Twisted Tale: When All That’s Left are Ghosts

When All That’s Left are Ghosts

By: Jessie Turk

“Hey man, are you just going to lay around in bed all day? Get your ass out of bed! We have work to do.”

Lewis muttered dully into his pillow, pointedly ignoring the voice nagging him through the speakerphone on his cell. He was not ready to face the day. The only reason he answered the call was because the ringer had blared to life at top volume. One minute he was dreaming about a day at the beach, and the next he’d been mercilessly roused by the victory theme song from Final Fantasy. He’d groped blindly around his bedside table just to make it stop. If Lewis ignored the call, his roommate Aiden would only call back a couple of minutes later. Aiden was nothing if not tenacious.

“Fuck you, Aiden,” was the only response Lewis’s sleep addled brain could muster.

“Aw, I love you too man,” cooed Aiden in a sickly syrupy tone. “Now, get up. You’re the one who asked for the wakeup call. You’ve got errands to run, remember? You need to go to the store and pick up some toothpaste and deodorant. Also, I left you a little something. Check the chess board. I got you cornered, pal.”

The phone clicked as Aiden hung up the call. Lewis always thought it was funny how phones still made that sound, even after the buttons on have become obsolete.

It was time for Lewis to accept his fate. Aiden was right, he was going to have to get up and get to work.

Groaning, he tossed aside the threadbare sheets and comforter that only a twenty-something bachelor could love, and shuffled barefoot to the bathroom to get dressed.

The clothes from the day before were laying in a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor. He put them on without bothering to do the sniff test. He already knew that doing a load of laundry was long overdue. Laundry had been Lewis’s least favourite chore since he was a kid, so after the washer and dryer stopped working it somehow kept getting bumped down lower on his list of priorities. Handwashing his clothes in a tub of soapy water was exactly as unappealing as it sounded.

A great many chores had to be done by hand these days. Since moving into the townhouse with Aiden they’d nested in the way that two young men fresh out of college tended to do. The sink was perpetually full of dirty dishes, the recycling bin was always overflowing with beer cans, and Lewis couldn’t even remember the last time he had bothered to dust. But as time went on, the small home had fallen into a deeper state of disrepair, and none of it had anything to do with Lewis’s poor housekeeping skills. Things like broken appliances, malfunctioning plumbing, and a leaking roof were beyond his ability to fix on his own. Not that he would ever admit that to Aiden.

Out in the main living area of the house, just about the only thing not covered in a layer of dust and grime was the coffee table in front of the TV. There sat a chess board with its pieces paused mid-game. Next to the board sat a notepad with one word written on a fresh page in an untidy scrawl.

Check.

Lewis pulled a protein bar from his pocket and took a slow thoughtful bite as he examined the pieces on the board.

The sticky note spoke the truth; the black knight was one move away from taking the white king, who stood seemingly undefended toward the back of the board. Pieces lost in the long drawn out game stood flanking either side of the board, like they were watching the conclusion of the battle from the afterlife. The number of white pieces standing vigil along the edge of the board far outnumbered the black pieces neatly lined up on the opposite side. Not that it meant Lewis was beaten. No, he still had a few tricks up his sleeve.

Lewis bent over the coffee table and plucked his queen from the board and knocked over the offending black knight. He placed the defeated knight on the sidelines next to Aiden’s other defeated pieces.

Check yourself.

After indulging in their game, and a little breakfast, Lewis decided that it was time to get to work. The household was not going to feed itself.

Lewis collected his things from the closet beside the front door. The front pocket of his Swiss Army backpack – purchased while Lewis was still a student – was filled with extra protein bars, a bottle of water, twine, a wind-up flashlight, a utility knife, and a couple of crossbow bolts. The crossbow hung in its usual spot on the closet peg, waiting for Lewis like an old friend.

Outside the safety of the townhouse, the world was sleepy and quiet. That seemed to be the perpetual state of the world these days.

