GHOSTS OF THE PAST

I am dreaming in the deep dark abyss, when suddenly I am wrenched awake by, “Super Massive Black Hole,” peeling from my cellphone. The sickly green glow from the digital clock beside the bed tells me it is 12:35AM.…goosebumps burst upon my skin; only bad news arrives in the middle of the night.

“Hello,” I answer, groggy with sleep.

“Liz, it’s me, Darren.”

My brother Darren is two years younger than me, and I haven’t heard from him in months, he’s a foreman for some big building contracts up in Auckland.

I wipe the sleep from my eyes, sit up and switch on the lamp.

“Liz, it’s about mum. She passed away…”

“What the hell Darren? What happened? I thought she was getting better. I only spoke to her two days ago, I don’t understand…”

Confusion and despair, wrap itself around me like a blanket, tears beginning to gather; threatening to consume me.

“She was getting better, which is why they sent her home from the hospital. But she woke up this morning, finding it hard to breathe…I should have rung you then, but I thought it was just the tail end of Covid,” his voice sounds strangled. “She had pneumonia, it went undetected. We need you to come home.”

“Of course, I will. I’ll make my way in a few hours.”

“Okay, by the time you get here, she’ll be home. I’ve asked that she be brought here after the funeral home has done their thing…oh God this is so hard…” a sob reaches down the phone.

“Is Billy there with you?” I ask.

Billy, our older brother, who’d lived with mum since dad passed away last year from a heart aneurism.

“He’s at the funeral home, with Kat…they didn’t want to leave mum alone, so they let them stay there with her. They’ve been especially accommodating.”

Kat is Billy’s girlfriend; she and mum were very close.

After hanging up the phone, I pack a small suitcase, with a few days’ worth of clothing and necessities. I’ve a huge drive ahead of me, at least thirteen hours from Wellington to the Bay of Islands, where my siblings and I grew up. It’s a little place called Russell, population 2,000, but it splurges to 40,000 plus when the tourists and holiday owners return, for the summer. Our family homestead is at Tapeka Beach, just over a small but steep hill from the main township, it’s been in the family for over two hundred years, gifted down through the generations.

If you take a hard left before you go down the winding road to Tapeka Beach, you will find yourself at Flagstaff. This is where one of my ancestors, Hōne Heke axed down the English flag three times, in the 1800’s, in protest to colonisation of our country. Russell was actually the birthplace of parliament, before it was moved to our capital city, Wellington. There is so much history there. My family members from generations past, are buried at the local historical cemetery. In fact, the first white woman to be born on New Zealand soil is also family and buried there. The church still holds the bullet holes during a battle between the colonists and the Māori.

In a state of shock, I pack snacks and fruit for the journey, and fill my thermos with hot coffee. I get in the car and after driving for around four hours, I take an hour break in Taupo, parked along the beach front, throwing my crusts out the window for the seagulls; their squawking and fighting is chaotic and loud, but it makes me smile momentarily. The mid-morning sun is heating up the day. There are children laughing in the park, it makes me think of my family.

I have two brothers and I am the middle child. I had a younger sister, Rose, but she passed away when she was two years old, and I was seven. She’d drowned in our swimming pool. It was nobody’s fault, even though each of us blamed ourselves for not being more careful…how she’d managed to get out the ranch slider door, when she was too small to reach the latch, is still a mystery. Billy found her in the pool when he got up to get ready for his rugby game – that cold wet winter Saturday morning. If I listen too intently to the echoes of the past, I can still hear mum screaming out for dad, as she administered CPR. The emergency services arrived, as the dawn broke in a mash of menacing magenta, pale golds, and bloody reds.

I wipe away stray tears. I need to keep driving, so I block it all out, again – I am used to doing that, because it hurts too much to think of Rose. I tune into the radio, upping the volume, and Pink Floyd is singing about bricks in the wall. Our family house is not small, but initially it was a stand-alone shack, that housed my dad and his six siblings and both parents, and their parents before that. One by one they left the area for work in other parts of the country, some venturing overseas. Only dad was left to take care of my grandparents, who eventually died in their old ages. During which time, he met mum, they did up the house and then us kids were born.

