Meet-Ghost

She met her true love in the middle of a field of tombstones. This was not a surprise. Tabitha was a ghost hunter, after all.

What was a surprise, at least to Tabitha, was that the man standing in the middle of the field was alive. From afar, with warm rain misting through the already saturated summer air, he looked like what she had been looking for over the last three years. Blurred around the edges, the air between them shifting in the faint moonlight, he appeared unreal. Unalive.

Convinced she was finally looking at a real ghost, Tabitha stopped by the first row of headstones, the long grass around her wicking moisture into her jeans. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of her heart. She wanted to hear him, this ghost in the mist.

He stood with his back to her, his head held at a slight angle, one ear turned toward the wood at the opposite end of the cemetery. Tabitha began to walk slowly toward him, afraid that the swish of her soggy pant legs against the heavy heads of grass would startle him, send him back into the ether.

But he didn’t move, didn’t flinch.

For a moment, Tabitha considered that he might be a statue, placed here in the cemetery to guard the dead under their feet. It was only the barely noticeable rise and fall of his chest that convinced her he was man, not marble.

Tabitha stopped when he lifted a hand in her direction, his head still frozen, one ear locked on the wood beyond. So much closer, the hand, and the body attached to it, seemed sturdy, strong. At this distance he looked like the living.

The hand drifted to his lips, a soft “shhhhh” drifting out over the field of tombstones.

Tabitha pried her eyes from the figure in front of her, pushing her attention to follow his own. What was he listening for?

Her own head tipped to match the man’s, her ear searching for the angle he had chosen. Would she be lucky enough to see one ghost and hear another all in one night?

Tabitha shifted her feet, moving closer to the man, her eyes and ear still on the wood. Her unattended foot found a long stick, shattering the silence of the heavy night with a decisive crack.

The figure’s head whipped away from the wood, dark eyes locking on Tabitha where she stood flinching in embarrassment.

“Sorry.” Tabitha moved her mouth more than she spoke, only a faint whisper slipping from her lips. Why was she apologizing to a ghost? What were they listening for?

A scream answered her question, a long, wavering, ululation rolling from the wood through the misty cemetery. It was the kind of scream that held unending agony, that pulled the flesh up on Tabitha’s arms in response, forced the muscles of her neck and shoulders to tighten in terror.

“Shit!” The man figure turned fully from the wood and grabbed Tabitha, pulling her down with him behind the largest of the nearby headstones.

His flesh felt real against hers, the gentle scratch of a callous where his hand touched her arm, his breath warm where it brushed against her cheek. The smell of mint and sandalwood surrounded him.

“Are you real?” Tabitha whispered.

The man looked at her in confusion for a moment, then pushed on the back of her head, forcing her to duck down further.

The wave hit them, rocking the huge stone ever so slightly on its base. Reflex found Tabitha’s hands locked in the man’s shirt. Soft cotton.

This was no ghost. This was a real man, a living man. Tabitha wanted to stand and walk away in frustration, maybe give chase to whatever was in the wood sending waves of screaming force toward them. That had to be something supernatural.

But the man had a firm grip on her arm with one hand, his other hand still tucking Tabitha’s head down against the firm surface of his shoulder as they cowered in the graveyard.

It should have been awkward, this strange embrace in the land of the dead. Tabitha found it comforting instead. She was not alone in the face of whatever lurked in the wood.

“What was that?” she asked when the screeching came to an end, her voice soft as the mist that wrapped them.

He slowly released his hold on Tabitha. She found that she missed his warmth the second his skin left hers.

“Well,” he said. “That is my sister.”

Tabitha immediately re-questioned his status as a man. What could be screaming in the wood that was related to a real human man?

“Your sister.”

He nodded. Sighed. Turned and sat fully on the ground, his back to the now stable tombstone. Tabitha remained crouched at his side, unsure if she should settle in for story time or jump up and run away.

She opened her mouth twice, closed it twice, then just blurted. “Are you a ghost?”

A laugh burst from his smiling mouth, a single shot of sound in the muffled air. “No. But she is.”

“Oh.” The word was a released breath. Tabitha hadn’t found her ghost. Not yet. But it waited, right over there in the wood.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Ghost hunter? This place seems to draw them. My sister seems to draw them.”

Shame curled in Tabitha’s chest, forcing her eyes down to her hands, anywhere but the woods where she longed to run. “Yeah. I heard this was a place you were guaranteed to find one. I haven’t had much luck lately.” Or ever, but that wasn’t for him to know.

“Well, tonight’s your lucky night. Tonight I’m shutting her down.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to draw her out of the wood and I’m going to send her on her way. To peace.”

“Oh.”

“This is no way to live.” He shook his head. “I know she’s not alive. But she doesn’t deserve to be a haunting. She doesn’t deserve to be haunted.”

They sat in silence for a moment, letting the cooling night air seep into their bones.

“She’s my sister, you know?”

Tabitha nodded. “Can I help? Not just because I want to see a ghost. I kinda feel bad about that— I hadn’t thought about who the ghosts used to be.”

His eyes found hers for a moment, searched for the truth there. He nodded, then stood, holding out a hand for Tabitha.

Tabitha reached up and slipped her hand into his.