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Jonah - Present
HAUNTED OR HUNTED?
Ghosts are real. I know, because I’m being haunted by one.
It wasn’t like the movies. There were no flickering lights, no cold patches of air, no odd smells or objects that moved on their own. I wished things were that simple, that easy to recognize. No, the ghost haunting me was far less obvious, and that somehow made him so much worse.
I saw him sometimes from the corner of my eye, only to turn and see someone else. I caught glimpses of him everywhere—his leather jacket, his long curly dirty-blond hair, his old worn boots, that stupid fucking tattoo on his neck. I’d hear his voice, his laugh in a crowd, and I’d be so certain it was him that my heart would stutter and my stomach twist and bile would rise in my throat.
It was never actually him.
It was his ghost. Coincidences that dragged me back into the memories of all I’d left behind. They rose from the depths of me, made my bones vibrate and my skin itch with the need to escape. Escape from what? The ghost of him, my memories, myself. I didn’t know anymore.
The truth was, I wasn’t evensuremy ghost was dead.
It had been almost a year since that day, and I sensed his presence now stronger than ever. I almost expected to see him around every corner, peering at me from dark alleys, staring at me across the bar. I could smell him in every cigarette. It kicked my senses intooverdrive and made me jumpy.Paranoia, I told myself, my imagination playing tricks on me.But what if it’s not?
The first time I was able to bring myself to look him up was a few months after I’d left. My stomach had twisted and my heart pounded as I’d guessed what the headlines would be: the confirmation of everything that had happened that day. Instead, I found… nothing. Not even a whisper of the name Dex Weller. No reports. No bodies. No murder investigation. I’d checked his social media accounts next, but they were all frozen in time. I still checked them regularly. It was the first thing I did when I woke up and the last thing I did before trying to sleep. My stomach always half dreaded, half hoped that something, anything, would change. Nothing ever did.
So here I was. I’d started running because I thought he was dead, and kept on running in case he wasn’t. Until I knew which one he was for sure, I guess he was both. Schrödinger’s boyfriend. Simultaneously dead and alive inside a box I wouldn’t open and couldn’t escape from, but fuck if I wasn’t going to try.
That’s how I ended up here in Hollow Creek, West Virginia. Another nothing town in the middle of nowhere. Another temporary stop on a journey with no destination, and fuck was I getting tired of it. This place was even shittier than the usual ones I stopped at. A crumbling old mining town with exactly one run-down motel, a diner that hadn’t updated its menu or décor since the sixties, the sheriff’s office at the back of the tiny grocery store, and The Rusty Nail, the bar I’d been working at for the past three weeks.
The first rule of running was to never get comfortable. The second was to always keep moving. Staying here this long? I was probably breaking both.
Not that anything about Hollow Creek was comfortable. The motel smelled like mildew, and the bed sagged heavily in the middlewith a tired old mattress decades past its intended lifespan. The Rusty Nail wasn’t much better: a dingy bar that reeked of old tobacco smoke and beer, with its sticky floors, flickering neon signs with dead letters, and a jukebox that only played sad country songs.
But they paid in cash, and they didn’t ask questions. That was all I needed.
“Jack, my boy, another,” said a rough voice from the other end of the bar. I smiled and nodded at Tiny, a regular. Why they called him Tiny, I had no idea. He was one of the biggest men I’d ever seen. I’m not even sure what his real name was. Then again, Jack wasn’t my real name either, so who was I to judge?
“Coming up,” I called back to him, getting a fresh pint glass and filling it before I slid it across the bar.
“Good man,” he cheered, cheeks already rosy with intoxication, but this wasn’t the type of bar that cut people off when they’d had too much.
I watched him stumble back to his booth, shaking my head softly before returning to wipe a damp rag over the bar counter again, half listening to the hum of conversation around me. It was the same faces every night, the same routines. I knew all their names; they thought they knew mine.
There was a sense of familiarity that I craved. I wanted to be known. I wanted to stop running and just breathe. Maybe make some friends who would actually give a damn if, or more accuratelywhenI just stopped showing up one day.
The fact that I was thinking like this only proved why it was time to move on. It was probably also why my paranoia had kicked up a level. I’d been stagnant for too long, and the little voice inside my head that always whispered, “Run, Jonah, run,” was getting louder and harder to ignore.
Lost in the monotony of my temporary yet oddly comforting routine at The Rusty Nail, my mind drifted to planning what wasnext. I would probably head south again after this, find another bar job like this one and hope they didn’t ask many questions. By now I had learned how to pick out the bars I knew wouldn’t; they were the kind that didn’t want questions asked about them either, and that worked just fine for me. I never stayed anywhere long enough to get caught up in any kind of shady business anyway.
“Didya hear?” came another voice from the bar that almost made me jolt, and I mentally scolded myself over letting my guard down. I knew better. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything.
“Did I hear what, Hank?” I asked the man as I reached for a fresh pint glass, already knowing what he was after.
“Ya aren’t the newest in town anymore,” said Hank, amusement playing on his weathered features. Hank had been one of the people who seemed the most curious about me when I first arrived here, asked the most questions. Eventually, he’d learned I wasn’t going to give him any interesting answers and had given up. Now, though, my interest was piqued, not that I wanted Hank to know that.
“Is that right?” I asked, keeping my tone carefully casual.
“Yep, ’nother young fella, ’bout your age. Said he’s just passing through,” Hank explained, and leaned forward over the bar like he was going to share some kind of secret he didn’t want anyone else overhearing. I couldn’t help but mirror him, my stomach twisting anxiously as I waited for his next words. “I don’t like the way he’s pokin’ around, Jack. Don’t like the look of him much either.”
My mouth ran dry, and my palms grew clammy as I inhaled slowly and fought the urge to escape out the back door. “Yeah?” I tried to sound unaffected. “What’s he look like, then?”
Hank leaned in closer, so I did as well, until I could smell the alcohol on his breath and had to fight the grimace from showing on my face. “He was dressed real nice. Too nice, I reckon, wearing a pink sweater, Jack,pink. I think he’s… one ofthose.”
