by Kim Hornsby
Carlos had not captured my ghost on camera last night, not even knowing that I was talking to a ghost when he emerged from the room to see me at the top of the stairs.
Eve was attending to our social media sites, getting more followers, keeping the ones we had, making sure my brand was alive and ticking. She’d loaded photos of last night to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, teasing our followers into watching the show that would be uploaded at midnight.
“Ready for last night’s dream?” I asked Eve. I felt terrible for anyone born blind because their dreams were different from ours, not visual, not able to comprehend even colors or how a tree looked in the wind. I was a prolific dreamer and loved to recount my dreams, because I got to see them all over again when I told the story.
When Eve was ready I recounted I’d been swimming off a wild coastline when I looked below the water’s surface to see a sunken schooner below. Putting my face in the water, I saw plates and cups floating up from the ship to surround me on the surface. They formed a circle around me and my swimming companion, who happened to be Denzel Washington in this dream, the barricade keeping us from swimming to shore. We treaded water wondering how to get to safety when I told Denzel that we’d have to dive under to escape. But he was afraid to put his face in the water. That’s when I woke.
“How do you want to word this?” Eve asked. She would post my dream, something she did every morning she’d worked for me.
“Dreaming of swimming off Oregon Coast with Denzel & saw sunken pirate ship. Dinnerware floated up to trap us,” I said. “Beauty and the Beast meets Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Eve typed and posted with a GIF of a pirate ship.
“I bet I dreamed that because yesterday you told me there’s a Jack Sparrow coffee mug in the kitchen.” What my mind came up with while I slept seemed to be extremely interesting to my followers, something that amazed me. Once, I’d had almost a thousand likes from a dream about a haunted house with a top floor that was full of owls. One tiny owl was my mother, and she was trying to get out the closed window. I set her free.
Dreaming could make or break my day and these days, just having the gift of being able to see in my dreams made going to sleep like watching a movie after sitting in the dark for days on end.
As Eve posted, I fastened my headphones and worked on my laptop, researching the history of the area, thanking whomever had invented the software program that allowed Moneypenny to read everything to me from a screen I couldn’t see.
“Bryn?”
I heard Carlos speak from outside my noise canceling headphones. I lifted one ear.
“There’s absolutely nothing visual on tape except you talking to the stairs.” Carlos sounded puzzled. “I tried to pull anything I could off the edge of the view of the stairs, put on several filters, did slow motion and everything I could think of.”
I wasn’t surprised and wondered if Carlos had come out sooner from the room and hadn’t been staring at me at the top of the stairs, if they’d have seen the ghost.
“We have film of you staring at the staircase talking,” Carlos said.
“He’d jumped over by the time you turned the camera,” I said. “What about audio?” A dark thought crept into my mind to suggest I might have imagined everything.
“That’s the exciting part. I’m not sure what I got but I separated what I think was a word and turned the volume up full. Here it is.”
“Who are you?” My voice says at a blasting level, filling the room.
Static next.
Then a word.
Carlos played it over several times and I smiled to remember the ghost seeing my friends and in the blink of an eye, jumping over the railing, his coat sweeping behind him as he dropped.
“What do you think he said?” Carlos asked, playing it again.
“Is it tap, or tapped?” Eve questioned.
“Or rats?” Carlos said.
I knew exactly what he said. “Drat,” I told them. “He said it after seeing you. Then he jumped. I believe he’s from an era when that would be said, like we say the f-word.” In the excitement last night, I’d forgotten that he spoke, even if it was only one, whispered word. The ghost’s voice was soft, but I could hear the essence of a low bass. Usually, when we got audio on a spirit, it was tinny with static, not like a real voice at all. Like the ghost was singing through a gramophone. This was different. Having audio of a real speaking voice made him more real to me as I sat in the den on that morning wondering how on earth I could see in the ghost’s presence. “Now you know I wasn’t just hallucinating or pretending.”
