Howl

A child ghost relives the last thirty minutes of his life in a perpetual loop.

I’m in Japan on holiday and a brief writing time-out. Here’s the story from August 2024.

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I could go back and forth over the end of the boy’s alive-life forever. I don’t really like to say “I” because it scares me. I like to say “the boy” or “he” did this or that. I know it’s really me, but “the boy” is better. “His mother” is better.

I could look at them from any direction, super up-close or from up high looking down over the seagulls, or from under a wave, or anywhere that’s near them from where they were at the ocean. I could go right before the worst thing happened and then watch what’s after it and then before it. That’s how I learned every detail. It lasted for half an hour. Then everything all started over, and the boy was coming out of the water in his scuba flippers again.

I call it “sweeping around” in my alive-life and howling. I don’t know if anybody else calls things what I do, because I only ever knew one other ghost, but I bet she called it howling, too. I heard her howl one time.

None of it makes any difference now or in a thousand years or a million years or eighteen trillion years. It’s all after the clocks. I call it “after the clocks.” I can’t explain it.

(I wonder if you can even hear me. Squeeze my hand if you can.)

*

I’ve told you a million times, but I’ll tell you again, how I drowned I mean.

The only reason, by the way, that I know it is half an hour is because I can see the boy’s mother’s watch when he comes out of the ocean the first time and then when everything is over. His mother’s watch said it was 3:12 in the beginning. She did the horrible squint when her watch always said 3:38, and then I would need to howl to make it better, and that made me go into the tar for a minute or a thousand minutes before I came back.

That’s how it used to be anyway before everything.

I don’t mean regular tar. It’s different than that. I’ll tell you in a minute.

There is nothing special, by the way, about drowning. Everybody has to die some way, and a lot of people die by drowning, but his mother’s squinting like she did was what was so scary, and I think it’s the reason I got stuck in those minutes forever.

When I was coming out of the waves in my scuba flippers – I mean the boy was coming out – she was getting up from her beach chair to ask a man to help her make the shade from her umbrella right, and he stopped and talked to her for a while, and then the boy came walking up to them. She made that laugh she always made in front of the men she liked.

His mother told the boy to go back into the water to get the beach tar off his legs even though he just got out of the water and he mostly had. She said he’s not getting into the car like that, and he said he can’t get the tar off and he had already tried. She said that well he’d better or he’s walking home and rolled her eyes about him to the man.

Then the man said he had to go, and the boy stayed in the water because she was going to pretend it was his fault the man left. His mother sat back down in the striped beach chair with the fabric tear I accidentally made that she said made them look poor, and she put on her “cat-eye” sunglasses. Then she took them off again and put them on top of the radio, then she looked up at the sun, then she looked at the backs of her hands with her fingers stretched out. She used to say that’s how age gives you away because it’s always in your neck and your hands.

While I used to wait for her to squint, she was reading LIFE magazine with Marilyn on the cover. It said August 17, 1962. “Memories of Marilyn.” You could see my address on the mailing label. His mother said they got cut from the same cloth in more ways that he’d ever understand. They had “the boys” in common. They’d have been best friends if they’d ever met but now they’re both completely screwed. That’s what she was talking about with the man.

Then I am swimming in the ocean in my red trunks with the rusty button pockets and the rope belt. That’s when I see the first jellyfish floating in the water like a ghost.

I mean he sees them. He.

Jellyfish really do look like ghosts, by the way, their heads and the X-ray inside parts. I’m not sure what you call them, but the floating strings under them, too. Those are the part that sting. I thought it would be the jelly head if you touched it. It’s not, though.

Then the boy spots four more jellyfish in front of him so he can’t get back to the beach, and the boy yells out to his mother. He yells so loud the water gets in his mouth. His arms get really tired all of the sudden, even with the scuba flippers. He sees the sand and some boulders under him, and the bottom is already really, really far down. He’s gotten too far out because of the flippers. Then he starts yelling help.

Then there aren’t just a couple jellyfish, they’re everywhere. They’re called a “bloom” because one of the lifeguards calls them that later. “Careful! There’s a bloom, there’s a bloom,” he yelled. There were probably a thousand. They were everywhere.

It is really loud with the sea and the waves and other people yelling, but I know that’s when his mother hears him out there for the first time. But she just repoints the antennas on her portable radio and leans the beach chair all the way flat on the slotted hooks that lets you set the levels.

That’s when the jellyfish start to brush on him. They are almost gentle at first, but then they begin to sweep over him, dusting his chest with their poison. For just a tiny bit the feeling is very soft and not at all painful like it’s about to be. It’s like when you cut into your hand and you can see the gory bits but it doesn’t hurt for a minute. Even now when I think about it, it’s like a billion years later, but it is all happening all over again.

When I used to watch, I usually swept over to where the lifeguards raced into the water kicking and splashing before they stopped. Or I watched from the sand next to where his mother was sitting when they were swimming towards me out in the water, but then they were too afraid to get in the jellyfish to come near me.

