100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2024. #61. Slaps.

When you hear someone get slapped across the face enough, it sounds like heavy droplets of rain striking the bare sidewalk outside your house.

There are fourteen of us in the home. Although she was our mother, we always called her our caretaker, Ms. Purrietree. She raised us on her own, can you imagine? We were all a handful, and a few of us got the business end of Ms. Purrietree's slipper, fly-swatter, ruler, yardstick, or wooden spoon. As we got older, Ms. Purrietree needed to make things easier for herself, so she instituted a rule that said that if one of us messed up, we would all suffer that one person's transgressions together. That meant lining up all fourteen of us and going down the line with open-hand slaps to our faces. Ms. Purrietree had small hands, but her slaps were the cat-o-nine-tails at the end of a whip. She'd undoubtedly been practiced enough that she knew how to effectively deliver a slap. It stung. She worked quickly going down the line as we each received her discipline. So fast, in fact, that for one twisted moment, I thought it sounded like heavy droplets of rain striking the bare sidewalk outside our home. 

Today, our mother, Ms. Purrietree, has been gone for fourteen years. The old house still stands unchanged but well maintained by its most recent occupants, who, as I have come to visit, are applying a new coat of paint all around. The lawn is very well-manicured, and the oversized garage is the most organized it's ever been. The mango tree is nicely pruned, exhibiting a near-bonsai quality. I'm impressed but sad as the old energy we left behind is gone. No trace of the fourteen of us remains. That's when I heard it and stopped dead in my tracks. My blood ran cold, and I was mortified to the spot.

"That's what I was talking about," Mr. Shigetomi whispered. "That's why I called you! My family is being physically assaulted by this ghost in our house!"

"What the fuck, is that?" I stammered.

"You tell me!" Mr. Shigetomi hissed. "You lived here long before us!"

Marvin Shigetomi was behind me, pushing me into the front door. I resisted the entire time, pleading with him not to do this. He would not hear of it and gave me no quarter. "Look! Look!" He screamed. "You tell me what the hell is going on?"

His wife and three kids were being physically assaulted by an apparition that was all five feet six inches tall. Looping slaps like a whip that left brutal welts on the sides of their faces. Running made it worse for them because the sting of flesh on flesh cracked the air and hurt my eardrums like it did to Mr. Shigetomi, too. "Don't run!" I screamed. "Don't run! Just stay still and take it! You'll only get slapped once if you stay still and don't move!"

Once they did what I said and stayed still, the physical assault eased up, and the spirit of Ms. Purrietree was gone. "You made changes to the house, which is nice, but you didn't ask Ms. Purrietree! She's upset; that's why she's come back and slapped the shit out of you like she used to do us!"

When I woke up in the hospital, Mr. Shigetomi was there. He told me I'd collapsed to the floor and went catatonic. He didn't know what to do, so he brought me to the E.R. at Straub and told me I'd been here for a week until I finally came out of it. "It sounds like heavy raindrops on the sidewalk, right?" I said.

"What does?" Shigetomi asked.

"The slaps," I replied. "The slaps."

I was on Shigetomi, and before he knew it, I had him on the sterile floor in my room. Slapping the shit out of him the way Ms. Purrietree used to do to us. Fourteen swift stinging slaps like heavy rain droplets on the bare sidewalk.