The Hungry Ghost

by Dalena Storm

  The things it could eat with such a mouth!

  The ghost dove into the empty body that had once belonged to Sam, and there it stretched out, trying to figure out how to make its new body respond.

  With a bluster of wings, a crow flew through Sam and then cocked its eye back at her as if to say, What are you doing?

  Sam was pleased the crow could see her as everything else she had seen so far had ignored her. “Do you want me to follow you?” she asked, and though the crow didn’t reply, Sam followed it anyway. She could sense it had a destination from the purposeful way it cut a straight line through the air over the city before descending into a neighborhood on the edge of Harvard Square, not far from the bar where she’d met Madeline in a time she only barely remembered now. Sam rode on the crow’s tail feathers as it swooped down to street level. The trees grew up around them, and the crow landed on the sidewalk before hopping into the gutter where it pecked at a bit of sesame bagel. Sam watched it for a while but the bird had forgotten her, and so she turned her attention to the street full of pedestrians. They walked past and through her hurriedly while talking on cell phones or listening to music. Moving on, Sam slipped through the door of the nearest building and was surprised to find the room filled with cats.

  They were everywhere, prowling around the carpeted floor and lounging on tall wooden cat trees and shelves. They sharpened their claws on cardboard scratching posts and ate from bowls of dry cat food. Some were sleeping on the windowsill, where bright sunlight filtered in to heat the room. Emblazoned on the window, in reverse, Sam could read the name of the shop: Jimmy’s Used Cat Emporium.

  The only human in the place was a strongly built black man, who she guessed must be Jimmy. His hair was cropped closely at the sides and short and curly on top, and he was wearing a fitted white tee shirt that exposed the muscles of his forearms. Jeans hung loosely on his hips. He was sitting on his heels on the floor, bending over a little gray cat with a large, swollen stomach.

  Sam drew in closer, examining the man’s face. He had smooth, supple skin and smile lines that creased his eyes, but he’d lived a life of worry, too, Sam felt, studying him. He was older than her by a good twenty years or so, but he handled the cat in front of him with a gentleness that made Sam ache. How she longed for someone to touch her like that. The cat—pregnant, Sam realized—panted and whined.

  “There, there,” said the man. “It won’t be much longer.”

  Sam was still adjusting to her new vision, and it took her a while to figure out that the five pulsing lights she saw in the belly of the cat reflected each of the lives waiting within her stomach—one for each of the five kittens she carried. Four of the lights were bright and white, but the fifth was weaker, mawkish, and blue. That one was buried deepest in the cat’s belly. Sam had a flash of understanding: she was seeing life before it was born, and one of those lives was in danger. The final kitten in the cat’s belly was the runt, and its fate had already been sealed.

  Unless Sam did something, it was going to die.

  Drawing close, Sam peered into Jimmy’s kind brown eyes as she filled the space between the man and the cat. As he stared at the expectant mother, Sam suddenly—desperately—wanted his eyes to see her. No one had ever looked at her that way, with pure love. It wasn’t the need that lurked in Peter’s eyes or the desire in Madeline’s. It was different, too, than what Sam saw in her own mother’s eyes, a sort of protective passion that was as demanding as it was giving.

  Acting on instinct Sam dove for the cat’s belly, sliding through its fur as she entered its womb. Once there, Sam focused her attention on the faint blue light that pulsed feebly from the dying kitten. She pushed, trying to enter the kitten through its belly, just as she’d entered the mother cat, and the blue light yielded, dislodged easily by her forced entry. Sam expanded inside the kitten’s small, soft body, her own light growing brighter and stronger as it eclipsed what remained of the weak blue glow.

  This space was Sam’s now, and she was wrapped in warm darkness. She could hear a strange sound, loud and overpowering. Thu-thump, thu-thump. It was quick and rhythmic, and it drowned out Sam’s thoughts with its hypnotic repetition as it grew louder and more insistent. She had a brief flash of terror: what was she doing? Where was she? Could she get back out if she wanted to, or was it already too late?

  Thu-thump, thu-thump, banged the mother cat’s heart, and a keen whining sound came from an outer chamber.

  A massive earthquake shook the world around her, and Sam felt the bodies of the other four kittens slither and slip around her. Sam gave herself over to gravity and momentum as she was pushed outward headfirst. She was being born again.

  In another room, far away, the ghost had stretched to fill the empty shell it had found in the bed. Things sutured into place as it solidified itself into its host’s limbs and bones. No longer a wandering spirit, the ghost now had a ribcage, a stomach, two meaty legs, two dangly arms. Wrists, shoulders, a neck, a head, a jaw. Teeth.

  It breathed through its nose. Sound came through its ears. The air tickled its skin.

  It was hungry.

  The ghost opened its eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Delivering kittens was one of Jimmy’s special pleasures. He’d never lost a mama cat, though often a few of the litter wouldn’t make it. It was terribly exciting to see what color the little furballs would turn out to be, how many were boys and how many were girls.

  Macy Gray did all the work. Five healthy kittens slid from her womb as Jimmy sat back with a towel, letting her lick them clean as he watched carefully for telltale signs that she’d attempt to gobble any. He kept the other curious cats a safe distance away.

