Brock's Tale
"Hey Dad, did you ever see a ghost?"
"Yeah, Uncle Brock. Did you ever see a real ghost?"
Brock grinned at the black-haired boy and brunette girl who were sitting on either side of him on the couch.
"Well, Conrad, Lindsey… The answer to that is yes."
"Oh come on!" Conrad exclaimed. "You've got to tell us now."
"You really want to hear it? It might be a little scary."
Lindsey rolled her eyes.
"I wanna hear it, Uncle Brock."
"All right."
I was had just turned six, and had even more recently gotten out of the hospital with what I remember as the worst case of the flu I ever had. I spent most of my time recovering on the couch or up in my room watching TV, up until our water went out and my mother decided to move us into the house of her boyfriend, Jesse, until it could get fixed.
Jesse was a skinny guy, lanky, a bit awkward but kind and friendly. He took quickly to having us living there; he made up a room for me and he would stay up late playing video games or board games or just hanging around with the two of us.
We were still there when Dia de las Muertes rolled around – the Mexican Day of the Dead. My mother convinced Jesse to have an altar, and we filled it with little mementos of people in our family who had died. I remember that we mainly had things for Tomas, my mother's kid brother who had died suddenly earlier that year. I found out later that he had been in a gang and had gotten gunned down, but I didn't understand that at the time.
We all went to bed, and I was sleeping soundly until I hear a weird noise. It was footsteps, but they didn't sound familiar – they had a kind of tap-click-click sound to them. I kept hearing it – tap, click-click. Tap, click-click. I stood up and went to investigate, slid out of my room and into the hallway.
In the hall, I found myself watching the figure of a woman, dressed all in white, but in black shoes. High heels. And I watched her tap-click-click right into Jesse's room.
I followed her. I wondered what she was going to do. Was she going to steal their energy? Haunt them? Scare them? Kill them even? And if she was, what could I do about it? I stood at the foot of the bed, frozen, not having any idea what to do. Terrified.
Then, just like that, I wasn't. There was a kind of weird glow to her. I could see her more clearly now, and could tell that she had pale skin and long black hair.
She leaned in towards the bed, where Jesse was asleep on his back and my mother was curled up on her side, arms draped over a pillow.
She leaned in and kissed Jesse on the cheek, then looped her arms under him and pushed him over on his side. She paused, then grabbed his wrists and moved his arms so they were around my mother's waist. Then she turned and looked at me.
I stepped back, gasped.
"Hi, kid," she told me.
"Hi," I said after a while.
"Brock, right?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Is Jesse doing okay?"
All I could do was nod.
"That's good."
And then, just like that, she was gone. I woke up the next morning and didn't remember how I got into bed.
"Whoa!" Lindsey exclaimed. "What did they say?"
"My mother thought it was just a fever dream. Or an overactive imagination."
"What did Jesse say?" Conrad asked.
"Well, he admitted after a while… and this is the creepy part… that he had had a girlfriend who looked just like that, who had died. Earlier that year in fact."
"Whoa," Conrad and Lindsey exclaimed.
"I don't know if he bought it, though. I don't know if I even bought it. But that's the time your old man might have seen a ghost."
"And what happened to Jesse?" Conrad asked. Brock reached out and tussled his hair.
"Well, I don't know," he replied with a grin. "Last time I checked he was in the other room playing chess against your mother… and losing. Go say hi to him." He chuckled and gave Conrad a little nudge, as he rolled his eyes and reluctantly got up.
Lindsey followed him.
"Did you believe that story?" she asked as they made their way into the other room.
"Nah," Conrad replied. "There's no such thing as ghosts."