He. He. He. He. He. He. I can’t stop saying it. It gets me so incredibly frustrated.

Then the leader tried to swim around to the other side to get him. It doesn’t matter, though, because the boy was already drifting further from where they were and the jellyfish were everywhere. Then there was a girl swimming to him in the water. She had been talking to the lifeguards on the beach.

In the end, before the boy goes under, he hears the seagulls. That’s always the sign that he is about to see his mother for the last time. Right at that same time, she blocks the sun with her arm so she can read her watch. Her watch says it is 3:38. The end is going to happen in four minutes. I’ve always known she could hear me. I know it. That’s when she turns up the radio.

And then it happens. I see there is a moment she almost brings her beach chair back up like she wants to look for me. Her hand goes onto the lever to lift the chair back up so she can see me, and it stays there for a long time like she’s deciding. She holds it right over the lever arm, but then she squints and takes her hand away from the lever and puts it back on the chair and makes a fist so hard her arm shakes.

Most of the time I used to howl right there when I’m watching it, but sometimes if I didn’t howl, I could look down through the gulls flying over my mother as she looked up at the sky. Her eyes were wide-open looking up.

But I know she almost slid the chair back up to see him. That’s all I ever really wanted.

*

I really didn’t even care sometimes if she stopped me from drowning or not. Drowning isn’t really that bad once you’re under the water. Everybody dies somehow or other. It’s that I always think she is just about to want to see me. Or that’s what I used to think.

If I didn’t howl right then and go sweeping into the tar, then I could get past her squinting to the dying part. There were bubbles floating up exactly like you’d think, which is funny like in the cartoons, and your feet with the flippers are up over your head and you can see your belly, like they didn’t ever understand anything in their entire life, but now they do.

There was sunshine on the top. It wasn’t that high up. You’d think the lifeguards could save him, but there were still so many jellyfish floating over him, and he could see their spots.

Then the girl I told you about swam down right through the jellyfish to try to bring him up, but he was too slippery and she had to go back up to the top. Then she came back, but there was a tiny part where maybe the boy didn’t really try to help her anymore. She was more scared than he was. I think she knew I didn’t try. She definitely knew.

I felt her one more time after that trying to grab me. I remember she had long hair in the water. Then everything went back at the beginning, and I’m walking out of the ocean in my scuba flippers towards my mom and the man.

And that’s mostly all I remember of the boy’s alive-life.

*

Ghosts don’t just howl for no reason, you know.

They have a reason. It makes your alive-life go away for a few minutes. It’s like escaping. Everything goes black as tar while you’re howling. And if you keep howling, you don’t feel anything. It’s like being dead when you’re dead.

I used to be sure you would float around forever in the tar and never see anyone again. You could just drift like you were inside of the sun or something and you got lost and everything was yellow forever because it is so big and you can’t find your way out. That’s the best way to imagine it. Except it’s black. I can’t explain it.

You still dream about your life sort of, but everything is like dream pictures of people at a beach you went to one time, but now you don’t know them. They’re like a math problem.

But just when the pictures are almost all gone and covered up forever, then I would always start to wonder if maybe his mother did mean to help him or the radio was too loud to hear him or she thought everyone was just having fun and splashing around. Or I hoped that maybe sand blew in her eye, and that was the reason she squinted like that and not because she decided not to look for me.

So, then I would stop howling and right away that took me out of the death tar, and all the dream pictures of the beach got real again, and I saw the boy coming out of the water, so I would go back and look at everything again in case for a tiny second she did want to see me. Right away I’m kicking through the waves coming out.

But one day I guess I decided what really happened and “what was what” she used to say. There was no sand in her eye or anything like that, and I didn’t go back ever again. I just stayed in the tar and howled.

Anyway, until then I never even thought that ghosts might die, too, or that you might die after you die.

Cause you can.

*

It felt like I was alone for forever, drifting in the tar. Then there were no more dream pictures, everything was covered up, and I didn’t even howl much anymore.

But then somebody grabbed me on the back of my neck and under my back. They didn’t grab that hard, but they surprised me, so when I flipped over to try to see them somehow, I turned too quickly, and their hands slipped off, and I started to swim and reach around everywhere trying to find them again, but we drifted apart forever. I should have kept still, but I chased after them. I was so stupid.

But then I thought there was a someday that maybe sooner or later I’d meet whoever grabbed me. It was impossible that I wouldn’t bump into them sooner or later with enough time, so I hung on and drifted in the tar waiting. That was really all I ever thought about after that.

(I always wonder if you’re like that, too.)

Then thousands and thousands of years later, I felt the hands again. This time I was ready, and I didn’t move an inch. I froze like I’d always planned. Then one hand held my neck right at the bottom, the other ran its fingers through my hair. It was like they were combing my hair with their fingers. It was very soft. It was like there was no hurry. I didn’t dare to move. Then I knew it was a girl somehow because once she let her hair float and pulled my fingers through it and her hair was really long.

