Hungry Ghost Part 5.

Written by Holly Wilcox Routledge.

T.W: Smoking, non-accurate descriptions on how to smoke, suicidal idealisation and implications of suicidal ideations.

And now, of course, you’re here. 

You’re certainly not the first to come out here and find me, and I seriously doubt you’ll be the last. You’re doing well, all things considered, for a first-timer here. You’re pacing yourself well. 

Here. Breathe in deeply. Let your breath hold. Feel your body, feel the space your lungs occupy inside of you. There we go. Let it out. 

Good job. I found the last person I did this with found it easier when I said it was like smoking – you don’t smoke, do you? Oh, good. Don’t start, it’s a disgusting habit. Not because the cancer kills you but because the prices start killing your bank account. Har har. 

The last person didn’t laugh at it either. Don’t worry. No, seriously, don’t worry, I’m gonna light up in a second. If you jump when I flick my lighter on, something is gonna get singed. 

Ahhh. 

Hahhh. 

You ever see The Good, The Bad and The Ugly? It’s an old, old film from the 1960s. One of the characters smokes a cigarillo in it, just like this. 

Fancy a pull? Oh, well. It helps with breathing like this. You bring your tongue up to block your throat but don’t inhale, or breathe it in. Hold it in your mouth for ten seconds. . . . . . . 

. . . 

Hahhhh. Exhale. Breathe the fire in just like that. It’ll help open up your mind. When you start to see strange things, you let me know. Those’ll be the dreams. 

Where was I? Oh, yes. I remember now. Keep breathing, close your eyes; I’ll continue the story. *** 

The light from the first-floor window roams across the damp road before me like chunks of raw gold. As I move closer, they spread further, running along the dimpled surface before vanishing entirely as my shadow stretches forward to consume it. 

I’m in the second row of houses in the neighbourhood. This house is four blocks down from the train station. It was one of the few places where the lights from the railroad crossing weren’t visible, blocked out by lampposts and other houses. The trains would come through silently in the night, clicking into and out of the tracks before coming to a rest, the wheeze of the engines the only thing making any sound. There would be the murmur of people boarding and the blast of the conductor’s whistle before the engines hummed to life, the wheels chugged along the tracks, and the train would move on into the night before silence came back to its rightful place. 

I don’t know if I woke up here. I don’t know if I’ve been anywhere before this house. I’ve blinked into this plane as easily as I blink myself awake. My legs are in motion and carrying me along. The road ahead has more houses, the lights on, the doors closed. 

How long will I walk this place tonight? 

I walk on into the night. House after house. It’s quiet. None of the usual sounds of small-town life in the dark. 

And what sounds would that be? 

Nothing worth thinking about. Nothing worth remembering. Not this place. Not here. 

In Singapore, in the darkest depths of night, there was some kind of noise, even beyond the dream kind. The quiet rush of cars on the far-away highways and roads. The late buses pulling into their depots for the night with the wheeze of engine and brakes. The odd muffled blast of karaoke and singing, smothered by concrete and metal. Now and again, there would be the odd late-night party that carried well on into the early morning, pounding bass music and voices that grew slowly quieter and quieter as the morning sun arrived. Or remained the same – I guess it depended on how good the DJ was. 

It’s nice to hear something. Better than silence. 

I round the corner of the junction and walk down the road, looking at the houses that rise out of the gloom. Garden ornaments dip in and out of shadow, spotlessly clean and void of muck and grit. Tidy pools of grass swell around them, the grass only appearing within the small amount of light that comes from their corresponding houses or the nearby lampposts. 

There should be something in some of those lawns; nothing is missing, rather that even when I was younger, they were void of anything to mark that people lived in these houses. The lawns are clipped, watered, fed, groomed, but apart from that care and a few ornaments, many of the small grass gardens indicate nothing about their owners. There were no toys or swing sets, outside tables or birdfeeders to be seen. Just grass. Tidy, clean, well-organised grass. 

They weren’t manicured. Not there, not back in my memories; manicuring has a certain level of personal interest – or at least, I think it does. These little gardens only existed for the sole purpose of everyone on the street to know you had one, that you had a little patch of land all for yourself that you could do something with if you so chose to, that you could plant things in it, that you could use it to host dinner parties or events for your friends if you so wished.

