Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn't there

He wasn't there again today

I wish, I wish he'd go away

When I come home last night at three

The man was waiting there for me

But when I looked around the hall

I couldn't see him there at all

Go away, go away, don't you come back any more

Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door

Last night I saw upon the stair

A little man who was not there

He wasn't there again today

Oh, how I wish he'd go away

William Hughes Mearns - "Antigonish"

Garofița was very excited about going to the Sunday market again! She joined Gabriel and Mr Ozsvar in their car once more, claiming she wanted to buy some things for her house: an old table, even if beaten up, a chair maybe, maybesometrinketslikemoreteddies, whatever else that might be useful.

"Did I tell you about the call I received on Wednesday?" Mr Ozsvar said as he drove.

"No, what's up?" Gabi asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Dr Birta from Timișoara died."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, in his sleep."

"Daaamn. May he rest in peace."

"Amen." Garofița quietly said as she looked out the window.

"He was in the middle of studying the transition from life to afterlife. I can imagine he's rather pissed that he can't write about what he has witnessed first-hand."

"How old was he again?"

"Would have been 90 this year."

"God, I hope I won't still be working at 90 years old."

"Birta claimed at one point that he would designate someone in his will to contact him from the other side and write on his behalf. I don't know if he actually did it, though."

"Mr Ozsvar," Garofița turned to him, "is it true you can talk to the dead with a ouija board?"

"Yes, but it's not safe." He replied.

"It's, like," Gabi said, "opening your uncle Petre's pantry and grabbing a mystery bottle filled with clear liquid. Could be just water, could be vinegar, could be palinka hotter than Hell itself. It's a gamble."

"Like your 'gah-tcha' games, or whatever they're called." Mr Ozsvar said.

"It's like the internet!" Gabi said, raising his finger. "Anybody can claim anything behind the screen."

"Understood." She said.

"It's recommended you do a targeted summoning, so you talk with who you actually want to talk to." Mr Ozsvar continued as he drove over a crosswalk right before the light turned red.

"Those are kind of hard to do, though." Gabi said. "I only managed to do it once with my parents. You want to talk to someone, Garo?"

"No, no! Just curious. A girl at my sc-my, uh, my old school tried to use a ouija board once and her parents had to call a priest."

"Oh, that's very possible." Gabi laughed.

"Hauntings rarely happen in Romania," Mr Ozsvar said, "as almost every household is blessed with holy water on New Year's and most people are religious enough to bless it themselves regularly. But they can still happen!"

Mr Ozsvar went on to explain that ghosts are the souls of people who have died but haven't moved on to the colloquial other side.

Nobody knows what happens after death, as those who have experienced it, even when summoned for an inter-dimensional conversation, have a hard time finding the words to describe it. It is as if their minds go blank when asked to describe the Heaven, Hell, Nirvana or void they found themselves in. We don't really know which version of afterlife is the correct one, or if the ghosts that are contacted are really still the same people they were in life. Who knows how dying changes you? Ghosts, dead but still here, are for the most part themselves.

They may look indistinguishable from living people (except for the floating), look transparent or only be visible in reflective surfaces.

"What happens if a vampire becomes a ghost?" Garofița asked.

"Eh, when they die for good they don't usually hang around anymore." Mr Ozsvar said.

According to Păunescu, there are 2 main categories of ghosts: lucid ghosts and looping ghosts.

Lucid ghosts are able to talk and remember everything from their life. They can't interact with the world anymore, their spectral bodies phasing through physical objects. It's a rather miserable existence, unable to enjoy what the world has to offer and not being able to leave either. Why lucid ghosts get stuck after dying is one of the greatest mysteries, but they can be helped to pass through religious rites. Perhaps by sheer stubbornness to hold onto life they will their spirit to remain in place. Mr Birta would have tried it for sure if death didn't get him in while his guard was down.

Looping ghosts, as the name suggests, are the souls of people stuck on a loop of doing various activities from before they died or at the moment of their death. This type of ghost appears to be caused by the soul-bearer dying a very sudden death, faster than their brain can register what happened. They may not even be aware they are ghosts, going on about their "life" with limited memories. This makes it harder for them to be convinced to move on. There are countless stories of girls falling from rooftops every night, or of a car driving the same street for years after its accident.

"Some people are allergic to using their blinkers, I swear." Mr Ozsvar said. "Sorry, is this boring?"

"No!" Garofița said. "It's cool!"

"Why can't you be enthusiastic like her, Gabriel?"

