Yes, I Have Ghosts

Once upon a time I was a broken bird with frayed, graying feathers that found itself imprisoned in a golden cage. At some point I began to believe that flying was wrong. To protect my heart I entered the prison of my own free will; after all, it was surely to my benefit not to fly when the ground is so very hard.

Yet my spirit became uneasy; my wings hung limp at the bars of my cage— when I said flying is wrong I believed it.

I was naive.

As if in answer to a silent plea, I am no longer alone in my golden prison; a pair of gloved hands, white as bone, are before my eyes. These hands hover just outside the bars, fingers steepled together in contemplation.

I call the white gloves the Pale Ghost of Regrets. It is One of the Three— the hungry ghost who hides behind questions.

"How are you today?" asks the Pale Ghost of Regrets. "What troubles you? You must share your feelings if you wish to be well. As your host I feel it my duty to listen to your woes."

I could use my wings, my splayed feathers, to answer the ghost. Flash a rude sign at it so there is no mistaking my feelings. But I hold my temper. Now and then I've used anger as a shield with the ghosts that visit me. On this occasion, I choose a smile as my armor. Only then do I speak.

"Host, you say? Don’t you mean captor? Isn't it all the same? If you are concerned for my well-being, why not use your fingers to open my cage? Free me.”

The Pale Ghost of Regrets closes its fingers and presses its palms together as if in prayer.

"You focus on captivity."

The ghost sways gently— it hovers before my cage as if my words are a soothing song that touches whatever heart a pair of hungry white gloves might possess.

"Does this mean you believe you've done something to deserve this particular form of penance?"

This is why I call it the Pale Ghost of Regrets. No matter how it begins, the conversation always turns to the topic of guilt, of regret for crimes actual or imagined.

"Penance." When I say the word it is acidic on my tongue. "Is this penance then? My choice to wear the hair shirt, to wield the whip and administer self-punishment with bloody red stripes on the flesh of my back?"

"Yesss," the ghost hisses. Despite myself, I give it the thing it most desires. "Yesss. Tell me more. Confess your heart to me."

Disappointed with myself, I say nothing. The Pale Ghost of Regrets makes several attempts to draw me out— to feed its need for my pain. But I stand firm and shut my eyes.

When I finally open them, the ghost is gone. There are only the golden bars that run from top to bottom of my cage. I'm alone again. Alone in the darkness.

I begin to doze and the dreams are right there waiting just below the surface. There are dim figures, strange, echoey voices— the words are muffled, unclear. The shapes and thoughts of fellow travelers perhaps. Or of fellow prisoners flowing through dream rivers of their own; they take flight, kiss the sky, then tumble down to cages of their own. Payment for the audacity to fly.

But the dreams, and the sound of the voices, do not last long. They never do. I'm awakened by another presence. New but not unfamiliar.

"Sit up straight," it grunts. "Your posture is quite abysmal."

This is the Dark Ghost of Accusation. It speaks in the rough, grizzled tone of an embittered old man; the voice that shames— a sound that turns my insides to water.

When I open my eyes, the ghost hovers beyond the amber bars of my prison. It is a pair of tattered black gloves with a frazzled nest of decaying, yellowed strings that pull away from the fabric. The wispy strings dance like nylon line spooling off a fishing reel.

The fingers of the Dark Ghost of Accusation are in constant motion. They twitch and flex; quiver and jerk about as if hunting for a neck to encircle. A pulse to measure. A life to hold in its hands.

"Well," the ghost murmers. "What have you to say for yourself? Or have you swallowed your own foolish tongue?"

The best way to handle this ghost, I've discovered, is to play dead. Ignore its lies, its insults— play the waiting game. It will eventually tire of my silence and leave me no less worse the wear by its absence.

"Pathetic," the Dark Ghost of Accusation grunts. "Useless. No wonder you are unloved. You are unlovable. A log floating downstream, rotten and filthy; overlooked by everyone you've ever known."

This goes on for some time. But as predictable as the yellow bars before me, the barrage of recrimination eventually dies off. The black gloves vanish.

Sleep is no lasting refuge from my hosts. These dire wolves who haunt me in a pack of three give me little time for rest. The third is the one I fear the most. When it appears, I wish to have a clear mind. I must wait for it, I tell myself. Brace myself for it— meet it without sleep in my eyes.

And yet I fail. The weight of my captivity drains me. It leaves me empty and docile. I dream.

