I Moved Back to my Hometown to Take Care of my Sick Mom… and I Think I Encountered a Ghost.
I (M24) recently moved back in with my mom (F57) to care for her full time. She has small cell lung cancer. Doctors said we were lucky they caught it early, so treatment could start immediately. That doesn’t mean they can cure her or anything. It just means that what would normally be six months of needles, tests, hospital visits, and the suffocating dread of imminent doom will be sixteen months of needles, tests, hospital visits, and the suffocating dread of imminent doom. Lucky.
So anyways, my mom’s choking to death on her own blood and lung tissue, and nursing homes are expensive. That’s where I come in. The prodigal son. The one who escaped, who made it out. The bright eyed and bushy tailed little boy with stars in his eyes and a dream in his heart that struck out to go to school in the big city… and immediately crashed and burned after graduation. (A degree in journalism sounded way cooler before I had to actually rely on it for anything substantial)
But I didn’t quit. No. I didn’t go back. I could never. See, the minute I set foot in New York, I promised myself that there was NO looking back. My home was in the city now, and that little podunk meth town that I grew up in would stay in the rear view. And I kept that promise. For better or for worse, not once did I EVER consider going back. Until my mom got sick.
All of a sudden, staying in the city was no longer an option. I had to go back. I had to abandon the life I had only just started and run back to the one that I left. Even though I knew it wasn’t the case, I couldn’t help but feel like I was walking back with my tail between my legs. I felt like a failure.
But it’s fine, ‘cause I have a bunk bed now. Or, again. I have a bunk bed again. The room I sleep in now is just my childhood bedroom, plus a couple boxes of junk and a family of opossums I’m pretty sure. Oh, and a ghost. I almost forgot about the ghost.
So this all started the first night I arrived. It was, like, 2 A.M. when I pulled off the I-81 into Coeburg. I was starving, and the last thing I wanted to do was deal with my mother on an empty stomach. So I pulled into the only place in this town that’s open past 9 P.M., the Yellow Submarine 24 hour diner.
Walking into the charming old building, I was immediately thrown into a world of deja vu. Bittersweet nostalgia washed over my body in thick waves. My ears were greeted by the familiar sound of the Beatles’ song “Yesterday” rattling the speakers of the ancient jukebox in the far corner of the dining area, and my nose was filled with the greasy aroma of Carol Rigby’s signature 24-hour fries. I’d forgotten how much I missed the taste of those crispy cholesterol bombs. The diner looked almost identical to when I last saw it, save for the piece of plywood covering one of the windows on the diner’s back wall. The cracked, neon yellow pleather barstools and baby blue cushioned booths all sat, empty, exactly as I remembered them. The yellow and white checkerboard tile floor and stainless steel tabletops seemed like a photograph taken straight from my memory, but faded, slightly, over time. Everything was just like it should’ve been, save for one thing. One person was missing.
In spite of the stress and chaos that plagued me in my everyday life, in that moment, that instant when my foot crossed into the Yellow Submarine, my mind was taken back to a simpler, less depressing time. Suddenly, everything was alright.
Overwhelmed by nostalgia, I let my instincts take over, and made my way to the bar. I hopped up onto my stool, the second one from the right, and rested my elbows on the countertop, hunching forward and letting all the stress of the real world roll right off my shoulders.
“Hoooo-leee shit,” a familiar chain smoker’s rasp, that could only belong to old Carol Rigby, came from within the kitchen, “If it ain’t Mister Big City!”
I looked up from the countertop, where I’d been observing my baggy eyed reflection, and greeted the old battleax in an apron with a smile, “Miss Rigby! God, it’s been ages.”
“You can say that again. Welcome back, kid. It’s good to see ya down in our neck of the woods after all this time.”
There was a split second of uncomfortable silence when Carol’s gaze landed on the empty stool next to me, then made its way back to meet mine. Her eyes were soft, and filled with a sort of hesitant pity. I could tell she was debating whether or not she wanted to say something.
Before she could make up her mind, though, a softer voice emerged from the back room, “I thought I smelled something funky.”
A young woman, about my age, walked out next to Carol. Her arms were crossed and her head was tilted sideways. A smirk and cocked eyebrow added an air of sarcasm to her next words.
“Thought the raccoons had come back around. I was fixing to get the broom from the back.”
I remembered her now. She looked so different from how I remembered her, so much more mature. The creases in the corners of her eyes and lines between her eyebrows were new. They looked so out of place on the face of someone so young. They were signs of stress, doubtless caused by the weight of adult responsibility and loss.
“It’s gonna take a lot more than a broom to beat away this city rat, Val” piped up Carol. She laughed at her own joke, her deep guffaw sounded like a velociraptor from Jurassic Park with the black lung.
“I missed that humor of yours, Miss Rigby. Glad you’ve still got it.”
“You’re a grown man now, honey. It’s Carol. Now, what’ll you be having?”
“Lemme guess,” interjected Val, a mischievous, knowing look in her eyes, “your usual?”
“And that is?” I implored.
