At the observatory, it had been mentioned by a tour guide that many of the tourists who had illegally removed lava rocks from the premises had been stricken with bad luck. Gravely, he allowed his hand to lead the student's eyes to a glass display case that looked like a transparent mailbox for letters. These were letters of apology – not to the State of Hawaii, or to the observatory, but to the mythical spirit goddess, Pele herself. Having removed the rocks and returned home, many of these families had become afflicted with a domino effect of such bad luck that they were compelled to mailed the rocks back with letters begging forgiveness. "So check your shoes when you get back on that bus," said the tour guide, a chipper red-headed woman in her early forties. "Pele makes no exceptions." The students shuffled on.
Ghosts and spirits remained on their minds for the rest of the tour, and on the fourth and final night before the class would return home, the tired yet willing group of students and their teacher Mr. Harano gathered in one the cottages, turned off all of the lights, passed around three flashlights, and told ghost stories.
"Turn off all of your cell phones," Mr. Harano said, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. The ring of student's tightened around him, piling onto each other, shoulders touching, giddy with suspense. "Glenda, if you want to listen to your mp3's you'll have to leave the room. It breaks the spell."
"Fine," said Glenda, and put away her mp3 player.
"Good," said Mr Harano. His voice lowering. "Now we can start."
And so the stories began. Mr. Harano started by weaving a spell of strange coincidences involving a mysterious family heirloom during his childhood, about how he saw a strange man standing next to it one night, and how that same man turned out to be his late great grandfather. He told stories of his family living in Kona, about how at one point or another, they heard the mysterious Hawaiian chanting coming from the ocean. He told stories about old schools that were once hospitals and clinics during World War Two, how custodians working late at night could hear voices coming from outside the windows – whispers coming from the branches of the trees, where it was reported that a distraught nurse had hung herself. He recounted the story of the bundle of blankets floating down a darkened stairway, something breathing inside. He even told them of Mokapu beach, where crying babies could be heard wailing in the dark. "That's where ancient Hawaiian ancestors used to take their deformed babies to die. Listen carefully, and you can hear them crying."
Strangely, his students remained unaffected by those stories. Glenda lied on her back and lifted her feet to the air to examine her toes. Joshua restlessly fidgeted with the pillow he was sitting on. Kenneth shot a rubber band across the room, where it landed in Holly's hair. Outside it was dark. The trees were rustling. The air was cold enough to frost everyone's breath.
"Tellin' ghost stories?" a voice whispered from the window. The students flinched. It was Mr. Beck, one of the cafeteria chefs on the base that everyone had gotten to know.
"Yeah, but most of em stay old. Heard em before," said Skyler from under a blanket.
"Well," Mr. Beck opened the door and stepped inside. The wind rushed in. "I've got one."
"They better be scarier than the ones Mr. Harano was telling," said Kimo.
Mr. Harano shrugged. "The stage is all yours," he said. "Take the stage. Tough crowd. Too many scary movies numbed out these kids sensibilities."
"Do my best," said Mr. Beck. He remained in the corner by the doorway and all of the children turned to face him. He rubbed his hands together slowly and methodically as if trying to warm the room. "Tell me. what happens when a bee dies," he began.
"Oh no. Environmental message," said Skyler.
"No no. This is a ghost story," explained Mr. Beck. "What happens when the bees all die?"
"They die," said Holly, flatly.
"What disappears along with them?"
"Honey," said Skyler.
"Yes. What else?"
"Cheerios," said Kimo. Everyone laughed.
"That too. But what else?"
"We give up."
"Us. We go. No bees. No pollination. No plants. No fruits. No food for herbivores. They die. That means no food for the Carnivores. And they die. And then at the very top of the food chain. There's us. Eventually, we go extinct. Get it? we run out of food and starve."
"So?" asked Joshua. "That's like in a thousand years."
"Maybe," said Mr. Beck. He crouched down to the children's level. Flashlight beams crisscrossed over his face. He squinted and smiled patiently.
"What's so scary about that?" asked Holly.
"Well. You see," said Mr. Beck. "That's exactly what happened. We died."
"Shoots then," said Skyler.
Mr. Harano smiled and shrugged from across the room.
