Salem's Sight

by Lyn Stanzione

  I walked over to the mirror near the window and fixed the back of my earring. With the sun shining in through the window, I had highlights of pure gold. That was the part I liked.

  Still, given the option, I would have traded with Berkley in a second. Traded completely. Like I said before, she has these cool almond-shaped dark brown eyes. Mine are just plain light blue. Again a lot of people have told me they’re pretty, especially boys, but like …hello… who can believe them?

  And I would’ve killed for her easily tan-able olive complexion. Add in the fact she’s a petite 5’3 while I tower over her at 5’7 and there you have us – beauty and the beast.

  Okay, so maybe I’m not the beast exactly. But you know, self-esteem again. It’s strange because I was overconfident before the accident, so sure of myself, so … invincible. Now my flaws seemed to stand out mocking me. Unworthy, unworthy, unworthy.

  Berkley opened her backpack with a loud zip and brought me back to reality. “…sort of like a new life. It may not seem like things fit together right away but they will. You just have to go with it.”

  We’d been talking about redecorating. “What do you mean?” I asked wondering how much I’d missed while I zoned out.

  “My parents are settled now, but when I was young we moved a few times so I know what it’s like being the new kid. Sometimes it’s hard at first to merge your old life into your new one. Bit of advice though, just go with it. Life changes no matter what you do.”

  Like, duh. “I know, but I don’t have to like it.”

  “Just don’t fight it. It’ll take longer and be more painful. It’s going to happen anyway.”

  Okay, she was a fatalist. I nodded, although I wasn’t sure I bought into it. It helped that she’d moved too, though. One more thing we had in common. One more bond.

  I really lucked out meeting Berkley. She had a lot of friends, but they were from many different groups. She could fit in and be accepted by any of them, but she didn’t make any one of them mutually exclusive.

  It was a good thing, too. It made room for me. And right now I needed her more than I needed food. Somehow, I think she realized it.

  I pulled the ribbon out of my hair and yanked off the rubber band. Having it in a high pony made my scalp ache. Normally I would have used a scrunchy, but not everything is unpacked yet and that box must have been put in the basement. The ribbon had covered the ugly rubber band.

  I looked at the ribbon and threw it up in the air, catching the other end as it came down. I’m not sure why I did this, except it seemed to help me unwind and relax.

  “What are you going to do your research project on?” Berkley asked as she continued to gaze at the topics list we were given in class earlier in the day.

  “Not sure, what looks good?” I continued to throw the ribbon in the air, watching the light blue cloth twirl, end over end, like a piece of falling sky.

  I threw it up in the air again and cupped my hands awaiting its arrival.

  It never came.

  Chapter Four

  Suspended two to three inches from the ceiling, the ribbon dangled, teasing.

  My breath caught and I stared. This couldn’t be happening. That thin strip of blue couldn’t just hang suspended in air.

  “Berkley,” I said, barely audibly.

  I could tell when she looked up by her intake of breath. “Oh my God! How’d you do that?” she asked as if I’d just duplicated one of Houdini’s famous illusions.

  “I’m not doing anything. It’s… it’s just there.”

  Berkley dropped her notebook and leapt to her feet. If she ran, I’d have been at her heels. But she didn’t. Instead, she took the few short steps needed to reach me. “Is it stuck on something? A cobweb or …?” She made a face and held her hands palm upward as if she knew what she said didn’t make sense.

  “Are you kidding? This room has just been painted. There aren’t any cobwebs here.”

  “How do you explain it then?”

  Explain it? I couldn’t explain it. That was the problem. “I’m pretty much clueless. Look at the way it’s hanging though. The shape is sort of like a candy cane.”

  Berkley peered up at the ribbon. “Looks more like a question mark to me.”

  We looked at each other then back up at the ribbon, which continued to hang motionless.

  A chill ripped through me. “What do you think we’re being asked?”

  Berkley raised her eyebrows in a bug-eyed stare. “We? I don’t think there’s any ‘we’ here. It’s your room, your ribbon, and your throw that sent it across into some other dimension. Face it, girl. This ghost’s for you.”

  My mouth dropped open and when I recovered enough to speak, my voice squeaked. “You think it’s a … ghost?” For some strange reason, that hadn’t occurred to me.

  My insides twisted. “Could it be my father trying to tell me something?” As I spoke my heart began to beat faster, racing along with my excitement and hopes.

  I realized I wanted it to be him. More than anything I wanted there to be some signal from the other side, some sign that my father was still around and that he forgave me for giving him a hard time the day he died.

  I looked over to where the writing had been on the wall. Ridiculous. There had been an explanation for that. There’d be one for this too.

  When I began to feel my hopes pretty well dashed, Berkley surprised me with her answer. “Anything’s possible. Not necessarily plausible, but possible. After all, you’ve got a piece of material dangling in mid air in your bedroom.” She flipped her hair from the inside of her shirt. It cascaded around her, fanning the air and causing the ribbon to slightly twirl.

  She had me there. The blue fabric wasn’t exactly obeying the laws of gravity. So the ribbon’s question, if there was one, remained.

