Old Ghosts

BY DR. AGONSON

The dirt is soft but heavy. My spade easily breaks through the wet earth, but my shoulders ache as I lift the shovel. With every thrust perspiration builds under my shirt, caking on my arms as it mixes with the rising dust. My lungs burn, and the white plumes of my breath hang stubbornly in the air.

All time disappears with the regular squish of the spade meeting earth, the throwing of the dirt over my shoulder, the deepening of the hole. Sleep is ever invading, and my drowsy eyes close.

A hollow sound wakes me. Have I been digging in my sleep? I lift my shovel again and bring it down. The same low tone rises from the earth. Falling to my knees, I begin brushing the dirt away, quickly revealing the dark wood of a coffin.

I keep brushing, searching the length of the casket. Finally, I find it, but it is too dark to see. Standing, I reach for my lamp, and drag it into the dark underworld. Its light shines upon the silvery emblem, the ancient seal.

A sort of madness gripped me then, and I began laughing, desperately clutching my sides. Then I dropped the lantern. It bounced at my feet, the glass breaking, its oil spilling everywhere. Still I laughed as the fire began spreading all around the bottom of the hole. I couldn’t stop, even as the flames began crawling up my leg. Laughing or shrieking, it was impossible to tell, I began clawing at the earthen walls of the grave, but they seemed to have risen higher than my head.

Then I awoke from the nightmare, panting in the darkness of my room. As the images of the terror faded, I wandered barefoot through the empty house, not daring to turn on a light else some spell break and the whole of the world’s horrors descend upon me. There is a certain fear one feels when rising in the darkness, a guiltiness, as if the shadows, if they were to notice you, might bite.

Mine is a very old house, and like any old house, has its ghosts. They are of a respectable sort, though. Yet I fear myself intruding upon their time when I, the living, wander these halls in the night.

I pause at a window. The excavation sleeps. The workers are home in bed like their red-faced foreman. What once was the old family grave is now the resting place of ugly yellow tractors, and where once there were cold stone markers flimsy canvas lies.

I suspect the ghosts of the house are unhappy with me, but I couldn’t stop the workers from coming. Standing at the window, I try not to imagine the horrid eventuality. Soon the preparations will be over, and this very old house will be felled. It is too irregular a place for the buyers. There will shortly rise over these precious ruins fat, little boxes for people to squeeze themselves into. Perfectly straight streets. Uniform lines of mailboxes. There is no place for the strange corridors of my home and its ancient whispers, no place for hidden passages or dark cellars.

My eyes adjust and I see a ghost, my own faint reflection in the window glass. I start a moment, for the image was terrible. Shadows covered my eyes, and the pale visage there seemed more a skull than a face, a skull with black, empty sockets. Yet not a skull. Skulls are marked by that sardonic grin. My reflection never grins at me, darkly or otherwise.

Tired and half asleep, I stare into that faint image. As a child, I thought those reflections were ghosts, captured images of the souls of the living. My soul seems rather morbid and decayed.

I feel a chill, and a breeze brushes my shoulder like a gently consoling hand. One of the many things the buyers find wrong with my precious house. The mystery of those breezes are only unexplained drafts, not spirits. The tingling chills hold no excitement for them, only coldness. They will build their squat little houses, hundreds of them, but only after they tear down a castle. No spirit can live in such abodes.

I see my face almost smile. There is a lifting of the lip as I consider that, though I hate what’s coming, there will, in the end, be life again. Children will play on those unimaginative streets. I think of my own childhood, wandering around senseless corridors, able to lose myself every day, have an adventure every day, all without leaving the house. The poor children will have to find some other mystery to play in, to grow in.

I am tired, and my eyes are growing bleary. Before I can wander back to my bed, I find myself sinking to the stony floor, my eyes ever on the window. Lying there, staring up at a clear and starry sky, I pass into sleep.

The shovel’s in my hand, and I must dig. The earth easily breaks apart, and I throw clods of grassy dirt over my shoulder. There is no time. Panting, sweating, my blistering hands bleeding, I work like the devil to enter Hades.

I will dig him up. I will find him again. I will remove the old seal. I dig, and the cold earth welcomes me. The musty smell rises to my nose like perfume, the odor of an old grave. I dig, though the spade grows heavier. I must dig, I must dig, must dig, dig, dig, dig . . .

Again, the hollow sound of a coffin rises to my ears, and again I fall to my knees, my hands searching the dirt.

There, there is the seal, the old crest, holy and blessed; powerful against what lies below; impotent against the impending march of time. I stand. Lifting my shovel high, I stab down upon that seal. Somewhere the deep tones of a bell echo over the lonely plain. Again, I bring the sharp point of my shovel down against this holy impediment. The bell rings, its dreadful vibrations shaking the earth. I feel the walls of dirt surrounding me tremble. Once more, and with a shout I bring the final blow.

The bell’s reverberating gong continues with ever loudening knells, and all around me the earth caves in burying me in darkness. Like a mouth, the grave closes over me. I am consumed in darkness.

They say of the Happy Hollow Homes there is a curse, or such is the tale told among the children. They say, in the ever evolving story, that there was a castle or a church standing here before the houses were built, and that the east side was built over a graveyard. Mrs. So and So’s gravel driveway is really the crushed remains of tombstones. The children speak of the unhappy ghosts which still haunt the neighborhood, which is a little unfair. The shadows are still alive where that old house once stood, and every child who grew up on those straight streets remembers how, when it was time for the castle’s final occupant to leave, he was found dead.