There is a babe, a male infant. He lies in a pram with golden bars on its sides—each bar a silent indictment to come. A fractured wheel spins above his head: a child’s toy that is also a clock with two thirds of its face waxy and melted. The hands are missing. It can no longer tell time. The child reaches up with tiny fists to grasp the wheel. But the dream stutters, then fades when I sense the approach of the third ghost.

My eyes fly open.

The air hums. Light dances; a phantom reveals itself in the space before the door of my cage.

This silent, cellophane watcher— this translucent pair of gloves I named the Ghost Who Knows— asks nothing of the bird in the cage. It knows the answers to all the questions that are Me. It levies no accusations. It has no need to accuse the feathery fool who chose its own cage. Regrets do not concern the Ghost Who Knows— it is not the kind of ghost that looks Back. It only considers the Now. At What Is, not What Was. Or What Might Have Been.

I despise it.

“Will you speak?” I ask the ghost. “Will you say something— anything at all?”

As always, the ghost who holds answers shares none with me. The gloves hover in an easy, casual fashion with the base of each palm raised; the fingers curl below in repose. Though there is no judgement in these disembodied hands, no thirst to quench like the Ghost of Regrets, it is this phantom I find the most discomfiting.

“Why must you watch me?” I moan. “What can I give you that will make you leave me in peace?”

Again, there are no answers. But there is a response.

To my surprise, and to my horror, the gauzy, nearly invisible surface of the gloves begins to glimmer like a thin pane of ice on the sidewalk at the dawn of a frigid winter’s morning.

This is unexpected. I have no experience to compare it with as captive of my cage. Has the ghost that asks nothing, gives nothing, does nothing but watch a caged bird in silence come to pity me? Have I fallen into a dream after all?

There’s a flash of hard light— the Ghost Who Knows shimmers, gains mass; gobbles up dusky photons from the space surrounding it.

‘This is my body,’ it seems to say.

A purplish blush— blueberries and blood— spreads slowly outwards from the center of raised ghost palms. The flush of life engorges the palms; it spears the base of ghost fingers with thirsty, burgundy capillaries— pours amethyst into ghost fingertips until they are fit to burst.

‘This is my blood.’

My bones turn to gel, my sides throb with a shingle sunburn ache as the air hums with a force strong enough to cause me to raise my wings and cover my ears. My feathers stand on end as two other figures join the Ghost Who Knows.

They are the Ghost of Regrets and the Dark Ghost of Accusation. They flank the terrible figure in the middle that steadily consumes light energy in its strange act of transformation. They too will be consumed, merged with their ballooning companion, now three times their size. They sprout feathers and become the wings of their companion.

“Take, eat.”

The Ghost Who Knows stretches massive, feathery arms— it is a bird-god. A great serpent with glinting rainbow scales and ghost-glove wings. The wings are dotted with eyes that peer out from between a carpet of richly painted feathers.

The Serpent-God flicks its long, pink and pitted tongue and visions from my third eye fill my head.

Images flash by in rapid succession over a dark screen. Each image is a snapshot; each snapshot an abbreviated reminder. I watch as these reminders are stitched together— they become a play that tells a tale.

A park smelling of freshly mowed grass— a pair of teenaged lovers, resting in the shade of a tall tree, embrace as they share a kiss with the awkward vigor of first love; they don’t yet know that first love rarely lasts.

A red door that shouldn’t be opened— the news that big brother isn’t coming home from a shattered, humid jungle land; it forever steals Father’s smile from his face.

A hospital nursery, alive with new life— newborn twin daughters, with fists waving wildly, wiggle like caterpillars in pink cotton cocoons.

A courtroom twenty years down the road— the faces of bride and groom pinched and blotchy at separate tables; too many promises broken.

Years of darkness filled with bitter, rambling decades follow the boy and weigh his wings down like a seabird caught in an oil slick. There are too many moments filled with raging, drunken despair. Not enough attention to the things that were blessings, though he didn’t know it at the time. If he did not face the future then, how should he confront the past now?

“Father. Help me.” The plea comes from somewhere deep in my belly. But Father is gone.

“Mother. Where are you?” Mother is gone in a way that leaves her breathing and confined to a bed; she can’t hear me— she is missing the parts of her that made her whole.

“Daughters. Please save me.” But they are grown— married with families, potlucks, careers and lives of their own to attend to.

There is no one left for the bird to call out to for comfort. There is only the golden cage.

And the three ghosts.

“Enough!” I scream.

I leap to the bars of my gilded prison and rattle the door, demanding the Ghost Who Knows— the Serpent-God, Patron of Priests and Guardian of Time— show mercy and cease this torment.

