Second Chance

Part 1: Poltergeist
a serial ghost story by Erin Zarro

It started with the radio. I’d been listening to a talk show, not ready for music yet, as I went through my parents’ closet. The house was huge: four bedrooms, a living room, a family room, two bathrooms, and a basement to go through. I was doing it in stages. I needed to sell the house as soon as possible but going through their possessions tore my heart out and burned it for good measure.

                The talk show was some mundane thing about the government. I wasn’t even sure what. My dad had followed that crap. He was a guitarist, and he loved music, which is why I couldn’t bear to listen to it. I couldn’t bear to do a lot of things. In the wake of the plane crash that had killed my family — my parents and my younger sister, Penny — there was so much I had yet to do. So much to remember — do this, do that, fill this out, get that form in, pay these bills, arrange this… It was overwhelming me.

                Yet here I was with the closet open in an empty, now-sterile house with only memories and furniture and clutter to keep me company.

                I caught sight of one of my mother’s old sundresses, one that I remembered her wearing when I was a kid. I took the material between two fingertips. It had little sunflowers on it and reminded me of bright, sunny days. Tears filled my eyes. Would my days ever be sunny and bright again?

                I dropped the material, falling to my knees.

                Here we go again, a voice inside me said. You need to get on with it, not sit on the floor crying.

                I mentally gave that voice the finger. I was grieving, damn it.

                The talk show host’s voice droned on as if nothing had happened. Then, static. Then…Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” came on.

                In the middle of the talk show.

                My heart lurched. That song. I hadn’t heard it for years. And the person connected to that song…

                He was my first love. A musician, just like my dad. He was going to be a famous rock guitarist.

                Until a car accident ended that dream.

                Suddenly I was hurled back into the memory.

                The room in the funeral home he was laid out in was completely packed with people, standing room only: teenagers, parents, community members, friends, his family, me — his girlfriend — my family…and the weight of the devastation felt crushing.

                His casket was beautiful, probably the best money could buy. His beloved guitar was in it with him, laid vertically somehow to fit. He didn’t look like himself, though. Not to me. He was just too pale. Dead people never look like themselves, no matter how good the funeral home people are. Flower arrangements filled the spaces around the casket, so much that the place looked like a small garden. And yet there were even more on each side of the room in a variety of colors — reds, pinks, violets, yellows, oranges, blues. No traditional funeral colors here. They were bright and vibrant, just like he was.

                “Kristen?” a soft female voice said behind me.

                I spun around. A classmate of mine, Tonya, stood there with her hands clasped together, her face pale. “Hi, Tonya. Thanks for coming.” I wiped a tear off of my cheek.

                “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Tonya said, her brown eyes glistening with unshed tears. She was wearing a black dress that reached her ankles. I wasn’t sure why I made note of that, just that I did — maybe just to keep from falling apart. “I wanted to tell you that Adam was such a great friend, and I will miss him terribly.”

                “Thank you,” I murmured.

                We hugged, and she disappeared into the crowd, which seemed to have grown since I’d last looked around the room.

                “I’m so sorry,” Sharon, another classmate, said, hugging me. She smelled like perfume.

                David, a football player, shook my hand. “Adam was so talented. So sorry he’s gone.”

                “Yeah, he was,” I murmured.

                The minister went up to the pulpit and said a few words, then gestured to me. With shaking legs, I went up there, blinking tears away. I had to stay strong. No one wanted me to break down. And if Adam were here, he wouldn’t want me to cry. He’d want me to be happy, to find comfort with friends and family.

                The afternoon light streamed through the windows and lit up his face. For a moment, I could almost believe that it was a spotlight. That God was giving him his one wish — to be in the spotlight, before we all said our goodbyes.

                With shaking hands, I unfolded the paper that I’d typed the eulogy on. Adam’s parents had asked me to do this. I’d immediately refused, because how could I condense Adam’s life into a simple speech? But after I’d thought about it, I realized that I was the perfect person to do this because I knew him best.

  The eulogy I’d written was lovely — I’d talked about how wonderful he was, how much everyone loved him, how talented he’d been, how he would have been a star if he’d survived…but somehow those words felt so hollow to me now. They didn’t feel like him. They didn’t feel real.

                I put the paper down and looked up at the gathered mourners. “Um, I had a whole speech prepared, and it’s a beautiful speech,” I said, picking up the paper and waving it. “But it’s not Adam. It doesn’t speak to the real, visceral side of this person I’ve loved for two years. So I’ve decided to wing it.” I crumpled the paper up and tossed it over my shoulder. A few people chuckled. “So, Adam. What can I say about Adam? He was a deep, old soul. He was a kind soul. He was not afraid to follow his dreams. But most of all, he wasn’t afraid to love…”

                And I went on. I told the whole truth about everything, about him as I saw him, flaws and all. I started crying halfway through, but so was everyone else. Somehow, it felt right, like we were truly sharing our grief, comforting each other, making it better.

                When I finished, I nodded to the minister.

                He pressed the button on the boom box. “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi started to play.

