I was thirteen but pushing two hundred pounds. The word obese was thrown at me more than you can imagine. We were in a new house, but the same rules applied. Lose a pound a week or else. My father—too embarrassed to call me his son in public—required a weekly weigh in our bathroom scale. If I was not one pound lighter each week, I had to do thirty laps up and down our wooden stairs. Each creak of the stairs a reminder of who I was, just an introverted, overweight teen without any friends.
My mother sympathized with me, but father shushed her up quickly. She stayed hidden in the shadows, unable to help my cause. All I wanted was my father to accept me without any harsh judgment against my body. I even tried to get more disciplined and better about my eating, but every good diet has its setbacks. It didn’t help that my father dangled delicious food right before my eyes.
“Your mother just baked some chocolate chip cookies. Now, you already know that they are off limits for you, but I want to really test you these next few days. I’m going to place the leftovers in a container and put them right here on the kitchen table. I better see six cookies in there still tomorrow night at this very hour or—”
“Or else. I understand.”
“Don’t interrupt me son. This is a lesson on self-control. I believe you have it inside of those rolls of yours somewhere. You just have to find it.”
I nodded in agreement like the wimp I had become, holding back an explosion of derogatory terms that nestled on the tip of my tongue. Father’s punishments were never physical. More exercise, no screen times, the usual batch of annoyances any teenager might expect in a similar situation. But I often found myself just saying screw it.
An hour after my parents settled into bed, I tiptoed down the stairs with only one thing on my mind: a nice late-night snack. The stairs creaked on a few of the steps, but I could still hear my father snoring. As I made my way through the dark hallway, I heard a commotion from the kitchen area, almost like a racoon tearing through a garbage bag.
I craned my head around the edge of the wall. A scrawny boy—maybe a few years younger than me—devoured the cookies from the bin. Perspiration formed a pool on my forehead. I wiped the sweat away from my eyes, as I watched with both fear and fascination. Next to the table, the boy opened a hatch to the pantry storage area below our floor. It was a space I was quite familiar with, as father often stored the tastiest of treats in that room. The boy descended the ladder and reached for the hatch. For reasons unknown, I bumped my knee into the wall, alerting the kid just before he sealed himself shut.
His little brown eyes locked with mine. The boy lifted a finger to his mouth and gestured for me to stay quiet. He pointed upstairs as if he knew I had come downstairs with the intention of not waking my parents. I walked over cautiously.
“I’m Clay,” he whispered. “And you’re Ian.” Clay tapped my chest playfully.
“Did you break into our house to steal food? Where did you come from?” I whispered back.
The skin on his face—stretched tightly against the bone beneath—made him look sickly, in desperate need of a meal.
“I live down there.” Clay pointed to the pantry below the floor. “My papa was mean to me when I was alive. He didn’t like it when I ate food.”
“When you were alive?”
“I died a long time ago, but I wasn’t ready to go.”
My body shuddered. “Are you like a ghost? Am I dreaming?”
“I don’t know what a ghost is. I’m only ten. I see the way your papa treats you. He reminds me of my papa. He used to lock me in the pantry. Will you… will you be my friend? I have marbles.”
Clay took out a small sack of marbles from his pocket and handed me a silver one. Despite the fact I was speaking to someone who was already deceased, the thought of having a friend filled me with joy.
“I’ll be friends with you Clay. Can everyone see you or just me?”
“I don’t know. The last family never came downstairs at night when I ate their food. Let’s play.”
For the next hour, Clay and I sat on the kitchen floor and rolled marbles back and forth, sharing quiet giggles and smiles. It was the happiest night I had experienced in quite some time. The happiness washed away when morning hit.
“You ate the damn cookies son. I warned you. You never learn, no self-control. Truly pathetic. I try to raise you right, help get you fit, and you throw it all away.”
My father pounded his fists against the dining table. There was no way I was going to tell him a ghost finished them off; he would have had a fit.
“Thirty laps, no rest,” he said.
I frowned.
“Get on with it,” he continued.
When my parents went to bed that night, I returned downstairs to visit Clay. Together, we chowed down on chocolate bars my father had been hiding in the floor pantry.
“Is that you down there boy?”
My body tensed up, and I covered my mouth. My father was awake, and the anger in his voice made my stomach churn.
“Don’t worry. I won’t leave you,” Clay whispered into my ear.
When father arrived in the kitchen, he lost it.
“Who in the hell is this stranger you brought over? He ain’t no friend of yours. I know you are a loner.”
Stunned that my father could see Clay as well, I waited for Clay to say something, anything.
“You’re just like papa. I hated him. I hate you. Why are you so mean?” Clay shouted.
“Kid, I don’t know where you came from, but you better cool that tongue of yours. I suggest you head on home, wherever that is.” My father locked eyes with Clay and stood sternly, reminding us he was in charge.
With an unexpected strength, Clay yanked my father’s arm and pulled him into the pantry. Together, they tumbled down the handful of ladder steps. As my father moaned in pain, Clay opened his mouth and dug his teeth into my father’s scalp, taking a chunk out as if it were an apple.
“Clay, why did you do that?” I yelled, tears swelling in my eyes.
I looked down at my father. His body jerked before going still. My mother must have heard the commotion because she came storming into the kitchen.
“I’m still hungry,” Clay yelled, before clamping his mouth on my father’s arm.
My mother screamed while I held her back. Clay jumped up and pulled down the hatch. When I lifted it back up, he was gone. The coroner eventually arrived at the conclusion my father’s death was a result of him falling down the steps. An accident. My mother and I kept our lips sealed.
Unfortunately, the following days were a terrifying ordeal. Clay never surfaced again, but someone far worse appeared: my deceased father. During his first appearance, I had gone downstairs for a glass of water. The pantry hatched opened, and he came out yammering at me.
“Boy, you need to lose that weight. I’m not going anywhere until you thin down.”
A piece of father’s scalp was still missing. I ran back upstairs and woke my mother. Fortunately, my father was not able to leave the kitchen. He came close to choking me with his pale meat hooks, but I stepped out of the kitchen, out of his reach.
We stayed a few more nights in that house to figure out a plan, but we never entered the kitchen again. My father continued to crack away with the insults. We eventually decided to move into a cousin’s house while we sold our home.
I’m a bit healthier now, but I still have some scars from childhood. One thing I learned is that whether dead or alive, some people never change.