Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #GhostStory

  • Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

    SIX – FISHBABY

    Those who sleep alone risk scarifying dreams. I dreamed I’d had the baby, and it was some kind of hideous ordeal. Call it a “trauma trigger”. I came back into myself hospitalized, bandaged head to toe and in traction. At first I was so disoriented I thought I was upside down, floating on the ceiling, but the ceiling was stainless steel and it was my reflection that I saw. The nurse approached from a long way off, carrying something in stiffly held out arms. That nurse’s face was so familiar, but who was she? I had only seen my uncle’s housekeeper once so why should it be her and not merely one of those recycled faces that haunt our dreams? The bundle offered was a fish.

    I knew she expected me to reject it – call the maitre d’ it and demand a replacement, but I don’t do what people expect. Besides, it had very human eyes, big and sad, with tears woefully a-boiling in its depths. With great effort I wrenched out of my bandages and out of my traction, grabbed my baby and ran away. Obviously this was a terrible hospital, where people give birth in traction and your baby is a fish. A carp, from the look of him, and

    not the lucky kind.

    He said, “Mummy, mummy,” but whether he recognized me or commented on my bandages I couldn’t say. Hard work running through sand, because that’s where I bogged down. A bunch of golfers grabbed my baby, tossing him into the air with jeers and screams. The baby looked at me imploringly with its chocolate brown eyes, but what could I do? They had cleats and

    clubs and all I had bandages. And I was losing strength, keeping only just enough to wonder, why golfers at the seaside? They tossed my baby in the ocean but I wasn’t having it. Waded right in after him but to my shock I soon was drowning. Can’t swim in bandages. You’d think the fish would return the rescue favor, but no. He was nowhere to be seen. It seems you can’t rely on anyone.

    When a dream becomes this disgusting you know it’s past time to wake up. I was fighting my way out when I encountered Arnold’s eyes. Looking at me as if I were loathsome.

    right.

    help me.”

    “You’re all over blood,” he said. And he was I said, “That blood was our child. Help me, But it had been too late from the first. The

    hospital had a stainless steel ceiling; how could I have guessed? Time seemed to loop; there was a panic-driven moment as they wheeled me conscious right to the operating table. Is “awake till the end” the punishment for being a bad wife, bad hostess, or bad mother? Behind the anesthesiologist’s mask I thought I saw my uncle’s eyes. I was out before I could ask what “D & C” stands for. Diddled, then cauterized?

    SEVEN – HAUNTED

    Arnold was enormously relieved that I was no longer pregnant. I was enormously relieved that Stan and Willette went home. Arnold was further relieved that the satellite guy installed the dish the day of my return; I was relieved that without a special dish it seemed we could get no local stations. Bait and switch, said Arnold.

    But it meant I could pretend I was no longer here. Didn’t matter that this was my own ice floe; freely chosen. Somehow, even dead and stupid, my uncle had won and I had lost. Money meant nothing. The stupid dead had scored again.

    “We played strip poker because you went to bed so early,” Arnold defended himself. Thus the guilty flee where none pursue. “Jealousy does not become you.”

    But had I become jealousy? The better to consider this possibility I turned down the sound on the plasma TV, then finally the picture. It was more fun to watch the raindrops slide together. Raindrop sex. Boy drops and girl drops, maybe even gay drops. Meeting and joining. Becoming one.

    “You know it takes a village to maintain a marriage,” huffed Arnold. “Bartenders, bankers and stand- up comedians.”

    And pretty, pretty grad students? He didn’t say. I ignored him till he said the magic word. The magic word was “drink.”

    He said, “No reason you can’t drink now.”

    Over a baloney sandwich and a glass of Chianti I began to feel forgiving. Someday I would have to go on a diet, find out if my body was still there, but not today and not tomorrow. Percocet enhances Chianti wonderfully. Without that dualism, if you scrape away the op layer of pain, deeper pain just bubbles up from underneath.

