Construction Time Again

I’ve been reading a lot, lately, about the Winchester Mystery house.

According to legend, the widow and heir to the Winchester fortune, Sarah Winchester, believed that she shared her home with the spirit of everyone ever killed by a Winchester rifle, and was compelled by this belief to continually add to her home. Rooms, wings, fireplaces, stairways, basements, elevators, beyond meaningful utility, beyond sanity, without rhyme, reason or any thought as to what purpose the finished building might serve her.

Because she did not intend that the building ever be finished, and so she had no conception of “finished” as far as the building went. Rather she worked to continually confound the spirits of the dead, hoping that they would become more and more lost as her home became more and more labyrinthine, hoping that they would never find their way through the maze she was continually constructing, to where she lived, like the Minotaur of old, at that maze’s centre.

In essence, she believed that if construction ever stopped, even for a moment, the ghosts would get her.

She was quite mad, obviously.

And yet, as I read, I couldn’t help but think about how much damn roadwork goes on here in Calgary.

Because it does at times seem as though the city’s constantly working on some major construction project or other and, while Mayor Nenshi doesn’t seem mad, the maddest among us never do.

Or, if he’s sane, perhaps he knows something the rest of us don’t, with regard to the occult.

I can’t off the top of my head think of anything that might have drawn the spirits of the dead to our town, but I suspect that were they here, among us, the roadwork outside my work right now would certainly confound them.

So perhaps there’s more rhyme and reason to the endless construction than I give my hometown credit for…

Although, if so, this would, in light of the fact that I’m not directly involved in planning or executing the construction myself, lead to a rather uncomfortable question.

 Am I living in the house? Or am I simply one of its ghosts?

The Plumbing in my New Place

It’s an old building and as such it has its share of quirks.

I was told that the day I moved in, and I have no right to complain as each specific quirk, in its turn, reveals itself to me. I’d been warned, after all, and forewarned is, as they say, forearmed. Nevertheless…

There’s some issue with the pipes beneath the floor, you see, and when I shower they spray water up, just a little, gradually soaking through the floorboards and carpet, leaving a wet area and watery footprints leading out of the bathroom when I’m done. No matter what I do, the footprints appear, every time I shower without fail, tracking water across the carpet.

Which ought to be fine, it ought to be something I could easily live with. My building super knows about the issue, after all, and I’ll never be called upon to pay for either repairs to the floor or replacement of the carpet. With that in mind the issue is annoying, but eminently live-with-able, the sort of thing that would elicit mild grumbling but no more thought than that.

Except…

The footsteps don’t lead to my bedroom, you see, where I walk after my shower, the way that they would if they’d been made by my own two feet.

Instead, they turn right, and walk off down the hall toward God only knows where.

I live alone. I’m the only person in the house.

And, until those footprints dry, each day, I find myself afraid to follow, and see where they might lead…

In Which I'm Visited By Three Spirits (dick pics pt. 2)

The first ghost that visited was a disgraced US congressman, humiliated, ruined, laughed out of Washington after a simple misunderstanding of how Twitter worked led to his sharing much more with his constituents than he’d ever intended.

The second, the ghost of Chat Roulette, and with it the potential to bring millions together, to create a community and bring the world to your home, potential swiftly reduced to a simple punch line about sudden, shocking exhibitionism.

The third, the future, was less clear. Was it a genuine watershed of body positivity, mankind coming together to celebrate its form in all its beauty? Or merely the exploitation by a mass media bent only on profiting off humankind’s animal instincts? I couldn’t be sure, but one thing was clear: The future had come, and it was naked.

I awoke from my dream and threw open my window, screaming down into the street, demanding a passing orphan tell me what day it was, if there was still time, if Christmas had yet come.

Upon hearing that it had not, I nearly wept with gratitude. But I did not weep, I maintained my composure, because Christmas was upon me and I still had much to do.

Shopping to get to.

Gift-wrap to buy.

Genitals to photograph.

Text-messages to send.

I had too long taken the holiday season for granted, but no more. Thanks to that late-night visit from the Ghosts of Dick Pics Past, Present and Future, I was in the proper spirit, and I finally understood the true meaning of inappropriate late-night text messages to friends and acquaintances. And, while once I might have scoffed at the notion of sending such photos to people who had not asked for them, nor given any indication such a thing would interest them in the slightest, I wasn’t going to let another moment go by without sharing myself with the people who were nearest me in the most intimate way that I could.

