Fat Ghost

My house floated thirty feet above the ground. Not hovering or bobbing in the wind, just existing, as if it had been built there, high above the crack-stone open wound of my basement. 

Ten minutes earlier, my wife texted while I walked alongside the river. She’d received a flurry of phone notifications from our security cameras. Gone haywire, she wrote. She’d left a letter, a week before, about how she needed to leave and climb mountains and figure things out. Every time I asked when she was coming home, my wife sent pictures of wooded trails and views of broad, town-dappled valleys from peaks unknown to me. I was afraid of what she would figure out. Afraid of how little control I had of a situation I couldn’t comprehend. I was content with nearby hills and the conclusions about my life that I found among them. Sensing a means to demonstrate responsibility, I texted back and said I’d check it out.

Splintered lengths of wood and chunks of brick and concrete peppered the backyard. As if a great force had ripped the house from its bones. Part of the basement staircase was still attached to the house, like the last tooth in a busted mouth. 

I texted my wife: All good! The house is fine. She responded with a picture of a forest speared by sunlight. 

Then I climbed down into the ruined basement. My stepladder was too short to reach the stairs. But I did have some old rope. I tied a big knot at one end, and after a few failed tosses, looped it between two balusters. I tugged the rope. It felt like it might hold. You never know how sturdy things might be, how sturdy you might be, until you’re dangling beneath your house. I began to climb.

The rope snapped. I grabbed the bottom step, and scrambled upward, nearly drowned through burning lungs, then sat and breathed for a while before I crawled to the door. 

A smashed-plate blizzard buried the kitchen. The living room furniture was scattered like untended sheep. The TV sobbed on the floor. My cat Simpson complained as any 14-year-old cat would from the top of his tipped-over scratch tower. 

I spent a few hours consolidating the mess, but not really cleaning it. A wreck compartmentalized rather than resolved. Then I sat down on the couch, hungry and sweat-soaked. Simpson groaned from the kitchen. I opened a can of tuna for him and ordered a pizza. Only later, when I heard a car horn bleat from outside, did I realize my mistake. I descended the basement stairs and apologized to the driver. She set the pizza down on the ground, laughed, and then crept away. 

&

I was tying bed sheets together the next morning, to make a crude ladder, when I heard a loud thump from the attic. 

I assumed some bird or squirrel broke in through an opening in the roof. The house was old, long-neglected, once the pride of a local cult, and my wife and I had only begun to address its decay. I scratched my face and thought of these things, about my lack of groceries and the bed sheet ladder I needed to escape. Then whatever it was in the attic made another big noise.

The attic was lifeless. Some light entered in thick pearl bars from a square vent at the far end. Sunshine stretched across ridges of cardboard boxes and plastic bins. The fake Christmas tree slept on its side. I descended the attic stairs and raised the door back into the ceiling. A new thump. This time downstairs in the kitchen. 

I found a ghost, fat and middle-aged, shrouded in a Patriots jersey and baggy jeans. The color of television static. I’d never heard of a fat ghost before. The fat ghost knelt in front of the liquor cabinet beside the fridge. He lifted and slammed down the bottles of alcohol, one by one.

What are you doing? I asked. 

The fat ghost turned, then asked, You can see me?

You’re the one making all this noise.

That’s right.

Have a drink. There’s plenty.

The fat ghost picked up a bottle of bad vodka and tried to twist the cap. He couldn’t do it. I wondered if all ghosts are very weak.

Here, let me help you, I said.

I took the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured some vodka into two coffee mugs. Nudged one of them in the direction of the fat ghost. The fat ghost closed his hands around it like he was trying to catch it. At first, his fingers passed through the porcelain, the liquor. Then the fat ghost lifted the mug, and he cried out like he’d been holding a great pressure inside. The mug fell and spilled vodka across the table. I grabbed a washcloth from the sink and wiped it up.

I almost had it, the fat ghost said sheepishly. 

We can try again later, I said.

I felt responsible for the fat ghost. I’d long suspected the place was haunted. I couldn’t sleep in complete darkness, and not unless the bedroom closet was closed. I wondered if the fat ghost ever watched me and my wife sleep.

The fat ghost’s face flickered as I drank vodka from the mug. 

Have some more, he said. I poured a few more shots into my mug and then filled a fresh one for him. The fat ghost eyed his warily, then pointed at my mug. Keep going, he said.

I hated vodka and that particular bottle tasted metallic, a product of Somerville’s grimier stills. But the fat ghost’s demeanor changed as I drank. Like he was feeding off my intoxication. This idea made me laugh and then the fat ghost laughed. I poured more vodka, collected both mugs, and led the fat ghost to the front porch. The fat ghost seemed nervous to step out into the sun, but he did, his back up against the house like he was afraid to relinquish his connection to it.

I used to drink there all the time, the fat ghost said. He pointed up the street. The Icehouse, one of two dive bars in town, the shitty one, the one where people fought on the sidewalk over money stolen and football bets gone bad.

They’re selling the Icehouse, I said.

They’re always trying to sell the Icehouse, said the fat ghost.

I tried to coax the fat ghost closer to the edge of the porch. He moved forward but held one hand against the house. The view was beautiful. I’d never seen the town this way before. The town’s four church steeples gleamed in the afternoon sun. The river curled like a saber. Someone was washing their car a street over. A flock of geese glowed as they flew south toward Deerfield. 

