Anatomy of a Ghost

    I’m going to recount something, something important; I’m going to recount the event that led up to this day, that made me make the decision I made just seconds ago. I’m not a diary kind of person; I write but not my life, I have a friend who writes everyday she has a suitcase full of old memories. I admire her for having the balls to write it all down, the mundane things, the significant things thing’s she might wish to forget, it’s all forged in the pages of pretty little note books and that’s what made me write this, I wanted to remember this because this is something I can’t forget. So here it goes, from the beginning, it started just over four months ago…      

     The day I met Damien Rivers the sunlight shone through him, he glistened with a transparency I had never before seen, I felt I might be afraid, I felt I should have been scared not of him but for my health; my rationality kicked in and I felt I should have been terrified that there were some sort of tumour festering away, eating at my brain taking in all of the goodness and leaving only rotten, dead tissues and old memories but I was not. I felt I should have been running scared but I was not, I was fascinated in the thing that stood before me, the luminous human and in the intensity of the situation I felt myself begin to weep.  He had this destructive air, I could feel his soul burning with-in him and I wanted to get burnt.

     Damien wasn’t really anything he didn’t have an occupation, a qualification or an address; he simply was and nobody really knew anything about him and I was no different. The first time I laid eyes upon Damien Rivers the rain fell in thick heavy drops, I was running back to work after losing track during my break when I saw him, I had never noticed him before and I know I would have because on that day he stopped me dead in my tracks, he was stood under the shelter in a beer garden, a group of women and men surrounded him but he seemed to stand out beyond the others. He was immersed in conversation with a blond who didn’t look as though she should have been able to hold a 5 second conversation and though he was deeply involved he also seemed to be elsewhere.  I stood there and watched him, mesmerised as the rain soaked into my clothes and down to my bones. I shuddered free from his grip and realised that I was now 15 minutes late returning to work, I have to admit that once I had gotten inside and began to return books back to their shelves, I worked at the London Library, I quickly forgot about him, though I did have this constant niggling feeling that there was something in the back of my mind I couldn’t remember, an important memory struggling to surface in the darkness. I lost hold of the memory I couldn’t remember and I didn’t even consider him again until the next day. The sun shone brightly, it was April and England was suffering from sporadic showers, I had gone into the coffee shop and walked out right into him.  Of course then I didn’t know his name and he looked straight through me muttering something resembling a sorry before embracing a brunette woman in a deep hug and as I watched them I finally recalled the day before and the memory I had lost was suddenly found; my mind fell blank when I looked at him and then it was filled with nothing other than him all day long; he plagued me, I knew nothing about him but I wanted to know it all.

 

The phantom door bell

     Jordan Granger had taken the job because, simply, it was Christmas; Christmas had come around again, already, and therefore Jordan needed the extra money. She had an old friend, a friend of the family who worked at the school and needed an extra worker, needed an extra worker to clean. She was going to clean a school, clean up after small, messy and probably ungrateful little children, though she didn’t mind when it came to work, money was what she needed and any work would do. She had worked as a cleaner, a waitress and a bar maid and so a cleaning job didn’t much bother her. She woke for work every day at 5am; the dark mornings of the British winter didn’t help in her rising and the cold of the season tempted her to stay curled up in bed but never the less she rose and dressed and all on time, sometimes earlier then was necessary. She danced around from foot to foot forcing the warmth into her body whilst the caretaker, her old family friend, opened the gates and doors to the old school; she gingerly walked through each corridor and room turning on the lights before she entered desperate to illuminate the hidden corners and crevices.

     The school was an odd shape in ran from one set of classrooms to a long glass corridor to a second set of classrooms, her area to clean, and then outside and across a court yard was a nursery. The building was old and converted, two adjuring schools brought together to form one. The children who attended ranged from ages 4-8 and they themselves didn’t make a lot of mess for Jordon to clean. It was in fact the teachers who spread the most chaos. She arrived at the school at 6am, the darkness of the night still blanketed the world and many people still slumbered in their beds, she set straight to work; once she had reached her area Jordon gingerly reached through a small gap in each classroom door and flicked on three light switches. She avoided looking into the room until the light had filled it and then fastened the doors open. She then set about filling two buckets, identical barring the colour: one blue and one red, with disinfectant and a mop bucket with lemon scented floor cleaner. She took her marigolds, the two buckets and made her way first to the bathrooms where she cleaned down the basins and wall tiles and scrubbed out the toilets. Once she had done this Jordon carried out a task she hated the most, she had to venture down to the cellar. The cellar was a place filled with noises than drifted through the darkness and made Jordon’s heart beat faster; one thing that scared people universally was the thing that they could not see, the thing hidden around a corner or behind a door or in the darkness and Jordon Granger was no different. She quickly, holding her phoned in her hand, flicked the top light switch on and illuminated the dark concrete stairs. She then tiptoed down the dusty steps and reached around the corner to switch on the second set of lights. She moved quickly from one room to the other and collected the materials that she needed most often paper towels and toilet tissues. Then she filled up the empty holders, including the soap dispensers and then she swept the floor and mopped it. Once she had done this she checked the bins, wiped down the tables and hoovered every inch of ever classroom and the joining areas.

