FICTION / SERIALIZED PARANORMAL MYSTERY
Ghosts in Real Life: Chapter 14
Jacob struggles with his lack of faith as he goes through a traumatic experience.
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- Welcome to Ghosts In Real Life, a strange paranormal mystery serialized into weekly installments. New chapters are released every Thursday. You can find all chapters available so far at the Contents Page >>
Just before they lowered that tiny casket into the earth, Jacob felt as though this was the first time he’d ever truly known what real pain was like.
The tiny casket containing his beautiful baby boy.
Anything he’d experienced before this had been merely a shadow of real pain.
Jacob couldn’t breathe, his chest was being crushed from the inside. His eyes stung with salty tears. His heart just about stopped beating.
Gazing at that little box disappearing into the ground.
Alfie wasn’t in there. Not anymore. Alfie was gone.
He couldn’t believe it. He’d never believe it. But there it was. His little boy, the light of his life, would never give him another smile, never share another laugh, never again give his father a warm hug of the kind that never failed to pull him out of darkness.
The minister droning on quietly, ‘Heavenly Father, whose Son our Savior took little children into his arms and blessed them: receive, we pray, your child Alfie in your never-failing care and love…’
Standing on that hillside in South London, the air fresh and the grass green from recent rain, Jacob earnestly wished he believed in God.
It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it?
Religion offered comfort during the darkest of times. It gave you something to cling to when life was bleak: that there was hope out there. Some day, you’d see your loved ones again. Heaven. Paradise. Nirvana. Even reincarnation, right?
That there would be something else other than this pain.
So why couldn’t Jacob believe it?
For goodness sake, science had even come along and proven the existence of a ghost. Two ghosts, actually. There was one in France, too. Wasn’t that enough to prove that there was an afterlife?
‘Even darkness is no darkness with you; the night is as clear as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike….’
Millions of people everywhere were now going to church regularly because of the Harpenden ghost. Churches — and temples, and mosques, and all sorts of religious centers — were stuffed with newly-devoted worshippers.
So why wasn’t Jacob on board?
Was there something wrong with him?
He didn’t believe in God. He couldn’t even pretend to believe. He just stood there on a cold day in Camberwell Old Cemetery off the Forest Hill Road, gazing at that awful hole in the earth. Alfie’s final resting place. Certain there was no afterlife. Nothing for little Alfie to go on to.
He was gone. Extinguished. He no longer existed.
That sweet, funny, clever, innocent little man had utterly vanished from this Earth. The world would never be the same without him.
All Jacob could do was remember him.
Becky was okay. Well, she wasn’t okay. But she had religion. She had something to lean on in this moment of utter desolation.
She’d been to church four times in the past two days.
And when she’d come back from long sessions in church, she’d done nothing much more than lie on the couch and put religious programs — sometimes yet more church services — on the TV.
She was still grieving, she was still distraught, but when he saw her sitting in front of daily editions of BBC Songs of Praise, or whatever church thing was on screen, he could see that it comforted her.
He resented her a little for that. It felt awful. It felt so selfish, but he did envy her that comfort.
And perhaps that resentment had even driven a wedge between them. They hadn’t really said a word to each other since Alfie had gone. Hadn’t touched each other once.
Jacob had even stood a little apart from her through the funeral.
Then afterward, she’d gone off with all the others for the wake. Jacob just stayed there by the graveside, unable to move. He felt so broken up inside; it was as though if he took a step away now, he’d fall to pieces.
Alfie was here, wasn’t he? If he walked away, he’d be walking away from his little boy.
‘But he’s not here,’ Jacob said aloud. ‘He’s gone.’
Then, a beat later, he added, ‘There’s no afterlife.’
It felt a little stupid, talking to himself aloud. He was silent again. Thinking. What if science really had proven, definitively, that ghosts could exist? Could that mean that Alfie had some kind of spirit, that would continue to exist now that he was dead?
What was a ghost, at least the kind of ghost those scientists had verified?
Jacob sighed. Perhaps he needed to pay more attention to what was going on in the world.
Perhaps he needed to do a little research of his own.
‘My Myers?’
The voice surprised him. In fact, he was so startled it almost made him fall into the damn grave.
He turned to find a man standing behind him as the rain started to fall again. A big guy, tall as a basketball player, and from the genuine concern imprinted on his face, Jacob was willing to bet he had the heart to match his size.
