Rivalry

Rivalry

A Ghost Story

by Jack Badelaire

Copyright © July 2011 by Jack Badelaire

Cover Design by Jack Badelaire

Cover Photo "
Lovely
Ranch
Style
Home
of
Red
Brick
" by Maureen Rigdon @ Fotolia.com

Published in the United States of America

Once upon a time, I thought ghosts were cool. Back in junior high, I must have watched
Ghostbusters
twenty times, and I devoured every book of ghost stories I could get my hands on: M.R. James, Sheridan LeFanu, William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft, Poe, and many others. I was the “creepy kid” in school, the kid who made all the girls roll their eyes and cause all the teachers to sigh every time I raised my hand. There might have been some letters to my parents - and a few pointless sessions with a child psychologist - but I’m pleading the fifth.

In the fall of ‘91, Doug came to my school. If I was the creepy kid, Doug was the sad kid, the hollow-eyed waif who never said anything, who ate his lunch alone at the corner of some far table in the cafeteria, who walked around hunched over by a bookbag too big for his body and never looked up from the ground. A lot of rumors flew around within the first few weeks of Doug’s arrival; some said he was abused at home, others said his family belonged to a cult. Either way, if I was a weirdo, Doug was a pariah, and the one thing you quickly learned in the trenches of junior high was that, if you’re a low man on the social ladder, the last thing you want to do is associate with the guy dangling from the bottom rung by his fingertips. I avoided Doug like the plague.

All of that changed one afternoon when I found Doug sitting across from me at the lunch table. Normally I wouldn’t have let that happen, but I guess Doug was late to lunch and my usual Doug-avoidance exercises went by the wayside. He arrived after me, and to my dismay, Doug wound up intruding on my social space at the table. Not wanting to engage him in any form of observable interaction, I just refused to make eye contact and went on eating my sandwich.

At first, Doug seemed to get the hint, but then I saw him eyeballing the books sitting next to my cafeteria tray. Sitting on top of my math and geography textbooks, I had an anthology of ghost stories with a lurid, almost comical illustration on the cover. Doug looked at the book, then stared at me until I felt compelled to make eye contact.

“
Ghosts really aren’t that neat,” he said.

“
What are you talking about? They’re awesome,” I replied.

Doug looked down at his tray. “People might think so, but if they’ve ever seen a real ghost before, they wouldn’t feel that way.”

If they’ve ever seen a real ghost
.

I stopped mid-chew. “Have you seen a real ghost?” I asked.

Doug just looked down at his tray and stirred some macaroni around with a fork.

“
Dude, seriously. Have you seen a real ghost?” I asked again.

Doug just shrugged. If anything, his slouch grew even more pronounced.

I got annoyed. “Doug, man, come on. What is that supposed to mean? Tell me if you’ve seen a ghost.”

Doug muttered something I didn’t quite make out over the cacophony of the cafeteria.

“
What?”

He finally looked up at me, a little peeved. “I said I live with a ghost, all right?”

I think if Doug had told me he was actually a talking dog, I wouldn’t have been more awestruck. My expression must’ve said it all, because Doug picked up his tray and got up from the table.

“
I’m going to find someplace else to sit,” he said.

I held out my hand imploringly. “No no no no! Wait, don’t go! You’ve got to tell me about this!”

Doug walked away and sat at the opposite corner of the room. For the next couple of weeks, every time I saw him in the hall or came near him in the classroom, Doug either went the other way or refused to acknowledge me. This revelation had completely reversed our roles; now I was the guy Doug was trying to avoid, not the other way around.

Little by little though, I wore him down. No man is an island, and this saying is no truer than in junior high. Young minds crave social stimuli, and Doug had been starved of friendship for so long that eventually he began acknowledging me. I played it safe at first, not mentioning Doug’s live-in ghost and keeping any related books out of sight when I talked to him. Eventually I learned that Doug wasn’t all that unusual; he liked G.I. Joe and Transformers and action movies, he enjoyed math and history but wasn’t a fan of English or social studies. Neither of us liked going to gym class, and we began to bond over a hatred of soccer and a love of ping-pong.

After a couple of months, I decided it was time to broach the subject again one Friday during lunch.

“
Doug, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but I want to know what the deal is with your ghost.”

We were sitting across from each other at the table, and like the first time we talked, Doug’s face fell. He kept his gaze fixed on his tray.

“
Owen, I really don’t want to talk about it.”

