Ghosts

by Diane Sprague

We do not know why we are here. We often pretend that we do, but our fears belie our feigned certainty. We create our lives, willingly or not, from our conscious visions. Experience causes us to define ourselves as how we observe ourselves acting in what we call reality. Underneath it all are currents that whisper and draw us to another place, another reality. This other reality is hard to define; it's elusive and dark. We can only speak about it in symbols and stories. The appeal of this other reality is that it offers us a new way to define ourselves. The astounding power of this discovery is that we can allow the ghosts that haunt us to suggest a way of being which is entirely different from anything we even expected.

It is hard to find the ghosts. They hide in the recesses, the shadowy corners of our existence. They leave us with hints of something more, something strange, something spooky. The minute we try to shed light upon them and to make them tangible and clear, they slip away.

In their absence, we find the world becomes cold and sterile. Our psyches become halls of broken mirrors with jagged reflections of our pale and torpid bodies. We connect the images we see and form a compilation we define as ourselves. If we keep our eyes away from the darkness, the unknown regions behind the mirrors, we may succeed in foolings ourselves into thinking that we are clearly defined.

We might be content with that illusion if the sharp edges of the broken mirrors never tore our skin and made us pull away from their razor corners. Too many times the images they present torture our consciousness with vapid repetitions. Repeatedly, we view patterns that never go beyond this bland, narrow existence we define as our lives. This monotony ends when the haunting begins.

We went to the graveyard at night. The clarity and beauty of the darkness silenced our fears. The solid gravestones held secrets and we embraced what we did not know. We were children laughing and playing with our ignorance and knowledge, whispering ghost stories, and dancing with the spirits that we wished would speak to us. We could not stay long. It was only a brief visit, a beginning of a new way of seeing ourselves. Before daylight would come, we followed the familiar path home. In the stillness we could sense something vague, nebulous, and silent floating behind us. Our thoughts came out randomly.

"It might be evil."

"It seems to be spreading out, surrounding us."

"I would like to float with it, maybe even fly."

"We cannot fly."

"What are we?"

"Did we never answer that question?"

"We know the answer."

"We forgot."

"Is it still there?"

"Yes, but it will vanish with the light."

"And we will forget again I suppose."

"No, there is always a part that remembers."

"Where is that part? Can we awaken it?"

"Yes, we can."

"I think it is gone now. Did it go back to the graveyard?"

"It is still with us, silent and invisible"

"Will it haunt us?"

"Perhaps it will."

"I hope it will. I hope it will wake us up."

"Are we dreaming?"

"It is always a dream."

"I think that is what we forget."

"I would still like to fly."

We all went home to spend what was left of the night in sleep and dreams. One of us flew that night and later told us her story.

The trees in the forest were covered with blood. She had entered the forest knowing that it might be dangerous, but the stillness and vastness of the forest was inviting. When she noticed the trees, she knew Someone had been there before her and left these ominous marks. What it might mean, she could not tell. Signs wove their way in and our of her life leaving her intrigued, but puzzled. Even in her confusion, she could still fly through the forest. The trees reached high into the dark sky and she floated along the canopy. Looking beneath her, she saw an open building. It had no roof. She could float above it and spy on the inhabitants.

She could see people sitting in a lounge. Not much was happening. The night was slow and sleepy. They were all just peacefully passing time with no frantic questions, concerns, or struggles. Life seemed to have slowed down and left the passers in quiet complacency. She thought she might warn them that surrounding their peaceful oblivion there were trees covered with blood, but the lethargy of the inhabitants dispelled her sense of urgency. No one noticed the spy watching them from the sky, no one cared. Time passed slowly and the eternal night hid it terrors.

She flew away from the lounge, deeper into the structure where a roof began to form. The ceiling caught her inside the building and she found herself unable to soar as she did before. She came to a large window. She looked through the glass and saw three children. the smiled at her and beckoned her to understand their happiness and innocence. She asked them who they were. They did not speak, but their silence implied the wealth of their potential answers. What they saw was obvious, plain, and simple but the glass separated them from her and preserved their secret.

She noticed the ceiling above her was flimsy. She reached up and began tearing a hole into it so she could go into the attic. The attic was old, empty, and large. As she surveyed the surroundings, people began to slowly appear. A group of woman were attending to a corpse. A dark- haired woman approached her and said that the one who was dead was not really gone; she was just waiting. She left her message on the trees. It was time to tell the sleepers to wake up.

After she shared her story, the seance began. We sat before a single candle. We held hands and silenty awaited some signs, noise, or apparitions. Nothing happened, and perhaps we had only ourselves to blame. We shuffled in our seats. Silence is hard to sustain, so we began to speak.

"Are we doing this wrong?"

"No, we cannot be wrong."

"There are no rules for us to follow."

"Then why are no ghost here with us?"

"Perhaps they will come shortly. Let's wait some more."

"We may wait all night."

"We may wait for days."

"We may wait for a life-time."

"Maybe they will come only when we are not expecting them."

"Then let's not wait anymore."

"What shall we do instead?"

"Wake ourselves up!"

"How?"

"Let's pinch each other!"

A large scramble of bodies, shrieks, laughter, and pinching filled the room. The candle was knocked off the table and lost it's flame. The complete darkness silenced us.

"So did we do it? Are we awake?"

"I don't know. What does it feel like to be awake? We have been sleeping for so long."

"It's cold in here now"

"Yes, I feel the cold."

"It's so dark. I am frightened."

"Here, I am going to light the candle again."

We all gasped as we looked around the candlelit room. The walls were covered with blood.

