MY BROTHER SAID HE SAW OUR DEAD FATHER STANDING BY THE WINDOW
He kept pointing at the large living room window, his eyes wide and glassy, refusing to look away from the dark pane outside. I felt my hands start to shake uncontrollably, a cold, clammy sweat breaking out despite the strange chill in the room.
“He was just… there,” Michael whispered, his voice trembling, barely audible, utterly convinced. “Watching us, Mom. Right where the rosebush used to be before it withered and died last summer.”
I tried desperately to pull him away from the glass, tried to tell him it was just stress and grief, that Dad was gone forever and tricks played on the mind. But his grip tightened on my arm, his fingernails digging into my skin until it hurt, leaving red marks.
The air around us felt suddenly heavy, pressing down, making it hard to breathe properly. The distinct, impossible scent of Dad’s cherry pipe tobacco, which hadn’t been in this house for years, seemed to drift through the room, thick and sickeningly sweet. Michael suddenly stopped pointing, his eyes fixing on something just behind my shoulder, his breath hitching audibly in his throat with a sound like a small animal caught.
A voice, impossibly deep, echoed from the empty hallway behind me.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. I spun around, my eyes darting into the dark rectangle of the hallway behind me. Nothing. Just the familiar coats hanging on the rack, the shadowed outline of the staircase leading upstairs. Yet the sound… it had been impossible, resonant, filling the space.
“Who’s there?” I croaked, my voice barely a whisper, utterly ridiculous in the face of that booming echo.
Michael’s grip loosened slightly, his focus unwavering on the spot behind me. His eyes, still wide, now held a flicker of something other than terror – awe, maybe, or a profound, sorrowful recognition.
The scent of cherry tobacco intensified, thick and cloying, wrapping around us like a shroud. It wasn’t just a faint whiff; it was like someone had just lit a pipe in the room. My stomach churned.
Then the voice came again, softer this time, almost a sigh, but still carrying that impossible depth. “Just watching over you.”
My breath hitched. It sounded… like him. Not a perfect replica, but the underlying timber, the cadence. Tears welled in my eyes, blurring my vision. It wasn’t fear I felt now, not entirely. It was confusion, a painful ache of longing, and a terrifying sense of the world tilting on its axis.
Michael finally turned his head, looking at me with those damp, glassy eyes. He wasn’t pointing anymore. He just looked profoundly sad, and somehow, strangely calm.
“He’s gone, Mom,” he said, his voice steady now, though still quiet. “He was just… saying goodbye.”
The heavy air seemed to lift slightly. The sickening sweet scent of tobacco faded, quickly and completely, as if the pipe had been extinguished in an instant. Outside, the darkness pressed against the windowpane, but there was nothing there, not even the ghost of a shadow where the rosebush used to be.
I sank to my knees, pulling Michael into my arms. He clung to me, burying his face in my shoulder. We stayed like that for a long time, the silence in the room no longer oppressive, but simply empty, holding the echoes of things unseen and sounds unheard.
I didn’t understand what had just happened. Was it mass hallucination brought on by grief? Had Michael’s vivid imagination, coupled with my own deep sorrow, created a shared delusion? Or had there been something more, a fleeting, impossible return?
I didn’t know. But as I held my son, feeling the tremor finally leave his body, I knew that something had shifted. The raw edge of grief felt slightly less sharp, replaced by a profound, unsettling mystery. Our father was gone, irrevocably gone. But in that strange, cold moment, under the shadow of the window, for a terrifying, impossible second, it had felt like he was home. We sat there, together in the quiet, the silence filled with unspoken questions and the lingering, impossible memory of cherry pipe smoke.