Christopher Lee Kneram

The clock struck midnight and I was still hard at work in the bistro. We had closed hours before, but the paperwork involved was tremendous, and this was neither the first nor the last night I would be there so late. A silence had descended upon the place, broken only by the scratch of my pen, the turn of a page, and a gentle swish-swish as time I had allocated for sleep vanished into the night.

The restaurant was dark. An intermittent, unreliable light streaked through the front window, the half-hearted work of our defective streetlamp. Each burst of light cast monstrous shadows upon the wall — only the chairs, upturned onto the tables. Only the salt shakers and the pepper grinders. Only the —

A man was outside the door. I glanced upon him only briefly and from a distance, for my office offered a poor view of the front of the house. I put down my pen and went to see who it could have been. The floorboards creaked slightly.

At the front I found nothing. No one. The street was abandoned in both directions. The pub to our right was silent, near empty at this hour, the music store to our left closed and vacant. Across the street, the graveyard peered out from within its envelope of darkness, watching quietly, unmoving. Outside, the sign of the Sleeping Duck groaned in the breeze.

I closed the shades and checked the door to make sure it was locked.

KNOCK. My heart seized, my stomach churned, my blood froze. Impossible! I had been looking out the window only seconds before. For someone to have come up to the door so quickly and quietly was —

KNOCK. Hand trembling, I opened the door a crack.

“Hello?” I called out, head tilted down, eyes averted. “Can I — can I help you?”

“Hello my good sir might I inquire about a drink?” A voice, pleasant but slurred, came through the crack. A friendly neighborhood drunk, nothing more. I opened the door wider.

It was a ghost. He was a rather disheveled man, past middle age but not elderly, unlike any other man walking the Earth. He was at once translucent and incandescent, and the eyes beneath his sooty bowler hat glowed blue-white. He was dressed for an occasion, though his suit had seen better days and a handful of worms crawled slowly in his waistcoat pocket. He carried a neatly folded newspaper under one arm and clutched a tattered umbrella in his hand. Despite the heavy chains draped and wrapped around his body, he floated neatly half a foot off the ground.

“Er…Maybe you want the pub next door,” I said. “We do sort of a rustic continental menu here.”

Chains jingled as the spirit floated past me into the restaurant. He seemed to shuffle lazily despite not really having to move his feet. “Many’s the long night I’ve dreamed of cheese, toasted mostly,” he said with a hiccup. “And I think, I think, maybe you didn’t neither. Where’s my hat? Have you taken my hat? I were buried with it an’ I’d like to keep it with me if only the, the…You know. Where are we on that cheese?”

I was glued to the spot by the door. It was ludicrous to think that I might choose to be alone in the dark with this specter, yet his slurred speech and the way he wobbled slightly as he moved evoked feelings of pity. Also, I couldn’t shake a feeling of familiarity, as though this ghost were known to me somehow. The apparition continued on straight through a table and chairs and then after three or four attempts sat at the counter. I stuck my head out the door and looked each way. Nothing out there but the slight pitter-patter of the rain as it started to fall. I shuddered involuntarily and shut the door.

My stomach growled.

“I suppose I could do us up a little fondue. I haven’t had a bite to eat all day,” I said.

“There’s a good lad. What’ve we got to drink around here?” the ghost said, waving an arm and a chain.

He began to sing as I went in the back, though what song it was I hope I’ll never know. It was horrible, discordant, hellish, but at the same time not really well-coordinated or even well-remembered, seemingly. I rubbed the goosebumps from my arms and grabbed a bottle each of Neuchatel wine and brandy, a couple of chunks of cheese and a head of garlic.

“Here,” I said, taking a place behind the counter, where there was a row of burners. I opened the brandy and poured a glass, then gave him the rest of the bottle.

“There’s a good, a good, a… there’s a worm in my pocket have you met him?” The ghost let out a quiet burp. “That’s the ticket,” he said, holding up the bottle and squinting at it with one bright white-blue eye.

“So what brings you to, er, the mortal realm?” I asked by way of small talk as I busied myself grating the cheeses.

