by Steve Novak
In Hawaiian mythology, Night Marchers are the deadly ghosts of ancient Hawaiian warriors.
'I don’t believe it.'
'It’s true. My cousin’s uncle told me. When he was the kid, the uncle, his neighbor’s house down the street was haunted and the boy who lived there, who was two grades ahead of him, ahead of the uncle, saw night marchers.'
'Saw them where? In the house?'
'No, not in, outside, in the yard. And up on Tantalus too. He saw them a couple of times.'
'Nah, I don’t think so.'
'I’ll tell you, and we can go see the house; it’s still there.'
'Really?'
'Yeah, now listen.’
*
The boy’s name was Keoki, and he lived with his mom. One night, Keoki was in his room when he heard his mom call him.
‘What is it?’ Keoki asked.
He hadn’t heard his mother come home. He looked up and turned toward the door as she stepped away.
‘What is it?’ he asked, louder.
When she didn’t answer he got up and stuck his head into the hallway. He saw a glimpse of her shadow turn the corner.
‘What IS ittt?’ he intoned as he went after her.
When he got to the end of the hallway, where it opened onto the kitchen-dining area, he stopped. He leaned around the corner and peered into the living room.
‘Mom?’
He looked back and forth, even though it was obvious she wasn’t there. Then he heard someone coming up the front steps. The door unlocked, opened… and his mother stepped in.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I was at the movie. I told you.’
‘No, just now.’
‘Just now? Coming home. You watched me come in.’
‘You came by my room a minute ago, and I followed you out here. Did you go outside and come back in?’
‘I wasn’t here. I came back right now.’
‘Who was here then? Did somebody go out?’
‘Nobody came out. And the door was locked. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. You’re sure it wasn’t you? You’re getting old, maybe you’re forgetting.’
‘Old? I’ll show you old, you little punk!’
With that she rushed towards Keoki, laughing as she ran. Keoki laughed too and protected his body to prevent her from poking him in the ribs.
A few weeks later, Keoki went into the kitchen.
‘I did not put that there,’ he said to no one, because no one was home except him. That was a small notebook lying on the dining table. The otherwise empty table his mother had cleared off and wiped down before she went out.
Whose is it?
He didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t there the last time he walked past. He looked around the room. And listened. Had someone come in? No one could have, it was too small a house, and he’d made sure he’d locked the doors. He reached out to touch it, but withdrew his hand.
He went back to the television, but couldn’t concentrate. A little while later his mother came bustling in, talking. At first, he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him , but since she came in alone and shut the door, he realized it must be. She repeated what she’d said.
‘Here, take this, it’s heavy.’
He jumped up and took the bag she was holding. As she walked past the table, he asked her if the notebook was hers.
‘What notebook?’
‘The one on the table.’
‘Huh?’
Keoki, following after her, reached the table. The notebook was gone.
‘Did you take it?’ he asked.
‘Take what?’
She was busying herself in the kitchen and wasn’t looking his way.
‘The notebook. It was here on the table.’
She turned around, and he pointed at the spot where the notebook had been.
‘I didn’t take anything.’
A chill ran up his spine.
‘Aren’t you late?’ his mother asked, changing the subject.
‘No. Got plenny time,’ Keoki said, quickly looking at the clock to be sure. He was going to pick up Puanani, and he knew exactly what time he had to leave.
*
‘Puanani was his girlfriend.'
'Yeah, I figured that.'
'They went up to Tantalus, to the park up there. It was closed, but it’s easy to go around the gate and walk in.'
'I know.'
*
They went to the lawn in front of the lookout, and looked out over the city, trying to pick out buildings and spots they knew.
‘Is that Ala Moana?’ Keoki pointed. He meant the beach park, not the mall.
‘No, over that way,’ Puanani said, motioning to the left. ‘See, there’s Magic Island sticking out.’
‘Oh, yeah.’
