Do You Believe in Ghosts- The Things That Follow: Part VI

Before we get into the story several fast updates.  

I would like to thank all of my new blog followers.  I think something like 25 joined this week and I really appreciate it.  Also, For Nothing is available in all your e-reader formats.  A website for my book will be coming up soon.  But for now you can go to these links to buy it for your Nook, Kindle, or whatever.

Amazon / Kindle

Barnes and Noble/ Nook

Smashwords -if you don't have an e-reader, or if you do and want to buy from the site that gives me the most royalties...

Also, my fan page is up and going, you can click "Like" on the right side of this page in the Facebook window.  

Okay, enough with that crap.

On to ghost stories:

The Things That Follow: Part VI

My brothers and I brought something home with us after an ill-advised trip to a hidden cemetery in the middle of nowhere on a cliff that over looked a rumbling creek.  The tombstones were worn and broken, and apparently, something did not like our excursions there.

My mom had the house blessed after it was apparent things were awry on the home front.  A carpet layered with a thousand yellow jackets and the sounds of a man pacing in your child's bedroom will do that to you if you know you had just vacuumed said carpet and you were staring at the room and could not see anyone making the walking noises. 

She thought she vanquished the spirit, but maybe she just sent him to the loft above the garage, because that was where my brothers and I found a trunk full of satanic poetry.  When we decided to burn the notebooks containing the poetry, it was as if the priest never came.

At first, it was just odd occurrences.  Things that you really could just chalk up to something else.  We began to find dead animals around the house.  Not around the house, at the doorways.  A dead field mouse was at the back door.  A dead bird by the front door.  

"She's a good hunter, Junior is."  My mom said it with the authority that only a mom can muster up.  

"But she only has three legs," I said.

"That makes it even more amazing.   We'll put a bell on her so that way she can't sneak up on anymore birds and mice."

My mother has infinite amounts of wisdom.  Despite the cat's meows of protest, the bell went on her collar.  

But the killings continued.  

Now it was two mice, a chipmunk, a raccoon by the garbage, and another bird in the front lawn.  There is no way my three-legged bell saddled cat was killing raccoons. 

I know what you're thinking.

So what it could be anything.

By itself, I would agree with you.  But along with everything that happened before and after, I find it curious.

Then there is this strange gem, and I have no clue if I mark it down as one part The Things That Follow or one part Something the Fuck Else. In either case it’s worth noting.

One evening five us, seven if you count the two dogs, were watching television.  My three brothers, Dennis, and my mom.  Two dogs.  Equals seven.

I think we watching Up All  Night with Rhonda on USA.  This was a really bad channel that showed such classics as "Attack of the Meat Eating Slugs".  

She was on television doing her normal shtick, "Thanks for watching UP all night with RHONDA, here on USA" or something of that nature. 

That's when it happened.

I thought it was just a light out of the corner of my eye.  You know how sometimes you think you see a light flash, you turn your head and its nothing?  Well this time it wasn't nothing.  At the same moment all five humans turned their head to the left.  

Dennis, who worked in a Chevy factory and is a man's man exclaims, "What the hell is that?"

The dogs both stand up and look in the hallway.

"That's just the orb dear."  My mom says this as if nothing strange was going on.  "They visit sometimes.  I am surprised you haven't seen them before."

We all see this one.  This one right now.   Translucent, two feet in circumference, hovering.   It floats down the hallway and goes out the back door.  I look over and Dennis is holding a tennis racquet.  Five mouths are hanging on the floor.  Two tails are curiously low and it takes the dogs several moments to even work up the courage to issue a low growl.  

Thanks, man's best friend.

It is with this in mind that I eventually go to my bedroom.  My bedroom is down the hall, nearly twenty paces from my little brother's bedroom where the ghost was pacing and sat down on his bed.  My bedroom has two windows, one is at the head of the bed and another is to my left when I lay down.  I work myself up as I lay there and my ears tell me lies about the man shuffling his feet in the bedroom down the hall.  

I doze.

I awake.

Oddly, I feel very light.  I get up off of the bed, but I am light.  So light.  Weightless.  I turn and look at the bed.

I must have pushed up to hard when I got up.  

I am now floating above the bed.  

But wait, I can't be awake.  I see myself sleeping in the bed.  It is definitely me, but it looks, different, somehow.  Less alive.  It doesn't bother me.  I don't know fear.

I look away from my sleeping body and glance out the window to my hovering right, my sleeping left.  I see these wisps.  White, gentle, rolling wisps, streak across the sky and curve around the house.  I follow them with my eyes, or whatever my vision is made of, and can see them streak past the window at my sleeping head.

Hundreds of them swiftly and silently slide past.

I will myself forward, towards the window.  It opens.

I float next to the window, over my sleeping head, and look out.

They look so beautiful.  I want to join them.  And why not, I can fly too.  I can hover for sure, and I bet it's not much different.

I prepare to leap.  I prepare to join these traveling waifs of white vapor.

Just as I am about to will myself forward, into the dark starless night, one of the wisps streaks past the window, but much closer than the others. 

It slows.

I can make out, at the very front, human-like features.  A face.  But just as I start to place the face, it morphs and like smoke, it is something different, then human-like once again. The wisp looks at me.

Now is not your time.  Go back to sleep.  It doesn't move a mouth, but its message enters my brain.  Telepathic?  I suppose.

But I want to fly with you, I protest.

One day, but not today.

I feel the weight of the truth in the statement.  Cowed, I slink back to myself and lay down on top of my body.  I float downward, downward, downward.

My eyes open.  The sun is in my room and it's hot.

What a dream!

I can't wait to tell my brothers and my mom.  I smell bacon drifting up the stairs as I run down them three at a time.

"I had the craziest dream," I yell.

My mom comes over and gives me a piece of bacon and I crunch it in my teeth feeling the grease wet my tongue a moment before I taste it.  As I chew it, my mom brushes my hair away from my eyes.

"My baby.  Good morning.  I had a crazy dream too."

I grab another piece of bacon.  I love it.  I can't help it.  Mouth full, my mom continues.

Her eyes meet mine and all I can see are the deep pools of green set there and my chewing reflection bouncing off the knowing orbs.

"I had a dream that you were about to jump from your window, and I told you, to go back to sleep.  Now's not your time baby.  Now's not your time."

[The Things That Follow Part VII: Thursday]