It's a Ghost Story!
We have a new "dead"line for our ghost story, Moondust: March 21, 2011. We await some final editing. Meanwhile here is an excerpt to wet your whistle. You are going to love Colleen Nicholson.
CHAPTER ONE
I
’ve been watching them steady for a year, ever since they built their dream house on top of my rock, scaring up not just ME but all the other elementals and untamed animals and eavesdroppers (mostly spiders) that inhabit my hillside. They’re still too noisy for my comfort. I hear them talking (and arguing) late into the night while their baby sleeps. His voice is always loud, hers is hushed. They don’t know it-or they choose not to know it-but their girl can hear them in her sleep, just as I can hear them in my current, stylishly slender ghostly form, which some would consider a type of sleep. But for the moment I’m awake, you understand, even if you think I am not really here.
I’ve been dormant, yes, for almost three decades, and I was coming to enjoy that “sleep,” debating whether to ever awaken, when their construction-the banging and drilling and loud radio music, the occasional cussing that popped into the air like gun shots-all that unnecessary sound-stirred me up so bad I couldn’t go back, especially after I saw who it was building the house: Della Small, one of my own! She’s the spitting image of me. Watching her plant her garden last spring, that clinched it-the nasturtiums were the tipoff- she had to be my great-great-granddaughter, the one I glimpsed when she was first born, before this last long nap I’ve been taking.
Della’s thirty-three years old, but she’s only got one child. It’s not for lack of trying; she’s been with Tommy forever (from her perspective, not mine). They were high school sweethearts, engaged at age 20, and now she and Tommy are married twelve years. Eight of those years Della pursued parenthood with a vengeance, dragging Tommy with her. He complied after he learned his insurance would cover it, and finally Kierra was conceived in a doctor’s office under bright fluorescent lights. Then Della almost miscarried at 18 weeks. She spent the final month of the pregnancy in bed. You might say Kierra came into this world with her ears back, reluctant for some reason only she knows, and to be sure her mama Della holds onto her like she’s the last doll in the storefront window, the store she walked by day after day as a fatherless girl, hoping no one else would get that baby doll before she could save up the money and have her for herself.
They woke me for good with that blast of dynamite into a beautiful ten-ton chunk of granite that was getting in “their” way (how arrogant is that), and when I blinked and saw it was Della standing back there in the distance, her hands over her ears, all grown up, I vowed to stay awake for her lifetime if I have to, and then when I saw her little girl with the turned-in eye, the slanty eyelid…. oh my. Maybe there’s a reason Della came knocking on my door. Pounding on it, rather. Breaking it down.
As far as I know, nobody remembers anymore what happened to me back in 1884, I think that’s the year, but I’ve begun to grow rusty on my dates. I don’t blame my people for their forgetfulness. That’s the way it goes-we are allowed to forget the sufferings of our ancestors, or how could we ever get on with life? It’s all too tragic, too poignant, isn’t it? But since YOU are listening, and you do seem interested, I’ll tell you how I got to being a ghost and all. Like most tragedies, my abandonment came with its own peculiar gifts. I was orphaned at the age of three-that was the tragedy for me, or so I thought-and that’s also how I got my ability to see beyond time, I’m sure of it now, and that’s why I am still here looking around, seeing into things most people don’t get to witness even when their physical life is done, because they’re in such a hurry to go directly up to heaven, I suppose. For me, I had something keeping me here.
Great loss gave me great vision. But I didn’t make that connection, I certainly didn’t want my fate, and by the time that knowledge caught me I was dead and that’s the truth in black and white. That is to say, I didn’t know what I was until I wasn’t.
During my days on this earth I remained a stubborn one. I died alone, the way I wanted it, completely alone in the woods, if “alone” means without humans. I walked up the side of the hill to the flat spot that overlooks the French Broad, my favorite place. Just beside the overlook, there was a naturally-occurring circle of hemlocks I named Mother when I was a teenager on the cusp of being married off. (I planned to be married there, the trees a stand-in for my mother.) The moon was only half full when I named those trees, and my man-Thomas-he died two days before the wedding. I was already pregnant with my only child. A girl, she grew up to be a tomboy like me, walking fence rails, throwing rocks, throwing off her shoes, climbing cliffs on Saturdays. That was it for me, in terms of marriage and children. I’m the original single mom.
Now I’m a single great-great-granny ghost, peeking through Della’s window, soaking up the moonlight. There were a lot of bats tonight; I waited for them to finish their business with dinner before moseying over, because I do not like bats in my hair.