I pull into Ngāruawāhia gas station to fill the car, and to refill my thermos with extra hot and strong coffee for the journey ahead. I am knackered, I’ve been on the road now for hours, it seems like days, and I can’t get there fast enough. My mind drifts to dad, he would not have been able to handle this grief, so I am thankful of the fact he passed away before mum – he will greet her, they will be together again, with Rose, my baby sister. I inhale in a deep breath and count to ten, slowly the memories and the tears subside.

Then mum bursts into my mind as I get closer to Auckland. I am travelling along the Bombay hills, when the memory of the day I left the family home for good, implodes inside my head. It was four years ago…mum was crying as I got into my car with my luggage, dad standing stoic, watching it all play out…but they never knew why I really left, it wasn’t to pursue higher education at university, no, that was just the excuse I used. They never would have believed me anyway, even if I told them the truth.

Through the windows of my SUV, I pass Auckland in a blur, then over the Harbour Bridge and into the North Shore. It begins to rain and hail. My wipers can’t keep up with the deluge, so I pull into Orewa, for a bite to eat, to wait out the downpour. I find a little café, and order a sandwich and a mochaccino, extra strength, double shot, with two heaped sugars. I finish up and head for the car.

The rest of the journey is awash with wet green grass, wildflowers along the road, making the hills light up in a magnificent array of colours; it is breath-taking. The landscape here is vastly different than it is in Wellington, the climate sub-tropical, the trees native and huge, been around for thousands of years. Up north, the ancient and magnificent, Kauri tree, Tāne Mahuta has been standing sentient for thousands of years – I will never forget the times we would go as a family to visit Tāne Mahuta, the God of the birds and forests, paying homage to him for our survival, for our life.

When finally, I pull up to the homestead, it is dark and there are cars littering the road, the driveway full and children running around, laughing as if nothing dreadful has occurred – the joys of childhood innocence. I park down the road, sitting there looking at the house, letting my mind wander to the family home with its ghosts. Here I am again after all these years of avoiding it, and now not ready to face it. The grief rips a hole in me, gut punched by the realisation, mum is in there, but she won’t be baking cakes and biscuits, nor will she be cooking up a storm for the family. Billy is at the kitchen window; he is talking to Kat.

My phone rings, bursting through the silence.

“Liz, where are you? You should be here already. Is everything okay?”

“Darren, I’m outside in the car, I just need a minute, okay?”

“Sure, I’m glad you are here, no rush, take your time.”

And I do…I am trying not to think about the last time I was here, but that doesn’t stop the thoughts muddled in my mind, sending cold shivers down my spine. The car is becoming increasingly cold, but it helps to numb the pain and grief. If I stay here, then it hasn’t happened, she is still alive. Suddenly I think of dad’s funeral, the one I had to miss because of Covid restrictions. I should have been here for mum, but we weren’t allowed to travel to other districts, let alone across the country – we had to watch it all from Zoom.

This house, it isn’t a normal house. Or is it I that is not normal? It seems to suffer with burden, grasping hold of the pains, the harsh memories from those who have ever lived here. Growing up, the locals would cross the street when they passed by our home. I never understood why. It wasn’t until I went to primary school that I discovered the rumours – people thought our house was haunted, they said that it was built on cursed land! I didn’t pay them any attention; until I saw it for myself.

The first time, I was five years old. Mum was tucking me into bed when I saw a man walk by the room, wearing a traditional Māori Piupiu, grass skirt, and wielding a Taiaha. I screamed and mum ran out of the room when I told her what I saw, but there was no one there. I recognised the Taiaha, it’s the same one attached to the wall in the living room – it’s been in the family for hundreds of years.

