Every Ghost Story by Natalia Theodoridou

Author:Natalia Theodoridou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

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The next day is pretty much the same. We participate in a group therapy session where people talk about their relationships with their parents, their relationships with the present, and how they relate to the ghosts. We’re a pretty diverse bunch in this respect, it turns out. Some people are fascinated by the ghosts. Some want to learn how to deal with them, while others see ghosts as a human rights issue. These factions clash, and voices are raised, but in the end everyone calms down when the facilitators offer a new way to think of the situation. The ghosts are not the problem, they say, they are merely a symptom. But they never say what they are a symptom of. I wonder if ghosts can be disappointed. Can they feel anything, really, or have all their feelings already been had?

At the end of the session, we each get a few minutes to write in our diary. They provided us with identical notebooks and pens at orientation, but I always forget to bring mine, and even at night when I go back to my tent it seems to slip my mind or my fingers whenever I try to make myself sit down and write.

Then, we congregate again and Miss Christine sets a pile of sheets on fire. We’re supposed to imagine each sheet is one of our ghosts, and this way we’re letting them go. Says perhaps that’s all they want, and all any of us need. Some people are really affected by this; I spot a lot of tears running down cheeks, noses sniffling. I don’t feel anything much. I keep thinking about how all the sheets are white and identical, unblemished. I remember the sheet of the ghost those ghostbusters destroyed (killed can’t be the right word, can it?), dragged through the muck, dirty.

Alex comes to stand next to me again, catches my eye. His are dry, thank the lord. I couldn’t take it if he also turned out to be one of those people, all they need is a bit of empty ritual and they’re good to go, dead husbands and existential angst be damned. I think Alex is the only one who might actually be able to understand the ghosts, maybe because he spent so much of his life being haunted by the person he would become. Is that transphobic of me to say? I don’t think it is. And anyway, I think it’s probably true.

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