The Ghost Who Tried to Love Me (2 page)

One weekend the water in her building was
out and so we decided to spend Saturday night at my apartment
watching a movie. We were cuddling on the couch, enjoying the movie
when the light and fan over the stove suddenly turned on. I got up
to see what the problem was and found that both of the switches had
been pressed on. Strange. I went back to the couch and was about to
sit down when the both came back on again. The switches I had just
turned off had been turned on again. My student's story of
exploding light bulbs jumped into my mind, and I firmly tossed it
out with a good laugh. I unplugged the electrical chord and we
enjoyed the rest of the movie uninterrupted.

That night as I lay in the dark waiting for
sleep to come I thought about ghosts. Most of what I thought made
me laugh, visions of Casper floating in my kitchen, struggling to
get the button pressed as beads of translucent sweat ran down his
cheeks. The light and fan were probably made in China, nothing else
that the landlord furnished the apartment with was good quality, I
was sure the kitchen stuff had to be cheap as well. I drifted off
with the vision of Casper struggling to get the chord plugged back
in so he could turn the light on and interrupt my movie again.
Ghosts!

There were no more electrical failures or
strange occurrences during the next few weeks. It seemed like the
flare-ups with the kitchen stove happened about once a month, never
on the same day, sometimes when I was alone and sometimes when I
had company. The more it happened the more convinced I became that
it was just some kind of short that happened when the humidity got
bad. Since it only happened once a month and unplugging it solved
the problem I never thought to ask anyone about it.

Summer came and with it a big schedule
change. When my students started their summer vacations it meant
that English classes moved from the evening to the daytime, giving
me free nights for the first time in most of a year. Brenda and I
used the nights as best we could (wild oats!), knowing that it
would only last for the summer. There was one more crazy fan
incident in July while she was at my apartment, and we got a good
laugh out of it. I told her the ghost story my student had told me,
thinking that it would get a good laugh as well. It didn't.

"Tell me that story again, slowly," she
said. I told her about the maiden ghost making noises and giving
the college girls a hard time when they brought boys home. "We'd
better not meet in your place next month, it's Ghost Month. If you
really do have a ghost here that's when it will have the most time
to bother you."

"What's the Ghost Month? I've never heard
August called that, aren't you thinking of Halloween in October," I
said.

"Halloween is just an excuse for American
kids to get candy, it has nothing to do with ghosts. Ghost Month is
the seventh month of the Lunar calendar, the time in the year when
ghosts can travel freely. The only other times they are out is on
the 15th of each Lunar Month."

I'll admit that I had a little chill go down
my back when I heard that the 15th of the month was a ghost day,
but logic shouted down goosebumps. "There's no such thing as
ghosts. You're just trying to scare me."

"Today is the 15th, maybe that's why the fan
went off again tonight."

With the soggy blanket of ghost talk
smothering any hopes of a romantic evening, Brenda ended up going
home early. I lay in bed for a while wondering what a Taiwanese
ghost would look like. The Scream? Dripping ghostly blood from its
long fangs? The more I thought about it the funnier the images
became, until I couldn't stand it anymore. I burst out laughing and
yelled "Come out ghostie, let me see your ugly face!" The fan went
on immediately. I went out and unplugged it, but there were no
ghosts to be seen.

Ghost Month starts with people all over the
city burning gold money and leaving fruit and burning incense out
on table near the road. The first omen that bad things were afoot
came the morning of the first day. I was riding my scooter down a
main road on my way to class when a fat old shopkeeper dumped an
armful of money into his burning bin just as I rode by. The wind
was just right, blowing towards me, and the flames lept up and
burned my leg. The shopkeeper felt really bad and took me to a
clinic. I came away with singed pants, a second degree burn on my
leg, and a prescription of thick green goop to apply to the burn
three times a day. I missed my morning class and the boss of the
school I taught at in the mornings told me to take the rest of the
day off. It was Friday and a three-day weekend sounded nice, so I
cancelled the afternoon classes at my school and went home to
rest.

I slept through the afternoon and into the
evening. Brenda called to tell me she was exhausted from teaching
alone during the afternoon, she wouldn't be coming over. I hobbled
around the apartment for a while and fixed some dinner, then
decided I'd watch a movie and head back to bed. HBO was showing
"The Exorcist" in honor of the beginning of Ghost Month, and it
scared me. When it ended I got ready for bed, images of the little
girl's head spinning around on her neck floating through my
mind.