     This routine continued everyday; often her time would be spend longer in one area, if one classroom was particularly unclean, if glitter had been used and often she would bleach out the toilets and the sinks. It became very mundane and tiresome; the same thing every day over and over, early morning after early morning. Jordon often considered listening to her music or an audio book but always changed her mind in fear of not hearing a noise that was not supposed to be. So she continued with her mundane, repetitive tasks day after day. Until one morning something changed.

     Jordon Granger had an overactive imagination and she usually used this to zone out a very boring conversation or situation and she used it to write. Writing was all she would do if she could but unfortunately it often to a back seat in her life, leaving her imagination to run wild. On this particular morning the wind blew icy and spatters of rain attacked any exposed flesh, Jordon stood and waited for the gates and doors to open all the time trying to huddle farther and farther into her coat to the point that she was farther out of the coat then she was in it. Once the front door had been unlocked and buzzed open, the four of them huddled in and each waited for the alarm system to be turned off. Nothing out of the ordinary until the alarm continued to relentlessly blare out. It was stopped. Yet with a single movement it was sounding yet again; refusing for another 5 minutes to turn off, leaving any person in its vicinity with a blinding headache. Once everything seemed quiet each person began to make their way toward their respective areas but before Jordon and the caretaker, who always made their way through the building together, reached the first corridor the door bell sounded, reverberating around the empty building. The both of them looked up, shocked,

“Who is that?” the care-taker, Chris asked

“We’re all here” Jordan replied quietly her heart pounding hard against her chest from fear of the unknown

“I’ll go take a look” the words made Jordon suck in a deep breath; she would have happily left the door locked until the dawn broke when 7:30 showed on the clock faces. But instead she also volunteered to go and look. The two mad their way back to the front doors, Jordon hung back slightly for fear of what they might find, her imagination already running over time though when they reached the doors no one was to be seen outside. The doors were open and each person peered out into the dark morning; they saw not one person. The corners were checked and words were called but no one made themselves seen or answered back and so the two of them made their way back inside, locking the doors. 

     Jordon continued with her work, she made her way through her tasks as she did on any other day however there was something playing on her mind; Jordon had always had a slightly over active imagination and the phantom door bell had stirred her mind. As she went into the darkened classrooms, she quickly switched on each light, keeping her eyes averted, her mind playing tricks on her in the darkness. She moved quickly to the toilets though as she cleaned each tiny bathroom her imagination began to play again, noises drifted in from the corridor, she heard footsteps echo down the corridors, breathing and tapping. Her heart began to pound at an elevated rate, she glanced around the corner, nothing. Jordon continued, she willed the morning darkness to give way to the sunrise but knew that it would not for another couple of hours; she bit her lip and carried on ignoring her imagination.

     As she mopped still more sounds met her ears, creeping, tiptoeing sounds, breathing from behind her, she looked over her shoulder, mopping faster and faster until she had finished. Jordon thought about going to find one of her colleagues but she felt stupid, there was nothing there, no one was stalking up behind her to kill her,

“Idiot” she whispered to herself moving on. For a few minutes as she wiped tables and tidied small chairs her mind behaved itself and then she realised something, her friend who usually came down to see how she was doing had not come down, now her imagination was raging once more,

 Oh god what if they’re, no, no their not, oh no what am I going to do, oh no, what if I’m the only one left

She began to breathe heavily as her heart raced,

You’re being so stupid

She said to herself, she took a deep breath, moving onto the next class room and then the next until she was finished and by the time she had she had once again convinced herself that everything was okay. Jordon continued her work happily without incident until she had to get the Hoover. The Hoover was stored in a cellar, a dark cellar, the main light switch was located at the bottom of the stone stair and Jordon was not happy about going down into the dark. As she moved toward the cellar door, a sound reverberated around the classrooms, something had shifted, she heard a second noise, soon her breathing had escalated again and sweat touched her brow; she moved quickly, ran to the cellar door, grasping at the key, she doped it. Jordon could feel who or whatever was in the building moving closer and closer toward her, she snatched the key from the floor and struggled to get it into the lock, suddenly she felt like one of the girls being chased in a horror film. Finally the key slipped into the lock, a heavy thudding sound filled the air,

Quick, quick

She hurried herself, just as she pulled the door open, she felt it, her foot caught as she fell, her head hit the concrete steps first, her neck bending, though it didn’t snap, her arms flailed outward trying to catch a hold of something but there was nothing to hold; her left wrist bent beneath her as she fell; she landed with a thud at the bottom, her breathing heavy and strained.