    “I’ve seen your ghost,” said Arnold. “It’s a guy in a lumberjack shirt.”

    But he had never seen my uncle. Not even a picture. “Describe him.”

    “Hair the color of driftwood with a widow’s peak, and olive drab pants.”

    “Did he look at you? Speak to you?”

    “Looked through me. Came right into the study when I was working. I think he was looking for

    you.”

    That was just mean. Utterly uncalled for. He was punishing me for my jealousy by making all this up. Why would my uncle’s ghost appear to him? I bet Arnold read my diary while I was in the hospital, helpless. It was just the kind of thing that he would do. People without gifts batten on the bounty of others.

    “That diary is private,” I warned him. “You’re the one saying married people don’t share everything.”

    “Bet he thinks that this is his house,” mused Arnold, relentless. “Since you bought it with his money.” He rose, whistling cheerfully at freedom from the sickroom. “I’d better get back to work if I want to have something to show my agent.”

    “Leaving me, are you?”

    “Just a day trip to town on Friday. That is, if you’re feeling better.”

    He didn’t bother to invite me. Me, who had done so much for him!

    “You be careful,” I threatened, “You’ve got “Not me,” he sneered. “I’m a modernist.” Could it possibly be that easy? If

    “modernists” were truly ghost-blind, maybe you need a conscience to see ghosts. He should at least be haunted by his fishbaby. Find the meaning, the challenge was always the same. Without meaning everything’s just another trauma trigger. What do refrigerators and meatsafes have in common? They slow down time. If Time truly has no meaning, don’t you see? It means we are free. We always have been free.

    I climbed out of bed, awkward because my limbs still belonged to someone else, and checked my underpants. No blood. Maybe all my blood was gone. If I was a ghost that explained everything. Arnold couldn’t see me because he was a modernist. So it was up to me to tell him what we all had suffered. Being ghostly gave me such a rush of power I finally understood how hard it is for them to leave.

    I took time to gather flies’ wings as I walked. Little boys tear the wings off flies; ask anybody. I thought they’d stir to life beneath my hands, but they stayed dead, so perhaps they’re only unshed tears. I’m a beginner at this. What do I know?

    I pushed open the door to Arnold’s study. There was a bad smell in there and it was Arnold. He hummed Wagner as he worked; a classic song of triumph. On the wall were blow-ups of my diary, in my private, loopy handwriting, my private, private words. Tabloid articles he’d pasted to the wallpaper; “Mom Kills Twelve”; “Satan in Miami”, “BatBoy takes a Bride”.

    The wallpaper was so beautiful in this room; it was the best in the house; a Morris pattern of leaves and mulberries and I hadn’t grudged it. It was priceless, probably irreplaceable; and this what I get. Anger postponed becomes rage and rage is truly liberating. I picked up the scissors from a pile of newspapers. Stupidly he’d placed his desk in the window embrasure, allowing me to walk up behind him. “Modernists” are ignorant of fear.

    “So what’s it called?” Peeking over his shoulder.

    He jumped a mile, scampering to close and save, frantic, busy, ineffective. But the printout lay right next to him. MOODY BITCH SEEKS KIND, CONSIDERATE MAN. I laughed because it was funny.

    “It’s a comedy,” he said defensively.

    “Aren’t I laughing?” I agreed. The cold fire that doesn’t burn consumed me. I opened my fist to shower unshed tears along his keyboard and he saw the scissors. He went so white. I loved that finally he saw me as someone to fear. Now I knew what turned my uncle on. I opened my mouth to speak but my uncle’s dust boiled out of me and I can’t remember what I tried to say.

    That I had bled and now it was his turn? That it only hurts for the first five seconds? That the living are as deserving as the dead? I should have told him it’s the little things…the glasses of wine, the band-aids, the unshed tears – still breaths of life that spark the dying air; these are agents of the dead rescinding time and looping it backwards. Back towards them. Because time’s the thing they’re so jealous of, the only precious thing that we have left.

  • Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

    FOUR – IS THAT YOU?

