Benjamin Bandosz

 
“Did you see that person walk up the stairs?”

My friend looked at me, and quickly looked over her shoulder.

“No, I didn’t notice anyone? Did you see an ex or something?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. She looked familiar, but it was hard to tell. I couldn’t make out her face.”

“Eh, it’s a big city. It could have been someone you saw at a party.”

If my friend wasn’t with me, would I have followed the ghost? Was there even a ghost? I remember trying to trace out her face, but all I could remember were vague details. 

“There have been so many times when I thought I saw my ex in public, and like, holy shit, I got out of there quick. Or just snubbed him.”

“It looked like a ghost to me” I responded absent-mindedly.

“Been playing with the Ouija board with your roommates?”

I shrugged, “No, but they won’t stop bugging me about doing a séance.”

We stopped at the end of the platform, and from the bowels of the tunnel the echoes of an approaching train grew louder.

“You commute every day out to Kipling. You probably see more than a thousand people in a week, so it’s possible some random person might appear familiar” she said trying to speak over the echoes.

“You may be right.”

A stale, warm gust of air burst out of the tunnel and then the train rushed by us. It slowly screeched to a halt, and commuters gathered around the doors which slid open simultaneously.

Time passed before the second incident occurred. These occurrences seldom happen regularly. Time strangely dilates; weeks and then months blur together without any event. And then in the middle of the night you notice a hanged figure in the corner of your hotel room, floating, and rotating. You rub your eyes, and it’s still there. So, you decide you should brush your teeth. After you’re done, it’s still there. And then you call the front desk because you need to be coherent at your meeting the next morning. While the staff are figuring out how to fix the problem, you remember your last ghostly encounter and you cannot properly determine how much time has passed. A month, at least. Or maybe just a couple of weeks. No, it couldn’t have been, because you distinctly remember that there was snow on the ground then, and that it melted by the time before last. Even as I write this, the chronology of these hauntings is pretty muddled.

I ran into Ula again, a few other times. We always exchanged a few words before heading our separate ways. Although, one time, we spoke for a while and her presence may have acted as a conduit. We met at a meeting and decided to walk back to the subway station together— several blocks north of where we all met. During the walk, we idly chatted about upcoming community events and other things. And, of course, she began to muse about different energies and spirits she has been able to detect or contact in the recent past.

“I went to visit a friend I haven’t seen for some time” she said in a staccato. Ula often spoke in non-sequiturs. At first, it came off as inconsiderate and odd. But with time, the abrupt changes in topics or unprecedented remarks became endearing, in a way.

“When was the last time you saw them?”

“Probably a couple of years ago… We were sleeping together, and then he took off all of a sudden, moved up north past Barrie; he lives in a hermitage now.”

“That’s a bit extreme. I envy his resolve.”

“I always consider my former lovers as part of me. Like, I don’t feel any hatred or ill toward them. I still love most of them. Even the ones that have passed on.”

“So, did you two get along?”

“He seemed, distant. His energy was completely different. It kind of felt like I was haunting him after the third day.”

I let out a chuckle and smiled. It wouldn’t be surprising if she evoked a few ghosts or sprites by her presence. Her ghostly complexion could easily fool spirits into believing they were already among kin. I empathized with her friend. But how is a haunting realized? To haunt or to be haunted requires two. It can only be done in the presence of someone. It made me wonder if I were complicit in my own ghostly visitations.

“Oh, wow! Someone left all this stuff on the sidewalk, do you wanna look through it?!” Ula exclaimed as she bent to examine the forsaken treasures.

“Uh, sure. But I need to head back home quickly.” I replied.

“Oh wow, lots of books. Ugh, mirrors. I don’t trust mirrors anymore, I won’t let you take one either. Here, take this.”

She handed me an ornate, bronze paperweight in the shape of a pyramid. It was scuffed, but its weight in my hand made me feel like a child who was holding a baseball for the first time— mesmerized by its form and weight, and eager to see how far it can be thrown.

“Pyramids have amazing spiritual and energy values. Four perspectives meeting at one point, stability, energy pinpoint and distribution. I think you could benefit from it.” she explained.

“Thanks, I’m sure I could use it at work” I said through a weak smile. “I should be headed home, thanks for the pyramid.”

She looked at me for a second, pursed her lips as though scrutinizing me, and abruptly waved at me. As I turned my heel, I quickly thrust the pyramid into my backpack and doubled my pace to the subway station. The pyramid was then forgotten in my bag. But I suspect that it was transmitting my movements to the spirit world.

It may have been a week or two after my walk with Ula that I stumbled through a ghost in a grocery store. Oftentimes after work, I would scramble into one of the grocers in my neighbourhood. I would drift in and out of a haze during my commute, roughly listing ingredients for different meals as I tried to read the latest propaganda I purchased from a second-hand bookstore. Going straight to a grocery store was always a risk for me, because I was never sure if I could fit all my groceries into my backpack; conceding to buying a plastic bag always felt like a humiliating defeat. But on this particular day I was being stubborn. I was already seated in the northbound train that would take me right to the grocery store.

When I walked out of the subway station, I was met by a lukewarm breeze that mellowed the sting in my lungs left by the subway’s metal particles. Within a minute I already had my grocery basket and was meandering through the produce aisles. The grocer franchises in Canada are known for their catering to gaudy tastes; within a ten-meter radius of the store’s entrance, there was a fully staffed sushi bar, an espresso bar, a lunch deli, and on the second-storey balcony overlooking the produce area was a grand piano that anyone could play—from time to time, they also had folk or jazz musicians perform live for customers. However, the tall, metal-beamed ceilings produced cold, dampened reverberations. At that time, someone was feebly trying to play a romantic piece, the piano was out of tune and it sounded like it was coming out of a tin can.

After sifting through a few stands of assorted fruits and vegetables, I proceeded to the columned aisles of packaged food. I debated whether I wanted to pay double for organic canned soup and decided I’d just buy more fruit, and I headed toward the end of the aisle. As I prepared to go round the corner into the next aisle, I stopped short in front of someone who was going around the corner from the other aisle. As I looked up, a smiling face looked right through me. With my momentum, I knew we would collide, so my body braced for the anticipated impact. But then the figure walked right through me. My eyes widened and the awful tinny vibrations from the piano echoed through my limbs, giving my sinews a dull rattle. Ghosts aren’t as cold as people think they are. They’re humid, chilly and humid—the kind of humidity you feel and smell in the depths of a cave in Northern Ontario. I understand how someone could mistake it as cold, but the sensation is akin to a heavy moisture seeping into your dry bones. I blinked without daring to look back and entered the next aisle. Rather than looking for the food on my list, I quickly scampered to the end of the aisle and peered around the corner to try to catch a glimpse of the ghost who had just violated my space. There were a few middle-aged women intensely scrutinizing nutrition labels, but the smiling figure was gone. The candour in that smile betrayed a secret knowledge and made me panic in disbelief.

Pages: 1 2 3