Search in the Rain

Jeff sat on the couch in Bill’s scrubby little living room. The TV was on and set to the right channel, and Bill was in the kitchen, procuring the first of many beers. There was a bowl of nachos on the coffee table and nary a bored girlfriend in sight. It was pouring down rain outside, but Bill’s little house was well-heated and the thumping rain overhead was soothing and comfortable. Jeff grabbed a nacho and swiped it through the cheese dip. All was right with the world.

Someone knocked at the door. Jeff jumped a little. They weren’t expecting anyone else. Bill had invited another guy from work, a squirrelly little guy named Jake, but Jake was newly engaged. Guys-only nights weren’t in the cards for him, not for a while.

The knock came again. “Is someone else coming?” he asked.

“Oh, that’s probably Robert,” Bill called from the kitchen. “Open the door, will you?”

Jeff obliged. A cold wind blasted him in the face, and he closed his eyes with a shiver. When he opened them, a young man with a pale face and dripping black hair stood on the porch. His eyes were wild and shadowed, as though he hadn’t slept in days.

“Have you seen Jessica?” the young man asked. His voice was trembly, either from cold or panic.

“No, I haven’t,” Jeff said. “Are you Robert?”

The man nodded shakily. He couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty, and he was ill-dressed for November. A white T-shirt—almost transparent from the pounding rain—and dark blue slacks. No coat or hat, and the temperature outside was barely above freezing. Poor guy, what had made him leave the house like this?

“Yes, I’m Robert. I’ve lost my girl Jessica, and I need to find her. Can you come help me?”

“Look man, it’s pouring rain, and the game’s about to start,” Jeff said. “Come inside, dry off, and we’ll call the cops if she’s missing. Jessica’s your girlfriend?”

“She’s the love of my life,” Robert whispered. “She’s gone, and nobody will help me.”

“Don’t say that,” Jeff said. “Come on in, and I’ll get you a towel. We’ll help you.”

“He’s not going to come in,” Bill said, walking into the living room with a beer in each hand. “He never does.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Jeff asked. He took the can that Bill offered and turned back to Robert.

The porch was empty. A sharp gust of wind slapped Jeff in the face with a fistful of rain.

“Close the door, will ya?” Bill said. He plopped down on the couch and took a swig of his beer. “Robert never comes in. Just goes door to door all night, asking for someone to help him find that chick Jessica.”

“What?” Jeff shut the door and went back to the couch. It was almost kickoff time.

“Robert’s a ghost. Always turns up on cold, rainy nights. Usually in the fall, but he came to the door once last spring. I guess it just has to be cold, dark, and rainy.”

Jeff stared at Bill. “You’re full of shit,” he said.

Bill shrugged. “I didn’t believe it either, when neighbor-lady Grace told me. Then when I saw him, I thought it was some kid yanking my chain. But I’ve lived in this house almost ten years, and that kid hasn’t aged. Hasn’t even changed his clothes. So believing sort of snuck up on me.”

Jeff took a fistful of nachos and turned to the TV. He was done listening to this crap. Bill was a good guy, but he didn’t know when to fucking stop.

After the game, though—goddam Bears, Jeff hated them so much, the fumbling morons—and a six-pack and a half, Jeff went back to the subject of Robert. It beat talking about that embarrassing game.

“So if this Robert kid is a ghost, then something killed him,” Jeff said. “You know what did it?”

‘Froze to death, man,” Bill said. His eyes were vague, and he gestured dramatically with his hands as he spoke. “Was in the news. You can still find the story on the Net. He got in a fight with his girl, they’d both been drinking, and she stormed off. Dude ran out after her, and—you know the forest preserve out by the edge of the subdivision? I guess you could cut through it to get to her house, so that’s where he went. Tried to go through the ravine, fell into the river. Didn’t drown, though. He got out, but I guess he was so cold he couldn’t move, and nobody was close enough to hear him if he yelled. I hear that when you freeze to death, you get really sleepy. Like passing out from being drunk. They found him next morning, lying curled up in the tall grass like a baby deer. Right next to that river.”

Jeff was feeling drowsy himself, and he shivered. “What about the girl? What happened to her?”

“Wasn’t near as wasted as he was, and she went to the gas station and called her mom for a ride. She’s still alive. Lives downstate somewhere. Husband and kids and shit.”

“And meanwhile his ghost is still roaming around, looking for her.”

“Yeah.”

“Has anyone tried to tell him that she’s fine?”

“Yup. He doesn’t listen when you talk. He asks if you’ll help him look, and then he just goes.”

“Could you get this Jessica chick to come up here, and just hang out and wait for him so he can see her for himself?” After seven beers, ghosts were a much more interesting subject than when Jeff was sober.

“Think someone did once, got Jessica to come for a visit, but he never appeared. I don’t know if the weather was wrong, or maybe Jessica kept him away somehow. But it didn’t work. Not everyone sees him. My wife lived here for three years, and she never saw him. She still thinks I’m full of shit.”

“Bill, you are full of shit.”

“Yeah, but not about that. Just about that ‘forsaking all others’ thing.”

“Dude, you’re a prick.”

“Yeah, I know. How about another beer?”

Jeff forgot all about Bill’s pet ghost for the next couple of months. Work kept him busy, as did the goddam Bears and their goddam soul-sucking season. He wasn’t sure what was worse: sitting in a cubicle for hours, glued to a computer monitor, or sitting in front of a TV for hours, watching a train-wreck in slow motion.

