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Ghost Story
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There was a saying which intrigued me as a child. It is hardly ever repeated in the United States anymore. After feeling an eerie chill or the shivers, a person would say, \"Someone just walked on my grave...\" All the adults would look a little pensive and then it would pass and be dismissed as easily.
My home is in Italy. I am only a visitor in the United States now. Vacations last a few years for restorers. We hibernate in a beautiful away place, an oubliette, a place of forgetting. The French like to give pretty names to unpleasant things so oubliette is their name for dungeon.,..a place for forgetting. My cottage in the forest overlooking the sea is a charming, little oubliette for many who have died a violent death. They were all previous owners who stayed too long in Ghost Cottage and still reside here today.
A mountain witch lived on this site before the house was constructed. She was murdered after she made one of her client\'s wives ill. The angered husband murdered her in winter and her body wasn\'t found until the following spring. Ghost Cottage was born haunted. The first owners left shortly after moving in. The next owner was not so lucky. He was decapitated. His widow married again and this husband flew his airplane into the side of a mountain on the anniversary of the death of the man who lost his head. Another, shot himself in the chest.
Owners musn\'t linger too long in Ghost Cottage without paying a price. Renters flee soon enough. First they see the shadows and then they hear the whispers in the gloaming. Then they are touched ever so lightly...like a butterfly kiss. And then their mail is forwarded to their new address.
I remember that touch. The first touch. The last touch. And what is touching me now. I am inextricably linked, moving will make no difference now. I remember when with each new day, I hoped it would be the last time I felt that touch...in the gloaming...when I knew it would begin again.
The days are different now. The ghosts are stonger now. Better behaved for the most part. Demanding as ever and getting their way. Now they are satisfied with using the energy from the lighbulbs and the oven and heat sources are provided so they don\'t have to draw so much energy from the living members of the house. We are the minority. Each day brings a new understanding. Each day brings with it a new experience with the other side defying its boundary. Each day the ghosts here vie for the pecking order in Ghost Cottage. Bill, the first owner of the house to pay the price for the privilage of this everlasting view of forest overlooking the Pacific is far and away the number one ghost. He and only he gets to decide who visits and who stays. His approval is felt warmly and his uncanny ability to heal those of whom he is fond is a wonder. For those who do not meet with his immediate approval, a different remedy is dispensed. A pharmacist in life, BIll is still handing out a dose of medicine, not always pleasant. It does make one want to be a better person, immediately.
Ghost Cottage remains my home. Bill saved my life in a car accident on the twenty-eighth anniversay of his death. Two years later, it is apparent Bill and I will be spending eternity together. Here, in Ghost Cottage and later on the other side. I saw the other side once. My heart stopped and I was brain dead for forty-five minutes after losing too much blood in an emergency surgery. What I remember seeing and feeling there made me question why anyone would return to this side. Living in Gold Beach, Oregon let me see a place so beautiful I understand why former residents regularly leave heaven just to visit here again. I suspose I will too. Ghost Cottage is a place everyone returns to after they have visited. The prospect of being a ghost here is a charming thought. One I can wait a good, long time for. One can be sure...I will return.
We honor heroes, not because we want to be one, but because we want to be rescued. At first light, on the anniversary of Bill\'s death, He rescued me from the wreckage of a vehicle hanging on the side of a mountain. There was no explanation for my survival...unless one believes in miracles and angels and ghosts and something greater than the universe itself. Ghost Cottage sits on the edge of that known universe, tucked away in a forest at the edge of the sea. Time seems to be absent here. There is another element absent here as well.
Boundaries. The boundaries which separate the living from the dead, angels from demons and dark from light seem to blend and melt away. Silent echoes in the distance reverberate between the mountains and the trees and the rock that stands guard against the crashing waves. Memories of the future, cries from the past all roll in with the Scottish mist ready for sunset to fall on this little cottage. No need to lock the doors. No one to break in here. No one to hear a scream. We honor heroes, but when that hero does not come, sometimes we have to rescue ourself.
Rescue is not so simple here. We think we choose our home only to find out one day, it is our house who chooses us.
Every house has its secrets. Some more than others. Like many homes, Ghost Cottage has it secrets. Quiet, little secrets and great big dangerous ones lurk in the shadowy corners and in the forest surrounding the welcoming home with its gleaming windows and pretty flowers which bloom all winter. The eternal spring which wraps around the house like a veil on a bride belies what is underneath. As day turns into night the house does not go quietly to sleep. With the darkness comes the quickening and a new set of rules.
Some shadows are not satisfied to stay in the corners. In the gloaming, the shadows take on a fluid quality. Moving slowly and then darting quickly behind doors and stairwells, reaching out, caressing with a silken touch, pulling the heat from warm skin. Each night a lullaby of whispers, kisses and somehting more penetrating than thought. Someone else\'s emotions are visiting...again. Some shadows are not satisifed at all.
Secrets have a way of becoming so large they can no longer hide. Secrets can take on a life of their own. Some secrets can take on a life not their own. Shadows have their secrets and the delicious intricasy of dark secrets so forbidden they cannot stay buried in the past and like the shadows themselves no long comply with polite boundaries revealing themselves to thise unready to accept truth. Denial is not a luxury one can afford in Ghost Cottage.
To reside here one shares an uneasy kinship with the past. The past, like its residents, will not stay buried.
Reading is one of my great pleasures. Reading a classic with a pot of tea beside me listening to falling rain is my luxury. This is easily achieved on this rocky coast. I wonder how many pleasures the former owners of Ghost Cottage have given up. Staying on here bears a high price.
I see them each day and feel their bittersweet longing while they look back on those they left behind. Feeling their longing, seeing their wounds, hearing their cries... in the night, these shadows embrace me, caressing my flesh, absorbing my warmth till I cannot tell where the shadows end and I begin, entwinded always against the loss of all one holds dear. I too give up the living to reside with the dead. I long for the happy endings in pretty stories. I always wondered if happy endings were possible. Living here in Ghost Cottage, I realize now...there are no endings.
Love, from Ghost Cottage |
Filed under:
Literature
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02/24/2009, 7:02 pm |
Rating: 0/0 |
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