A Ghost Story

I moved into the old house in February.  Snow spotted the ground.  Cornfields were bare black squares covering up the earth in a patchwork quilt older than time and I was transported back to days when life began at sunrise and ended in small puddles of light shortly before bed.

Downstairs there was a kitchen, living room and long narrow bedroom with five hooks on the wall for clothes. Up a solid oak staircase, enclosed between thick walls and separated from the downstairs by a heavy oak door, were two other rooms.  Rooms that had been a boys' bedroom and girls' bedroom.  Rooms with two big windows each and three hooks each.

I rose every day to drink my coffee and write until mid morning.  Then I mowed the huge grassy yard, populated by blue birds and finches and cardinals...and the inevitable snake in the garden. I planted a labyrinth of sunflowers circling into the center of my thoughts and life was almost idyllic.

One day I heard a crowd.  It sounded like people at a football game and I went outside to see where this miracle came from in the isolation of my world.  Snow geese and Canadian geese filled the sky!  Thousands of them, some flying so low I felt the wind beneath their wings move my hair.  They passed over me for nearly twenty minutes and I remained there in awe.  I have never seen so many of one kind of animal at one time.  Ever!

Then in July I decided to wash the windows.  Inside and out, there was a need to remove fifty years of accumulated grime, to brighten my world, to start nesting.

I began downstairs using a step stool and finally moved to the upstairs with my old extension ladder.  I washed the inside and then climbed up to wash the outside.  Looking in at my things arranged around the old room in a sort of chic antique way I marveled at the homeliness of it all.

Reaching down I picked up the bottle to spray the window and when I glanced back up she was staring out at me!  Her eyes were dark, her hair pulled up.  She seemed to be wearing a high necked white blouse and I might be able to tell you more but the shock caused me to fall backwards off the ladder!.

I wasn't hurt by my tumble to the ground, but I was terrified.

I could not go back in the house.  I could not climb back up the ladder.  I moved away shortly after that.

It may have been my reflection.  It probably was.  I hope it was.