“Give me peace!” I cry. I’m too angry for tears though my heart feels like dust in my chest. “A life is not just one thing or another— not simply good or bad! Black or white. Right or wrong. There must be more to it! I have to believe there’s more. Mercy! Have mercy on me— I beg of you!”

I’m on bent knees, my beak hanging low between my slumped shoulders.

I shudder once and the tears break free. Saltwater raindrops fall from the corners of my eyes; they leave soft, damp circles on my dull, muted feathers. I am a broken bird in a gilded cage of my own making.

“Must I be a prisoner forever?”

“You crave forgiveness. After so many errors is this within your grasp?” asks the voice of the Ghost of Regrets.

“You wish to accept responsibility for those things that are your triumphs, and those things that were your failures. Are broken wings strong enough to carry this weight, boy?” barks the voice of the Dark Ghost of Accusation.

“You claim that a life is not one thing or another.”

This voice is strange. I have never heard it before. It belongs to the Ghost Who Knows— it speaks for the first time in my long years of captivity. It will be the only time it does so.

“You claim there are shades of gray. True enough. Many curse the vagueness of gray. Yet the sum of the parts will always equal a greater whole if one has enough courage to see the entire picture. The gray, the white. The black. Without them, how would anyone know there are so many other delightful colors in the world?

“You, your lifetime of unfulfilled dreams. Your glorious victories, easy laughter and your bitter tears— these are the many colors of the rainbow that is You. Do not ask your ghosts for forgiveness. Do not plead for validation or mercy. We cannot give you that which you are not willing to give yourself.”

The Ghost Who Knows peers into my cage with one massive, reptilian eye. It is a depthless, black diamond pool set in a fiery sea of amber and emerald. It fixes me like an insect— a specimen pinned on a flat, matte canvas. My mind tells me I should be afraid. Yet there is kindness in the stare of the Serpent-God.

“Why- why have you- never spoken to me before?” I stammer. “Why now?”

“Because,” replies the Ghost Who Knows who wears the face of a serpent, “now you are ready, boy. Look.”

The creature flicks its tongue at my clenched wing.

Startled, I feel something cold and heavy resting in it. Slowly, I raise the object to my eyes.

It is thick and heavy; a glittering, many-faceted diamond shaped in the form of a key. Radiant and impenetrable. Fashioned and polished to perfection by Time itself. Compared to the golden bars of my prison, it is the sun itself.

“A k-key?” I stumble over the word. “Where did this come from?”

“SSilly boy,” replies the serpent. “Do you really not know the answer to that question?”

I nod my head and stare at this dazzling, immortal thing— this cold fire I hold between quivering wings.

I grip the key tightly and stretch my other wing to the door of my cage. Puzzled, I stop and frown.

“The lock,” I whisper. “There’s no lock on the door of this cage. How do I—“

The Serpent-God hisses and I recoil from the snout now suddenly near. Its head is through the bars; flaming reptile eyes are mere inches from my chest. The scales of the creature glitter with as many colors as there are names for them.

The pupils of the creature’s eyes widen; the black diamonds are swollen rectangles of pure black ink. Something in my chest tightens at the nearness of the beast.

“Part your feathers, boy.”

The Ghost Who Knows flicks its forked tongue. It slaps my breast with a dull, wet sound.

As if under a spell, I obey the serpent. I use my beak to pull back my dull feathers and expose the pink flesh of my chest.

In the blink of an eye, the ghost is upon me. There is a sharp stinging pain— I squawk loudly when I realize I’ve been bitten. The Ghost Who Knows slips back into the darkness.

Surprised and shocked, I struggle to speak— my jaw moves but no sound emerges. I grab at the wound on my breast knowing I’ll find red on the tips of my wings.

But there is no blood; only a dark, keyhole-shaped outline traced over my heart meets my eyes.

There’s no time to wonder. I don’t dare think. I take the luminous key, dazzling and resplendent in my grip, and raise it to the keyhole tattooed on my breast by the serpent’s bite. When the teeth are properly aligned to the hole, I pause.

Looking up, I expect to see the eyes of the Serpent-God watching through the bars of my prison.

But only emptiness and darkness exists beyond the cage.

“I am ready,” I whisper to the darkness. “Ready to end this self-imposed exile. Yes, I have ghosts. But doesn’t everybody?”

The diamond key slips into the hole in my heart. I turn it. The cage door slowly swings aside and I glimpse something looming tall and far off in the distance.

A lighthouse.

I spread my wings— they are now full, healthy and brilliant, with many colors all their own. I raise my eyes and set a course for the beacon shining in the darkness. I step through the door, and take flight.

I do not look back.