There’s a ghost haunting me. Not my house: me. I don’t mean metaphorically either. This isn’t some jilted lover or a relative I wish I’d patched things up with. This is… Well I don’t really know what this is. All I know is there is a ghost in my head, and I am terrified.
Yeah that’s fine, take a minute. It’s a lot to take in. Believe me I know. The fact you haven’t run off or laughed at me yet just proves I was right to tell you. I know you must be thinking about it though. Perhaps you’re thinking something even worse. I wouldn’t blame you for that either. I must admit I’ve thought worse myself. No you’re right. I’ll start from the beginning. That’s the only way any of this will make sense. But you must remember this ghost is haunting me. Nothing else. It is with me everywhere I go.
So I haven’t always been haunted. No this is a recent career change. I have no idea when exactly it happened. It could have been 3 months ago when I woke up with a sudden chill in the night, or a couple of weeks after that when I walked passed that flooded church, when the ground in the cemetery shifted and all those bits and pieces rose to the surface. I just don’t know. There was no defined moment where I felt myself become haunted. The realisation came gradually. It was the nights. The dreams. I say dreams, they were more like a twisted form of memory of times and places I have never been. But they were so real in my mind. You know those dreams you have sometimes that are so vivid that when you wake from them you have to make an effort to remember who you are, where you are, and what’s real. It was like that but every night. Every day I woke up and didn’t recognise my room. I didn’t even recognise my face in the mirror. It was like I was standing in a stranger’s body. It was only when I stood there for a few moments, verifying it was me moving and making faces, only when I’d dragged my own memories to the fore that I felt settled. The first couple of days I laughed it off as some weird trip. After a week of that I was getting pissed off and a little worried to tell the truth. So I stopped drinking. Ha I knew you’d look like that. Cross my heart I haven’t had a drink since. God knows I’ve wanted to though. I really thought I’d drunk myself insane. So I stopped. But the dreams didn’t. The waking nightmare didn’t. It got worse.
I’ve always been fascinated by lucid dreaming. Always wanted to do it. The drinking always messed that up for me. Half the time I’d be so pissed I couldn’t dream or just enough so that I didn’t think of any of the techniques you need to do it. But this was different. In these dreams I didn’t need to ground myself. I felt like I was walking on solid ground. I was walking on solid ground. I knew I was dreaming. Still it all seemed so real. Anyway every “dream” was the same. I was in a house I have never been in, a very old house. You could feel the age emanating from the timber and antiques it was filled with. It was night in the house as well. A dark night. Candles were poor wardens against the darkness. They gave just enough light so I could walk slowly around. As I went I heard sounds, muffled like they were always coming through from the other side of a wall, and sort of ethereal, fluid like when you’re about to pass out. They were the sounds of laughter and conversation, the scrape of cutlery on dinner plates and the clinking of wine glasses. It was the sound of a party. There was a violin, or some type of string instrument being played. It should have been a cheerful sounding tune but the strange effect on the sound made it sound mockingly mournful. I did my best to get away from that sound and explored the rest of the house. It was all dark, cobwebbed, dusty on the floor, the furniture was all covered with dust sheets. It was the same everywhere in the house. Every night I wound up there. Every night I walked through the same corridors and rooms. I got bored with it truthfully. So one night I decided to see where the party was. I really wish I hadn’t done that.
I walked with determination at first, through the corridors before I came to the entrance hall with its grand staircase. I immediately slowed my stride as I took the steps down. Uncertainty crept into my heart. I could hear the laughter and music, so warped and unsettling getting louder. It was one of those times when your legs and brain don’t want you to keep going. “Stop!” they say, “don’t do it! This isn’t right, this isn’t safe. Just turn around before it’s too late!”
I don’t know if it was bravery, or defiance, or rebellion that kept me going. Maybe I was just bored of seeing the same dusty corridors and rooms every night. But I kept going down those stairs, turned at the bottom, walked right up to the big double doors, the only room I hadn’t been in, where all that strange noise was coming from. The laughter, the music, the clinking of plates and glasses all got louder and louder as I approached the doors. Too loud. It surely wouldn’t have been that loud even if I’d already been in the room. It made my breathing heavy and my heart race, but by this point my course was locked in. I stepped right up to the door with the sound swelling to a crescendo. As I touched the brass door knob the laughter became an ear-splitting scream. I turned the knob and the door swung open with ungodly force and I was thrown away. It happened so quickly I didn’t even see properly into the room. All I saw was the ceiling, bathed in the orange light of a fire, shadows writhing and frantic, and blood. I saw the blood, splattering so high I could see it even as I went flying backwards.
