It’s celebration time here at home! Four hours into it, and I’ve already had a glass of red wine to start off, then two glasses of Kahlúa and milk, three glasses of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and four glasses of Jim Beam and Coke.
I. Am. So. Wasted.
I’ve been listening to music from YouTube videos, often annoyed by the ad interruptions. For the past hour, I’ve been playing a compilation video of songs from the 1980s. At the moment, I’m hearing one I haven’t heard in years. I don’t remember who did the song; I’m too wasted even to remember the song’s name, as ridiculous as that sounds.
The rhythm section sounds like a combination of heavy pounding on the drums with a drum machine. The keyboards are dark and eerie, while the singer–whose voice sounds really familiar, but I’m too drunk to place it–keeps doing a perverse, evil laugh.
What I do remember, and vividly at that, about the song is a line I’m singing along to: “Don’t leave me, Mama!” I sing it out loud, powerfully…then I remember my neighbours, above, below, and on either side of my apartment. I listen carefully for any reactions to the noise I’m making.
All I hear, apart from the song, is a feminine voice whispering, “I won’t leave you, Roger…ever.”
I stagger, almost falling on the floor.
*************
Several days have passed by since my little solo party on the night of the funeral day. I was too oppressed by my killer hangover the next day even to give a second’s thought about the voice I’d heard. So far, since hearing that whisper, I haven’t noticed anything disturbing or unusual.
My aunt is running the pet food store with the expected efficiency. I begged her to let me call her just by her name, without “Aunt”: she’s grudgingly allowing me to, thank God.
Sometimes, as I’m walking from my apartment to the pet food store, or the other way around, or if I’m out for any reason, such as to buy something from the grocery store, I’ll see that man again. He’ll gesture to me, wanting to get me to talk to him. I’ll turn my head away and pretend he’s not there. I really hope he’ll get the hint and stop bothering me.
Anyway, here I am on the sidewalk, on my way to the pet food store. As I’m walking past a park, I can see that man sitting on a bench under a tree. Oh, God, he’s waving at me! I’m turning my head away to ignore him–that should work.
Wait…what’s that over there? The face on the street sign on the other side of the street. It’s showing a man selling beer, but the mouth is moving. I hear, “Go on. Talk to him,” in a feminine voice.
It’s the voice of my mother.
I trip over a break in the sidewalk and fall on my face. As I get up, I can hear people laughing at me.
****************
Having arrived at work, I’m visibly shaken, for my aunt has noticed the fear on my face. “Roger, what’s wrong?” she asks.
“Oh, uh…I fell down,” I say. “It was embarrassing. People were laughing at me. You know how sensitive I am about that kind of thing.”
“Well, be more careful,” she says. “When you change into your Pet Valu shirt, the first thing I want you to do is face the cans.”
“OK,” I say; I change into the shirt, and go into an aisle to face the cat food cans. I see a middle-aged couple entering the store–a man and his wife, I assume. They’re coming into my aisle to look at the cat food.
After looking at the cans for a while, the woman says, “Hmm. No Whiskas to be seen anywhere here.”
“We should be getting a shipment later today,” I tell her. “Any time, really. I’m surprised it isn’t already here.”
“Could you ask your boss, please?” she asks.
“Sure,” I say. “Ma–er, Aunt–er, J-Jane?”
“Yes, Roger?” I hear her say with a sigh of annoyance, obviously from my not calling her Aunt Jane. “What is it?”
“Have the Whiskas arrived yet?” I ask her.
“The truck is on its way as we speak,” she says.
“When do you think it will get here?” I ask. “There’s a lady here who wants to buy some.”
“It should be here in about ten minutes,” she says.
“Can you wait ten minutes?” I ask the customer.
“Well, I’ll come back in about a half hour,” she says. Then, just as she’s walking away, I hear her say, “Go talk to that man in the park.”
Her voice changed distinctly into that of my mother.
The cans I had in my hands have fallen to the floor, just barely missing my feet.
**************
I haven’t heard Mama’s voice at all for the rest of the day, but I’ve been shaking the whole time. Is that voice real, or have I been imagining it? It sounds too exact, too vivid, to be an auditory hallucination.
After a week, I’m lying in bed at night, drifting off…
At night, I see the graveyard where Mama was buried. My eyes are like a movie camera, slowly coming closer to her grave. I see a yellow mist rising from the ground before the headstone. The mist stays there for a moment, hovering there. Then it floats away.
I see it moving down the street, in the direction of my apartment. My camera-like eyes follow the mist like a tracking shot. A white fog, like the kind you’d see in England, is all around, surrounding the original mist, which is still floating along, a hazy spot of yellow moving in the white haze. The yellow reaches my home.
It slips through my bedroom window like a ghost. Indeed, it is a ghost, for it wakes me from my sleep. I hear Mama’s voice: “Roger! Roger, wake up! It’s Mama.”
I wake up and look at the yellow mist, in the centre of which I see her face forming. She is grinning malevolently at me. “What do you want?” I ask in a tremulous voice. “You haven’t come here to kill me, have you? Have you come here for revenge?”
“Oh, no!” she says in a hissing voice. “On the contrary, I want to thank you for helping me to liberate myself from the limitations of my physical life.”
“Limitations?” I ask, my eyes and mouth wide open.
“Yes. Being in a body puts great constraints on the magical powers that a witch like me can use. Now that I am all spirit, I am free to roam anywhere and do anything I like. Killing myself wouldn’t have worked, because the spirit world frowns on suicide as a sin, just like the Church does. So I needed to prod you into making that voodoo doll and killing me with it. And you, my dutiful son, did exactly that! You freed me from the prison of my body, and now I want to thank you for your gift of love! My good boy!”
“And what are you planning to do with all your newfound freedom?”
“Oh, I’m planning all kinds of mischief! Nothing I can tell you about in detail, though, since you, now acquainted with the magical arts, might try to stop me. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to hone your skills to a level matching a witch who’s been a master for decades, so you’ll have a lot of catching up to do. And with that bad habit of yours, always seeing and hearing things, you already have quite a bad handicap, so I’d advise not even trying to interfere with my plans, OK? Gotta go now, son. I have some wickedness to indulge in, now that my corporeal chains have been broken, thanks to you. Oh, how delightful it is to have power over so many people! What fun this will be! Don’t worry about it. You’ll see what I’m up to soon enough. ‘Bye!”
The glowing, golden mist evaporates, leaving me in total darkness.
I rise from my bed with wide open eyes, a pounding heartbeat, and sweat all over me. I’m shaking. My bedroom is as black as it was before, minus the mist. Was that a dream, or a vision? It’s hard to tell the difference between the two. Has this all been real, or have I been imagining it? Is Mama really a ghost, reappearing in my life to torment me, or is all of this just a reflection of my fears and guilt?
Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense that she would have planned my killing of her with the voodoo doll. That was far too easy; surely, she would have known, or at least suspected, what I was doing, with her far greater mastery of magic. So as strange as it may seem to believe she’s returned as a spirit, believing I, a novice in magic, could outwit her, is even less plausible.
This must be real.
As a witch, she’d know all about the spirit world and how to use it to aid her in her manipulative purposes. To become such a spirit herself would simply be the next step for her, no longer needing the aid of other spirits.
I’m in trouble.
The whole world is in trouble.
I’m not going back to sleep, that’s for sure.
Infinite Ocean 