Christmas is, after all, the season of giving.

God bless us, every one…

Homecoming

Whenever I return home, I make a point of visiting the skate park.

Jerry broke his neck there in ’98, trying to jump over a bench. No helmet.

The funny thing is, he wasn’t even on a skateboard, he just tried to jump over the thing and tripped. And to this day you can still see his spectral form, aimlessly wandering the park. I give him a wave as I pass, though I don’t know if he can see me. I like to think he can, though he never acknowledges me.

I also stop in at the Rose & Crown, where Don was hit by a drunk driver, minimum once. He’s there, at his favorite booth, nursing an eternal pint, though nobody who didn’t know him can see. I’ll sit with him for a quick one if time permits. It seems the least I can do to honor his memory, although for obvious reasons we don’t speak. People would think I was a crazy person if we did, from their point of view it’d look like I was talking to myself.

Anne still sits on her bench in the hanging garden. It’s not where the accident took place but it’s a place that she loved in life, so I guess she found her way there afterward. And I can’t blame her, it’s a lovely place to visit, and I’m glad she can make good use of the bench we had dedicated to her. Makes the gesture feel a little more worthwhile.

I don’t sit with her, though. I can’t bring myself to. Even after all these years the memory is too raw. Still, I walk through the garden and venture near enough to at least catch a glimpse of her.

I don’t revisit my hometown as often as I’d like, work and family make that harder and harder as the years go by, and the farther I get from that part of my life, the less reason I have to go back. I suppose that’s true for us all. You can’t go home again, and what not. It’s not the same place, or more often you aren’t the same you. It all just feels too different, alien…

…nevertheless, now and again I do make it back, and whenever I do I make a point of visiting old friends, at all the old haunts.

Not Another Ghost Story

Timmy already knew, standing in the front yard of the old place, that he never should have agreed to it.

All the kids in the neighborhood knew the house was haunted. Nobody’d lived in it for as long as Timmy’d been alive, and the yard was overgrown with weeds, as nobody cared enough to tend to it. The windows, long since smashed open wide, had allowed decades worth of rainwater into the building, causing the framework of the place to sag. Everyone on the block kept a wide berth, and even the neighborhood’s parents warned their kids to stay away.

Oh, they never called the place haunted, or even admitted there were such things as ghosts, but they did warn their kids to stay away. And that, for the neighborhood kids, was proof enough.

Timmy had known all of this earlier in the day, when on the playground Andy had dared him to go up and into the house after dark to meet the ghost. He knew it, and he knew that nobody he knew of had ever gone into the house and come back out. Nobody had ever gone in at all. And yes, he was terrified by what he might find in there. But he was much more terrified of being called a chicken, there on the playground, in front of everyone he knew. It was a name that could never be lived down once he had it, and one he would go to any length to avoid.

So he claimed that Andy was being stupid, that there were no such things as ghosts, and that he’d be happy to prove it.

And that was how he came to be in the front yard of a haunted house shortly after sunset, with a handful of witnesses from school waiting behind him to see if he’d really go through with it and a rotted oak door ahead, inviting him to come inside. He desperately wanted to run away, but he knew that he could not.

He breathed as deeply as he could, closed his eyes, counted to five, and made his way up to the door.

The knob was cold in the autumn night and the door creaked loudly as it opened, dashing any hope he may have had that it might be locked. Inside, the darkened hall stretched out farther than he could see, and as he entered moldy floorboards creaked under his feet. He took two steps in and stopped, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then, girding himself, he set off down the hall.

He was inside, after all. The hard part was done with and he’d survived it. All he had to do now was find something to bring back out with him, to prove he’d actually gone all the way in, hadn’t just hidden in the hallway, counted to one hundred and retreated to safety. A plan of action which, had Andy not demanded the souvenir, Timmy almost certainly would have pursued.

Down the hall he went, hand braced against the wall for balance, looking for a promising room to search. But most of the rooms in the old haunted house had been long since stripped bare, and nothing could be found. Still, as he headed deeper into the heart of the place, Timmy could swear he heard sounds from the basement level.