I leaned forward. “Dude, you have to talk about it with someone. It’s totally bothering you, and if you don’t get it off your chest, you’re always going to be miserable.”

For a long moment, Doug just sat there, avoiding eye contact. Finally he glanced up at me.

“
My family is haunted.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
In the last ten years, we’ve moved four times. Every time we move, the ghost goes away for a little bit, but it eventually finds us. Then it gets worse, until we have to move again.”

“
Have you seen it?”

Doug looked away from me. “Just glimpses, now and then. Movement in the corner of your eye, or in a shadow, or a mirror. We don’t have any mirrors in the house any more. But it makes noises, whispers sometimes. And things move, or fall off tables and shelves.”

I was completely hooked. “What does it look like?”

Doug shook his head. “You can’t really tell. None of us ever see it clearly.”

“
Well is it like a person, or more like a blurry ghost, like something from a movie?”

“
Like a blur, but now and then, you might see something like an arm, or a head, or part of a face. When we started to see that, that’s when we got rid of the mirrors. It’s always clearest in the mirrors.”

Neither of us said anything for a long while. I mulled the idea over in my mind.

“
Doug, can I come over to your house?”

He looked at me with a panicked expression. “NO! That's a really bad idea. My parents don’t want people over.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me. They don’t want you to have friends over? That’s nuts. They have to be happy that you have friends, right? Or at least
a
friend?”

I could see the last words struck a nerve. “They know I, well - that we talk now and then.”

“
Well, bring me over to stay the night. We don’t need to tell them why, we’ll just hang out and watch movies. I’m sure they’d like to see you living like a normal kid for a change.”

“
Normal kid? I
am
a normal kid, Owen. Don’t be an asshole.”

I gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “Look, all I’m saying is that your parents want you to be happy, and maybe if I hang out with you, crash there for the weekend, maybe it’ll make them happy too. You know what I mean?”

Just then the bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period. Doug stood up and grabbed his tray. “I’ll talk to them about it, but don’t expect them to say yes.”

“
Okay, cool. Just talk to them about it - who knows.”

I spent that weekend wondering what the answer would be, and kept imagining what his parents would say; if they would tell Doug no, worried that I would make fun of him or get scared, or if they would say yes, desperate to see their son interacting with a kid his age like any normal thirteen year old.

Come Monday, I went hunting for Doug, but eventually a teacher told me he was out sick. Tuesday came and went, with no sign of Doug. Had his parents become so angry at him that he was beaten? I had no idea what they were like, or what either of them did for a living. Doug never wanted to talk about his family, so his home life - except for what he had told me about the ghost - was a mystery.

Finally, on Thursday, I ran into Doug in the hallway. I thought my suspicions were confirmed; there was a welt over his left eye, slowly healing but still obvious. We only said hello very briefly, but at lunch, I decided to confront him and ask about what happened over the weekend.

“
It was the ghost,” he finally admitted.

“
You’re not just saying that to cover up for your folks, are you?”

Doug recoiled, giving me a disgusted look. “No! I asked them if you could stay over next weekend. At first, they said no - they didn’t want you to...see anything, or have anything happen.”

“
So then what?”

“
It...got mad. It started to throw things around. Papers, a salt shaker, then some mugs and glasses from out of our kitchen cabinets. I got hit in the head with a mug, and that’s when my parents said yes.”

“
And the ghost stopped?”

“
Uh-huh. I think...I think it wants someone else to visit. As soon as Mom and Dad said you could come over, everything stopped. Its been real quiet all this week. I think it’s waiting for you.”

It’s waiting for you.

The most awesome four words I’d ever heard. A ghost - a real, actual spirit that could pick things up and throw them around a room - was waiting for me to visit! I couldn’t sleep that night, and instead I packed what I thought of as my “ghost hunting kit”. I borrowed a Polariod camera from my parents, put new batteries in my flashlight, and dug a small signal mirror out of my camping gear. I packed this with my change of clothes and other necessities, since I’d be going straight from school to Doug’s house.

The next day, I could barely pay attention to anything in class. What would my first encounter with a real ghost be like? Would I be scared, or would it just be exciting? Would it talk to me, or would it not even realize I was there - just drift by through the air, maybe passing into a wall? I knew that some ghosts interacted with people, while others just did the same thing over and over, like a film reel playing the same picture time and time again. From the sound of it, this was a ghost that interacted with people, but who knew - maybe it just acted out without reason, and the people experiencing the events were putting meaning to them that didn’t exist?