Ghost Story
BY MANDY SHUNNARAH
Camille fluttered awake with a shiver, a common occurrence when you’re homeless and spend more nights sleeping outdoors than in.
“I’ll be damned, I thought it would never happen!” a woman’s voice squealed.
Camille wasn’t expecting company. The whole point of sleeping in a graveyard is to avoid people––and avoid the possibility of being robbed. Or worse.
She bolted upright, feeling the dampness from her period between her legs. She’d run out of tampons again and old socks rarely stayed in place.
“Shit,” she grimaced, looking down to see if her pants were stained.
“Oh my,” the other woman said. “That’s awfully unfortunate. I’d offer you a rag, but––”
Camille glanced up, the annoyance marking her face quickly turning to shock. The other woman wore a feather headband around her bobbed hair, a long string of pearls, and a fringed flapper dress. Her whole body, clothes and all, were ashen, as though they were a different, more muted color palette than the rest of her surroundings. She could’ve been covered in a fine layer of dust.
She didn’t emanate her own light, like Camille had always assumed a ghost would, but rather she struggled to make herself visible with the little light the moon gave.
Camille gasped and scooted backward until her back hit the tombstone.
“Oh, no, don’t do that. I can see I’ve given you a fright. Allow me to introduce––”
Speechless as she was, Camille shook her head back and forth, trying to discern whether she was dreaming, though the wetness of her period, the cold stone beneath her hands, and the obelisk monument behind her back were enough to tell her she wasn’t.
“Perhaps it would make you feel better to know that I wasn’t aware of The Hour either when I was alive. It seems not much has changed in the past century.”
“Ghost. You’re a… you’re a ghost,” Camille croaked, her voice hoarse from lack of use. She was a loner, a homeless person without a tent community, and didn’t have much reason to talk to people who were rarely kind to her.
“A specter, a ghoul, a spirit––sure, whatever you want to call me,” the ghost sighed. “No one has ever called me that before because you’re the first person to see me in this... form.”
The ghost looked down at herself disconcertingly, as though she wanted to smooth the wrinkles from her dress but decided it didn’t matter. It didn’t, after all.
“As I said, I can see I’ve given you a fright,” she went on. “Perhaps this wasn’t the best of ideas.”
“What idea?” Camille coughed. “I was just trying to get some sleep and here you are being a… a creep!”
“I’ve done no such thing,” the ghost responded with a haughty thrust of the chin. “I learned excellent posture in finishing school and I wouldn’t be caught creeping along the floor for diamonds or pearls. If I had a book I could walk with it perfectly balanced on my head. I’d even set a teacup atop the book if I had one of those too.”
Camille blinked, not knowing what to say to that. Even if she had a book and a teacup, she thought surely it would fall through the ghost since she wasn’t solid––good posture or not.
The ghost sighed again, this time appearing to fight back ethereal tears. “I should’ve known I wouldn’t be so lucky. You didn’t even come here knowing what you were doing, did you?”
“Look lady,” Camille began, wanting to calm the ghost before invoking wrath from the underworld. “I’m homeless and there aren’t many safe places to sleep, okay? And it’s bad out there for a woman alone but usually people are afraid of cemeteries at night because they’re afraid of ghosts, so graveyards are the best place for me to get a couple of hours of shuteye. I’m sorry for disturbing you––”
“So, you’re not afraid of me then?”
Camille’s eyes widened, fearing the ghost was challenging her.
“You said, didn’t you, that people are afraid of cemeteries at night because they’re afraid of ghosts. You’re here, so does that mean you’re not afraid of ghosts?”
Camille tread lightly through the minefield of her words. “Well, I’d never seen a ghost before, so I didn’t think they existed, but I stand corrected. You’ve made a believer out of me.”
“I see. And you likewise said, did you not, that you came here to sleep. Did you choose my grave for any particular reason?”
“I mean, it’s a fine grave… ma’am,” said a nervous and shaking Camille.
“Yes, yes, of course. But did you come to my grave for any specific reason?”
Camille looked over her shoulder, remembering the landscape of the cemetery as she entered it a few hours before and tried to retrace her steps.
“Well, it’s off a ways from the footpath for mourners, so anyone who was coming by would have to have a reason to walk over here specifically. And there’s that slope of the hill, see? So, this spot is a little more hidden, so it’s safer for me. I don’t like surprises. And since it’s in an older part of the cemetery I figured the graves over here are less likely to get as many visitors. And there’s that nice wide tree over there where I could squat and––”
“That’ll do, thank you!” the ghost chirped. “I’m led to believe that you coming here at the hour of my death and sleeping on my grave is nothing but an unfortunate and disappointing coincidence,” she concluded, turning her back to Camille and looking up at the moon.
