Written by Finale Doshi-Velez / Artwork by Holly Eddy
Haunted

































One moment, oblivion. Next moment, there I was, a ghostly figment floating in front of the television.
Irene yelped and buried her face in her sofa cushions, blindly stabbing at the remote. I shook my head,
watching a swanky Ford Explorer disappear around one of those commercial-perfect bends on the
plasma screen. We both knew that once summoned, no earthly technology could send me back.

I drifted toward the glass doors leading to the back porch. The last autumn leaves clung to their
branches, dry and dead and yet desperate to hold on. I didn't blame them. Across the dilapidated fence
that separated my home from Irene's, I glimpsed my daughter Allie dressing up a doll I didn't recognize.
My husband Jake was in the kitchen, packing away a cake. I glanced at the newspaper on Irene's coffee
table. October 15. I had just missed Allie's sixth birthday, her first birthday without a mother.

The television winked off, and Irene risked a peek in my direction. I gave her a tired smile. She covered
her face in his hands. “I don't know how it happened,” she whimpered. “Amanda, I feel so bad. So, so
bad. I wish I could do that day all over again.”

“I hear you,” I said, though my ethereal lips could make no sound.

The seconds ticked into minutes while I gazed forlornly out the window, getting as far from Irene as our
bond allowed. I couldn't bear to see that hunted look of despair on Irene's face. Back home, Jake rinsed
a few candles under the sink. Jake had always been too manly to cry, but I could see his eyes were moist
as he glanced at our wedding picture. Why couldn't I be with them instead? I sighed a silent sigh. Life
had not been fair, and now it seemed that death wasn't either.

In the months after the accident, I had found myself present almost constantly, always around my
neighbor Irene. Nearly a year later, the events were less frequent but no less disturbing: she jumped
whenever she spotted me, turning so pale she could be a ghost herself. But why? I was certain she had
not meant to hit me with her pickup on that foggy New Year's morning; indeed, I blamed myself for
running along that winding lane. I wouldn't have haunted her if I only had the choice.

Irene flipped the television on again, rushing through the channels like a hare on the run, as if the erratic
changes from sports to weather to soaps to blender infomercials would somehow throw me off the
scent. Eventually the news summary diverted her attention, and my form eroded in a familiar rush of
oblivion.

~ * ~

I had only a few seconds to register my supermarket surroundings before a cascade of plastic poppies
tumbled through me. Irene stood in the middle of the ruined display, her knuckles white on her cart
handle. She glanced from me to the mess, trembling, and I surmised she had lost control of the cart
when she saw me.

I drifted away while she collected the flowers—and her senses—letting shopping carts stream through
me. Why now? Why here? Shoppers came and went, thrusting their hands through me while I hovered
over the potatoes. I wished it would tickle or hurt or something, anything just so I could feel real. Feel
like something other than Irene's nightmare. From the corner of my eye, I watched Irene struggling to
place the pins with her shaking hands. Remember, remember the fifth of November—I wish you didn't
have to remember, I thought. I wish we could both forget.

I had not realised I had sank between displays until I noticed the colors around me had changed to
blotchy reds. I pulled myself up out of the apple tray, only to find myself inches away from a familiar set
of fingers. Jake! The last time I had seen my husband close-up was when Irene went to offer her
condolences. Jake had only frowned at her, stony-faced, while she wept her apologies. Today his perfect
jaw was tight as he picked through the bruised batch of apples. I had to be slightly proud of him: he
never took that much care with the shopping when I was there. “Jake!” I reached toward him. “I'm here!”

He tossed one last apple in his bag and pushed the cart toward the next aisle. I tried to follow, but my
body felt like I was pulling against one of those resistance bands at the gym. “Wait,” I said, straining
forward. “Don't leave!”

Back in aisle two, Irene had finished rearranging the poppy display. I felt myself fading. Please, just a few
more seconds, I thought. My feet were already dissolving as I reached out a hand to Jake's, only inches
away. Just a chance to pass my fingers through his hair. “Wait!” I screamed as the oblivion took over.

~ * ~

I appeared next at our neighborhood block party at New Year's. I did not know how the conversation
started, but I heard the words “just how Amanda used to—” and then there I was, yanked out of
nothingness as if forced through one of those flamingo-shaped straws. Irene went white and dropped
her sherry.

Ed, who lived across the street, guided her to a swing on his porch. “Are you feeling okay? I think you
should sit down.”

I distanced myself as much as possible. I resented this ghostly role I had been given. I always thought
that being a ghost meant haunting, well, whoever it pleased me to haunt. Walking through walls, the
ultimate freedom. And if I was going to be pulled into this world against my will, I would have rather gone
to watch Allie's soccer game or piano recital. I would have rather watched Jake trim the hedge, sit with
him in front of the television. Pretend that life had never ended, despite being able to see the paving
stones through my arms.

Yet as far as I could tell, I appeared whenever Irene thought of me. Watching our favourite Saturday
night television, sipping coffee at our Sunday morning coffee shop, heating up a microwave dinner I used
to scold her not to buy. I thought back to the day at the grocery store. What had triggered her memory
then? The potatoes? The poppies? Seeing Jake? I was learning more and more about Irene from when I
appeared.