I had only been asleep for a little while
when something made come full awake. The room became frigid and I
could feel something on my leg. I looked down, I had kicked the
covers off because of the heat, and saw a line of goosebumps
popping up on my thigh. It looked like someone was drawing a line
on my skin with a piece of ice, but there was nothing there. When I
moved my leg the cold air whooshed out of the room and I was back
in the heat of the August night. The goosebumps settled down and I
wondered in my grogginess what in the world had been touching me.
The rest of the night I had nightmares of "The Exorcist."

The next night I was wary when I went to
bed, it had been a very strange day. Brenda listened to my story
about the night before and decided I needed professional help. She
took me to a local temple to see if the master could tell me what
was wrong. We were part of a huge group of people waiting to see
the master for "ghost decontamination," all of the people there had
been frightened by ghosts in the night and wanted a special
poultice made to calm them down. When it was our turn the master
took one look at me and said "You have a ghost following you. You
need to be very careful." I asked him what the ghost looked like,
but he said it wasn't the form of a ghost, it was a disruption in
my aura, he could tell because my aura had a color that shouldn't
be there. I was getting this all in a choppy translation from an
increasingly worried Brenda, so it didn't make much sense to me.
After a few sentences she stopped translating and just talked to
the master in Chinese. Finally she turned to me and said it was
time to get a mirror.

What good is a mirror against a ghost? It
turns out that ghosts can't look into special Fengshui mirrors, so
if you position them in your house it corrects the bad Fengshui
that lets the ghost in in the first place, leaving you a
mortals-only house once again. I thought it was the dumbest thing I
had ever heard. The "master" smelled like a two day drinking binge
and bad barbecue, the mirrors he told us to buy were crappy little
things that screamed "made in a Chinese sweat shop," and I didn't
want any part of it. Brenda insisted, and I became the proud owner
of two Fengshui mirrors. I drew the line at the master coming over
to install them himself, though. He told Brenda where to place them
and told me to come back if the ghost came back. Right buddy, I'll
be back when hell freezes over.

We installed the mirrors and then Brenda
took me out for lunch. We couldn't find a parking spot close to the
restaurant where we wanted to eat and ended up walking a long ways.
My leg was throbbing by the time we got back to the car so I was
sent home with instructions to rest easy and not worry about
ghosts.

As I was laying down to sleep I felt the
cold come back but no icy touches. It had to be a stray draft of
freon flavored goodness from a neighbor's house, nothing more, I
thought. It stayed for about three minutes and then slowly
dissipated. I was so relieved I fell asleep almost immediately.

I began to have a dream about a beautiful
girl. She never spoke and never smiled, just seemed to go through
the room like a black cloud. She was petite, had long black hair, a
real Chinese beauty. As she walked she trailed a set of vague forms
behind her, some that looked like people and some that looked like
possessions, books and things. She was walking across the dream
room slowly, coming in my direction but not in any hurry. As she
got nearer to me she lifted her face and brushed her hair back
behind her ear, and I could see a horrible mark around her neck
like she had been strangled with a thick rope. As she looked at me
and our eyes made contact she shot across the room in an instant
and was suddenly right next to me. I felt the cold touch return on
my leg and I heard a scream.

My eyes shot open and I looked around the
dark room. The scream was mine, and the cold touch on my leg was
still there. So was she. She was rubbing my leg with her index
finger, head down. Her long hair was covering her face completely.
She moved slowly, her finger tracing along my skin. I screamed
again.

I closed my eyes and started to panic. The
girl was in my room, touching me. I snapped my eyes open again and
she was gone. The cold in the room lingered but I was out of bed
and into the front room as fast as I could move. I wanted to call
Brenda but realized my cell phone was back by my bed on the
nightstand. There was no way I was going back into that room,
Brenda would find this all out first thing in the morning anyways.
I got a beer from the fridge and sat down in a chair to decide what
to do next.

I couldn't go back to bed, but I couldn't
leave the house either; I was only wearing boxers and a t-shirt.
All my clothes were in the closet in my room. I checked the clock,
it was 3:10. I turned all the lights in the apartment on and
watched Sports Center and the Discovery Channel until I finally
passed out just before six. That's how Brenda found me at 8:30,
snoring on the couch with the TV blasting, all lights on and the
floor covered in empty beer cans.