"I already knew all this!" He scoffed.

There are exceptions to Păunescu's categorisation, of course, and there are exceptions to the exceptions. Gabi's favourites (sarcasm).

In the maternity ward in Ferești there was the ghost of nurse Marieta Ciocan, who died in 1995. She was a huge woman, 2 meters tall and built like a polar bear. She looked after mothers and newborn babies for 40 years, dragging bad family members outside by their necks with minimal effort. She had a cerebral haemorrhage in her 60s while on duty, but her soul continued to check on patients while her body lay on the floor.

Staff and priests tried to convince her to go to rest, but she would stare at them blankly and say her shift wasn't over yet. Therefore, she seems to be a combination of lucid and looping. Far from malevolent, her ghost was allowed to stay. Perhaps nurse Ciocan's version of Heaven was to continue taking care of others.

There was a big debate whether or not it was ethical to have ghost employees, since they couldn't really use money anymore. In the prison in Lăutari there were the lucid ghosts of three children, two girls and a boy. Part of the prison's building used to be an orphanage during the communist regime, its many rooms being repurposed.

During communism in Romania, all forms of birth control and abortion were banned, so the population would rise, more workers, etc etc. People who did not want children or could not afford to raise them would give them away at orphanages, which very quickly became overcrowded, understaffed and uncaring. There are many horror stories of what happened in those places. Let's just say it was no wonder the three children died at less than 10 years old.

The trio was the prison's unofficial mascots, spending most of their time in the offices, but the girls would frequently head out into the prison to torment its residents. What else was there to amuse themselves with? Call it atonement! The boy was meeker, but he knew how to read and would tell them why each prisoner was there, for ~personalised~ punishments.

"I wanna meet them!" Garofița giggled.

"You can come with me to Lăutari, if you want!" Gabi said. "I'm joking, that town sucks."

"Is it really that bad?"

"It really is Gotham! We're not being hyperbolic!"

They arrived in Hidiș and parked between a truck and a beaten-up little toyota. Garofița led the way, fixing the mask on her face and taking in her new favourite place in the world.

"Garo, you said you want a table?" Mr Ozsvar asked.

"Yes, but any table is fine." She said. "Nothing fancy."

"Girl, you could find one for free on facebook if we searched." Gabi said. "Or at the trash dump near Călimari."

"You are such a cheapskate." Mr Ozsvar said.

"Me?!" He whipped his head towards him. "You know what this man did once, Garo?!"

"No, let's go!" She tried to convince them to keep walking.

"He refused to buy a plastic bag because it was 10 freaking bani!"

"It used to be 5 bani!" Mr Ozsvar retorted. "We are living through a depression, Gabriel!"

Garofița almost left them behind, trotting between boxes of ratty home decor and porcelain plates.

Mr Chereji's stall was in the same place as last time, full of beauty and old things. Along with several collections of figurines (the teddies among them!), there were gilded mirrors stacked against each-other and ornate brass chandeliers, currently on the ground with disembodied wires bundled up.

"Mr Cherejiii!" Garofița happily ran towards him.

"Hey there!" He chuckled, and waved at the two other men as well. "How are you doing?"

"Good!" She said, taking the mask off her nose. She wished her period hadn't covered her cheeks in pimples.

"What do you have for us today?" Mr Ozsvar said.

"I'll show you in a minute." He replied. "Or, actually, you can go downstairs and see for yourselves. I have to talk with Sandu real quick."

"Is anybody else here?" Gabi asked.

"Nobody!" He said, followed by an odd laugh.

Garofița descended down the familiar steps and made her way to Relicum first. She opened the book to the end and found that 4 names appeared under hers since last time: Matei, Alexandru, Raisa and Dumitru. The book predicted Garofița would die in her 80s from a gas leak. That's not very good... She checked again and it said it would happen in her 90s, not of old age but from a slip on ice. Ugh, nevermind. The other people's deaths got updated too.

She set the book back how she found it and strolled between the shelves, swinging her arms and hoping to find more interesting things.

She looked down a row of bookshelves and abuptly stopped in her tracks. She had no reason to stop, there was nobody there to block her path. The aisle between shelves was completely empty, not even dust particles dancing in the air. There was nobody there, and not just invisible, for there was no shadow cast by the pale lightbulbs. There was no coldness associated with ghosts, no translucent outline, no nothing.

There was simply nobody there, nobody that could turn to look at her, no eyes that widened momentarily, and no hand inviting her to come closer. The dissonance made her stomach turn.

