Back in 1999 I was living in San Antonio. One day, as I drove into my apartment complex, an ambulance was leaving my parking lot in a hurry. There was a crowd of neighbours gathered around a tree talking. I saw my wife and son in the crowd and they greeted me as I walked toward my apartment. I asked her what had happened. She told me that our young neighbour boy had stopped breathing. It was sad because he was only about 9 years old. His mother was single and raising two boys that were a few years apart. The 9 year old was the young one.
The mother was working long hours and had taken a nap while the older kid played outside and the younger stayed in watching TV. She had woken up and found the boy dead on the floor of the living room. Their mother ran over to our apartment and asked for help. My wife called 911 and they waited with her until the paramedics showed up. They tried to revive him, but were not able to. They continued to work on him as they drove away in the ambulance.
The neighbours in my building gathered upstairs and were waiting to hear if he was going to be okay. I stood in our kitchen looking out into the breezeway. From where I stood I could see both my front door and part of the neighbour's front door. As I stared out the window, I saw the older brother and a man walk up the stairs. I knew that they were there to deliver the news. I stayed looking out to see if my wife was going to be coming back downstairs when the 9 year old boy walked around the corner into the breezeway. He had the usual skip in his step and a smile on his face. I looked right at him and could not take my eyes off of his face. He was holding the hand of a man in a dark suit. I did not even think to look up at the man's face. My brain was trying to get a handle on the situation. For a minute I told myself that he was okay.
The two of them walked toward his apartment and disappeared. I didn't hear the heavy metal door slam as it usually did. They seemed to just keep walking. Next, I thought, I could be seeing the older brother. They looked enough alike. I could be mistaken. But then, here comes the older brother down the stairs with a man in a green shirt and shorts. They walked straight to the parking lot, got in a car and drove away. Now, I was certain that it was the younger boy. What I didn't know for sure was if he was okay or not. About a minute later, a young neighbour girl runs down the stairs crying and tells the people standing around that the boy had died. That was it. I saw his ghost. If only I would have looked at the man in the suit. I could have seen an angel or something. I guess it felt a little comforting that I had seen him looking so happy. I wanted to tell his mother, but my wife said that it wasn't the time for my ghost stories.
The next day, my wife told me that the mother had been by to see her. Her son had suffered an aneurysm and had been dead for a while before she found him. The mother said that when she had gone to the school to tell the kids that her son wasn't going to be there anymore, two of his friends said that they had talked to him that morning before the bell rang. He told them that he was moving away and they all said goodbye.
Loading comments....
