Life After Dead The Ghost
I tried for what had to have been about a month to find my murderer. I stayed around the boardwalk constantly day after day, week after week watching the people who came through there. I no longer needed to sleep so I could be untiringly obsessed with it all day and all night long. I was desperately hoping to spot him but it was feeling more like a failure with each unsuccessful day. I watched everybody that came through there; from every angle possible, he was nowhere to be found.
That couldn’t have been the first time he had come through here, on the night that I was murdered. I couldn’t accept that as the conclusion of my life. I couldn’t help but wonder how long would I have to wait if I was ever going to find him?
Of course a better question might be what was my plan going to be if I did find him? I had already tried unsuccessfully to hurt him before. I also hadn’t made any significant strides towards figuring out how to influence things around me. I couldn’t allow myself to become discouraged before any time went by. I couldn’t afford the human privilege of impatience. I was going to have to be as patient as ever. All of the stories I might have ever read while I was alive were about ghosts that were haunting places and had been around for decades, sometimes even centuries! I doubted he would be around that long but I had to give it a good effort at least. Suddenly I imagined an eternal ghostly high school where I was one of the unpopular ghosts that got teased by the long time haunters.
I tried floating in the direction he was driving that night before I unwittingly whisked myself away to that circus porno of my ex-girlfriends.
To my repeated utter dismay to find some sort of clue as to where he went, I had to resign myself to the fact that there was nothing to go on. There were no tracks I could follow made by his 4 wheeler; there was no blood trail or other obvious signs to be seen. My bread crumb trail had blown away; I was beginning to lose hope.
After about 6 months I finally decided to give it a rest, at least for a while. My initial shock had completely worn off and I felt that my inability to hurt him physically would only destroy me psychologically if I did find him. I was as useless as an amputee in a karate tournament when it came to affecting the land of the living. That thought made me remember a guy that I had known when I was alive named Chris. He liked to be called Christ. He was an inbred redneck and treated everybody who came his way like absolute shit.
One day he was trying to show off to this pretty young freshman girl he had taken for a ride in his old rusty black pickup with the rebel flag tint in his back window. As he was passing a couple of kids from his high school he didn’t like, he stepped on his gas, revving the engine as if his truck were so badass that he could run over a tank if he needed to. They flipped him off and he saw they both used two hands, giving him 4 birds total causing his blood to boil.
He wanted to be smooth and turn his car in the middle of the road, so he jerked the wheel for a 180 degree turn. The problem was he was going too fast and it only rocked his truck off balance causing the truck to shift its weight and the front wheels locked up sideways. His truck flipped over hard, getting more momentum with each flip. It almost looked like the ground was spring loaded and forced the truck to roll faster and faster before it finally stopped and landed on its side. During one of the rolls the truck landed with all its weight directly onto Chris’s back as he flopped out of the window.
He looked like a ragdoll as he was flung from the scene, his back broken in the process. He was paralyzed from the forehead down trapped inside his own body unable to deliver responses since most of his nerves had been destroyed. His spine and many of his nerves were crushed by the weight of the truck with the added force of its roll. He was very awake and aware much like Professor Steven Hawking, the difference being that Chris only had a tenth of the brain power of Hawking, if that. He also had no speak and spell to communicate with and probably couldn’t figure out how to use it if he did.
So far I had found only one limit as to who I could and could not see or check up on and that was my murderer. I had to maintain a feeling of familiarity as I thought about their personalities and presence. When I would visit people I couldn’t touch them or affect anything but I could watch them without limits as if I were the ultimate stalker. It was more like I was trying to stalk a stripper at the strip club though since I could only look but not touch.
I had gotten over the initial fear of walking through things like walls and doors. It seemed that there was a new set of fears that I was going to develop now like was I going to be alone for the rest of eternity? I hadn’t seen anyone I knew who was already dead, or anyone else dead for that matter. I hadn’t seen a light at the end of any tunnel either. I was beginning to feel like I was going to be trapped waiting for this guy forever with no chance of ever leaving or finding him.
One night I was floating along the beach wishing I had someone to talk to feeling extra lonely. I noticed something from out of the corner of my eye from the water’s edge. I saw a weird guy crawling out of the water slowly like he had just reached shore after a boat wreck or something. I watched him crawl out of the water and expected him to be soaking wet but when I looked closer he was completely dry. I walked over to him feeling a hidden excitement trying to beat its way into some glimmer of hope in my chest.
“Help me.” He begged me as he crawled up to my legs and actually physically touched my feet.
I was in shock. This was the first person to speak to me since I was killed. I knew it could only mean one of two things, either he was a ghost himself, or he was some sort of psychic. I was more apt to believe the first choice since he was dry, crawling out of the water. There was one way to tell for sure, I reached down to see if I could touch him and I could! I was so happy I could hardly contain myself. I grabbed his hand and helped him to his feet.
He looked tired as hell and I realized he must have died out there in the water. I felt a little guilty but I didn’t care that he was dead. I was just glad to finally have someone else that was in a similar situation as me. If ghosts could kill themselves I probably would have done so already as helpless and alone as I had been feeling. I was even beginning to feel like I might be the only ghost in existence. It was a very eerie feeling.
I helped him up to his shaky feet and I walked him over to sit down on a nearby spot on the sand. He coughed and water came out his mouth and nose to my surprise, some even going through my hand that was on his shoulder, I wasn’t aware that a ghost could touch the physical world let alone cough it up.
“Where am I?” He asked me in a rather broken and raspy voice. He must have gone unconscious at some point before he crawled out of the water because he looked like he had just woken up. He had heavy black bags under his eyes that I could see even under the dim conditions we were in. He was dressed like a fisherman with a white button up shirt that was cut off at the sleeves and some cut off camouflage shorts. He had a couple of fishhooks in his pant leg where he would hold them for quick access should he have needed a new one.
“I think your dead man, I’m sorry.” I replied.
He smiled up at me I could see he was trying to decide whether I was crazy or just kidding. “Okay.” he said with a roll of his eyes. “So I guess you’re another ghost that helped me out of the water?” He laughed.
“Feel your hair.” I told him matter of factly.
He reached up to feel his hair and his smile faded as he realized that it wasn’t wet at all. He looked down at his shorts as well and saw that there was no water on them either although he had gotten out of the water only a minute ago. The look on his face said that he was about to panic so before he flipped out I tried to calm him down.
“Hey hey, look at me your alive you’re just… not inside of your body anymore but I promise you’re okay.”
He looked down and realized I was right with a noticeably relieved expression on his face. “Yeah I guess you’re right. Well that answers that fear.” He looked up at me as he said, “My mom’s going to be…” I could see bright white lighting up his ghostly eyes as his eyes drifted to something behind me.
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