“Not that I haven’t enjoyed this chat, ma’am, but is there a reason why this shouldn’t be a coincidence? You’re not my great-great-grandmother or something, are you?”
“I certainly think not! I’d sooner skin my children alive and boil them like chickens than have them sleeping in a graveyard like some wild fox.”
“What a nice thing to say to someone,” Camille replied dryly.
She gathered her backpack with her few possessions and turned to walk back up the hill to the cemetery entrance. She’d fallen asleep with her shoes on––a habit to prevent them from being stolen––and decided she was better off sleeping behind a dumpster in an alley than this place. An alley with a couple of drunks might be quieter than this talkative specter.
“Oh no, I’ve really done it now,” the ghost cried. “Do come back!”
“Happy trails,” Camille said with a salute. “This is the last time I sleep in a cemetery.”
“Oh dear, no, goodness no. Come back, please! I apologize in the sincerest fashion.”
Camille kept walking.
“Come back, I say! Come back this instant!” the ghost shouted.
Camille shook her head, wiping crusted sleep from her eyes as she trekked closer to the cemetery gate.
“Come back right now or I’ll… I’ll haunt you! I’ll haunt you for the rest of your days! From the year of our Lord… whatever year this is, until the day you join me on the cold side of the ground. I’ll haunt your children too! I’ll haunt all your descendants! I’ll make your skin crawl so that you can’t lie in bed at night without thinking death’s maggots are seeping into your flesh…”
“Jesus Christ, will you shut up, lady? I don’t even have a bed! That’s how I got here!”
“Oh my, this must be a degenerate society if you think I’m Jesus Christ himself, but if that’s what it takes. I’ll condemn you if you don’t come back here! I’ll send you straight to the fiery furnace! Even more fiery than the one I sent Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to!”
Unsure whether she was the only one that could hear the ghost, Camille couldn’t risk it. If the cops were called because of a noise complaint or disturbance, she’d be the one given a ticket for trespassing––one she didn’t have the money to pay––and she’d be the one locked up for the night––not the ghost. And as she knew from past experience, the only thing worse than not having a proper place to sleep was having a proper place to sleep inside of a jail cell.
She succumbed to the ghost’s demands before they got loud enough to wake the dead.
“I knew you’d see sense,” the ghost said smugly, unable to force the grin from the corners of her translucent mouth.
“Just tell me what you want.”
“Alright, if you insist.”
Camille rolled her eyes and plopped back down on top of the ghost’s grave. There was no point in arguing over who had really been the one to insist…
“There’s a rumor, little more than hearsay, really, that there are ways to come back after you die. Of course, most people who end up dead didn’t wish to become that way. So many are taken before they feel ready. They’ll latch on to any opportunity for a second chance, no matter how outlandish, and the fiction of that possibility gives them the hope they need to endure the eternal emptiness of the afterlife. Specters do love to talk, you know. When you’ve had little else to do for decades on end you get rather good at spinning tall tales. There’s a reason they call them ghost stories.”
Camille’s mind wandered for a moment; thinking of all the ghost stories she’d ever heard and wondering if ghosts had actually been the ones to make them up.
“One of the stories that gets repeated is that if a mortal falls asleep on your grave and is still there asleep on the day of your death, specifically at the hour of your death, you can trade places with them.”
“Nope! Absolutely not!” Camille shouted and scrambled to her feet again, snatching her backpack as she went.
“I cannot force your hand! If you choose to trade places with me, it must be of your own accord.”
“And why would I do that, huh?” Camille snarled.
“Do you like your life?”
A blankness replaced the scowl on Camille’s face.
“Tell me. Do you like your life? Do you enjoy living?” the ghost pressed.
“More than I’d enjoy being dead.”
“Well, I don’t see how you could possibly know that,” the ghost replied with a chuckle. “You’ve never been dead before, have you?”
Camille answered with another eye roll.
“You’re sleeping in a cemetery in torn clothing and men’s trousers blood-stained from your womanly curse. You’re too sickly-looking for me to believe you’re well-fed. You appear to have a lingering cough and might want to send for a door-to-door doctor to see to it that you don’t have tuberculosis. You must not have any family, otherwise you’d seek their hospitality rather than roam like a vagabond––”
“Alright!” Camille shouted, cupping her face in her hands. “I don’t need you to––”
“I do not wish to hurt you, only to tell you that it’s apparent you're tired. You appear to be the very definition of world-weary. Sleep is the closest that the living can come to death while still being alive, so when a living soul sleeps atop the grave of a deceased person on the day and hour of their death, the seal between the world of the living and the world of the dead is temporarily broken. Death is a sleep like no earthly sleep. There are no dreams and no sense of the passage of time. It’s a way for a mortal to escape from the woes of the world.”