I slumped into an empty garden pond near the porch, drained for the winter. If ghosts could cry, my
tears would have filled the pool. However, all I could do was wallow in the coffin-like plastic tub, misty-
eyed in the way all ghosts are, while the world forced me to witness my friend's misery.

Usually it did not take long for Irene's thoughts to drift, but not tonight. Not on New Year's Eve. Ed tried
to draw Irene back into the conversation. “Got any New Year's resolutions?”

“Too late for that,” she muttered. She looked at the truck in her driveway, and I felt myself grow more
present. My hands glowed as brightly as the tinsel decorating the trees. She clutched her stomach. “You
go join the party, Ed. I just need some space.”

I wanted to join the party too, but I had no choice but to follow Irene up the street. She wandered past
a few smokers, shoes crunching on broken beer bottles. She sat on the edge of the sidewalk at the
intersection, gazing at the road curve away into the trees. I sat beside Irene and hovered an arm around
her shoulder. She started sobbing. “I can't believe I didn't see you,” she said, covering her face in her
hands. A few cars whizzed by, veering away to avoid us—her.

“It's okay,” I said, “I don't blame you. But we can't stay here.”

A pickup careened around the bend, passing us so close Irene's hair whipped over her face. If only mine
had done the same, I thought: but that time had long passed. “Irene,” I said, trying to make my
features as soothing as a specter's can be. “We've got to move on.”

She was still crying when the DJ turned up the music. The disco lights panned around the street,
splashing my misty form with garish blues, greens, and reds. “Get a hold of yourself,” I said, shouting
instinctively above the noise though I knew my words were silent, my blurry lips unreadable. I tried
shaking her by the shoulders, but my fingers went right through her. “You've got to let it go,” I
shouted. “Let me go.”

~ * ~

Fourteen months after the accident, I just wanted it to end. I paced Irene's sitting room, striding
through the furniture, while Irene watched from shaded eyes. “It's not fair,” she whispered.

“Damn straight,” I said. If Irene had to have her demons, then so be it, but why did I have to be
involved? Why force me to be at her call? I glared at the glossy home and garden magazine that was
probably this time's culprit. Outside, Allie was making snowballs in my backyard. I recognized my
mother's knitting in the rainbow patterns of her hood. A Christmas present, I guessed. A present from a
Christmas I had not been allowed to witness.

I kicked the television, attempted to throw the lamp on the floor. Useless, all useless. What was the
point in bringing me here? I could not speak. I could not touch. I could do nothing. Nothing but be the
object of torture to my best friend.

Irene shivered. “I sorry Amanda, I really am. I know you can't hear me—“

“I hear you,” I said. “I've always heard you.” It was the cosmic order of the universe that was deaf. I
punched the television, and Irene flinched as my fingers appeared on the opposite side of the screen. We
seemed to be stuck in our usual stalemate.

Irene scratched her chin. “Amanda,” she said, in an odd voice, “are you an angel?”

Hah, I thought, rolling my eyes. The only angels around here are the ones Allie's making in the snow. Did
I look like I had wings? Where was the halo and the harp? In any case, angels were supposed to provide
blessings and comfort, not terror.

“You know,” Irene said. “My grandmother believed in angels. She said her father often appeared to her,
guided her through dark places when she was crossing the border to Switzerland.” She paused.
“I just wondered—hoped—that maybe you aren't here to curse me.”

I stopped. All this time I had been wishing to be with my family, all this time I had felt cursed being stuck
with Irene, I hadn't thought that I might not just be a cosmic tool for fear and guilt. I sat down on the
end table, my back inside the lamp. Maybe I did have some other purpose, but how was I supposed to
achieve anything? Meanwhile, Jake and Allie had gotten into the car. Allie drew hearts on the frosty back
window while Jake waited for the engine to heat. Her eyes did not twinkle quite the same way she used
to, but I recognized her smile. She and Jake had moved on, moved on in a way Irene never could, not
with me always—

And then inspiration hit me: what if I was meant to be Irene's angel? I beckoned Irene to her own frost-
encrusted glass door. She came, trembling but curious. I put a finger on the glass and motioned her to
do the same. She obeyed without her usual whimpering, though the hairs were raised on her arms.

I smiled as the frost melted under her tentative touch. I dropped my finger a little, and at first Irene
appeared puzzled. I gestured for her to follow my finger. Slowly I led her hand around the window: F-O-
R-G—Irene gasped and turned to me. I smiled. Together we finished the remaining letters: I-V-E-N.

Her hands were shaking so much that the last letter was a spidery tangle. Irene pointed at the glass and
then at herself, and I nodded. “I don't blame you,” I said, and although she did not hear me, my
meaning was clear.

She collapsed on the couch, and for a moment I thought I had made some grave mistake, that she was
going to go mad. All I could do was stare at her shaking shoulders as the tears ran down her cheeks.
“Thank-you,” she whispered, wiping her nose. “I don't deserve it, but thank-you.”

The familiar oblivion rushed into me, and I embraced it. I hoped this time it would never end.
THE LORELEI SIGNAL
Finale Doshi-Velez is a graduate student at MIT, where she
researches methods in statistics and artificial intelligence. She
believes happiness is a choice.

Her fiction has appeared in Everyday Fiction, Stories that Lift,
and the Copperfield Review.

Visit her website at: http://people.csail.mit.edu/finale