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better-than-sleeping · 7 years ago

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A Friend in the Walls

Uh, where was my body hidden again? ...The basement? Or was it attic? One of those two, but I avoid going in either, for obvious reasons. I mean, very few people want to see their own corpse and I definitely don’t fall into that category.

It’s fun to drop in on people, see how they’re doing. It keeps me from getting bored and I think I’m kind of lucky in a way, that I exist somewhere with lots of people. Don’t worry though! I know what you’re probably thinking- “hey, if ghosts are real then what if they’ve seen me naked? Or taking a dump!?” Or maybe that’s just what I’d be thinking if I were in your situation. I try my best to give everyone their privacy when it comes to stuff like pooping or getting changed, though I can’t vouch for ALL ghosts, so you should probably stay on your toes. You might have some kind of toilet voyeur with you.

Anyway, when you’re a spirit your whole existence is kinda bitter sweet, with most of that sweetness coming from the people around you. Which is why I want to tell you about them. My residents.

On the top floor is Mr Archman who’s in his thirties (or forties maybe) and all I’d ever hear from his apartment was bang, bang, bang like some loud-ass metronome. I don’t know how long I’ve been gone for, but he still hasn’t stopped his constant hammering, so of course that’s the first place I check out when I realised I could go just about anywhere in the building. And you know what he was doing? Putting up pictures. The walls are almost completely covered with framed photographs and the main theme seems to be “old”. Every one of them is a black and white picture of people; people standing in groups, on the beach, in singles, pairs, any combination or place really. But there’s always people. They don’t have to be smiling or looking at the camera- so long as there’s a person, it seems to be good enough for Mr Archmans’ wall. None of the pictures are of his family.

I wonder what he’ll do when he runs out of space?

Honestly, whenever he’s putting another nail in the wall, a part of me hopes the next picture will be a new one. One of him at a party or something. Sometimes his mouth makes this small straight line, the hammering gets harder- bang, BANG, BANG – and then it all leaves him at once. He’s just left with a blank look in his eyes.

This was why I started to make tea for him, I mean, I can’t get my hands corporeal for long enough to actually MAKE the tea yet, but I get out his favourite mug and put the kettle on. The sound of it turning off snaps him out of it and nowadays he isn’t even confused about whether he switched it on or not. I feel a bit better about myself when I see the calm look on his face.

Today I just watch him for a while like a creep, then when he’s done putting up another frame he vanishes into his bedroom before reappearing briefly on his way out the door. And so I’m left alone without really feeling alone. Being in his flat is kind of like standing in front of a crowd of people, most of whom are silently staring at you. So basically a nightmare, huh?

I leave pretty quickly.

Next floor down is Ms Ward and her baby Matthew. She argues with Mr Archman about the noise a lot, since it wakes up the baby who’ll cry and cry without stopping. Poor thing. Both of them. She must drop the baby off somewhere then pick him up after work and its gone 8pm by the time they get back and her nails aren’t even there anymore, she’s bitten them into dust.

Despite the fog of worry that seems to hang around the place, I do enjoy this floor. Matthew- he’s the only one who’s looked at me since I left, the only person who can see me. Granted, when I first came to visit I think I frightened him a bit, I don’t really know what I look like to him, so maybe I’m all dark and ghosty and child-frightening now. After a few visits he was more comfortable around me though, which is why I started to take the liberty of calming him down when he has one of his cry-a-thons. Ol’ Matty can’t be picked up by me since he’s alive, the most I can do is rock his cradle a bit. Ms Ward walked in on me doing it once which must have looked like some real horror movie shit. I almost found it funny, but couldn’t really bring myself to do a ghost laugh with her making that face. She’s one of the two who’re certain the place is haunted. Ha. Now I feel kinda guilty remembering how on edge she must feel with me around. I wanted to disappear when I saw that look on her face… but that was a while ago now. I think that it’s worth being here if I can make peoples’ lives a bit easier.

No good ideas on getting her to think I’m friendly so far- I had the terrible idea of drawing a smiley face on the mirror while she was in the shower, but the condensation made it look like it was crying and bleeding from the mouth, so I rather hastily wiped it off before she could be traumatised any further.

