A Short Story: Ghost Story

Nothing was where I expected it to be - time, structure, reality; it all seemed to shift and change within these bleak, entombing walls, and I felt as though I had been searching forever for peace of mind, an answer, a destination or a destiny, something unknown and just out of my grasp.

Hallway after hallway stretched on for miles in this place, this old, old house with gilt-framed portraits glaring down from its shadowy walls. I turned a corner, thinking, At last; but I was wrong again. In the place where my bedroom had been for years - hadn't it? - was a parlor full of fussy, spindly furniture and tiny porcelain ornaments. Vines like flowering snakes writhed up the wallpaper trellises. Heavy velvet draperies hoarded the dust of decades. And in the center of the room, three people. The two painfully thin women, one silver-haired, the other half her age but still not young, their hair up in outmoded buns, seemed to fit the era of the room. Their gowns were long, somber, tight-sleeved, with bustles in the back, and the toes of their button-boots were evilly pointed. They loomed over the third figure, clucking in concern. Somehow, in the same vague, distant way that I knew Asia and Europe lay to the east of here though I've never seen either one, I knew the women were my mother and grandmother.

The third figure, she was my twin sister. How is that possible? I wondered. The girl in the modern wheelchair with an IV bag suspended over her, head lolling, eyes rolled, mouth drooling, wasted arms crossed uselessly twitching on her lap, she couldn't have been more than five or six, and I . . . I was twenty-three, wasn't I? Or seventeen. Thirty? But I wasn't four or five, of that much I was certain.

I was exhausted, weary of the world and my place in it. I had been in search of my room in this vast mausoleum of a house because I wanted to rest, at last. To be polite, though, I entered the room and asked, "How is she?"

"She's getting worse," my grandmother said, though she looked at my mother when she said it.

"It's only a matter of time," my mother sorrowfully agreed, also not looking at me.

"What," I began, feeling foolish for not knowing, "what's wrong with her?" Even when I stepped closer they did not answer, did not look at me, did not acknowledge my presence.

"Is it cold in here?" My grandmother wrapped her thin arms about herself, looking blankly at the doorway through which I had entered.

"I'll get a blanket." My mother walked past me without a word or a glance.

I followed the trail of her perfume out of the parlor and went in search of my bed.

Up an ornately railed staircase, past door after closed door, I found one door that seemed familiar. I opened it, stepped through, and found myself struggling against the flow of a crowd. Business-suited men and women surged past me as if I wasn't there, talking on cell phones, glancing impatiently at watches. Ranks of office windows towered above. Pavement grated below. Car horns struggled to be heard over the sound of thousands of footsteps and muttering voices. Exhaust fumes churned my stomach and spun my head. Grey. Everything was grey, devoid of real color. I couldn't breathe in that crowd, couldn't think, couldn't push my way against them to reach my destination - not that I knew where that was. I only knew it wasn't in the direction in which they forced me. Sidestepping, I entered the street to escape them.

I didn't see the SUV, didn't feel the impact.

That evening I found the dining room. Odd that I hadn't smelled the aroma of food. My twin sister - I couldn't recall her name - slumped in her wheelchair at the head of the dark and gleaming table, oblivious. My mother and grandmother fastidiously pushed food about on their plates, only occasionally taking tiny, halfhearted bites as though to keep up appearances. The three were the only occupants of a table set for thirteen.

"Why didn't anyone call me for dinner?" I asked.

No one looked at me. My grandmother shivered. "It's that ghost again," she said.

"Never mind," my mother soothed. "Beatrice will be here soon. Beatrice will take care of everything."

We were in the parlor then, gathered by a crackling fire that gave no warmth. My mother and grandmother sat stiffly, nervously, on the edge of a comfortless couch, my mother's thin fingers plucking at a handkerchief, glaringly white against the darkness of her gown. Both looked toward the place I was sitting, not at me.

"But of course you're a ghost!" Plump, disheveled Beatrice, my aunt, gave a full-bodied tinkling laugh. She waved a jeweled hand as though in dismissal of a protest, though I didn't recall saying anything. Wasn't I standing in the doorway of the dining room less than the blink of an eye ago?

"I'm not," I murmured in confusion. Fog cleared momentarily from my mind, long enough for me to say, "I have kept growing, while my twin sister seems to have stopped at five. If anyone's the ghost, she is."

