Home: A Ghost Story
The day of the funeral was cold, rainy, and dark. Thick clouds hung low and swiftly made their way across the sky, and like everyone who came to show their support for the young couple, disappeared quickly in the distance.
They just stood there.
He held an umbrella for them both, keeping it straight with one hand while wrapping his other arm around her. Though there was a strong wind and the rain stronger, the umbrella never wavered. She stood squarely under it, lost in him and in a far-off moment. Giving birth was pain unbelievable. This pain was beyond that. Beyond screaming. Beyond fighting. Beyond pushing. Beyond breathing.
An age went by, and they held each other; a statue of a man and woman in grief unbearable.
Finally, with a soft voice like the light shaking of a baby's rattle, he suggested they go home.
Another age passed.
She agreed.
Slowly and without life, they walked back to their car. Someone had missed the 'Baby On Board' sign. Everyone afterward had been too scared to take it out of the car window.
She took it out, her hands shaking, and they carried it back to the tiny gravestone and placed it there.
After they left, a gust of wind took the sign into the raining sky.
***
They lay on their bed, holding each other. Their wet clothes soaked the quilt her mother had made. The quilt was a picture of them on their wedding day. Her mother was very good at quilts. She had offered stoic platitudes and the beginnings of a cry before deciding her kitchen was wrong and needed rearranging.
He thought back to a few hours ago when his best friend, who had never endured anything more tragic than being dumped by the head cheerleader senior year, walked up, put his hand on him, and paused before saying, "I have nothing I can say. I'm so sorry, and I'm here if you need me."
It was hardly nothing.
The couple somehow managed to get closer, and their tears flowed together like the rain at the grave—in torrents.
Something banged against the window in the baby's room. Again and again.
They both started and sat in silence, staring at each other's bloodshot eyes in the near dark.
It was a mystery enough to get them up and off the bed. They slowly worked their way to the door to the room, where everything still smelled of an infant.
The baby monitor had run down its battery, having been collected with many other things and put in the baby's room, but whoever had done it had assumed it was off. It kept building a slight enough charge to cause it to light up for a moment before going dark again, which it did just as they entered. They watched the light fade away, and if anything was left of their hearts to tear, it did.
The 'Baby On Board' sign, caught in the wind, banged at the window.
She screamed, more than at the birth, more than at her birth, and rushed to the window, flinging it open and flailing at the sign, trying to snatch it from the gusts. It flew past her and dropped into the crib but stopped short of the blanket, inches in the air. Then it shifted and slid to the edge as if it were on some invisible mound. She stared at the spot and wondered if she'd lost her mind. He stared as well and was sure that he had.
A wispy outline appeared of their baby, laying there the way she always lay when she slept, her left hand in a tiny fist on her chest. They looked at each other, seeing in each other's faces that they saw the same thing. They slowly walked to the crib, afraid to make a noise or creak a board.
They reached out, hands shaking, and touched their ethereal child. She stirred and turned her eyes toward them. Lightning flashed, and the entire room brightened as if in the day. There was no baby. It was dark again, and the baby reappeared.
She reached down and picked up her little girl, ghostly mist running over her arms onto the floor, dissipating gently. He stepped in, put his arm around her, and smoothed the baby's furrowed brow. A smile crossed the baby's face, and she cooed in a distant echoey trill.
They lived in that house the rest of their days, only one leaving at a time. Always one staying in the room with the baby, lest they return to find her gone.
A ghost's presence is delicate, and too much messing about can sever its bond to the material plane. They knew this deep in their souls and never told anyone. Everyone thought them odd, never seeing them together, but they didn't care. They were together in that room.
When they were old, they stood in that room, holding their baby girl, and quite suddenly, she was real. She was warm and solid, and they knew deep in their hearts that they'd no longer have to worry about losing their baby again.
They buried them on either side of their baby. The day of the funeral was warm and sunny.