They pointed this way and that and talked about places they’d been and things they’d done. Puanani did most of the talking, because Keoki was more focused on her than on the sights. After a while they lay back and looked up at the stars and clouds. The clouds were thick over the mountains, back above their heads, but it hadn’t started raining. It was quiet, until Keoki heard the faint sound of drums. He heard them, or rather felt them, but it didn’t register right away. When he did notice, his heart missed a beat.
‘Night Marchers!’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘Shh… do you hear that?!’
They both listened intently.
‘Drums,’ Keoki said. ‘The night marchers sound the drums to warn you they’re coming. Quick, lie down!’
He rolled over on his stomach and pushed and pulled at Puanani with his left arm to get her to do the same.
The sound got louder and nearer. Keoki put his face in the grass and hissed at Puanani, ‘Don’t look!’
The sound passed them by on their right-hand side. They waited a minute or two before getting up.
‘I think it was a car,’ Puanani said.
Keoki stared at her with a blank face that quickly turned to a look of disappointment.
‘Oh… Yeah…’
He was relieved as well as a little disappointed. He had forgotten how close to the road they were.
'Stupid! The road’s right there.'
*
'Haha, yeah, but I guess he wasn’t thinking straight, being up there with his girlfriend.'
*
‘It’s a good thing it wasn’t Night Marchers,’ Puanani said. ‘We wouldn’t be able to get away. There’s no way we could get through those bushes.’
‘You can’t get away from them,’ Keoki said. ‘And don’t need to. All you have to do is lay down flat with your face in the ground and don’t look up. Let them go by. If you look up at them, that’s it, you’re dead.’
Puanani didn’t say anything.
‘Oh,’ Keoki said after a pause. ‘You’re supposed to take off all your clothes too, before you lie down.’
‘What?’ Puanani laughed. ‘Who says?’
‘Auntie Jo says. It’s a sign to the Chief that you know you are nothing in his presence. Insignificant. Not worthy.’
‘I never heard that,’ Puanani said.
‘It’s true. Auntie knows. Ask her.’
‘I will. And I’ll tell your mom you tried to get me naked.’
A few days after his date, Keoki was back in his room doing homework. His mother had done the laundry before she went out and had left his clean clothes on the bed. He opened the closet door to get hangers for his shirts, and when he did, he noticed there were several shirts that were not his hanging on the rail. He picked one out and held it up.
‘I’d never wear that,’ he said aloud.
He put it back. He finished hanging his shirts and went back to work. When he heard his mother come home, he went out to greet her. Auntie Jo was with her.
‘Hi, Auntie!’
‘Hello, Keoki,’ she said as she hugged him.
‘Whose shirts are those in my closet?’ he asked his mother.
‘What shirts?’
‘There’s some shirts in my closet that aren’t mine.’
‘They must be yours. I’m sure they’re not mine.’
‘They’re not mine. Did you put them there?’
‘I didn’t. I left yours on the bed. I don’t go in your closet; I know how particular you are.’
‘Well, there’s some shirts in there that aren’t mine and I didn’t put there.’
Keoki didn’t say anything more, but later, when Auntie Jo was in the living room and his mother was in the kitchen, he went to talk to Auntie.
‘How do you know if you have a ghost in the house?’ he asked her.
‘What makes you think you have a ghost?’ Auntie replied.
He told her about the night he thought his mother had come by his room and about the notebook. And then the shirts that were right then in his closet.
‘Hmm…’ Auntie said, thinking. ‘It could be.’
‘What does it want? Is it dangerous.’
‘It’s hard to say. Some are playful, and others are mean. Mean, but don’t want to hurt you. They hide something you’re looking for or turn the coffee you only made two minutes ago cold. But then there’s some who do want to hurt you.’
‘How do you know which they are?’
‘You have to watch them, watch what they do. All ghosts want something. You have to figure out what it is. Maybe all they want is attention.’
‘What if they’re a bad one? One that wants revenge for something somebody did to them? What would we do?’
‘Well, if it’s something like that we’d have to get a kahuna who can heal them and cleanse the house. But first, you watch and see if you can find out what they want. So far it hasn’t done much, if it even is a ghost. Maybe it will get bored and go away on its own. That happens sometimes.’
