Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Ghosts

For a guy who doesn't believe in ghosts, I tend to write a lot about them. Once, I was looking at my list of short stories and realized that about half of everything I'd written was a ghost story of one type or another.

For some years, I've been working on a novel I'm calling PORT CITY. I take to it from time to time and work on a chapter here and there. It's at about 60,000 words, but at the rate I work on it, I'll probably be about 60 years old before it's done.

Here's a little tiny bit of it, ghost included:


It could, and would, happen at almost any time. He might be reading. He might be eating. He might even be watching television or just waking up from a nap. At a time such as those, or many others, the ghost would arrive.

It was no big deal. He would stop what he was doing, say hello to the ghost, or It’s good to see you, and then they would talk. About anything. They would just sit there or stand there and shoot the breeze; talk about anything and everything. The ghost would tell him things. Never what to do but, rather, what not to do. He was always happy to accept this advice, and generally took the words to heart.

After all, the ghost had once been his father.

2 comments:

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

when i was younger, i thought about ghosts a lot. i would keep myself from getting scared by coming up with story titles. the hamper that suddenly shut. the dog that barked at nothing.

James Robert Smith said...

You have one of the finest senses of humor I have encountered.