    The phone man said the best that we could get was a party line. No real privacy – ever. I was dumbfounded. “There’s no real privacy on them other lines neither,” said Mr. Sterling, the phone man. “You just think there is.”

    “Don’t sweat it,” Arnold told me, right in the phone man’s presence. “We’ll get our phone through the Internet like all sane people. The land line is only for emergencies.”

    Sometimes when the phone rang we weren’t supposed to answer it because it wasn’t our “ring”. Maybe Arnold can ignore a ringing phone: I can’t. Especially if it goes off in the middle of the night. No counting a “ring pattern” there – not with the echoes of sleep rattling through your head.

    “Who could be calling at this hour?” I demanded of my husband. Rhetorically.

    But he said, “Cows. Bears.” In his dream or on the phone?

    As usual it was up to me to answer it. “Hello?” I quavered.
    A sharp intake of breath but no one spoke. I

    had played this game before. Could we have brought our own ghosts with us?

    ‘That you, Gayle?” I boldly inquired. “Just checking up on us? We’re fine. The baby’s fine. Arnold says hi.”

    155 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    It was only afterwards that I wondered if the caller was my uncle’s “housekeeper”. The unpaid one he swore would be compensated in his will. Who else would be angry enough to hound us? And there was always the possibility that it was my uncle himself, wanting to complain about the way I’d spent his money. It would be just like the stupid dead to initiate calls they can’t complete.

    FIVE – MEATSAFE

    Our first visitors came when before we were ready (as visitors will). Before the cable was connected. Willette had streaked her hair with an unbecoming dissipated rock star red which, considering her coal black eyebrows and pointed chin made her resemble Sarah Bernhardt in her coffin. She had two legs, however. Willette had always been High Maintenance. Compared with her, Stan, a little plumper, somewhat balder now, seemed refreshingly cooperative and easily amused. In honor of our upstate move he wore a sweaters with a vaguely Chistmassy theme.

    “Snowflakes! Moose!” he genially exclaimed. “What’s not to like?”

    “You’re not missing anything in the city,” said Willette. “We’ve been burgled.”

    take?”
    Stan.
    “Better glasses don’t help.”

    “Omigod,” I sympathized, “What did they “A Cuisinart and my reading glasses,” said “Those instructions are rough,” I agreed.

    “We told the cops to be on the lookout for a bandit with severe left eye astigmatism,” Stan joked.

    “Not that they’ll look,” said Willette gloomily. “They never do.”

    “Until the guy kills somebody,” agreed Arnold.

    “They don’t even care about that now,” asserted Willette. “They bargain murders down to “accidents” just to skew their crime statistics. Fighting crime from a desk chair.”

    “Nice work if you can get it,” echoed Arnold, a sociable host refilling wineglasses.

    They had been stuck in traffic so we were dining at nine-thirty, a distinct hardship for anyone with my raging metabolism. I had eaten the cheese and crackers all by myself and was forced to smack together some distinctly unappetizing crudités. Zucchini slices with sour cream, anyone? Fortunately it didn’t matter. They wanted dinner and dinner itself hardly mattered because the dining room was so dark. Without windows, but six doors, there were constant and mysteriously unaccountable drafts; the candles slanting first one way and then the other. Over Martel and coffee conversation languished. No Martel for me. No wine. I was trying to be good. Trying to be good does not a dinner party make.

    “I know,” I roused myself. “Let’s play

    Icicle.”


    “Icicle?” they all wanted to know. “How do you play that?”

    “One person hides and everyone goes looking for him. When you find him you have to squeeze in as close as you can get. Last person left is the icicle.”

    “That’s sardines!” scoffed Arnold. “I’ve played that.”

    But Willette was intrigued. “Good game for this house,” she said. “We’ll find cubbyholes and corners even you haven’t seen.”

    “I’m warning you, I’m the world-class champion sardines player,” said Stan. “I once won hanging for an hour in a garment bag.”