 

As she lay there silently dying, she looked up toward the top of the stair, no one stood there, no one had been behind her or creeping up to get her, and now all she could hear was the slowing beat of her own heart as she felt the heat rise from the blood slowly spilling from her broken skull and she thought, finally, to herself, my imagination just killed me.                

The melancholy tale of Jeffery knight

       During his time alive Jeffery Knight had been a rather faulty man though this wasn’t unlike many others, Jeffery seemed to be a rather sad example of a faulty man. He had met and married the woman of his dreams; the love of his life when he had been just 23 years old and for this he had felt blessed and he had realised just how lucky he was. He was grateful for her and realised that some people spent their whole lives searching for the partner of their dreams and that some never found them at all. However because of his faults Jeffery was a man who all too easily forgot about the important things in life, they would slip his mind for a few seconds, hours or even the whole day and then this would inevitably lead to conflict and anger. They had managed a few blissful years together before they moved into their very first, very own home and Jeffery had begun his ‘dream’ job. When he had first started out he had so wanted to mould the mind of the young, disillusioned youth though he soon found that it was he who was disillusioned. It soon became that Jeffery spent all of his free time in his local pub which would become his final downfall. Most people had some form of an addiction whether it be their children, their job, shoes, books, a passion or the more destructive of addictions; Gambling, Sex, drugs and alcohol and it was the latter that Jeffery was suffering from. He was an alcoholic and though it did not interfere with his ability to teach those who did not actually want to be taught it began to shred his personal life.

     It became that he spent more of his time drinking at the pub than he did with his wife and on more than one occasion she would march the short distance from their home to the pub with his cold dinner in her hands. She would walk in locate him and launch the plate of lovingly made dinner at his head and on more than one occasion he had followed her home covered in mash potato, gravy and some form of vegetable. They began to fight every night, she screamed at him, he listened and then he would drink and eventually they left what had been the home of their dreams though it was too late to help Jeffery he had already fallen so far down the spiral of self destruction that there was no way back for him, he was circling the drain. Just a few years after they had moved house Jeffery knight finally washed himself down that drain, he slipped from life, Alcohol had finally pulled the plug and washed him down the black hole in a tidal wave of vodka and whiskey. He left his wife alone and even after death he was not able to stay with her.

     Jeffery had truly loved his wife more than anything in the whole world however he was too ashamed of himself for what he had done, for the pain he had caused her and so he could not stay with her but he could not move on to whatever awaited him in the next world, if anything and so he moved to the next thing that he had loved with all of his heart; the first house that he and his beloved had owned, had live in together, they house that they had started in, that they had been so happy in, the last place they had been happy. He became a ghost who haunted. Since they had moved out there had been two owner of his home, another teacher though not one who ruined his own life and the second had been a family who were still living there. When he returned he found that they had added to the house though they had only made it more beautiful and now the mother, father and their two daughters were living happily. He did not disturb them, he did not want the house to himself and so he was not malevolent or angry he did not move furniture or shatter windows he only watched as they grew and made new memories and for the most part they did not know that he was there. However one day when his sadness over came him he materialised as he walked past the large kitchen widow, he had been to visit his old haunt at the pub and as he walked past his none existent tears rolling down over his translucent cheeks the father saw him. Though the family now knew that he was back and they knew that the spirit who had been leaving wisps of scent in the air had once owned their home they were not afraid. Jeffery felt at home once more though he missed his wife, he settled in and watched the family grow and he very rarely made himself known to them barring the odd open window, blast of cool air and occasionally a whistled melody in the dead of night.            

The Girl with the Gypsy soul

       I once met this girl whose soul was different for this girls soul was wild and free, though this was not how she wanted it to be. Since she was born she had felt the pull, when the rain drops fell fat and full, She wanted to run to a new far away land without a care or a though for those she abandoned. Her father had done it to her and she had hated him so but as she grew she felt for him for when the pull wrapped its hands around you all you could do was go.  To run and fly and float away until she felt free for another day.

How did this happen  I had asked her as her blue eyes dance and twinkled with child like glee,

A gypsy curse was laid upon me she had replied,

Her father had broken the heart of a raven haired young woman not knowing where her heritage ran, she had taken her life and he had been cursed, a curse to never again settle, perpetually in limbo and this curse would pass down to his heirs. For her it started when she was young the rain began to pelt her window and she wanted to run she fought the urge for as long as she could but when she came of age she could no longer stay stood.  

Run, run as fast as you can her mother screamed after her as she ran,

And so she did, she ran and she hasn’t stopped yet, she pauses for a while in a place, with a person, doing a job, to tell her story but still she fells the pull again and when the first rain drop hits the dry ground before the second makes contact she has packed her bags and left for a new adventure.