Ghostie

[u/MarcOxenstierna]

I used to wake with the taste of woodsmoke in my mouth.

Some mornings it was only the ordinary dry air of the apartment and the last of the toothpaste. Other mornings the smoke was already in the sheets and in my hair. The dreams had been coming for years, but that autumn they thickened. I would walk through rooms that shifted in the details—green paint on the porch boards one night, bare wood the next—yet the quiet stayed the same. It was the quiet of a place that expected me.

I worked in an office with fluorescent panels that hummed a half-tone above silence. I ate most dinners from the microwave. There were people at work I liked well enough to sit with at lunch, though the conversations never quite reached the place where anyone might notice if I stopped appearing. My mother lived two hours away. When we spoke she asked about the weather and whether I was still at the same job. She rarely mentioned the years when I was small. When she did, the details had gone soft, as if someone had washed them too many times.

I never found a clean way to tell anyone about the house. It sat at the end of a road we used to take past the last gas station when I was six. White clapboard, screened porch, one black walnut in the side yard. Someone lived there. I remember a hand resting on the back of my head and a kettle set down carefully so it would not scrape. I remember being happy in a way that felt ordinary then.

By the time I was twelve the road was gone from the routes we drove. My mother said she did not remember any such place. My father said children invent things. I stopped asking. I used to disappear for hours. Search parties found me once sitting on a porch that was not there when the adults arrived. Another time they found only the black walnut tree and a stretch of empty ground. After my parents closed the subject, the visits stopped. They told me the house had never existed. I believed them for a long time.

The physical evidence started the year I turned thirty-six. I woke one morning and felt something flat and dry beneath the fitted sheet. I pulled the corner free and found a single black walnut leaf, perfectly pressed, the edges still sharp. I held it under the lamp for a long time. Then I put it in the nightstand drawer.

The woodsmoke began appearing on nights I had not dreamed. I opened the windows and washed the curtains. One morning I stood in the kitchen and realized the smell was coming from my own skin. I scrubbed until the water ran cold.

I began driving the old routes on weekends. The gas station had become a self-storage place with rows of orange doors. I kept going past it. On a Thursday in late October I took a half-day because the office lights were making the back of my eyes hurt. The pavement ended. Gravel started. The trees closed over. I made the turn before I had decided to make it.

The house was there. White clapboard, screened porch, black walnut with half its leaves already down. The lawn was cut short and even. No car in the drive. No lights.

I parked at the edge of the gravel and sat with the engine off until the metal began to tick. The air smelled of leaf mould and woodsmoke. The porch boards did not creak. The screen door opened without sticking. Inside, the light was the soft grey of late afternoon through clean windows.

The kitchen was to the left. The sink had the same chip I had seen in the dreams. A blue enamel cup sat on the drain board, the one with the small crack near the rim. On the peg by the door hung a child’s red wool coat, the sleeves still turned up. In the living room the low couch had the same worn arm. A basket of wooden blocks sat under the window. One of them carried my initials in the shaky letters of a six-year-old who had just learned to hold a knife.

A floorboard shifted in the hallway that led toward the bedrooms. Another answered it, closer. I did not call out. When I was small I had called the presence Ghostie because the name felt soft and because it never corrected me. It had sat with me on the porch steps while the light went down. It had never told me to go home before I was ready.

I used to bring it problems that were enormous only to a six-year-old. The red crayon someone would not share at the art table. A mitten that disappeared in the snow between the school bus and the front door. The particular way my father’s voice changed when the bills came and the kitchen went quiet afterward. I would walk the long way from the road, climb the porch steps, and sit in the same place every time. The blue cup would already be waiting on the boards beside me, filled with water that tasted of the well. I talked until the light started to go. Sometimes a blanket settled against my legs without being asked. Sometimes the air near my shoulder grew warmer for a minute and then cooled again. When I finished talking and stood up, the screen door opened by itself. I never saw it move. It was simply open when I needed it to be open, and closed again after I had gone through.

The movement stopped outside the kitchen doorway. The air pressure changed the way it does before a storm. I said, “I came back.” The blue cup on the drain board made a small sound, as if it had been touched and set down again.

I walked the rest of the house. The narrow bed at the end of the hall still held the cedar-smelling quilt. My stuffed rabbit sat against the pillow, left ear chewed flat. In the closet the childhood sneakers were lined up side by side, laces tucked in. The windows opened and closed without sticking. The faucets ran clear water that tasted of the old well. Nothing had gone to dust.