  A change came over Macy as she pushed out the final kitten. A deep, guttural growl rose from her throat and her claws slipped through the fur of her paws. Instinctively, Jimmy’s scooped up the kitten, swaddling it protectively in the towel. He received just one little scratch on the back of his right hand from Macy Gray as he soothed the shivering kitten’s body. Eyes closed, its body damp, the kitten seemed only half alive, as if it hadn’t made up its mind whether to stay in this world or not.

  “There, there,” Jimmy cooed, wrapping the kitten so that only its tiny face peeked out. Jimmy knew what it was like to be rejected by a mother; he’d never even met his own. The kitten’s mouth hung open in a silent mewl, begging for food but seemingly too startled to speak. “It’ll be formula for you, little…lady,” Jimmy said, checking. “And for a name, it must be… Mickey. After Michael, the youngest of the Jackson Five. He was at his best, back then. Just a fresh young kid. I sure wish he could’ve turned into the man I knew he could’ve been.”

  The ghost’s new body was uncooperative. It was sluggish and weak. Hunger raged in its stomach but it wasn’t able to move to satisfy it. The ghost wanted to howl in frustration, but the most it could manage was a low moan. When it would moan, people would rush to it, pet its head, and give it an injection that forced it into a state of hazy consciousness. Even sedated, the ghost would never actually sleep, which made its agony worse. It was awake in the new body that had called out to it, but the ghost couldn’t control it. It could do nothing to quell the pain of hunger.

  On the first morning, the ghost ignored the humans who came and harassed it. One human held a small device close to the ghost’s head, and strange, hypnotic, and repetitive sounds came out of it. The human then said, “Remember when we danced to that, Sammy?” and sat, staring at the ghost, waiting for some sort of response it didn’t give. Other humans insisted on talking and talking as if the ghost wanted to listen, but it did not want to listen—it wanted to get up.

  It wanted to eat.

  As the ghost lay inert, striving for motion, it became aware of the needs and demands of its body. Different desires peaked and quelled, depending on the time of day and the sort of injections it received. Some of its urges were not consumptive but eliminative, and those would happen in abrupt bursts, after which it w
ould be soiled until another human came to clean it off again.

  This banal human life, the ghost quickly learned, was nothing more than a new kind of hell. Where were the buffets, the animal legs? The rich sauces and fine wines it had imagined? Why had it escaped the realm of hungry ghosts if things were hardly any better here?

  Nevertheless, the ghost was forced to observe the humans around it. They came in different sizes and were distinguishable by face shapes and names. One particular human face rose out of the background when it leaned over and took the ghost’s hand. This human was there more often than all the others, always with the useless talking.

  “We’ll have a big party, darling, as soon as you’re well, with all your favorite foods. I’ll get Carly to make Coq au Vin, authentic French style, and I’ll make pie. We’re all rooting for you, my strong girl. I love you to the moon and back.”

  The ghost vainly attempted to focus on this all-important face and tried to distinguish its features from those of the other humans. Its eyes were big and brown, its hair dark and short, curling down to a pointed chin. It had small lines coming off the corners of its eyes and on either side of its mouth, which was redder than most mouths and always turned upward at the corners. The eyes hardly ever blinked. The human also had a soft, protruding chest, which not all humans seemed to have. The ghost felt an odd fondness for this chest, as if it were somehow important to it. The human’s name was Bianca, and it seemed to think the ghost’s name was “my girl” or maybe it was “love.”

  Once Sam awoke, the early weeks of her recovery passed quickly for Peter. He had used her hospitalization as a wake-up call, a signal to get his life into gear before she came back to her senses, and he’d thought he was making excellent progress. His calendar now showed forty-seven checkmarks in a row, one for each day he hadn’t had a drink. This was a technique he’d acquired in one of his stints in rehab: visual reinforcement for meeting goals. It sounded sappy, but it worked. Seeing those marks made Peter feel like he’d accomplished something—like he was headed for something good.

  But it wasn’t enough. At the rate Sam was recovering she’d be walking and talking in no time, and Peter still didn’t have a job. The bakery hadn’t called him back, and last month’s rent was overdue. “You just have to try harder,” is what Sam was going to tell him, just like she always had before. But damn it, he was trying! It was the world that was against him. He didn’t even look employable. Had she taken a look at him lately?

  But no, of course she hadn’t. Her eyes were open but she hadn’t recognized him yet at all, he reminded himself.

  He almost smiled but stopped. There was nothing about Sam's condition to smile about, but it did mean she wasn’t actively being mad at him. Maybe with a little luck, by the time Sam was back to herself he’d be different. He was getting clean, and this time…this time he’d stay that way.

  The theme to The Fast and the Furious started playing on Peter’s phone and he nearly dropped his coffee mug in his scramble to answer it.

  “Hello? This is Peter Harrison.” His voice sounded eager and excitable, even to him.

  “Hey, yeah, Peter, this is Tony from Breadwinner Bakery. I’m calling to see if you were still interested in the job.”