She actually has more in common with Mr Archman than they know because her place is packed with books on every possible surface. They’re stacked all over the floor too, so they make a mini woodland pathway through her home, and I can’t wait to start hacking my way into them! Slowly I’m getting better at holding things, so once I can start reading that’ll be an instant tonic for boredom. Sleep isn’t really a thing for me, so it gets super tedious once everyone’s gone to bed. Ms Ward has a bunch of different genres, but her collection is mostly what I’m assuming is her favourite- thriller mysteries.

Wait, shouldn’t she be a bit more desensitised to creepy stuff if that’s what she’s always got her nose in? Or maybe that’s WHY she’s so tense- most of the books have some frankly unsettling covers. You can’t shift your gaze without it landing on a detective being garrotted or something.

When I drop in today they aren’t at home, so instead I spend about half an hour trying to pick up a book and turn the page. “Why did you take half an hour for something so simple” you may ask. Well have you ever tried to pick up something that’s just COVERED in butter? It’s kinda like that, but your hands keep shifting through planes of existence. If I still had blood vessels, I’d have a headache right now. Ugh.

Next floor!

Oooo, this ones Ada’s apartment, I can’t wait to tell you about her! She’s pretty old, constantly playing records of Nat King Cole, Etta James and the like. It gives quite a relaxing atmosphere really, and her place is a mix of standard old people furnishings- (she has textured wallpaper! My grandparents had some before they modernised their house, it reminds me of them)- and new age religious stuff. When I say new age I mean, like, tarot cards and crystals ‘n’ stuff so I guess she’s not that typical of an old person. More of a 50/50 split. So, Ada has these two cats (who never seem to get any more comfortable around me but whatever) that I feed whenever she forgets to. I could never leave a kitty to go hungry, even if it hisses and puffs up at me because I’m an abomination. I won’t give up on them though! Bertie only hissed at me twice when I last visited!

The majority of the time I’m down here, she’ll be chatting on the phone to a friend about her day or laughing along with the telly, and it’s good to know at least someone in this building has a social life. I get jealous, and then I just get sad because I think “is that what I could have been like?” God knows I wasn’t a social butterfly before, but what if they’d just given me time to grow into my skin? Why was that so hard?

Um, yeah… anyway. She spoke to me. One day I was standing next to her chair, she had a cat on her lap, watching tv and she goes “do you want me to change the channel?” At first I think, Ada, cats don’t care about what’s on tv, they just want to sleep and nock things off your counter. But then she says “I know someone’s there, you come here often don’t you?” I couldn’t reply, so just waited for her to continue. “You can watch tv here whenever you like, ok?” And from then on she’s never turned off the tv when she leaves the house and when I’m standing next to her chair she says random stuff, telling me about what’s gone on in the news, how she’s feeling. It’s nice. I hadn’t felt that kind of calm belonging for a while and I desperately needed it.

Quite a while goes by as I watch tv, or more accurately, stare at the screen while I think about what I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. The cats get fed their bi weekly ‘stop hating me’ treat and I stare at the fridge magnets for the tenth time. How cliché it would be…to leave a message.

Surely she remembered talking to me when we would run into each other? Surely.

Maybe I could’ve been found by now. But no one came.

Let’s move on.

This one’s my old place, recently housing a new couple. Dear Sadie and Margot, I can’t really hold it against ya. It’s probably the least cockroach infested flat they have at such a low cost, so enjoy I guess. Well maybe I am a bit annoyed, but I know it’s not realistic that it should stay empty forever just because I used to live there. That’s dumb. It’s like I’m expecting the world to feel sorry for me when really it’s the world who did this to me in the first place. Not their fault. The couple that is. I’m more than happy to fling my petty feelings at some vague representation of the forces that cause things to happen.

They haven’t been here for long, so I don’t know much about them yet, except they’re loud and probably students, and they loooove each other! Also, they’re constantly jawing about something; how do they find SO much shit to talk about!? The room is sparsely furnished, but two thirds of it is filled with their noise. I suppose it’s kinda sweet though, the way they look at each other.

There isn’t anything I do for them. They have each other.

When it’s night time and they’re finally quiet, sneaking glances at each other, or when Ada says something kind and quiet, when Matthew smiles at me, when Mr Archman drinks his tea with a look of peace- that’s the closest to feeling alive I can get. But the feeling of living isn’t an entirely good one. There’s this awful burning that comes with it- I’m lovesick, in the sense that I am sick of their love. I’m sick of everything that keeps me from rest.