As I landed the doors whipped closed again. I was thankful they did. I had no intention of ever going in that hall now. Not after the brief look at the scene I had been shown. For a few moments I just lay there, petrified, all the wind had been knocked out of me. In those moments I had completely forgotten that this was a dream, forgotten everything about me. I just lay there trying to breath and not cry.
It was good for me that I didn’t make a sound as I lay there. As I was flung from the open door, unable to see properly what horrors were unfolding within I had not realised that something had come out. I lay there silently; all I could hear was my own breath and the thud thud thud of my beating heart until another sound shattered that uneasy quiet. A footstep, heavy on the creaking would. I turned my head and saw it…the ghost! Tall and shrouded in a muddy and torn cloak walking away from me. Every footstep it took rattled the world around me. At its side it carried, with as little care as you or I would carry our shopping, an axe, dripping with blood, coated with hair and bone and other unrecognisable pieces. The ghost rounded the corner and only then did I move. I wasn’t bored any longer. I wasn’t wandering the house hoping to find something interesting. I was terrified and I moved to stay alive and keep away from that terrible creature.
When I awoke the next day the return to my own life was even harder. I couldn’t reconcile the room I was in, the life I was in with the thoughts, feelings, and experience in my head. The door to my room frightened me. How could I open that? What would I let out? Eventually though I did. For good or bad the ghost was in my head and not out here I convinced myself. I pulled myself slowly out of that house and back into my life.
Until the night-time and it started all over again. I had hoped that perhaps the ghost would not remain released, would somehow be trapped in that hall again. But once it’s out it stays out. My night was spent sneaking around, checking corners, and hiding in rooms, praying the ghost would not find me, then waking and having no idea who I was or where I was.
I know this all sounds like it’s just bad dreams. It’s not. I feel it. I live it. That house, that ghost, they’re in me. And it got worse. Like I said every night I spent trying to avoid the ghost as it wandered the house. After a few nights though it felt like it wasn’t looking for me but for something else. Again my curiosity became too strong and rather than avoid the ghost I followed it, watched it as it walked slowly around the house. The axe was still there. Its steps were heavy, far heavier than it looked like it should be as if it was weighed down by more than it’s physical, or metaphysical form. Why do I call it a ghost if it seems to have a physical impact? Death. The stench, the feeling, call it what you will but some sense of death emanated from it. Just as the age of the house was such you could feel it so to was the death from this ghost. It was dead, and it had caused death. For me a living creature it felt like a combustible and volatile element, like matter coming into contact with anti-matter. I just intrinsically knew the deadness in this ghost.
Anyway, I followed the ghost, careful as I could be. It was searching for a way out. I saw it every night go to the front door, a large wooden exit with a heaving looking handle. The ghost reached out with a still shrouded hand, twisted, and tugged at the handle. But the door never budged. The ghost let the handle drop with a heavy clang and walked off silently. It tried other doors, windows but it was always frustrated and continued to search those halls every night. Until I made a mistake.
I’m sorry give me moment. It’s just this is where the terror gets too much, it’s too much. And now you’ll really think I’m crazy. Bad as all of this was at least it was contained. I only had to deal with it at night and then drag myself back to reality in the morning. I messed up and after that it all spilt over.
Again I followed the ghost on its fruitless search for an exit to the house. God damn my curiosity and boredom. If you go searching for something the universe always provides, even if it’s not what you were expecting or wanting. I wanted something more than just nights spent following a ghost and I got it. I saw it go into a room and tiptoed behind it at a safe distance. As it pawed at the window I crept slowly into the room as well, which I had not done before. When it went into rooms I would wait at the threshold. I inched my way into the room staring solidly at the ghost, not seeing the table and covered vase next to the doorway. I knocked into the table, heard the vase wobble, and ran. As I fled down the corridor I heard the vase smash and footsteps, heavy, rapid, searching footsteps. The ghost knew it wasn’t alone anymore.
I spent the rest of the night hidden inside a wardrobe, clenching the wood so hard chips of wood stuck under my fingernails. The footsteps of the ghost rattled around the house as it looked for me. I stayed in that wardrobe until I woke in my bed the next morning. It was the hardest it had been yet to bring myself back to reality that morning, even more so had there were chips of wood under my fingernails. Even later that day when I remembered who I was and where I was I could still see chips of wood from an ancient wardrobe on my bed where I had pulled them out from under my fingernails.
