I stared at the ghost. I supposed I was getting used to seeing spooks around, but this guy was not your everyday run of the mill haunt.
He was sitting cross-legged, well technically he wasn’t sitting, he was hovering cross-legged just above that old guy reading the magazine. That was different.
He looked to be a kid, maybe ten, no more than twelve years old. He was wearing some kind of old-fashioned military coat with a high collar and lots of buttons. On his head he wore one of those Civil War caps that are squished down in the front
Suddenly, the ghost looked up from the professor’s magazine and caught me staring at him. He seemed surprised and for a couple seconds we just stayed like that gawking at each other. Then he floated right up to me, looked me in the eye and said, “You can see me can’t you.”
“Yeah.”
“Ssshhh!” The Ghost put his finger to his lips like some bossy librarian. “I reckon you don’t want folks t’be seein’ you talkin’ to yourself. Follow me.”
The ghost glided between the stacks with me hurrying along behind him trying to keep up.
It wasn’t easy.
This ghost clearly knew his way around the building. It didn’t help either that he could take shortcuts by gliding right through some of the bookshelves and even doors.
I followed as best I could, dodging between the stacks of books. The ghost would stop every now and then and wait impatiently for me the catch up.
I’d round a corner and there he’d be, grinning and waving for me to follow.
He led me to a stairway in the back of the room and glided up two flights of steps with me puffing behind.
I wasn’t really thinking about the weirdness of all this. I mean, here I was following a ghost through the bowels of some strange building.
If you saw the same situation in some old horror movie you’d be yelling at the screen, “No, you idiot! Don’t go down that hallway!” A mysterious phantom, a dimly lit stairwell, in the movies the next thing you’d expect would be an axe in the forehead.
But I didn’t have any thoughts like that at the time. They didn’t even cross my mind.
There was no spooky vibe what so ever about this guy, the ghost I mean, and so it was easy to trust him.
Finally, the ghost glided through a door at the top of the stairway. On the door there was a sign that read “Audio-Visual-Computers.” Inside there were study carrels with computer terminals lining the middle of the room. The ghost led me past these to a row of doors along the back wall.
Behind the doors were little sound-proof rooms. Inside each was a chair and a small table holding a tape recorder or CD player and a set of headphones. They were listening rooms, places where students could listen to music, lecture tapes, whatever.
The ghost chose the door on the far left, turned to me and said, “We can meet in here. Like as not we’ll not be bothered,” and glided through the door. I hesitated.
Like I said the ghost seemed harmless enough, and I really did trust him; still, he was a ghost, you know, a dead guy, and those were really small rooms…
I stood by the door, not exactly scared, but careful, when the ghost’s head popped through the door.
I mean that literally. He didn’t open the door. All of a sudden, “pop!” and there’s this head sticking out of the middle of the door.
He gave me a goofy looking grin. “Come on in. There’s nothing t’be afraid of.”
I thought to myself, “That’s easy for you to say. You’re already dead.”
“What’s easy for me to say? You aren’t a-scared are you?”
What? Did I say that out loud?
The ghost looked surprised. “No, I don’t reckon you did.”
“I didn’t say anything!” I yelped. “Are you reading my mind?”
Before he could answer, the sound of footsteps started coming towards us.
The ghost heard them too. “Someone’s comin’ and I don’t reckon you want ‘em t’see you holdin’ a conversation with a door do you? You’d best be getting’ in here.”
Quickly I opened the door and scooted into the room. No, I didn’t want to be seen talking to a door, but more than that, I was burning with curiosity. Who was this guy? Was he reading my thoughts?
I closed the door behind me. “Who are you?” I asked.
The ghost drew himself up to his full height, (which wasn’t all that much), and smiled. “Begging your forgiveness for my lack of social graces, allow me to introduce myself. Zachary Taylor Fontaine, at your service.”
“Uh, hi, I’m Marc.”
“Marc? That all?”
“Okay, Marcus Aurelius Swartz, pleased to meet you.”
I figured someone named Zachary Taylor wasn’t about to start making jokes about my name.
“Marcus Aurelius, now that’s somethin’. So would you then happen be a philosopher?”
“Not especially,” I answered, thinking to myself, “This guy’s considerably better educated than the other dead folks I’ve been running into.”
“I reckon you’d know a thing or two if you’d spent the last hundred years hauntin’ a library.”
Say what? Was he reading my mind again?
“I don’t know. You didn’t say that out loud?”
“No way,” I answered. “You mean you’re not doing this on purpose? Mind reading isn’t one of your ghostly powers?”
“Ghostly powers, I like that. I would appear that I am, though I can’t say as I’ve seen the like since the passing of poor Henry Clay…”
“Henry Clay?”
“My brother, Henry Clay Fontaine. He used t’be the librarian here, a long time ago.”
I got back to the burning question. “But you’re reading my mind. What’s that all about?”
“I don’t rightly know,” the ghost answered. “ As I was sayin’ back when my brother was with us I came to note that he was occasionally given to directing his thoughts my way and I would be able to hear those thoughts as if he were speakin’ directly to me.
“Might I suggest we apply some scientific experimentation here? Why don’t you think of somethin’ and I’ll try to read what you’re thinkin’.”
He screwed his face up in concentration. I almost cracked up. It looked more like constipation than concentration.
“OK…um,” my mind blanked. It seemed like hundreds of random phrases were running through my head and I couldn’t settle on any of them. I was thinking how stupid this seemed and then finally looked at the ghost and thought, “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”
He seemed perplexed. “Rain in Spain? What’s that?”
“It’s from an old movie,” I answered, “but you heard it? Did you hear any of the stuff before the ‘Rain in Spain’ part?”
“What stuff before?”
It turned out that he hadn’t heard my brain sorting through all the other junk. After more “scientific experimentation”, Zach and I established that he could only hear the thoughts that I intentionally directed at him.
Does that make sense?
You know how sometimes you’re mad at somebody, and you want to say something to them but you know it would be a bad idea?
Say some big jerk is in your face, hassling you, and you think, “Go stuff your head in a trash compactor, butt-wad.”
You just think it to them, not out loud, (not if you want to go on living), but almost out loud.
Well, that’s how I could talk to Zach.
It was awkward at first, but in time I got to be pretty good at communicating with Zach even when there were other people around.
It got so we could sit with my family in our tiny living room holding a long conversation and Mom and Dad would be none the wiser. Sometimes I’d hold a book or a magazine and pretend to read, so it wouldn’t look conspicuous.
I’d just have to remember not to hold it upside down.
Oh, I’d still slip now and then and say things out loud, usually only at those times that were guaranteed to cause maximum embarrassment. Most of the time, though, no one seems to have a clue when I’m involved in a conversation with a ghost.
My eye caught the clock on the wall outside the listening booth. It was getting late.
“Look, I’ve got to get home. Will you be here later?”
Zach had an odd expression on his face – sort of a cross between excitement and embarrassment. “I reckon I might like to try to go with you if that wouldn’t be an inconvenience.”
I thought about that one for a minute.
Having a ghost follow me home could turn out to be a big inconvenience, but I was curious and decided to take the chance.
“Okay, yeah, come on, but try not to freak out my parents.”
“As a rule, do your parents regularly see spirits?”
I admitted that they didn’t, at least not so far as I’d noticed.
“Then let’s go.”