“We never thought that,” Eve said indignantly.
“I wondered. It crossed my mind,” Carlos said, truthfully. “At least the hallucinating part.”
“Post it in the episode, Carlos. Let our followers hear him say “Drat.’” I was validated and excited that we could all hear the ghost. I’d seen him twice and now Carlos and Eve had heard him.
“I wonder if Belinda was talking about this ghost,” Eve said. “Or if there is even another ghost.”
I’d thought about that too. “Joan said the ghost was a handsome man and this dude was definitely handsome. I’d have to guess we found who we were supposed to find.”
Now came the hard part. Getting him to reappear and tell us how to help him.
My phone rang as I walked up and down the grand staircase for my afternoon exercise.
“Moody here,” I said. I had to figure out how to get caller ID vocally on my phone. Although it was usually my mother calling, sometimes I hoped it wasn’t even when I heard “Bad Moon Rising”. This caller had an unidentified ring tone.
“This is The Seeing Eye,” the voice said. “Is this Bryndle Moody?”
My heart jumped into my throat to think something might be wrong with my beloved Hodor. “Is my dog OK?”
“Hodor is fine,” she said. “But I wanted to talk to you about his training.”
“Is he still doing well?” I couldn’t imagine my sweet two-year-old dog having had to bond with his trainer these last months and wondering where the heck Harry and I went.
“Hodor is not doing well with other dogs, and I’m not sure he’s well-suited to life as a service dog, to be frank. He’s not as trainable as we originally thought and has developed some unusual habits in his first two years that don’t bode well for his graduation.”
I immediately started thinking up nasty names for the woman on the other end of the phone who probably thought it was every dog’s dream to be a service dog like some damned Navy Seal. “That’s fine.” I said calmly. “He doesn’t have to graduate.”
I heard Eve’s footsteps tap across the foyer and make a wide arc around the no-go zone under the chandelier. I stood halfway up the staircase, talking on my phone and imagined she’d look up and think I was talking to my mother.
“Although Hodor has learned some skills in the last few months, he doesn’t get along well with dogs and that’s a problem,” the Terrible Trainer Lady said.
“Is he getting kicked out?” I almost hoped she’d say yes, so I could go get him. If they didn’t see his gorgeous personality as anything but wonderful, I didn’t want Hodor to spend any more time with a bunch of tight-asses who made him conform to service dog standards. Then I remembered it would be beneficial to have my dog trained as a seeing eye service dog. Everyone had said so. Both Eve and Carlos championed to send my last link to Harry off to train for four months without me. If Hodor flunked service dog school, I could not get a real graduate dog as my seeing eye dog because Hodor wasn’t friendly with other animals.
“Not getting kicked out, but Hodor is an unusual case. I wanted to warn you that we don’t foresee his training will ever be complete. He’s just not seeing eye dog material, we’ve discovered.”
I instantly imagined her to be called Ms. Stuck Uppity in my mind. “How so?” I said in a controlled voice.
“Well, he was your dog to start with and we were asked to trai
n an adult dog who hadn’t come up the ranks as a service puppy.”
Ranks! I knew it. Beverly saw this as her army equivalent of boot camp for SEALS. “So, cut to the chase. Should I come get him or are you still trying to train him?”
I heard Ms. Stuck Uppity sigh on the other end. “It isn’t a clear-cut case, Bryndle. Hodor shows promise and has learned well, but I’m calling a month ahead of graduation to tell you that he won’t pass his tests because of his inability to ignore other dogs and his aggression towards them and cats.”
She took a breath while I thought about how I didn’t need Hodor to be around other dogs, or cats for that matter.
“He won’t graduate,” she said.
“I’m sure that’s serious in Seeing Eye School but Hodor is my companion and truthfully, I just want him back and don’t care if he graduates.” I held in all the words I wanted to say in defense of my sweet doggie, like “don’t give a rat’s ass,” and other lovely expressions my mother had taught me by the age of eight.
