Gas Station Ghost [FICTOID]

“Is that damned ghost out there again?”

“Well…it’s unfair to call him damned, isn’t it?  I mean, he’s not in hell, is he?”

“He’s in Tempe, Arizona.  Poh-Tay-Toh, Poh-Tah-Toh.”

They watched the ghost slowly circle the gas pumps, floating inches above the ground.  Though semi-transparent, the spirit’s 19th century European style uniform stood in vivid contrast to the sun-bleached pumps.

“Who is he, anyway?” Smiley asked.  They called him that because he never did.

“Near as I can figure, King Radama the First of Madagascar,” said Al.  They called him Al because nobody could spell Aloysius.

He showed Smiley a picture on his phone.  “I found him through a Google image search.”

“Yeah, that looks like him,” said Smiley, “only what’s he doing here?  Shouldn’t he be in Madagascar?”

A car pulled up to the pumps.  The driver got out, completely oblivious to the ghost’s presence.

The ghost could only be seen through the big plate glass window of the gas station.  The window was made of polymer reinforced bulletproof glass with a special polarized UV-blocking overlay.  Smiley and Al presumed this made the ghost visible to them but not customers.

Just as the customer paid no attention to the ghost, the ghost paid no attention to the customer.  It continued to circle the pumps, gliding discorporately through the car.

The specter’s lonely procession would continue for another hour or so then fade into nothingness.

It never appeared after dark, only during the day sometime just before noon.  And not every day; sometimes Smiley and Al went weeks without seeing it.

“Does that mean it’s not there at other times?” Al pondered.  “Or just that we can’t see it?”

“Does it matter?” asked Smiley.

“Well…yeah,” said Al.  “If it’s always there then there’s gotta be some sort of external influence that causes us to see it.

“But if it appears entirely on its own, then it has some sort of internal reason for doing so.”

“Not necessarily,” said Smiley.  There could be an external influence that causes it to appear periodically.”

The customer finished gassing up and drove off, passing right through the spirit as it began another circuit.

The ghost of Radama the First carried a curious clockwork mechanism in its hands, roughly the size of an egg, made of shiny brass in real life.  The ghost constantly turned the wind up key on this device but Smiley and Al never saw what it did.

Al tried taking pictures of it with his phone but apparently the rules of the game were no photos allowed, so he could never figure out what the intricate little object was or did.

“Maybe that’s connected somehow with the manifestations,” he said.  “Maybe the ghost needs to turn it to appear here.”

“How do you know the ghost only appears here?” Smiley said.  “For all we know this ghost might be making guest appearances at filling stations all across the country.”

“We would have heard of it by now if it had,” said Al.

Smiley looked dubious but said nothing.

And the ghost circled on and on and on…

© Buzz Dixon