The Unseen Guest

I was woken up by a sudden noise inside the house. I grabbed my bat and inspected every room, but there was no one there. All the doors and windows were locked, so there was no chance of anyone being inside.

Maybe it’s a rat, I thought.

The next morning, I woke up to the scent of freshly cooked food filling my room.

Is Gerard back already?

I rushed downstairs expecting to find my husband, but all I found was a dining table full of food and a house that was empty. I looked around, but I was the only one home.

I soon found myself gripped by fear. Was I being stalked? I was about to rush upstairs when, suddenly, a voice rose behind me: “Don’t worry, it’s only me here.”

I turned around to find myself stupefied; a translucent humanoid figure stood before me. A ghost? Was I being haunted?

“Don’t worry, I mean you no harm,” the ghost said. “My name’s Nathan. I’ll help you around the house if you allow me to stay. I was a chef when I was alive, you see.”

This was too good to be true. “How come you didn’t move on to the afterlife?”

“I… I couldn’t. I stayed behind to look out for my daughter as she grew up since I was her only parent. She had to move in with her aunt after my passing. Now that she’s starting a life of her own, I’m more or less a nomad.”

“Can’t you leave for the afterlife now?”

“My chances were exhausted long ago. They won’t accept me anymore.”

This experience took me back to my childhood. It was just like back then. Everyone thought my mom was crazy when she said she could see ghosts, and for most of my life, even I thought she was mentally ill. But now, I was beginning to question that assumption; was she actually telling the truth all those years ago? Either that, or I, too, was losing my mind. I could only hope it was the former.

“Don’t worry, you’re not going mad. I can assure you, I’m real. If you let me stay, I’ll take care of all the chores in the house; you won’t have to lift a finger.”

His words were sincere, and I sensed a hint of loneliness in them. Nathan had no place to belong to and nowhere to go.

“Fine, you can stay.”

Nathan told me not to speak about him with Gerard because he wouldn’t believe me, and I agreed at first, but once Gerard was back, I was feeling more and more uncomfortable about hiding it from him. As the first week after he was back passed by, he was beginning to wonder how I was getting my chores done so fast compared to him. He wasn’t too suspicious, but this secret was still gnawing away at my conscience. I had to tell him.

“Not you, too…” That’s the first thing he said when I confessed my secret. He assumed I had inherited what everyone thought was my mom’s mental illness. I called out to Nathan and he did indeed appear before us, but Gerard couldn’t see him. We argued that day and he kept pressing me to see a psychiatrist. I reluctantly agreed.

The psychiatrist also came to the same conclusion as my husband and prescribed me some medicine. From that point on, I decided to pretend like I wasn’t seeing Nathan; and for a couple of months, it was convincing, until Gerard walked in on me talking to Nathan in the kitchen. We got into an even bigger argument that day and he suggested that I get admitted at the hospital.

That was it. I immediately told him to pack his things and leave. He stormed out of the house that evening and, after two weeks of silence, I received divorce papers. My marriage was over, but I was at least grateful to have made a dear friend who would stay by my side for ever.