Lewis and Aiden’s townhouse stood sandwiched between a dozen other identical homes. Roughly half of them were boarded up and hidden behind weed-choked lawns. The houses that were abandoned before they could be closed off to the world stood with their doors ajar and windows smashed. Musty blackness bore out from the open windows like the empty sockets of skulls.

Downtown was only a few short miles away, across a highway which cracked and buckled as nature stepped in to reclaim lost territory. Even if there were cars around that still worked, or any gas to run them, there were precious few roads left which would be smooth enough to drive.

The Final Fantasy victory theme chimed from Lewis’s pocket, shattering the perfect silence. With a practiced motion, Lewis reached into his pocket and answered the call. He attached the smart phone to a clip on his belt so he could continue to use speakerphone, and keep his hands free.

“Some days it shocks me how quickly the city has gone to shit,” Aiden said, giving voice to Lewis’s thoughts. “Days turn into months in the blink of an eye, and all of a sudden you find that the world has just … moved on without us. How long before it looks like we were never here?”

Lewis shrugged, even though he was talking on the phone, and his friend could not see him, “There are no more government stiffs around to make sure all this stuff is up to code.”

“Just seems like a waste. All the years spent building it up, only to have it all fall apart so fast,” sighed Aiden. “Anyway, enough moping around. Have you checked the traps yet?”

“That’s first on my list.”

Lewis meandered in the direction of the downtown area, stopping along the way to check the snares he’d laid out the day before.

That morning, the stars must have aligned in Lewis’s favor. He managed to bag not one, but two rabbits. He cut each of their throats with a hunting knife he kept tucked in his belt. It was grisly work, but it beat starving.

“Looks like dinner is on me tonight,” said Lewis triumphantly. “I’ve hit the motherload.”

“Look who thinks he is Grizzly Adams,” Aiden laughed. “Remember when I taught you how to set those traps, city boy? You didn’t know the first thing about tying a knot in those days. Now look at you! It almost makes me proud.”

“Now look at who is doing all of the work around here.”

“Shoot yourself another deer,” suggested Aiden in a sarcastic tone, “then maybe I will be impressed.”

The two of them bantered back and forth over the phone in the way old friends do. Friends that had known each other for so long that they were like family. Lewis was certainly closer to Aiden than he ever was with his real blood relatives. They talked to fill the silence, and to help pass the time while attending to mundane yet life sustaining chores.

“Did you ever think you’d miss traffic?” asked Lewis absently. His gaze lingered down the highway were the white lines disappeared into concrete snarled with creeping ivy vines and patches of thorny thistle. “It’s so weird. I never thought I would miss the sound of engines and car horns driving past the house.”

Aiden mumbled in approval, “I know what you mean. Remember when people used to whine about getting out of the city for some peace and quiet? Heck, I would kill to hear that stupid country music our neighbors used to play in their garage on the weekends.”

“How about the old guy across the street who used to get up at the crack of dawn every Saturday to mow his lawn? That drove me nuts.”

“Or that yappy little runt of a dog down the street?”

The door to the closest corner drug store hung open, or rather the hinges were rusted so thoroughly that Lewis doubted the door could close anymore. Inside the shelves still held a surprising number of dusty boxes. Only the shelves behind the pharmacy counter were picked clean.

“The world fucking ends, and the first thing on people’s mind is to raid the pharmacy for prescription medication,” Lewis muttered.

“Their loss,” Aiden’s tone suggested a shrug. “At least that leaves plenty of toothpaste and soap for us.”

“No bottled water though,” Lewis sighed. The end cap displays in the store advertising twenty-four packs of spring water were all empty. “Looks like at least a few people were actually thinking ahead. Looks like I will have to check a corner store on the way home.”

“Bummer, that will be a real pain in the ass to carry all the way back to the house,” Aiden sighed. He paused for a beat before speaking again, “You ever think about moving? You could live downtown in one of those fancy condos. You’d be closer to the stores. You could live like a king. It’s not as though anyone is around to stop you.”

