1 - Invisible Head, Barely Visible Lips

My grandfather’s ghost would always slowly become visible, and I could never tell when he had started to appear. He would usually begin to appear from the head down; first his head, then his jacket, shirt, arms, hands, and legs would materialize on the armchair one after another. Within three or four minutes, he would completely lose his transparency and become fully solid. Then after another three or four minutes before he was fully himself again and could start having a conversation with me.

Since he always began becoming visible from the head down, I could never tell when his journey from the other world to ours had actually begun. Because he had never managed to learn how to make his head visible. He could make every part of his body visible except his head. He could touch and interact with objects, and he could even become so corporeal that he couldn’t pass through a wall. But none of this applied to his head. He would often tell me how sad he was that he couldn’t kiss me on the cheek.

“I’ve tried everything, Charlie. Everything I can think of. Nothing works. Nothing ever works. Do you know how painful this is? I can see you, but you can’t see my face. It’s awful. I’ve been coming here for about five years now. We’re always chatting, gossiping about your father, talking about your sister’s antics. Now tell me, have you been able to satisfy your longing for me? I don’t think so. You need to see the head. The head matters. Arms, legs, hands, everyone has those. It doesn’t count without the head, Charlie.”

I can’t remember a single day when my grandfather didn’t complain about it. To avoid being caught by the other members of the family, he usually came into our world late at night, and every time he did, he would rant.

“I really fucking hate myself for not being able to make my head visible, Charlie. If you could just slap me across the face, I’d fucking love it. But you can’t. Why? Because I don’t have a goddamn face.”

I always laughed when he said things like that. There are fewer things in this world funnier than watching a grandfather get angry about something that can’t be changed, in my opinion.

My grandfather didn’t trust the others very much. He thought they would be frightened if they saw him. He had made a few small attempts, though. For example, three years ago, something happened that scared the hell out of my sister. My grandfather didn’t yet know how to become fully visible back then, and he didn’t have any clothes either. He could only make his voice heard and blow on things. One day, while my father, mother, sister, and I were all sitting at the dinner table, he leaned close to my ear and whispered, “Watch this.”

We all had bowls of soup in front of us, and they were very hot. My grandfather started blowing on my sister’s soup. He kept blowing and blowing. I noticed what was happening from the ripples in the soup, so I distracted my sister. Since the rest of the family was listening to us, no one noticed the ripples in the soup. My grandfather blew on her soup with all his strength for several minutes.

Her soup was ice-cold now. Ours were still steaming. My sister took a spoonful of hers.

“Mom, did you leave this soup out for too long? Why is it ice-cold?”

“What do you mean, ice-cold? Look, it’s still steaming,” my father said.

I explained what had happened: that my grandfather’s ghost was among us, that he had blown on her soup and cooled it down, and that he occasionally came to visit us, and so on.

“Charlie, son, there’s such a thing as table manners. You don’t play jokes like that at the dinner table. If something goes wrong at the table, you deal with it quickly, then you eat, and afterward you clear the table. You don’t drag out whatever happened at the table by making jokes and fooling around. Say, for example, I’ve got my mouth full right now—leeks, salad, whatever, I’ve got all kinds of things in there—and you pull a joke on me. How am I supposed to laugh at that joke with my mouth full? But laughing is a reflex, right? You can’t stop it. You can’t just say, ‘No, I’m not going to laugh at this,’ and choose what you’re going to laugh at. That’s not how it works. Don’t be rude.”

My sister couldn’t react because my father was angry at the time, and she couldn’t bring herself to interrupt him. We were all afraid of our father. He was an authoritative man, and whenever he got angry about something, no matter what we were feeling or what came to mind, we would wait for him to finish speaking. It had become a reflex. Even if we were afraid of something while he was angry, even if his anger meant we were going to be late for an appointment, we would wait until he finished. He would usually talk at length when he was angry, but because he wanted to follow the table manners he preached (and was just as authoritative with himself) he kept his outbursts at the dinner table brief.

But afterward, my sister got up abruptly and looked around, searching for some sign of him. Her breathing quickened, and I felt sorry for her. I told her I was joking and apologized. She didn’t seem to believe me that day, and she had lost her appetite and couldn’t eat. But over time, the incident was forgotten, and the subject of ghosts never came up again.

“Holy shit, it worked. I made my mouth visible. Quick, give me a pipe before it fades. Come on, you idiot, hurry.”

I immediately left the room and secretly took one of my father’s pipes. I hadn’t spent much time looking for it, but when I returned to the room, my grandfather was smoking a cigarette. His mouth was barely visible; I couldn’t quite make it out. He knew this, and he kept moving his lips in strange ways so I could see them, taking deep drags from the cigarette and blowing smoke rings. I couldn’t make them out clearly, but it looked as though there were two pinkish shapes, one on top of the other, trembling strangely a few inches above where his neck ended.

“Give me the pipe, boy, before the lips disappear. What are you waiting for?”

I handed the pipe to my grandfather. He put it in his mouth and quickly lit it. He took a deep drag. After blowing out the smoke, he moved the pipe to the corner of his mouth and took a drag from the cigarette as well.

My grandfather’s lips never disappeared that night. In fact, they became a little more visible, and I could now make out their movements. He moved his lips excessively while speaking so that I could see them. He answered my questions with exaggerated lip movements and exaggerated his laughter just as much. I was worried that the other members of the family might catch us.

“Did you know they train news anchors to move their upper lips when they speak? Apparently, we use our upper lips less when we talk.”

I didn’t know. I wasn’t curious, either.

We chatted until morning and around dawn, he slowly faded, with his lips disappearing last. In fact, proud of his success, he made his entire body invisible and kept his lips visible for another four or five minutes before returning to the other world.