Michael looks at his hand as if it's not his own. As if it's something he has never seen before. Not a moment earlier he could have sworn his hand went right through the man sitting opposite to him.
Jack.
As if Jack had been nothing but mist....a figment of his imagination.
But he isn't....he can't be....Michael is sure of it.....he's....
He shuts his eyes tightly for a moment and then opens them again.
Jack is still there. Michael can still faintly see the stars and the outline of the room through the shape of his body.
This can't be real....none of it....and yet....it very much seems like it is.
“Who are you?”, Michael starts to ask again but then he corrects himself “What are you?”
Jack just smiles.
“I'm a ghost.”
“I don't believe in ghosts.”
“Well.....then I don't know what to tell you.”
Jack is still smiling. As if this is all highly amusing and, maybe, it actually is.
Michael can't really remember the last time he was this interested in....well...anything really.
“Alright”, he says, “how did you die?”
Jack shrugs.
“I can't remember.”
“You can't......why?”
Instead of giving an answer Jack just shrugs again.
Michael tries a different question.
“Do you haunt this lighthouse?”
This time Jack nods.
“I think I do”, he says, “I don't really remember being anywhere else.”
“Well, how long have you been here then?”
Once again Jack shrugs.
“I don't know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I'm not always here.”
“But you said....”
“I know what I said”, Jack continues, “but I'm not always.....present......conscious......if you can call it that.....I'm only ever here at night.....God, I don't even remember what the sun looks like, and I don't even think I'm here every single night because sometimes the stars are suddenly in a different location.”
“Where do you go when you're not here then?”, Michael asks.
Jack's lips form a tight line before he replies. As if he's thinking hard or trying to remember something or trying to come up with just the right answer but all he ends up saying is:
“I don't know. I don't remember. I'm just gone.”
Michael doesn't know what to say.
He's never believed in the supernatural.
He's never believed in life after death.
He always just thought that, after you died, that would be it. You would just stop existing and everything you had done during your life would not matter one bit.
Good or bad.
Maybe that had been why he had never been afraid of dying.
But now......
With Jack sitting right here in front of him.
Living proof.....so to speak.....of the fact that there might be consequences to your actions, he is suddenly afraid.
YOU ARE READING
Light
General FictionA lonely lighthouse on the coast of England in 1986. A man desperate enough to try and end his life meets the resident lighthouse ghost. An unlikely bond forms but can something like that really last when one of the two is already dead?
