The day I opened the front door was the day the ghost disappeared forever.
Had I been asleep, I might have missed the sound, like a strange scuttling against the walls. I glanced over at the boy in the corner, but he remained silent, staring at me with those sad eyes. I looked back at the door, unsure of what to do. It had been years since I’d stepped outside, groceries pushed in through a latch I’d had installed. I often wondered what the person undertaking the deliveries thought when they knocked on the door.
When the noise continued, I realized that I had no other choice but to check it out. I got up from my bed, and cautiously made my way over. It was past midnight, and common sense told me to leave it alone until morning, but common sense had long since left the building.
The dog rummaging for food right outside gave me pause. She was by the front door, face hidden deep inside the trash can. It wasn’t mine, the rubbish, and I supposed that one of my neighbors had left it there, long since assuming that cleanliness was a limited resource in this house.
I couldn’t blame them. After all, it had been my choice to stay hidden behind my many barriers, walls and doors both, away from all opportunity. It kept me from heartbreak and pain, but I was also unable to attain happiness or companionship in the darkened depths of my house.
It was easier, I’d told myself, to remain where nothing changed. Where the wall clock continued to tick in the same way, year after year, and the lightbulbs buzzed until they simply couldn’t anymore. I could hear pin drop silence every day if I stayed still long enough, the breath paused in my lungs. The reason behind my isolation had been quick and subtle, the anxiety of living sending me off the rails.
But this dog, my intruder, had changed everything, and I found myself staring down at her, the night time breeze fresh on my face for the first time in a very long time. It nipped against the skin on my face, making me shiver. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to figure out my next move. I could go back inside and continue like nothing was different between today and the day before…
Or I could do something I’d never done before. I could take a chance on something other than just my cowardice.
“Are you hungry?” I asked the creature that appeared to be digging deep into the trash can. It was this, more than anything, which made me certain that she didn’t belong to anyone; that she, too, had been abandoned. At least we had that much in common.
The dog pulled her head out of the trash can, and looked up at me. For the first time that night, I caught a glimpse of her matted fur, illuminated by the nearby streetlight. The white color of the coat was just barely visible, doing its best to shine out from underneath the filth. I hadn’t the slightest idea about how to take care of a dog, but I realized that I couldn’t possibly leave her out in the cold like this.
Not like this; not when I’d finally opened that door. It felt like this moment required something different, and shutting out this desperate, hungry thing didn’t feel like the correct action to choose. It felt like I would be sending her off into the world, not knowing if she would make it through the night. I know I wouldn’t have, and it didn’t make sense for me to think that she would, either.
Coming to a decision, I quickly ushered her in, my mouth hurting from smiling at another living being—mostly, it was just me and my mirror. The ghost, after all, didn’t speak or give me anything beyond that pleading look.
“I’ll find you…something that’s not out of the trash,” I said, as the dog padded into the room, tail lifting off the floor slowly, as if hopeful for the first time ever, yet unable to believe it. The feeling that followed was daunting, almost haunting. The last time I’d tried my hand at taking care of someone else, it had ended in terror. I still woke up gasping from nightmares, and those were the good nights.
There were days when I would go around in circles, unable to forget my brother’s face, right as the life faded from his eyes. It was that gaze that followed me across the loft as I walked in with the dog. It was accusatory, as if trying to say that I wouldn’t succeed where I’d failed with him. We were all just desperate creatures in a world that was eager to devour us completely.
Now here was another one, just as pathetic as I was in that moment, and I didn’t know what to do.
I blamed the door, and even though it was closed once again, with lock and key, I could still feel a draught rushing in. I stood in the entrance, watching the dog acclimate herself with her surroundings. She didn’t seem as shy as I might have expected, but maybe that spoke to her years on the street. Maybe, like me, she had been alone for a while now, and was more used to that solitude than companionship.
There was that word again: companionship. I didn’t know what it meant anymore, but I felt the beginnings of its definition, as the dog settled down against the couch, lightly scratching her paws against the floor, unaware of the ghost silently glaring at her. I took that as a sign to mean that she was hungry, and I finally let go of the door and walked closer to where she’d found refuge. The dirt came off her fur as she moved, collecting against the furniture, but I didn’t mind it as much as I thought I would.
I lowered myself down onto the floor right in front of her, careful to keep a pleasant expression on my face. Was that how one was supposed to act around a new dog? Or maybe that particular advice was for encounters with bears. I should’ve already acquired this knowledge somehow, I scolded myself. Tonight proved that anything was possible.
“You’re the first…living…thing to come into this house,” I told the dog, idly, feeling the boy’s stare at my back. “I don’t even keep plants.” It was all about my fear, afraid to be left in charge of another being’s needs and wants again, as I’d been told by the therapist I’d been forced to see, in those first few months after my baby brother’s death. I hadn’t been able to comprehend the words at the time, but now I understood what she’d been trying to tell me.
The dog—her name was Luna, I decided, the name appearing almost suddenly in my mind—stopped scratching at the floor, and leaned over to put her head on her paws, looking up at me with big eyes. I didn’t know if it was real trust or mere necessity, but she didn’t seem to be scared of me. Instead, she patted me on the cheek, almost like she was trying to console me. Somehow, I knew she could understand every word I said.
The bright color of her fur was shining through by now, and I found myself thinking of giving her a bath to get her clean and healthy in preparation for this new life.
It was strange…I hadn’t felt like I was capable of doing anything good since Ayaan had died, almost four years ago. The accident had been my fault—I should’ve been paying attention to the road instead of messing with the radio, my brother’s laughter mingling in the air because of a joke he’d just told.
“The other car came out of nowhere” had been the first words out of my mouth at the hospital, but that wasn’t the whole truth. I would have seen it if I’d been paying better attention to the road.
“I’m Samar…and I’m going to call you Luna,” I said, speaking my thoughts out into the space between us. “Is that…okay?” The dog lowered her head, almost like she was nodding. It was a rather bizarre experience, because I’d never seen an animal behave like this before. She felt like a true companion, and I had heard that dogs were a man’s best friend, after all.
“Let’s go give you a bath first,” I said, standing up and gesturing for her to follow me to the bathroom, only a few feet away. She did so, without a moment’s hesitation, trotting in right behind me when I pushed open the door. “Then I’ll feed you, and…t-tomorrow I’ll…I-I’ll go o-out and… get you something better to eat.” Luna seemed sympathetic to the stutter. She tilted her head to the side from where she stood next to the bathtub and watched me fill it up with warm water.
The very thought of leaving the safe confines of this house was terrifying, words choking me on their way out, but I knew I had to do it. I had to do it for her.
When I looked back, right as the bathroom door closed, the ghost was nowhere to be found, leaving his corner behind without a trace. A memory played before my eyes, and I paused. Rewound the last few seconds. No, that wasn’t right.
“Ghosts never really go away, do they?” My brother had said those words to me a few days before the accident, his face thoughtful in all his sixteen-year-old glory. I told myself it had been a coincidence, but I suspected Ayaan had always known something was coming for him.
As if he’d accepted his fate and made peace with it, something I still hadn’t done. That’s why the ghost had stuck around for so long, I realized. I’d held on for as long as I could, past the point of return, past the point of healing.
I sat on the bathtub’s edge when Luna jumped in, splashing water everywhere, and I thought: Maybe it was finally time to open the windows again.
Photo by Mia Anderson on Unsplash