    With a challenge like that, he had to go first.

    “Basement off limits!” shouted Arnold. “It’s dangerous down there.” Was that an implied waiver of danger elsewhere? We listened to his footfalls clatter up the stairs and wander overhead.

    “Sounds like there are three of him,” said Willette. Of course we weren’t bothering to count.

    “I wouldn’t be surprised,” I teased. “Real estate agent says this house is haunted.”

    Willette seemed unintimidated. Stan I could have impressed.

    “Our refrigerator tried to eat the delivery man,” said Arnold, getting into the spirit. “Both recovered and doing fine.”

    “And there’s kind of a bad smell coming from Arnold’s study.” I suggested.

    Arnold gave me A Look. Ooo, snap! Talk about burning with a cold fire! I pulled out the Big Guns. “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”

    “I feel a fireball coming on myself,” said Arnold, shaking the empty Martel bottle.

    “Maybe it’s an animus.” said Willette. “You know, like a malignant spirit that attaches itself to unfinished business.”

    I didn’t know. Upstairs a door slammed. Hard. We took that as a starter’s pistol. I let the others rush straight upstairs, elbowing each other like a middle- school recess, pretended at first to follow, then ducking behind a door.

    World Champion Stan could not make it this easy for us, not even in an unfamiliar house. If it was me I would make a lot of noise going up the front stairs and then sneak quietly down the back. How he slammed that door I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound difficult with our drafts. If you balanced something on it and opened a window…

    Outside had to be off-limits. I heard an unpleasant rustling in the rhododendrons. Think far enough outside the box, fall off the edge. I allowed myself to be seduced by the kitchen broom closet. It’s as narrow as an ironing board but runs the depth of the room, thus making an ideal crawlspace. And there was someone in there. I could hear him breathing. “Is that you, Stan?”

    The shadow rippled towards me. “I’ve missed you, Sharl.” That could have been my sigh, me just talking to myself. But then the voice spoke unmistakably and said the most surprising thing: “Time has no meaning.”

    That’s not a message I would ever give myself, and it was my uncle’s voice, I swear it. I backed out in a panic, slammed the door so hard the doorknob fell off. The ghost was locked in, ha ha. Serves him right for refusing to play dead.

    Willette and Arnold were upstairs together, looking equal parts smug and guilty. Like I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And they couldn’t say exactly where they’d searched. “Please yourselves,” I yawned. Maybe if I found Stan, he would show a sudden yen for pregnant women. Unlike everybody else.

    “He’s not downstairs,” I declared, so it was time to inspect the attic. My flashlight revealed footprints in the dust along the steps. I pursued a faint tapping sound. In the dark, Stan had locked himself in the old meatsafe. Dumb place to hide! And he wasn’t happy about it. Like it was our fault. Willette, feeling a bit one down after the exposure of her skirmishes with Arnold, seized advantage like a wolverine protecting its mate.

    “What if he had an asthma attack!”

    Then you’d be a merry widow, I thought. But honest Stan said, “I don’t have asthma.”

    “But an experience like that could give it to you,” said Willette. “Trauma triggers, they call it. “Traumatic inception”. Someone needs to take that door

    off at the hinges.”

    mandarin .”

    “Don’t look at me,” said Arnold. “I’m a

    The game was over. “Maybe in the morning,” I told Willette. “I’m gravid and I need my sleep.”

    When Arnold finally came to bed – could Stan possibly have agreed to a threesome? I refused to let him in. “You’re the icicle,” I told him.

  • Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

    TWO – THE OLD CHASE PLACE

    When I discovered one house on the list was haunted I gave the real estate agent no rest until he took me there. Honestly I had to do that man’s job for him. It was raining so heavily that morning that his car was like a bathysphere.

    “I want to at least look at it. Cheer up; if there are leaks we’re sure to see them.”

    “That’s it.” The agent still seemed very depressed as he reached for his golf umbrella. “It’s been empty fourteen years. No modernization whatever.”