Della’s walking her baby tonight. It’s a little after 1am, and Kierra’s fussing again, the little devil. She’s had a run of colds and such, just little things. I heard Della tell Tommy it was because of the new “daycare.” (What a funny word that is.) Fever, runny nose, cough, that sort of thing, old as the hills. Della says she might have to quit her job. She wrote in her journal that she wants to quit, but Tommy hates the idea. She wrote that, too (that he won’t let her), then scribbled it out.
I’m not so keen on Tommy. He’s a taker, that man. Really he’s more like a boy than a man, always thinking about what he wants, planning, plotting. It’s a wonder he ever agreed to have that baby in the first place. They fight nowadays more than they did when that house first went up, when I first poked my head around the corner to see who was there. The more they fight, the more she seems to get used to it, but I can see her mind bending, bending, bending in the unceasing hurricane winds of unhappiness.
She’s walking her little Kierra, and that girl keeps pulling on her own little leg, like it hurts or something, and Tommy’s snoring in the other room. I went in there and blew cold air across his face and mouth, to wake him up, but nothing. So I jumped on his stomach, and that did nothing but give him the hiccups. The hiccups didn’t even wake him up-he’s hiccupping in his sleep like a big baby, his stomach fat jiggling each time and I just feel cross. It’s not that I’m sleepy, or hungry. Like I said, after three decades of snoozing I am wide awake, and you know I don’t eat.
“There, there, there,” Della’s singing now. “Little mumpkin pumpkin, treasure of mine, getting too sleepy to stay up and whine.”
I like Della’s profile, that little white turned up nose, just like mine, the wispy curls. She looks about 15 years old. Her hair is thin, but shiny. She smiles like a milk saucer if you have any idea what I mean. That’s how my mother described my own smile, a milk saucer smile, and she’s got the green eyes to compliment that smile, all twinkly and alive. Unlike me, Della would do anything for anyone, and she is beautiful to boot. She’s getting too skinny though-I’ve noticed that too, in the past year. As if keeping her weight “under control” would solve everything, she just loses a pound or two every time she questions the marriage or her job or herself. This is unfortunate because she doesn’t think as clearly when she starves herself. I don’t like to think that she might not want to think. Ha!
Tommy moves his arms like he’s having a bad dream; maybe it’s a delayed response to my blowing on his face, or the end of those hiccups. Next thing we know he’s up, he’s peeing in the bathroom. He looks over into the next room, the baby’s room, and he sees what’s going on. “Honey, you okay in there?” he asks, and Della nods, “mmmm… hmmmm.”
“You don’t need any help?” he asks, but the answer is in his question and Della always says “no, go back to sleep honey,” and the baby never wants her daddy anyway, he’s loud and scary. Little Kierra already knows who cares about her, and of course she’s already smitten with the one who doesn’t take care of her-but not smitten enough to go to him for anything she needs.
I understand. It’s pointless to wake up this husband.
Makes me so mad I could stomp on his stomach-no, that doesn’t work… I could throw a lamp on him-just to interrupt his precious sleep, but all he would feel is the spider web feeling that maybe a bedbug has gotten on him, or the sheets came off and there’s a breeze in the room. Della would notice the lamp lying there on top of him and freak out, and she has enough on her mind. Can you imagine what that’s like for me? Can you imagine my frustration? Do you wonder why I stick around, when there’s nothing I can do about it?
Okay, maybe it is not much different from my actual earthly life as a female in the later part of the 19th century, we were pretty invisible then, too, but everyone had their place and there was some respect for our contribution, a mother was allowed to be a mother without having to be everything else too. I wasn’t expected to be a sex object on top of being a mother. Whether the men respected us or not, men were willing to say out loud that they needed us and they lived up to our need for them-if they didn’t die. It wasn’t a sin to need each other back then. Women could live together whether or not they were lesbians and not much was said about it, at least, not where I lived out my life in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
That little thing, my sweet baby Kierra, she just keeps holding her leg and whining, and Della just keeps walking, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Their eyes are swollen, both momma’s and baby’s, one from lack of sleep, one from crying. Della presses her finger against Kierra’s lymph nodes, feeling the swelling, evaluating.
Since I never sleep, I’ll admit I appreciate the company, as selfish as that may sound to you.
For the most part, when I’m not angry and wanting to stomp something, I’m content with my new form. I am lighter than a feather, you know. I died just lying there on the ground, nothing dramatic. My last earthly vision? That same half moon that I saw when I named those trees as a teenager in love, a moon that is milk-white, pockmarked, imperfect to this day. That one thing remains unchanged since I died-I look up into the sky and I always see those hemlock fingers brushing about above me, as if to sweep away the dark sky so that I can see the half moon. Time stopped up there. Down below, time went on.
