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Since it's come up in comments to a couple of recent downwhen posts, yes, there were ghosts in the bed with us last night. They made it hard to sleep.
These weren't nearly as palpable as the old woman Colleen claims to have seen on the back stairs from time to time. I haven't seen her myself, but wouldn't be too surprised to learn that Sarah Winchester has been walking her old estate, wondering where her lovely orchards have gone. The old almond tree in our back yard died years ago.
These are memories, mostly, I think. It's a little hard to tell in the cold hours after midnight. Insubstantial, but real enough. Not all were of dead people.
Yes, of course: one was a dead, close friend. Parents: her mother, my father, closer than they've been in several years. Crying calls them. One was a stillborn child, another a stillborn friendship. Some were more insubstantial: dreams and illusions. The ghost of a lost illusion is a tenuous thing indeed. One of them might have become a song, if it had lived.
I've written before of the veil between the worlds. Sometimes, on a night in early August, it's so thin that I can almost reach through and touch whatever is not quite there. Last night it was thicker and less transparent; the ghosts were fuzzy with distance and sleep, and silent.
They never speak plainly, the ghosts; last night they made no sound at all, but seemed to have something to say. I'm never certain whether to try to listen, or simply to wave them off. They'll be back, I'm sure, until we've learned whatever they have to tell us.
We lay in one another's arms and took turns, sleeping, and waiting for the ghosts to speak. They never said anything that I remember. They rarely do.