‘What about…’ Keoki hesitated.
‘About what?’ Auntie asked.
‘About the notebook. If it shows up again, should I look inside? Read it? Maybe it’s trying to communicate.’
Auntie’s face went serious.
‘I don’t know, Keoki. I don’t know if that’s a good idea.’
Keoki kept alert, but a month went by and nothing ghostly happened. Another month, and he mostly forgot about ghosts. He had other things on his mind. The high school junior prom was approaching, and he was fixated on that. He looked at tuxes and gave advice to Puanani about dresses. She didn’t give much consideration to what he said, though.
‘You’re just hoping to see my boobs.’
‘No, no,’ he argued, badly to be honest. ‘Strapless shows off your shoulders better.’
‘I know you’re lying because you told me before I have boney shoulders.’
‘I never did!’ he said, and then tried to remember if he had.
Puanani smiled.
Two weeks before prom, Keoki opened the drawer in his desk. Where his energy bars should be, he instead found a notebook. The same one he’d seen on the table months before. He wanted to take it out and look at it, but he didn’t want to touch it. He stared at it for a long time. He closed the drawer. When he felt he’d waited long enough, he opened it again. The notebook was still there.
With shaking hands, he slowly reached in and picked it up. He laid it on the desk. As if trying to pierce the cover with his sight, he leaned over the book and examined every mark and scratch. Divining nothing, opened it. The inside cover page was blank. He flipped to the first page. In large, cursive script were the words, mememto mori. '
*
'What? What’s that mean?'
'That’s what Keoki said. And you’ll have to look it up like he did. Before he did, though, he flipped to the next page. In a flowing handwriting that slowed his reading—he didn’t use cursive and wasn’t used to reading it—he began.’
*
‘The bible tells us that we come from dust and will return to being dust one day. It doesn’t tell us that during the time between, we are nothing but shit. Useless and rank. It would be better being dust. At least you’d have the hope of becoming something better. A beetle, perhaps a bird. Wouldn’t that be nice? To fly free, to be untethered? But you are not. You are excrement.
‘Why waste time here? Why not return to the earth? Help others return? You’d be doing yourself a favor, be doing them a favor. You wouldn’t be useless, at least for a moment. But you are weak. Weak minded, no conviction. A weak, soft, pile of jelly.’
What must a person feel like to make them write something like that, he wondered? Was that why they became ghosts, because of their pain? He read on, but it was more of the same and it depressed him. He closed the notebook and left it on his desk. He went out to the kitchen where his mother was. She’d cheer him up without even doing anything special.
‘Oh, Keoki, perfect timing. Can you peel potatoes?’
‘Okay. How many?’
‘Two should be good. No, make it three.’
Helping with dinner took his mind off the notebook. When he went back to his room later, he didn’t notice at first that it wasn’t on his desk. When he did finally realize it was gone, his first thought was that he’d put it in the drawer. It wasn’t there either.
He couldn’t work anymore, and he couldn’t sleep. A movie occupied his mind enough that he could relax a bit. Eventually he nodded off, but it was a fitful sleep.
Tests to study for, papers to write, and prom to prepare for should have kept Keoki’s mind occupied, but those things were being crowded out with thoughts of ghosts and death.
The notebook did not appear again, but other things did. Odd things. One week before prom. Keoki was in the kitchen while his mother prepared breakfast.
‘Prom’s next week,’ Keoki said.
‘Hand me the egg timer, please.’
‘One week from today,’ Keoki repeated, trying to get her to engage.
‘Three-minute eggs; need the timer; don’t want four-minute eggs,’ she rambled.
‘Prom…’ Keoki said.
‘Porn? What are you saying?’
‘Prom, mom. Prom!’
His mother laughed.
‘Oh, prom… You had me worried for a minute.’
Keoki looked at her.
‘Prom, yes, I know it’s coming up. Next week, yeah?’
Instead of using her phone, as he would have done, his mother used a cheap, plastic kitchen timer, the simple kind with a big dial. He opened the cabinet where it was kept, but it wasn’t there. Instead, he saw an hourglass.
