We Found a Ghost Life (Part 1)
My husband and I had been living in our new house for a week when our neighbor, Carl, told us that there was a ghost in the neighborhood.
“He’s a great guy, though. His name’s John. No one knows how he got here, but he’s really pretty normal and wonderful. You’ll see.”
Carl said you could find John just about anywhere. He didn’t go into anyone’s houses, unless he was invited. But he was big into taking walks and climbing trees. If you were looking for him, he spent a lot of time around what was left of the bleachers on the overgrown baseball field at the northern border of the neighborhood. He didn’t need to sleep, so he was around all hours.
Of course, Tom and I thought it was a joke. A pretty good one too. Carl was really selling it with the level of detail. “What’s John’s story?” I asked Carl.
Carl took off his faded red baseball cap and dabbed the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “He used to live here back in the ‘70s. Had a wife and a kid. They all died in a house fire. John came back. He lost them out there somewhere. Time is different for ghosts.”
If Carl was making this all up, it was becoming some weird, twisted, not-very-funny joke. But hey, we hardly knew this Carl guy and the area seemed to be filled with oddball burnouts, even though Carl came off as a straight shooter. All I could think to say was, “That’s very sad.” Tom and I nodded to each other and headed home to grill pork chops for dinner. Tom thanked Carl for the info as we walked away.
Carl called after us, “I know it sounds crazy, but he’s my best friend.”
...
It was my idea to move back east. Our kids, Lily and Jason, were eight and five, respectively. Tom and I had found ourselves kicking around in corporate media jobs that we weren’t passionate about. And really just scraping by in Los Angeles, despite the high salaries. We had done a good job saving, and we knew we could get decent jobs in a smaller town or pick up remote freelance work. So we made the leap. My mom’s side of the family was from upstate New York. I grew up in the Jersey suburbs of NYC and no one in my family lived there any more. Thomas is from New Orleans, but he doesn’t have any contact with his family. So western Massachusetts on the New York border felt like it could be as close to home as either of us had known.
We daydreamed about giving our kids an intelligent, rural upbringing. We didn’t want a super depressed town but we didn’t want a wealthy town either. Lorney Mills was right in between. The neighborhood we landed in was half filled with retirees, like Carl, and young families like us. Lots of boys and girls playing in yards and building tree forts. Trails the kids could bike on connected the different properties.
“I didn’t think areas like this existed any more,” I told Tom on our first night.
“I didn’t think they ever really existed,” Tom replied with a bit of a forlorn nostalgia in his undertone. Growing up in a Southern city, Tom had convinced himself that this kind of idyllic adolescent setting was the thing of Mark Twain stories, the stuff of pure fantasy. He had totally missed out. He never got to build a fort. Never shot bee-bee guns. Never made bike jumps or had dirt bomb fights. He didn’t bury treasure. He hid treasure in drainage pipes and hoped the rain wouldn’t wash it away.
“I’m glad we found it. The kids are going to enjoy growing up here.”
We kept them on a tight leash to start. Tom had picked up a gig with a marketing company in Albany through the summer months, and with the hour-plus commute he wasn’t much help during the week. Which was fine -- I was working from home doing freelance copywriting, so I could bounce outside and keep the kids busy most days.
After a month of me juggling at-home work and bored-and-restless kiddos, we decided we’d let Lily roam free with the other girls on the street, as long as she wasn’t going to be too far away. It was a Tuesday in July and I was on deadline, so I agreed to let her cruise four houses over to play with the McQuiskey kids on their trampoline. Jason, our youngest, would hang back and watch shows with me until I freed up in a couple hours, and then we’d join Lily. But Jason pitched such a fit because I didn’t let him go with his sister that after fifteen minutes I had to wrap up my work and bring him over to join in the fun. Only when we got to the McQuiskeys’ house, Lily wasn’t there.
The kids thought that maybe she had gotten turned around in the wooded patch that connected the backyards. I ran onto the trail and through the treeline, breaking into an open field. Jason jogged behind me. He said, “She’s probably at the pond, momma.”
“What pond? There’s a pond around here?” I was getting frantic.
Just then a neighbor moved out to meet us, carrying a rake. “I think I saw your little girl head over to the pond,” he said. He was middle-aged, maybe ten years older than me. He had a warm, steady way about him.
“Which way is that?”
He pointed to the other side of the field where there was a break between two sections of brush. “Right past that gulley there,” he said.
“Thank you,” I scooped Jason up in my arms and cut fast in that direction. “I’m Kelly,” I said, giving the neighbor a wave as I backpedaled.
“Nice to meet you, Kelly. I’m John.”
He turned and glided a few feet away, and I noticed that his legs were missing below the knee. John disappeared behind a tree. I ran to the pond and found Lily there, digging in the mud with a stick.
“You’re supposed to be at the McQuiskeys!”
“I think I took a wrong turn. So I just waited here. I’m sorry, don’t be mad.”
I wasn’t mad. I was terrified. As a parent, there’s nothing like losing track of your child. Especially when you’re in a still somewhat-unfamiliar area. And even though John had been a pleasant and helpful presence, he was still a ghost. I wasn’t sure how to feel about him just yet.
Over dinner, Tom was floored.
“You saw the ghost.”
“Yeah. John. He helped me find Lily.”
“What do you mean, he helped you?”
“He pointed to where the pond was. Relax, dude. He’s a ghost.”
Tom turned to Jason, who was eating macaroni and cheese with his hands. “Did you see him?”
Jason thought for a second and then shook his head. “No. But I saw frogs at the pond.”
“Did you see him, Lily?”
She hadn’t. Poor thing was so turned around in the forest that all she could think to do was sit by the water and wait for me to find her. I could tell she was still nervous about getting lost, even if she wasn’t letting on.
“Is he a real ghost ghost?” she asked us. “Ghosts are kind of freaky.”
“Well, apparently, he’s a nice ghost,” Tom said.
“He was nice. He was helpful.”
Tom just nodded. I told him to go out after dinner and see if he could find John. That he could meet the ghost, and thank him for helping us find Lily. He liked that idea, and walked out to the field as I was cleaning up.
Tom was gone for two hours. When he came back he had an enormous smile on his face. “John is amazing! He showed me this cool natural spring where carbonated water bubbles right out of the ground. And then we played frisbee for an hour. He had to go because he was having beers with Carl.”
“Can he drink?” I asked, resting my book down and sitting up on the couch.
“Well, he can sure let a frisbee rip.”
“Were his legs gone beneath the knees?”
“No. His legs were all intact.”
“Interesting,” I said. Something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. “Maybe we should keep our distance from John. At least until we get a better sense of who and what he is.”
“Keep our distance? You said you liked him. I’m supposed to go through my baseball card collection with him tomorrow. You know he went to the 1970 World Series? Orioles in five. Brooks Robinson.”
How would I know that? “No, I didn’t know that,” I said and I picked my book back up. “Let’s just not go too crazy with John, okay?”
Tom smiled and nodded. I knew he wasn’t paying attention to me. He was really excited about John. I get it -- you move to a new town, you meet a new friend, you start to remember all of the little things that you’ve neglected for most of your adult life, like baseball cards and playing frisbee in a field. Tom had been really stressed with work things for years now, so I wanted to encourage him to relax and enjoy himself. Recapture the flame of youth.