  “I would have been spooked if you hadn’t been here,” I said grateful that this time I had company. If I’d been alone, I would’ve booked it out of there and would probably still be running. Anyway, I felt like I owed Berkley an explanation.

  Come on, just suck up the embarrassment and fill her in. I took a deep breath and felt my face heat with shame as my thoughts traced back to my flight of the chicken. “A few nights ago I ran out of here screaming like a baby because there was literally writing on the wall. Turned out to be old stuff my grandmother jotted down to ward off my mother’s nightmares.” I gave her a condensed version of the details.

  Berkley’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. Her expression bore a startling resemblance to those commercial actors who clunk their hands on their heads and realize they could’ve had a V-8. “This was your grandmother’s house, right?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I’ll bet it’s her.” Berkley glanced back to the ribbon and then around the rest of the room as if she expected my grandmother to materialize.

  I frowned not following her train of thought. “I don’t understand.”

  “Your grandmother must be behind the ribbon. She lived here; ghosts often stay where they are comfortable,” she said, quickly adding, “I read that once,” as if that fact gave credence to her opinion.

  The thought sat taking root in my head. Berkley made it appear logical. I shook my head. Logical? What was I thinking? There was no logic to this.

  “My mom won’t be home for another hour or so. What should we do?” I asked wondering if we should make her race home or try to google ghostbusters.

  “Document it. Have a camera?”

  Once again, Berkley with a common sense answer to a less-than-common problem. “I’m not sure where my mother keeps her digital, and I haven’t seen mine since the move, but I have a disposable one in my top draw. It might have one or two pictures left.”

  I pulled it out and snapped off one picture. Sure enough it was the last on the roll. Not the best time to run out of film, yet so day-in-the-life-of me.

  “What if the angle isn’t good enough?” Berkley asked. “We don’t want to look like fools.�
��

  Fools? I hope she wasn’t planning on submitting it to “scariest places on earth” or something because, hey, like I still have to live here. “Who are we planning on showing this to?” I stood waiting terrified of her response.

  “Your mother, of course, and could I show it to my parents? Please? This is just so cool. I wouldn’t mention it to anyone else though. It’s too easy to get labeled strange. I mean some people would think it was awesome. But there would be others that wouldn’t believe no matter what, so I think we should just keep it to ourselves.”

  That was a relief. She had me nervous there for a second. “Trust me Berkley, I’m not about to parade around saying, ‘Hi, I’m the new girl and I have a ghost in my house. Want to come over?’”

  “Good point. You don’t think you can find the other camera?”

  I shook my head.

  “What about video? Do you have a video camera?””

  Again leave it to Berkley to find the answer when my head refused to work on all its cylinders. “I know where that one is. Watch the ribbon,” I said, glad I was the one leaving the room rather than the one left alone there with the phenomenon.

  I could tell she didn’t relish the idea of being left there either by the way she glanced at the ribbon and then at the door.

  “Just hurry up, okay. You don’t want it to come down before we get further evidence.”

  Yeah, I understood, and it had nothing to do with evidence. It was simple. Berkley was not much braver than me. Not wanting to leave her there too long, I ran toward the living room in record time, grabbed the video camera from the cabinet under the television, and headed back for my whacked out room.

  Before I entered the room I hit record and got some good footage of the thing suspended in space. I didn’t want to touch it, but at the same time wondered how long it would stay. “Take the camera from me and continue to film.”

  Handing the camera off to Berkley, I gingerly approached the ribbon once again searching for any sign that it caught on something, any reason for it to be hanging there. Needing to do something, gently I blew a soft breath on the ribbon. It moved ever so slightly, one half twirl. I blew on it again and the question mark glided around in one full circle.

  Getting more daring I blew harder and … the ribbon fell. My heart fell with it.

  What if it had been my father? What if it was my only chance to say I’m sorry? I’d have to pay close attention in the future. Whatever was happening was happening for a reason.

  Berkley shut off the camera and handed it back to me. “Well looks like whatever or whoever was there is gone now.”

  She was right. The second the ribbon fell there was an empty feeling throughout the room the way it feels when your friends leave and the house is suddenly silent.

  ****

  Berkley left about an hour later and you better believe I was cursing fate for that one. I had pleaded with her to stay, but she figure skates and wasn’t about to lose her ice time and pre-paid lesson.

  Less than ten minutes after that, the sound of the door opening and closing echoed through the quiet. Mom was home and I still hadn’t figured out how to approach the incident in my room. ‘Hey Mom, funky stuff happening in the house, better get out your holy water,’ wasn’t going to cut it.

  We chatted casually and just when I was going to ease my way into ghosts and the possibility that there was an entity occupying the house, I noticed the flowers she had brought in with her.

  “Do you want me to put these in water?” I asked as I looked at the bouquet. Wildflowers, not my mother’s usual pick. Normally she preferred yellow and peach roses, but any roses would do.

  “No, I’m going to run them over to your grandmother before supper.”

  Oh good, now Mom lost it too. I wanted to ask if she actually heard from Grandma lately or if she just wanted me to bring them to my room where her spirit had taken up residence. “Excuse me?” I asked instead, trying to sound casual like I just hadn’t heard what she said.

