Dopecentury XLVIII --- Real Ghosts
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: "the monotony rarely becomes tedious.") My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these "Dopecentury" entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
In that corner of the city — one of the corners far out toward the city edge, where the homes are still tightly packed together but rarely rise above a squat second story — there the wires are still strung above, pole to pole and pole to house; the project of submerging power lines against the frequent onslaught of winter weather having long ago been carried out in the center city, but somehow the funds had never been found to take care of these satellite neighborhoods that orbited close to (but absolutely within) the city border. Because of this, during the parts of the year when weather takes its toll on the city budget, the power here browned out and blacked out with some frequency.
Frequently enough that the residents have routines in place for how to occupy their time when the neighborhood went dark; the younger folks would generally head outside, particularly if there were snow to be had; the oldest among them would form up into gangs and prowl the neighborhood looking to intimidate; (even though, statistically, there was barely a blip to be seen in any measure of crime distinct from there being power rated against there not being power; "there is a consistent 5% rise in crime in that neighborhood every time the power goes out" the report from the crimelab would run, and the tabloid-sized papers would run their coverage of the report on the front page, while the broadsheets might give it a few inches; and nowhere would it be mentioned that a 5% increase in crime was the equivalent to perhaps two additional police interactions in the neighborhood — depending, of course, on where you were inclined to draw the boundaries of the neighborhood.)
During a true black out, the older folk in the neighborhood saddled up their fear and trudged on down to the local corner store, where the proprietor would have a heater running (many of those old stores still had some kind of small wood stove in a corner, which, if not often used, still were conveniently serviceable when the power went out). Especially if the power went out after sunset but before late evening the draw of a warm store, maybe a coffee warmed on the stove, or a beer from the stash in the snow outside, and catching up on the news and gossip with other local characters — it was all fairly compelling; power outages came irregularly, but the routine of what to do was well established.
And so, in that neighborhood, at one store where the blackout routine goes on; a store situated at an odd intersection of more than two roads, and so the store sat on an odd-shaped lot wedged into the intersection and having some time long in the past shaped the store into a sort of triangle, with the door embedded in the point that jutted into the space of the odd intersection, and forced foot traffic through the intersection to pass the door as often as possible — at this store the older folks of the neighborhood gathered (along with one or two very young people tottering in an overstuffed snowsuit and holding their grandparent's hand) and sipped their coffee or beer as was their wont.
And having already worked the conversation through the best news anyone could gather about the state of the power lines, and also having poked and prodded the neighborhood gossip (at least the items that were reasonable for discussion among an open-invitation group); an inflection point was reached, where the conversation paused among the sipping; no one at that particular moment had the confidence to direct the next stage of the conversation; though really this was just fine for most of the people there.
Not for the young one in the overstuffed snow suit though (now unsnapped all down the front and the sleeves pulled off the small arms so they hung limp and lifeless from the child's sides like extra limbs that might be dropped in the face of a threatening predator). This kid did not want silence, and was not comfortable letting it teeter on while the fire crackled in the stove. The kid knew exactly what direction would be good for the conversation at this point: "Have any of you ever seen a ghost?"
Smiles crack along with awkward pulls at beer bottles. A few classics are tried out: the hook on the door of the car, the phone call comes from inside the house. The kid knows better: "No, I mean a real ghost."
Some have stories of odd noises from the depths of their old houses, but nobody has a story of apparition that is satisfying to the kid.
Then, one old codger who sat in rickety old chair by the door, which he kept cracked while he smoked a long thin cigar and blew the smoke out into the cold night air; one of these men who had been around the neighborhood for as long as anyone could remember; who spent much of his meager pension from some long-ago city job at this very store; who dressed in clothing that was thick and heavy, even in the summer heat, and always wore boots, and ate apples by cutting off slices with a big folding knife from his pocket — you know the type of dude — this guy indeed had a ghost for the kid.
"I know a real ghost." He sucked at his cigar and blew blue smoke out into the sucking cold wind of the cracked door. "The realest ghost of them all. You've probably known it yourself, or you will at any rate. This ghost comes and visits every one of us at some point. And it favors some over others, and those it favors are in their way cursed. I know the ghost, but I thank my luck that I am not favored by the ghost. Pray, kid, that the ghost will mostly pass over you in your lifetime. But nobody gets out without confronting it at some point.
It comes only in the middle of the night, when it is darkest in your room. It comes when you are most vulnerable: when you have just awoken from a dream, in a state where what might seem absurd by the light of day feels as if it could in fact be real. The thing is: that is the lie we tell ourselves: that the things we feel in the middle of the night when we are in half-dream are not real, they are just the fantasies of a half-conscious mind. This is, in truth, the reverse of reality. The reality is that fear that we wake to in the middle of the night, when your eyes open and you can't keep your consciousness from insisting: you are going to die. You will be no more. And within a very short period of time, you will be all but forgotten. And a relatively short time after that, forgotten completely. Wiped from the planet as if you never existed — this is in fact the truth, not a fantasy. But we can only know the truth really know the truth; feel the reality of it in those moments when you wake in the middle of the night and all the guardrails against insanity that you have up all day long are suddenly gone.
This is the only real ghost there is. It's the realest of real ghosts. It is a visitation of real fear and terror and your own mortality is exposed to you in a cold light that cannot be denied. You have to live your life knowing it is coming for you. All you can do is hope that it does not come too often. Good luck with that kid."