The Ghost Who Tried to Love Me

by Adam Tervort

  The Ghost Who Tried to Love Me

  by Adam Tervort

  http://adamtervort.com

  Discover other titles by Adam Tervort at Smashwords.com:

  Adventures in the Land of Singing Garbage Trucks: A Memoir of Life in Taiwan

  Copyright 2011 Adam Tervort

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

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  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  1 2 3 4 5

  About the Author

  Introduction

  This story is part of the Zodiac Schmodiac story cycle, a group of short stories based on the Chinese Zodiac. Remember the paper placemats with zodiac animals from your favorite Chinese buffet? The things it tells you are wildly inaccurate and probably have no resemblance whatsoever to your life or situation, but reading them is fun and writing these stories was too.

  “The Ghost Who Tried to Love Me” began as a retelling of my favorite ghost story. I know a teacher in Taiwan who resembles this story’s “Hank” quite closely, and he told me his ghost experience one night during Ghost Festival. We had just finished teaching our conversation classes for the evening and I mentioned to him that some of the students thought he’d seen a ghost before. He told me that it was true, he had seen a ghost, and the story he told me stuck in my mind. His story scared me because guys like us (non-Taoist, educated North Americans) aren’t supposed to believe in ghosts much less see them. He didn’t have any explanation for what he had been through, he only knew that it was really creepy and that it happened. The details of this story aren’t his, they are mine. His story was a great jumping off point, but this story started to go in interesting directions almost as soon as it got started. Any inaccuracies or strangeness here is mine, not his.

  So which zodiac sign does this story take? The dragon. I know, it’s a stretch to relate ghosts to dragons, but I figured since they are both “imaginary” that they fit well together. The real Chinese explanation for why people see ghosts is much more involved than what your zodiac sign is, it takes into account you “8 life numbers” which is terribly complicated and way over my head. I once had a Chinese fortune teller say that since I am a foreigner and born on the wrong side of the globe my 8 numbers don’t even work. (Maybe she could tell that I’m a cheapskate and wouldn’t pay well so she decided to take the easy way out.) If your 8 numbers show that you have a light tie to this world then you are more likely to see things from other worlds, like ghosts, which is why I always try to stay a few pounds overweight so that I don’t float away or see any ghosts.

  Zodiac Schmodiac Part 1 (the first half of the story cycle) will hit the shelves of fine bookstores (Smashwords, Amazon, etc.) at the end of August 2011. If you enjoy this story you might consider purchasing the full book. I appreciate your support and look forward to hearing from you with your comments and reactions. (You can find my contact info at the end of the book, or email me anytime, adam @ adamtervort . com)

  1

  What makes someone believe? I could ask you if you believe in ghosts, but that is just a question. Most people will roll their eyes and laugh. The answer they give isn't important, that laugh tells you exactly what they think of your question. Do you believe in snow? Another roll of the eyes. Ask a Bedouin in the middle of the desert if he believes in snow and you might get the same response as the one I got asking about ghosts. (And vice-versa.) Just because you haven't seen it before doesn't mean it doesn't exist, OK? Don't put a wall around your mind or you'll be stuck all alone inside.

  My name is Hank. Ghosts have become an everyday part of my life, even though a few years ago I didn't believe either. It might sound sappy or naive, but again, that's because you haven't seen what I've seen. I grew up on a farm in New York state and was going to go back and work with my family after university, but my parents encouraged me to go and explore my roots before I settled down to a life of tractors and seeds. Our family is ethnically Chinese, which doesn't mean that we actually speak or eat Chinese, but that we look Chinese. I had a distant cousin who was working in Taiwan as an English teacher and my parents told me I should go over and do the same thing for a few years. I suppose they were hoping I could go to the other side of the world and sow my wild oats so I could come back and farm for the rest of my life, I don't know. Maybe they really wanted to learn about my heritage, whatever that means. I went, though, and I'm still in Taiwan. It turns out that teaching conversation classes is a lot easier than harvesting grain or running cattle, and I like life here. My Chinese has never taken off though. One of the hard things about living in a Chinese country if you are an ABC (American-born Chinese) is the prejudice. Oh, you're Chinese but you don't speak any Chinese, how interesting. (Roll of the eyes.) Hope you enjoy your vacation here. I usually don't want to spend the energy to tell people I've been here for 15 years, they aren't interested in a Chinese they don't consider to be Chinese.