Finally the season ended, and midwinter found Jeff back in Bill’s townhouse for a much happier occasion: Jeff’s fortieth birthday. Jake made it this time, and the three men spent a cheerful evening drinking beer, swapping sex lies, and noshing on the novelty titty cupcakes Jake had brought. His fiancée, he confided, worked in an erotic bakery. Bill solemnly swore that he would rearrange Jake’s entire outlook on life if he let this one get away. It was unseasonably warm outside, but far from pleasant; rather than snow, a sleeting rain pounded the windows.

Someone banged on the door. Jake jumped, but Bill just looked up and nodded. “That’ll be Robert. Open the door, Jeff? He’ll bang all night if you don’t.”

Jeff opened the door, and the same shivering young man stood on the porch. His eyes were wild with panic, and his black hair was plastered to his face. “Please, will you help me find Jessica?” he asked. “I need to find her.”

“Jessica’s fine,” Jeff said, knowing it was useless. He didn’t know when he’d started to believe Bill’s assertion that this was a ghost, but he believed now. Maybe it was the wet, panicked eyes. Nobody could fake that look.

“Jessica’s fine,” he repeated. “You should—you know. Go on. Home, or wherever.”

Robert only stared, and Jeff looked into the dead man’s eyes. They were dark and eternal, and Jeff saw that the young man was in hell. He knew the truth, which he was trapped in this endless search for no real purpose, but he was unable to stop, unable to break free and go wherever lost souls were meant to go when they became found. Robert’s eyes were in an agony of terror and grief, and he could not find his way out.

“Jessica’s the love of my life,” the dead man whispered. “Will you help me find her?”

Something in Jeff’s head clicked. “Yes,” he said, thinking fuck it, it’s my birthday and I’ll do what I want. “Yes, I will. Let’s go.” He stepped out the door and closed it quickly, before Bill or Jake could say a word.

Robert was already running away, down the street. Jeff had to jog to keep up.

“Thank you for doing this,” Robert said. “Thank you for helping me. Nobody else would help me look for her. They wouldn’t even answer their doors. I was alone, and it was so cold.”

“I know,” Jeff said. The rain was stinging his head and shoulders. His good shirt was soaked. “It was a shitty way to die.”

Robert turned around and Jeff was nose-to-nose with the dead man. “It was so cold, it went all the way through me. I knocked and knocked, but nobody would help me. I was too drunk to drive. So I tried to walk to her house. I fell in the water. God, it was so cold!”

Jeff understood now. Robert had knocked on doors, had asked his neighbors for help after Jessica ran out. But nobody had helped him, and Robert had panicked and taken off after her himself. After his sudden death, he’d found himself locked into the same pattern of knocking and asking, knocking and asking. Even though the object of his search was long gone.

But now Jeff was breaking the pattern. What would happen now?

Robert turned away and kept running. The cold winter rain poured over them both, baptizing them in darkness.

“I have to find her, I have to apologize, and then everything will be all right,” Robert said, apparently talking to himself. Jeff followed and said nothing. They were in an unfamiliar part of the subdivision, and Jeff could see winter-bare trees up ahead. They were approaching the forest preserve.

Robert kept going at a fast walk, and in spite of the cold and his dawning apprehension, Jeff followed. He felt locked in, as much a part of the pattern now as Robert himself.

“Jessica!” Robert shouted. “Jessica, are you in there?”

There was a shallow ravine cutting through the preserve, and there was a small stream at the bottom. But with the unseasonable January thaw, that stream was now a cold, coursing river. Robert stumbled to the edge and looked around. A heavy breeze blew, Jeff shivered so violently that he felt like he was having a seizure—and Robert fell in.

Jeff reacted without thinking. He jumped feet-first into the river after him. It wasn’t deep—his head didn’t go under—but the cold tore through him like a dull knife and he couldn’t feel his feet. Jeff stumbled, and then his head did go under. It was like being attacked by cold razors. He flailed—and his fingers snagged Robert’s white T-shirt.

Jeff grabbed Robert with both hands and somehow found his feet again. His head broke the surface, and he took a deep, lung-burning breath of cold air. Robert’s head lolled. His eyes were closed.

Jeff dragged him out of the ravine and collapsed onto the freezing ground. He closed his eyes. Far off, he heard Bill shouting.

Jeff awoke in a soft, smelly bed. His head hurt, and his mouth tasted like gritty mud. He looked around and saw titty posters and beer signs. He was in Bill’s bedroom. Bill himself sat in a bean bag chair next to the bed. “Well hell, Jeff,” he said. “I knew you were bummed about turning forty, but that’s no reason to try to off yourself.”

“Bite me,” Jeff said. “Is Robert okay? I pulled him out.”

“Dude, Robert’s been dead for fifteen years. There’s no way you could have pulled him out of that stream.”

“Except that I did,” Jeff said quietly. But he understood that he hadn’t actually saved him. He should have known that he couldn’t save a dead man.

But still, maybe he had changed something.

Maybe having a companion, a witness to his lonely death, had finally brought Robert the peace he’d sought.

And maybe—Jeff straightened as this thought occurred to him—maybe that was what he’d really been looking for all these years. Not Jessica, not really.

After all, nobody wanted to die alone.