5- Five Million Ghosts in Total

“It’s not enough to just have you, Charlie. You’re the only one I communicate with. It’s been five years, if you think about it. Sometimes I think, let them be scared if they’re going to be scared. Why should I care? Is it my problem? It’s not because I’m tired of you, so don’t get me wrong. I love you. I love you more than I love your sister. But just having you isn’t enough either, Charlie. Try to understand me. Do something. Get me in touch with your mother. Let me talk to her for just a few sentences. That’s enough. I won’t ask again. That’ll keep me going for at least another year.”

I didn’t know what he experienced in the afterlife; he didn’t talk about it much, but I couldn ‘t imagine someone like my grandfather being very lonely. He probably had plenty of friends. I was sure he had friends of all ages, helped guide the young dead, and talked about oldies but goldies with the older dead.

He was probably having a good time there. But here, he was lonely. It was strange. Why did he make such a big deal out of feeling lonely here when he had so many friends there? The rules over there were much more flexible. There were no illnesses, backaches, weakness, fevers, weight loss, chills, or any of the many other bodily functions I can’t even think of right now. Could you ask for a better advantage than that, or a higher quality of life?

And the people there must have been intelligent who had come to terms with death, accepted it, and managed to settle into the idea of living as the dead. They were probably all much smarter than my father. Certainly much, much smarter than my sister. Having conversations and interacting with people with minds that open must have been more fulfilling than going fishing with my father.

Maybe I’m talking nonsense. This example about going fishing shook my biased perspective a little. The truth is, I envy my grandfather, so whenever he asks me for something, I think, ‘’Come on, you’re already living in fantastic conditions over there. What more do you want, old man?’’

On the other hand, since my grandfather had never told me anything about life on the other side, maybe all my assumptions were wrong. I had asked him several times what you did over there, how you spent your time. Every time, he would get angry and refuse to tell me.

Four years ago, once his coming and going into our world had started to feel completely normal to me, I asked him for the first time what the conditions were like on the other side. He told me that he wasn’t allowed to talk about it, and that leaking such information would result in his existence being terminated.

“What do you mean, terminated?” I asked.

‘’You just disappear.’’

‘’I don’t understand.’’

‘’What a surprise. Well, that’s how it is. Not everyone gets to become a ghost, Charlie. It doesn’t work that way. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone who died became a ghost and just carried on living like kings? Flying around wherever they wanted, walking through walls. Wouldn’t that be nice? Come on, it doesn’t work that way.”

“So how does it work, then? I mean, who gets to become a ghost?”

“Kid, I’m telling you, I can’t explain it. Don’t you understand? They’re listening to us twenty-four hours a day. The moment you try to leak something, bang, they terminate your existence. Just like that. Your sentence gets cut off halfway through. They don’t even tell you, and there’s no warning or anything. You just disappear.”

I didn’t like the idea of my grandfather being in danger of having his existence terminated, but it was impossible not to be curious about a world inhabited by forms of life other than ours. Imagine, for example, that a fish showed up right here, started talking, and said:

“If I tell you all this, they’ll kill me, but I can’t keep it inside anymore. I have too many secrets in my head. Think about it. Imagine a friend tells you a secret and says, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ And it’s a really strange secret, a genuinely good secret. What would you do? Let’s say you lived with that secret for a year, two years. But after a while, it would start bothering you, gnawing at your brain. You’d think, ‘Maybe I’ll tell my uncle this secret too.’ At the very least, you might explain the secret to someone in a letter and, instead of putting your name at the bottom, you’d sign it ‘A friend.’ Now imagine I have hundreds of these secrets in my head. How about that? You’re curious as hell now, aren’t you? But if I tell you, they’ll kill me. They’ll punish me immediately. So what do I do? Do I tell you or don’t I?”

I’d probably tell it to tell me. I wouldn’t want such a valuable and intelligent fish to die either, but I would want it to tell me at least one of all those secrets. I might even insist. Because it was being crushed under the weight of those secrets too, and telling someone would probably do it some good as well. Yes, this was exactly where I could get to him; my grandfather knew the other world inside and out. I wondered if having so many secrets in his head created some kind of heaviness, some kind of nausea in him.

“No, son. I have no confusion whatsoever, and I could live for centuries with all those secrets in my head. I’m immortal, you know, that’s why I said centuries. Don’t get me wrong. And wait a minute, are you trying to get me terminated? What’s gotten into you? You’re willing to risk never seeing your grandfather again just because you’re curious?’’

I was still wrestling with my curiosity. For a moment, I couldn’t say anything. Of course, I wanted to keep seeing my grandfather, but my curiosity kept nagging at me.

