When I was fourteen years old, I slipped on the deck of my father’s boat and struck my head on the railing. I don’t remember what happened next, but everyone says that I fell into the water and wasn’t breathing when they finally pulled me out again. Everyone says I looked dead, flopped unbreathing and limp on the deck of my father’s boat. I don’t remember this, but they tell me it happened.
Obviously I didn’t die, I’m not dead. I have to be alive, this has to be the part of my life that’s real – this is still my life. But once it started happening, after it kept happening, I wondered if I maybe had died that day on the boat. If maybe the boy who went into the water wasn’t the same boy they pulled out again. I know that sounds crazy. All of this is going to sound crazy, but if you could see what I see, you’d start to wonder, too.
The first wasn’t long after that day on the boat, three months later to be exact. Not to the day or anything, but after my birthday so I was fifteen years old when I saw my first ghost. My grandfather, actually, standing there at the edge of the cemetery as we buried him. I didn’t see him for very long, and I honestly didn’t even know what to think about seeing him. At the time I told myself it was nothing. A mistake, some other old man with withered cheeks and hollow eyes, with parchment paper skin and wispy white hair. But then it happened again, and it kept happening, and I started to wonder about that day on the boat, the day they say I went into the water and wasn’t breathing when they pulled me out again.
See I think that was the day all this started. I think that was the day something happened to me, in that time between when I wasn’t breathing and was, something besides scaring my mother and splitting my skull. Something happened to make me different, so the boy they pulled out of the water wasn’t the same boy who went under.
I’m telling you this now so you’ll believe me when I tell you that I’m not crazy, that I really do see this stuff and it’s real. It’s more than just the ghosts, the dead people, the stuff that’s not there but yet I see it. Everyone says it’s not real but it’s right there, and I see it. I’m telling you this so you’ll believe me when I tell you I need help, and not the kind of help that my mother tried with doctors and medication until I started lying better about it. I don’t need that kind of help, because I’m not crazy.
I know you can help me. You have to help me. I see this stuff, and I don’t know why or what it means, but I just know that last week was the first time something saw me back. Something looked back at me and knew I could see it, and now I’m scared. I heard a voice last night that wasn’t mine, wasn’t my mother’s or my father’s, wasn’t the television or the computer or the neighbors. I heard something calling for me. Something’s coming for me, I think. Something knows who I am, what I am. I don’t even know what I am but it does, and it’s calling for me.
I know you can help me. I need you to help me. I don’t know enough about what this is, what it means, what I see or what sees me — and I know you do. Please don’t ask me how I know, how I got your name or this address. Just tomorrow when I knock I need you to open the door. I need you to let me in. I’m not just a dumb kid looking for trouble. I’m a scared kid in a lot of trouble, and I know you can help me. You have to help me, please. I don’t know where else to go or who else to ask. Just open the door and talk to me, tell me I’m crazy or tell me I’m not. I need to know if this is real like I think or if I really am crazy. Thanks. -reliabel5 (Abel)