“’S all about the haunting,” he said. “Can’t go about not haunting things my good man, Lord, that’s fine brandy.” The ghost drained half the bottle. I wondered where the drink was actually going. “I reckon life wasn’t all that, all that, you know what? You know, you work hard, all your life, only to fall off a pier an’ drown, like some…what kind of a pub is this?” He glanced about, his glowing eyes casting an eerie light wherever he looked.

I poured some of the wine into a pot to boil and chanced a look up. I could see straight through him, all the way through the bistro. If I were a drinking man it would have been a great opportunity for a large whiskey.

“This isn’t a pub, it’s a bistro. Like a cafe.”

“Ah, a ristorante. Back when I was young and fit I used to like a little place like this. Toasted cheese, like they say, it warms you up — ” he stopped to hiccup. “It warms, it…because sometimes it’s so cold on the other side. People think it’s hot, but what do they know anyway? They don’t know, they don’t…because of the cold.”

I selected a nice loaf of Tessiner bread, Swiss, very authentic, and started to cut it up.

“And they just let you come back here any time you want?”

“Well,” the spirit said with a wobble, “’s not that easy. You have to have, to have business, you know I really miss the legs, women have such nice legs, and sometimes on the other side everyone jus’ floats around, you never see the legs. Unfinished. That’s the business. Have to have some reason to wanna haunt a place. Usually if you wanna haunt a place it has to be you haunted it when you were living, you know?” He chuckled, a warm, jovial, ominous, hellish sound.

“Excuse my saying then, sir, but I’ve never seen you here before,” I said.

“No, no.” The ghost finished the bottle, and his chains clinked as he tossed it aside. I only just managed to catch it as he continued. “But yes! I come to this pub all the time! It’s, well, the decor has changed, but how long have I been gone? Ha! I’m always gone, you know. Gone right now. ‘S the only way to forget. Where can I find some nice legs this time of night?”

The bread went into the oven to toast and I started to add handfuls of cheese to the wine. “I think you’re haunting the wrong place, sir. The pub’s next door.”

“Is there? What has happened to my hat and to the brandy? Have you met my worm? I think he’s around here somewhere…” Chains rattling, he looked around. “I had dreams, you know. Mostly of trying to give a speech while in my underwear.”

I popped a bit of Gruyere in my mouth. “So what’s your unfinished business?”

“Dunno, never finished it. Could be I wanted one last drink, could be I — you know, it was all going fine until it stopped. Started I mean. Started with the drinking, that was the problem. Any of that wine left over?”

There was still half a bottle of Neuchatel. “Here you go,” I said as the specter unfolded his newspaper.

“Looks like market’s taking another bloody dive,” he said.

“Er…I think this is about ready,” I said. “Let me just finish it off.” All it took was a dash of brandy and a quick stir. I took the bread out of the oven and put it into a bowl, then retrieved two fondue forks from the back. Sliding the bread and the cheese to his side of the counter, I sat down next to him.

“En guete,” I said. “It won’t stay melted for long.” The ghost folded up his newspaper and speared a bread cube.

“You’re out of wine again,” he said. “An’ I don’t reckon I like the way that salt shaker is looking at me. I mean, you work, an’ you work, an’ you… for what? It all falls apart, and you never have time to talk to that woman, what was her name? She had a graceful what-do-you-call-it, neck…”

We ate in silence for a moment, the pure cheesy goodness of the fondue overwhelming the last remnants of my terror, which had mostly been chased away by the spirit’s easy demeanor.

“I had it, used to be I had it all once you know,” the ghost said. “And this cheese is really, is really good. You’re great. The food is terrible on the other side. ‘S all eye of newt an’ tail of bat an’ wing of dog. Lemme ask you this,” he took a grimy and decayed handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the corners of his mouth. “Did you ever have a bacon sandwich that was ether — that was see-through? Or a haunted leg of lamb? Had a, a, a nice job. An’ a income. But what did I spend it all on you ask well I’ll tell you it was booze. An’ cheese now an’ then, have you priced a good Sbrinz lately? It’s criminal.”

Sbrinz. My favorite. My mouth was suddenly very dry. I got a glass and turned my back to the ghost to fill it up at the tap.