‘Where is it?’ he asked, while still looking at the hourglass.
‘It’s right there. You’re staring at it.’
He turned his head to her.
‘No, it’s not.’
She stepped over, reached past him, and took the timer that was sitting on the shelf.
‘That… that wasn’t there.’
‘What do you mean? If it had teeth, it would have bit you.’
‘No, I mean there was something else.’
‘What?’ She looked in the cupboard.
Keoki felt an ever so slight wave of fear.
‘Nothing…’ was all he said.
In the dining area, there was a shelf where Keoki’s mother kept family photos; Keoki’s grandparents, one of him as a baby, Auntie Jo, and a few others. For some reason, Keoki turned that way on his way back to his room. He noticed a small statue, or figure, on the shelf that hadn’t been there before. Curious, he went over to take a look. It was a bird. A small sculpture of a large black bird with a naked head. A vulture.
‘Mom?’
‘Yes?’
‘What’s this bird statue here?’
‘What?’
‘With the pictures. What is it?’
His mother turned around to see what he was talking about. From where she stood all she could see were the frames with the photos.
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked, and came towards him.
She slid one of the chairs closer to the table as she walked past, and it made a scraping noise. Keoki turned his head at the sound. His mother came to his side and they both looked at the shelf. There was no vulture figurine.
‘It was right there,’ he said, pointing. ‘A vulture with its wings half out.’ He held his arms up, bent, to show her. ‘I swear it was there.’
His mother put her hand to his head.
‘Are you feeling alright? First you can’t see the timer, then you see a vulture. Do you have a fever?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. Then, ‘Is Auntie Jo coming by? Sometime soon?’
‘I don’t know. Why? She going to prom with you?’
‘Nothing. Never mind.’
Keoki went back to his room, his mother back to the kitchen.
‘Breakfast’s ready!’ she called, a few minutes later. He wasn’t listening. He was looking at the crucifix that was hanging on the back of his bedroom door. The one that wasn’t there the last time the door was closed. The one with Jesus staring straight at him. Was he smiling?
Finally, prom night. Keoki’s mother let him use her car.
‘You don’t want to go in that old car of yours,’ she told him. ‘You might break down and get stuck somewhere. On a dark road with no one around, getting cold outside, what would you do?’
‘Mom!’
Puanani didn’t wear a strapless gown. Nor was it low cut.
‘But you can see my boney shoulders, that should be exciting enough for you,’ Puanani said.
Keoki pretended to be disappointed, but he wasn’t. They had a wonderful evening, dancing and talking with their friends. Keoki knew the night wouldn’t last forever, but he didn’t know it would fly by so fast. One minute he was showing off his moves, the next he was driving by Puanani’s house as the sun was rising. What happened to all the time in between? Keoki also didn’t know he wouldn’t see Puanani again for a long time.
*
‘You want something to drink? A juice? I got juice or iced tea.'
'Uh, tea, but are you going to finish the story?'
'Yeah, hold on.
*
Fifteen years passed since Keoki saw Puanani; since prom. But he remembered how her skin felt, how she wore her hair, the color of her dress. That night had been too short. But he was going to see her again, and he was giddy. He had the night all planned out. He would pick up Puanani, take a relaxing drive, and see where things led.
He borrowed his cousin’s car, got takeout, and packed a blanket, and a few other essentials to make a picnic. After everything was ready, he went to get Puanani. When he got her in the car, he thought things were starting out well.
After what to Keoki seemed like forever, but was only about twenty minutes, he pulled the car to the side of the road, turned off the lights, and cut the engine. He slid across the seat and whispered, ‘I missed you, I’m glad you could come out tonight.’ Puanani sat silent, offering no resistance to his advances.
As he put his arm around her, a flash of light caught his eye. With the windows wet from a light rain that was falling, he couldn’t be sure if it came from off in the brush or if it was a reflection. He had his mind on other things, though, so dismissed it. But then there was another light. This time he was sure it came from somewhere in the vegetation that lined the road.