&

The fat ghost wanted me to experience everything he couldn’t. I made peanut butter and tomato sauce sandwiches on the counter. Drank vodka straight from the bottle. Squeezed my body into one of my wife’s dresses. Stripped nude, thumped my chest, and chased Simpson from one end of the house to the other.

Evening surprised us. We listened as church bells beckoned the sunset. I texted my wife and said I missed her. The fat ghost and I built a fort with the cushions of the couch. I dozed, still naked, against the wall in the living room. 

The fat ghost made a sound beside me and I stirred. Watch me, he said. 

The fat ghost cupped his mug with his hands and lifted it to his mouth. A thin stream of vodka passed through his lips, down through his jersey and jeans, and splashed against the floor. The fat ghost set the mug down, looked at me, and laughed. I think he cried, too. Something disturbed the ivory static around his eyes. I want to believe he cried, that he rediscovered the small human part of himself who enjoys the ability to do a simple thing when simple things seem as difficult as staying alive. 

I breathed in the moment of his success. Then I asked, How did you die?

The fat ghost moved the mug in a small circle on the floor. The mug made a low scraping sound.

Took some bad shit to feel good, he said. Then he said, Really bad shit. 

The fat ghost pointed at the ceiling. My room was that one, he said. I was there.

I nodded a few times and said nothing.

The house was different back then, the fat ghost said. No glass on the windows. Wood coverings in a few places. Drafty. Power only some days in the week. 

Then the fat ghost said, Sometimes when you and your wife are asleep I’ll touch your faces and feel the electricity inside you. The heat, too. I love the heat. 

The fat ghost paused. I’m so cold, he said. All the time.  

Where were you buried? I asked.

The fat ghost said nothing.

Did they bury you? I asked.

I don’t know, the fat ghost said. Sometimes I try to find a place in the walls where I can lie down. To get some sleep.

Let’s find that place tonight, I said.

A sledgehammer stood by the back door. My wife and I found it in the basement when we moved in. I picked up the sledgehammer and felt its weight, felt the memory of that first day in the house. I also felt a flicker of purpose, a need, a thing to accomplish. I’d help the fat ghost find his way home.

I drove the head of the sledgehammer into the wall until I had a rough-hewn hole about a foot around. The fat ghost peered inside.

Not here, he said.

After fifteen minutes I’d punctured about thirty jagged-edge holes around the house. At first, I tried to do it as quietly as possible because it was getting late and my neighbors were quiet people. But I was drunk and eager, almost desperate to help, and my swings grew sloppier, more frantic. Each time the fat ghost looked closely and said the same thing. Not here. 

Exhausted after an hour, I dropped the sledgehammer and fell onto the couch beside Simpson. I felt the fat ghost come near.

Can I feel your face? he asked.

Sure, I said. 

The fat ghost’s touch was cold but there were pinpricks of heat within the cold. Like a source of heat imprisoned. I fell asleep with his hand on my forehead.

&

In the morning I finished the bed sheet ladder. My hands, never great machines, were sore, so I postponed my escape and chugged the last dregs of a can of instant coffee. As I forced the drink down, I remembered the fat ghost, and, turning to call out for him, realized I never asked for his name. I sat at the table and gazed at the holes in the walls. Every place we’d checked for solace.

One spot remained, right where we kept the sledgehammer. I grabbed the sledgehammer and swung hard. A new sound chorused with the crush of drywall. I knelt and picked away the pieces, reached inside, and withdrew a length of bone. Half a femur. I kept searching: bits of skull, a few ribs, a scapula. 

I was sure these were the fat ghost’s remains. That was all I was sure of. Who put his bones in the wall? Does a ghost witness their burial? When does a ghost become conscious? Do ghosts approach the afterlife first, only to turn back? I should have asked him these things, but I didn’t, and now I must feel my way in the dark and search for the truths of life and death like everyone else. 

I grabbed my backpack and carefully placed the bones inside. Then, I took the bed sheet ladder and descended the basement stairs. The view of the ground disoriented me. It was easy to forget I was thirty feet high. I tied the bed sheet ladder to the balusters and the sheets swayed in the breeze. Then, I started to climb down, and the linens held strong, the whole thirty feet, and I felt the blush of relief when my feet touched the ground. 

Instead of taking the usual route through town to the grocery store, I headed to the river. The path was busy with joggers. The water was high and fast from recent rain and the waterfall roared with swollen power. My body vibrated from the river’s force.

I didn’t know where to bury the fat ghost’s bones. I decided to drop them from the bridge. Let the waterfall dissolve and purify his remains for the birds and plants to drink. Let him become the warmth he sought. I walked to the bridge’s peak and looked down. The water roiled and spewed mist as it struck the rocks at the foot of the falls. I took the bones from my backpack and dropped them into the frothy churn. 

When I returned from the river, the house was gone. Simpson lingered by the edge of the basement and meowed as I approached. I looked around the yard for any sign of it, a scrap, a shingle. Nothing. I knelt and lifted Simpson. He softened against me and purred.

I looked toward the road. My wife stood beside her car. Her arms were folded tight across her chest. She’d cut her hair. She didn’t have her bags or backpack. I had the feeling that she didn’t mean to stay and that our relationship was about to die. Maybe it had already died, and she was a ghost, and I was, too, and everything up until then was one long echo, the same surge and sunder shared by every person who’d lived long enough to love. But she was back, and that was enough. I stepped around the basement, avoiding glass and broken stone, and began to close the space between us. 

Then I saw it. Our home, unmoored, headed south, a distant fleck against the blue and open sky.