The night that my roommate Steven and I saw a ghost, we didn’t even really see it. It was the middle of the night when we met unexpectedly in the kitchen, both woken by a sound. The apple juice cartons we stacked on top of our apartment refrigerator had been scattered across the floor. We were not sure how.
An AV unit pointed in a way that could have caused them to fall, and we felt suddenly cold. After checking the thermostat, I confirmed that the temperature had been changed; the dial read 42 degrees.
“Steven? Go get the screwdriver.” I said. Holding the handle in my hand, I tried to change the dial to read 68, but couldn’t. Convinced I had simply stuck the flat-head in the wrong way, I took it out and reinserted it. Still, the dial would not turn.
My hand was interrupted by a sudden cold feeling that ran through my body, as if entering through the capillaries in my palm and jolting my heart. A shadow of some kind was struggling for control of the thermostat.
“Steven. I think a ghost is controlling this thing.” I stammered. My hand dropped to my side and the screw driver fell to the floor. We didn’t say anything else, and didn’t need to.
I remember that our eyes were tearing up like little girls’ as we ran to the front door and made our way down the fire escape. The rails of the corkscrew staircase were hot from heat simmering inside, but I didn’t feel it. The cold current was still running through my veins when I reached the safety of a black sky.
Even the moon was smiling at something else instead of laughing.