“Yeah,” he said, “I had a good ol’ time running the place. But then it all started it all went downhill. Lost everything. Had half my liver stolen by the mob, took a beating from the mayor, an’ in front of everybody that one. Spent a couple o’ years in a third world prison cell and never did wind up feeling up a really good pair of, pair of…where’s my drink?”

“I’m afraid,” I said, a knot growing in the pit of my stomach, “well, I’m afraid of many things at the moment, but chiefly I’m afraid it’s time to cut you off. How about a hot cup of coffee?”

The ghost looked around. “I say man, this isn’t the pub. Supposed to be haunting a pub, do you know where I can find a pub?” He dug through the pocket of his waistcoat, dislodging a number of ghastly translucent worms, which hit the ground and faded into nonexistence. A grubby scrap of paper, as insubstantial as thought itself, drifted from his pocket and landed on the stool next to him.

“There’s a pub next door, sir, I think you mean to be haunting them.”

The ghost finally succeeded in taking his watch from his pocket. “Ah, yes, I’ve always loved the pub next door. Started going there roundabouts when I was your age. Speaking of haunting, I think I’m a bit early,” he said, squinting at the watch. “Quite a bit early, now I look, nigh on fifteen years! Why’ve been haunting the wrong place and the wrong time.” He hiccupped again and wobbled to his feet. Lifting his hat, he said, “Good day to you my fine sir.” Under the glow, there was a look in his eyes which I recognized, having seen it in my father’s eyes, and in my grandfather’s eyes.

The apparition, booze-addled and sad in all the wrong ways, dragged his chains back through the restaurant and straight through the front door without stopping. I glanced at the scrap of paper; even as it began to fade I could make out the writing on it.

It was a to-do list. Among other things (howl at the night, lament a life of regret, endure an eternity of torment), there was this one item: “look up tombstone inscription: SUM QUOD ERIS.”

More than scared, or frightened, or terrified, I was stricken, completely immobilized in both mind and body. The terrible implications of the spirit’s existence pummeled, crippled my nervous system. My extremities were pins and needles, my stomach a tiny ball of fear.

Glancing out the window, I could see that the pub next door was still open.

I needed a drink.

CHRISTOPHER LEE KNERAM is much like you, but from Ohio. In his spare time he reads, he takes walks, and he teaches underprivileged children to speak Chinese, which is something they don’t really need, and hate doing, besides. When no one is looking he pens absurd fiction, some of which can be found around the internet.

by Eric Magnuson

Until eleven months ago, I’d seen what I’ll hesitantly call ghosts on seven occasions, beginning at age four and returning sporadically through sophomore year at the university, nearly two decades ago. Eleven months ago, however, I met a bearded, copper-haired man named Alexander Pennings.

Pennings came with much notoriety. He’d written a small library of books on others’ experiences with the paranormal. He regularly appeared as an expert on ghosts in numerous film and television documentaries of dubious nature. There were the newspaper articles — usually local publications or laughable magazines about the supernatural that featured spectral women in period dress or “haunted” houses on their cover pages — but he did somehow warrant a Times profile when these naïve ghost-chaser programs became strangely popular, even among the college-educated. The legitimate papers invariably documented the little respect he received from his colleagues at our university, especially noting their disdain for his tenured professorship and continued funding for work they deem “unserious” and “lowbrow entertainment.” Then there are details that are often included merely to give readers something shocking — and most likely apocryphal — to believe he’s a madman: the somewhat mundane event that Pennings experienced as a child at his grandfather’s Iowa City soybean farm, which led him into these studies; the allegations that he’s drugged a handful of the people he’s interviewed; but most absurdly, there is the rumor — which is taken far too seriously, even among my own associates in the history department — that the man himself is a ghost.

Despite working for the same public university since I arrived here four years ago, I’d never met the man. Nor had I even seen him in person.