A few days after the seance, we explored a mansion. The rooms were exquisitely decorated with Victorian objects. Multicolored ornaments filled every corner. A new scent of incense and spices drifted from each room. On the top of the mansion was a flat stone roof with a solitary room in the middle. The room has a large dresser upon which were placed various bottles, flowers, jewels, and knick-knacks. The pictures on the wall showed various scenes of children playing in a forest. In the middle of the room was a queen size bed with a soft white covering. We knew at once the bed belonged to the attic ghost, to the one who was dead but not gone, to the one who may still choose to haunt us.

"How incredibly rich she must be," we whispered.

We were sad that she was absent. And yet her house was so full, so rich, so deep, and so inviting. Our visit would be a short one this time, but we fully intended to come back.

We did come back to the mansion many times. We explored it one room at a time.

There were less of us now, but each of us speaks more powerfully and feels more strong as we explore the corners and spaces of the splendid mansion. The white attic bed still lies empty, but we detect the slight scent of an eternal ghost blended in the the soft, fresh covers. It comforts us and makes us feel at home.

Another place we visit is a house of mirrors. Inexplicably, we return to visit this house too. The jagged, shattered mirrors provide us with mulitiple images of ourselves. We look like pathetic fools, confused children running to and for trying to find some type of center. There was no center there, just falling floors, hidden corners, and broken streams of light and color. The background music contains loud discordant notes ending abruptly in a shocking silence. This silence would quickly be broken by more music which was garish, repetitive, and meaningless.

"Why do we come here?" we shouted to each other.

It was hard to leave; the exit doors were difficult to locate. We would see them, only to have them become dark and hidden as we approached them. Only after hours of searching would a real escape appear. We would run through the doors and collapse on the ground in front of the house.

Distant chimes would slowly awaken us from our nightmare.

"There is somewhere else, something else, someone else..."

And we would begin our long journey back to the graveyard, the forest, and the mansion.

Days passed. Many days. Life often demands the sterile stoicism of enduring. Our numbers again became fewer. Our conversations became reptitive and dull. We ached for the release that would come with the freedom of realizing the emptiness of our fears and illusions. We wanted to escape from the house of mirrors. The prison of the false reality which held us was relentless in its insistence that it was the only thing that counted. We know the truth of the ghosts, but we could not grasp it. We could not awaken ouselves. We tramped on and on, knowing we were foolish, knowing we had touched upon something beyond our sleepy reality, and knowing that we were powerless to break the spell of the nothingness that held us. What were we to do? Where were to go?

Symbols of God appeared to us in our darkness. The first symbol was a ceiling: four triangles meeting at a apex. In one of the triangles was dark glass spot, a dark window of some sort. We knew our ghost was behind the opaque window. Yet she was still so distant, so unapproachable. Anther symbol was strips of silver tape being placed against a wall. The surface of the tape was mirror-like. It was a gentle, healing mirror as oppose to the jagged that tore our skins. Another symbols was just a point, many objects collapsing into a singularity. We debated whether we should try to interpret the symbols of just let them be. Should God be understood or only experienced? We did not know. We just wanted to wake up, to wake up, to wake up...the sunrise was coming. A shrill alarm woud jolt us to the reality of a different type of day...a day full of darkness and night...a darkness for of sunshine and brightness...a new time.

Instead of shrill alarms, the silence surrounding us helped us to begin to let go. It did not matter. Nothing matters. Illusions big as mountains shrink into tiny specks that scatter into the wind. It was all just a story, just a series of symbols we took far too seriously. They slowly fade away. We can laugh. We can let go. We can shake off the endless sleep, the endless dreams, the endless striving.

The solid walls of the mansion began to form around us. The sweetness of elaborate surroundings enchanted us. We were very few now. Just a handful.

"This is our home."

"Let's find our ghost's room."

"I knew this was true. I knew this was real. I lived in my state of forgetfulness too long."

We searched the many wonderful rooms of the mansion, but our ghost still remained hidden. There were signs, scents, and sounds that suggested her presence, but nothing tangible, nothing definite.

"She is too elusive."

"We are too dull. Our minds are still foggy."

"Does it matter? Must we see things clearly or should we be content with the suggestions?"

"I don't know. We are treading on sacred ground. Perhaps we should take off our shoes and be silent."

Our barefooted silence was peaceful and long. We began to hear, softly chanting in the heights of the mansion, the gentle voice of a female ghost.

"She is now above the ceiling, in her attic room, haunting us."

"I am frightened. She is so close."

"Are we going to die?"

"Yes, of course, we are going to die. We are always dying."

"Will it all end?"

"Yes, and it will all begin"

We were all covered with blood. Time had slowed down. The ceiling had been removed. We were being watched. The one who dreamed did not warn us. We slowed down and peacefully passed the night with no frantic concerns, questions, or struggles. We were caught in the sleepy circle and we drowsily allowed ourselves to be watched by the dreamer. The dreamer flew off to the deeper recesses of the house. She would find the children soon. We would send them. It was simple. The answer was simple. The children know and laugh and wonder why we struggle so. We were marked by blood.

Our numbers continued to dwindle. Just three of us left. We were the three children looking through the window, smiling and beckoning the dreamer to find the secret. We are the ghosts. We are not many. We just play the roles, circling and circling, trying to wake ourselves up to see what we forgot. We are in the process of remembering who we are.

The silver strip upon the wall holds the reflection of my image. I am just one now. I found my white attic bed. It is welcoming and warm. It is soft and eternal. It belongs to me. I am the ghost I was seeking. I haunted my shattered self and visited my dreams. I woke myself up from the suffocating sleep of existence. Now it is time for a new beginning. I don't why I am here, but I can create anything I want from the conscious knowledge. Anything.