“You’ve paid money for us to train him as a seeing eye dog, but I’m afraid he has one serious . . .”
“That’s fine. We’ll come and get him.”
Eve was now standing beside me on the stairs, listening to Ms. Uppity tell me my dog wasn’t perfect. I’d turned on the speaker.
I fought back tears of joy at the thought of seeing my dog again soon. Tears I’d held in for months. “Please make arrangements with my assistant. And thank you for saying Hodor isn’t perfect because now I’ll be in good company.”
I handed the phone to Eve, sat on the stairs, and cried big, happy tears.
**
Even though my second attempt to speak with the ghost last night hadn’t turned up anything, or anyone in boots and a black beard, I intended to try again. We’d stay another night. I asked Eve to dye my hair and she’d done what she called a “Bang Shang A Lang job, bleaching the tips and coloring them teal.”
All day, I wondered if the low-cut top I’d worn last night had anything to do with the ghost’s willingness to appear. He had looked slightly flirtatious when he tipped his head at me. Did ghosts flirt? Jim’s ghost at the Roslyn Eatery certainly seemed to like him, if in fact, she’d said “my love” just before she touched him. And gave his girlfriend bruises, something that may have been a fit of jealousy.
That afternoon, when the rain let up, I insisted we all walk around the property, get some of that salty Oregonian air in our indoorsy lungs. One of my roles within this trio had always been to force physical fitness on my crew. In the past, I’d made them go kayaking, jogging, bowling, biking, and even rock climbing to one of those indoor climbing walls with knobs screwed on that you grab as you head up the sheer wall face. Of course, we hadn’t done any of these things lately and I imagined without my forceful suggestions that we go outside or exercise, both Carlos and Eve had been relieved these last months.
I told them we were all going outside for a walk because we’d spend most of tomorrow in the car, aside from one stop along the way to pick up my wonderful dog at the Seeing Eye School. Eve had convinced Beverly that we were resigned to the fact Hodor would not graduate, and I did not need twenty days of training with him now, learning how to work with a seeing eye dog. We’d slide into the town where Hodor’s school was sometime around two p.m. the next day, spring him and take off like bank robbers.
The scent of the salty air was heady as the three of us wandered around the side of the house, Carlos on one arm and Eve on the other. Carlos was still feeling responsible for the dirty lens fiasco and having to trash all the footage that showed the bloody wall. Although I was disappointed, I could not be mad at him because I’d had a fishy feeling about the authenticity of it all along. And I don’t know if it was my clairvoyance or just regular intuition, but I hadn’t counted on the bloody wall to catapult us into the next stratosphere of fame.
“Tonight, I’ll try to reach the Pirate again.” I said to my walking buddies. “No offense you two, but you can get some sleep after you leave me on the third floor. I’ll see if I can pull in this ghost.”
“What about a camera, maybe discreetly set up across the hall?” Carlos asked.
“I think I’ll do this one alone. I don’t want him to stay away because of you guys. Or a camera. I’m willing to bet he has no idea what a movie camera is, but still. . .”
“It’s you he’s trying to contact,” Eve said, clutching my arm tighter as we headed into the wind at the front of the house.
“When I said I saw him, he didn’t seem troubled. He looked...almost full of himself.”
“That would make him Belinda’s ghost. The one Joan knew about. He was handsome, like Joan said?” Eve sounded interested and almost envious.
“In a pirate sort of way. Dark facial hair, tall, athletic as he jumped over the banister. He has long black hair, worn loose.
“You saw him that clearly?” Eve gripped my arm. Eve liked tall men.
“I saw him like it was one of you on the stairs. He only became translucent when you came out of the room,” I said.
Carlos whistled, and I considered if now was a good time to reveal that I’d seen him before. Not as clearly, but I was now sure the shadow from the night before was the bearded man. It was now or never. “This isn’t my first time seeing him.” I waited, almost fearfully, to let that sink in. I knew these two would feel betrayed and I also knew I might not be able to explain my secrecy to them.