  No matter how "in touch" I get with my "roots," I still act like an American. Want me to believe in your silly traditions? Fat chance John Chinaman, show me the evidence and I'll show you my belief. I'm a realist, like most Americans are when it comes to folk traditions and strange customs. Taiwanese people think they see ghosts everywhere, and maybe my doubt is what got me a meeting with the creepy one in the first place. Every year during the seventh month of the lunar calendar (sometime in late August) Taiwanese celebrate ghost month. To them it is a chance to offer sacrifices to ghosts so that the ghosts will leave them alone for another year. To me it always seemed like a great chance to sell lots of "gold paper" for burning as offerings. It's just a racket set up by the traditional vendors to pick up their profits during a slow time of the year, right? Ask your normal Taiwanese on the street and they'll tell you they burn the gold papers and offer food because they think they probably should, not because they think it really does anything. Some really believe the customs work but not most. But even though most people tell you the money and the sacrifices don't do anything they still believe in ghosts.

  I'd been teaching English for a few years when I first talked to a student about this. We were having a conversation class and I asked who believed in ghosts. Everyone raised their hand. I laughed and asked if they were serious. They laughed and seemed embarrassed, but the ones who would talk about it said they believed in ghosts, they had a distant relative who had seen one once, and then they would tell an urban legend. (At least that's what it seemed like to me.) It made for a fun conversation class, but I knew they couldn't be serious.

  The next class I asked if anyone had actually seen a ghost before. One girl in the back of the class raised her hand, looking pretty timid. She told us that when she was in university she lived in a small house with three other students. They were classmates but came from different areas in Taiwan. Not long after they started living together she would wake in the night and hear the sound of running water. (She was a light sleeper.) Every time it was the tap by the washing machine. She just assumed one of her roommates had been washing clothes and forgot to turn the faucet off. The next day she would mention it but none of the girls admitted to washing clothes the night before. No big deal, she’d say, just make sure you turn off the water next time. A few months later she woke up in the night when the TV turned on. They had a really old TV set with a dial to change channels and a button that had to be pushed i
n hard to turn it on. When she went out to see who was watching TV no one would be in the room. Once or twice when this happened one of her roommates would come out to see why the TV was on as well, but they never saw who had turned it on.

  The months passed and these kinds of things would happen from time to time but never consistently or in any kind of pattern. One night one of her classmates brought a boy to the apartment after their date. They were sitting in her room with the door closed when all the lights in the apartment started to flicker and then went out. The boy helped them to find the fuse box and change the master fuse, then left for the night. The next week when he came back the same thing happened. Two weeks later when he tried to kiss the girl in her room the light bulb exploded and a glass shard cut his arm. All of the roommates were starting to get scared and talking about ghosts. One of the girls said she had an aunt who was a fortune teller and could see spirits, so they asked her to come over and tell them what to do. After the aunt asked for a fee (because the third eye needs some money to lubricate its vision), she told them that as soon as she had walked into the apartment she saw the ghost of a teenage girl. The girl watched them all talk, and whenever one of them spoke about a boy the ghost's fists would clench and she looked angry. The aunt told them she would do some research and get back to them. She came back a few days later and said that a girl had committed suicide in their house 20 years earlier after her boyfriend had broken up with her. The aunt's final advice? Don't bring any boys home and the ghost would be happy to share the house with them. The rest of the time my student was in university they didn't bring any boys into the house and there were no more problems with the ghost.

  What a lame story, right? Spurned ghost on an eternal quest to keep female students chaste. Not exactly the stuff of horror novels.

  Some other students told stories of seeing lights or waking up in the night and not being able to move. Most stories ended with an appeal to Buddha and an eventual release. For the most part they seemed like poorly strung together sets of coincidences, but the students believed them.

  2

  Around that time I opened a small school. I rented a spot in an office building and had a couple of classes of elementary school children that would come and learn English after school. It didn't take long before I had enough students that I needed an assistant to help me with paperwork and coordinating with parents. Brenda was recommended to me by a friend and we started to go out to dinner a few times a week not long after.

  I was living in a cheap apartment not far from a hospital back then. When I told people how low the rent was they always seemed amazed that I had found such a great deal and asked me how much the roof leaked. (The roof was fine.) I wasn't spending much time there because of my growing classes and my time out with Brenda. We started to date seriously, going out every night after class and spending weekends together at her place. (See mom, sowing my wild oats!) Months went by and I was happy with the relationship, happy with the classes and happy with the money we were making. We started to talk about getting married, but weren't in any rush.

  One weekend the water in her building was out and so we decided to spend Saturday night at my apartment watching a movie. We were cuddling on the couch, enjoying the movie when the light and fan over the stove suddenly turned on. I got up to see what the problem was and found that both of the switches had been pressed on. Strange. I went back to the couch and was about to sit down when the both came back on again. The switches I had just turned off had been turned on again. My student's story of exploding light bulbs jumped into my mind, and I firmly tossed it out with a good laugh. I unplugged the electrical chord and we enjoyed the rest of the movie uninterrupted.

