There are holes in my past that I’d love to fill in, but I know I never will. I once read the brain suppresses traumatic events; it protects you from yourself.
I should be grateful, I suppose, but I am curious to a fault. I want to remember, and I need to know exactly what happened the night my cousin died.
I was five when I attended my first funeral for my cousin Ben. Ben was nine years old when he died of a heart attack on the eve of Halloween.
What I remember is my dad getting a phone call in the middle of the night. He was gone for hours, and I pictured him with my aunts and uncles. They gathered together under the glare of hospital lights, silent, waiting.
What I remember next is the funeral and the old playroom they sanctioned us kids, too. It was directly next to the chapel, close so the adults could monitor us yet far from the ice-blue coffin in the middle of the room.
But more importantly, we were out of view of the raw grief of my aunt and uncle.
It didn’t bother me to be hidden because, even back then, I thought it cruel that they had to see and hear the laughter of their nieces and nephews.
Their son would never laugh or play again; instead, he’d lay still and silent forever, soon buried under a mound of dirt.
“He saw a ghost,” my cousin Netta whispered as we played with dully colored legos. “He saw a ghost, and it scared him. And then he fell down the stairs and died.”
“How do you know he saw a ghost?” I asked Netta, pushing together two broken legos. “How do you know he fell?”
Netta rolled her eyes and snatched the blocks from me. She tossed them, and they broke apart against the pale yellow wall.
“Because dummy,” she hissed. “At the sleepover, He told us about the ghost. He told us something was watching him. It had been watching him for a very long time. It followed him, and it scared him…It scared him a lot.”
We fell silent, and in the silence, Netta cradled a baby doll with matted hair while I swirled patterns on the brown carpet.
My cousins’ screeches of laughter rang in my ears, and my mom walked in and hushed them. Netta didn’t speak again until after she left.
“He went to the bathroom,” Netta said, her voice strange. It was high-pitched and wobbling. She was crying. “He went to the bathroom, and we heard him. He was choking, so we ran down the attic stairs to help. But it was too late, and he fell down the stairs. He…didn’t move. He wouldn’t wake up.” She looked up at me; her eyes were shining. “Do you think his ghost got him?”
If you thought I would say, of course not, ghosts don’t exist, you would be wrong.
Instead, I nodded, and eventually, Netta did too.
My family has always believed in the afterlife; we know what’s behind the veil.
I believe my family is haunted, and it began when my dad and his siblings moved into a dilapidated house at the end of a dead street.
My grandma was a single mother to ten children. She worked all the time, and as a result, my dad, aunts, and uncles often found themselves alone.
My dad told me strange things happened all the time there.
One story he recalls I will never forget. How once, my Uncle Tony walked into his room, and on the bed was a tall figure staring at him, smiling.
“It was completely black, and it had no face. There was nothing. Just black. Like a shadow, but solid. Its teeth were as bright as its body was dark. And they were sharp and pointy, like fangs. He saw it first, but soon we all did. All of us. And when we moved, it followed us. It followed us everywhere.”
I wonder, I still wonder, even though nearly 30 years have passed. Suppose the shadow was what Ben had seen. Had he inherited the ghost from the old house? Had it been following our family for years? Why did it pick us? Why had it chosen him?
Where was it now?
Throughout my life, I’ve felt something staring at me. I’ve seen figures from the corner of my eye.
When I look, there’s nothing; I see nothing but fear and unease sink and settle heavily in my stomach.
I do sometimes question the ghost story, and I try to be logical. Of course, Ben hadn’t seen a ghost.
That was just stupid kid talk. It was nearly Halloween, and they had been telling scary stories in the dark. He went to the bathroom, believed he saw something, and got scared. That was it. That was the truth. It was. Right?
Right?
I remember little else about the funeral. I must have blocked it out.
My brain, my protector, whispered to me, filling my skull. “You’ll thank me later.”
It had at least left the memory of me saying goodbye. Ben’s brown skin was pale and cold and wooden to the touch, and before I could stop myself, I began tracing patterns on his skin.
My family placed flowers, teddy bears, and letters inside the coffin, and my aunt gently set his Little League card by his head.
She kissed him and held his body to hers. “I don’t want to let you go, my baby.”
I am thirty-four now and have a daughter. And I’ve been to many funerals since. I feel guilty admitting this, but I don’t mourn Ben as I do the others because I barely knew him.
I forget all about him until All Hallows Eve, when my uncle posts tribute to his youngest, whom he loved and lost.
It’s a tragedy, and it is unfair to my family, but especially to my aunt, uncle, and cousins. They lost a child, and my cousins lost their brother. Life is hell, for no reason.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Ben lately, about his untimely death and the ghost that allegedly killed him.
What happened? Why him? Where was the ghost now?
I wonder if he had first seen it out of the corner of his eye. Did he feel eyes on his back when he was alone? Had its gaze made his skin prickle and break out in goosebumps?
Had it begun to manifest and become solid?
Everywhere he went, did he see it? Did it follow him, smile at him? Did he know it wanted to take him? Where did it take him? Why?
Where was it now?
I can wonder endlessly, but I will never know. What would knowing do for me, anyway? I know I have to let it go and forget.
I’m an adult, and a single mom; I have a teen to feed and bills to pay. I have more important things to worry about, but I can’t stop myself from fixating. Because…because…
Because what if Ben wasn’t the only one it wanted? Every family has its ghosts. Do hauntings ever truly end? Or do they wait and stalk, stalk, and wait?
Life has been strange lately. I feel something is watching me, following me.
I work from home; I’m alone most of the day and sometimes feel I am being watched.
I see figures in the reflection of my computer screen, and I hear faint choking, coughing sounds coming from the next room.
On sun-streaked walls, shadows grow and undulate under my gaze, and when I go to the bathroom at night, i see flashes of white. Pointy and sharp, they smile at me.
Every family is haunted, and some ghosts are family.
And doesn’t family belong together?