They ate lunch, talking about classes. Laurie could sense that there was something between them that she had no part of. At first she wrote it off to love. Then something clicked in her mind.
“You mentioned something about ‘the ghost’ earlier, and Julie was talking about ghosts and things yesterday. What did you mean?”
Richard looked at Julie. Then he said, “I’ve got a friend. He told us Friday that he had seen a ghost. So we checked it out. We went there last night and we saw it too. It was mean and horrible and scared us both. For some reason, though, my friend saw it as beautiful.”
“Julie, did you see it?”
“Yes. It really freaked me out. I couldn’t stop shaking.”
Laurie was alarmed. She had heard a lot about supernatural phenomena, most of it bad. “Aren’t you worried that you might get haunted or possessed?” she asked.
“I hadn’t even thought of that,” said Richard. “But she seemed confined to her tree by the rope.”
“The rope she hung herself with,” explained Julie.
“You know, this ghost fits in with what the speaker said today,” said Richard. “She seems like someone who refuses to let herself die, and so she just keeps dying forever.”
“You mean the part about dying daily to ourselves?” asked Julie.
“Yes. The ghost doesn’t die daily or whatever. She won’t let herself die in the right way, so she’s stuck in some kind of half-dead state. She keeps re-living her suicide—re-living her death.”
“That makes sense, kind of,” said Julie. “But what about Mike?”
“Who’s Mike,” asked Laurie.
“That’s my friend,” said Richard. “The one who told us about the ghost. To him she was beautiful. He fell in love with her, and she talked to him. They spend all night talking when she appears.” “Maybe there’s still some life left in her,” said Laurie. “Maybe God’s letting her work it out before it’s too late, before she winds up in hell forever.”
“So she’s hanging between life and death, love and hate,” said Julie. “Mike sees her as loving, we see her as hating. She will have to turn into one or the other. The two states are so incompatible that I don’t see how she can be both at once.”
“I wonder,” said Laurie. “I read a book once that said that unless love lays itself down to die, it will become demonic. There’s a paradox in Christianity. It goes like this. If you try to hang on to something, like your life, you’ll lose it. But if you lose your life for Christ’s sake, you’ll keep it eternally.”
“So you’re saying that trying to hang on to her love is what made her horrible?” asked Julie.
“Maybe. Think about why she killed herself. Wasn’t it jealousy? Doesn’t jealousy turn people into monsters?”
“Yes, but usually not so visibly,” said Richard.
“But it’s still there,” said Laurie, “just like the cancer you mentioned, even if you can’t see it.”
“What worries me,” said Richard, “is telling Mike about it. What if the ghost never comes back? Mike will be really upset.”
“I bet she’ll come back,” said Laurie. “I think she’s hungry. She wants someone to fill her up—with life or something.”
“That sounds scary,” said Julie. “Do you think Mike’s in danger?”
“I have no idea,” said Laurie. “I’ve never seen a ghost, or known anyone who had, until now. I’m wondering if the ghost might not be a demon. After all, the Bible talks about demons. It even says they can appear as angels of light.”
Julie looked at Laurie. “How can you tell the difference between a demon and a ghost?”
“I don’t know,” replied Laurie. “But the Bible tells us that we’ll know a tree by its fruit, and we’ll know people, or spirits too, I guess, the same way. Evil people and evil spirits can’t do good.”
“Well, the ghost didn’t actually do anything bad—or good,” said Richard.
“It was bad,” said Julie. “At least, whatever it had become was bad, just wrong.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s a demon,” said Richard.
“No,” said Laurie. “We need to know more.”
“I don’t want to find out more,” said Julie.
“I don’t know how to find out more,” said Richard.
“Maybe we can go see your friend,” suggested Laurie, “and ask him what he thinks.”
“We could do that,” said Julie, hesitantly.
“Yes, I suppose we could do that,” agreed Richard, also hesitantly.
“You have to sooner or later,” said Laurie. “You are going to tell him, aren’t you?”
Julie and Richard looked at each other. “Oh, of course we are,” said Julie. “It’s just a lot to think about, and last night was not a night I want to remember.”
Richard frowned, since it certainly was a night he wanted to remember. But he could see Julie’s point of view.
“OK,” Richard finally said, “let me give him a call.”
He walked over to the pay phone and dialed Mike’s number.
“Mike,” he said, “can we come over and talk to you?….Yes, it’s about the ghost….Actually there are three of us now….But I have to tell you, we did something you may not like….Yes, we went there, and yes, we saw….Well, we saw something….It wasn’t what you described. But it was similar in some ways….No, it was not pleasant. Look, Julie saw it too, and….No, just Julie and I went….I’m sorry, we should have asked….OK, we’ll come right away.”
Richard came back and sighed. “Well, he wasn’t happy. But he didn’t say any four letter words. And he said we could come over. Shall we go?”
The three of them walked over to Mike’s apartment. It was about half a mile from the campus. It was furnished in typical college-town apartment decor—green vinyl upholstered couches, mostly.
Mike was waiting for them. He was angry, but also somewhat relieved, though he did not want to admit it, even to himself. In fact, he had been looking for something to help him deal with what was becoming an obsession, making even simple human functions difficult.
Getting up in the morning, for example. He was coming to despise the sunlight. He waited for the cool darkness of night, the stars, and even more the moon. He thought his night vision was even getting better. He believed he was seeing things he had never seen before. Shadows, flittering in the corners of his eyes. Or maybe not shadows, perhaps dimly glowing shapes. If there was one ghost, there were probably many. And probably spirits of various kinds. Maybe even God.