    Better and better. The bathrooms and kitchens I’d been seeing were like lip-sticked hogs in toe- shoes. There might even be original paneling. Peering out of the window I could see nothing through the darkening rain. “What’s it haunted by?”

    I saw his wattles quiver in battle with his chin. Was I interfering with the real estate agent’s code?

    “Various things.” Unadroitly he tried changing the subject and actually selling. “It has a view of the river. And it’s a real bargain.”

    “Like what things?” Not reaching for my own umbrella or putting up my hood might tempt disclosure. I saw him wondering he could talk me out of going further.

    (Sigh) “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”

    I was entranced! Had he searched his memory for the spectre least likely to queer a deal? “There

    was a fire?”

    He hastened to reassure. “A green fire.cold fire that doesn’t burn.”

    A Delicious! I had to see it now! I pulled

    galoshes over my ivory heels. “Let’s go!”

    Perched above the road, the house was reached by a corkscrew of steps. The porch was an addition, so it was full of leaks, but the house was solid as a rock. Silent. High ceilinged. Original paneling. One bathroom for seven bedrooms, a marvelous thirties kitchen with no appliances, and a single light bulb in the exact center of every ceiling. This could be fun.

    The real estate agent ensconced himself by the library window with its view of the river and refused to go upstairs. “I’ve seen it,” he said, pulling his fishing hat down over his ears as if assaulted by inner rain.

    Upstairs there was no fireball, but the floors were littered with little glittery shards that turned out to be flies’ wings. No flies, mind you, only their wings. Thrifty spiders, I suppose who dine on all but isinglass. Is that how fairy legends started, I wondered. Fairy wings and flies’ wings – hard to tell the difference. I’m on the side of spiders. They can have all the flies they want.

    And that’s how I bought The Old Chase Place.

    THREE – DELIVER US

    I should never have told Arnold the place was haunted, but I couldn’t resist bragging. “It has everything,” I sang.

    “Air-conditioning too, so it seems,” he groused. He was always out to ruin my good time.

    “That’s just the wind off the river. A natural chill factor. And real oak, too.”

    “I’m not complaining.” He couldn’t help but warm to so much wood. In the city everything is “faux”. Alas the rooms were rather small, and in strange juxtaposition. Not a rich man’s house, you wouldn’t say, but perhaps the warren of a worrier.

    “This will be my study,” said Arnold. He chose the one room in the house that still had a working fireplace – the others had been fitted with hideous stovepipes. But I didn’t argue, because at last he was smiling.

    We were having a picnic lunch when the Sears truck drove up with the appliances. I didn’t see the accident because in my condition, meals are serious events. If I’m going to spend all morning nauseated then I’m going to spend all afternoon eating. (And all evening sleeping it off.) So when Arnold rose to show the hirelings what a forceful homeowner he could be, I pulled the fried chicken bucket closer.

    When I heard a crunch and a hoarse cry I did run to the window. The ramp had fallen off the steps, tossing the refrigerator and pinning a delivery man. His mouth was open – I could see blood – and he was gasping for air. He reminded me of the fish my uncle caught on his

    many unsporting ventures into the wild. He loved watching creatures die. He once presented me with a still- beating fish heart, saying, “It’s only the stupidest that go on living after they are really dead.” The fish, the headless running chickens — I guess the joke was on them, if they didn’t know they were dead. But the delivery man was not dead; we all affirmed the fact.

    There was a flurry of activity while the driver jumped into the truck to call for help – we didn’t have a phone yet and cell phones don’t work out here. The fire and rescue truck arrived after about ten minutes to take over. Arnold had to help the second delivery man move in the appliance. “Get a camera,” he hissed.

    He wanted me to take pictures of the ramp and the steps to show, although our porch was in sorry condition, it was the ramp anchoring that was at fault (them) and not the steps (us). That’s because it’s so important in life to figure out whose fault everything is.

    “He’ll be all right,” I offered. “He had a lot of meat on him.”