I don’t stay long on this floor and my presence isn’t felt by them.

The ground floor is another place I don’t tend to stay long in. The woman who owns it is in her 40s and lives by herself. I didn’t know anything about her while I was alive, we never talked, and I only know slightly more than nothing now I have unlimited access to the flat. She leaves early, comes home late, makes dinner, watches tv, goes to sleep…and that’s all. Her standard Ikea furniture gives away nothing. She receives no phone calls. The only thing I can guess about her life outside the apartment is that she has a daughter. On her bedside table is the only framed picture she has, one of her standing with a young woman holding a diploma. The picture itself is an odd length and stops abruptly to the right so it doesn’t quite fill the frame. Like I said, there’s usually no reason to come down here most of the time, but today I heard something out of the ordinary- a woman’s voice. I could tell that she was on the phone since she was the only person I could hear and my interest was piqued (I’m nosy).

The moment I decided to drop down into the room was where it all started to go wrong.

“What are you talking about?...No…I’m afraid I don’t…but she’s only 25! She CAN’T be…” and then, without ceremony, she ended the call. And so her face began to crack. Slowly at first, her eyes were fixed on the middle distance and that seemed to hold it back, like she needed to be fully present in the moment before she could cry. And the crying wasn’t loud and open like Matthews, she hunched over on the sofa and pressed two white-knuckled fists to her eyes, breath stuttering awkwardly through her nose. That was what really made me sad, she couldn’t even cry shamelessly in her own flat.

I know she couldn’t tell I was watching, but I’m very aware that my presence now counts as a violation of privacy by definition and that had me torn between staying or leaving. If it were me, I’d be horrified to find out someone had been watching me cry, I’d just hate that shit! But on the other hand… watching her cry made me feel sadder than I’ve been capable of feeling in a long time. The expression on her face was so raw I felt almost embarrassed to look and each shudder of her shoulders was a punch to the gut. It’s selfish to think this way, but was that how my mother looked when she found out? Did your face crumble in the same way? Could you even cry at all mum?

It was starting to get unbearable, our feelings building in a loop of positive feedback until she was howling and I was ready to break apart. I felt I had to do this now, I had to comfort her the way I wanted to comfort my own mother, tell her it’s alright. That it doesn’t hurt because I don’t remember. Before I know it I’m sitting on the sofa, my hand is solid and resting on her shoulder.

“What the fuck?” She looks around, confused but distracted in the way people get when interrupted from trying to cry out all their feelings. My hand doesn’t move and neither does she. Tentatively her own hand reaches up, and stops when it reaches my own. “Oh my god…oh my god, Hayley?”

I squeeze her shoulder.

“Hayley…Hayley…” A few more times she repeats the name between sobs, sliding off the sofa and onto her knees.

I try my best to remain corporeal as she rests her head on my lap.

“I’m sorry!” Is the last thing she says before she’s crying too hard to talk.

My form only lasts a few minutes before her head passes through me onto the sofa cushion.

I make my way toward the door, unable to comfort her any longer.

Times like these, I feel like I should be taking a pull on a hipflask or something, y’know? But then again, I was always real careful to not be a problem drinker when I was alive, if only to spite family tradition. Not like it’s even possible anymore either.

I’ve been thinking about Ada and using my words for a while, but I didn’t want to burden her with any... unpleasant thoughts. For a while I had myself convinced that this might be enough- but it isn’t- and that they need me- but they don’t.

Losing the big things that come with being alive hurts the most, like eating or being with friends, but do you know how weird it is- to stand close to a window on a cold day and notice the glass doesn’t fog up? Or to have the perfect joke for the tv program you’re watching, but you can’t share it? It’s a sneaky kind of loss. Not only have the small privileges that come with being alive been taken away, but their absence reminds you that you’re DEAD, over and over so you can’t forget. Bastards.

The only upside to being a ghost is you can afford to just sit in a grimy, tin can stairwell and let yourself feel. I’ve had plenty of time to feel contemplative without really thinking. “Thinking can come later” I told myself, but the thoughts have already been and gone.

I stand and make my way to Ada’s kitchen.

I push the colourful alphabet magnets into a recognisable order.

“It’s Alice” they say.

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