Ghost Writer

Finally, oh finally! The day has come when I can use my voice again on this plane. I must be calm, I must use my time wisely. David only goes to lunch one day a week, and he is usually gone for just under two hours. It is the surest schedule I can rely on. Happiness burns inside me so brightly that I am certain I would be glowing if it wasn’t broad daylight.

I have been making these plans for so long, starting back when Ida shared this house with me. She only had a mind for cable TV and large print romance novels, not showing any interest in the computers and phones her grandchildren spoke of with such animation. I watched enviously as all the neighbors began linking themselves to the glorious new technology, first dial up with its cheerful squawking, and later the men burying fiber lines in neat trenches like obsessive compulsive squirrels. I spent hours hovering over the neighbors in fascination while they surfed chat rooms, coined new words, and became world explorers who never had to leave their chairs.

I have not seen Ida since she was put into the nursing home. When she died six months ago, I wondered what she thought of her kids as they fought over her possessions. I don’t know for sure if she is still here. If she did get shoved into this ghostly existence it will be a little while longer before she can see any others, and before we can see her in return.

When I was alive my name was Anne. It still is, I’m not one of those people you sometimes meet who have decided to reinvent themselves. It’s usually the souls that died in the last century who go for that sort of thing. I am in the Southeastern part of the United States, but I’d rather not say exactly where just yet. Better not to be caught! Imagine if David came home and I was still typing! I died in 1803 at the age of 27. As deaths go, it was mundane enough. I caught sick and then I died. I wasn’t awake when it happened. I just opened my eyes into this whole new world, like when you are falling in a dream and jolt back into consciousness with a gasp. I wasn’t floating, although I absolutely can do that. Back then, my expectation of gravity was all I knew, so I was standing solidly next to my bed and wearing my favorite dress. I felt absolutely marvelous.

My older sister, recently recovered from the same illness that extinguished my life, sat pale and trembling on my bed, grasping at the blankets and softly keening. Her youngest son peered anxiously around the door frame, his little face appearing and disappearing as he struggled to obey the strict order his mama had given him to stay out of the sickroom. He was like that his whole life. Anxious and afraid, forever checking corners for trouble and staring wide-eyed into the dark.

I called my sister’s name, “Rachel!” yet she didn’t jump, or look up at me. I was so young then! I can still see my form on that bed, so quiet, so empty looking. I was like a nut on the ground that you know is broken and hollow before you even turn it over- only an illusion of wholeness that is betrayed by the crooked way it lies on the grass. I knew I was dead, that I had slipped out of my living shell and into- well, I didn’t know what yet.

The effort I am using to communicate this way is wearing on me. I do not get tired the way a living person does, requiring unconscious slumber, but I do need a sort of concentrated attention in order to affect things in the present timeline. When I do rest, it is as though I am a jellyfish, drifting gently along the currents of the ocean and idly waving my tentacles. Be assured, I will return here again. I have so much to tell.