    “Jesus, Sharl,” said Arnold, “I heard his bones go crunch.” And that was the end of that picnic.

    At least I had a brand new oven, refrigerator, dishwasher and washer/dryer. I went back to applying the coat of dark green paint to make the room picture-perfect. Hunter green for Hunter (boy or girl); a super-infant guaranteed to make all his mother’s dreams come true.

  • Cold Huntsman – a short story by Alysse Aallyn

    Amy liked Aunt Petra from the moment she first met her, because Aunt Petra was the only

    grown-up who understood about the ghost room.

    It was Amy who carried Aunt Petra’s suitcase up the stairs and showed her into the Blue

    Room, because Amy’s mother was busy with lunch.

    “I wonder why they didn’t put me in the ghost room,” said the guest, not even looking around her cheery boudoir before flinging herself on the bed and wrapping herself like a caterpillar in her paisley

    pashmina.

    Amy’s heart beat faster. “How did you know?” she gasped. Aunt Petra hadn’t even toured the house. The door to the ghost room was always closed and as directed, Amy had tried to scuttle past without

    glancing in its direction.

    “It felt cold, for one thing,” said Aunt Petra. “Several degrees colder than the rest of the

    house. Brrr.“ She shivered. “I’m still cold.”

    “Mom says it’s the furthest from the furnace,” Amy told her, “But when we put in an electric

    heater it kept shorting out.”

    Aunt Petra laughed. “Never heard yet of a ghost who mastered electricity, but I’m prepared to

    believe it’s possible.”

    82 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    That’s when Amy decided she liked Aunt Petra so much. She offered, since her aunt didn’t appear to be moving “Would you like me to unpack for

    you?”

    “That would be wonderful,” said her aunt, so Amy opened the suitcase. Clothes and books and cartons of cigarettes and pill bottles were just thrown in haphazardly, but Amy took things out carefully one by one, folded them the way her mother had taught her. She

    gave each category of item its own drawer in the highboy.

    “I see you have a scientific mind like your father,” Aunt Petra commented. “Would you please hand over those cigarettes?” As soon as she had them in

    hand she lit one and puffed on it fiercely.

    “I’m going to be an artist,” objected Amy, although she wasn’t supposed to correct or even “talk back” to adults, which meant never pointing out they were obviously wrong. Then, “Mother says those things

    will kill you.”

    “Everything kills you,” sighed her aunt. “Everything, everything. You’ve got to take your pick.” She coughed heavily. “Allow me to serve as a bad

    example.”
    swinging her feet, and reverted to the subject she really

    Amy sat on the slipper chair, wanted to discuss. “There’s the smell,” she offered.

    Aunt Petra looked at her floral cigarette in surprise so Amy elaborated, “In the ghost room. We washed it down in disinfectant and Mother had the rat man in but there was no getting rid of it. It comes

    and goes.”

    83 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    ”Very interesting,” said Petra in her drawling voice. “This will allow us to identify the ghostly

    presence. What exactly does it smell like?”
    Amy considered. A question she

    had never been asked before. “Dirty feet.”

    “Ah,” said Petra. “I recognize that one. It’s the stench of neglect. Neglect and consequent

    regret. Truthfully, do you go in there often?”

    And although Amy had been forbidden to enter the room if she was going to insist on talking about the ghost, she liked Aunt Petra so much she

    answered honestly. “Yes.”
    “So have you seen this ghost?”

    Amy nodded gravely. “And you, Aunt Petra? Have you ever seen a ghost?”

    “No,” said Aunt Petra, “I never have and I never will. Some people are gifted one way and some another.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the water glass Amy’s mother had thoughtfully provided for quite another purpose. Amy was too surprised by the revelation that you could believe in ghosts without ever seeing one to notice. Aunt Petra was certainly a strange species of grownup. So Amy asked, “But why would you want to

    believe in ghosts? I mean if you didn’t have to?”