Camille glared at the ghost. “So, you want me to give up my life for yours. Just like that, huh? That simple.”
“Only for a time. A mortal can’t sleep the sleep of death past the hour of their birth. When is your birthdate?”
Camille’s eyes widened. “July 25th. A little over two months from now.”
“And the hour?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Pardon me?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“Surely there’s a family Bible you can check for the record…”
“I don’t have a family, remember? Otherwise I’d ‘seek their hospitality rather than roam like a vagabond,’” Camille replied, mocking the ghost.
“Perhaps you know the general time of day?”
“Early morning. My mother once told me being in labor with me kept her up all night.”
“Poor woman,” the ghost said, running her hands over her own stomach at the mention of labor.
“So, you’re saying that I can sleep like the dead, at most, for two months?”
“From the hour of my death to the hour of your birth––yes.”
“And what are you going to do in the land of the living?” Camille asked, gesturing around the cemetery as though it were some grand prize.
“I want to see the face of my child.”
“But you died, like, a hundred years ago…” Camille said, turning to glance at the ghost’s headstone. Luella Pangborn. What a name. But her math was a little off––Luella had died in 1928.
“There must be a descendent of mine somewhere whom I would recognize through the generations. Or perhaps there’s a photograph. I want to know what became of them,” Luella replied, her mental calculations creasing her brow.
“So, you’re telling me you want to do some genealogy research? Why not just ask one of your dead relatives? I always thought spirits all hung out together or something in the afterlife.”
“Well, you are sadly mistaken. I’ve only been able to ‘hang out’––as you say––with my neighbors,” Luella said, gesticulating. “None of whom are my family.”
“Don’t people normally get buried next to their kin?” Camille asked.
“My, you ask a lot of questions. None of which are any of your business whatsoever,” Luella huffed, stomping her foot soundlessly on the air she hovered above.
Camille muttered under her breath, “I’d flip you off if I thought you’d know what it meant,” and turned on her heels toward the cemetery gate.
“Wait! Wait,” Luella cried in defeat. “If you must know, I died in childbirth and my husband remarried. I know because he and the new Mrs. Pangborn visited my grave until he died or forgot all about me––whichever came first. I assume he and my child, if the baby survived, are buried in some other plot elsewhere. Far away from me.”
“Mr. Pangborn and his new bride never brought your baby to visit you?”
“Not even once. My husband married awfully quickly so I imagine his new wife raised my baby as her own. My child may have never known who his or her mother actually was. Or maybe my baby died when I did. But I don’t think so because the baby would’ve been buried beside me, surely…” Luella said, her voice trailing off on the wind.
“We don’t have much time,” Luella gasped, wringing her hands. “If I cannot take your place, please find out what happened to my baby and come back a year from now. I beg you. I need to know what happened to…”
“I’ll do it,” Camille announced.
“I know even asking you to return in a year is a favor I don’t deserve...”
“I said I’ll do it. Like, switch places with you or whatever.”
Luella looked stricken with disbelief. Her propriety prevented her from staring at Camille slack-jawed with shock, though that’s no less what she felt.
“You w––”
“There’s one thing I want to know before I do, though. What’s preventing you from permanently taking my place? Like, if you don’t come back by the hour of my birth do I actually die? Do you turn into a pile of bones on the street or what?”
Luella became paler than even her natural ghostly pallor allowed and looked down at her grave.
“I would… go on living,” she admitted. “It would, however, be a cursed existence. And because I will have robbed you of your own life, I would forfeit all opportunity for a peaceful afterlife. My soul would never be reborn into another body. I would never know joy or happiness again. Only sickness, death, and despair. Attempts to take my own life would fail. I would live long and suffer every moment.”
Camille raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like a pretty good incentive to come back on time.”
Luella smiled. “I’d say so.”
“You said there wasn’t much time. Let’s get going.”
Camille and Luella stood facing one another on Luella’s grave, holding each other’s hands. This was especially difficult for Camille since touching Luella in spirit form made her skin itch and tingle, as though her hand had fallen asleep. They were silent in the final minutes of the hour.
“Hey, Luella,” Camille whispered. Luella stirred and her eyes widened at having been called by name. “How do you know all this is true? That this will actually work?”
Luella was silent and her forehead creased in consternation. Camille began sinking slowly, imperceptibly into the six feet of earth below the grave.
“I’m not at all certain,” Luella concluded. “It could just be another ghost story.”
Their hands slipped apart as Camille sank lower, fading in corporeal substance, pulled gently into a dreamless sleep––and Luella filled with pulsing breath and color. Noticing, for the first time in nearly a century, the chill of the night air.