He couldn’t tell what it was, but for reasons unknown even to him he was drawn toward the sounds, perhaps simply because the soul-crushing emptiness of the place made the prospect of something, anything, seem appealing. The knock-knocking grew louder as he made his way through empty halls and gutted rooms, and as he came to the door leading down to the cellar he saw a faint, ghastly light emanating out from under it’s crack.

To go on was madness.

To go back a humiliating admission of defeat.

Thus, there was no choice at all.

He cracked open the door, readjusted his vision to the sudden presence of light, and steeled what little courage he had left. Then, believing himself ready for anything, he made his slow way down the stairs.

He was ready, that is, for anything but what he saw.

A single, rotted mattress lay across unfinished floor, with two threadbare blankets thrown atop it. The room was lit by a few dozen candles, and they illuminated it enough to see… not much. An old looking, battery powered stereo, a faded picture in a frame by the mattress, a few articles of clothing strewn about the floor, and a table with a collection of glass flasks and bags of powder atop it, next to which sat a well used chair. Timmy didn’t understand what the flasks were for, nor what the powder was, but he knew he had to leave the house with something, and if he were to find anything this would be where it was found.

He took a step away from the stairs and into the room as behind and above him a slurred voice cursed and the door slammed shut.

As footsteps echoed down the stairs Timmy realized; in an empty room, there is no place to hide. Not that one can hide from a ghost.

So, cowering, Timmy awaited his fate. Though when the ghost arrived he looked nothing like any Timmy’d ever seen on TV.

His eyes were wide and wild and his hair long and stringy, falling to his shoulders in greasy waves. His too thin body was clad in old, torn jeans and a faded t-shirt, and he was shaking with fury as he arrived at the bottom of the staircase. He took a minute to adjust his own eyes to the light, the left one twitching uncontrollably, and finally fixed them, white-hot with hate, on Timmy.

“Who. The fuck. Are you?” This horrifying stranger nearly screamed as he bore down on Timmy.

So no, the house wasn’t haunted after all.

Though perhaps it soon would be.

The Haunting

She loved him. He killed her.

Worse, he got away scot-free.

Every year on the anniversary of her death, her spirit returns to plague her killer. But every year she stops short, unable to face the man she’d so loved in life. Without fail, she turns away.

Instead she winds up visiting me, ethereal, weeping. Saying it’s unfair, how she loved him and how betrayed she feels...

And every year I’m there, listening, wishing I could hold her, wishing she had a body to hold.

I’ll always be there for her.

Because I loved her, and she died on me.

The Last Day of the Author's Retreat

It wasn’t until my last night at the author’s workshop that I heard them. Until that moment, I was certain they were just a rumour spread by the returning members to the newbies, a cheap, laughable attempt to take advantage of our overactive imaginations as we tried to get to sleep after long days spent workshopping our stories. In fact, after seven days of networking and frenzied, unbridled creativity, I’d nearly forgotten entirely the strange tales I’d been told my first night at the retreat.

But I remember those stories now. Oh yes. A fire twenty two years ago, and a dozen authors trapped inside the retreat’s cabin by the collapsing roof, praying for rescue that would never arrive. They rebuilt the cabin, of course, but still the dead authors visit the site on the accident’s anniversary each year. Yes, I remember those stories now. I doubt they’ll ever be far from my mind…

Nor will the deafening sound of their ghastly typewriters, like thunderclaps crashing one room over, or the chilling laughter of the dead. I knew I’d not sleep that night as I lay, covers pulled up over my head, waves of terror creeping up and down my spine, listening to their spectral conversations as they bounced ideas off one another in haunting tones about what to do with the Star Trek tie ins they’d been assigned to write.

They’d never been writers of note, those apparitions, even before their death. Simply women and men doing work for hire to fund their dreams, who didn’t know even after their grizzly demise that, for them and their dreams both it was far, far too late…

And the next morning I went home, sleep deprived and terrified, my own project long forgotten, replaying the harrowing experience over and over again in my mind.

And as the shuttlebus pulled away, taking me back to the airport, all I could think back to was that song we’d sang my first night there, seven days previous, in more innocent spirits.

Yippy-kai-yo.

Yippy-kai-yay.

Ghostwriters in the sky.