The truth hit me like a lightning bolt. How could he have known where that was unless he had been in the apartment? I felt a paralyzing jolt of fear grow in my stomach and spread through my body like cold poison. Then, out of almost nowhere, I got angry.
“You—? You were in my apartment? How the fuck did you get in here? Why? Are you some kind of sick freak or something?” I searched for the nearest weapon I could reach. He didn’t even try to defend himself as I discovered a dirty kitchen knife and brandished it at him.
“You and I have something in common, Jordan.”
“You have three seconds to get out of here before I call the cops or stab you, not necessarily in that order.” I held the knife inches away from his throat.
His smile widened into a smirk.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I am not playing with you. Get. Out.”
“Y’see, there’s something you can do that other people can’t.”
“Now.”
“And that’s how and why I tracked you down.”
“Time’s up. Now get out!” I punctuated the last word by slashing at his arm. The blade met resistance but no blood came out. It just sort of…bounced off.
“I’m dead…and you can see me.”
My mouth dropped open. “You…you can’t be a ghost. You can touch things.”
“I’m a poltergeist. I can touch whatever I want, whenever I want.” He reached a hand out towards my cheek. I flinched, expecting to be hurt but instead it felt like touching some sort of metaphysical barrier. The skin on my cheek tingled, though not in the same way that a ghost passed by me. This sensation was more constant, as if energy were rushing from him to me.
“I need your help. I want to know what happened to me, and you’re the only person in this entire city who can help me.” His voice was gentler now. The teasing smile vanished, leaving his face vulnerable, serious, maybe even wounded.
I shook my head, taking another step back and kept a loose hold on the knife just to make myself feel better. “You were stalking me and now you’re asking for my help? You’re out of your damn mind.”
“I don’t have a mind to be out of. I can’t remember anything. All I know is that you’re the only person in Albany who can see and hear me. That’s all I’ve got to go on.”
“Give me one good reason to help you,” I shot back, crossing my arms underneath my chest.
The poltergeist paused, softening his tone. “What if the reason I’m dead is that I did something terrible? I can’t go wandering around for the rest of eternity not knowing. Wouldn’t you want to know?”
Something in my chest stung when he spoke those words. He couldn’t possibly have known about what happened to me, but the question wasn’t lost on me. I often wished I hadn’t killed an innocent man or that I could forget about it, but at least I was working to make up for it. If I denied him the same chance, what would that say about me?
“I…I can’t guarantee anything, but I can give it a try,” I said after a long, tense silence.
He sighed in relief. “Thank you.”
A few minutes later, I had rummaged through my duster to find my notepad and the mystery dead guy had perched himself on the counter by the sink. My hands still shook a bit as I smoothed down the paper enough to write. How embarrassing.
“What’s your name?”
“Michael. I can’t remember my last name, oddly enough,” he said, his brow wrinkling a bit with worry. I started the page.
Michael
Caucasian, possible Mediterranean background
Brown hair
Green eyes
6’1’’
Athletic build
No accent
Apparently a poltergeist
“You’re Jordan Amador, right?”
I looked at him in surprise. He pointed to the counter behind me where there was a stack of bills. “It was on your mail.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, that’s me.” I cleared my throat and started off with my official preliminary questions for a new spirit.
“When did you ‘wake up’?” There seemed to be a prominent process where troubled souls would recover after their death either at the site or nearby hours, or sometimes days, later. They never immediately remembered how or why they died. In my experience, it took between twenty-four hours to two weeks for a ghost to remember his or her death. Perhaps Michael would have that sort of luck.
“About two days ago. I was lying on a bench outside of some sort of club.”
“When did you realize you were dead?”
“At first, I thought the couple outside were just ignoring me, but then I started to notice they couldn’t hear me no matter how I shouted. Even when you’re ignoring someone, you flinch if they scream right in your ear. The weirdest part is that I could still touch them even though they couldn’t see me.”
He paused to chuckle. “Found that out the fun way, though. I flipped up this chick’s skirt in the middle of the street just to test out the theory.”
I rolled my eyes and wrote “horny dead asshole” below the last line. “Can you remember anything about your life yet?”