The Paper Ghost (Deleted Stories)

Marquez held his hand up to the summer sun and felt its golden  warmth against his skin. He was not dead, of that he was sure.

 

And yet, in front of him, a pine box was being lowered into an oblong hole in a cemetery and the brass plaque on the coffin lid bore his name, Roberto Marquez and, all around the grave mouth, his family and friends and neighbours, people he’d known all of his life, were dressed in black and weeping bitterly.

 

“Has everyone gone stark raving mad?”, he yelled, “I’m not dead. Why are you all crying? Can’t you hear me? Can’t you see that I’m alive?”.

 

He took the black gloved hand of his wife, pressing his fingers round the finger upon which she wore her wedding ring and, raising her black widows veil, kissed her cheek, certain that his beloved wife at least, the woman he had shared his bed with for 32 years, would see him.

 

But his wife didn’t even look at him. She kept on weeping and looking down into that dark hole and the coffin inside it, clutching the hand of their little daughter, Lysette tightly.

 

“Why can you not see me?”, he said, waving his hand in front of her black veiled eyes, “Is your veil that thick?”.

 

He knelt down beside his little 6 year old daughter.

 

Surely she would see him, her own father who loved her with all his heart.

 

“You see me, don’t you Lysette?”, he asked the little girl, stroking the pretty curls at the back of her head, “Hmm? You see your daddy, don’t you?”.

 

He could see some sort of discomfort on the girls face but even she wouldn’t register his existence.

 

“I don’t understand it”, said Marquez, sitting down on the edge of a headstone nearby and biting his thumb nail, that he noted was still growing, as the priest read out his last rites in Latin, “I can’t be dead. I don’t feel dead. I’m still breathing like a living person. So why can’t anyone see me or hear me even?”.

 

Suddenly, he felt a tap on the back of his left shoulder and, turning round, he saw a blonde haired stranger with a smiling face.

 

“Who are you?”, he asked, suspiciously, “I don’t know you”.

 

“I’m a ghost like you”, said the man.

 

Marquez laughed.

 

“I’m not a ghost. Don’t give me that. I’m alive. It’s those people over there”, he said, pointing to the mourners, “Weeping and wailing over an empty coffin who seem dead to me or, at least, blind, deaf and dumb”.

 

“They will not see you. Not even the little girl because they all know that when you look at a ghost, you become a ghost”, replied the stranger.

 

Marquez shoved the man roughly aside and the stranger stumbled backwards.

 

“I’ve already told you; I’m not a ghost”, he said, angrily, walking past the man now towards the exit of the cemetery.

 

“You are according to the powers that be”, said the stranger, “You were taken for questioning, were you not? And, while you were being held, They declared you officially dead because, like me, you must have been involved in some activity that They deemed seditious. Perhaps it was just reading some revolutionary pamphlet handed to you randomly in the street by one of our friends  but, whatever it was, now you are no longer recognized as one of the living and neither your family nor anyone else in this godforsaken country will now acknowledge your existence”.

 

Thunder peeled overhead and it started to rain and then, from outside the gates of the cemetery, Marquez heard the growl of a motor vehicle and saw a black van pull up bearing Their insignia on its sliding doors and, though he couldn’t see inside the van because of its black opaque windows, he got the sense that the people inside were watching him and would spring out at any minute.

 

“Oh, Christ! What are They doing here?”, he asked, looking back over his shoulder at the stranger.

 

“The state appointed grim reaper”, the man replied, “Come to take away the officially dead”.

 

Marquez started to panic, real fear widening his eyes like the eyes of a hunted animal, “What am I supposed to do?  I can’t go with Them! Then I really will be dead!”.

 

Then he could see them inside his head. Somehow they had gotten inside;  eyes; hundreds of staring, probing eyes and a deep voice like the thunder.

 

“You will obey us”, it said, “You will surrender yourself to us”.

 

The world started to somersault.

 

The stranger took hold of his hand firmly now and lead him, hurriedly, towards the back of the cemetery, to where he saw a stone angel clutching a bible in one hand and pointing the outstretched finger of its other hand towards heaven and then, gripping hold of the angels gesticulating hand he pulled it down like a lever and Marquez saw a hole open up in the earth near to his feet and, inside the hole were steps leading down into some underground passageway.

 

“There’s only one place where we ghosts can go”, said the stranger, stepping down into the hole, “And that’s underground”.

 

Hearing the sound of men in boots approaching and the barking and growling of their angry dogs from behind him, Marquez didn’t think twice before following the stranger down the steps.

 

“One day though, my friend”, said the man, smiling back up at Marquez as they headed downwards and the secret entrance closed above their heads, “All we ghosts will rise up. You’ll see”.