Not that I wished to meet Pennings. I am, by most accounts, I believe, I hope, something of a reasonable man. I’ve written the first extensive history on the Battle of the Red Earth Reservation. I’ve published in all of the important journals, The Journal of American History, The American Historical Review, WMQ, and so on. In other words, I’ve done what I can to become a tenured professor at the university — though the internal politics on this campus keep holding me back for whatever inane reason. Perhaps it’s the peculiar relationship that this university has with the state’s Native American population — more specifically, the Takota, from the Red Earth Reservation. But that’s something else entirely. I don’t think this — I’ll call it an “oversight” — has anything to do with my embarrassing ghost stories. I stopped telling even my friends about these unexplainable experiences of mine not long after my undergraduate studies concluded. I then avoided telling them as a PhD candidate and during my post-doctoral research as well. My wife knew nothing of them when we were married — she’s since only heard them on nights where we’ve been slightly, well, incapacitated. But even as an undergraduate, I only elaborated on them to my closest associates, those who would go on to be my closest associates more than ten years after. So it was those decade-long friends that proved detrimental to my entire well-being so many years later:

Because, well, I suppose I should elaborate a bit more on what I mean by “incapacitated.” I’m afraid to say that there are times when it’s late at night, and the cocktail party’s grown quiet and we’ve drank far too much — at least I’ve drunk far too much — and we’re at the point where everything is poured straight over the ice without mixer and everybody’s gotten perhaps a little too loose with whatever is on their minds, and I might be coaxed along by one or two of these old friends to divulge these paranormal stories as something of a party trick — to playfully frighten others when the lights go down. Or perhaps I just let myself publicly believe in them when I’m drunk. Either way, the last night that I detailed these experiences was — somewhat obviously — at the end of a cool and late October evening.

By the beginning of the new year, Pennings had learned that a reasonable man on campus believed he’d seen ghosts.

Pennings first emailed me in January. I immediately wondered which of those inexplicable friends of mine relayed my strange history to Pennings but rather than turn annoyed or angry, I realized that it must have been one of those strangers at the party. I’ll assume this anyway in order to avoid a fracas. No matter. I brushed off his first request to meet. Then a follow-up email arrived, which I not only disregarded but deleted before finishing. And in February there was a voicemail, which I promptly erased. And then a second, and somehow we’d missed each other’s paths so often that there was a third and fourth. Ridiculously, I began considering the rumor that Pennings truly was a ghost.

This continued until the first week of this past April, when I opened my history department door and was taken by surprise by Pennings himself. He stood at least seven inches taller than I. His copper beard was somehow both natty and unkempt. His skin was sickly pale. And he likely had freckles but they were difficult to discern from behind the beard. He also wore a ridiculous black overcoat that hung off of him like a cape. He was, in many ways, a caricature of himself.

Pennings told me that he was happy to have finally bumped into me, which was laughable considering that he was standing outside of my door, waiting for me to exit. Knowing immediately who he was, I did what I could to appear busy. I hurriedly walked down the musty university hallway, saying that I was running late and that, perhaps, he might try calling or emailing me later in the week. I told him that email was best but he immediately called my bluff, saying he already tried for not just weeks but months to reach me. “Do you have a class to teach right now?” he asked.

“Mr. Pennings,” I said, “I’m really not interested in talking about ghosts with you.”

“So it’s true then,” he said. “You have had these experiences.”

“Mr. Pennings.”

“Please, call me Alex.”

“Mr. Pennings, whatever I saw happened so long ago. It could have been anything, which was probably nothing.”

“I know Dr. Witting,” he said. “I’m actually good friends with him.”

And I stopped at this odd detour to my department chair’s name.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Despite the reputation you might think I have, I have a good standing with Dr. Witting. He secretly likes the work I do. He’s a closet connoisseur of the paranormal — at least if it has historical context, like the Confederates still haunting Gettysburg for instance.”

“I’m still not following you.”

“I’m told that you’ve had some trouble getting tenure here.”

“I barely remember what I saw, Pennings.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“But I thought you believed everything that people told you.”

“And maybe you just get drunk and tell lies.”

“Excuse me?”

“A man who invents stories when he’s drunk because he lacks the ethics or wherewithal to abide by the truth.”

In twenty minutes I was sitting with Alexander Pennings in the quietest corner of a shabby Mediterranean restaurant off campus.

* * *

Pennings rested a digital recorder on the wooden table and said, “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

I was obviously apprehensive. I didn’t trust the man. But I felt somewhat cornered. To give myself some traction, I said, “Not quite. Let’s talk a little bit first. I’d like to know why you’re so intent on speaking to me.”