“Wow, you’re staying quiet, huh? All right, all right. I’ll tell you, then. If I suddenly get terminated, it’ll be your fault. Yeah, listen carefully. Not everyone can become a ghost. I don’t know what determines who gets chosen. Maybe I’ll find out someday, but I haven’t been able to get that information yet. There are about five million of us in total. Much fewer than there are people in the world. Now, think of it this way. You know how a whole bunch of sperm go after an egg, but only one succeeds? Dying is kind of like that too. It’s partly a matter of luck. I mean, that’s just my theory; there’s no actual information on this. Like I said, I haven’t been able to find out anything. But I suspect that’s how it works. When I got there, there were about seven million of us. Two million of us have been terminated because they were at risk of exposing secrets. That’s it. That’s all. Interesting. I’ve finished talking, actually. I’m still here.”

He was probably making it up. That was why nothing had happened. Or maybe he was making up the whole thing about being terminated when secrets were exposed. I wanted to push him a little further.

“But what if someone exposed you? Isn’t there a risk of that? I’m not talking about taking your picture or recording your voice. I can imagine that you wouldn’t show up in photos and that your voice wouldn’t be audible in recordings. But let’s say I secretly told a hundred thousand people about you, and suddenly they all came here. A hundred thousand people can’t all be hallucinating at the same time, so the whole world would believe in the existence of ghosts and start coming after you. Wouldn’t that be risky too? You just come and go here whenever you want.”

I was sure he was going to start by claiming that I couldn’t possibly get a hundred thousand people into the room. He’d resort to sophistry. That thought had made me angry. In that moment of anger, I was genuinely annoyed by how casually he came and went from our world. There was a risk of being caught, a risk of being exposed, and he could ruin the whole system all by himself. He wasn’t being careful at all. We’d talked about it before: everyone could see him, so it wasn’t as if I was the only one who could see and hear him. If my mother suddenly walked into the room, she’d probably die of fright. If my sister found out about him, she might find the whole thing interesting and secretly show my grandfather to her friends. Any way you looked at it, it was incredibly careless. And it contradicted what he’d said, too; that he’d be terminated if he exposed the secret. By coming and going here, wasn’t he already exposing a huge secret, namely that ghosts could come to our world?

“Yeah, yeah. There are hundreds of thousands of rules in this world, but there aren’t any in the other world, right? There’s no risk of getting caught or exposed or anything like that. All of this is regulated by laws. We’re monitored. It’s not like I’m being careless. If I’m being careless, then tell me, how come I’ve never been caught? Being careless, bumping into something and knocking it over and making a noise, being seen by someone you can’t trust and telling them you’re a ghost; all of these things have different punishments. Scaring someone is an automatic life sentence. You can’t come back to this world ever again.”

“I thought you’d been that careful when you first appeared to me so you wouldn’t scare me. Turns out it was so you wouldn’t get punished.”

“What does that have to do with anything, son? Don’t I have a conscience of my own? You’re getting more and more disrespectful. I’m leaving now. I won’t be back for a month. I’m genuinely offended. You’d better straighten yourself out too. See you in a month.”

I apologized, but he didn’t respond. As usual, he slowly became transparent and faded from view.

“Son, whenever I ask you for something, you start getting lost in thought. I’m telling you to arrange a meeting. Get me in touch with your mother. Are you listening to me? Is this some kind of tactic or something? I ask you for something, and suddenly you start getting lost in thought. Now tell me, what were you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about the first time I asked you to tell me about the living conditions on the other side.”

“Oh, that. Hmmmmm.”

My grandfather had started to become transparent.

“What does that have to do with anything? Where did that come from? What does it have to do with me talking to your mother?”

“Are you leaving, Grandpa? Where are you going? You just got here.”

“No, no. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere. What are you talking about? I missed you, son. We haven’t seen each other, and I haven’t been able to come by for two weeks. I’m not leaving. I’ll be here for two or three hours.”

He was still becoming more transparent.

“Huh. Then there must be something wrong. You’re slowly becoming invisible.”

“That’s just how it looks to you. I don’t feel anything like that. If I were becoming transparent, wouldn’t I feel it? When your hand accidentally touches a hot pot or something, don’t you feel it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Grandpa. There’s something wrong with you. Look, it’s still happening.”

“All right, let’s do this, then. Wait until I become completely invisible, I mean, according to you. Like I said, I don’t feel anything. Wait, then call out to me and let’s see if I answer.”

My grandfather disappeared from view within two or three minutes. I called out to him. There was no answer. I called out again. Still no answer. He was gone.