Beatrice clucked in good-humored disapproval. "Now, is that a nice thing to say, Ghost?"

"What is it saying?" my grandmother asked sharply. She and my mother huddled fearfully together.

"Never you mind, it doesn't matter," Beatrice told them. She looked into my eyes.

"You can see me," I said in awe; "you can hear me?"

Again she gave her bright twinkle of a laugh, jarringly delicate in a woman so robust. "But of course I can, my dear Ghost, I'm a spirit medium!"

"Then tell me," I desperately began, "tell me how . . . what . . . ." Whatever I had been on the verge of asking was cut short by the arrival of a woman out of nowhere, her hands locking in a firm grip on my arm. She was all in white, from the severely tight bun of her hair to her cold eyes, from her uniform-like dress to her stockings to her sturdy shoes. Not even Beatrice seemed to see her.

"Come along," she told me in a dour, no-nonsense voice. "Bedtime."

At last, I thought in relief, and let her guide me away.

Then she was pulling a sheet up toward my face as I lay looking up at the ornate, gilded plaster ceiling. For a moment I panicked, fearful that she would continue to raise the sheet until it covered my head. It stopped at my chin. A sting in my arm and I turned my head in time to see her taking away a hypodermic needle. Voices pierced the warm drowsiness that followed, the sounds of people shuffling and talking quietly in a corridor outside my door. Things flickered, sharpened. The elaborately enameled wrought iron of my bed took on the industrial accoutrements of a call light and a medical chart. Wallpaper, draperies, carpeting, the embroidered upholstery of a wingback chair, all became, briefly, before sleep took me, the impersonal and easy to clean surfaces of institutionalization. Strangely, the richly decorated ceiling remained the same.

I did not dream. I barely blinked, before I was in the street again - a very different street this time, and yet it felt the same. The sidewalk was a boardwalk, echoing hollowly with the tramping of feet. There were fewer people, and these mostly men in morning suits with watch chains across waistcoats, and derby hats. They still rushed in the opposite direction from the one in which I wished I could go. No skyscrapers loomed here; instead there were two- or three-storied buildings of brick and wood. The street, a dirt road, was thronged with vehicles: carriages, not cars. The smell of horse dung and mud and human sweat still churned my stomach, though, and spun my head. Sidestepping, I entered the street. I never saw the carriage, the horses; never felt the impact.

It had been darkest night as I wandered the corridors again, if the view out the windows of the few rooms with open doors was to be trusted. Yet as I leaned uncomfortably in the recliner stationed before the desk I could see the grey of a foggy day in the colorless city outside the office window.

The shabby recliner, the bent metal blinds, and the plain, serviceable, and dented desk were at odds with the crown molding and carved plaster of the ceiling. I sat abruptly upright so I would not have to stare at their disquieting elegance.

"Are you a spirit medium? An exorcist?" It seemed not to have been the first time I asked, nor even the second time, though I could not for the life of me recall having left the street.

The woman behind the desk smiled patiently and without warmth. She was all efficient intellect, her thick-rimmed glasses and harshly scraped-back hair told me. Did none of the women in this place wear their hair loose? I wondered, though it didn't matter. "If you mean, can I help you rid yourself of painful associations with the past," she was saying, "then, if you're willing to work hard at it, yes, I suppose I could be called an exorcist of sorts."

"What is this place?"

"You know very well what sort of institution this is," she said, looking not at me but at a manila folder full of official-looking paperwork.

My gaze wandered, despite my intentions, upward. "An institution with ceilings like that?"

"It used to be a private home, I believe, before the family died -"

"How? How did they die?"

"I hardly see that it matters."

"It does to me."

She sniffed indignantly, laying aside my chart, and coldly looked into my eyes. "It was an accident, as you well know. A traffic accident."

The corridor seemed grey and bleak, shrouded in colorless shadow. My mind cleared and sharpened as I turned a corner and beheld the doors. Not the forbidding, solid doors that lined every hallway in this vast and confusing place, but twin doors made up of delicate, diamond-shaped panes of glass. I could see through them, not into the cold, desolate, crowded city, but into a place of lush green lawn and riotously colored flowers, an effusion of life and growth. The sky was blue, really, truly blue, and butterflies flitted everywhere. My heart ached. Stumbling forward, I reached for the ornate door handles.

