Nathan Daniel Coley

The Dead

 

 

Nobody really understands what ghosts are, you know. Oh they’ve heard all of the stories, where thin, translucent spirits roam catacombs and graveyards, where they hide behind old grandfather clocks and under the bed and behind portraits.  People think ghosts have black shadows around their eyes and sunken cheek bones, that spirits look like old and faded photographs, and that they can pass through walls and make rooms grow cold and make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. They think there is some ghostly, shadowy world, filled with dead trees and dead people and dirt paths that lead to nowhere, where spirits wander and as they hold onto the memories of the land of the living.

           

People who actually believe in the spirits sit in graveyards and lean against old tomb stones, or they take out Ouija boards and huddle around a small table in a basement, or use contraptions that beep and whirl. They record background noises and call them the whispers of  the damned. They turn off the lights in their bedrooms and listen to the house creaking, thinking that they hear the ghosts in the floor boards. But they don’t hear ghosts. They listen in all the wrong places and look in all the wrong places, at all the wrong times.

           

A ghost isn’t so different from everyone else. Ghosts are very much like real people. They can stub their toes on rocks and snag their coats on rose bushes. Ghosts are hungry, very, very hungry, and they can chew food and taste when things are sweet and salty. They can swallow the food and feel glad and content. The cheeks of ghost aren’t pale at all, and they aren’t sunken in. Their faces are warm and rosy, and if you touched their skin it would be soft and you’d never guess that you were caressing a ghost at all. Ghosts can’t hide under rocks or in old portraits, and they wouldn’t fit under your bed, and they wouldn’t want to anyway.

           

A ghost is more like someone who’s just forgotten, that’s all; like someone in the room who nobody bothers to talk to and nobody notices. Ghosts always travel alone. You will never see a ghost with someone else. The bag lady on a park bench in an old hat and a floral scarf; the boy at the library who always sits at the back table, where he knows none of the other boys will sit, with a book covering his face, or the bus that drives by with a single passenger, way, way in the back.  

           

Ghosts aren’t invisible, but if you don’t believe in them you probably won’t notice them. You’ll walk right past them. You won’t say hi or tip your hat or hold the door for them, but they can be seen all the same. If you can see the sun shoot through a cloud or a dog chase a rabbit, then you should be able see a ghost. They are there. In full view.  You can see sunlight and clouds and dogs and rabbits because you believe in them. If you can’t see a ghost, you needn’t get your eyes checked.   

           

How do you know if you’ve seen a ghost? Now that’s a bit tricky, because ghosts aren’t quite like regular people. They are dead, after all, but if you look in the right places you will find them. But you must be quick. One thing about a ghost is that one moment it’s there and the next moment, it’s not. When you are at the market and you pull some frozen fish from the freezer, and you think you see someone next to you, reaching for frozen vegetables, and you put the fish in your cart and look up and see nothing, you’ve seen a ghost. When you’re returning a sweater at the department store and patiently waiting behind someone in front of you, and when you look down at your receipt and up again, and all you see is the clerk, looking confused and impatient, you’ve seen a ghost.

           

You must be quick to see and quick to hear. When your music is loud and you think your wife or your husband asks what’s for dinner, and when you tell them chicken or ribs, and they ask why on earth you are talking about food, you’ve heard a ghost. One thing that’s true is that ghosts like to make noises in the night, but they don’t making creaking sounds from behind the wall or any of that nonsense. Most of the time they just open and close your cabinets or refrigerators, because as I said, ghosts are very, very hungry, and they are always glad to eat.

           

We are more lonesome, than dead. That’s all, and we just wish you would believe in us so that you can see that we can still smile, and that we still press our shirts and fill our backpacks with snacks and paperback books, and that we like a good laugh and a warm, strong hug.

           

We are just lonesome, that’s all, and we wish you would believe in us enough, just for a moment, to say hello.

 

 

 

N.D. Coley currently serves as an instructor of English composition at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Community College of Allegheny County, and the University of Phoenix. He was trained at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg as a literature major (2005), with a minor in writing. He furthered his studies at the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus, earning an MA in English (2007), with a specialization in literary analysis. In his spare time, he laments the human condition, plays old school video games, reads dark, depressing literature, and tries to keep a smile on his face.