Ghost Lover

GHOST LOVER

COLLEEN LITTLE

Ghost Lover

Copyright © 2014

Published by Dark Hollows Press

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Ghost Lover

Copyright © 2014 Colleen Little

ISBN 10: 1940756820

ISBN 13: 978-1-940756-82-0

Original Publication Date: July 2014

All cover art and logo copyright © 2014 by Dark Hollows Press

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

The railroad tracks behind my house have always been one of my favorite places to go. It hasn’t been an active line in a long time and grass has grown up through and around the rails and cross ties. Across from my house and down a small embankment there is a little retaining pond and several willows grow around it. The trees in the area are old and stately and the only clearing was the strip where the tracks ran through. By the time you crossed the tracks and got to the pond the light was shadowy and green and moved in liquid patches over the moss and fallen leaves on the ground.

During the heat of summer days when I was younger I would take my dolls or a book and go sit under the trees by the pond. I’d be cool in the shade and if I sat long enough I could watch the little animals that I disturbed with my arrival creep back and go about their normal lives. By the time I was 11, I had a chipmunk that was partially tame who would come and sit on my knee and eat his acorns. He was not my only companion, though.

There were several spirits that lived in my immediate area. My mother had warded the house, with the help of her coven, so ghosts could not cross the boundary around the property. However, there was nothing to keep them from wandering freely in the woods. There was a tall stately woman who wandered near the tracks. When I was a child, I would watch her but I was never brave enough to speak to her. She was so beautiful.

The little Indian girl I met the summer I turned 7 was my best friend all through school. I was sitting by the pond one day, up in the crook of the branches of my favorite willow tree. I had a book and a snack and was completely happy. When I heard the stealthy rustling below me, I ignored it at first. I was wrapped up in
Anne of Green Gables
. After almost a full minute of hearing soft footfalls and rustling, my attention was finally diverted enough to make me look up from my book.

A small dark-haired girl in a buckskin dress was slowly creeping around the pond. Her black silky hair was pulled back in a braid and her moccasins made almost no noise as she crept along. There was fringe and beading on her dress and turquoise earrings in her ears. Really the only thing that was unusual about her was that I could see the trunks of the huge old oak she was passing straight through the mass of her body. I watched her curiously for a few minutes, fascinated. Not because she was a ghost though. That part didn’t faze me.

I’d seen ghosts as long as I could remember. One of my first memories was standing in my crib, talking to the old woman who would come into the nursery. She would sing me songs and I would try to mimic them. Once my mother finally understood that I was seeing the spirits all the time, she had called her coven for help. It gave me a safe spot. If I stayed in the house, or even in the boundaries of our fenced-in yard, no one came near me. I made a choice when I came to the woods.

The girl was creeping round and round the pond. At this point, she had already made two full revolutions and I was starting to wonder what she was doing. Finally, with the curiosity that drives most young children, I slid down out of the tree and walked to the edge of the water.

The girl was almost back to me. She was walking slowly with her knees bent, placing her foot down carefully on the heel and then rolling it gently forward. When I asked, “What are you doing?” she froze and stared at me hard. For about 30 seconds she stared at me and I stared at her and neither of us spoke. I became impatient with this extremely quickly. “Didn’t you hear me? I said what are you doing?” I put my hands on my hips and tapped my toe as I asked this time.

Most ghosts don’t need that much encouragement to start talking and I was starting to get frustrated with the little girl who was still just staring at me. It finally occurred to me that she maybe didn’t understand me and my attitude changed. “I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t understand me and I’m over here getting mad at you for not answering. Poor thing. I can tell you are an American Indian. Do you not speak any English at all?”

A strange expression passed over the girl’s face.  Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, her face crumpled up in laughter. “I speak better English than you do, white devil,” she said and giggled. She bent over at the waist with her arms wrapped around her and stamped her foot. She laughed and laughed and finally ended up with a very unladylike snort. I rolled my eyes. Even at seven, I knew she was really more amused than the situation called for.

When she finally stopped giggling and snorting we sat down and talked. She was Leotie. I had a hard time pronouncing it at first. She kept saying it for me, with smirks and eye rolls interspersed between pronunciations. Finally I managed to pronounce it well enough for her not to giggle when I said it. “I’m Anastasia,” I told her. She looked puzzled and tried but it came out sounding nothing like my name. She tried several times and finally threw up her hands in agitation.