    “When you get older you’ll find it very nice to believe that life doesn’t come to a full stop just because we’re no longer physically around,” her aunt responded. “Anyone over thirty is already a big fan of

    84 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    second chances.” She smoked. ‘And third and fourth. Infinite chances are very attractive.”

    “Well Mother doesn’t believe in ghosts. She took me to the doctor.” Amy hated the fat doctor whose fingers smelled of penicillin. He was only good for shots. And sure enough, he gave her a vitamin shot. Vitamin B12 to cure her of ghosts. Amy had been afraid it would work, but of course it didn’t. Thinking about it, she ran her finger thoughtfully around the rim of

    the empty suitcase.

    “Know what’s especially amazing about it all?” asked Petra. “Your mother was half your age

    when she saw her first ghost.”

    me!”

    Amy squealed incredulously. “Tell

    “Well, our high school was right next to the kindergarten and so I always walked your mother home after class. And one day my appendix burst right in the middle of gym – I was rushed to the hospital but in the excitement everyone forgot about your mother completely. She waited until it was dark and then she tried walking home alone. She said this dog – she described him perfectly with his long droopy ears and the spot to the right of his nose – was following her. And he had such a friendly face he gave her courage. She knew he wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to her. Then when

    she got home he disappeared.”
    Amy jumped up and down in her

    excitement. “And the dog was a ghost?”

    “It was my dog Peanut who died long before your mother was even born. We had no pictures of him and we never talked about him, so how

    85 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    could she have known? I wished I could have been the one to see him but I was grateful to him for walking her home. I liked thinking he was there.”

    “You should tell her she saw a ghost,” insisted Amy. “She doesn’t even know!”

    “Oh, you know your mother,” said Petra comfortably. “She wouldn’t believe either of us. We should give thanks instead for her practical head. Look at this beautiful room. And I know in advance that dinner

    will be delicious and healthy.”
    Amy cared not a fig for house-

    keeping. “I wish our ghost was a dog.”
    “Tell me all about him.” Aunt Petra

    fixed her niece with a bright, beady stare.

    “He’s an old man in a rocking chair. The rocking chair’s a ghost, too. He sits with a finger in the Bible, looking out the window at the frozen pond. He

    never ever looks at me. Not once.”

    “Maybe you’re a ghost to him,” said Petra. “What’s he look like?”

    “He has white hair brushed straight up. And overalls. And boots with big looping laces that touch the floor. And his face is all wrinkly. His earlobes

    dangle almost to his shoulders.”

    “I can just see him,” said Petra. “Doesn’t he ever read the Bible? Just looks at the pond? I

    wonder if I know what he’s thinking.”

    86 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    “I don’t see how you could.” Did ghosts have thoughts? Amy was astonished.

    “He’s probably thinking he’s useless and his life is over. Wanting to jump right into that pond

    but afraid of what will happen.”

    “He must have jumped if he’s a “Maybe he regrets it.”
    “He ought to go to heaven with the

    ghost,” said Amy.
    rest of the spirits and stop bothering us,” said Amy

    heatedly.
    the doorway. “Let Aunt Petra rest before dinner. She’s had

    a long trip.”
    said Amy, and Aunt Petra backed her up.

    “Maybe we should tell him that.” “Amy!” Amy’s mother appeared in

    “I wasn’t bothering her, honest,”

    “We were having a wonderful talk.”

    Downstairs her mother gave Amy a hug. “I know Petra wishes she had a little girl like you.”

    “Well, why doesn’t she get one?”

    Amy’s mother tapped a wooden spoon uncomfortably against her left cheek. “You know

    mothers need a daddy to make a baby.”

    “Well, why doesn’t she get one of those?” It was terrible the way grownups acted powerless

    all the time when they had all the power in the world.

    87 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    “Because she looks like hell warmed over,” said Amy’s father, sitting at the kitchen table with

    his newspaper.
    “Marriage isn’t just about looks!”

    “Bob!” barked Amy’s mother. “She acts snarky and superior too,”

    said Amy’s dad. “Nobody likes that.”

