Forever My Dear Ghost Read online

  Forever, My Dear Ghost

  F. S. Pinkey

  Published by F. S. Pinkey, 2022.

  Forever, My Dear Ghost

  Copyright © 2022 by F. S. Pinkey.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used, distributed, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopy, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, you can contact :

  http://www.fspinkey.com

  Book Formatting by Derek Murphy @Creativindie

  ISBN: 9798201799502

  ASIN : B09Q8W1TMS

  First Edition: March 2022

  “Left hand reaches towards the moon,

  Right hand twirls the red thread of fate.

  May you and I be granted

  A predestined love as we desire

  Under the shimmering moonlight

  You and I, together -

  -Forever.”

  -Upwards To The Moon

  Performed by Sa Dingding

  CONTENTS

  Forever, My Dear Ghost

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  1

  The Professor Gets The (Haunted) House!

  "SO PROFESSOR, YOU LIKED THE HOUSE? Wanna buy it?" The broker’s eyes were glistening with expectation.

  To tell the truth, this house seemed creepy to Yunxi Wang, though he was not a believer in spooky tales. The house had been abandoned for a while, nearly 3-4 years. As soon as he stepped into the house following the broker and the owner, he felt the chilly wind blowing inside it. The air had a damp smell. The walls were full of mold, windows were broken, the sewage system was damaged, and the water system was not working. Though it was daytime, the house was dark and gloomy. It was as if the house was mourning someone’s death and he might see the dead body if he stepped into the next room.

  Yunxi Wang looked at the dead and filthy garden outside and sighed inside his heart. He was unable to afford a better house than this one with his meagre savings. It was his third time visiting this house.

  Though this house was a bit creepy, it met all his requirements. It was in a quiet and peaceful locality. The duplex house had a garden in front of it, and there was also a small backyard. The rooms were spacious enough and all the rooms had wide windows. This old house had a garage too. Moreover, his university was closer to this neighbourhood.

  He looked around and said to the broker, "Would the price cover the repairing cost? Because I cannot give you more than this amount for this creepy-looking old building."

  The broker looked at the actual owner, who was desperately trying to sell the house. The scary rumours surrounding it were making it impossible for him to rent or to sell. The owner looked at Yunxi, the tall and thin figured man. His pair of deep-set eyes under sharp eyebrows were holding a calm and wise temperament. A semi-round metal frame of power glasses sitting on his high-bridged nose, and his neat and clean suit created a scholarly air surrounding him. With fair and flawless skin, the man looked very elegant and handsome. He had heard that Yunxi was a professor. Now seeing him up close, he seemed to come from a good family as well.

  This elegant looking silly man agreed to come and see the house despite listening to the rumours. It was his chance to get this bummer out of his life. So he nodded quickly in agreement. He just wanted to sell this ominous house as quickly as possible. However, as soon as he listened to the professor’s instructions and calculated the cost inside his head, the landlord's eyes widened with shock. The repair would cost at least one-seventh of the selling money. He looked at the gloomy old house and cursed his fate silently before biting the bullet, and nodded once again.

  Yunxi Wang was not silly; he simply didn't believe in superstitious things like ghosts or bad omens. The broker didn't tell him anything about the rumours. The first time he came to visit this abandoned duplex building, he, coincidentally, met one of his exchange students, who lived in the very neighbourhood. So far Yunxi knew about her was that one of her parents was from Germany.

  “Professor,” she called Yunxi when the broker was not nearby. “Don’t buy this house. My granny told me that this house is haunted.” Her two big eyes were getting bigger to emphasise the significance of her words. “Whoever lived here met ill fate. Either they got sick or they had a financial crisis. People have seen shadows lurking around this house, you know! Look how terrible it looks!” She curved her lips to show her disgust.

  Yunxi lifted his right eyebrow and said in an annoyed tone, “You are a student of Applied Physics. How can you say and believe such nonsense?”

  Well, he really couldn’t blame his student. No matter how many times he visited this house, it never failed to give the vibe of a gloomy and dark atmosphere.

  'The house may look better after some repairs,' Yunxi thought.

  So skeptic Yunxi ignored his student's warning and finalized the deal.

  After a week's renovation, he could move into the house.

  Yunxi Wang was 33 this year. He had been a professor of physics at Nanjing University of Science for the last eight years. His wife divorced him five years ago and took away their only son with her. Since then Yunxi had been living alone. He didn't want to marry again as his ex-wife did. However, Yunxi Wang was a human being too, so there were times when he felt extremely lonely and he missed his son too much. Although his mother was trying to set up another marriage for him, he simply chose to be alone.

  The night the deal was made, at dinner time, when the room was filled with faint sounds of chopsticks hitting against the white clay rice bowl, Yunxi’s father cleared his throat.

  “Heard from your mother that you have finally bought yourself a house?” Yunxi’s father suddenly spoke up while chewing the vegetable.

  “Yes, I have,” Yunxi said after taking the meatball into his mouth. He didn’t look at his father even once.