“I’m eager to speak with anyone who’s had a paranormal experience. They can be difficult to find,” he said. “Many people are like you. They don’t want to return phone calls in these matters. The ones who immediately call you back, or seek you out first, often saw their doors blown shut by the wind. The people who truly have these experiences often hide it. They begin pretending it never happened. But as they bury this down deeper and deeper, the more they actually believe it did happen. They torment themselves. I’m sure you’ve had many frustrated nights in the dark. It’s common. But I find that when people finally do open up with these stories, they feel somewhat relieved.”

The introduction sounded oddly rehearsed, as if he’d said the same thing over innumerable lunches.

“So you think you can set me free from my personal demons?” I said. “I didn’t know that you were also a psychologist.”

He laughed. And while I tried building this wall between us, the thought of speaking did sound appealing. I hadn’t told these stories while sober in more than a decade. I didn’t know what would happen if I did tell him about my experiences.

“But what do you plan to do with my stories?” I asked.

“Right now,” he said, “I don’t know. It greatly depends on what you have to tell me.”

“Will you tell anybody else about them?”

“Do you want me to tell anybody?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“Then I won’t tell anyone we ever met.”

Pennings’s surrender seemed oddly swift. Somebody in his field surely needed a name attached to their subjects. To have no name only made it easier to discredit the stories that made him so infamous. But then again, he already lacked so much credibility within the academic community.

“What if I also say ‘no’ to the recorder?” I asked.

“Then it won’t be recorded.”

Again, very peculiar. What could he be getting at? I wondered. He held no notebook nor pen that I could see. And he never maneuvered to pull one from his ridiculous overcoat.

“Tell me, Pennings. What’s the real reason you sought me out?”

And for the first time that afternoon, he began to look somewhat uneasy, as if his script ran out. He reverted to what he already said: “I try speaking to anyone who’s had these experiences.” And he thought for a moment, collecting what he may. “This will be a casual conversation between us. If we choose to, we’ll have a more academic study later on. But for now, we’re having a conversation that will never be heard again.”

After thinking to myself for a moment and sipping from my water, I began to tell him what I believe I’ve seen.

First: “When I was four-years-old, I awoke to see a large Native American man standing at the end of my bed. He did not speak. Nor did he move. He then disappeared.”

Second: “Months later, my mother and I heard voices in our basement. They were foreign. Or, more likely, indigenous. Years later, when I asked my mother about them, she said, ‘Oh, you mean the Indian ladies? They had a good time in that basement, didn’t they?’”

Third: “At five-years-old, I was alone in my grandfather’s basement. A light flashed off and on in front of me. A chair in the next room moved.”

Fourth: “At ten-years-old, I heard furious typing at the computer keyboard in the next room as I studied. I peeked my head inside to find the room empty.”

Fifth: “Standing outside of a friend’s house when I was sixteen, I saw an old man staring at me from a second-floor window. He was bearded. I later asked my friend if her dad was home. She said no. I said that I’d seen a man upstairs. She told me, without humor, ‘You saw one of the house’s ghosts.’”

Sixth: “During freshman year at the university, I awoke in my bedroom with everything bathed in a foggy teal glow. I turned over and saw a young girl looking out my window. She smiled. I somehow fell back to sleep.”

Seventh: “I was violently shaken awake from a nap at my parents’ house. When I opened my eyes, I saw an orange blur floating away from me. Then I saw nothing.”

“That should be everything,” I said. “Will that be good enough?”

“And you believe, without any doubts, that these were paranormal experiences?”

“Off the record?”

“Of course.”

“Off the record to the point that this lunch never happened?”

“Sure. Sure.”

“Then, yes, I suppose I do.”

“Why do you have no doubts?”

“Because they’re the things that I saw. I don’t doubt my memory. Especially when it’s something mildly traumatic like this.”

“And you consider yourself a reasonable, logical man, correct?”

I was slightly offended by this. Of course, I did. “Mr. Pennings, I didn’t come down here to eat a soggy gyro and be offended by a man in a cape.”

“I meant no offense,” he said. “I’m just asking in order to piece everything together.”

I gave in to this. He seemed sincere.

“Then, yes,” I said. “I consider myself reasonable. Logical.”

“And I assume that you trust in science?”