‘Do you see those lights?’ he asked.
She didn’t.
‘I’m sure I saw lights out there. Who would be out there at this time of night?’
He didn’t want to waste this time alone with Puanani, but he was curious about the lights and kept looking out the window. There they were again, but more of them. They flickered and danced through the water droplets on the window. It looked like light from a fire.
Or from torches!
He reached over and rolled down the window to get a better look, but he couldn’t get a clear view. Once the window was open, however, he heard what sounded like chanting. It came from the direction of the lights.
‘Night marchers!’ he hissed. ‘It’s night marchers!’
He felt a chill. He grabbed Puanani’s hand. It was cold as ice.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ he said.
But as he was about to start the engine, he saw a dark shape in front of the car. He stared at it through the windshield. He sat frozen in place. For what seemed like minutes nothing moved, then the dark figure moved closer.
‘Don’t look at it! Don’t look!’ he shouted and pulled Puanani’s head down as he hunched over her. He wanted to leave, but hesitated, unsure if what he saw was real.
A tap on the window next to him made him jump. He fumbled with the lock, and as he did there was another tap on the window. Then he heard a man’s voice.
‘Excuse me! Hey! Open the window!’ As the man spoke, he turned on his flashlight and pointed it through the glass. Another man, who was in front of the car, turned on his flashlight and directed it through the windshield.
‘There’s two of them,’ Keoki heard the man in front say. The one by his door said again, ‘Open the window!’
Catching his breath Keoki looked at the men. Even though it was hard to see through the rain-soaked windows he saw they were dressed as security guards. Keoki rolled down the window.
When he did, the guard shined the light in his face and asked him again what he was doing. Keoki said they just stopped to look at the stars, not realizing how stupid that sounded, as it was cloudy and raining and they were parked on the side of Nuuanu-Pali Drive under dense tree cover. Before the guard had a chance to laugh, Keoki asked him if he saw the lights and heard the chanting.
‘I thought I saw night marchers,’ he told the guard.
‘Night marchers? Dude, they’re filming Hawaii 5-0 over there. Didn’t you see all the trucks and the No Parking signs? You and your girl have to go somewhere else to make out.’ As he said this, he shone his light on Puanani. When he did, he let out a scream, jumped back, and dropped his flashlight. The next thing Keoki knew, he was at the police station.'
*
'What? Did they arrest him just for parking there?'
'Let me finish! You’ll find out.
*
‘We weren’t bothering anybody,’ Keoki said. ‘Why’s everybody so excited?’
The officer who was fingerprinting him looked at his colleague in disbelief.
*
Detective Albert Takahashi, at home later that evening, stared blankly out the window.
‘Your dinner’s getting cold,’ his wife said.
‘What? Oh, sorry. Yeah…’
‘Tough day?’
Albert turned and looked at his wife.
‘I’m going to retire.’
‘What brought that on?’ she asked, surprised at his announcement.
‘You know, I thought I’d seen the worst of humanity; domestic abuse, beatings, murder even, but there’s a new breed out there and it’s a world I don’t want to see.’
‘Was it that bad?’
‘Yes. Yes, it was. You remember that prom night murder years ago?’
‘At the lookout? Yes.’
‘Well… there’s a sequel. You’ll see it on the news in the morning, if you’ve got the stomach for it.’
Fifteen years earlier Detective Takahashi had been called to a crime scene at the Tantalus Lookout. It was prom night and even though the park was closed the kids went to the lookout to party and make out. Driving up the hill he expected to find that an argument had escalated and someone lost their life.
‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ the detective said to the boy he was questioning.
‘We heard her scream. A bad kind of scream, not like they were playing or something, like she was scared or hurt or something. I never heard anyone scream like that before.’
‘Did you know it was Puanani?’
‘Not at first. We didn’t want to go over there where it came from,’ He pointed to a spot at the edge of the lawn, ‘but then it looked like Keoki. When we went over, and Keoki was just standing there, and she was lying there. Me and Benz asked him what happened, but he didn’t answer. Tanya and Sofie went to ask Puanani what happened, and when they did, they saw she was dead. Well, they saw she wouldn’t answer them or move, and when they put the light on, they saw the blood. Lots of blood, all over. And on Keoki too. We all kind of freaked out then.’
