Stumbles - Halloween 2018 Short Story #2

by: Roger A Wilbanks

I really hate Halloween. I mean I REALLY hate it. Not your garden variety "take it or leave it" kind of hate, either.

The "I want to set it on fire and salt the ashes after it burns alive" kind.

That's probably a pretty funny statement to hear coming from a ghost. I get that. You would just assume most of us supernatural types are partying it up on Halloween. But not me. No sir. And I've got my reasons.

You see, I'm a ghost. May have mentioned that before, but I'm not the "scare the Beejeebus out of you" kind. I'm the "I just want to be left the HELL alone" kind.

Thing is, I'm not graceful. I have this habit of, well, stumbling. I was like that when I was alive, I'm like that now. I guess God must have been short one yuck monkey in the afterlife when my time came up.

You can only imagine how hard it is keeping a low profile when you're constantly bumping into everything. I remember after I passed, I woke up like this, some kinda conscious cloud, invisible to the living. Well to people at any rate. Dogs can kind of see me, or smell me. To be honest, not really sure how that works, but they know I'm there and that's all that matters.

So there I am, this newly minted spook, not sure where or what I am and I start walking or floating or whatever it is I do in what used to be my house, only everything is different now. Imagine going to sleep and waking up to find that someone's thrown out all your crap and replaced all your junk with theirs and on top of that, they've moved it all around on you. It's like getting up in the middle of the night to go pee at someone else's house. Things just ain't gonna work out well for you at that point.

Case in point. When I first woke up here on the other side, I was still in a lotta pain. The cancer that killed me wasn't quite done with me and it felt like every piece of me was on fire. One second, I'm in my bed saying my goodbyes to my family, the next, I'm sitting in the same room I died in but everything's different. The bed's been spun around. The dresser's different and on the wrong side of the room. There's a nightstand in the way now. Horrible. I stand up for the first time as a spook in this bizarro world and I do what I always do. I stumble.

Now there's fellas that will swear to you ghosts are immaterial. Well, that fella's only halfway correct. We're immaterial when we want to be. At that moment, though...I didn't want to be. I was falling down and, hell...I didn't know I was a ghost yet. It's not like they gave me a rule book or anything. But anyways, I put out my hand like this to keep from falling and I knock over a lamp that had no place being where it was. It goes crashing to the ground, I pass clean through the floor and tumble through a wall, making a crazy racket the entire time. I hear some lady yelling in the kitchen and that was odd. The first time I heard a liver talk from the other side. It's like they're underwater or something. Well this liver cusses up a storm till she gets in the room. By this time, I've figured it out and am poking my head through the wall and watching her. She thought her dog made the mess till the little beast comes trotting in the room. Fido takes one look at me, smells me or whatever and freaks the HELL out. Starts barking and whining. I hear THIS just fine. Runs to the wall I'm poking my head out of and starts clawing it to shreds. Needless to say, this takes baby girl back a bit. She turns as white as me. I get a kick out of this and chuckle. SHE HEARS ME. Scared the piss out of her. Literally. She just wet herself right there where she stood. She was gone from the house in a week and I never saw her again. But she did take all her crap with her and left the house blessedly empty. So thank you, Pee Lady.

I found out living like this ain't like it is for the livers out there. Not like it is in the traditional, sense at any rate. There is no more 24 hour day. It all blurs now, like watching a movie that just keeps jumping forward. One minute my house is empty, the next thing I know, someone's put a frikkin ottoman in front of the fireplace and there is a fire burning. I discover both of these at approximately the same time as I trip over the ottoman and go sailing into said lit fire. It doesn't hurt, but again, it catches me off guard. I make a ruckus, I curse up a storm and then I sit in the fireplace and turn to see the family gathered around my fireplace. I'm guessing I had some soot sticking to me because as the sparks die down, they are all looking right at me. I pass on through the fireplace floor and into the basement. I come back up into the room behind them and watch them staring at the place I was and looking at each other. I figure at this point, I'll just go back to the basement and wait this out and turn and walk right into a display case that shouldn't be there and send it crashing to the floor.

Dad must have been the religious type cause he's got all of his spawn behind him and he's pointing a crucifix at me like it's a loaded gun. I giggle. He hears that and lunges at me mumbling something like "the flower of rice propels me..." I sink into the floor again to get away from him but this crazy man but the jackass follows me into the basement, throwing holy water on everything. Some of it sticks to the soot on my face and gets in my eye. I start howling like a wounded bear and the coot runs backwards and busts his head on a beam.

Time does that wacky thing again and jumps forward and now I'm alone in the basement. I hear commotion directly above me. I poke my head through the floor to see what's going on and see a full blown exorcism going on in my friggin living room. These assholes are trying to kick me out of MY house like I haven't paid the rent! This was MY house! I wasn't going anywhere! Still tho, I got it. I knew the score. As long as these mushrooms were in my house I had to be careful and not bump into anything. Easy to say, hard to do. Like I said, I ain't particularly graceful. So I bump into a few more things, Jehovah’s Gestapo chases me around with holy water and a super soaker until they finally give up and get out.

Now the place is nice and quiet with NO crap in the way. I don't even mind the broken windows and hole in the ceiling. But I will tell you what I do mind. Hallo-freakin-Ween. That's what. I get 364 days a year of peace and quiet till the calendar flips and then I get the crazies who want to see the 'documented poltergeist' whatever the hell THAT is. Some of these turnip heads even spend the night, running power into the house from a generator outside. Sometimes I unplug the cords, sometimes I switch the generator off, once I drained the gasoline out, but that was a pain in the ass. Most of the time I just hide in the basement and wait for them to leave. I blocked the entrance up so no one can find it. But every year they came and every year it got worse. So last year, I got fed up and had my "Popeye Moment" Where I "had all I can stands and I can't stands no more." As soon as they got in the house, I ghosted the locks so they couldn't get out. Then I "stumbled" into their kerosene lamp (Honestly. Who uses those anyway?) I dump the lamp on the floor and the house catches fire like tissue paper. I didn't mean to kill those people, well, I wasn't doing this for that reason. I really just wanted to scare them. Some par of me may have wanted some company, but it didn't matter. They didn't sick around. Almost the second they died, that light shined out of nowhere and everywhere and they walked right on in. I see this and start running towards the light, but wouldn't you know? I stumble on that lamp and fall and the light just goes away.

So now, here I am, living in the basement, house burned down and these crazy bastards have turned the entire place into a campground that kicks off on October 1. Every year.

GOD I hate this holiday.