GHOST

My first experience of the other world seeping into mine was hearing violin music in my bedroom in Brooklyn when I was six years old.  I lived on a street where untold stories proliferated in the presence of a silence I was frightened of. It was different then the quiet solitude of play, or closing my eyes in the sunlight. I asked my parents if anyone else had heard the music. They responded with an absence of words that I had become familiar with. My brother, master at finding ways to scare me. - since he held a grudge because I was born,interrupting his seven year reign as an only child. “He said, “ A man hung himself in the attic above your bedroom.”  My mother’s eyes widened. It would be her task to explain, because my father had already succumbed to distance behind the newspaper. She continued, “You should never be afraid of those that have passed.” That terrified me.  Then she told me the lacking- all-detail story of a Hungarian violinist who they took in ,when a woman around the corner, friend of my grandmother, did not have room for him in her tiny apartment.  “He played beautiful music,” she assured me.  My brother chimed in, “Until he hung himself from the ceiling.”  The attic, that had been my secret sanctuary of make believe and solitude instantly became a house of horrors. It is no surprise that I found solace, soon afterwards, in creating funereal events between my house and the dark curtained house of holocaust survivors next door. 

I never heard the music again.  But I had repeated visions of huge spiders waiting on the steps to the haunted rooms above. Other strange things occurred but the ghosts were still, until my mother’s death. She was in the hospital in a coma for ten days.  On the tenth day, alone in my bedroom, I called to her, “Mama will you live or will you die?” I incanted over and over until the walls of my room turned white. A door appeared and opened. There stood my mother smiling, wearing a dress I remembered from summers on the back porch. She tossed her cane into the blue sky outside the door, waved to me, turned and faded slowly from view. I stared into an immense azure space. I heard the phone ring and ran downstairs. It was the doctor saying, in a heartless voice as if his tongue was captured in mashed potatoes, “I am sorry to tell you that your mother died a few minutes ago.”  I understood that what I had seen was real. I kept it to myself.

For a long time I did not see more spirits or ghosts, but often heard voices.  My ears were unprotected from those on the other side.  I would hear my mother’s or my grandmother’s voice.  “ You are not alone. Do not be afraid. “

There were other sightings, later.  Stories for another time. Often, I tried but could not conjure ghosts to myself no matter how I tried with supplications, Ouija boards, and jumping over puddles.  Then, one day, in my early twenties, I found a dust covered book of reconstructed Hindu myths in a second hand store on 10th street.  I had to buy it! I never opened it.  Days later in the afternoon , there was a knock on my door.  A man stood in the doorway. Insteead of the hall, I saw a large library room with overflowing books on shelves and a large desk. knew it was his room.   He asked for the book.  In a matter of fact weird obedience, I found the book, and gave it to him. He said, “You promised to return it. Thank you.” I shut the door. Then, opened it to see the gray walls of the building.  I felt a great relief and took a long nap. The next day I went to the bookstore to inquire about the book. “ It was one of a set of three,” said the shopkeeper.   He explained it was a story written in the early 1900’s about a man who purchased a dream.  I told him about the visitor.  He said, without explanation, “It is probably a good that you returned it to him.”

The last encounter I had was a hair raising event that caused me to never visit a certain couple again. I was telling stories near Lake George, and had miscalculated how long it would take to get there.  I was so late, my audience had left.  Those who hired me, aquaintances who ran a foundation, were sympathetic. They  invited me to spend the night in their house outside of Woodstock. A foreboding rose up from my stomach, an inner cold feeling. “I should leave immediately,” I thought, but felt guilty. It was the kind of guilt a child feels when caught stealing forbidden food.  It was a long dark drive to Woodstock. As we arrived at the house, I was senseless. with exhaustion. My host said, “You will love this house it is full of antiques.” The chill filled me again. The house in the dark was creepy. It was a shadow frame triangular in shape, as if it was half buried in the earth.  They opened the door and turned on the lights. My eyes ached. But I came to my senses, because the front room was filled with heavy furniture, and a tall wall of shelves. On every shelf were bald porcelain doll’s heads with open eyes. One was wearing a hat weirdly similar to a hat an aunt of mine, jealous of me and my mother, wore when she visited us in Brooklyn. My brother and I were sure she tortured her younger sister who lived with her and never married, “She is more a slave then a sister.”  my brother whispered delighted. It was her face that stared at me from the shelf. It was always her face I saw when I read fairy tales about witches. 

“You must be tired,” remarked my host’s wife.  I felt nauseous. I attempted a polite “yes.” And, followed them to the bedroom.  The room, at least, had no dolls. It was an ordinary room with a bed,small table, one lamp and a n upright dresser,. There was a large window shaped like the house, a long triangular window. . I could hear the wind and the trees made shadows on the darkened glass. I was tired. My head lited forward with the weight of heavy eyelids. I fell into bed into a deep sleep. 

Near dawn I awoke.Outside was the sound of children running and laughing. I looked out the window and saw what I had not seen in the dark, a round stone well, covered by wood.  No children.  I relaxed. But, suddenly a woman appeared at the window. S he was thin and had on a cloth nightcap like a character in a Victorian novel.  She stared at me. I could not move. Her body began to shake and then her head moving back and forth as she began to wail.  I heard splashing.   She opened her mouth filling the room with a muffled  scream, and continued to wail. When I forced myself to move,  she disappeared.

  I got dressed and sought the bathroom, then the kitchen, the doll head living room that was no longer frightening  but unbearably repulsive ,and went outside where my hosts were already at a table, waiting for me, for breakfast. I sat down.  I turned and saw the well behind us. 

  I asked about the well. Unlike my mother, who did not talk about the past for fear that the evil eye that had followed my grandmother from Romania was always lurking, my hostess chatted about the age of the house that was once a school for orphaned children.  “That is what I heard, the children.”  I blurted out. She barely listened to me, or even recognize my fear. She chatted on, “A woman lived in the house with the children.”  “I saw her, “ I whispered my voice dry and trembling. “We sometimes feel as if she is still here,” said the man happily pouring coffee. “And the woman,” I asked, now hardly breathing.  “Describe her,” said my hostess and I did.  “Exactly,” she said. “And the children what happened to the children?”  She said, lifting up a piece of toast, “There is an old story that they were playing and drowned in the well, ONe minute they had been running and laughting, and then they disapperd. The house was abandoned for years until we bought it.” Her husband added, “It had potential. She said, “I love the shape.”  

“Can I tell you about the dolls.?” asked my hostess. “ No No please don’t tell me about the dolls.”  “Aren’t you hungry? “ she inquired. “No No I am not hungry.”  I ran into the house and found my luggage, not daring to look at the dolls or the window where the woman had wept.  I made an excuse and left. I went home, and on the steps leading up to my apartment, I begged the ghosts of my mother and grandmother to be silent. I did not need their voices. In truth, they have not reached out to my since. Except earlier today. I have asked,summoned and begged for them to protect me in case the woman followed behind me. I wanted the door to the other world in my control. The words of my hosts in my ears, “Why did she choose you?’  which they asked as I walked away from the house.

I was paid $500 to listen to an old woman, a psychic living on East 84th street, named Agatha, who wanted to record stories she said she heard from another planet.  We had tea and when she began to let the voices from Venus speak through her, I heard tthe voice of my mother. ‘Who is it?” I asked, Agatha surprised as well, said it was my mother . She was reaching out to me from the other ide. “What is she saying ,” I asked.

Again in  the voice of my mother I heard, “ Do not be afraid of the dead.”