    “But you want me to be superior,” argued Amy. “You put me in the advanced class and made

    me skip second grade.”
    “Just know you are superior without

    acting that way,” said her father, confusingly.

    Amy didn’t believe him for a minute. Aunt Petra was so easy to talk to she could probably explain to Amy the most puzzling problem of all: the difference between insides and outsides. How come people looked one way and felt another? In the following days she hung around her aunt, who never chased Amy away or acted bored by her company. She was the first to

    tell Amy that her name meant “Loved.”

    “The one who is loved. Could there be a better name? That says it all. My name means

    “stone”.”
    change it,” said Amy. Aunt Petra was the one always

    “If you don’t like it you should saying life was all about choice.

    “Some things you’re stuck with,” said Petra. “Some things you can fix. It takes a lot of living

    to tell the difference.”

    88 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    Of course she wanted Amy to take her to the ghost room. Aunt Petra told her sister that the light was just right for watercolors and so Amy’s mother allowed a special dispensation. At the doorway Aunt Petra halted, spread her arms and chanted,“Cold Huntsman,

    depart, take your knife from out my heart.”

    Cold Huntsman?”

    Amy was impressed. “Who’s the

    “The Cold Huntsman is Death,” said Petra. “It was just something we used to say when we were children, going anywhere scary. It’s a big help when passing graveyards by the light of the moon. It must have worked because I’m still here. Let me know when the

    ghost comes back.”

    Amy considered it a lot more exciting to be a child in the olden days, walking by yourself to school and strolling past graveyards by the light of the moon. No one she knew was allowed to get away with anything like that now. Parents seemed to

    assume everything was fatal

    Gratefully she offered, “Would you like me to paint a picture of you?”

    “I would love that.”
    “It will be a picture of your insides,”

    said Amy, “because I can’t do people’s outsides yet.”

    “Better and better,” said Petra. “It’s just my insides that I care about. How can one girl get so

    lucky?”

    Aunt Petra was the perfect model, because all she wanted was to lie there. So Amy drew her with a face like the sun. Then one day the ghost came back.

    89 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    “He’s there,” she told Aunt Petra through chattering teeth. It was colder than it had ever been, and she felt a deep sense of horror, like she had

    somehow made things worse.

    Petra sat right up and threw off her pashmina. “I’m going to tell him he can go,” she said.

    “Leave us.”

    Amy waited in Petra’s room in an agony of excitement. When Aunt Petra finally returned her face was gray with exhaustion. She threw herself on the

    bed.

    “He’s gone,” she said.

    “Did you see him?”

    “I didn’t need to see him, I could feel him. I went and stood in his place right by the window.

    Where he must have been sitting.”
    “You must have made him so

    angry,” whispered Amy. “Was he the Cold Huntsman?”

    “No. The Cold Huntsman had come and gone. I told him what he chose was the right thing and everyone else forgave him so we wanted him to forgive

    himself.”

    “And then?”
    “And then he went away. I think for

    good. I hope so. We’ll see.”

    “Let’s tell Mom!”

    Amy jumped wildly up and down.

    90 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

    But Petra made herself very small, under her shawl on the big bed. “When you grow up you will learn there are some things you can never tell

    anybody.”

    After Aunt Petra left the ghost didn’t come back. The room warmed up and the stink went away. Amy’s mom wouldn’t let Amy move her bed in there, but she was allowed to put her art table in the ghost’s place, under the window. Petra was right; the ghost had sat in the very best light. Amy was working there one day when she had the funniest feeling. She turned around and there was

    Aunt Petra, lying under a shawl on the bed, eyes closed. Amy burst through the kitchen door

    wailing. “Aunt Petra’s dead!”

    Her mother’s face was stained with tears. “I should have told you,” she sobbed, “but I didn’t

    know the best way. How on earth did you guess?”

    But although Amy was a long way from grown up she had finally learned that there are some

    things you can never tell anybody.