‘Uh… yes?’
Everyone else was gone now. It was just Jacob standing there by the graveside, getting soaked by the downpour.
Jacob and this big guy. For a moment, the guy didn’t seem able to speak. Jacob started thinking he was the gravedigger, come to finish off burying Alfie. That he wanted Jacob to leave.
But then the guy said, in a deep, slightly faltering voice, ‘Mr. Myers… my name’s Lenny. I’m a nurse. I looked after… I knew your boy. Before he passed. Alfie.’
‘Oh, right?… Hello.’
Lenny stepped forward and wiped some of the rain from his brow. ‘I’m sorry I… I had to come…’
Jacob nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it. I’m sure Alfie would…’
Lenny wiped a tear from his right eye. Jacob found himself oddly touched by the show of emotion from the kind of man, on first impressions, you might not expect to express himself in such a manner.
‘Alfie was… an angel, Mr. Myers,’ he said. ‘You know that? He was the light of that hospital ward while he was with us.’
Jacob stifled a sob.
Nodded.
‘He… uh… I’m sorry… I have to tell you something about him.’
‘What is it?’
‘Now I know… you might have a hard time believing me…’
‘Just tell me. Please.’
‘The night that he passed… I was just coming into work after a day off. I saw Alfie standing there in the hallway. He came up to me…’ Jacob could see the guy trembling. It was more than a little odd, the guy was so large. He looked down at his hands and continued, ‘…I thought he was just sleepwalking, you know?’
‘He was out of bed?’ Jacob recalled how weak and fragile Alfie had been in those final days, and it now sparked a dark suspicion inside him.
Had somebody fucked up?
Had the hospital staff failed to notice a sleepwalking Alfie wrenching out his tubes before climbing out of bed?
Had some negligence cost him priceless time with his son?
Lenny saw the hurt, the anger igniting in Jacob’s eyes, and quickly course-corrected. ‘No, no, it’s not like that…’ he insisted, talking rapidly to get his point across before Jacob snapped.
Lenny composed himself and said, ‘I thought he looked better, much better. Happier. I thought the doctors must’ve found some new miracle drug…’
‘I don’t understand,’ Jacob said. ‘What are you saying?’
Lenny took a breath. ‘He spoke to me. He told me he wanted you. He wanted his daddy.’
‘Okay. Okay…’
Then the big man looked Jacob straight in the eye. ‘He said you needed to know about the man in the tweed jacket.’
‘What?’
‘He said the guy was… lost. I… I don’t know what he meant. He said something about the guy needing to talk to the professor, whoever that was. I thought he’d been watching a movie on TV, maybe. You know that stuff sometimes gets in your dreams…’
Jacob’s face screwed up in confusion.
Lenny glanced aside, and then back at Jacob, his expression one of pleading now. ‘I swear to you, that’s what he said. He said you needed to know about the man in the tweed jacket. That he was lost. That he needed the professor.’
‘I don’t understand… he was sleepwalking… before he died?’
Lenny said, ‘I took his hand, went with him back down the hallway, and helped him climb back into bed. He looked happy. He went straight to sleep again. Then I went back out to reception… and they told me…’
‘What are you saying?’
‘They told me he’d passed two hours before.’
Jacob scanned Lenny’s face. The guy looked so earnest. So serious.
‘Oh, God…’
Jacob stepped backward, full of disbelief.
‘You’re one of those…’ he said, feeling the anger building inside him. ‘What, you have a sideline in contacting the dead? Are you one of those crackpot mediums or something…?’
Lenny took a couple of steps toward him, his hands clasped together, pleading. ‘No, Mr. Myers… you don’t understand…’
Jacob felt the rage bubbling up within his chest. ‘You want me to pay you, is that it? So I can talk to my dead son one more time?’
‘No, Mr. Myers, please. I swear that’s how it happened. I just thought you ought to know…’
But Jacob staggered backward, glanced over his shoulder to make sure there was an escape path — that other lunatics weren’t blocking his way, desperate for him to believe too.
‘Why would you say something like that? At my boy’s funeral?’
‘I swear to you — ’
‘Leave me alone. Just get the fuck away from me.’
Lenny stopped where he was as Jacob fled.
Author’s note: Thanks so much for reading! This is a developing story, so let me know what you think with claps or comments! Please do follow or subscribe if you’d like to know when new chapters are released.