Now I carried the weight of the ghost with me everywhere. As I went about my day I heard a constant thudding of footsteps as the ghost searched around my head. If I became distracted and daydreamed the world in front of me seemed to morph into a corridor from the house. I had constant headaches like something was trying to burst out of my head. I spoke to doctors, to therapists. They did tests and scans, gave me pills and advice and nothing worked, nothing changed. I got so tired. So very tired. Every night my sleep was spent running and hiding, terrified. My days I was so tired and on edge as the world around me and the world in my head blurred. I was reaching my breaking point.
The house was a maze, and I was exhausted, I was bound to slip up. I had fled from the ghost almost catching me to where I thought was far from it and would allow me to find a room to hide in for some respite. I came to the end of a long corridor which was not empty. Stood tall and grim at the other end was the ghost, the axe by its side, cloak covering all apart from its face. My god that face. Hideous, rotting, malevolent. It stared me down and instantly understood its predicament, what it was and where it was. I have never run like that with such abject desperation. The footsteps pursued behind me shaking the house, my head, and my heart.
That was it. From then I saw the face of the ghost everywhere. Even when I was awake if I closed my eyes it was there. If I looked in a mirror I saw it staring back. The ghost knew me, it recognised me. I don’t know how or why. It seemed pleased to know me, as if this gave it great satisfaction. Which of course is even worse. I can understand the ghost evil as it is delighting in torturing anyone. But why should it recognising me provide it with added pleasure? I don’t deserve this! I’ve not done anything wrong, never hurt anyone, not really, certainly not this ghost. I’ve never done a thing to this ghost. I’ve never done any- Oh my god your face it’s just like-
I wake screaming from another bad dream. For a few moments I forget myself, who I am and where I am. The sight of my own chambers terrify me. Soon though the contents of the dream are fading, even if the feeling is not. I try to capture the imaginings of my dream in my waking memory. It is all so disjointed and strange I cannot make sense of it. It is a dream about dreaming, and there is fear, and a ghost, and something about a face which escapes me. There are places I have never been and contraptions and clothing the likes of which are so strange I cannot even hold them in my mind, and they are already gone. One part that does stick is my family home, only not as it is. In the dream it is older, decrepit, covered in dust and disuse. The splendour I remember of it is not there. As I look around my chambers I am reminded of how things actually are and forget the dream. That’s all it is, a bad dream. Never mind I have been having a lot of them recently. I look to one side and see the near empty carafe of whiskey. “That explains it,” I think. I look to the other side and see my brother’s naked wife still sleeping. “That also explains it,” I think, the guilt returning once more so I reach for the carafe.
I ruminate on the situation as I lay there sipping whiskey and stroking her bare back. Of course I feel guilty. I am no monster. It is just unfortunate that he is elder really. Tradition demanded he be given first choice of everything, that he would be the head of the household and demand only the finest in everything as befit his position. If he is a dullard, a dimwit, a drain on any who come in contact with his faulty personality then really for the good of the family and all involved it is only proper that I step into the breach and step up where he has failed. Still, I do feel guilty that it need be done.
Slowly, as the whiskey eases me and the bad dream fades, I remember that today is my birthday and there will be a party later in the great hall. As the thrill of this lifts me and my brother’s wife rolls over and on top of me I begin to think that today will be quite the day after all.
The party is a raucous affair. The room is abuzz with chatter, laughter, the clatter of glasses to many a toast, and music that swirls around as fast as one bottle of champagne after the next. Best of all it seems that my brother has decided against coming back from his hunting trip for the party. Naturally I do not do anything openly with his wife at the party. But if my hand lingers a little, or I make a risqué comment or two there is no one to see or hear about it who cares.
It is late in the night. The fire is burning low so that there is an orange glow across the room and the outside seems all the darker for it. My guests are still dancing but after the flow of wine they are rather more writhing and unrhythmic in their revelry. I am looking for my brother’s wife as I felt it was quite late enough to sneak off with her when I see her, or rather I see her head roll across the floor to my feet. No one really seems to know what has happened. Those that have are so drunk and shocked they just stare as my brother stands there tall and wild, covered in his hunting cloak and rain and dirt, an axe dangling at his side, a terrible, wild look on his face. For some reason the violinist keeps playing.
I cannot say a word, nor does anyone else as my brother starts swinging his axe, severing a limb here, splitting a face there. The violinist keeps playing. Now people start screaming and trying to run. I back up slowly, unable to run. I can hear in the entrance all my guest’s fists hammering on the front gate, he must have locked it.
My brother strides up to me and knocks me down and through the doorway to the great hall. Lying on my back his cloaked form fills my vision. As he lifts his axe so easily above his head the shame of what I have done, and the fear of what is going to happen overwhelm me. My brother laughs. “Sweet dreams, brother,” he cackles, “sweet dreams.”
storiesbyadam 