Lewis laughed with his signature snort, “And give up our sweet pad? Nah, I’ll pass. Besides, I know where all the good game is out in the suburbs. I’d hate to give up easy access to all that fresh meat.”

“You sure that’s the only reason?”

Lewis didn’t answer. They’d had this same conversation at least a dozen times before.

“Okay,” Aiden’s defeated voice crackled through the speaker. “Fine, I will drop the subject if you are going to be all butthurt about it. I’m just looking out for you.”

The conversation went into a lull after that. Lewis tried not to think about it too much as he scoured a Seven Eleven for as many bottles of water and sports drinks his backpack could handle. Then he tucked a couple more under each arm. He felt like a pack mule, but the fewer trips he would have to make into town, the better.

Once upon a time, Lewis had been a heavy guy. Not fat, but certainly no star athlete. Not surprising, considering his diet mainly consisted of beer and take-out. Lewis’s regular hunting trips and forays into town melted the pounds right off him. Lugging around bottled water and the occasional deer could do that to a person. These days he was a little on the skinny side for his liking. Sources of fat were surprisingly difficult to come by when you couldn’t just order it to go.

“All that junk food will ruin your girlish figure,” Aiden used to tease.

Back at the townhouse, Lewis unloaded his haul. He stacked the drinks in the cupboard, and took the rabbits out back to cook over the fire pit. He’d make one to eat, then smoke and salt the other to use as jerky.

As Lewis walked by the coffee table with the chess board, he stopped for only a moment to move the black king out of harm’s way. The game would continue as it always had, for a little longer at least.

Aiden’s laugh echoed from the phone attached to Lewis’s belt, “I can’t let you win that easy can I? That would be boring!”

The back lawn was the only yard for miles around that had been carefully trimmed and maintained using an old eco-friendly manual push mower. Lewis had to keep the plant life under control or the vegetable garden he built would soon become choked with weeds. Not that his garden was exactly thriving. He was still a city boy after all.

To one side of the sad little garden was the fire pit Lewis had dug into the soft earth; city bylaws be damned. On the other was a single lonely cross cobbled together from a couple of broken fence boards and a bungie cord. It stood stuck in the ground at an odd angle, a result of the ground thawing over the past spring.

“Would it kill you to fix that?” asked Aiden. “That thing is an eyesore.”

Lewis unclipped the smart phone from his belt and set it face up on the stump he used as a table. The glass screen was black and spider webbed with cracks, though it had stopped working well before the screen was ever damaged. The city’s power grid, along with the cell towers, were among the first pieces of the city’s infrastructure to fail.

How many years ago had that been? Lewis couldn’t remember anymore. He supposed that it didn’t matter.

“I never figured you to be fussy about that sort of thing,” muttered Lewis.

“I can bitch all I want, it’s my grave,” Aiden’s voice snapped over the speakers of the dead phone, “I told you not to bother with the stupid thing.”

“Just didn’t seem right not to,” Lewis said under his breath. It didn’t matter how quietly he spoke. Aiden would hear every word.

Aiden sighed, “Man, this ain’t healthy. You should get out of this place. You know I am just looking out for you, right? You’re like a brother to me, and I just can’t watch you do this day in and day out.”

Lewis swallowed the lump in his throat, “I’m not ready to go. Not just yet.”

“You know I’ll be here when you are. Right, friend?”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks, man.”

Author’s Story Note

Part of me wasn’t sure if this story would be classified as pure horror. It is definitely one of the quieter pieces that I have written in a long time. Nobody gets murdered or stabbed with a piece of glass this time around.

After seeing the movie It Comes at Night a few months back, it got me thinking about subtler sub-genres of horror. Quiet pieces which explore the aftermath of a terrible event with an ending that suggests that our protagonist’s only happy ending is death.

We don’t know what happens to Lewis in the end, or if Aiden is talking to him from beyond the grave, but he is alone, and that is horrifying enough for me.

-J. Turk