“What do you mean?” Eve said. “You saw him before? Where? When?”
How could I explain why I held back important information from my two trusted companions and friends? I steadied myself. “I saw him two nights ago, when I said I heard footsteps. I felt my way up the stairs, the banister rail in my hand and went to the third floor. My vision got lighter. Then lighter, until I could see shadows of things. It wasn’t a sea of black anymore. I waited and soon I was able to see the furniture, the doors, everything. The only light came from the second floor, so it was dim lighting up there, but I saw someone duck into that first room. It was only a shadow, but I saw him. I thought I might be dreaming, or hallucinating.” I heard Carlos grunt in disapproval. “But now I know I wasn’t. When he was gone, so was my ability to see the room.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Carlos asked, voicing what they probably both wondered.
The rain started with a forcefulness that had us heading back to the house in a mad rush. We hung our coats on the four hook thingie by the door and found our way into the library to light a fire. This time I let Eve light some crumpled newspaper and kindling to make our fire. We were cold, and time was a factor.
“Why didn’t you tell us about this sooner, Bryn?” Carlos asked again. “This is muy importante.”
I sat my traitorous butt in what was becoming my favorite spot in the house, by the fireplace. “If I told you that I saw him, that I saw anything, it made the experience different. I wanted it to be just mine, at least until I figured out if I was dreaming or hallucinating.” I hoped my friends would understand although I felt bad for not being truthful. “I intended to tell you eventually. And, I saw the same ghost in Roslyn, when we were leaving the restaurant.” Might as well heap it all on the pile of deception.
A gasp told me Eve’s reaction. I wanted to hug her, tell her that keeping this secret had nothing to do with them and their fierce loyalty to me.
“That night, I saw the interior of the restaurant for only a few seconds. Then a flash of the dark coat with tails, the long hair, the boots, as he disappeared around the corner into the next room.”
“Uh, Bryn, you’ve been holding back,” Carlos said.
“This is huge news, Bryn. Maybe you’re getting your eyesight back.” Of course, Eve would see it this way.
Those words spoken out loud with such unselfishness made me feel bad for withholding my secret from Eve. “My eyes haven’t regained sight. I see psychically, not visually, but it’s the same picture.”
“You’re not
seeing through your eyes?”
“Nope. If I close my eyes, I still see.”
“And yet, in the presence of The Pirate, you have sight,” Carlos said. “Whoever this ghost is, he’s restored two lost senses.” Carlos sounded less excited and more scientific than Eve and me.
I was hesitant to think that this turn of events was linked to anything being restored. The last few months had been a difficult road to acceptance, even if I still hoped for the psychic sight to return. “Restored is a strong word. I’d say something otherworldly is coming through and when it does, I can see.” I made a mental note to contact my eye doctor to maybe set up new tests, just in case. At the very least, she would tell me that nothing had changed, and I’d go about my business as a blind person. A blind person who had seen in the presence of a ghost. A ghost who lived in a haunted house on the Oregon Coast.
I hated to be reliant on one skittish ghost that came and went on a whim. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t change the fact that I was blind.
What I might be able to change was finding this ghost again and investigating how I managed to see in his presence.
**
It was just after one a.m. when Eve left me perched in the highbacked chair on the third floor. I’d already decided that if the Pirate did not show himself tonight, I’d be calling Joan tomorrow. That woman knew more than she let on and I needed to sit her under a single lightbulb in an empty interrogation room to get her to reveal what she knew.
My makeup was perfectly fetching, (according to Eve), my top was tight and low-cut, and I was ready to meet the man who’d looked at me with interest the night before. When I heard Eve close her bedroom door on the second floor, I waited. She knew I’d be listening and had slammed it hard enough to leave no doubt that she was in for the night.