  Peter grinned. It looked like lady luck was on his side after all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Peter’s interview was scheduled for ten-thirty the next morning. Resume in hand, he pushed open the door to Breadwinner Bakery at exactly ten twenty-nine. There was a short line at the counter. Shit, the fucking subway had screwed him. Could he go to the front, or was he going to have to wait? After a brief moment of hesitation, Peter headed straight to the counter, trying to catch the eye of the young female cashier. “Hello,” he tried, but either she didn’t hear him or was ignoring him as people in line started to turn and look and glare. The door to the store opened and a young woman with a double stroller came partway through the doorway and then appeared to get stuck. Feeling chivalrous, Peter abandoned the counter and dashed for the door, holding it back as the woman struggled to maneuver her way in.

  He’d been the hero, but now it was ten-thirty and he didn’t see any choice but to wait in line. When Peter finally reached the counter, it was ten-thirty-four.

  “What can I get for you?” the woman asked.

  “I’m here for an interview.”

  “Sorry? I didn’t get that.”

  Peter held up his resume, showing her that this was official business; he didn’t want a muffin. “I’m here for an interview with…” the owner’s name suddenly slipped his mind. “An interview. For the bake shop.”

  “With Tony? Is he expecting you?”

  “Yes. I’m his ten-thirty.”

  She glanced up at the clock on the wall and rolled her eyes. He was late. She was seeing that he was late—that he was five fucking minutes late, no thanks to her selective hearing. So professional, Peter scolded himself.

  “Go on around back,” she said, gesturing with her head to a door behind her in a movement that concurrently dismissed him and motioned the next customer forward.

  Peter maneuvered himself around the counter and made his way through to the back. The guy’s name was Tony. Tony. Tony. Tony.

  He wandered past a restroom and was presented with a choice of three more doors. Peter paused, feeling himself briefly in some kind of game show—And behind door number three, Johnny—he tried to peer through the blurred glass windows, but all was foggy. When he reached the end of the hall the last door opened and a man walked out—almost right smack into him.

  “Oh,” said the man, blinking, startled.

  “Are you Tony?” Peter asked. “I’m here for an interview. My name’s Peter Harrison. Sorry I’m late.”

  “Ah, yes. Fine. Nice to meet you.” The man who must have been Tony extended his hand and shook Peter’s firmly. Peter’s own handshake was wimping out, getting crushed. He redoubled his efforts and grasped harder.

  “You, too,” Peter said, affecting a deeper voice as he met Tony’s eyes. He gave Tony’s hand an extra hard squeeze before releasing it.

  “Go on in,” said Tony, shaking Peter’s grip out of his hand. Peter winced. Maybe he’d squeezed too hard. It probably wasn’t a good thing to crush the boss’s hand. “Have a seat. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “Certainly.”

  The minutes that passed while Peter sat in the office prepping for the interview seemed to him, in retrospect, to have lasted longer than the interview itself. He had so many possible stories he could have relayed, so many funny and relevant anecdotes he could have offered, but Tony simply glanced over his resume and noted the gaps between employment, saying at each, “So, what happened there?”

  Peter could not say, I was in rehab. My wife was divorcing me. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I overslept my shifts. I snuck drinks on the job. Instead, he said, "Oh, you know how it is. This blasted economy."

  “Mm-hmm,” Tony grunted in return. After that, no matter what Peter offered—his unique recipe for rye, his years in customer service—he knew he’d lost Tony. He could feel his face turning red, his body growing hot with shame and frustration. He was leaning forward too much, over-gesticulating with his hands.

  “Well, thanks for coming in.” Tony dismissed him too soon, long before Peter had really gotten started. “We’ll give you a call if we’re interested.”

  “All right. Great. Sure thing. I’m looking forward to it.”

  They had one more handshake to cap things off, which Tony cut short as well, and then Peter was ejected from the bakery still a jobless loser. The counter girl didn’t even look at him as he tried to smile at her on his way out. Bitch.

  Outside in the street, the midday blues were starting—the time when things were too hot and too heavy, and all Peter wanted was to be unconscious. He would kill for a drink. The glare of the sun on the faces of passersby seemed to wash everything out. It was like they were bleached of color and the will to live.
/>   It didn’t go that badly, Peter tried to tell himself, but he knew it was a lie.

  Bianca was keeping herself busy planning for Sam’s future. Her only daughter had almost been lost but now she was back, and Bianca would devote the rest of her life to helping Sam recover if that was what it took. Sam had only gone through with the divorce six months before the accident. This was her chance to thrive, but Peter was always hovering about, hoping, no doubt, that Sam would change her mind and take him back.

  Sam wouldn’t, especially if Bianca had anything to say about it.

  “Hi, Peter. How are things?” Bianca would greet him, carefully and cordially, when he came to visit. He seemed to be intent on making amends, on getting his life together, but Bianca was wary and watched him like a hawk. If he made a move on her little girl, if he got too close and tried to hurt her—

  Bianca could well remember the events that had precipitated the divorce. Sam had called her in the middle of the night, sobbing as she asked for a place to stay.

  “You can always stay here, sweetie. You know that,” Bianca had said, keeping her voice stable, steady, and devoid of judgment—though she certainly had plenty.