  “I want to stop by her grave.” She hesitated. “Normally I just have flowers sent, but I figured since I’m here I’d just make a quick stop.”

  I stared at her. She might have been speaking in tongues for all the sense she made.

  “It’s the anniversary of her death today. I’m sure you didn’t know that. I always make it a point to send wildflowers. They were her favorite.”

  I gripped the table for support and turned away from my mother so she wouldn’t see my eyes bugging out of my head.

  I mean I had thought it, and Berkley said so, but this was real. My grandmother was haunting the house. No way was it a coincidence she’d picked today to ‘make contact.’

  How cool was this? She was asking me a question all right. She wondered if I knew the date of her death.

  Well, I did now.

  Somehow telling Mom about the experience with the ribbon and showing her the video became so out of the question. I called Berkley and got her machine. By the time she called me back my mother had left for the cemetery and I was able to fill her in on the details without interruption or fear of being overheard.

  Berkley said she wasn’t surprised. She reminded me of her findings from the report she had to write the year before and that many sources suggested ghosts have a tendency to stay in places where they feel familiar.

  That made me sad though. Because that meant my dad was still in North Carolina.

  It didn’t take me long to mention that little tidbit to my mother when she returned from the cemetery. The fact that she could visit her parents’ graves yet my father was almost a thousand miles away – alone.

  Mom pointed out that the rest of his family still lived there and that we’d continue to send flowers the way she did to her parents before we moved back here.

  She understood how I felt though. It majorly sucked that he died. It sucked more that I couldn’t even visit his grave.

  I pouted, was grouchy during dinner, huffed through my homework, and then set off for bed a good hour earlier than usual.

  ****

  “Sleep well last night?” My mother eyed me trying to judge my mood.

  I glared at her. If there’d been one thing I hadn’t done well last night, it was sleep. I’d spent a good half of the night flailing about trying to get comfortable, but the room wouldn’t let me. “Must have tried to go to sleep too early. I was awake half the night.”

  “Want some coffee?” She poured her cup and the aroma filled the air enticing me.

  “Sure. It’ll help me stay awake during some of my less exciting classes,” and believe me, there were more than a few of those. Let’s see, how about POD, which is Problems of American Democracy where we looked at government, complained about it, but didn’t look for any real solutions.

  Then there was Family Studies where we learned how messed up most people’s families are and we have to carry an egg around like it was a baby for a month. Hate to break it to Mrs. Donovan, but most of the kids cracked theirs within the first few days and replaced it with another. It was supposed to simulate what it was like to be a parent. Yeah, right. Can we say, failed miserably?

  I looked up at my mom, my parent, as she opened the cabinet and grabbed my snowflake mug that Dad had bought me when he went on a business trip to Canada.

  He was thoughtful like that. Any time he went away he’d always come back with some little trinket. He bought this mug because it was smaller and I always insisted on joining Mom and Dad when they had coffee. Mom didn’t want me to, but Dad caved. I could always get him to cave.

  Well, almost always.

  She held it in her hand for a moment then returned it to the cabinet and replaced it with one of her mugs without uttering a sound.

  Once again mixed emotions. Did it mean she thought I was finally old enough for one of her special industrial-sized mugs of caffeine, or that she just didn’t want to remind me more of my father? As if I could ever forget.

  I mean, how could
I forget the man who made me believe the world was mine to command? I did mention he so spoiled me, right? But it wasn’t about that, and it wasn’t about things.

  It was about how he made me feel. Like a princess. I know that sounds uber stupid, but there’s no other way to explain it. When I was with Dad I felt like the most special person in the world.

  Only now he was gone, so most of the time I just felt like … crap.

  “Any dreams last night?” she asked drawing me back to reality.

  “Some. Although it was weird. Even while I was awake I kept thinking of all my teeth falling out.”

  “Damn!” Mom yelped as the coffee she was pouring me spilled onto her hand. She put down the cup and stuck her hand under the cold water.

  Was it something I said? Or was it just an accident? She had jumped and spilled the coffee, but I couldn’t imagine why.

  After I fixed my coffee, one Splenda packet and a splash of half and half, I turned on the computer, Googled dreams and scanned through the list. There it was - losing teeth – an embarrassment.

  “This is odd. It says that when you dream of losing teeth, it’s because you’re afraid of being embarrassed.”

  Her shoulders relaxed. “That’s a relief. Your grandmother always said when you dreamt of teeth falling out it meant death.”

  She didn’t need to say why that thought weirded her out. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was – we’d just had our share of death and didn’t need any more.

  “Why’d she think that?” I asked as if I were no more than casually curious.

  Mom closed her eyes as if trying to remember the past. “She used to also say dream of the dead, hear from the living.”

  “That’s a good one to know.” Sipping my coffee I debated that issue.

  Mom sat down next to me at the table and half mumbled as if she were talking to herself. “They were all just ramblings.”

  “Ramblings? How so? You mean you didn’t believe any of the things that your mother said?” Her tone changed immediately and I could tell I pissed her off.

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it. She was just much more superstitious than I ever was. She believed things…” My mother hesitated and I wondered what it was she’d been about to say before she thought better of it.