My sister’s ghost

My sister is hospitalized for a skin graft just before Thanksgiving 2021. She isn't burned but because most grafts involve victims of fire she is admitted to the burn unit of the local trauma hospital where she spends six days recovering in a rather dark setting that includes a hyperbaric chamber, a drain in the floor of her room, and lots of morphine.

Burn units are terrifying places full of pain, fear and death. The injuries are usually the result of some traumatic event like a plane crash, house fire or surprising explosion. Perhaps it’s better to die quickly than to live on with the fire still raging within you.

When my sister and I were kids we knew a family whose father had blown them up (accidentally) with lighter fluid. They all survived but each had mementos, some in the form of visible scars some in other, secret places. One son, whose face had been nearly incinerated, later tried to kill them all but his father managed to get the knife.

They never really recovered.

Covid precautions mean I can’t visit but I do send my sister a very cute, pink teddy bear, one as close in appearance as I can find to her childhood toy, Chocolate Ripple.

I wonder now if this is where all the trouble started.

About two days after my sister’s return home she sees a boy run past her living room window. He is outside in the yard, within the fence, near the chicken coop.

Don’t let the chickens trick you. My sister doesn’t live on a farm. She resides in a densely populated neighborhood in Portland, Oregon where chickens are popular and ubiquitous.

Because of a past trauma involving a drunk mother in law, I hate chickens. I think they’re filthy but my sister and I have different fetishes and philosophies so I just pretend I can’t see them. I admit they can make very soothing clucking sounds.

She doesn’t mention the boy until she sees him again. This time in the hallway of her house skipping with his back to her until he disappeared into a wall.

She calls me, annoyed after he touches her shoulder.

“I think there’s a ghost boy in my house,” she says. “He’s about ten, a tow head and he’s wearing a blue shirt. My house isn’t even that old.”

I ask her if she thought he’d followed her home from the burn unit. Perhaps attracted by the bear.

“Maybe there’s a reason he won’t show his face,” I say.

“What? Like it’s burned off,” whispers my sister.

“Maybe,” I say.

My sister is a calmer person than I am, less inclined to run amuck but the skin grafts are on her heels so she is trapped in a recliner while the uncanny roams her place. She can’t even run out of the house. Despite this she is not losing her nerve.

She has few allies other than myself. Her husband is a non believer and her cats are disinterested, continuing to lounge about as is their custom. In the ghost shows cats are always hissing at nothing, backing you up.

At this point I am about sixty percent convinced. It’s not that I don’t believe in the spirit world, it’s mostly because she is still on pain meds and frankly I’m the sister bothered by ghosts. I might just be jealous.

Then something happens that changes everything. I visit her between Thanksgiving and Christmas to help get her a tree and decorate her cozy little house. She has a husband but he works and he’s not that jazzed about the holidays so off we go.

Portland is a menacing place since the riots and Covid. There are hardly any trees left at the Optimist Club tree lot and the first place we try to have lunch demands proof of vaccination or banishment outside to a kind of concrete bunker with a fire pit and rain blowing in.

There are two mothers with a baby and toddler without papers so we give them the bunker (while acting like a couple of old crones “ now you be careful of that fire!”) and drive off to a lovely dive bar where I strike up an unlikely affair d’amour with our waiter Leron.

It begins after he gives me someone else’s rum and coke and over pours my shot of Maker’s Mark. No extra charge.

“You’re acting like a school girl,” hisses my sister.

“It’s free booze,” I shout.

The head waitress appears and moves the rum and Coke across the table. “You’re not allowed two drinks at once,” she says to me. “Pretend this is hers.”

I am cowed. But so grateful.

We drive home to my sister’s and flop down in the living room. By this time it is very dark. On the way back we see houses decorated for Christmas but they all seem menacing and creepy.

We come inside slightly depressed and arguing about whether or not to bring the tree in. The dispute peters out. My sister picks up a box of Christmas decorations and places it between us. I sit in front of her pawing through it looking for the wise men.

My sister silently picks up a Christmas stocking. Something about it seems to entrance her and as I glance up to see what it is, I hear the back door knob turn.

It’s quite obvious so I assume it’s her husband. I put on my polite face and witness the door opening slowly and deliberately. It does not blow open. No one is at the door.

This is alarming and I assume that a killer is hiding just out of sight. So I rush the door shouting “ who’s out there.” My temper propels me outside, where I suddenly realize the yard is empty. Unnerved, I back up across the threshold and yell Hey! Get out! in a voice my sister says sounds like “Clint Eastwood yelling at some kids to get off his fucking lawn.”

Then I slam the door shut and lock it.

The next thing I remember is sitting on the stool muttering something like “who the fuck do they think they are.” My sister remains motionless, Christmas stocking in hand until she murmurs, “that’s pretty bold. I mean with company being here and all.”

Well, that’s how we were raised. Not to air our dirty laundry. Being able to see ghosts was always a great family shame. This was the first time two of us had been in the same room with one.

I feel sort of bad for attacking the boy ghost but I don't apologize and in short order the boy ghost shares his hurt feelings by making noise in the laundry room, turning off the oven with the Christmas turkey in it (thank god I was basting every 15 minutes my sister says), opening the kitchen drawers, and pulling out the freezer.

He also pushes on the front door, ringing the bells on the knob causing my sister’s skeptic husband to remark drily, “You’d better do something about your boy ghost.”

Meanwhile my sister and I try to figure out over text how to discern what he might want or at least how to politely evict him. He’s beginning to wear on my sister’s nerves.

I’m very excited by this latest kitchen mischief and I start to tell my sister how to hold a seance (if you haven’t already figured this out I’m a bossy oldest sibling). I want her to try and get some electronic voice phenomena.

She’s attempting to resist but I prevail. Too bad we can’t figure out how to record the session with me on FaceTime but oh well. She lights the candle inside a protective circle and asks him a bunch of questions. The video is too long to send and she’s afraid to listen to it by herself but she did hear a couple of knocks.

She’s nothing if not brave.

It’s been about 45 days since this all started. Today is February 5th 2022. Night before last, the night of the seance, my sister had a dream. She dreamt about her dead dog and her son. In the dream, her son accidentally sets the dog on fire. She is too far away to stop it although of course she is trying to. The dog burns to death while her son tries to desperately to save him. He says something like “ stop me.”

It seems to me as if this much be a message from the ghost boy. How he died. In some kind of code.

I ask my sister if there’s anything about the dream that rings a bell.

“What? No. It was just so awful” she says.

“Maybe,” I say “the boy is trying to tell you what happened. Maybe someone accidentally burned him. Maybe he’s looking for his mother. “

“But the dog died” says my sister. A short pause then “Oh shit. The boy did too.”

It’s too horrible to think about for long.

That night the electric kettle in her kitchen turns on and off. She sends me a video. In it you can hear her sort of pleading with the ghost boy. Tomorrow evening we’ll be together for another seance. How I wish Hans Holzer could be there.