Mr. Beck smiled back, then cast a serious gaze upon the small group of children. "No. Really. We died a billion years ago," he said softly. "The human race is an extinct race. The bees disappeared and then a thousand years later, the last human being went the way of the dinosaur. It took a long time for it too happen. And there were other factors that contributed to the extinction of our kind. Wars. Natural disasters. Man made disasters. Storms. Climate shifts. Asteroids. It took a while, but it happened," he said, his voice grew quieter. "Very slowly, with long stretches of suffering and despair, with glints of hope scattered in between. We slowly died. You and me. And now here we are – ghosts telling ghost stories."
"How are we here and dead? what kind of story is this?" asked Holly.
Mr. Harano crossed his arms.
"Now," Mr. Beck continued. "It takes a long time for everything to disappear. Eventually, trees started growing again and they grew right out of the windows of the empty buildings. Cities turned to rust, and collapsed very slowly. Plants overtook the buildings, and they died, and then grew again, and died and soon, dirt and sediment covered those roads. All man made structures were buried by the shifting soil. It took millions of years. Nothing but time and silence. It's a long time to wait."
"Like the end of the world. The Apocalypse," said Kimo.
Mr. Beck nodded gravely and continued. "New organisms began to evolve. And those organisms evolved into different animals and insects. Not like the kind you're used to seeing. All new ones."
"Like what?" asked Skyler.
"Well, like a warblerfly."
"What's that?"
"It's an insect with 8 sets of wings. Imagine an airplane with 8 wings from head to tail, and all the little windows along the sides are eyes."
"Weird."
"Yes, they were. Those too went extinct as the ecosystem evolved. Another million years passed. Soon, inevitably, there was intelligence. Now, there were those pixie-like creatures, winged insects with dexterous hands. The size of a hummingbird. They created fire. Small fires. They ate smaller insects and evolved and grew bigger. They formed colonies. They burrowed underground for shelter. And eventually, they came across something unexpected."
"What was it?" asked Joshua.
"It was... it was a time capsule" said Mr. Beck. "You see, here's the interesting thing. When humans evolved, we had no one to guide us. All of our mistakes were original. We developed our own language and art and science and created our own destiny, dark as it may have been. With these new evolved creatures, they discover that a whole sophisticated race of beings had preceded them. Imagine a caveman discovering an iphone. Imagine that. All of our literature was preserved, and as time went along, as these intelligent beings evolved, and learned to read our many languages, as well as creating their own, they assessed us as a failed race. Our remnants were like textbooks for life, basically. What to do. What not to do."
"And then what?" asked Skyler. He crossed his legs and leaned forward.
"A million more years pass by. This new civilization has evolved. All of the old world's preserved literature is contained in a single universal database. At this point, these creatures are advanced beyond anything humans could ever dream of. They've studied all of us. We're more in the science books than history. We are their cautionary tale."
"This is, what, billion years from now, right?" asked Glenda, a concerned look over her face.
"No. This is now."
The class giggled. Mr. Harano watched on, his arms folded, waiting for some punchline.
Mr. Beck continued in a whisper as if a secret were being let out. "They've created machines, like computers, only without any physical components. Strange, crazy things. And they've recreated earth, how it was at every point in history. So there are different earths at different time periods. One earth for each minute. These beings are god. You see, you look at me and touch me, but I'm not real. If you look through a microscope at me you'll see that I'm made of nothing but light. Same goes for all of you. We are all dead. We're ghosts. Like our mothers. Our fathers. We're in a computer created by godlike beings, walking around like characters in a video game."
The children remained hushed. Joshua pinched himself. Everyone shifted uncomfortably.
Mr. Beck began tearing. "We've been gone a long time," he began to sob.
Mr. Harano grew alarmed. He cleared his throat and stepped back in front of the children. "Well. That was a good story. How about some ice cream?"
The children all watched Mr. Beck cry. Something was wrong. Mr. Harano tried to usher Mr. Beck out of the room as the kids all stood up, concerned and confused. "Let's all thank Mr. Beck for coming by tonight," Mr. Harano said.
Through a tear-smattered face, Mr. Beck emitted a strange smile. His eyes seemed inverted. Holly jumped back at the new and strange expression on his face. The kids all clustered together. "Mr. Beck," said Mr. Harano sternly. "Time to go," he said, reaching out his hand to usher him out but it was too late. Mr. Beck's edges grew jagged, his face became a pattern of strange mosaic tiles, his entire body became a stack of small squares, and he dematerialized and vanished in front of their very eyes.
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