Written by Bethany Cutkomp
Do you believe me?
Jodie barely registers her son Luke’s question over the roar of ocean waves. He and his
friends drag her along, ankle deep through the fizzy kelp-laden tide, bare toes squishing sand,
shoes held dangling by their laces. Squinting through spindrift, the group searches the bay for
what the high school juniors call an “inverse ghost.” A functional body, of sorts, only one
without a soul. One without sentience. One without a sense of place and self.
The kids claim to have discovered the figure pacing the shoreline on multiple occasions,
mainly during high tide when the sea teases unsuspecting fools into its gaping maw. Despite the
risk at hand, their so-called inverse ghost trudges through the depths unscathed.
We even came face-to-face with him once, Luke explained this morning. Shook him by the
shoulders and everything, but he didn’t react. There’s like no awareness behind his eyes. Nothing
at all.
What Jodie comes to realize is that this isn’t any ordinary west coast cryptid they’re referring to.
This body belongs to a soul they all know well. A good friend of theirs. A former best friend of
theirs, Sean Patterson.
It’s him, I swear, Luke’s friend Omar insisted earlier, flattening his beanie over his ears.
He’s wearing that same red shirt he had on when we last saw him.
The thing is, Sean isn’t dead. Dead to her son, maybe. Moving two-thousand miles east in
a midwestern small town will do that to a friendship. Geographically speaking, in no way, shape,
or form should Sean’s body exist wandering aimlessly along the beach.
Reality is peeling away once again. Jodie is all too familiar with these types of situations.
I believe in a lot of things, she answers her son at last.
Spirits, for one. Her midwestern hometown overflowed with their stubborn presence,
reaching her through localized chills and disembodied whispers. They did their best to latch onto
Jodie’s mother when she took a job out here on the coast. Their efforts doubled when Jodie
herself moved out west to be closer to her. Instead of phantom knocks and flickering lights,
however, the hauntings manifested as phone calls from her father, begging her to come back to
him.
Even now, Jodie can’t bring herself to engage with this bait. If she answers a call, she
chances to have a spirit wriggle through the line and pull her back home by the earlobe. Best to
ignore all temptations and focus on her heart at sea.
When her kid comes yammering to her about his former friend’s body roaming the
shoreline, however, Jodie senses her ghosts may have caught up to her after all.
Stretching over the sea, a dense pillow of fog resembles something just short of spectral.
A sigh of wind purrs through the dune grass, hissing through the cypress trees up the mountains
to their right. The group rubs a shiver out of their arms.
Keep your eyes peeled, Jodie says to the group, sweeping the mist for hints of movement.
How long have you seen him out here?
I see him every few weeks or so, though I never figured he was real, Luke admits.
Their friend Isobel lobs a clump of seaweed into the surf. I usually see Sean on my way to
soccer practice. Sometimes he’s here, sometimes he’s not.
I get scared, Omar says. Like, what’s he doing here? What does he want?
It’s a loaded question, one that haunts Jodie personally. It’s what she asked her own
mother twenty-five years ago, when she’d run off to pursue a liquid embrace only the sea could
provide—a deep ocean expedition inviting only the finest of divers.
What does she want?
It’s what her father asked of Jodie when she, too, fled to the coast. Not to disappear,
necessarily, but to take a stab at redefining herself among a new crowd.
What do you want?
And what did she want? In an environment where the pastures and woodlands reeked of
loneliness, a kind of notion she couldn’t expel from her clothes, Jodie wanted a second chance at
finding her community. It’s what she wanted of Sean when she saw him off with well wishes.
Maybe she’s had it all wrong. Maybe the best sense of company isn’t one to be chased.
What if the loved ones that lay down the foundation of your past are who make up your true
community?
In the years that Jodie has spent perched on the coast, anticipating an intimate
mother/daughter reunion, how many signals has she received from the ocean deep? None. And
how many voicemails has her father left her in the meantime? Too many to count.
Jodie blinks away traces of regret, forcing herself to focus on the main issue at hand.
Her son’s loyal friendship meant the world to Sean. No wonder leaving his history behind
divided the boy in two. If it’s true that his soul exists somewhere in unfamiliar territory, that
means his body carries no sense of defending itself in this harsh environment he once called
home.
Jodie swivels to the trio. Have any of you reached out to your friend since he left?
All three juniors exchange sheepish looks amongst themselves.
Kind of figured he wanted a clean slate. Didn’t bother, Luke says to his feet.
I mean, I shot him a text a while back. Back when I thought I just saw his doppelganger.
But look. Omar wipes his screen on his sweatshirt and tilts it toward the others. Message not
delivered.
Okay. Okay. Jodie inhales the briny breeze through her nostrils, filtering the panic from
her tone. Split up, but stay close. We need to find him.
The group drops their shoes in a pile and scatters, slogging through the bubbling surf.
Inspecting the barnacle-infested pier. Circling dunes of rye.
Jodie’s mind reels as she pivots in the sand, considering those hungry wave crests. Those
powerful rip currents. That boundless stretch of deep mystique. Someone lost can
disappear in conditions as unforgiving if they allow themselves to.
But what is the opposite of a ghost? A body that wants to be found.
There! Isobel’s shout carries over the crashing tide. Omar, to your left. Your left, Omar!
All three juniors are in the water before Jodie registers a fourth figure in drenched
burgundy floundering among whitecaps. Exhaustion impairs his strokes, leaving him spitting
between gasps. Jodie’s knees nearly buckle once the group reaches him. They’re talking to him.
Touching his face. Slinging his arms over their shoulders.
All the while, their friend remains unresponsive. Dripping. Shivering. Staring. That poor
boy. If his body is stuck here without a spirit, that must mean his spirit is out there haunting his
new town without a body.
This way. Bring him here, Jodie orders, leading them up the golden grass trail to the
parking lot. I packed towels in the trunk. Dry yourselves off. Poor things, you’re all soaked.
Moving Sean into Jodie’s Grand Cherokee is like corralling a zombie. He slumps across
the backseat, teeth chattering. Luke tucks a towel around him and eases the door shut.
His smile morphs into a grimace. Where’ll you take him, Mom?
Starting the engine, Jodie ushers Luke’s friends inside to warm up while they phone their
parents. She scrolls through her own contacts, her sand-crusted thumb wavering between Sean’s
mother and her own father’s number. A swell pulses in her, strong as those thundering waves.
Home, she answers. A reunion of all sorts.
Child to parent. Resident to abode. Body to soul.
.
Bethany Cutkomp is a Best of the Net nominated writer of surreal and existential fiction. Her work appears in Stanchion, trampset, HAD, Ghost Parachute, Exposed Bone, The Hooghly Review, and more. She currently supports her hometown community as a library associate in St. Louis, Missouri. Find her on social media at @bdcutkomp.