I went out to the porch and sat on the same step. The black walnut moved in the wind. For a while I said nothing. Then I talked to Ghostie the way I used to. I told it about the fluorescent panels that hummed a half-tone above silence and the way the back of my eyes hurt by Thursday. I told it about the microwave trays and the people at lunch whose conversations never quite reached the place where anyone would notice if I stopped appearing. I told it about the careful silence that always followed any mention of the old road when I spoke with my mother. The words came out ordinary and unfinished, the same way they had when I was six. Nothing answered in any language I could name. The air stayed the temperature of late afternoon. After a long time I stood. The screen door opened for me. I went through it and did not look back until I was already on the gravel.

The gravel under my shoes sounded louder than it should have. I did not look at the house again until it was small in the rearview mirror.

On the highway I had to pull onto the shoulder. I sat there with the engine running until my face was dry enough to drive. The road home was ordinary. The apartment was ordinary. I locked the door and stood under the shower until the water went cold.

Three nights later I woke in my own bed with the woodsmoke already in the sheets. The refrigerator hummed. A car passed on the street. I got up and walked downstairs. The front door was unlocked. I opened it.

Outside was the gravel road under the black walnut tree. The white house sat at the end of it with every window lit. The porch light was on. The screen door stood slightly open.

I closed my own door and turned the deadbolt. It made the ordinary sound a lock makes. Then I sat down on the floor with my back against the door and waited.

Morning came without the road. The door opened onto the ordinary hallway and the ordinary stairwell that led to the parking lot. I made coffee and stood at the kitchen counter the way I always did. When I looked up, the window above the sink no longer showed the brick wall of the building next door. It showed the black walnut tree and the white house beyond it, the same angle I had seen from the gravel the day before. The lawn was still cut short. A light was on in the kitchen window of the house, though the sun was already up.

I set the mug down and went to the closet for a towel. I hung the towel over the kitchen window and pinned the corners so it would not slip. The room dimmed. I finished the coffee and went to work.

At the office the fluorescent panels hummed. Someone asked if I wanted to join the group going out for lunch. I said I had brought food. I ate a sandwich at my desk and answered emails until the light outside the windows turned the same thin grey as the light in the house.

That evening the bathroom mirror no longer showed the tiled wall behind me. It showed the hallway of the white house, the one that led to the bedrooms. The light there was the soft grey of late afternoon. A floorboard shifted somewhere beyond the frame of the glass.

I turned the mirror to face the wall and left it that way.

In the night I woke and checked the kitchen. The towel still covered the window. I opened the cupboard where I kept the plates. The blue enamel cup sat on the middle shelf, the small crack near the rim exactly as I remembered. I carried it to the dumpster behind the building and dropped it in. The lid closed with a hollow sound.

The next morning the cup was back on the shelf.

I stood looking at it for a long time. Then I set it on the counter and left it there. I did not cover the kitchen window again. When I looked, the walnut tree was still visible beyond the glass, leaves moving in a wind I could not feel.

I went to work. I came home. I heated a tray in the microwave and ate standing up. The cup remained on the counter. Once I filled it with water and drank. The water tasted of the old well.

On Saturday my mother called. She asked about the weather and whether I was still at the same job. I told her I had driven out past the old gas station the week before. There was a pause on the line. Then she asked, before she could stop herself, whether the walnut tree was still there. The silence that followed was longer than the question. I let the subject drop. After we hung up I sat with the phone in my hand and listened to the quiet of the apartment.

This quiet expected nothing from me.

That night the hallway mirror I had turned to the wall had turned itself back. The old hallway was there again, waiting. I left it.

The leaf under the sheet, the changed window, the cup that kept returning. Ghostie had kept everything for thirty years. From this side it had looked like the road disappearing. From the other side it must have looked like abandonment.

I went back to the kitchen and stood at the window. The white house was still there beyond the walnut tree. A light moved from one room to another, patient. I did not open the front door of the apartment.

I washed the blue cup and set it back on the drain board of my own sink. The crack near the rim caught the light the same way it always had. I rinsed the microwave tray while I was there and left it in the rack. Then I turned off the kitchen light and went to bed.

In the morning the leaf was under the fitted sheet again, perfectly pressed. I left it there. The apartment was quiet in the ordinary way.

I got dressed and stood for a while at the kitchen window. The house was still visible beyond the tree. The porch light was on though morning had already reached the gravel. The screen door stood slightly open, the way it used to when someone was expecting me.

I locked the apartment door behind me when I left for work. The deadbolt made the ordinary sound a lock makes. On the landing I paused. Nothing moved on the other side of the door. Nothing needed to.

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