Meeting Ghosts

Sagacious used to be afraid of the dark.

Every night, when the lights go out, she would cover herself completely with her blanket, tucking its edges underneath her until she can no longer tolerate the trapped heat. In the time spent in this wool cocoon, her ears were keen for all nightly sounds in her house.

Footsteps outside of her door. Creaking from above. The ‘brrr’ing from the old air conditioner. When her windows shudder.

It’s hard to tell which of them were natural and which weren’t, when you know that monsters are real. Her mother made sure she was aware, that under no circumstances should she accept anything from them and strangers alike. She often used her dad as an example, to let her know that she didn’t want to lose her like what has happened to him.

Her mother was also responsible for teaching her to use her powers if she ever felt threatened. And she’s done a pretty good job at it, because Sagacious didn’t hesitate when her friend had fallen under a foul presence that one time.

I was there when she hid in the cupboard, when those thugs smashed in and took her father. Jakle was there too, for we arrived in time to see them drag her father into a van, gagged and bound and terrified and looking at us.

He saw us. No one else did.

It was enough to set aside our differences. We don’t know why it happened. No one does.

The authorities promised to contact them if they find any new leads, but that was over twenty years ago. The news covered them for a while, but just like many headlines in the newspaper, they soon vanished into obscurity. They were just another family in the neighbourhood, after all, just missing one parental figure.

It’s easier to say that a monster has claimed your father than to explain why he was taken. 

She didn’t behave like the other children we saw. She didn’t speak much, preferring to shake her head or nod when a question is directed at her. We weren’t sure if she had friends. Either they kept their distance from her, or she chose to stay away from them.

Nothing mattered to her. She wanted answers to why her dad had screamed for help, why no one had come to help him, or why he had seemingly vanished off of the face of the planet.

But none of the grown-ups know. They were supposed to know everything, according to Jakle, when I asked if it was normal for children of her age to cry when not given an answer.

Aid was offered, but her mother couldn’t afford it. Just like young Sagacious, her mother was struggling. She had multiple jobs to pay for the bills, pills, rent, fees, sessions, caretakers, among other necessities. They barely made by for a couple of years in this life.

Until she had enough. She made the decision to return to her hometown in Pei-ning, back to the house that she had lent to her friends in her absence.

The prospect of leaving her home in Apotos, the place where Sagacious was born and raised, confused her. The journey was scary. The new place looked scary. The new-old building had fewer rooms than their previous. She couldn’t contact the few friends she had anymore, left behind like the furniture that her dad had bought.

She hated it. No one spoke her language. Even if they do, they had trouble understanding her.

The kids didn’t know her. Neither did she.

She would cry till she cried no more, no matter where she was. At school, she would sulk in class, making it difficult for her teachers to know if she had paid any attention to lesson. At least they allowed her to keep her stuffed animal. I don’t think Jakle could handle listening to the child cry for hours on end. I don’t think I could.

We tried to approach her when she was alone. We had to. We agreed that we should do so individually, beginning with Jakle because he doubted my intentions. Somehow he thought that I wanted to twist the child into releasing her frustrations and wrath upon the world for their failure of giving her the answer she wanted. Do I honestly look like I had the heart to make her do that, after seeing what she’d been through?

Every attempt ended with her screaming for her mother. It was funny to see Jakle on his wit’s end, wondering why she screamed louder at the sight of him. He didn’t understand that a kid would find a being of intense radiance terrifying, that she couldn’t see his face with all the bright light around him. She thought that he was a ghost, ha!

Then again, I fared no better. You can surely guess how her encounters with me go. I chose to assume a form similar to hers, for I had none prior to seeing her. She was curious initially, wondering why we looked similar. But she soon cried because she wasn’t sure if she was seeing her own shadow or something far sinister. She said something along the lines of “she looked like me!” when explaining to her mother why she had cried. Thankfully her powers were weak back then, or I wouldn’t be here to tell the story.

We had to hurry, however. Because of her increasingly fragile state of mind, a lot of unfavourable spirits wanted to feed off of her. I was one such creature, but I suppose Jakle was fortunate that I still had a conscience instead of being driven by hunger. It was easy to convince him that I am unlike other spirits. All I had to do was rake the one that nearly bested him.

I must confess, I had fed off of Sagacious’s uncertainty a couple of nights when Jakle wasn’t looking. It was so delicious, but it made also me feel bad. I’m not supposed to feel bad. Why am I feeling bad for her? Was it because she was my first victim? Or did Jakle do something to me, seeing as he was capable of making spirits vanish instantly? Why didn’t he do that when we first met?

Even at her homeland, her mother was becoming increasingly exhausted. So was Sagacious. We had to make contact with her quickly, so at least everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. We want to let her know that we were watching over her. That we’ve been fending off terrors of the night from feeding off of her anxiety and fear since the first night after the incident.

It wasn’t until Jakle swallowed his pride and demanded for my assistance against a particularly strong terror that Sagacious realised we weren’t monsters.

Our defence has never left any collateral damage, but when she asked what we are, having gotten off of her bed with her plush toy in one hand and blanket in the other, we were stunned. She must’ve seen the terror that we had obliterated. You’d think we were used to receiving such questions, coming from the spirits who wondered why we were protecting this child. But not from Sagacious, who we were used to being screamed at. She was staring questionably at us.

And that was how we got to know each other. It took her a while to not flinch whenever she saw us, and for us to not dash out of her sight whenever we make eye contact.

One night, she asked if we knew what happened to her father. We told her what we’d seen.

“Can you bring him back?”

“No,” was what I’d said. “We don’t know where he is now. And I don’t think we can look for him when we have to look after you.”

“To make sure that the same doesn’t happen to you or your mother,” added Jakle.

We lied, obviously. But she accepted the answer. We told her the truth years later, after she had joined this group full of kids similar to her in some way or another. She took it fairly well. Maybe it’s because she had found comfort in knowing that there are others who had suffered like how she did.

At least she isn’t afraid of the dark anymore. Not when both of us can keep an eye on her back.