The Touchy Ghost

I hate Halloween. At least, I hate what it has become. It was an austere feast, at the beginning, poetic, melancholic, typically British, with which you celebrated the arrival of the cold, the beginning of the new year, and the period in which you shut yourself at home with your family. With a respectful and fearful thought turned to the most serious, disturbing, and common event of all our lives: death. So, once upon a time. Then she took a little trip to America and spread throughout the world transformed into a grotesque and noisy carnival.

That’s what I was thinking, more or less, while I was wandering at a walking pace in that fog aboard my old Mini, with the headlights that couldn’t do anything but thicken further, with an annoying and hostile fluorescence, the insubstantial gray wall in front of my car. It was only a late afternoon, still, seven thirty or so, but on the thirty-first of October, and with that bad weather, the night had already fallen for quite a while. A dark and stormy night, as it says the world’s most famous incipit of a story that almost nobody knows.

I had reluctantly set out on that journey, after all a short one, no more than fourteen kilometers, because of my opinions on that annoying holiday. A party, for the occasion, at the home of a mutual friend, in Aprigliano. I would have declined without thinking about it for a moment if it had not been for Ivana. I had been after her for maybe a couple of months, and it seemed the time had come for her surrender. With the cost of attending that reception. She would have disguised herself as Lady Godiva, she had said. To my remark “but Lady Godiva was naked,” she replied: “how foolish you are, you won’t think she always lived without veils.” And then she had added: “She only undressed when she was riding a horse.” Gosh, Halloween or not, how could anyone say no to an invitation like that?

In any case, however, the time seemed to have come to decide between turning around and going home, forsaking that tempting offer, or calling someone and asking for help. My old little car had no idea what a satellite navigator was, and there it was already a lot to be able to stay within the strip of asphalt, let alone to have a sense of its position. The odometer informed me that I must have covered about ten of them, so I should not miss more than five or six at the destination. As long as I have not taken a wrong turn. Road signs, absolutely non-existent. Apart from those, more than superfluous at that juncture, of the speed limits. The only indication I could give was that I had recently passed a cemetery. Or, at least, a place that had seemed so to me. I hoped that this would be enough.

I pulled over and grabbed my cell phone, which, with irritating diligence, immediately gave me yet another bad news: no signal.

I squinted my eyes and looked past the windshield, side windows, rear window, hoping to manage to identify something inside that milky gray changing from the milky backdrop in front of the headlights to the reddish of the position lights behind and the deep blackness of everything else. Then I engaged the first gear and started moving forward again, holding the cell phone in my hand, hoping to see at least a poor bar appear on its display.

After five minutes, bars always nowt, but the darkness was scratched, in front of me, by a lamppost hanging on the wall of a building. When I was closer, I saw that it was a lantern placed next to the sign of a tiny bar. A slight glow, above, a little further on, I imagined from an upstairs window, informed me that there was probably someone there. Other lights could not be seen, but I decided to stop and try to enter anyway. Hoping to find, inside, at least one living soul, in that night dedicated to the dead. That could show me the way to my destination, or inform me about which place I had arrived in my almost blind wandering.

The massive dark wooden entrance door was closed, but a plaque attached to it invited to ring the bell. I pressed the button, hesitant, and had at least the comfort of hearing a trill inside the building. I confess I despaired of such a success. After less than a minute, just before I tried to press again, I heard other noises coming from beyond the doorway. At first, suffocated, distant, barely perceptible, then sharper and closer.

The click of the lock seemed to resound in that unreal silence. The squeaking on the hinges of the door that opened, amplified by the system of a rock concert. And finally, some light, real light, from the lamps to the ceiling of what immediately appeared as a warm and welcoming place.

- Good evening, sir. You are welcome.

The man who had opened the door, a rather old guy, thin and in an austere gray suit, lowered his hoary head like a bow and stood to the side to let me in. I did not make him repeat the invitation.

- Forgive if you found this closed - he continued - but in these days, and this weather, no one ever comes, so I open only on request. Can I serve you something? A beer, some good wine, a tot of grappa, something to eat?

- A beer will be fine, thank you. And a piece of information. Could you tell me where I am and if I am on the right road to Aprigliano?

