The Lost Letters

My name is Quincy Vance. I was a Private Fist class for the Royal Canadian Air Force in France 1942-1944. It has been 75 years since the war ended. The world has changed a whole lot since then. We won the war, but we lost what was essential. Our sense of togetherness was gone. Gone were the friendly neighbors, gone were the children on their bicycles. It was not what I fought for. 

That wasn't all that we had lost, some of us came back to empty homes. Dead relatives, grown children. In winning our future, we lost our present. And like all of us that lost things, I too am searching for what I lost. My wife was 21 years old when I left for war. I hadn't been much older, 22, with everything to prove. 

But that is a story that has long since ended. Let us discuss the present. Like all the others that came back to something that was lost, I too had lost something. I was gone for four long years when I returned my wife was gone. When I came back there, a lot had changed. My parents home was gone. I wandered the streets with my pack, sleeping on curbs and the occasional motel when I had the money. I don't know how long I spent like that, the days turned to weeks, the weeks into months and the months into years. There was no sign of my wife anywhere. I wandered into different cities and nothing ever turned up. 

As the years passed, things changed around me. I saw the towers being built up. I didn't ever imagine they would be able to build that high. The world was growing at a terrifying pace.

Around the 1970s or 80s, I began to feel lonely. An ever-growing loneliness that was never quelled. I never did remarry, I felt as if I betrayed my beloved if I did. I don't remember much of the 1990s, I dove head first into drugs, I don't even know how I am currently alive. By all accounts, I should be dead. No one did care though. I laid there on the streets, abandoned by the country I had fought for, by the people I had fought for. Just another gutter rat. And all of that frustration that I had pent up for 50 years had begun to boil up into an insatiable rage. That is when my presence began to be noticed. The building, I was hiding out in had 17 floors and I hid in the 14th floor. The tenants began complaining of excessive noise coming from the higher floors. Management would come to investigate and I would hide. They couldn't find me.  My rage led me to spiral and soon tenants began to leave. The building was empty and was set for demolition. 

In 2017, 20 years after the building complex had been demolished, a young businessman bought the area and constructed a small home there. I watched from a distance as the home was built up into a 3 floor home. When the house finished construction, I snuck into the attic. I had nowhere else to go. My rage had since cooled down, leaving just an empty shell of an old man. I began to learn about the man in the house. His name is Jaison Gill. He had a small security company and employed a staff of 6 guards. He was doing well for himself. 

One day, I had spent too long and he came home earlier than I expected. That's where my story begins. 

"Who are you?" I heard a voice say apprehensively. I froze and turned to him slowly. "How did you get in here?" He asked, backing up slowly. "Son... listen," I said, raising my hands. "My name is Quincy Vance," I said to him. He turned and ran out the door practically screaming when I stepped towards him.

I felt hurt, he saw me and ran. He didn't even want to hear me out. I went into his attic and grabbed my old pack. I still carried it around to this day and walked out of his house. I saw him on the phone furiously pacing around outside. "I'm telling you, Sharon, It's a fucking ghost!" 

"What do you mean a ghost?" I said from across the street. "I know I'm old but learn some manners!" He turned and saw me and turned sheet white. Almost as if he had seen a ghost. He began backing up into a street. "Hey watch out!" I said reaching for him, he backed up further. There was a terrible screeching sound and a car barely managed to stop before hitting him. "Get the fuck off the road,"  yelled the driver before peeling away.