It’s hard to explain without sounding crazy, I keep trying but I just know I sound like one of those crystal waving loonies. I can sense, and sometimes see, paranormal entities. They aren’t well-defined, mostly hazy figures or unnatural shadows, but sometimes, if they are strong and angry enough they can look nearly as real as any person. The only reason I’m not knocking down the doors of the nearest insane asylum is because I’m not the only member of my family that can do it. My dad and I are the strongest, I guess, but my brother isn’t exactly blind to them either. My mom and sister have nothing, and I’m glad for that. With the talent of “seeing” comes, sometimes, a gift for driving things away, exorcism if you will. And these things don’t like being forced away. But, I digress.

The ability to see these demons, ghosts, fey, whatever you want to call them truly is a freakin’ curse. Because it makes you stand out, it draws a target for creepy shit right on your back. It never stops, never goes away. And believe me, trying to work any job when you can see the skeletons hiding in people’s closets are not a fun thing, let alone trying to be a minimum wage checkout clerk in a major grocery store.

Here, let me explain what I mean. There is the older guy who comes in; he’s probably in his mid-fifties to early-sixties, and he looks like he’s somebody’s grandpa, albeit a Vietnam veteran, soldier of fortune battle-grandpa. He’s got silvered brown hair, tanned skin, a tall and trim physique, a jovial soft-spoken voice and friendly seeming eyes. He kinda reminds me of that one neighbor we’ve all had at one time or another, the one that is nice as hell but just a little too in to the patriotic expressions of any holiday. The guy that has an American flag on every piece of clothing he owns, has more guns than a National Guard armory but buys all the little kids on the block snow cones from the ice cream truck if he sees it go past. Yeah, him. He’s in every day it seems, just buying a few groceries for the day and talking to us employees. Just a nice seeming guy.

It’s what follows him around that really gets to me.

He has a hitchhiker, you see. Well, hitchhikers to be more accurate. They are ghosts that latch on to you because you meant something to them. Little kids usually have them if a parent dies or people who’ve had a spouse die; hell I’ve seen people with their best friends clinging to them if they were close enough. But hitchhikers sometimes cling for other reasons.

I’ll never forget when I noticed him and his passengers. I was just about to come on shift after my lunch break and I was turning the corner from the backroom of the store and onto the main sales floor when I bumped him. He reached out a hand to steady me because I nearly ass-planted like the graceless wonder I am with a small chuckle. When he did I saw her, his hitchhiker. This girl was, at that time, the most visible, real and tangible entity I’d ever seen.

She was a beautiful twenty year-old Vietnamese girl when she had died, and she died hard. Her naked body was bruised and stained with what I think, hell what I still desperately hope, was dirt. Blackened blood leaked from the gaping wound in her neck and stained her thighs as well. My mind shut down and I went into autopilot, mumbling some apology and scurrying towards the front end of the store. I firmly decided not to even think on what I had seen and to just pretend that nothing had happened.

I should have quit right then.

You see, like I said, he comes in every day. And every day for the past two months the hitchhiker has been a different girl. They are always naked, always beaten and they are always visible around him. I’ve tried to pretend that I don’t see them, but I can’t help but stare in horror as he walks around the store chatting with the other employees in his neighborly way. Last night he came in just before the store closed and I recognized the girl following him, she was an Amber Alert two weeks ago, a seventeen year-old junior from a nearby town who vanished while jogging. As he loaded his purchases onto the conveyer belt he leaned forward so that only I could hear his voice.

“She’s the prettiest one yet, isn’t she? But not as pretty as you.”

He gave that friendly grandfather-like smile and paid for his groceries.

I don’t want to go into work today.