Ghost Story

Ghost Story

I don’t believe in ghosts. At least that’s what I’ve always said.

Memories can be fragile. I should be lucid and know exactly what I’m doing here. I don’t. That’s the funny thing, I can’t remember anything other than this moment. It’s like nothing existed before.

Strung across a telegraph pole are a line of crows staring like feathered stoics with their ebony bodies and dark disposition. Those small black eyes can pierce even those most resolute. It’s said in folklore that they transport souls between realms.

You would expect there to be all the sounds associated with bucolic countryside but, instead, there’s a deafening silence. Not a crow’s caw or a dog’s bark, not even the snapping of twigs. It’s like I’m in Purgatory.

I see all this from the bedroom window of an old dilapidated cottage. Stealthy ivy climbs the walls clinging to the crumbling brickwork like a drowning man. Dusk is approaching, shadows growing longer. There’s a chill in the air that comes with the onset of winter. For now, autumn still holds sway evident by the leaves piled up in drifts on a golden brown panorama.

I turn to stare at the pine dresser across the room near the foot of a bed. There’s an ornate mirror gathering dust. A reflection of a teenage boy glares back dressed in a scruffy sable hoodie and black trousers; a pallid face has irises faded to a pale hue of what once was. A wooden wardrobe stands inert gathering dust against a wall. Moisture forms in beads on peeling paper, racing cars adorned in withered colours. A young boy’s haven from another time.

As I shuffle away from the window a knocking sound starts. It’s quiet at first but gets gradually louder. It appears to be coming from another room. The light is fading as night approaches making noises more ominous. The electricity doesn’t work in the cottage. There’s a slow rap-rapping, a coherent pulsing that punctures the stillness.

After a while it stops. I listen hoping that, whatever it is, has gone away. The hairs on my arms are bolt upright, tension rifling through my body. It’s so cold in here. The knocking sound is replaced by scratching. It sounds like it’s coming from the walls. I feel on edge, scared by what’s going on. Darkness is slowly filling the house, replacing the optimism of light with seeping desolation. Silhouettes dance on walls, goading me. I want to find out where the din is emanating from but my body feels frozen, unwilling to move. Inertia. A paralysis of sorts. After a while I manage to slowly edge towards the wardrobe. I open the doors and tumble in; falling in saccadic blinks.

Hours pass - the stealthy march of time. The tedium is finally broken by the sound of someone entering through the front door. A muffled commotion then footsteps padding on stairs. Voices whisper as though sharing secrets in an asylum. I watch, waiting for someone to enter, someone to commune with. Someone to acknowledge my existence. The door knob turns and a man and woman appear, both bent low as though avoiding being seen. A torch-beam flickers, illuminating nooks and crannies. 

They perch in the centre of the floor. Breath billows in bleak clouds, frozen in the icy air. The woman is middle-aged with blonde wavy hair. Her smile looks strained as though it bears the weight of the world. She is wearing a navy parka with a fleece-lined hood. The man seems of similar age. His hair is flaxen with a square face highlighted by an angular jaw and flat features. He also is wrapped up against the cold with a black trench coat and tartan scarf.

Exchanging glances, a sports holdall is unzipped, incense and candles pulled out. Carpet has long gone leaving a surface of broken underlay, strewn in random pieces, a putrefaction of neglect. Melting tallow makes little difference to the degradation of the ground. The man flicks a lighter on and holds it to the wick of two candles along with sticks of incense. She puts her hand inside her coat and a book appears. It’s small but thick. I stare harder trying to read the name. The text is in another language. Maybe Latin.

All the time, I am watching through a crack, wondering when to declare my presence. It doesn’t feel like the right moment. After all, I don’t know who these two are and what they are doing here. They may be Satan worshippers for all I know. I mean, look at all that stuff they have spread out. Normal people don’t scatter ritualistic items on the floor. There’s graffiti on the walls spread by previous intruders. Strange drawings. One of the doodles is in the form of a goat sitting cross-legged, horns curling imperiously from its head. It’s overwritten with spray-painted configurations. Even Satanists succumb to the algorithms of youth subculture.

Amongst the paraphernalia, a photo in a frame sits propped up. It’s a picture of the woman sitting in a deck chair on a beach, pregnant, waves breaking behind her. Wearing a pink tee shirt featuring a unicorn and blue shorts, her baby bump is prominent suggesting that the image was taken close to birth. The woman is peering intensely at the snap, melancholy feelings surging through her like a dagger piercing the past. It’s clear to me now that these people are here on a kind of vigil, a pilgrimage of some importance.

Shadows dance on walls, candlelight causing shapes to form. I can see a silhouette. It appears to be in the shape of a female standing upright. There’s only me that’s seen it. The man and woman are chatting, remembering, talking about how a boy would have been in his teens by now. There’s a solemnity to proceedings, a rueful succession of reminiscences. The scratching resumes. It’s like fingernails clawing at floorboards.

They are getting up and crossing the room. Perhaps this is the moment where I declare myself. There’s a hand reaching for the wardrobe door, pulling it open. They both step back as the innards of the furniture are revealed. There are two dead rats in there. The smell is abhorrent, the sight worse. They look as though they have been there for days. The bodies are stiff and decomposing. They can’t have made the sounds can they? How can they have when they aren’t alive? Can rats be wraiths?

A moment of potential euphoria has passed. I still see them but not from the wardrobe. As the doors were pulled open, a dark shape rippled across walls, passing from one place to another. Even the strongest eyes would not have been able to detect the motion. A shadow inside a shadow inside a pitch-black canvas where the night is darkest. There’s a subdued shape on the other side of the room. An entity fused with a silhouette, made plain by the light from burning candles. The soundless effigy is of a woman with hands holding a pronounced belly – a stomach containing a life. My life. Years have receded in seconds and the aging I have undergone in a different time and place have dissipated as it always does on this occasion. On this memoriam.

There is no mass, no matter, no substance. Just a reflection lost in lamentation. It’s clear that I can’t communicate with these people. I now know that the man and woman are my parents, come to remember my passing. We have been here many times to reunite on this anniversary.

When the flames are extinguished, I will evaporate into the ether like the spirit I am. Wax is waning, the last of the light passing into darkness once more. I sense them leave, the man with his arm around the woman, comforting her. The room is subsumed becoming a caliginous vale of gloom. The night knows us all. It waits patiently ready to massage our fears, to corral our memories and take us into the morning. Where the light greets the living and the dead are forgotten again.

Image free to use via WikiCommons

First published by AlienBuddha Press in EZine 62 April 2024 (Updated/Revised version published at ABCTales)