Sketch № 12: A Ghostly Visit
Reading or watching a good ghost story, I’ve found, allows us a safe way to occasionally open that creaky, warped door to the crawlspace in the back of our minds where we keep our dark side. It lets us poke around a little in that space, see what lurks in the shadows. And while I open that door from time to time and linger in the shadows, it’s usually not long before I need to come back out to the light, to rationality and goodness, to the natural order of things.
Whenever I’ve heard bumps in the night or seen a spectral outline in the corner of my room, the door of my dark side crawlspace remains firmly shut and my rational mind takes over. Bumps in the night are from the wind, spectral outlines are the white pants I left hanging on my wardrobe door for tomorrow’s outfit. While part of me has wondered about the existence of ghosts, I wonder about them in terms of science: are they a form of energy, which cannot be created nor destroyed? Are they blips in the gray matter between our ears? Or are they merely an age-old device of spooky stories?
Barring some illusionist’s trick, I have to admit, any rational explanation of the late Mr. Creaverton’s supposed entrance into the Café Confictura eludes me still, even though it’s been over a week since it happened. I wasn’t even able to write about it until now, because I’ve been processing, going over it in my mind, questioning my own assumptions. A small door in the café’s Fireplace Room — a door I’d previously thought was to a closet — opened on its own, the knob turning and the motion of the door itself stilted and controlled, as though an outside force acted upon it. The lights in the café flickered. Mrs. Creaverton seemed to have no doubt that this all marked the presence of her husband’s spirit.
Mrs. Creaverton — café owner and, apparently, human Ouija board — said to me and Violet, her head barista, that Mr. Creaverton was here, and she spoke as if he were standing right in front of her.
“Spot on about what?” she asked the air. Violet and I exchanged baffled looks.
I murmured to Violet, “You don’t see anyone, do you?”
In her French accent she dryly muttered back, “I see a crazy old woman talking to herself.”
For a second I figured I had Violet on my side in all this rational thought stuff, but then she added, “All this time she said she was talking to his ghost I figured he was at least showing himself like the others.”
There have been hints over the past couple of weeks that Mrs. C communes with Mr. C, and that neither Violet nor café regular and good friend of Mrs. C’s, Roscoe Belesprit, find this at all unusual. But I figured she “communed” with him the way I sometimes talk with my own late husband, in whispers and telepathy and imagined replies. I guess I should’ve known better; ever since the mysterious Quake that rocked this town of Applewood, Connecticut, some of the many strange happenings have involved supposed ghost encounters. Two (living) people have committed murder and pled insanity, saying ghosts told them to do it. Sightings have gone up around cemeteries and historic homes. Anyone familiar with horror stories would expect to get some of this in a small New England town at any given time, but it’s become so widespread, The Applewood Timber online news has taken to reporting on it, and by all accounts they’re a reputable publication.
In hushed awe, Mrs. C said, “So that’s how she knew. What does that have to do with the rot?”
The rot is another Quake mystery. Every building in town, except for the café, began decaying after the last tremor — grass dried up, paint peeled, siding cracked, roofs and floors caved in. People have been working as hard as they can to fix their houses and businesses, but it’s slow going, and at times it seems like the minute a repair is made, the rot just eats away at it again.
For a while, Mrs. C seemed to listen to Mr. C. I took the opportunity to sneak a peek past her into the room he apparently came from, what I’d thought was a closet. It looked more like a narrow passageway, leading into the dark.
Mrs. C finally said, “Then I’ll wait for the memory. Thank you, my darling.”
A moment later, the passageway door closed with the same purposeful motion that had opened it.
“I need to sit,” said Mrs. C, and Violet was immediately by her side, helping her into a chair.
“Do you need water?” asked Violet. “Tea? A shot of something very alcoholic?”
“Did you see him?” Mrs. C asked us. We shook our heads. “I saw him,” she said. “Right there, plain as day. I always see him now, ever since the week of the Quake.”
