Night Marchers

Enclosed in the package I’ve sent you is a book on paranormal activities of the island, including sitting ghosts, eating ghosts, girlfriend and boyfriend ghosts, suicidal ghosts, and even one strange case of a ghost reportedly expressing symptoms of OCD –however what will interest you, sir, is the section entitled Night Marchers: Hawaiian Warriors of the Spirit World. If this seems strange to you, let me explain a little of my own history. For seven years, I’ve given local tours of the island. I can assure you sir, that what your wife encountered was definitely real. In fact, I remember you, your wife, her red flower-print dress, and this exact incident because (although I’ve experienced many paranormal activities as a tour guide of such a mystifying and culturally affluent land) each paranormal event is something wonderful and amazing in its own individual way.

But first, where are my manners, Aloha. Did you know that Aloha means many things? It means hello. Of course, you knew that. I taught you that, as well as your wife –but it also means, goodbye, I love you, mercy be on you and any number of expressions of great emotion. Now I know what you’re thinking, these Hawaiians must have just gone on and on saying Aloha, Aloha, Aloha, all day, and this is probably true for some. Mostly the bitter mother-in-laws, but you’re getting away from the point again. The point is that it was a very sacred word, when you used it as a greeting you were literally exchanging your life breath with the other person.

So it is a very grave offense to not say Aloha to another person when you meet them, especially when you are on a moonlit beach, and especially when the person you don’t say it to is a rather frightened beautiful young woman not from the islands. So naturally, I told her the only plausible explanation to such a strange procession of people walking directly towards us on such a moonlit night: they had to be night marchers.

Night marchers are well documented ghosts of the island –warrior ghosts, who would like nothing better than to kill a lovely, frightened, beautiful young woman who does not know she is committing a cultural faux pas, because she does not know what to substitute for an Aloha (understandably since night marchers are notoriously rude, you would think they are simply ignoring you, or looking for no response at all). However, a tour guide such as myself, who just so happens to deal in the paranormal, knew that the only way to not get killed by night marchers is to remove your clothes and lay down on the ground. I quickly explained this to your wife, whom showed no hesitation in taking off her clothes –which to you, sir, should be a sign of a very good wife because she was obviously acting on your behalf, as I’m sure she didn’t want to spoil your honeymoon with her untimely demise.

So there we are, both lying on the ground, night marchers marching towards us, they clothed for war, us naked; when she asked a very smart question: “Should I be face up or face down?” Now I knew that being face up was the preferred way to be, but she was obviously scared, undoubtedly thinking about her young husband, so I told her she should lie face up, and I should lie face down. If anything, at least one of us would survive to tell you, we both agreed. I could tell she was still scared, and cold, we were right on the shore, after all; so I decided to cover her with my body. There was no rule against it in any paranormal books I had read, and anyways, it would be silly if she were to die of influenza after surviving such an ordeal…

I don’t know if we waited for seconds, or minutes, or hours. We were both deathly scared to move. We heard strange sounds, leaves rustled with new vitality, a strange persistent beat was faint in the distant, and the clicking of crab legs against grains of sand were all for us to hear. We listened to the waves crash down, felt its foam like sandpaper on our bodies. We became more aware of the sounds of nature than I think either of us had ever been in our lives. The one flip-flop-flip-flop sound that flourished in our ears louder and louder finally took shape as the outline of your body, and it was too much for me to keep in, which is why I jumped up and shouted, ALOHA!