They wouldn't turn. Twist, pull, and pound as I might, the doors would not budge.

Hands locked onto my arm and the woman in white led me away, saying flatly, "That isn't for you."

The hypodermic needle stung a little in my arm, and once again institutional images imposed themselves on the quietly genteel luxury of my room. As my eyelids drifted closed I asked, "Why can't I enter the garden?"

I barely heard the taciturn woman say, "You'd have to ask the Administrator about that."

The street was crowded with heavy, rounded cars spewing fumes, and the sidewalk with people in severely tailored suits and disturbingly outdated military uniforms. There was not a cell phone to be seen. The women all wore hats and the same dark shade of lipstick. There was a war on, though I could not remember which one. I wanted to go in the direction opposite that of the crowd, there was someplace I wanted to be - though where that was, for the moment, escaped me - but I could make no progress. There seemed little choice but to sidestep them and enter the street.

I did not see the roadster, never felt the impact.

Rounding a corner, I stopped abruptly. "But - no. No. They were here yesterday. It was yesterday, wasn't it?" I wasn't talking to anyone other than myself. Looking for relief from the unmitigated drear of that enormous, elegant, cold place I had set off in search of the garden doors. The corridor was familiar, all the landmark doors and somber portraits I could recall were where they should have been, but the glass doors were not. Turning away in bewildered disappointment, I noticed a short hallway opposite me that I was certain had not been there before - though I wasn't certain if I meant before yesterday or before today.

It ended in a heavy wooden door marked Administrator. Recalling the dismissive words of the woman in white, I opened the door and entered.

"You're late." Seated behind a carved and polished wooden desk, he did not bother to look up from my medical chart to see me. Blue sky showed in the window behind him, sunlight outlining a shadowy head as narrow and hairless as an egg. "I'm very disappointed, Ghost."

"That I'm late?" I asked, still standing. "I had no idea I was supposed to be here, or anywhere for that matter -"

"With your lack of progress," he enunciated, impatiently stressing each word.

Having no idea what he meant, I instead addressed an issue of more immediate concern to me. "I want to enter the garden."

"No doubt you do." He set aside the manila folder and looked at me with emotionless eyes. Dryly he asked, "Do you think the garden is for just anyone? Do you think I should bend the rules and let you enter before you've learned your lesson?"

"What lesson?" I demanded, frustrated. Stumbling forward, I placed both hands on the edge of his pristine desk and leaned toward his darkened face. "What progress? What do I have to do?"

His upper lip twitched in supercilious distaste. "If you have to ask then you haven't learned a thing, and I am certainly not going to be the one to enlighten you."

"How am I supposed to learn a lesson if I don't know what lesson it is I'm supposed to learn?"

Picking up the chart and giving his attention once more to it instead of to me, he said with a cold lack of interest, "Be sure to close the door behind you on your way out."

The towering office buildings were back, I noticed, though the cell phones seemed a lot larger than they should have been. Men wore T-shirts instead of buttoned shirts under their suit jackets; women wore running shoes with their shoulder-padded power suits. The cars rushing past seemed smaller and boxier than the ones I thought I remembered. It didn't matter; none of it mattered. Everyone, in a vehicle or on foot, moved in the opposite direction from where I wanted, needed, to be, wherever that was, and those on the sidewalk were carrying me along with them. Enough was enough. I couldn't cope with the crowd any longer. Despairingly, I sidestepped and entered the street.

I didn't see the car. Didn't feel the impact.

I was almost used to the sharp, cold sting of the hypodermic needle. The elegant and comfortable individuality of my room blurred into impersonal institutionalization but the ceiling remained ornate. As I looked upward, faces gathered beside my bed to look down at me in disappointment. The woman in white, the exorcist-doctor, the Administrator. Sorrowfully, resignedly, they shook their heads. I don't know which one it was who spoke, but as I drifted away I could hear someone murmur, "Welcome back, Ghost."

* The End *

The cameo in the introduction was a public domain photo of a vintage brooch, which I modified. The sepia photo was released for public use by Blaby and made available on Wikimedia Commons. The black and white photo by the National Photo Company was released by the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division and made available on Wikimedia Commons; this photo was modified by me.