Sometimes she pressed onto my chest where I’d gotten stung, or onto the pain on my shoulders, or my ankles or my lips or my back. It always hurt a tiny bit where she touched from the stings, but she was still touching me, and it was nice. Sometimes she would rest her head onto my stomach in that way that could go on forever, and sometimes it felt like it did.

That’s how I learned you can talk through your hands. You can’t say “let’s go to the store” or something, but you almost can. You can still talk better than words, and I knew she was talking to me the whole time. She was saying, “Don’t howl. Don’t howl,” because sometimes I was just about starting to, and sometimes I would get upset. I didn’t even know why, but she would put her cheek against mine and hold my hand, and I felt it exactly as if I was living an alive-life again, but it was better than an alive-life, and I never dared move, not even a twitch. She would say “shhh” with her hands.

Then out of the blue a billion years later a really bad fear started to grow, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I almost wanted to howl again. But it’s not what you think I’d be scared of. You probably think that it was that the girl might leave me all alone again. But it was really this other worry. I got crazy with the thought that I would never get to touch her back when it was her turn not to move.

I wanted to talk. I wanted to say what I had to say, but I was too scared to budge a hair. So after another thousand years, her fingers were in my hair and her hand was underneath my back, and she was putting her cheek bone up against mine.

And that was when I turned my head towards her the tiniest, tiniest bit to press my face back into hers. And she didn’t go away like I’d always worried. I felt her fingers pull on my hair a bit then stop, but in a nice way. She was completely still as I pressed into her, just like I used to be with her, and I told her everything rubbing my face into her face.

I told her everything I could think of. I don’t even know what I was telling her really.

Then almost right away I realized the dumbest thing. My eyes had been shut for forever, maybe because I don’t really even know why, and I just opened them.

The world was all seawater and the jellyfish shadows were up at the top again. The girl with the long hair was floating over me, but she was a ghost now, too. Maybe she died of jellyfish stings, when I did. Maybe she just wanted to come back again and find me for whatever reason. I’ll never know. It doesn’t matter. There are a million ways to die and they are all the same as each other.

*

When we got out of the ocean, the beach was empty. There were no people, or lifeguards, or chairs, or buildings. There was only sand with no footprints and wind, and grass up on the dunes. So, it was like there was nobody in the entire world but the two of us. Then she pointed way down the beach. I’ll tell you why in a second.

We sat for a long time looking out at the ocean, and our hands talked like they always had. Still it was different. I wish it was longer, but I knew it wouldn’t be. She told me that.

She got up first, so then I did, too. We were standing there, and she leaned into me and told me with her forehead on my forehead that she had to go. She was a lot taller than I was, and I remember how she leaned down and her eyes were closed. She was probably thirteen.

Then she went back into the ocean. She waved back at me, and for a long time she looked at the waves while she was facing the other way from me. Then she looked back at me one more time and pointed down the beach again. After that she didn’t look at me anymore. She let out a terrible howl and ran right in the water and dove into a wave like one of the lifeguards. I knew she was going back to help.

(You remember I told you I heard one other person howl once? That was the time. Can you even hear me?)

After she left, I walked down the beach to where she had pointed, and after a while I saw there was a small red dot. Then I saw it was a person. Even from far away I saw the person stand and then sit down in a chair and then get up over and over.

It was the boy’s mother, and she did the same thing a million times, just like she did when I used to watch her. She talked to someone who wasn’t there and pointed to the umbrella. I could see where she was talking to the boy, but he wasn’t there either now. She put down her sunglasses and read her magazine, and played with the antennas on the radio. You could still see all those kinds of things around her. She leaned all the way back with the chair lever and she squinted and made a fist. Afterwards, she just laid there for a bit watching the gulls that were over her head with her eyes wide open.

She did everything she had done when she let the boy die.

When she let me die. I should just say it.

*

I sat by her for a long time. Maybe I was there for ten minutes, maybe a million years. It was after the clocks. She just kept doing what she was doing. One time I tried to get in her way and stop her and she yelled “no, no, no” at me with those angry eyes she used to make when she got so mad at me, and then she immediately did all her stuff again. I never got so scared, and I wasn’t going to try again after that.

Then I saw there was beach tar getting on her magazine. It was all over the cover and her hands. You couldn’t even tell it was Marilyn anymore. That reminded me of the math problems I was telling you about, and all the sudden I understood, just like that. Like a math problem.

So I sat there for a long time getting myself ready, and then I walked out into the ocean and stepped through the first waves where they were really bumping me around because I’m still small for nine, but I knew I had to go get her even if I had to drift in the tar for a billion years in order to bump into her and find her by accident.

When I got out pretty far, I turned around and saw she was still getting up and down and looking at the sun.

(Do you remember how I turned back to look at you?)

“I’m coming, mother,” I howled. Then I dove into forever.