“Cheeseburger. Hold the mayo and mustard, extra pickles, cooked just long enough to get charred on the outside, but so the inside is still pink.”
“And?”
“Double side of fries.”
I was floored, “Damn. Didn’t realize I was that predictable.”
“I always remember the regulars,” Val said with a proud grin and her chin held high.
“I’m hardly a regular. It’s been six years, V.”
“Time doesn’t move the same round here, hun,” Carol assured me, resting a wrinkly hand on my forearm, “as long as you’re right here with us, you might as well have never left.”
I enjoyed my meal, and the company that came with it. While I ate, Val and I caught up. We talked about what we’d done after graduation, what lockdown was like in our respective communities, what it was like being an adult, how different things are, how different we are.
In many ways, everything in Coeburg was exactly as it was in my memory, but in one, very important way, nothing was the same. After I left the diner, and navigated the narrow, winding roads that lead me back to my childhood home, my nostalgia began to fade away. The temporary rose tinted fog that had filled my mind had cleared, allowing me to, once again, see the town for the place that it was. The place that drove me away so long ago. The place that I thought I had, finally, managed to escape.
The front door of my mother’s house was wide open, and the only thing that sat between her and the outside world was an old, dented screen door. I reached out my hand to grab the handle, and slowly pulled it open. The hinges screeched aggressively, cutting through the silence of the sleepy neighborhood like a greasy chainsaw through jell-o. Suddenly, I became very aware of the fact that it was four o’clock in the morning.
I did my best to creep in the house as quietly as I could, praying that the door hadn’t completely blown my cover.
“Boy, where the fuck have you been?” My mother’s raspy voice, emerging from the darkness, nearly made me jump out of my skin, “Last message you sent me said you just pulled off I-81, and I know for fucking certain it don’t take no two hours to get here off the interstate.”
“Good to see you, too, Ma.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“I was hungry,” I rolled my eyes and dropped my backpack on the floor next to me, “So I stopped at the Yellow Submarine. I saw Carol and Val there, and we lost track of time catching up.”
“And you didn’t get me anything?”
“I didn’t know you’d be up. You’re supposed to be getting rest, right? Isn’t that what Doctor Phillips said?”
“I didn’t know I was too good for a to-go box,” my mother continued, “I can reheat things, y’know. Just ‘cause you’re a big city boy now don’t mean we’re in the stone ages back here. Father Michaels gave me an airfryer for Christmas last year, and I’ll tell ya what, it changed my life.”
I nodded my head toward my mother and started to make my way down the hall to my room, “Alright, Mom, goodnight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow morning.”
“You’re gonna have to sleep on the top bunk, by the way. I’m using the bottom for storage.”
I sighed and rested my forehead on my bedroom door, taking a moment to beg all in the world that’s holy to put me out of my misery quickly. After taking an appropriate amount of time to be dramatic, I turned the handle, and swung my door open.
It was too late, or, early at this point, to take time to wax nostalgic and reminisce about the good old days. Instead, I kicked off my shoes and climbed up into the top bunk, plopping myself down on top of the blankets, still wearing my clothes. There was no time for comfort. Just sleep. And that was what I planned to do.
But I was interrupted. Because of course I was.
Just as my eyelids, heavy with the stress of a long day’s travel, began to shut, and my body, stiff and sore from ten hours on the road, began to fall limp, and my mind, so full of pain and nostalgia and trudged up memories, began to shut itself off, something happened.
My arm hair stood on end and the skin all around my body prickled up. My heart skipped a beat and my breathing got faster. I felt someone. A presence I couldn’t deny.
Before I had the chance to think, my body shot into an upright position, and immediately, I locked eyes with it. Him. I think it was a him. I can’t quite describe it in a way that 100% makes sense. There wasn’t a ball of light or a floating sheet. It didn’t look like a person, either, because it really didn’t look like anything at all. It looked like… nothing.
When I say I saw him, I really mean I saw nothing in the shape of something. But with no shape at all. The shape of this thing— this ghost. It has to be a ghost— can only he described as the uncanny, jarring absence of a person where a person should be. Like a gap in my perception of reality. Like my eyes wouldn’t see— or maybe my brain wouldn’t process— what every other part of me knew was right in front of me. I wanted to reach out to it. To understand it. To ask it, or him, a question. I could tell it wanted to talk to me, too. I felt it. I felt the absence getting closer like an arm reaching out to me, trying to take hold. Trying to communicate.
Before I could process anything— before I could cower away or reach back— I woke up.
The sun was up, its burning rays shining down through the curtainless window onto my body, which was now drenched in a cold sweat. I was disoriented. Just a moment before, I’d sat, face to face, with a presence that I was— and am— absolutely certain came from a world beyond our own. But in the blink of an eye, I was back in my bedroom.
I didn’t know what to do, so I started writing. And now I’m here, with my story, asking you all if you can tell me something— anything— about what I saw last night. It had to be a ghost, right? I saw a spirit in my home, and I don’t know how to move forward from that, or if moving forward is even an option.
0 notes