People didn’t. In the seventeen and a half years that I spent in that town, I don’t remember going to a single birthday party that was held in someone’s garden, even in the houses of the kids who actually had a larger garden or back area. Everything was done inside houses, no matter the weather, or we were carted off to the nearest mall or play centre to go to an ice-skating rink or a cinema, or some primary-coloured playpen that we would be let into for a few hours. There was one family who had tried to host a birthday party in their house once, complete with party games and some fun music on the CD player, only for a neighbour to rat them out and call the police on them to turn the volume down. 

Can you imagine that? Phoning the police on children having fun at a birthday party? Miserable fucking busybodies. 

I’d kick a fence if I could at the memory of that. If I managed to walk past the house of the old bag who had gone and made that call, I would. I’d hop the fence and drag my shoes up and down the pristine lawn and dig my hands into the grass and tear until I felt mud spill around my nails and the roots of grass hung over my fingers like rings. 

But I couldn’t. Not even here. Not even whilst I was safe from her. The thought of even walking past that house, seeing its windows and occupants, made me feel nauseous, both in and out of this dream. 

Elsewhere then. Away from that house, that woman, away from . . . away from. . . 

I’m making a sharp left down the street, towards where the small high street used to be. It’s here, on these nights, even though most of these places should be closed down and long gone. Small little grocery shops and haberdasheries mostly, hand-painted signs displaying their names in faded paint, sponsored by old companies now long gone out of business. They have old-fashioned wooden shutters coming down over the windows, and though they make the surface of the window difficult to look into, I can just see the outline of myself walking on, the curve of my leg, the swish of my hair as I move. 

I don’t feel sad walking down that area. Should I feel sad? You’re supposed to, aren’t you, when you walk past things long since gone, places that will never return, no matter how much money or effort you put into it. Maybe it’s because the people who do feel sad are sad they are no longer in the time and place they were when they first saw them. They don’t actually feel sad for a closed-down grocery shop as they feel sad they won’t ever get to be young again – a child, a new parent, a fresh grad, the new stranger in town – and being able to exist without the worries and misfortune that plague them now. 

If anybody else were to come through here like I am, would they feel this sadness? Would they long to go back to that time? Would it eat at them, night after night, knowing that the very time they’ve wanted is just out of reach? Would they try the doors to every house, trying to get in and see the occupants, to see people long since lost to time?

Not that I tried that. Not that I cared about any of that. No, I didn’t care. 

What am I supposed to feel here? 

Does it matter at all that I don’t feel anything? 

I turn the corner and I see the ashy gleam of the high bars of the bridge. It’s almost over for tonight. 

Tomorrow . . . what would tomorrow bring me but more of the same? Eat, shower, work, then sleep, only to return. It’s not worth trying to feel anything different when all you get is the same. 

Look at me – I left years ago, and here I am still in this place. What difference does it make that it’s just a dream or a memory? I’m still trapped. The only difference is that nobody else can see it. 

Power through, keep going – for what? For what? For hotels? For a job I thought would keep me safe? 

There is an obvious answer. Not wise or practical, or even good, but it is an option. But far greater than all those worries, far greater than the weight of reality sinking me day by day, that answer becomes something far more terrible. 

If I die – if I die, will he still follow me? If I come onto this earth during Hungry Ghost; will he be waiting for me, now as an equal instead of merely a dream? 

The potential that had become far more horrifying than this monthly grind. When August ends, I won’t see him for another year. 

But if I die. . . if I die, I may see him forever. And unlike running away from home or going into hotels, there is no way to ever know for sure. 

The small incline that leads to the bridge, unlike the other main road areas behind me, is smooth. When the council decided it was time to smooth the roads and pavements to even any cracks or potholes, this area was the very first place to be treated. It was to do with the bridge crossing and the nearby railway; lots of tourists, they said, coming with heavy bags and luggage. Their first experience of this town couldn’t be inconvenienced with struggling to make their way along bumpy, untreated roads; no, it had to be perfect. 

They would get to drag heavy bags along cracked pavements and uneven roads later. First impressions were important.

No moonlight shines down on the incline. It’s dark going up. The crossing is just near one of the street lights that lurk near the edge of the road. As I go up the incline, the light begins to bloom over the concrete like an exploding star.