The Ghost Behind Me

In the corner of my room sits an empty white crib. Each night as I sleep it sprouts sharp fangs and quietly creeps up to my bed where it slowly drinks the blood in my veins. I wake tired and weak despite a full night of sleep. I know the crib is responsible. Although I've never caught it red handed, its angle and position are slightly different each morning. The crib was never used except as a changing table and to store the clothes of the one it had been purchased for. Even now a handful of baby clothes litter the crib. They sit there discarded in the same way a snake sheds its skin. The whole apartment is that way. I am also a discarded cast off.

My wife once tried to grow things in the garden behind the house. But the place is used by a dog as its toilet and it will grow only sandy soil and large dark clumps of things unmentionable. Aside from the crib the house is quite haunted. At night I can hear the ghost walk. There's a plank in my hard wood floor that makes a dull creaking noise every time I step on it. And in the dark of the night there have been times when I've stepped on that plank and the board has creaked twice. Half an eyeblink after passing over it the floor will creak again and I know the ghost follows me about the house. One step behind me. When the air is extremely still and hot I can feel its breath on my neck. Never once have I turned around to behold it. Last night as I lay in bed the ghost made a horrible rasping noise from the bathroom and I knew that it stood in front of the mirror and combed its hair. Contrary to popular opinion ghosts aren't human but nevertheless they engage in a mocking imitation of us. It would leave presents of a sort for me and once when I went to bed I found a book atop my pillow. It was printed in a language I couldn't quite understand. I tried to read it and I came close to realizing something about the words that had been written in it several times but the meaning was always just beyond my reach. When I woke in the morning I looked for the book but it had disappeared.

Later that day I opened the closet. I had placed all the baby things in it so their sight would not pain me. I hadn't opened the door in quite some time. I was shocked to find a new room had grown there. Its furnishings were few but I could tell it belonged to a woman because the room had those feminine touchs that grace the presence of women. There were pictures on a bureau but as I examined them I was disturbed to see all the faces had been scratched out. Perhaps this room belonged to the ghost ? The pictures seemed to indicate that there was something it was trying to remove from the world. I left and shut the closet door behind me. What a wild imagination I possess. I'm sure this room must belong to my upstairs neighbor. I realized it had been weeks since I had seen her and I became concerned for her health. Death held no terror for me but the thought of someone decaying alone made me shudder. I meant to call the landlord but promptly forgot all about it. I decided to leave my apartment and walk to the pub down the street.

I find crowds of people both comforting and unsettling. After you've lived a certain number of years you begin to place people into broad categories based on their appearance. You do it almost unconsciously. It is human nature to generalize. An unfortunate consequence of this is the tendency of strangers to seem oddly familiar which is comforting. But it also reminds one of how alone you are. They remind you of your friends but they never greet you or clasp your hand in friendship or regale you with stories that bore you. And this is unsettling.

A funny and intelligent woman talked to me this night at the bar while I drank and wrote. She seemed familiar. One part an ex-wife and three parts the mother of a good friend seasoned liberally with an aunt and a cousin from my fathers side. I was about to say something interesting but she was already beginning her next statement. Half way through speaking she became bored and began talking to her companion. The words died on my lips. I've often wondered if I inhabit a separate world than my fellow humans. We speak the same language and have many experiences in common. But my world moves at a treacle pace and if a butterfly gets too close the best one can hope for is pretty amber thousands of years from now. The music in the bar has just stopped and my words are moving slower than usual. I've been careless and need to lubricate them with more alcohol. To the apartment I go. I'll type what I've just written. Passing the words through a machine makes them intelligible to others.