Haunted by a Stray Comment

- A short ghost story, or rather, a story about a ghost who was short

It was Alice that told me the house at the end of Vine street was haunted. And that was the last thing she told me except for "Shut the freaking door" because a car ran over her yesterday and broke its axle.

I was ten, and so was Susie, Pfft and all the other ten year olds on the block. That wasn't Pfft's real name, but he had a bad case of the stutterings and could never get past the Pfft. Sue told me it was Pancake because it started with a P and was long enough for Pfft to stutter over. I didn't believe that, but Susie said she'd rub my face in dog poop if I didn't, so I did. She was the only kid on the block that had a dog, so she had the shit to back it up.

Pfft wanted me to walk to town once, to the dog park, to get dog poop. But Susie heard him and said "Holy Shit! Stop this crap." which her mother said all the time, and Pfft started giggling because he wasn't allowed to hear bad words. And then Susie hit him on the head with my baseball bat and I had to stick a straw down his throat because he started choking.

Folks said Pfft was the sort of boy that wouldn't hurt a fly. But that was because he didn't like flies. He was ok with killing ants and clubbing baby seals near the train tracks. "Flies have a thousand eyes. So it's like a thousand by two people with two eyes watching you." He said that with the stuttering and all, but you wouldn't understand it if I said it like he did.

Susie said they looked like centipedes. But Pfft said they were seals and I figured he'd be right because he watched a lot of Discovery. Susie was almost always right about dogs, and that was because she watched her dog a lot. It didn't have a name because they weren't going to keep him. So we just called it dog. And we had to use the small letter because it wasn't a proper noun, and Mrs. Raddison got mad if you did that.

So Pfft was clubbing baby seals when Susie said he had to stop because her mother told her clubbing baby seals wasn't nice. It was like killing puppets, and that was really bad because you got the stuffing all over the floor and it would stick to everything. And then dad would hit me on the head with the beer bottle.

Pfft said he'd stop if me and Susie went down to the basement in the abandoned house and got his gum from the first stair in the basement. He was chewing it right then, so we had to wait. He got tired of chewing it after ten minutes so I did it for a while and then Susie hit me on the head with the baseball bat because it was late and the dog was whining.

I had to run away then because the dog pooped and Susie was mad. When I came back Susie said Pfft'd gone in and then she'd seen two shoes running out and back to his house. Which made sense cause Pfft's mom said we weren't allowed to see him if he got into any trouble like microwaving snow globes or breaking into houses.

We put the dog in the postbox and went around to the back of the house because Susie said you had to use the back door if you were breaking into a house. That was how they did it in the movies. It was dark in the house and Susie fell right into the basement. I stood ready to run if she was dead and became a ghost and wanted to do some haunting then. But she didn't die, which was kind of a bummer cause Pfft said ghosts could walk through walls.

She said I could fall down too and then we could find out if I was lucky. So I did and banged my head on a table Sue had pulled up to the bottom of the stairs. I said that wasn't fair because the table wasn't there when she fell. But she said that was because she was lucky and fell first so that she could pull up the table.

The table had little drawers on them and there were stones in the first one. Susie opened the second one and it had sand in it. I said the third one would have water and Sue said it had love letters. She bet me all her dog poop from next week if it had water and I said she could have the chewing gum when we found it if it had love letters.

That's when the drawer opened and the letters came out. They were black, but you could see through them. Susie said they were love letters but I said they didn't count because they weren't real because my straw went through them.

That's when the letters coughed and said boo. It was very quiet like, so I asked them if they were trying to scare us and the letters started crying and asked us if it had seen Bob anywhere. I didn't know and Susie didn't either. They said they were a ghost and it had to haunt the Bob person.

Susie said it wasn't a ghost because it was not people and it started shouting but it wasn't very loud. It said we were kids and didn't know a thing, which wasn't true because Susie knew a lot about dogs and I knew how to hold my nose and not die by breathing through my mouth.

Susie pulled me under the table and said we had to help the ghost because it would haunt us otherwise. That was bad because we couldn't spit in Pfft's milk when he wasn't looking since the ghost would tell him. So we got up and I banged my head under the table again and Sue told me that was because I still wasn't lucky.

So we asked the ghosts if we had to help it kill somebody so it wouldn't haunt us. It started crying again and said we were kids and didn't know anything, so I held my nose and breathed through my mouth and Susie told it that you couldn't make a dog's tail straight.

That's when Pfft fell down the basement and hit his head on the table because he wasn't lucky. The ghost was still crying so Susie told him about Bob. Pfft's father worked in the shop where they kept Grandma when she died, so Pfft knew how to search for dead people. He said we could go to the graveyard and check if Bob was dead first.

The graveyard was just round the block but Susie said we had to go the other way to be less suspicious. Pfft wanted to go the other way too because otherwise we had to walk in front of Mrs. Little who'd make him say good evening till he got it right. The ghost couldn't leave the house because it wasn't dark yet and it said ghosts couldn't leave the house when it wasn't night. So we went the other way to the graveyard and Susie said we were not suspicious and Pfft didn't say good evening to anyone.

Pfft said they'd have names on the graves, so me and Susie started reading them when he got the spade from the shed. Susie wasn't much good at it so I had to walk over to her side and read it for her. She had something which I can't say because it has a y and an x but it isn't a yacht or a xylophone and I don't know how to say it but Susie can.