Admittedly, this is not where I predicted his line of questioning would run. I assumed that I’d regale him with these stories that by then were cheapened by the fact that I’d told them so many times that I didn’t even need to think about which words to put emphasis on anymore, and that he’d be happy and we’d be on with our days never to speak again. This was turning far more philosophical than I believed Alexander Pennings ever ventured to be, especially considering that the last television program I saw him appear on utilized a smoke machine to almost comic effect.

“I don’t even bother asking most people that question,” he said, leaning back into his chair. His long coat wrinkled on the floor. “When I meet them I generally see that they fear God in one way or another. So instead, I ask them, ‘Are you a religious person?’ And they invariably say, ‘Yes, they are.’”

He sighed and let the conversation hang there, as if I knew where to pick it up. My mouth was full of lamb meat. Fortunately, he continued.

“So after my line of questioning is through,” he said, now leaning over his untouched plate, “I go around the house and I basically tell them, Well, I’m sorry, but there appears to be a breeze coming through here. Or we have an electrician come and the problem is fixed. I’m basically an overseer of handymen. As long as we’re off the record here, I’ll leave that off the table as well. As for the incidents that you may have seen on the television programs I’ve hosted or appeared on, those are merely the cases that couldn’t feasibly be witnessed by an unbiased party. They are the things that we cannot prove or disprove, meaning: We do not need any real proof of them. So we recreate them for television with actors and special effects. It’s obviously not something that I’m proud of, but does anybody actually make money from something that they’re proud of anymore?”

It was over the course of our conversation that I realized that Pennings was completely unsure of what he was studying. He told me that nearly everything he’d found in the past three decades could be explained in one way or another. Faulty wiring. An undiscovered breeze. Plumbing so old that it now made the pipes speak. Most of the people he’d interviewed over the years were likely to believe anything they’d heard, and a great percentage of those merely liked the idea that it was ghosts that produced their little oddities. Pennings, it turned out, was looking for a reasonable man to tell him that he was not wasting his life on a ludicrous search for the paranormal. But like the good academic nobody any longer made him out to be, he would not part with a false positive. He began to ask questions that made me feel uncomfortable and, for the first time in years, somewhat infantile.

“Do you believe in God?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Sometimes though?”

“Not really. If I do, it’s brief.”

“And you take it back afterwards?”

“I suppose so. If I actually think about it.”

“So you’d consider yourself an atheist?”

“I generally tell people I’m agnostic.”

“But you’re not so sure?”

“Is any agnostic?”

“Funny. Humor. I’m glad we’re moving along. But tell me, does your agnosticism believe in an afterlife?”

“Well,” and this was the perplexing thing that I didn’t wish to think about. Because, frankly, I didn’t believe in an afterlife. But I also honestly believed that I’d seen these things, felt these things that are popularly believed to be the lore of what only happens after death. “No,” I said. “I do not.”

“So what do you think happens after we die?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea. Most likely nothing.”

“Is that worrisome?”

“Not knowing?”

“No. That it could be absolutely nothing?”

“It’s not a great feeling,” I admitted. He stared at me inquisitively across the table.

“Is it more than a worry?” he asked. “Do you fear it?”

“I really don’t know how this matters to your work.”

“Please. It matters a great deal, actually.”

I still didn’t answer.

“Do you fear death?” he said.

“Sure. I suppose. I think I’m allowed that from time to time.”

“But tell me. How do you reconcile your belief in ghosts with your belief that nothing happens after death?”

“I don’t know. None of it makes sense to me, really. I know what I’ve seen. My memory’s never failed me. But I also have no hard evidence that anything happens after death.”

“Do you think it’s possible that you conjure these ghosts and hold onto their memories because you fear death? That perhaps you let your mind imagine them because you want there to be something to come after life?”

I stopped eating and looked at Pennings for a long time, not saying anything while I considered what this meant to me. We had very little else to say during our lunch. We left knowing that we’d likely never see each other again.

And now, everything is ghosts.

ERIC MAGNUSON is a freelance writer based in the United States. His fiction has appeared in The Los Angeles Review and Stumble Magazine. His journalism has been published by numerous magazines, including Rolling Stone, The Nation, and Spin.