Spirit

I open my eyes. I am once again laying in the soft grass of the cemetery. The moonlight reflects off of the new, polished gravestones. It's a warm night, so I know it's summer. I don't know what day or month it is, but that's okay. A ghost like me doesn't need to keep track of time.

I stand up, and stretch my arms. I can only be awake after sunset. It's nighttime. The moon glows overhead, and I run. I run away from that horrid spot, where I got to watch my own funeral, so many years ago. My gravestone now stands, dull, with my name and day of death carefully carved into the front.

Charlotte Sage Smith

April 22, 3007 - August 25, 3015

I leave the cemetery, and run across the street to the park. There are several swings, and slides. There is a green and purple roundabout, and several red and yellow seesaws. A sandbox is filled with plastic buckets and shovels, left behind by children who were too excited to get ice cream and forgot their toys. They will be back to retrieve them tomorrow.

I remember the excitement that I felt when the park was finally finished. The workers had finished in the evening, so I was the first one to play on the playground. Since I am unable to go farther than the corner of the block, the park finally gave me something to do during my lonely nights.

I sigh, smiling at the large oak tree, which during the daytime, brought shade to the sandbox and the roundabout. The park is only a few years old, but I can't imagine being without it. I climb to the top of the tree, and then jump off, into the sandbox below. As a ghost, I can pull stunts like these and not feel any pain. I climb the ladder to the slide, and then slide down it's smooth plastic, laughing and shrieking as I go around each turn. I spin the roundabout as fast as my little arms could. Then, I jump on, giggling as I'm spun round and round. After a while, the playground equipment slows to a stop, and I roll off, onto the gravel, watching the clouds above blow by, illuminated by the bright crescent moon.

"Hello." I hear a voice. It sounds like it belongs to a child. I sit up, to see the voice does, in fact, belong to a child. It's a young girl, with brown hair twisted into twin braids. She is wearing a yellow and red floral print sundress. 

"You can see me?" I am utterly surprised. For a girl to greet me like any other person is an uncommon occurrence. Most people can't see me, and those who can, only see me as a hallucination.

Apparently, my question confuses the girl, "Yes...why wouldn't I be able to see you?"

I don't want to reply, as it feels good to talk to another person after so many years of solitude. If I tell her that I'm a ghost, she might get scared and run away. However, she looks expectantly at me, waiting for my response. So I comply, "The reason why you shouldn't be able to see me, is that I am dead."

The girl looks surprised, but only for a moment. Then she goes back to treating me like any other human girl. "Oh. Okay. I'm Luna Rowan. I'm eight years old, and I moved in a few days ago. I wanted to go this park a long time ago already, but we were so busy unpacking that my mother wouldn't let me go until now. Actually, she didn't want me to go this late, but I went anyway. What's your name?"

I'm surprised. A human who can see me, and isn't afraid. I find it quite interesting. I smile at the girl, "My name is Charlotte Smith. I'm eight years old, or at least that's how old I was when I died. I can only come out at night, so I sleep in the cemetery across the street during the day." I point to my home.

Luna sits down in front of me. "When did you die?" she asks. It hurts, a little. For a ghost, their death is a touchy subject. I brush it off, however, as a child like Luna must not know better.

"I died on August twenty-fifth, in the year three-thousand and fifteen, during world war four. Our hometown was bombed, and my entire family died..."

"World war four? That's a long time ago."

I am surprised, and ask what day it is. She replies, informing me that it's the fourteenth of July, in the year three-thousand and ninety five. 

We talk more, and learn a lot about each other. I'm still baffled at the fact that Luna isn't scared of me, but I am happy. At the end of the night, when her mother calls her for bed, she turns to me, and asks if i want to be her friend. Of course, I agree. It's very lonely when nobody ever notices you, so I am glad to have found a friend.

~

Every day she came to see me. We would meet after  sunset under the park's large oak tree, and we would talk. We came to be very close friends, and she never treated me like the ghost that I was. I can't say how she truly felt. For all I know, she only continued being my friend out of fear. I don't think that's the case though. We talk every night, and play on the playground. This continues for years. She continues growing, but I stay a child. One who is dead cannot grow.

Once she reaches middle school, she goes to me for help. I give her advice on what to wear for the school dance, and I let her cry on my shoulder when she fails a test and is scolded by her mother. 

Then she reaches high school. She asks me about what world war four was like, as a research project. Her grades in history are soaring. She finds love, in a boy who didn't love her back. She cries, and I let her hold my hand. She comments on how cold my skin is to the touch, but that is because I am dead. 

One day, she starts acting strange. She doesn't want to tell me about her school day, and when I ask about her family, she gets angry and yells at me. She gets bored of seeing me, and eventually stops coming. It's understandable, as she is now in high school, on the road to graduation, and I am still eight. Still, she never once acted like being my friend was a chore.

I wonder what happened to her. Years go by and I don't see her. She left me without explanation, and I am left, devastated. My one and only friend, gone. It's almost like she's dead to the world. But even if that's so, why didn't she come visit me as a spirit?