Ghost Kiss

Lily

     My wrist is screaming at me. But I need to get this done. I want to be in my bedroom by tonight. I move the boxes into the hallway so I can go through them later. I wonder what possible treasures I'll find inside. I grab the dresses from the bedroom and decide that I'm not going to get rid of them just yet. I move them to the other bedroom closet instead. This time making sure that the door can not close behind me. I move those boxes into the hallway while I'm here.

     I go back into what is now my bedroom and begin cleaning. I'm done an hour later and the room looks great. I polished up the lamp and even managed to save the old dresser that is in there. I move the bed out into the hallway and just sit for a minute. Taking a break never hurt anybody.

     Then I hear my doorbell for the first time since I've moved in. It's incredibly off key and I make a mental note to fix that later. I head downstairs to my front door and open it.

     It's Viv from the diner. "Hey girl, how are you settling in?" she asks me as soon as I open the door. "Just fine, I was just doing some stuff upstairs. How did you know where I live?" I ask because I don't ever remember giving her the address. "The old Murdoch house? Remember?" I do remember that conversation. Makes sense. I invite her inside and offer something to drink but she refuses and we sit on the couch.

     "Grammy told me about your wrist. How does it feel today?" she asks as she eyes the wrap I'm wearing. "It still hurts but ya know, still got stuff to do. I iced it last night and plan on icing it again tonight." I tell her just in case she reports back to Grammy, she can tell her I'm following orders. "Well, do you need help with anything? I'm happy to do it." I'm actually ready for some help considering I didn't want to make a million trips up and down the stairs since I can only carry one box at a time.

     She helps me carry the boxes downstairs and I decide to go ahead and crack them open. We sit on the couch with the first box in front of us on the coffee table. I open it up and look inside. There are some old ribbons and trophies. Whoever these belonged to really enjoyed baseball. Probably her grandson that Earl was telling me about.

     We move on to the next box, there are books. No, photo albums. "Have you heard about what happened?" Viv asks as she's repacking the box with the ribbons. "Only that the woman who lived here had a grandson that died before she did. Is that why the house was so cheap? People are creeped out by the fact that someone died here?" I'm mostly just wondering aloud but she answers my question anyway. "Well yea, your not?" She's staring at me in disbelief. "You do realize that with the age of most houses and the fact that people die every day that, chances are, someone has died in every single house that's more than 100 years old, right? Dying is part of living." It's a bit of a morbid conclusion but a logical one. She has a look on her face as if she's thinking it over. "I guess your right but are those places haunted too?" She's wide-eyed staring at me now. "I don't believe in ghosts." I shrug and turn back to the box. Next, she will try to tell me about black cats and walking under ladders, and don't break a mirror.

     I pull out one of the albums. The first page is full of photos of a baby boy. He's adorable. We both "Awe" in unison. As we flip through the pages we see the baby boy's growth through the years. In quite a few of the photos, there's a woman holding the child. I assume she is the grandmother Earl mentioned. She has the look of one too. Soft eyes and a caring smile. She's beaming at the boy in every photo, you can tell she loved him very much. We get to the final page and see the baby boy from the first page has grown into a man. A gorgeous man I might add. Broad chest and shoulders underneath a baby blue button-up shirt and jeans that hang just perfectly. His eyes are bright with a big smile on his face. His grandmother was under his arm. She has clearly aged since the first photos and he towers over her. She clings to his chest, there is clearly no place else on this earth that she would rather be.

     "Oh my god, he's fine as hell!" I wonder if she's going to start drooling on the photo. I roll my eyes at her. "What? Do you disagree? How can you look at this man and tell me that he's not the finest man that ever walked the earth?" She asks. I don't want to get into the conversation of men with her like I do my mother. One person in my life like that is quite enough. "He is very good-looking," I say. Even though, in truth, I can barely take my eyes away from him.

     Our attention then turns to his grandmother in the photo with him. "I can't imagine the pain she must have been in when he died," Viv says. "She must have been devastated. It just goes against the natural order of things." I don't think I'd wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy. "What do you mean?" She asks. "A child loses a parent, they become an orphan, a husband loses a wife, he becomes a widower, and a wife loses a husband she's a widow. There's no name for someone who loses their child. It's just not supposed to happen that way. As you get older there are people in your life that you expect to lose. No parent expects to lose their child. It's not the natural order of things."

     "That's a hell of a way to look at it." Viv stares at the box that I've just put the album back into, processing what I've just said. I guess the conversation did turn a bit dark. But how could it not? She seems to snap out of it though and smiles at me, "I suppose I'll leave you to it. I'll see you tomorrow at work. It will be fun."

     I walk her out and lean against the door after I close it. I stare at the other boxes and decide I'm no longer in the mood to go through the rest right now. I scoot them into the closet that sits just off the side of the living room and head back upstairs. I gotta figure out how I'm going to move my bed up here and put it together.