We talked for hours that day, and I was back out the next day right after breakfast. We spent the rest of that summer talking and exploring. That first day she had been surprised because she had never met someone who could see her before. Some ghosts don’t know that they are dead so they spend their days enacting the last days of their lives. They never acknowledge living people because that would mean they would have to acknowledge that they weren’t living. Leotie wasn’t one of those. She knew she was dead.

One of her favorite games was to creep into homes and scare the people. She moved things and she touched people and she whispered and made creepy noises. The only house she had never managed to get into was my own home, and it fascinated her.

Leotie knew all the other ghosts who lived in the area. She told me all of their stories but the only one that truly interested me was the beautiful woman who walked near the tracks. Her name was Elise and she didn’t socialize much with any of the other spirits in the area. Leotie thought she was stuck-up. I just thought she was gorgeous.

Leotie and I stayed friends. All through school she was my closest confidante. As soon as I got home from school, I would head straight to the woods and talk to Leotie. When I finally decided that I was going to go to college in New York I told her first and we both cried. I’d seen her every day since the day we met and now I wouldn’t.

College was the first time in my life that I had living friends. I met men and women there and found people with my same beliefs and interests. I also began dating for the first time. Half-way through my freshman year I met Joseph. He was handsome and kind and funny, and I liked him a lot. I thought that liking him translated into
liking
him but found out that it didn’t. We dated for six months.

I always wondered why I didn’t feel the way I read about in books or heard other girls talk about when he kissed me. I began thinking there was something wrong with me and got depressed. The night Joseph slipped his hand underneath my shirt and tried for more was the breaking point. I had tolerated kissing in the hopes that someday a switch would flip and I would start feeling the right way. His hand brushing across my breast convinced me I was wrong. I couldn’t do it. I ended the relationship and sank into a funk.

It was one of my closest friends at school, the ghost of Nilda, who had been the women’s studies professor who died in the ’60’s, who helped me figure out the problem. “Honey, have you ever considered that boys might just not be your thing?” I didn’t really understand what she was asking and told her so. Her gray eyes twinkled at me from behind her round framed glasses. “You were a sheltered little thing, weren’t you?” she asked as her mouth quirked up in humor.

I shot her a look. This wasn’t funny. “I didn’t hang out with living people other than my family and Mom’s coven members when I was growing up, and most of my interactions were with Leotie,” I explained, frowning. She patted my hand and pursed her lips. I could see that she was trying hard not to smile. “Have you ever heard the word ‘gay’?” she asked.

Now it was my turn to smile. I rolled my eyes and said, “Yes Nilda. I do read. Gay means happy.” Nilda laughed out loud then. When she had finally gotten herself under control she explained the alternate meaning of gay to me and left me to think about it. It took a while for all of it to sink in. I really couldn’t accurately even say whether I was gay or not. I’d never considered it. Now I thought about it.

All of my life, the people I had most been drawn to were all women. Granted, I’d never been around men much but I’d never looked a man and thought, “Gosh, he’s beautiful!” I thought that about women all the time. However, it still seemed to me that there should be more involved in being gay. It was all too confusing for one day. I took a walk and got some ice cream before I went with my go-to solution for when things got too muddled. I called my mom.

I know that every child in the world thinks his or her mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, but in my case it was absolutely true. My mother’s name is Rhiannon and she looks like what music would look like if it could be made solid. She was tall and slender with chestnut hair that fell to her waist in gleaming waves. In the right light her hair shone almost a dark red, in other lights a deep, rich brown. Her eyes were the color of emeralds and her skin was that creamy shade of pale that generations of Southern ladies had coveted and cultivated.

I grew up wishing for nothing more than to look like my tall, beautiful mother but I just didn’t. I was short, coming in at just 5’1” with blond hair and a face full of golden-hued freckles. I had inherited Mom’s green eyes but they just didn’t look the same on me somehow. Where she was slender effortlessly, I was slightly rounded everywhere. I was clumsy too. Where Mom glided from place to place, I clomped. Where she agilely avoided obstacles, I tripped over thin air. I was always healing some bruise or scrape or scratch.

I’d grown up hearing that I was the most beautiful girl in the world from my mother, but it was hard to believe when you had someone who looked like my Mom to compare yourself to. Even if it was hard to feel beautiful in her presence, she was still my favorite person. Mom and I were extremely close and if anyone could help me sort this out, it would be her.

The phone only rang twice before Mom answered. “Hey baby bear! How’s today treated you so far?” she asked, her voice full of warmth and home and…love. My heart swelled and my eyes welled all at the same time. By the time I answered her, my voice was already quivering. I poured out the whole story, half afraid that she would be horrified and disgusted with me.