  “Hmm.” His father didn’t make any further conversation. Yunxi, too, didn’t make any attempt. But his mother couldn’t control herself anymore.

  “But why do you have to? Why are you leaving us? Who will take care of you there?” Her beautiful sharp eyebrows, which were like Yunxi’s, were knitted together in worry.

  “Mama, I’m not a little child, I can take care of myself. And you can come at any time.”

  “Yes,” Yunxi’s father spoke up again. “He is now a grown-up man. Let him live as he wishes.” The sixty-something old man looked in Yunxi’s direction for a short time. “As long as he doesn’t make our head lower down in shame with his activities.”

  Yunxi managed to swallow the last lump of his food down his throat. His relationship with his father was cold since his high school days. When he married and had his son, his father seemed to open himself up a little bit in front of him. But after Yunxi’s divorce, his father grew colder than before.

  Yunxi put down his chopsticks and thanked his parents for the food before leaving the table. He felt too suffocated. His father’s harsh words never failed to pierce his heart and slice it into pieces. To move his focus from his suffocation, he began to think about his new house- how it would look after the repairing works.

  ‘I need to contact an interior designer to decorate the rooms. Hmm, how much do I need to spend?’

  Realising that his mind was focusing on the expenditure, he felt relieved.

  It took him time to make his mother agree with his departure. He neither wanted to live with his parents nor wanted to live in the university dorm for the professors. He wanted a house- a home of his own.

  A week passed in the blink of an eye. In the meantime, he was very busy packing his things and hiring an interior designer, choosing the minimal design, selecting colours and furniture, and buying the necessary items for his new house. His mother helped him to buy the necessary things and utensils. Besides, he had loads of examination papers to assess.

  After a week, when he reached his new home, he was surprised.

  'Whoa! Is it the same house I saw a week before? It doesn't look creepy at all.' Yunxi Wang smiled with satisfaction.

  The previous owner had worked hard to polish this house and made it shine like a pearl under the sun. The windows were all intact. The water line was working perfectly. The sewage system was okay. The inside and outside were painted with bright colours. The garden was clean.

  He walked around the house and felt happy. He saw the workers from The Movers & Packers Company putting and arranging the furniture inside the house.

  “Keep it there. Carefully! Put that down. I said carefully.” The house was filled with the designer’s loud commanding voice, the sound of furniture being moved, and the footsteps of the workers. They completed their task before noon and left.

  The house was beautiful but still ... it felt lonely.

  Yunxi walked to the study room which was beside his bedroom on the first floor. The white coloured room was decorated with a desk and several bookshelves, which were light wood i
n colour. He stood beside the window and looked at his garden. To make the house look livelier, he decided to buy some plants for the garden. But before that, he had to prepare for the housewarming party in the evening. He ordered food and beverages from a well-known restaurant. For flowers, he went to a nearby florist. He chose some fresh white roses, blue orchids and tulips. He chose them randomly but white roses were his favourite. He brought them and decorated the empty glass vases. Then he took shower and put on a simple casual tee and jeans.

  Yunxi stood in front of the mirror on the door of his closet and combed his black hair. He had nice silky smooth hair. Yunxi wasn’t a thickly muscled man but he had broad shoulders and a slim waist which made him look good and attractive in any outfit. He looked at himself in the mirror and felt satisfied.

  His parents arrived even before the food was delivered. One by one his guests arrived too.

  “Hey, you got yourself a nice house!” one of his friends said.

  “Yeah, it’s nice. But Professor Wang, you could live in the faculty quarter. Why did you choose to buy a house so suddenly?” Professor Chang, Yunxi’s close colleague, asked while drinking beer.

  “Well, I see all of my colleagues’ faces all day long. I’m not interested in seeing them all the time. Ha ha ha!”

  “But I think Yunxi did the right job. It is better to own a house than to be a guest of the government,” Yunxi’s friend, who was an accountant, commented. “Right, Uncle?”

  Yunxi’s father was silent this whole time and replied with just a single ‘Hmm’.

  Yunxi’s mother called him while serving the dishes on the table. “Yunxi, from where did you buy those flowers? They all withered and spreading a bad smell.”

  Yunxi was surprised. “What are you saying? I brought them fresh this afternoon. They can’t wither this fast.”

  “Look over there.” She pointed at the vase on the dining table. “Remove them fast or the guests will have a bad impression.”

  Yunxi picked them and noticed that all the flowers had withered. So he removed all of them and threw them in the bin in an instant.

  The guests ate and chattered all along. Yunxi was kind of introverted, but he felt warm because of the people’s presence around him and their good wishes for his house and for his future.

  “So what will you do next? Have you thought about your marriage?” his cousin-sister asked.

  “Ah, Lulu! You brought up the matter at the right time,” Yunxi’s mother chirped. “Yunxi, the matchmaker brought two good proposals just this morning. I brought the girl’s photos for you.” Mrs Wang thought that it was a good time to pick up the topic of Yunxi’s marriage. They all would be able to persuade her son to get married again. She got up from her chair and brought out two photographs from her expensive purple purse. “See, aren’t they pretty?”