We found three Bobs when Pfft got back with the spade. He said we could go to the haunted grave in the corner and see if we could find any ghosts who knew which one was our Bob, so Susie hit him with my baseball bat because we needn't have done the reading if he told us that first. She didn't like to do the reading because her head hurt.

The grave in corner had a dead person called Crowley and there was also his son, and his father in it and the son was beloved. Pfft started digging it because ghosts are usually sleeping because they can't go out of the graveyard and you had to wake them up by digging.

The Crowley ghost wasn't in the grave because he was already awake and he said boo, so Susie said good evening. And he asked us what we wanted and said something which I couldn't hear because he said it the way Aunt Mila spoke when she was telling something to Uncle Richard when he was watching the game and didn't want to take out the trash.

Susie told him about the ghost words and Bob and she also told him he couldn't give apples to a dog since it makes them sick because she didn't like anyone telling her she didn't know anything. And then the ghost was very nice like and said children were smart and Pfft was smiling and I was afraid Susie was going to hit him with the bat because she didn't like being called children but she didn't do anything. The Crowley ghost said Bob had gone to pick up some mail but he would be back shortly and then he laughed and told us it was a pun which is like a bun except that you spell it with a p instead of a b.

Pfft asked him if we could all walk through him and he smiled and said we could. Pfft didn't want to go first but Susie pushed him and he fell and then I walked thorough the Corwley ghost after him and then Susie because nothing had happened to Pfft. It was real cold like inside the Crowley ghost but it was very nice too. Susie asked him why he became a ghost and the Crowley ghost said we could call him Mister Crowley and said he just overshot because someone he loved shot him. So Susie made me promise I would shoot her when she was dead and Pfft said he'd do the same for me so that we could become ghosts and have other people to walk through us.

Mister Crowley asked us if we wanted to sit. So Pfft walked over to the bench near the Bobby person's grave and Mister Crowley said he felt like someone just walked over his grave and I said it was Pfft because it was him and Mister Crowley laughed again. He said people became ghosts because they didn't expect to die and then they started to die and overshot and became undead which was the opposite of alive. He said a ghosts would then have to find something they really wanted to do when they were alive and then they'd start to become alive and then they'd be really dead which I didn't understand.

Mister Crowley said it was like an oh-sil-a-shun which I could spell anyway I wanted because he said people couldn't tell if I was spelling it wrong if I said it right. He said all people who died unexpectedly became ghosts and then they all found something they forgot to do when they were alive. And if they had to say something to someone who wasn't dead they had to do the haunting.

Pfft said he would die unexpectedly and asked Mister Crowley if he needed a gun to do the overshot because you needed to get a license for that and he couldn't do that till he was older which would take a long time because his dad told him you had to go through all the numbers in order. Mister Crowley said a gun wasn't really necessary and said "Hi Bob" because the Bob ghost was standing behind us.

The Bob ghost was very pale and he was also very short. He smiled at us and thanked us for setting him free so I said he was welcome but we didn't set him free because he was a ghost and he could walk through doors. The Bob ghost smiled and said children were nice but Susie didn't hit him. He said he died after a long fruitfly life but just before he died he remembered a stray comment he had written down and read every day that he wanted to read one last time. And that was in the third drawer of the table in the basement that we had opened and he was happy and told us the ghost words "Live out your life before you die." and thanked us again.

So I said he was welcome and asked him how he became a fruitfly and he laughed and told me it was fruit full so Pfft said I could save up all my money from Christmas and Thanksgiving and buy lots of them. So Bob smiled and said goodbye and he became lighter and lighter till we could not see him but it was a little cold when we walked through the place he stood but it was also nice. Mister Crowley said "Bye Bob" but he was a little sad like when he said it and Susie told me later that was because Bob had finally found his peas which I didn't like. Dad had slipped on peas once and had to go to the hospital and then Aunt Sarah came and cooked us corn flakes which made me sick the next day.

Mister Crowley asked if we could help him find someone but Pfft told us he had to go but we could ask the gravedigger because his Aunt Alice had died and Mister Crowley made a tear roll down one cheek which I could never do and he said thank you and God bless us and I said he was welcome again and asked if he could stop saying thank you because I had to say he was welcome every time. He laughed again and became lighter and lighter like the Bob ghost and said not to forget the magic of childhood when we grew older.

Then Susie started crying and I didn't ask her to try making a tear go down one cheek at a time because she always hit me when I asked her to do that. So I asked her why she was crying and she said it was because she was forgetting the magic of childhood. Pfft told her he remembered everything and she said we didn't remember where dog was and so he started crying too and spit out his gum which I put in my pocket because Susie hadn't chewed it yet.

And then someone said the dog is in the mailbox and Susie said it was me. I said it wasn't me because I couldn't talk in Bob's voice but she hit me with the bat and we went back to the house to get the dog. And that's when Mrs. Little asked Pfft to wish her good night so I told her we had a long day which was a lie because Mrs. Raddison told us every day was always 24 hours long. So Mrs. Little said we could come in to have milk and cookies which we did because we would get to spit in Pfft's milk when he wasn't looking.