‘I bet,’ Albert muttered.
When the first officers arrived, they found Keoki and Puanani as Detective Takahashi had been told.
‘He was just standing there,’ the officer said, pointing. ‘I asked him what happened, and he said ‘Night Marchers’. ‘Night marchers?’, I said, ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Night marchers?’ Detective Takahashi asked, incredulously.
‘Yeah, that was my reaction too. What the hell?’
‘Then what?’
‘Well,’ the officer continued, ‘he said the night marchers had come, so he pushed the girl down. then laid down next to her. He said he peeked over at her, and she was sitting up. He said the night marchers got her because she looked at them.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘No, he was serious. And so matter-of-fact, like it was all natural or something.’
‘Okaaayyy…’
‘Yeah, he didn’t say anything about the knife on the ground and the blood all over him. It’s pretty obvious he did it, but I guess it’s up to you to prove it.’
‘Proving he did it and making sense of it are two different things.’
*
‘Hey, that’s Puanani’s house,’ Keoki said from the back of the police car as they passed it.
The officer driving looked in the rearview mirror and saw Keoki smiling.
The detective did his job, but Keoki never went to trial. He was found not competent and was sent to the State Mental Hospital. After fifteen years he was determined to be fit to reintegrate into society. The morning after Keoki’s arrest for the second time, Honolulu woke up to a horrific news story.
‘A man was arrested last night,’ the news anchor said, looking into the camera, ‘after police found him in a car with the body of a dead woman. The man failed to report back to his transitional housing residence. He stole his cousin’s car, robbed a convenience store, and then, apparently, dug up his former girlfriend’s grave and took her body. This was the same woman he was accused of killing fifteen years ago. He was found on the side of a roadway in Nuuanu Valley by a pair of security guards at a film shoot location.’
*
'Aiya!'
'I know, right?'
'So it wasn’t night marchers, he did it.'
'Maybe, but I’m not done yet. You can decide after.’
*
Two days after Keoki’s arrest, his Aunty Jo was at his house caring for his mother. She was understandably distraught. After setting a pot of stew on the stove to warm up, Aunty Jo went to Keoki’s bedroom. His mother had left it mostly untouched all the years he was gone. Without thinking much, Aunty Jo looked around the room. She opened the closet door, and when she did, she remembered the time Keoki mentioned there being shirts that didn’t belong to him. She looked through the clothes, and noticed there were several t-shirts that seemed out of place. Keoki mostly wore polo shirts or button downs, but that’s not what set these apart. It was the designs on them; satanic symbols and pictures of goats with glowing red eyes.
He'd never wear something like that, Aunty Jo thought. What are they doing here?
She closed the closet door and moved to the desk. Hesitating momentarily, she sat down. There wasn’t much on the desktop; a pad of sticky notes, a few pens and pencils, a keyboard and monitor. She opened the top drawer. There was a notebook. She took it out and set it in front of her. She lifted the cover, then leafed to the first page that had writing. She read the same words Keoki had read, and it nearly froze her blood. At that moment, she heard, or thought she heard, something outside the house. She rose and went to the window. She saw the faint glimmer of what appeared to be a torch, held by the shadow of a man, disappearing into the darkness past the banyan tree behind the house.
When the last hint of the torchlight was gone, Aunty Jo suddenly felt a wave of relief come over her. She turned from the window and looked back at the desk. It took a moment, but she realized the notebook was gone. She left Keoki’s room and went back to the kitchen. She hugged her sister, Keoki’s mom, and whispered, ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’'
*
'Ah, it was night marchers!'
'Yeah.'
'I got chicken skin.'
'And it’s true. I told you, uncle lived down the street from Keoki. Let’s go over to the house, I know where it is.'
Steve Novak is an ordinary working man. Having started writing non-fiction, he has since switched to fiction. He thinks about Rome frequently.
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