And maybe time becomes timeless when you die, but still there is an accounting of sorts. I started out dense, seen by many as I made my rounds. My unique face, my willowy nightgown, my old leather boots-there were testimonials about the old lady of Flat Top Mountain, and that was me all right. But as the decades wore on I did change, as I say, there was an accounting of sorts. I became thinner, more spread out, less… tangible. So yes, I’m timeless in one realm, but I do seem to respond to the time in your realm. I am, perhaps, wearing out.
Maybe if it had been a full moon I would have made my way onward to heaven, I could have been pulled right through that bright perfect circle into the wonderfulness, that place where there are no worries. But the half moon-I couldn’t get my head through it. Even though my body had shrunk to eighty pounds, my skull remained round and hard and stubborn as ever. I knew it was time to let go of my body, but I also knew I wasn’t finished raising my own girl, my one girl, my one chance. I knew something was unfinished, that I wasn’t done here, and stubborn me, I wasn’t going to allow one little thing like the loss of my physical body stop me from finishing my work. To this day I’m left gusting through these woods because of my own stubbornness and the pure hard-headedness of those girls that have come after me. They take after me. I pound on their heads to get through to them, but they don’t listen. They can’t see me, they won’t see me. With all the freedom I have as a spirit, free of life and death, free to come and go, I still feel the way I felt under that rock when those people walked away without looking back. Helpless. Orphan. It’s such a familiar feeling now, such a pain and yet a comfort. It’s who I am. Sometimes I give up, and sometimes-like now-I give it all I’ve got.
The night that I died the half moon was turned upward like a cup, which foretells rain, and indeed it rained as soon as I was gone. It rained for three weeks straight, a hard, steady rain. The first sighting of me came after that, as the fog gathered its skirts and tiptoed out of the woods, and things began to dry, to look upward at the sun, and grow. A young boy found my body, it was Leroy Wilson’s son, and that evening his mother saw my spirit walking through their apple orchard when she was putting the cows in. Back then, that first night, my spirit was so dense she thought I was a real physical person, she thought it was me, alive, and she called out to me but I kept going. An hour later her son came clashing into the kitchen with the news of my bones. I wish I could explain more on the subject of death than this, but ultimately, it’s a mystery to me-I haven’t crossed all the way over, and just like you, I can’t really conceive of it, that “final” place, I can’t comprehend something like that with what’s left of my mind, my ghostly mind. It’s just too big, we all might understand that. It’s too big.
CHAPTER ONE
I
’ve been watching them steady for a year, ever since they built their dream house on top of my rock, scaring up not just ME but all the other elementals and untamed animals and eavesdroppers (mostly spiders) that inhabit my hillside. They’re still too noisy for my comfort. I hear them talking (and arguing) late into the night while their baby sleeps. His voice is always loud, hers is hushed. They don’t know it-or they choose not to know it-but their girl can hear them in her sleep, just as I can hear them in my current, stylishly slender ghostly form, which some would consider a type of sleep. But for the moment I’m awake, you understand, even if you think I am not really here.
I’ve been dormant, yes, for almost three decades, and I was coming to enjoy that “sleep,” debating whether to ever awaken, when their construction-the banging and drilling and loud radio music, the occasional cussing that popped into the air like gun shots-all that unnecessary sound-stirred me up so bad I couldn’t go back, especially after I saw who it was building the house: Della Small, one of my own! She’s the spitting image of me. Watching her plant her garden last spring, that clinched it-the nasturtiums were the tipoff- she had to be my great-great-granddaughter, the one I glimpsed when she was first born, before this last long nap I’ve been taking.
Della’s thirty-three years old, but she’s only got one child. It’s not for lack of trying; she’s been with Tommy forever (from her perspective, not mine). They were high school sweethearts, engaged at age 20, and now she and Tommy are married twelve years. Eight of those years Della pursued parenthood with a vengeance, dragging Tommy with her. He complied after he learned his insurance would cover it, and finally Kierra was conceived in a doctor’s office under bright fluorescent lights. Then Della almost miscarried at 18 weeks. She spent the final month of the pregnancy in bed. You might say Kierra came into this world with her ears back, reluctant for some reason only she knows, and to be sure her mama Della holds onto her like she’s the last doll in the storefront window, the store she walked by day after day as a fatherless girl, hoping no one else would get that baby doll before she could save up the money and have her for herself.
They woke me for good with that blast of dynamite into a beautiful ten-ton chunk of granite that was getting in “their” way (how arrogant is that), and when I blinked and saw it was Della standing back there in the distance, her hands over her ears, all grown up, I vowed to stay awake for her lifetime if I have to, and then when I saw her little girl with the turned-in eye, the slanty eyelid…. oh my. Maybe there’s a reason Della came knocking on my door. Pounding on it, rather. Breaking it down.
