OTHER SIDE
I was hit by a car that didn’t see me in the crosswalk one night. It was not that the lighting was bad but more so that I was dressed in dark colored clothing and the driver of the oncoming vehicle did not see me until it was too late. A Hawaiian man came to me who was not the driver, he helped me to my feet and walked me to the side of the road and had me sit so that I could gather myself.
He continually asked me if I was alright and I assured him that I was. He then suggested that he help me get back to my house further up Hakimo road. I was still a bit dizzy and the man helped to right me every now and again. I pointed to the left of the road and told the man that the brown Quonset hut was the place that I lived in. We carefully crossed the street but the second we walked into my driveway, something seemed strange, visually it was my place but it didn’t feel like it. There was an odd grayish pall which seemed to have fallen over my property, like something out of those old black and white Hammer films depicting old London, except this was Nanakuli.
It was the same when I entered my home, all of the lights were on but everything within my domicile was dim, the brightness was gone. My mother sat at the kitchen table as if she were an oddly made up actress in a Harold Pinter play, the same went for my wife who was always dressed in bright colors. Something about her was lifeless, she seemed like an image taken from a black and white picture that was now laying on our bed. I walked over to where she lay and reached out to touch her when suddenly the Hawaiian man who helped me walk home now stood between myself and my wife. He slapped me across the face, “Touch nothing in this place lest you never return to the life you once knew!”
“But this IS my home,” I told him.
“This is not your home but merely the shadow of what was once your life, why do you think everything is so dim?” The Hawaiian man scolded. “It is the life that can never be again; what you see are memories and hopes that the deceased wish was so. This place occupied your last thoughts before you died. Your wife and mother will only see you like a shadow that haunts the house, not as you were in life.”
“I’m dead?” I asked him in shock, I was quite certain that I was hit by a car but not killed. “How can that be? You helped me get here!”
“I helped your ghost get here, your body still lays at the place where you were struck down,” the Hawaiian man said mournfully.
“But you slapped me and I felt it!” I screamed at him. “So, how can I be dead if that happened?”
“You and I are ghosts, we occupy the same space on this empty plane. We are not of the living, to touch the living means that all other spirits who are hungry to return to their former toil as human beings will see you and they will devour you in order to get to those you love. This is why we can never physically touch those we knew in life, not for any reason whatsoever.” The Hawaiian man sounded as if he were reminding himself of this edict more than he was instructing me.
With that, I dashed out of my home and ran down the lane of my gravel filled property and ran down the road to the crosswalk where I was hit by the vehicle. The ambulance, fire truck, and police cars blocked onlookers from approaching closer. The medical team worked furiously to revive me with CPR, but I had not a moment to waste, I reached out to grab my foot but the Hawaiian man returned and wrestled me to the ground. This time I fought back and stuck both of my thumbs in his eyes, it made him let go of me as he howled in pain. I got up and walked over to my body where I reached for my foot, it was at that moment that I saw all of the hungry spirits surge forward through the throng of the living. They quickly moved around the onlookers, the police, the firefighters and the EMT. They were drooling with ravenous anticipation but the moment that they realized it was my own body that I touched, they screamed and howled with repulsive horror.
….…….
I awoke in a hospital room at Pali Momi behind Pearl ridge, my wife and mother were sitting nearby talking to one another. My voice was more of a croak than it was a voice, but I called out for my wife and her eyes flew open wide. My mother couldn’t have been on the other side of my bed anymore quicker than if she were a winning track star. I was weak and dizzy with a fracture here and a broken bone there but very much alive. It would be a few more weeks before I could go home, but when I finally did I was able to walk out of my room on my own two feet. On the walls of the hallway leading to the elevator were pictures of all the old doctors who worked at the hospital who have long since passed. I merely glanced at the framed pictures but I couldn’t help but notice the last framed picture of one doctor before we got into the elevator. I looked at it closer and to my disbelief, it was the Hawaiian man who came and got me after I was hit by that car. It was the same Hawaiian man who took me to my home only to tell me that I was dead and could no longer come into any kind of contact with the living. I asked the nurse about who that doctor in the picture was because I could see that there wasn’t any plaque with his name on like the others.
“I’m not sure,” the nurse answered. “What I do know is that years and years ago he was killed by a drunk driver while crossing the road in Nanakuli one night, just where Hakimo road comes out on to Farrington Highway."
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