Violet told me, “She used to feel his presence only. When the Quake hit, she stayed upstairs in their apartment for a week because, she says, they were talking.”
Mrs. C closed her eyes. “Just give me a moment.”
Roscoe and young Doc Graham happened to come into the café then, and from my vantage point in the Fireplace Room, my eyeline had a straight shot to the front door. I waved them back, and they joined us.
“What’s going on?” Roscoe asked.
Violet said, “Mrs. C was just paid a visit by Mr. C.”
“What?” said the doc with interest, sinking slowly into the seat next to her.
“What?” said Roscoe with alarm, plopping down in the seat on the other side of her.
Mrs. C opened her eyes and asked Doc Graham, “Have you ever heard of a future memory? I mean, in theoretical science or something like that?”
He thought a moment. “I wonder . . . Since the Quake, several of my patients who claim to have had, um, supernatural encounters have described waking dreams and fugue states, disjointed images that feel like memories, except that then these visions come true in reality. That kind of sounds like a future memory.”
“Like déjà vu?” said Violet.
Doc Graham, who makes no secret of his undying love for Violet, propped his chin in his hands, elbows on the table, and smiled at her. “Sort of, my reason for living.”
Violet, who’s not fooling anyone, rolled her eyes at him and pretended to hate the attention.
“Mr. Creaverton told me he would try to show me one of these visions,” Mrs. C explained. “He said it had to do with the rot, and also with how we just got our customers back.”
The café went through a dry spell for a couple of weeks, thanks to rumors started by Nessie Fyne and Pastor Sweeney, both of whom would like to see Confictura shuttered.
“Apparently,” she continued, “these future memories are part of how Nessie knew we’d be in Sweeney’s church last month right when the glass in the sacristy started cracking. It’s how she knew when to get the cops there and accuse us of vandalism.” Mrs. C stared into space. “There’s more to the story, Mr. Creaverton said. But then he had to go.”
Being a reporter by trade, I ask questions as they come to me, often prompted by whatever the subject of an interview has just said. With Mrs. C’s words, I pictured the door to the passageway closing again, and I asked, “What’s the passage behind the door?”
“A back corridor,” she said. “It runs the length of the café.”
I wanted to know more, like if the Creavertons had built it in and why, but Mrs. C got up then. “I’m sorry,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go lie down. Maybe this vision will come to me if I’m in a dark, quiet space. Maybe Mr. Creaverton will come back again.”
Roscoe jumped up to take her arm. “Can I bring you anything, Phillipa?”
She patted his hand. “No, thanks.” She chuckled. “With any luck, I’ll be bringing you all something soon. I’ll let you know as soon as I learn anything more.”
She didn’t come back down from her apartment again until the next day. No vision had come. We’ve been waiting over a week now, and no vision, no future memory, has come. I wish the vision or Mr. Creaverton or something new had happened by the writing of this post so I could have a great new insight ready for you, dear reader. But apparently, ghosts don’t care about deadlines, which is kind of funny if you think about it.
After nearly three months since the Quake, with all the mystery surrounding it and its fallout, these visions seem like they might offer the first major crack in the case. You will hear about anything we learn as soon as we learn it.
In the meantime, we wait.
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Clarissa J. Markiewicz is also the author of Christmas In Whimsy — a heartwarming, fun novel readers compare to Hallmark Christmas movies, and recipient of Readers’ Favorite 5-star Seal — and the genre-bending new-age mystery The Paramour Pawn.
This and any related blog posts are works of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to living or dead public figures, entities, places, events, and the like, are of a fictional, opinioned, and/or parodic nature. No healthcare professionals have been consulted in writing this. Any advice given or inferred is anecdotal and used at your own risk. Consult your doctor in all healthcare matters. ©2024 Clarissa J. Markiewicz. No portion of this or any related blog post may be used to train any AI application without explicit consent from the author.