Garofița walked backwards until she could dash in the opposite direction. She glanced back to place where she didn't see anything, and still there was nothing.

Whoever wasn't there didn't have a voice either, and didn't ask her what was wrong. She ran back up the stairs to the surface, where there were tangible people to look at.

Garofița stood by the ceramic figurines and listened to Mr Ozsvar and Gabi's muffled conversation. The man who was not there didn't join in, didn't ask who the youth were and if he could not be of help. Garofița wanted to smack Gabi for answering. The man who was not there couldn't know who she was since he did not exist, but she still didn't want him to know.

Her head started to hurt.

People passed by the stall, looking while walking or stopping for a few seconds. Only Garofița was present and she smiled imagining herself as the vendor of pretty vintage things. She fought the urge to look back at the door, where there could not be any creak in the wooden stairs since there was no weight, and no eyes watching the back of her head.

In her old home she would avoid the glaring eyes of her parents, hoping they would stop being mad sooner if they could not see her face. They got madder no matter what expression she made. One brow or one lip corner was enough to set off an explosive. It had been such a nice break from that vigilance since she ran away. Suddenly feeling like she has to do it again made her want to die.

The man who was not there was no longer there, and she sighed in relief.

A real old man with a dark beard and a cowboy hat was looking at Mr Chereji's mirrors. He glanced around and saw the only person available was a little girl with a facemask.

"How much for this one?" He asked, pointing to a mirror with a rounded frame.

"Uh, uhm..." Garofița looked around for Mr Chereji but he was nowhere near, and Gabriel and Mr Ozsvar sounded far from the door. "...50? I think? S-Sorry, the, uh, boss isn't here."

"Fifty hundred?" The man asked.

Garofița nearly choked. Before she could say anything the old man was already taking money out of a leather wallet.

"W-Wait!"

"Here, I'm in a hurry." The man said, picking up the mirror and walking away.

Garofița was left in shock with the money in her hand. She slowly glanced down at it. She never held this much money before, it was 5 times her stash at home.

She heard Gabriel coming up the stairs and felt the urge to hide the money. She just rolled it in her fist.

"I need a coffee mixed with red bull." He groaned.

"Is that safe?" Garo asked.

"Don't care." He propped himself against the door. "Did you notice it too?"

"T-There's nobody there..." She said.

"I know!"

"But..."

"Yeah. Freaky stuff."

"Is it, like, a ghost?"

"I think so. It's rare, but it can happen."

"W-What can happen?"

"Uhhh, like,... have you ever seen a ghost in real life?"

"One time... it was a looping ghost of a lady. But, uh, after she heard me she stopped and looked at me, so I'm not sure."

"Yeah, might have been a combo... Although looping ghosts have moments of lucidity. There is this pretty cool paper on it, by Maria Szekely, who studied apparitions all over the world, particularly grey ladies in the UK- ah shoot, sorry, I'm off topic."

"It's okay!"

"Anyway, was that lady you saw visible?"

"Yeah, like you and me. It was kind of dark, though."

"Yes, so, how visible a ghost is depends on the ghost, as well as an individual person's senses." He explained while rubbing his eyes. "Some people can see ghosts very well, while others not at all. Then add to that a ghost that is hardly visible too. You may only be able to hear it, or smell it, or sense its presence. Or nothing! A ghost could be in your house right now and you'd have no idea!"

"Oh."

"Or you'd just feel a sort of unease. Humans have really good danger senses, left from back when we could get clapped by wild tigers. Like you know when you're trying to go to sleep but you keep thinking something is there, so you keep turning on your phone's flashlight, only to see nothing. OH! It can also depend on angle! Some ghosts are only visible from certain angles. Like when you're turning around really fast, and for a second it looks like there's a person down the hallway?"

"Please stop."

"I'm back! Sorry, sorry!" Mr Chereji returned, phone in hand and still close to his ear.

"How is Sandu?" Mr Ozsvar asked from downstairs.

"His girl left him again."

"I'm shocked! Truly!"

"Uhm, Mr Chereji, a-a man bought one of the mirrors." Garofița said, trying to hand him the money like it was hot.

"Why is there so much?" He raised an eyebrow. "Which one was it?"

"A small round one. Uh, like this one."

"Oh, girl, those aren't worth even 1000 lei!"

Garofița's heart dropped. "Sh-Should we give him the money back?"

"Hell no!" He laughed, stashing it in his pocket.