Dead-Tired

Content warning: non-gruesome child death, mental illness, swearing

Dead-Tired

The night my mother drowned us in the bathtub I could only count up to 57.

It’s been a thousand series of 57 as of today. I’ve done a lot of self-reflection in the past 156.1643835616438 years, a lot of updating my math skills as well.

My siblings and I are stuck here in this mansion turned hotel, turned affordable housing, turned Airbnb, turned haunted-spot of 2023. I mostly hang out in the bathroom, staring out the window they thankfully put in the wall. The bath that we died in was also removed some hundred years ago which really helped with our ability to move on from that moment.

I was only ten years old on the night where we went under the water for the last time. The eldest of three children. My mother drowned me first, knowing I’d protect the others. 

I can imagine that if you have a heart that right now you’re feeling a sort of way about it all. I know because the day I met Polly and I told her my story all she could do was weep for hours. Polly is eleven years old and she has a big heart. Being a ghost is strange. I still feel like a child. I have a child’s perception of the world, a hopeful heart, and a penchant for whimsy, but after 156 years…I’m also very tired of it all. Time is so endless. My mother thought she was saving us from the horrific ennui of existence, but instead she tied us here.

They took our mother away soon after the incident. Sometimes I’ll hear the ghost tour guides talking about what became of her. Years in an asylum, and a tragic ending. I wish I could tell them about the beautiful moments that are stuck in my steel trap of a memory. The days she took us wandering the forests searching for blackberries, the incredible breakfast she would make out of what little we had and the time we sat, quiet, in a meadow watching a doe nurturing her fawn. I remember my mother staring at those deer and the hope in her face as she watched that act of transcendental parenting.

Our father, he was not a nice man. That is all my mother would say on the nights that she wept while making sure we had our bath, our stories, our songs, and tucking us into our bed.

We weren’t often allowed to leave the house. I think because our father knew that she would leave and take us with her. I’m not sure why he needed us to stay, when it was evident he had no love for any of us. My mother was a good person. A good person driven to a terrifying moment.

…and it’s this moment that all of those, I’m going to say it…fucking…(I still feel bad about cursing, even one hundred and fifty six years in to being ten years old) ghost hunters and paranormal researchers want to talk about. In the brochures for the ghost tour, they call me chatty. At least that’s what Polly said. She said it was the brochure that made her come to visit me. 

The day Polly came to the bathroom to visit me, the light shifted. The bathroom is a grey dull place where I spend most of my days, and even the addition of a window couldn’t brighten the place. But Polly, Polly brought with her this shimmer. That’s what snapped me out of my reverie. I had been thinking about how much I missed blackberries. My mother would hide them in our oatmeal and milk. One or two as a surprise, if she could find them. Then the shimmer. I looked up and there was this young girl, staring at me. Like, right at me. I looked behind me, as you do, to see if there was something else she could be looking at. Nope. She was looking right at me, in my eyes. It was really uncomfortable, to be honest, after one hundred and fifty six years of only really communicating with live people via the bathtub tap (I could sometimes get them to hear me if they turned it on, and I sat in the bathtub and talked non-stop, which is, I guess, why they called me chatty in the brochure) having a live girl staring at me…it was surreal. 

Polly was alone, she was holding the brochure, and must have gotten ahead of the tour group on purpose. I know she did cuz she told me right then and there.

She was a little out of breath, and looked nervous but excited too. “I got ahead of the tour group. We don’t have much time.” 

The first thing she asked me was my favourite colour. “Every kid has a favourite colour, right? Or did they do that a hundred and fifty six years ago?” I guessed she was good at math too. 

“Pink.” I said. And she heard me. I watched her eyes widen. 

“David.” Polly said excitedly. She told me all about the brochure and how it said I was chatty, and how it spent a lot of time talking about how I died…but that it didn’t really say anything about me. Or my siblings. Or my mom beyond that she was a murderer with mental health concerns. The brochure didn’t put it so nicely, said Polly. But she wanted to know about me. She wanted to help. She said I must be awfully “traumatized” from having to relive a tragedy over and over and over, and not be able to talk about real things like: how my day was, what did I think about chocolate or did I know that the white rhino was extinct?

I hadn’t heard of the white rhino and was abuzz with questions, but the tour group arrived and Polly’s uncle (he was the most annoying tour guide) started scolding her.

“This place is really haunted, you know, Polly! These ghosts could get you.” Polly laughed this warm laugh and the bathroom got even brighter.

“Whatever, Uncle Patrick, you don’t even believe that. Would you please stop asking David about his mom?”

The annoying tour guide smirked at that. “Yeah, sure Polly, I’ll just take that right off my list of questions for “David”. He put my name in those annoying scare quotes that you’ve likely seen people use but don’t actually understand what they mean.

Polly looked at me. “I gotta go,” she said, “but I’ll be back.”

And she did come back, as often as she could. And she brought kids books and she read them to me, and to Anna and Peter. My younger siblings really liked Polly. Each time she came the brightness came with her, and the bathroom seemed like a gentle place of laughter and kindness. 

Sometimes we would just look out the window together. “Don’t you have other things to do, Polly?” 

Polly frowned at that question, and the bathroom dimmed a little. I could tell that there was a darkness in her life that she wasn’t ready to share.

That was a month ago. Polly had stopped coming and I spent more time looking out the window, hoping. My siblings were more melancholy than usual. I stopped talking to the ghost tours. 

But today, on the one thousandth iteration of 57, Polly knocked at the bathroom door.

“David?”

I greeted her excitedly. 

There was something different about Polly. She was iridescent. 

It struck me before she had a chance to speak. She was dead. A ghost.

But she didn’t look sad.