Ghosts Are Worse This Time Of Year
Patient ID: 2212
Name: █████ ██████
Sex: Male
Case file: Ghosts Are Worse
Notes: The following is a recorded interview with █████ dictated by the late Reese Parker.
Dr. Botgore: Is it always a horse and carriage?
█████: No, the method of transportation differs depending on the circumstances.
Dr. Botgore: Why do it at all?
█████: What do you mean?
Dr. Botgore: Is it theatrics?
█████: Isn’t it all?
Excerpt taken from Thaddeus Botgore Session #3 recorded 1991
“Ghosts er werse dis timer year.” He said with a sly toothless grin. As the words left his mouth, so did the acrid smell of cheap whiskey and rotting gums. He was a sailor and spent more of his life in water than land. As for his name and age? That didn’t matter, they died long ago when he left his loving wife and newborn on the shore.
“It not be a long one,” he said. Words she didn’t know then would be the last thing she heard from him. “She knew what she was gettin inta.” He continued. “Sailors first love always bein sea, ain’t nottin changin that.”
The air was eerily still and frigid even for Manitoba. Skin stung as bones ached. The man was wearing ripped gloves with most of the fingers missing causing his blackened fingers and dirty broken nails to protrude through the torn fabric. On the man’s back was the skeleton of an orange jacket once filled with goose down now an empty husk of stitched-together fabric. The man wore a grey beanie slanted to the side, not for fashion but merely out of carelessness for his appearance. The grey hat displayed a silver anchor outlined in gold.
“He must be freezing,” I thought to myself but he showed no signs of discomfort. I tried to mimic his strength but the cold was too much to bare. My teeth chattered as my bones rattled in my goose-filled jacket. “Made for winter my ass.” I thought to myself. The man paid no attention to my suffering and continued.
“Big fuckers too, like a moose on two legs.” He laughed a gruff laugh that hid pain. “They say da livin can’t see em, den esplain how I saws em?.” He continued. “My wife say I hada gift, more a curse if ye ask me.”
The station was deserted. When I was a kid, we would drive to Philadelphia to visit family. On the way, we would pass train yards where out-of-commission carts would sit and rust. Relics of a different time. My father would joke it was a graveyard for older trains and I always wondered what it would be like to visit one. “It must feel a lot like this.” I thought to myself as I watched little brown mice dart between the gravel underneath the rusted tracks.
The train was running late and normally, I wouldn’t talk to crazies, I’d find an excuse to stare at my phone or pretend to look busy but something I can’t explain pushed me to ask him “how did you know they were ghosts?”
Without missing a beat he retorted “jus knew” the man stared across the tracks as if he was watching something far in the distance. “Ye dun believe me do ye?” I don’t know what to say, I didn’t want to insult him but ghosts aren’t real. “I’m…I…guess? I guess anything is possible? But I’ve never seen one.”
The old man sighed, his chest rattled like a bag of bones “yer one-a those.” “What do you mean?” I asked.” The old man turned his head. His eyes were filled with a cloudy substance, a graveyard of broken dreams from memories long past. His mouth was a dark cavern of mostly recessed gums with one semi-rotted tooth in the middle. His skin rippled and sagged under sunken eyes and a grey prickly unshaven face. “How’d ye get ere son?”
“What do you mean?” I knew what he meant but something about the question sent chills down my spine. He watched me, waiting for a response. “Well, I…uhh…I got up…and..” “shit!” I thought to myself “why don’t I remember? Why am I even waiting for the train? I have a car, I drive to work every day.” My concentration was broken by the man placing his boney arthritic hand on my shoulder. “Is okay son, nuthin to be scared of.” Trying to orient myself I looked at my watch but the hands were static. I look up at the man “how long have we been talking?”
“Time dun work like dat her.”
My breathing became shallow and rapid. I felt a wave of panic come over me. “I’m sorry, I need to go,” I said. I began to sit up when the man gently placed his boney arm back on my shoulder and said “only one place fer ya ta go now, son.” He nodded his head to the left. “Da trains pullin in.”
Suddenly a large black train began to pull into the station. The train looked like a train built a hundred years ago. Black smoke poured out of the chimney and drifted gently into the still air to become one with the gray cloudless sky. I looked at the old man, he nodded a reassuring nod and cracked a smile revealing that last rotten tooth.
“Nutin to be fraid of son” the train door creaked open. The sound of metal on metal hissed a high-pitched screech that echoed through the otherwise empty station. The conductor’s window opened revealing a figure in a long black robe. The face was hidden in shadows by a deep hood. I couldn’t make out a face but somehow, I knew he was looking directly at me. A gravelly voice said in almost a whisper “all aboard.” I don’t know why but there was something comforting about the hooded figure. I stepped on the train and the doors gently closed behind me. The engine roared as we rode off into the darkness. The old man waved as he faded in the distance.
An elderly woman with a shaved head, pale thinning skin, and sunken eyes approached the platform. She looked cold and frail like her bones were made of glass. Her feet shuffled as she looked for a place to sit. She noticed an old man with a sly toothless grin sitting on a bench. The man nodded at her, extending a hand to help her sit. “I was just in the hospital, where am I?” The woman said. The old man smiled a toothless grin and said “ghosts er werse dis timer year.”
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Originally published at https://botgore.substack.com on March 16, 2023.
