Post by Salzmank on Apr 18, 2018 16:31:59 GMT
“Ex Umbris”
I first met my paternal grandmother when I was six years old. She had been dead fifteen years by that point.
My parents never told me in so many words, but she had not been a kind woman—to the contrary, she had been something of a household tyrant. Her husband, my grandfather, had been unable to deal with her petty jealousies and screaming-fits, and left her after my father’s youngest brother graduated high school. She had never forgiven him. She died, as I said, before I was born, but my mother would tell me bits and pieces of stories about her whenever we saw a red cardinal, her favorite bird, or (of course) when we visited her grave to lay flowers. Other than that we spoke little of her.
When I first met her, then, I hadn’t been thinking about her; she wasn’t on my mind, and I’d only even seen a few photographs. We had not visited her grave in some time. In fact, being that the season was winter and I was in elementary school, the first thing on my mind was the hope for a snow day. I tried every method I knew: turning my pajamas inside-out, sleeping with a spoon under my pillow. That this magic had never worked before did not, of course, dissuade me or my classmates; it only shored up our contention that it was absolutely necessary to do it again. I didn’t even know they would be called “superstitions” (a word I had recently learnt from a children’s book about a pig that didn’t want to step on cracks); they were simply what had to be done to effect the next day’s snow, a principle as sure and certain as the law of gravity.
Well, with my pajamas inside-out and the spoon under my pillow, I ascended the stairs, kissed my mom and dad goodnight, and went off to bed. I had always been imaginative, and I had long suffered from bad dreams and night-terrors. But there was no reason to be worried that night. After all, the spoon and the pajamas, remember? I fell asleep.
The next image I saw was my living-room, where I could not be; I knew it was being re-painted, and plastic covered the walls, but here the re-painting had finished, and daylight streamed through larger window—not the daylight of winter, I hasten to add, but that of early spring. I slowly realized that I was dreaming and thought it best to look around, to see what could happen, what I could do, in the dream. If you have ever experienced lucid-dreaming before, you will know what I mean: it is a feeling of extraordinary freedom. I then saw that I was not alone in the room; my mother was there, as well, and she was arguing with someone. I knew at once who this “someone” was, not because of recognition but merely that act of extrasensory perception by which one knows in a dream. It was my father’s mother, although I had never met her before and had not thought of her in months. As I say, she and my mother were arguing, and I caught a few words of the conversation.
My mother was saying that my grandmother couldn’t be accurate, that she must be mistaken, that the whole idea was silly…
My grandmother’s words came out like ice: “There is a woman living in your basement,” she told my mother. She did not know who the woman was or what she was doing there; it was merely that the woman was there, that my grandmother had seen her in the night, her shadow along the wall.
Then, in the way that events happen in dreams, I knew that it was time for me to go to bed. I said goodnight to my mother and my grandmother, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and went up the stairs. As I ascended, I was not thinking of pajamas or spoons or even of the woman in the cellar—I was only feeling an intense sensation of cold, coupled with the notion that all the color was ebbing out of the hallway. I ran to my bed and pulled the covers over my head. All sound in the house ceased, even my mother and grandmother’s voices downstairs, except for a creaking, as of someone cautiously going up the staircase. I was cold, very cold, and colder still when I felt the door open. I was terrified, but some feeling, even dread curiosity, persuaded me to lower the covers. There was no one in the doorway. But I saw a shadow across the way, a black shadow of a woman with stringy hair. It was, in that same way that one knows, the woman from the basement. I screamed.
My parents came running—my real parents, in real life. I had been dreaming, of course, as I had already figured out, and the woman was therefore gone, vanished with waking. I told them the story, and they were worried but comforted me. I never had the whole dream again—but I had it in pieces, in images. One night I might dream of my mother and grandmother talking, another of the woman from the basement. But never the entirety of the thing.
I do not know why I had it or what it meant, if dreams may be said to mean anything. I will only say that I found it curious that I woke the next morning to the song of a red cardinal.
My parents never told me in so many words, but she had not been a kind woman—to the contrary, she had been something of a household tyrant. Her husband, my grandfather, had been unable to deal with her petty jealousies and screaming-fits, and left her after my father’s youngest brother graduated high school. She had never forgiven him. She died, as I said, before I was born, but my mother would tell me bits and pieces of stories about her whenever we saw a red cardinal, her favorite bird, or (of course) when we visited her grave to lay flowers. Other than that we spoke little of her.
When I first met her, then, I hadn’t been thinking about her; she wasn’t on my mind, and I’d only even seen a few photographs. We had not visited her grave in some time. In fact, being that the season was winter and I was in elementary school, the first thing on my mind was the hope for a snow day. I tried every method I knew: turning my pajamas inside-out, sleeping with a spoon under my pillow. That this magic had never worked before did not, of course, dissuade me or my classmates; it only shored up our contention that it was absolutely necessary to do it again. I didn’t even know they would be called “superstitions” (a word I had recently learnt from a children’s book about a pig that didn’t want to step on cracks); they were simply what had to be done to effect the next day’s snow, a principle as sure and certain as the law of gravity.
Well, with my pajamas inside-out and the spoon under my pillow, I ascended the stairs, kissed my mom and dad goodnight, and went off to bed. I had always been imaginative, and I had long suffered from bad dreams and night-terrors. But there was no reason to be worried that night. After all, the spoon and the pajamas, remember? I fell asleep.
The next image I saw was my living-room, where I could not be; I knew it was being re-painted, and plastic covered the walls, but here the re-painting had finished, and daylight streamed through larger window—not the daylight of winter, I hasten to add, but that of early spring. I slowly realized that I was dreaming and thought it best to look around, to see what could happen, what I could do, in the dream. If you have ever experienced lucid-dreaming before, you will know what I mean: it is a feeling of extraordinary freedom. I then saw that I was not alone in the room; my mother was there, as well, and she was arguing with someone. I knew at once who this “someone” was, not because of recognition but merely that act of extrasensory perception by which one knows in a dream. It was my father’s mother, although I had never met her before and had not thought of her in months. As I say, she and my mother were arguing, and I caught a few words of the conversation.
My mother was saying that my grandmother couldn’t be accurate, that she must be mistaken, that the whole idea was silly…
My grandmother’s words came out like ice: “There is a woman living in your basement,” she told my mother. She did not know who the woman was or what she was doing there; it was merely that the woman was there, that my grandmother had seen her in the night, her shadow along the wall.
Then, in the way that events happen in dreams, I knew that it was time for me to go to bed. I said goodnight to my mother and my grandmother, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, and went up the stairs. As I ascended, I was not thinking of pajamas or spoons or even of the woman in the cellar—I was only feeling an intense sensation of cold, coupled with the notion that all the color was ebbing out of the hallway. I ran to my bed and pulled the covers over my head. All sound in the house ceased, even my mother and grandmother’s voices downstairs, except for a creaking, as of someone cautiously going up the staircase. I was cold, very cold, and colder still when I felt the door open. I was terrified, but some feeling, even dread curiosity, persuaded me to lower the covers. There was no one in the doorway. But I saw a shadow across the way, a black shadow of a woman with stringy hair. It was, in that same way that one knows, the woman from the basement. I screamed.
My parents came running—my real parents, in real life. I had been dreaming, of course, as I had already figured out, and the woman was therefore gone, vanished with waking. I told them the story, and they were worried but comforted me. I never had the whole dream again—but I had it in pieces, in images. One night I might dream of my mother and grandmother talking, another of the woman from the basement. But never the entirety of the thing.
I do not know why I had it or what it meant, if dreams may be said to mean anything. I will only say that I found it curious that I woke the next morning to the song of a red cardinal.