"What happened to you?" she asked after she
shook me awake. I grabbed her and hugged her. She looked at me like
I was a crazy stranger. "What's wrong with you?"

"The mirrors didn't work," I said.

"What do you mean? Did you see
something?"

"I had a terrible dream, and then she was
right next to my bed." I told her what I remembered, and although
it seemed burned into my memory I couldn't describe it very well. I
was afraid she wouldn't believe me.

"Are you sure it wasn't just a dream?" she
asked.

"Positive. She was there, touching me."

Brenda wanted to go straight back to the
temple, but I didn't want to go back and have that oily "master"
tell me more about my aura problems. I got dressed and we went out.
We spent the whole day together, but in the late afternoon Brenda
said she needed to get home. She had told her parents she would go
home for her sister's birthday that night.

"I'm really sorry I can't stay with you. Do
you want to stay at my place tonight?" she asked. I wanted to cry
out "yes!" but was feeling pretty sheepish. Maybe it had been a bad
dream. Maybe it wouldn't happen again. Maybe I was just going
crazy, or maybe watching horror movies before bed is a bad idea. I
told Brenda that I'd be fine, she should go and enjoy herself at
her sister's party.

It was after six when I left, but I couldn't
bring myself to go home yet. I killed time walking the aisles at a
supermarket, got some greasy comfort food from the night market and
had a drink for an hour or so in a bar not far from my apartment.
At 9:45 I was feeling like a wimp and decided it was time to go
home and face the ghost. I had another beer to steel myself and
went home.

I'm not sure what I expected to see when I
walked in. Perhaps I expected to open the door and see an alternate
dimension filled with ghouls, Ghostbusters style. It was just my
apartment. The beer cans all over the floor looked pretty bad, so I
cleaned them up and then sat on the couch for a while. I suddenly
felt really tired. Maybe it was all the alcohol I'd had, maybe
something else. Whatever the reason, I picked myself off the couch
and went into the bedroom. It was nice and hot, humid as hell.
Usually I would be kicking myself for not fixing the air
conditioner yet, but tonight I was happy to sweat. Anything but the
cold like last night.

I dropped off to sleep the moment my head
hit the pillow. I don't know how long after I was asleep before the
dream started. Judging time while you're asleep isn't very easy,
now is it? I was soon back with her. The details were clearer this
time, we were in a room, but the ceiling was so high I couldn't see
it. She came towards me just as before, working her way across the
room as if time didn't matter. I wanted to run, to hide my face,
anything to make sure our eyes didn't meet again. She raised her
face and looked at me, and I was paralyzed. Our eyes met and she
shot forward, stopping inches from me. The marks on her neck were
more pronounced than before, and her color seemed more solid as
well. I opened my mouth to scream but she raised her finger to my
lips as if to hush me. My lips burned as if I had kissed a block of
dry ice, and my eyes shot open.

Back in the apartment, her finger still on
my lips. I was lying flat on the bed, unable to move, and she was
directly on top of me. Her long hair fell over her face, hiding it
completely. Her weight was far too light, as if she were only the
shadow of a real person, but it was there. Wherever her skin
touched mine the burning was intense, the burning of ice on bare
skin. She lifted her finger from my lips slowly and traced it down
my cheek, the caress of a lover. If I could see her face I was sure
the look I would see would be desire, her whole body seemed to cry
out. I tried to speak again and her finger went immediately to my
lips, searing them. I tried to move my head away but couldn't, my
legs wouldn't move either. When I tried to bring my hands up they
moved slowly, as if moving through a strong current of water. I
brought them up, but didn't know what to do. I didn't want to alarm
her but I wanted to be out from under her. The pressure on my chest
was making breathe harder to take. I raised my hands and decided to
brush her hair back so I could look at her face. Maybe if she could
see my fear she would leave me. Her hair felt damp and dark, like
touching a puddle of not quite viscous ink. I pushed the hair away
from her face, but the she had no features at all, her face was
just a blank piece of skin with the vague outlines of features but
no breaks for eyes, mouth or nose. My scream ripped through my body
and as she pushed back from me her featureless face expanded in a
scream to match mine, but sounded only in my mind. As she
disappeared I passed out into sweet dark oblivion.