White chamber

I awoke in the white chamber on the second floor of the Victorian house on F-Street in Salida, Colorado, with the distant but certain feeling that someone was listening in the stillness – a child.

I knew it was the child whose face I’d seen peering in the window of this room before, the child in a plain white nightshirt that had paid me a visit another night, whispering – for all I knew, because I only saw her lips move – to come with her. I followed her downstairs and then into the basement, to the last room that is used for storage, has a slate grey floor and musty smell. There she pointed at something on the wall, and at first I knew I’d seen something, but whatever it was quickly faded away and left no recollection as to what it had been. The little girl was gone.

I did not tell anybody about this, and later on came to the conclusion that it had all been a dream.

But some time this spring my aunt Mary Anne, who had lived in that same house years before, told me about a visit she had had from a ghost – a pale little girl in a plain white nightshirt – around midnight on Valentine’s day. The girl had beckoned her to follow and led her to an unused room upstairs, pointing at a small hatch in the wall that was always closed. The girl motioned her to open it, and a sealed envelope fell out. As it turned out, it contained a Valentine’s card that had been sent by Mary Anne’s daughter from France many years before.

I awoke in the white chamber of the Victorian house on F-Street in Salida, Colorado, with the distant but certain feeling that someone was listening in the stillness of the night.

– Niebla ( © 2008 )

Written using the words awoke, chamber, distant, ghost, house, listen, still, whisper, window from Café Writing’s Halloween project.