The answer to the first question was a name completely unknown to me, which told me nothing, and I immediately forgot. The answer on the second one was perfectly understandable, how freezing: - Uh, no, sir. I’m afraid you missed the fork at the previous junction. It is a bit hidden, not very visible. You should go back, not by much, though, about a couple of kilometers.

To re-enter that fog, go back, look for an invisible branch, and then perhaps have to search for another one that is just as impossible to find... No, it was not even discussed.

I studied the viewer of my mobile again, then I asked: - Do you have a phone here? There is no signal in this area.

- The appliance here in the lounge is out of order; a few days ago, a drunk man smashed it, and it hasn’t been replaced yet. I have one at home... I live upstairs. Do you prefer to drink your beer before or after telephoning?

- The call is more urgent. Then I will probably have to wait, and I will have time to quench my thirst.

The idea was to call Ivana or some of her friends and have them come and guide me. I had had enough of that blind wandering.

The elderly bartender preceded me up a narrow dark wooden staircase, perfectly in tune with the walls and furniture of the salon, from the few tables scattered here and there, to the elegant chairs, to the shiny counter. Upstairs we entered a cozy sitting room, in which an elderly woman sat by the window and looked through the glass, although it was impossible to see anything outside except the oppressive grayish barrier. In the fireplace was burning a fire that I found inviting in an almost painful way. I would have liked to sit there and send to hell fog, party, and even Ivana.

At our entrance, the woman turned to look, and, when she saw me, she started violently.

- Don’t worry, Agata. He is a customer. She has to make a phone call - the man, who I imagined was her husband, cheered her up.

The thing surprised me a lot. I didn’t look threatening, even more so since my Dracula outfit had remained in the Mini, nor so unpleasant after all. Many said I looked like a good guy. The bartender, equally embarrassed, pointed to me the appliance on a shelf. - Don’t mind it - he whispered to me, with a stealthy attitude. I nodded, grabbing the handset and dialing the number, and peeked discreetly at the woman. She had returned to turn towards the window but was now shaking visibly, with her clenched fists firmly resting on the windowsill, her jaw tightened. Her eyes jumped in the orbits as if they tried to look beyond the glasses, and, at the same time, behind her.

Ivana decided to answer after a long sequence of trills, and the noise that came out of the earpiece when it happened informed me that I had been lucky after all. Slightly annoyed, she asked me if I had reconsidered. I explained the situation to her, had the bartender repeat the name of the place where I was, and got the commitment to have Alberto, who knew the area better, pick me up as soon as he finished his performance disguised as Alice Cooper... ten minutes or so.

I hung up, greeted the woman at the window with a nod that she would not see - in the state she was in, I had feared that a simple “goodbye” would make the situation worse - and followed my guest in the short corridor first, then down the stairs, and finally to the shiny counter.

- I’m sorry - I murmured, in a tone of apology, while the man filled a glass of a dark beer with an inviting appearance.

- It is not your fault. It’s been like that for years now. And what’s more, tonight is Halloween. I was the one who has made a mistake. I would have done better to go upstairs, unplug the device, and plug it in here in the room.

- She is your wife, isn’t she? Is she... not well?

- Yes, she is my wife. And she’s been like that since that cursed night, twenty-two years ago.

I didn’t have the slightest intention of prying into their affairs, but, after a sip of that fresh beer with its strongly aromatic taste, the question came out of my mouth on its own: - What happened?

The man looked at me, far from bothered by my indiscretion. With gratitude, if anything, or something that resembled it. At least, so it seemed to me. He must have read on my face the sincere sorrow I felt for the woman sitting at the window staring into nowhere, and it seemed he himself had the need to open up to someone and relieve himself of a burden he must have kept within himself for all those years, and of which he perhaps never dared to speak to anyone.

- It’s an incredible story - he announced.

- But, I guess, real - I encouraged him.

He nodded, decisively. He thought about it for a moment, then he judged that a drop would do him good too. He poured more beer into a second mug, filling it halfway, went around the counter, and invited me with a nod of his head to follow him and sit at a table.

I satisfied him without objection.

“It was Halloween night even then,” he said, “and the weather was about the same as tonight…

(continue)