  That night as I lay in the dark waiting for sleep to come I thought about ghosts. Most of what I thought made me laugh, visions of Casper floating in my kitchen, struggling to get the button pressed as beads of translucent sweat ran down his cheeks. The light and fan were probably made in China, nothing else that the landlord furnished the apartment with was good quality, I was sure the kitchen stuff had to be cheap as well. I drifted off with the vision of Casper struggling to get the chord plugged back in so he could turn the light on and interrupt my movie again. Ghosts!

  3

  There were no more electrical failures or strange occurrences during the next few weeks. It seemed like the flare-ups with the kitchen stove happened about once a month, never on the same day, sometimes when I was alone and sometimes when I had company. The more it happened the more convinced I became that it was just some kind of short that happened when the humidity got bad. Since it only happened once a month and unplugging it solved the problem I never thought to ask anyone about it.

  Summer came and with it a big schedule change. When my students started their summer vacations it meant that English classes moved from the evening to the daytime, giving me free nights for the first time in most of a year. Brenda and I used the nights as best we could (wild oats!), knowing that it would only last for the summer. There was one more crazy fan incident in July while she was at my apartment, and we got a good laugh out of it. I told her the ghost story my student had told me, thinking that it would get a good laugh as well. It didn't.

  "Tell me that story again, slowly," she said. I told her about the maiden ghost making noises and giving the college girls a hard time when they brought boys home. "We'd better not meet in your place next month, it's Ghost Month. If you really do have a ghost here that's when it will have the most time to bother you."

  "What's the Ghost Month? I've never heard August called that, aren't you thinking of Halloween in October," I said.

  "Halloween is just an excuse for American kids to get candy, it has nothing to do with ghosts. Ghost Month is the seventh month of the Lunar calendar, the time in the year when ghosts can travel freely. The only other times they are out is on the 15th of each Lunar Month."

  I'll admit that I had a little chill go down my back when I heard that the 15th of the month was a ghost day, but logic shouted down goosebumps. "There's no such thing as ghosts. You're just trying to scare me."

  "Today is the 15th, maybe that's why the fan went off again tonight."

  With the soggy blanket of ghost talk smothering any hopes of a romantic evening, Brenda ended up going home early. I lay in bed for a while wondering what a Taiwanese ghost would look like. The Scream? Dripping ghostly blood from its long fangs? The more I thought about it the funnier the images became, until I couldn't stand it anymore. I burst out laughing and yelled "Come out ghostie, let me see your ugly face!" The fan went on immediately. I went out and unplugged it, but there were no ghosts to be seen.

  4

  Ghost Month starts with people all over the city burning gold money and leaving fruit and burning incense out on table near the road. The first omen that bad things were afoot came the morning of the first day. I was riding my scooter down a main road on my way to class when a fat old shopkeeper dumped an armful of money into his burning bin just as I rode by. The wind was just right, blowing towards me, and the flames lept up and burned my leg. The shopkeeper felt really bad and took me to a clinic. I came away with singed pants, a second degree burn on my leg, and a prescription of thick green goop to apply to the burn three times a day. I missed my morning class and the boss of the school I taught at in the mornings told me to take the rest of the day off. It was Friday and a three-day weekend sounded nice, so I cancelled the afternoon classes at my school and went home to rest.

  I slept through the afternoon and into the evening. Brenda called to tell me she was exhausted from teaching alone during the afternoon, she wouldn't be coming over. I hobbled around the apartment for a while and fixed some dinner, then decided I'd watch a movie and head back to bed. HBO was showing "The Exorcist" in honor of the beginning of Ghost Month, and it scared me. When it ended I got ready for bed, images of the little girl's head spinning around on her neck floating through my mind.

  I had only been asleep for a little while when
something made come full awake. The room became frigid and I could feel something on my leg. I looked down, I had kicked the covers off because of the heat, and saw a line of goosebumps popping up on my thigh. It looked like someone was drawing a line on my skin with a piece of ice, but there was nothing there. When I moved my leg the cold air whooshed out of the room and I was back in the heat of the August night. The goosebumps settled down and I wondered in my grogginess what in the world had been touching me. The rest of the night I had nightmares of "The Exorcist."

  The next night I was wary when I went to bed, it had been a very strange day. Brenda listened to my story about the night before and decided I needed professional help. She took me to a local temple to see if the master could tell me what was wrong. We were part of a huge group of people waiting to see the master for "ghost decontamination," all of the people there had been frightened by ghosts in the night and wanted a special poultice made to calm them down. When it was our turn the master took one look at me and said "You have a ghost following you. You need to be very careful." I asked him what the ghost looked like, but he said it wasn't the form of a ghost, it was a disruption in my aura, he could tell because my aura had a color that shouldn't be there. I was getting this all in a choppy translation from an increasingly worried Brenda, so it didn't make much sense to me. After a few sentences she stopped translating and just talked to the master in Chinese. Finally she turned to me and said it was time to get a mirror.