What Richard had told him had scared him badly. He realized that, at best, one loved a ghost at one’s own risk. Ghosts were dead. Perhaps they were the decayed remnants of souls, in the same way that corpses soon became the dead remnants of bodies. What if he was loving the decaying remnant of a soul?
On the other hand, he believed that Annie had become more real, even more substantial in some way, during the time he had known her. She seemed to talk about more things, though he admitted to himself that he could hardly ever remember what they talked about. In some sense, he thought, his own limited reality was a handicap. He seemed to lose bits and pieces of himself as he talked with Annie.
The doorbell rang, and Richard, Julie and Laurie walked in. Julie spoke first. “Mike, I hope we haven’t done any harm. I’m really sorry, we should have talked to you before we decided to go there.”
Mike said, “Well, you saw something. At least that makes me feel better, because if I’m having hallucinations, so are you.”
“I’m worried about evil spirits,” said Laurie.
“You mean the devil?” asked Mike.
“Yes. After all the Bible warns against trying to summon the dead.”
“But I never tried to summon the dead,” said Mike.
“True, but after the first time, perhaps you were ‘summoning’ her when you went to see her.”
“I don’t know, Laurie,” said Julie, “but it seems like she needs help. Maybe we can’t help her, but maybe we can.”
Richard looked at Julie with some surprise. “You seem to have bounced back from last night,” he said.
“No, it still scares me. But now that I have had some time to think about it, what scares me is not how weird and different she was, but how much I could see myself in her. I can see myself getting angry and bitter and, well, just hanging on to it like that.”
Mike shook his head. “This is so strange. Every time I saw her she was beautiful. Tragic, maybe, but never hateful and ugly.”
“I wonder,” said Richard. “You know, it’s the new moon. You never saw her except in the full moon. Do you think that has something to do with it?”
“I’m sure the moon has something to do with it,” said Mike. “But I don’t know excatly what. Anyway I never saw her at all except during the full moon. I went up there every day for two months and that was the only time she was there.”
“Our problem all along is that we don’t know enough about anything,” said Richard. “We don’t even really know what ghosts are.”
“Or if there really are such things,” said Julie. “I saw something but I don’t know if it was a ghost or a demon or even maybe aliens from Andromeda Galaxy for all I really know.”
Mike said, “I was thinking that maybe we are seeing a kind of soul-corpse. Like a body after it dies, but the soul instead of the body. And maybe eventually it will disintegrate completely.”
“But you said she got more solid when you spoke to me.”
“Maybe she sucked life from me or something. I don’t know, I haven’t been normal since I met her. I love her. But how can you love a ghost? What future is there in it? What exactly am I loving?”
Laurie said, “Why don’t we go talk to Paul Syme?”
“Paul Syme?”
“He’s the man who spoke in church today. He’s one of the pastors there.”
Mike said, “Why should I talk to him about this?”
“Well, I suppose you can say he’s a kind of spiritual professional,” said Richard. “I mean, he gets paid to think and talk about spiritual stuff. So maybe he knows something. Besides, what he said today made as much sense as anything anyone else has said about death. And I’ve been keeping track.”
“OK,” said Mike. “But maybe we can talk to that guy we saw the other night, too.”
“Who’s that?” asked Laurie.
“You mean the Fellowship of the Daylight Moon guy, right?” said Julie. “He was my English teacher the first quarter, and that’s how I found out about the Fellowship of the Daylight Moon.”
“Fellowship of the Daylight Moon?” asked Laurie.
“Uh, yes,” said Richard. “It’s kind of a role playing game. I guess we can talk to him too, but I thought his ideas were a little lightweight. Circle of life and all that. Disneyland stuff.”
“Well, it’s the best I’ve heard yet,” said Mike. “And he didn’t bring God into it. This could just be some extension of natural laws that we don’t know about yet.”
“Well, you haven’t heard the other guy.”
“OK, I’ll listen to him too, but I do want to get more than one perspective.”
“OK, let’s call them up.”
“I have Professor J’s phone number. He gives it out to the students,” said Julie.
“Professor J?” said Richard.
“He likes to be informal. His real name is Jeffrey, I think,” said Julie.
“I have Mr. Syme’s number,” said Laurie. “Who do we call first? And what do we say?”
“I think we should just try to get an appointment to talk with them,” said Mike. “That way we can all hear and talk. Let’s call the daylight moon guy.”
“OK, I’ll call Professor J,” said Julie. “But you explain it to him,” she said to Mike.
She dialed the number. “Hello? Hi, Professor J. I’m a former student of yours. Some of us came to the Daylight Moon meeting the other night. One of my friends has some questions about ghosts. Here he is.” Julie handed the phone to Mike.
“Hello? Yes, well this sounds kind of strange but we were wondering if you knew anything about ghosts….Well, I guess to be honest some of us have seen ghosts. Actually one ghost. A girl who killed herself a few years ago because of a bad love affair. We thought maybe you might know something about this stuff, because you talked about cycles of life and stuff at the meeting the other night. And I guess we think a ghost would be some part of some cycle of life somehow. At least if there is one, and we think there is….Tomorrow? OK I think we can make it tomorrow. 9pm. What’s your address?…OK, we’ll be there. Can we bring something?…Thank you very much.
“I guess you guys heard that, right? He invited us over tomorrow night at 9pm. Here’s his address.”
“OK,” said Laurie, “let’s call Mr. Syme.”