As far as I know, nobody remembers anymore what happened to me back in 1884, I think that’s the year, but I’ve begun to grow rusty on my dates. I don’t blame my people for their forgetfulness. That’s the way it goes-we are allowed to forget the sufferings of our ancestors, or how could we ever get on with life? It’s all too tragic, too poignant, isn’t it? But since YOU are listening, and you do seem interested, I’ll tell you how I got to being a ghost and all. Like most tragedies, my abandonment came with its own peculiar gifts. I was orphaned at the age of three-that was the tragedy for me, or so I thought-and that’s also how I got my ability to see beyond time, I’m sure of it now, and that’s why I am still here looking around, seeing into things most people don’t get to witness even when their physical life is done, because they’re in such a hurry to go directly up to heaven, I suppose. For me, I had something keeping me here.
Great loss gave me great vision. But I didn’t make that connection, I certainly didn’t want my fate, and by the time that knowledge caught me I was dead and that’s the truth in black and white. That is to say, I didn’t know what I was until I wasn’t.
During my days on this earth I remained a stubborn one. I died alone, the way I wanted it, completely alone in the woods, if “alone” means without humans. I walked up the side of the hill to the flat spot that overlooks the French Broad, my favorite place. Just beside the overlook, there was a naturally-occurring circle of hemlocks I named Mother when I was a teenager on the cusp of being married off. (I planned to be married there, the trees a stand-in for my mother.) The moon was only half full when I named those trees, and my man-Thomas-he died two days before the wedding. I was already pregnant with my only child. A girl, she grew up to be a tomboy like me, walking fence rails, throwing rocks, throwing off her shoes, climbing cliffs on Saturdays. That was it for me, in terms of marriage and children. I’m the original single mom.
Now I’m a single great-great-granny ghost, peeking through Della’s window, soaking up the moonlight. There were a lot of bats tonight; I waited for them to finish their business with dinner before moseying over, because I do not like bats in my hair.
Della’s walking her baby tonight. It’s a little after 1am, and Kierra’s fussing again, the little devil. She’s had a run of colds and such, just little things. I heard Della tell Tommy it was because of the new “daycare.” (What a funny word that is.) Fever, runny nose, cough, that sort of thing, old as the hills. Della says she might have to quit her job. She wrote in her journal that she wants to quit, but Tommy hates the idea. She wrote that, too (that he won’t let her), then scribbled it out.
I’m not so keen on Tommy. He’s a taker, that man. Really he’s more like a boy than a man, always thinking about what he wants, planning, plotting. It’s a wonder he ever agreed to have that baby in the first place. They fight nowadays more than they did when that house first went up, when I first poked my head around the corner to see who was there. The more they fight, the more she seems to get used to it, but I can see her mind bending, bending, bending in the unceasing hurricane winds of unhappiness.
She’s walking her little Kierra, and that girl keeps pulling on her own little leg, like it hurts or something, and Tommy’s snoring in the other room. I went in there and blew cold air across his face and mouth, to wake him up, but nothing. So I jumped on his stomach, and that did nothing but give him the hiccups. The hiccups didn’t even wake him up-he’s hiccupping in his sleep like a big baby, his stomach fat jiggling each time and I just feel cross. It’s not that I’m sleepy, or hungry. Like I said, after three decades of snoozing I am wide awake, and you know I don’t eat.
“There, there, there,” Della’s singing now. “Little mumpkin pumpkin, treasure of mine, getting too sleepy to stay up and whine.”
I like Della’s profile, that little white turned up nose, just like mine, the wispy curls. She looks about 15 years old. Her hair is thin, but shiny. She smiles like a milk saucer if you have any idea what I mean. That’s how my mother described my own smile, a milk saucer smile, and she’s got the green eyes to compliment that smile, all twinkly and alive. Unlike me, Della would do anything for anyone, and she is beautiful to boot. She’s getting too skinny though-I’ve noticed that too, in the past year. As if keeping her weight “under control” would solve everything, she just loses a pound or two every time she questions the marriage or her job or herself. This is unfortunate because she doesn’t think as clearly when she starves herself. I don’t like to think that she might not want to think. Ha!
Tommy moves his arms like he’s having a bad dream; maybe it’s a delayed response to my blowing on his face, or the end of those hiccups. Next thing we know he’s up, he’s peeing in the bathroom. He looks over into the next room, the baby’s room, and he sees what’s going on. “Honey, you okay in there?” he asks, and Della nods, “mmmm… hmmmm.”