  “Yes, look at the pictures and choose one. No need to live alone in this big house,” Yunxi’s father Mr Wang spoke up.

  Everyone got excited and cheered up. They all took the photos in turn and praised the girls’ beauty. But Yunxi got upset, and his friends were silent too. He took the photos. Both girls applied too much make-up and took photos like models. He wouldn’t be surprised if these photos were photoshopped as well.

  “Mama, I’ll talk to you about it later,” Yunxi replied coldly.

  After seeing off his guests and his parents, Yunxi made a video call to his six year old son Sam and showed him the house.

  “Sam, it’s your room. I painted three walls with light blue colour and one wall with green colour. See, the green mountains and pine trees design on the wallpaper?” Yunxi walked further away from the green wall to capture the whole painting. “Do you like it?”

  “Yes Papa, I like the design. But where’s my bed and other things. Why is the room empty?”

  “I’ll buy it very soon. Your papa spent all the money buying this house for you and me. But don’t worry, Papa will buy all the things you need.”

  “Hi, Yunxi! How’s everything going?” Yunxi heard his ex-wife’s voice.

  “Hey, Mengli! Everything’s good here. How are you and Peter?” he asked softly.

  “Oh, we are doing great. Sorry Yunxi, we need to go now. Sam has to go to school and I need to go to the doctor,” Mengli said in an apologetic tone. She was still looking beautiful with her porcelain-like skin, softly arched eyebrows, big eyes and petal-like lips. Her cheeks were blushing pink. She was four months pregnant.

  “Sure. Take care of yourself. Bye! Sam-Sam, bye-bye!”

  “Bye-bye, Papa!”

  “Bye Yunxi!” Mengli looked somewhat sad.

  But Yunxi was staring at his son. Sam got his doe-like big eyes from his mother and Yunxi felt that his universe was residing in them. He never thought that he’d love his only child this much. He felt a twisted pain in his heart. Yet, he was satisfied today.

  After cleaning up his house, Yunxi fell asleep quickly. But in the middle of the night, he suddenly woke up. His eyes were wide open. He didn't know why he woke up like this. It felt quite strange to him as he thought that someone was standing beside him.

  Yunxi’s body was sweating. He looked left and right in the darkroom but couldn't see anything suspicious. He got out of the bed and walked to the kitchen which was downstairs. He opened the refrigerator and took a bottle of water. While drinking, he felt a presence behind him.

  He turned his head fast to see but found nothing. So he thought it was his imagination and let that go. After drinking water, Yunxi got back to his bed with the water bottle, in case he needed it again. He put the bottle beside his head and tried to fall asleep again. After many twists and turns, he was finally asleep.

  The next day Yunxi Wang bought some flower plants, a small shovel and some fertilizer on the way back to his home and started to plant them in his garden. While digging the soil, his eyes caught something which had a smooth and white surface. He removed the soil and took that thing in his palm.

  It was a little angel that was flawlessly carved out of pure white jade. The cold jade angel was very pretty and nicely fitted into his palm. Yunxi felt so good holding the angel in his palm that he didn't throw it. He brought it inside his home, washed it, and kept it on his study table.

  In the evening, after talking to his son, Yunxi Wang sat down to eat his dinner. He didn’t cook it; his mother had put a week's worth of dishes in his refrigerator for him, though he didn’t want them from her. He took one of the boxes out, warmed it and sat to eat at his huge six person table alone.

  Sigh!

  ‘The table’s too large.’

  After two bites, he couldn’t eat anymore. So he went to his study room, took the jade angel and kept it on the table in front of him before sitting again to eat.

  He sighed several times, looking at the little sculpture while eating.

  “So, now I need a statue beside me to eat, eh!” Yunxi scoffed. “A lifeless statue!”

  After washing his dishes, he took the little sculpture to his study room and placed it back on his desk. He spent some time reading a thesis paper listlessly. Before going to bed, Yunxi took a stroll inside his house, ensuring its security.

  Thud!

  In the middle of the night, Yunxi Wang woke up again due to the sound.

  This time it was worse- he was having sleep paralysis. And it was his first time experiencing it.

  At the same time, he kept feeling that someone else was present beside him. Yunxi felt so scared that he couldn’t breathe well. This made him panic more and he began to twist his body. After some time, Yunxi’s body was released and he slowly sat up on his bed. A bead of sweat rolled down from his forehead and he was panting like a dog.

  After returning to normal, he stretched his hand to his bedside small cabinet to look for water. But the bottle was on the ground.

  ‘Was that the sound of this water bottle falling?’ Yunxi thought but didn’t mind it too much.

  He took the bottle from the ground to drink water. After taking a moment of relaxation, he fell asleep again.

  Next few days, he slept well without any disruption. His life was going smoothly. He invested his time in writing papers on applied physics for the next international conference.

  After two or three more days, he smelled a stench in his house. It was a foul stench of rotten flesh. Yunxi looked for the source of the stench in the kitchen but couldn't find it. The stench eventually vanished.