A Story of Shadows

The ghost floated a little, and her eyes even seemed to blink sadly, before she disappeared into the wallpaper without a sound. I groaned and pounded my head against the desk almost hard enough to feel the grains digging into the skin of my forehead. Again! This was the third time this week that she had appeared to me, a silent story waiting to be told through the mists of time and memory. But, oh the silence! The unbearable weight of it. The Muses would sing to me, but I could hear only the rustling of the breeze outside and the occasional groan of the pipes.

The house was old, so it didn’t surprise me that there would be a ghost in the upstairs bedroom. What shocked me, really, was that it had taken almost six months for me to find her; or, rather, for her to trust me enough to reveal herself. I’ve always been very accepting of otherworldly guests; it seemed to me that I was merely a caretaker, someone who’d waltz in and out of what amounted to their everlasting abode. Further, I have always found that the shadows dancing, specters of history, in the periphery, were the ultimate ambrosia to the creative centers of my mind. Ghosts, revenants, misty stories floating through my life, waiting to be captured.

So, when I found her, staring out the window in my guest bedroom, I knew I had to know her story. I know they can rarely speak—most of my stories are the product more of my imagination than of the story of their lives—but those that can, and she struck me as that type, provide the best stories. The stories of true lives, of real history; those are the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A piece of history, straight from the mouth of someone who lived it. Perfection.

But I couldn’t get her to talk. No matter how many times I stared, waiting, sitting at the desk with pen in hand. She wouldn’t even move. Usually, the full formed ones like her moved, whisking about the place like they owned it—since they did, really—but she just stood there and stared. And she knew I was there, because she stared at me, silently watching as I watched her. Together, we stared into the face of a different time, and there was a connection. I felt like we should have been able to speak, but something stopped it and I couldn’t figure out a way around it.

I sat at the desk, staring at the cherry wood finish, tapping the pen against my thigh. “Damn,” I whispered. “Damn!” Louder this time. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

“Because it’s rude to speak first to the owner of a home.” The voice surprised me and I jumped in my chair, the bone of my knee running straight into the edge of the desk. Icy adrenaline coursed through my veins, triggering a heart-pounding moment of short-breathed panic. I have quite the startle reflex, rather embarrassingly so for a paranormal journalist. As I calmed myself and rubbed my aching knee, I looked up at her again.

“What? All this time and you were just waiting for me to speak?” I ran a hand through my hair, reminding myself to get down to the barber some time this week, and pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose before brushing at my clothing. “You could’ve given some kind of sign.”

“My appearing to you wasn’t sign enough? Do you think I’m the only ghost here, Tim?” I looked up at her, eyebrow raised. “There are many of us. There are always many of us. But no one ever thinks to talk to us.” She solidified just slightly, her skirts swishing silently across the hardwood floors as she walked toward the bed and sat down. I was surprised to see that the bed dipped just slightly, which she must have noticed because she chuckled, hiding her face behind a slender hand. “This bed was mine. I guess it still recognizes my weight.”

“I guess,” I replied, chuckling and making note on my paper, using my own shorthand. I admit that it was indecipherable to anyone, even sometimes myself if I didn’t pay attention while I wrote it. The magic of listening to the dead, through time, through the very realms of existence, however, seemed infinitely more important than being able to read my sloppy handwriting. In the end, the story was in my heart and in hers, meeting together in this time and place, sharing a story centuries in the making. Not on a page of hastily taken notes.

“You haven’t asked what you want to ask, Tim. You want to know how it is that I know your name and you do not know mine. And, most importantly, you want to know about the other ghosts here in your house.” The woman folded her hands demurely onto her lap, smiling and gazing at me from across the room. “Well, are you ready?”

“I think so. Well then, um…what’s your name?” I chuckled nervously, running a hand over my still-aching knee. Listening to what she’d had to say so far, it seemed like she was the voice of many, and I wondered if there were others floating about in the shadows, unwilling as yet to be seen. What did that mean for me?

“Emily. Emily Whiteacre. This was my home, Tim, during what we called the Great Rebellion, the rebels called the War of Yankee Aggression, and what you would call the American Civil War. My husband was an Army Lieutenant. He was wounded at Gettysburg and brought home to me. I tried so hard to keep him alive, I did!” Here her voice broke and she gave a great gasp. Transparent tears floated down her ghostly face and dropped to the carpet below, where they left no stain at all. “He died right here, in this room. On my bed. I died not long after…grief, they said. And I’ve been stuck here ever since.”

A story. The story, really, the more I thought about its beauty. It was simple, and it reverberated. A story just like this had been the centerpiece of novels, movies, musicals, and music, but here was a living, breathing example of its poignancy. “Well, Emily. I will make sure that your story is known. Everyone will hear it and read it and know it.”

She smiled again, but I noticed that there was something different in this smile. A lightness. It seemed like Miss Emily Whiteacre was suddenly free of something. Which I imagined she was. It had been over a century since her death. Over a century of wandering her old home, trapped there without the man she had loved so much. It was almost more important to me to help the ghosts, which I had always imagined I did, than to get a new story for the publisher. The job of the writer was to share a story with the world and the true writer, the real bard, shared the stories of real people. I had always taken it one step further, I thought, sharing the stories of those poor souls trapped by their untold tale. Maybe allowing them to release their secrets, confess their sins or tribulations, freed them somehow.

“I thank you, Tim. Sincerely, and from the bottom of my heart. You are as wonderful as the others have said.” Emily’s face colored, and the blue of her eyes seemed somehow almost solid, reflecting the light of the sun shimmering through the window. “A true listener.”

I raised my eyebrow, unable to tear my gaze from the increasing life in Emily’s face. What was going on here? This had never happened before. Usually, the ghosts I spoke to—whether with words or not—simply smiled before fading away. Never before had a ghost stayed with me, becoming more and more real. “Miss Whiteacre, what is going on?”

“A ghost is trapped on this plane of existence because they are tethered here by a story, whether of grief or pain or, often, anger. The ropes are thick and they do not wear. And they must be unwoven by the ghost. Someone must hear our story, so that we can divest ourselves of the feelings—the human feelings—that keep us here.” Emily looked completely solid now and she stood, walking toward me, her skirts actually swishing against the wood floors. “You listen to us, Tim, and make us free. This house is full of us because I allowed it to be so. When I saw that you—a true listener, who speaks to us and allows us to speak to you—would be moving in, I invited them.”

“So ghosts…they talk to one another?” I was completely overwhelmed here. If I had released Miss Emily, why did she look more solid? And did all of those ghosts whose stories I’d written, listened to, over the years…owe their freedom to me? Was I some famous ghost whisperer in the revenant community? Thoughts dinged through my head uncontrollably and I focused on writing notes to gain control over myself.

“Do humans talk to one another? We are trapped between this world and the next because of our actions in life. Thus, we are not trapped in certain places, despite what the stories may claim. To the ghosts, limbo has no distance or time. It just is. But it is miserable to be trapped by such dark feelings, unable to move on to the eternal. So we seek one another out, for company. When the stories circulated of a human who could free us, we felt hope! And then you came here, and I knew I had to invite them all.” Emily leaned forward and pressed her lips to my cheek. It was then that I realized she only looked solid; she was still as ghostly as a fog. “Talk to them, Tim, listen to them and set them free. Everyone deserves a chance to tell their story.”

Then, fading slowly, Emily disappeared, a beatific smile on her face as she crossed to the eternal. Smiling myself, I stood to stretch the muscles of my legs, pulling off my glasses and rubbing them against my sweater. When I put them back on, a little boy stood before me. “Hello, kid. My name is Tim, what’s yours?”

Word Count: 1,746