                It was the only song I could send him off with.

                I could feel his smile from wherever he was. For one brief moment of time, we were together again.

                That song …he’d sing it to me all the time. It was his favorite. I’d fall asleep with it still in my ears, still echoing in my heart.

                And now…damn. My heart shattered all over again.

                Why would this song play in the middle of a talk show?

                I’d stopped listening to it. I’d stopped listening to the radio, period, not wanting to hear it even by accident. And I’d managed to avoid it for so long…and today…

                Tears filled my eyes as the memories came rushing back. But I stayed rooted to my place, not able — or willing — to turn off the radio. It was like…

                It was like…he was here. But that was impossible. He couldn’t be. Ghosts didn’t exist.

                The song continued, and the tears fell from my eyes, and I wiped them from my cheeks as I sorted clothes. After the song ended, the talk show came back as if there was no interruption at all. No invasion by Bon Jovi, no siree.

                That made me smile.

                As I continued sorting clothes well into the evening, and as the sun set and lit the world outside the window golden, a distant part of me wondered…had he visited me so we could be together again?

                My eyes filled with tears again. I’d lost Adam, and I’d lost my family. I was utterly alone in a huge house with only a song and a talk show and my family’s possessions. But these things weren’t them. I would never see them again, I would never hold them again, I would never talk to them again.

                Nothing would ever bring them back.

                All I had were the memories, and even they weren’t enough.

THREE MONTHS LATER

                The apartment was too damn small. I was used to the huge house I had lived in with my family. We’d been close, and I hadn’t felt ready to find my own place yet. Now it felt weird and claustrophobic. And I was alone in my own place for the first time in my entire life.

                Like I was living in a damn coffin.

                After laying my entire family to rest, I felt wrong inside. That kind of loss…permeated everything I did and colored my world. I had brought very little of my family’s possessions with me. Just the sentimental things…everything else, I had sold or given away. I couldn’t bear to keep it all.

                Sighing, I buttoned up my blouse and glanced at myself in the bathroom mirror. It was smudged to hell. My mother would have wanted it clean.

                My mother.

                All the air left my lungs in a rush, and the room lurched up to meet me. I caught myself on the counter and took a deep breath. Would I ever be able to think about my family without such pain?

                I was going to work today. It was finally time to get out into the world, out of my own head and grief. Out of this damn coffin.

                Taking more deep breaths, I pulled my hair into a tight bun, then went into the living room, grabbing my purse and my lunch bag. Yeah, bagged lunches. My inheritance was nice, but I was all about saving for the future. Bagged lunches just made sense.

                I took one more look around my tiny new home, making sure I hadn’t missed anything. My eyes landed on the small statue of a white cat that had been Penny’s. I’d placed it on a shelf near the doorway. She’d loved cats, especially white ones. Said they were magical. My eyes filled with tears again, but I blinked them away.

                This is your new life, a voice said inside of me. Time to live it.

***

                By lunchtime, I was starting to wonder if I should have stayed home.

                “So you take this line, and add it to that line, and then input it here,” my supervisor, Shelley, told me with a smile. We’d been banging our heads against this all freaking morning and had made no progress. I was still hopelessly lost. The software they were using now was brand new, supposedly the best ever, and made no logical sense. “Then you come over here to this line—”

                “All the way over here?” I narrowed my eyes. Why the line on the opposite side of the screen?

                “Yes,” she replied patiently. “And then that number goes here.” She pointed to yet another weird place that just didn’t connect for me.

                I rubbed my eyes. “I’m sorry, but can I take lunch a bit early? I just really need a break.”

                Shelley frowned. “How are you doing? Really, Kristen? Don’t bullshit me, I can tell.” She wagged a manicured finger at me.

                I sighed. “Is it that obvious?”

                “Obvious to me.”

                “I’m okay. I just…needed to get out of my apartment and get away from all the memories and the endless crying. Focus my mind on something else, like software I totally don’t understand.” We both chuckled at that. “It’s not going to be instantaneous, and I can’t hide forever. And I can’t wallow in it, either. I’ll lose my mind.”

                Shelley put her hand on my shoulder. “Well, if you need to talk, let me know. I’m here. Definitely take that break, and then we’ll get back to it. Maybe after that something will click.”

                I nodded, trying to look more confident than I felt. “Thanks. When did you—”

                Bon Jovi again, this time “Bed of Roses.”

                Shelley jumped, then looked around frantically for the source of the music. “What the hell?”

                My eyes narrowed. “When did you guys put a radio in here?” I stood, looking around for said radio, and didn’t see it anywhere.

                “We didn’t,” she said, her voice quivering. She’d turned pale, too, almost the shade of her white blouse. “There’s an old radio in the closet, but it’s not connected—”

                I was at the closet doors and opening them before she even finished speaking. The radio was right there, on the top of a towering pile of boxes, dusty and a bit beaten up.

                And it was playing. Even though it wasn’t plugged in.

                Bon Jovi.

                “We have a poltergeist,” Shelley whispered.

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