This is the story of a man and a ghost.
Not the usual ghost story however.
This was a most unusual haunting...
Bob Johansen sat down wearily on his couch. The last of the boxes were unpacked. He was officially moved in. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
He couldn't really blame his ex-wife for looking for more excitement. But she should have been a little more discrete about it.
Bob winced as he remembered coming home to find his wife naked on the couch with her lover. The divorce had been quick and uncontested. He had given her the house and most of the things that they had collected together during the 20 ears they had been married. But the distraction and strain of the divorce had affected him at work and he had been laid off when the company downsized.
A new house. A new town. And a new start.
"Crap." he said aloud to himself. "I'm 42 fucking years old, and it's going to be a bitch starting all over again from scratch."
Bob stood up and stretched. At least he wouldn't have to worry about blizzards and snow down here in Tucson, he mused, just rattlesnakes and heatstroke. Bob snorted a laugh at his own whimsy. At least his sense of humor still functioned.
Bob looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Time to shave off all that excess face fuzz, he thought. Then he paused. "No," he said, "time for another change. I wonder how I'll look with a beard?"
Bob shook his head. He was talking to himself more and more since the divorce. After 20 years of marriage, conversation was a hard habit to break.
"As long as I don't start answering myself, I'm OK." he said with a grin. Time to go try out the new stove. Beth just happened to be wandering past when Bob emerged into his back yard after his supper. She floated along above him a good 30 feet off the ground. This wasn't hard for her. After all she had been a ghost for over 100 years.
Somehow the man below her didn't seem to quite fit into the neighborhood. That scruffy beard for one thing, and he was dressed way too warmly for the desert. Beth decided to stick around for a bit. She was very bored, and anything unusual was a welcome break from the monotony.
She heard the phone ring inside the house and she phased through the walls to eavesdrop. Beth smiled to herself. Dead all these years and still an incurable snoop.
The man picked up the phone. "Hello?" "Yes this is Robert Johansen." "OF course I remember you. You came by our booth at the trade show in Chicago last year." "Sure, I'll come by for an interview." "Tomorrow at 2. Got it. Thank you. Goodbye."
Well, now she knew his name.
Bob turned around and jerked back in surprise. "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"
Shocked beyond belief, Beth stumbled backwards, passing right through a wall. He had seen her!
For the first time since she died, someone had seen her and spoken directly to her! Confused, Beth fled, traveling by reflex to her favorite place, a mountain valley in the Rockies.
Sitting on the boulder where she would come to gaze out at the natural beauty of the valley, she propped her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. She had to think.
When Elizabeth Cook was 21 years old in 1898. It was her 21st birthday in fact, the 5th if July. She could remember riding into Omaha with her mother and father in their farm buggy.
Her next memory was standing out in the rain at the graveyard near her home. She remembered feeling confused and scared. She couldn't feel the wind or the rain, and there was no one with her. She ran all the way home, but couldn't open the door. When she tried, she passed though it. Once inside, none of her family could see or hear her. She tried for days, pleading and screaming to no avail, she could see and hear them, but they could not see or hear her. At last, she had left her home, never to return.
In all the years that followed, she had never found anyone who could see or hear her. She saw other ghosts, but they could not hear or see her either.
She had found her abilities by trial and error. She loved to read, but could not pick up a book or turn pages, so she would spend hours at libraries, reading unseen and unfelt over people's shoulders. She read anything and everything she could find. She attended college classes and lectures unseen, but adding to her store of knowledge.
She traveled to Europe on a steamship and wandered around, taking in the fashions and the cultures of the various peoples.
She had visited Asia and Africa, South America and Australia. And never once had anyone seen her.
While visiting Paris, she had envied the women in their fashionable clothes, when she looked at herself, she discovered that she was now wearing the outfits she had seen. Beth had long since figured out that she could see herself in a mirror, so she would practice for hours, changing outfits by just thinking about it and wishing. She even walked through Buckingham Palace stark naked just on a whim. All to no avail. No one had seen her, not even the 30 or so ghosts that she saw there.
Decade after decade of wandering, watching the new technologies emerge. When movies came out, Beth would go watch them, usually sitting in a vacant seat, or in the aisle. Television she watched by the hour. Music of all kinds, automobiles, anything new to relieve the boredom. But in all that time, no one had seen her.
And when someone finally did see her, she had fled like a scared kitten. She had to go back and find out if it was true, that he did see her.
Bob stared as the woman stepped back through the wall and vanished. He blinked, then waved his hand through the space where she had just been.
"I'm losing my mind." he muttered to himself.
Too much sun in the back yard, plus the phone call from the woman at the Motorola plant. That was it. A simple hallucination brought on by heat exhaustion.
He went back into the living room and sat down on the couch. "I think I'll take a nap." he said. Suiting actions to words, Bob kicked his shoes off and laid down on the couch. He put his arm over his eyes and sighed.
"Before you go to sleep, could you please talk to me?"
Bob sat bolt upright. "Who?"
He twisted around to stare at the girl sitting in his easy chair.
Red hair, green eyes, pale skin, nice figure.
"Umn, who are you?" Bob managed to say. "And how did you manage that stunt with the wall earlier?"
"Thank God you can see me! And hear me!" the girl exclaimed.
Bob swiveled around to slip his shoes back on. "And why shouldn't I see and hear you? You're right there. And I ain't deaf or blind."
"Well, that part is a little hard to explain. But first things first. My name is Elizabeth Cook. And I am a ghost."
"Riiiight." said Bob.
Beth pouted a bit. "I AM a ghost, at least I think I'm a ghost. I know I've been dead since 1898."
I can't believe I'm having this conversation, Bob thought to himself. "I don't think they had jeans and T-shirts with Nike logos back then."
Beth looked down at herself. "Oh," she said.
As Bob watched, her outline fuzzed from the neck down, then sharpened into focus. Now she wore a simple gingham dress and high buttoned shoes. "Is this better?"
"Wonderful, now I'm going nuts along with everything else." Bob said sadly.
Beth came quickly to sit next to Bob on the couch. She reached out and clasped his hands in hers. "You're not crazy, I'm real, I'm here." Beth said urgently.
"Your hands are cool and soft." Bob said dazedly.
Beth glanced down. She could feel him! She could touch again! Beth slumped against the back of the couch and toppled on through the couch and the wall behind.
Bob tugged on the hand he still held, helping her to sit up again.
Bob watched as her head and body emerged from the wall and couch until she was again sitting next to him. "Better be careful about that." Bob said.
Beth looked at Bob again. "You seem to be taking this all very well."
"Sooner or later, I'll wake up." answered Bob. "meantime, I am going to enjoy the dream."
"But your not sleeping..." Beth said.
"Then I'm gonna make some shrink very rich, 'cause I'm nuttier than a fruitcake." was the reply.