“You don’t need any help?” he asks, but the answer is in his question and Della always says “no, go back to sleep honey,” and the baby never wants her daddy anyway, he’s loud and scary. Little Kierra already knows who cares about her, and of course she’s already smitten with the one who doesn’t take care of her-but not smitten enough to go to him for anything she needs.
I understand. It’s pointless to wake up this husband.
Makes me so mad I could stomp on his stomach-no, that doesn’t work… I could throw a lamp on him-just to interrupt his precious sleep, but all he would feel is the spider web feeling that maybe a bedbug has gotten on him, or the sheets came off and there’s a breeze in the room. Della would notice the lamp lying there on top of him and freak out, and she has enough on her mind. Can you imagine what that’s like for me? Can you imagine my frustration? Do you wonder why I stick around, when there’s nothing I can do about it?
Okay, maybe it is not much different from my actual earthly life as a female in the later part of the 19th century, we were pretty invisible then, too, but everyone had their place and there was some respect for our contribution, a mother was allowed to be a mother without having to be everything else too. I wasn’t expected to be a sex object on top of being a mother. Whether the men respected us or not, men were willing to say out loud that they needed us and they lived up to our need for them-if they didn’t die. It wasn’t a sin to need each other back then. Women could live together whether or not they were lesbians and not much was said about it, at least, not where I lived out my life in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
That little thing, my sweet baby Kierra, she just keeps holding her leg and whining, and Della just keeps walking, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Their eyes are swollen, both momma’s and baby’s, one from lack of sleep, one from crying. Della presses her finger against Kierra’s lymph nodes, feeling the swelling, evaluating.
Since I never sleep, I’ll admit I appreciate the company, as selfish as that may sound to you.
For the most part, when I’m not angry and wanting to stomp something, I’m content with my new form. I am lighter than a feather, you know. I died just lying there on the ground, nothing dramatic. My last earthly vision? That same half moon that I saw when I named those trees as a teenager in love, a moon that is milk-white, pockmarked, imperfect to this day. That one thing remains unchanged since I died-I look up into the sky and I always see those hemlock fingers brushing about above me, as if to sweep away the dark sky so that I can see the half moon. Time stopped up there. Down below, time went on.
And maybe time becomes timeless when you die, but still there is an accounting of sorts. I started out dense, seen by many as I made my rounds. My unique face, my willowy nightgown, my old leather boots-there were testimonials about the old lady of Flat Top Mountain, and that was me all right. But as the decades wore on I did change, as I say, there was an accounting of sorts. I became thinner, more spread out, less… tangible. So yes, I’m timeless in one realm, but I do seem to respond to the time in your realm. I am, perhaps, wearing out.
Maybe if it had been a full moon I would have made my way onward to heaven, I could have been pulled right through that bright perfect circle into the wonderfulness, that place where there are no worries. But the half moon-I couldn’t get my head through it. Even though my body had shrunk to eighty pounds, my skull remained round and hard and stubborn as ever. I knew it was time to let go of my body, but I also knew I wasn’t finished raising my own girl, my one girl, my one chance. I knew something was unfinished, that I wasn’t done here, and stubborn me, I wasn’t going to allow one little thing like the loss of my physical body stop me from finishing my work. To this day I’m left gusting through these woods because of my own stubbornness and the pure hard-headedness of those girls that have come after me. They take after me. I pound on their heads to get through to them, but they don’t listen. They can’t see me, they won’t see me. With all the freedom I have as a spirit, free of life and death, free to come and go, I still feel the way I felt under that rock when those people walked away without looking back. Helpless. Orphan. It’s such a familiar feeling now, such a pain and yet a comfort. It’s who I am. Sometimes I give up, and sometimes-like now-I give it all I’ve got.
The night that I died the half moon was turned upward like a cup, which foretells rain, and indeed it rained as soon as I was gone. It rained for three weeks straight, a hard, steady rain. The first sighting of me came after that, as the fog gathered its skirts and tiptoed out of the woods, and things began to dry, to look upward at the sun, and grow. A young boy found my body, it was Leroy Wilson’s son, and that evening his mother saw my spirit walking through their apple orchard when she was putting the cows in. Back then, that first night, my spirit was so dense she thought I was a real physical person, she thought it was me, alive, and she called out to me but I kept going. An hour later her son came clashing into the kitchen with the news of my bones. I wish I could explain more on the subject of death than this, but ultimately, it’s a mystery to me-I haven’t crossed all the way over, and just like you, I can’t really conceive of it, that “final” place, I can’t comprehend something like that with what’s left of my mind, my ghostly mind. It’s just too big, we all might understand that. It’s too big.