The second time it happened, I was in the bath, mum was getting my towels from the linen cupboard, when a woman walked into the bathroom, right through the wall. My screams sent mum running in. I told her what I saw, and she shook her head. She told me to never talk about the oddities I was seeing, so I stopped telling her about them. The ghosts of the past. I saw many other frightening things while I lived there, but the worst was the one that had me packing my bags the next day, leaving them behind for good…the ghosts and my fear.

This is what happened…something woke me, I turned my head and lying on my chest was a creature, surrounded within a mass of black, with indistinguishable features. It was breathing into my mouth, its claws scratching through the blankets as it held me down. Pinned and trapped, I couldn’t move, nor could I speak or scream. It was licking my face, it smelt of rotten meat and decay. My tears came full on, but still, I couldn’t move. When eventually it let me go, it flew through the ceiling, leaving me there a sobbing mess. I felt violated, used. I got out of bed, and scrubbed my face in the bathroom sink, until I could no longer handle the pain, trying in vain to erase what had just happened. I collapsed to the floor, with my hand in my mouth, stifling a horrendous scream of pure terror. The next day I left for Wellington – the further away from the house the better.

A knock at the car window snaps me back, from a dark place of rotten memories. Billy is standing there with a hot coffee and a cigarette in his hands. I let him in.

“How are you holding up sis? You had a big drive,” he hands me the coffee and cigarette, he lights it for me, I drag it in until my lungs have had their fill, I exhale it like a dragon.

“You know I quit two years ago, but you always know what I need,” I sip my coffee, it’s heaven to me, since my thermos is empty. “I had a few stops on the way…I’m not ready to go inside yet…,” the cigarette trembles in between my fingers.

“You’ve been sitting here for an hour, the kids have been keeping an eye on you,” I glance them outside the window, though it is dark, I can see them from the flood lights on the side of the house, casting them in a warm yellow glow.

We walk together to the house. As we approach the deck to the ranch slider doors, I can see through the window, the casket’s lid is up against the wall. This rips apart my heart, and I crumple to my knees. Billy grabs me before I hit the deck and wraps me in his arms.

“It’ll be okay sis; we are here for you. Come on, we’ve ALL been waiting.”

There is utter silence as we enter the house. The fire is burning, warming it – the change is instantaneous; I didn’t realise how cold and numb I am until I feel the heat from the fire. My eyes scan the room. Everyone is standing, except for Darren who is holding mum’s hand inside the coffin. My eyes stray to her briefly, but I am not prepared to see her yet. My Aunty Sandy welcomes me with a hongi – the kiss of breath the way Māori do when welcoming someone; very casual and informal, thankfully – I don’t think I could have handled the traditional Māori ritual of pōwhiri, especially when the wailing begins from the women. I see my Aunties, my cousins, and other people I do not recognise. In the corners of the room, I see my people, the ones who have passed, they stand behind my family members, hover above mum; their faces pale, their shapes translucent, shimmering in the light from the fire. I wonder if anyone else has noticed the ghosts in the room?

It is time to see her, so I gather myself, suck in my emotions. I put my bag on the mattresses littering the living room floor. I walk gently over sleeping babies, over to the coffin. I see her face and once again, my legs buckle beneath me. I wail like a Banshee; I can’t stop the pain releasing itself from deep within my soul. She is beautiful, even in death. It is her, but it isn’t. I am flooded with childhood images. Her out in the garden, pulling weeds, planting vegetables, pushing me on the swing. Dad turning over the soil, readying the ground for planting. As my cries soften slightly, the vision dissipates. Gently, I touch her face, it gives me a fright, I wasn’t expecting her to be so cold, when she was once so warm. She could be sleeping; her eyes and mouth are closed, but no breath of life comes from her. My sodden tears spill onto her as I kiss her cheek – if only my kisses were powerful enough to break the spell of death!

People are scuffling about, preparing for sleep, as I move quietly towards my old bedroom. It isn’t pink and purple anymore, but a nice eggshell yellow. The windows have blinds, not the old drab curtains. My posters are gone from the walls, there is nothing here to remind me of the past. I close the blinds and plonk down on the bed. I swallow a sleeping pill, dry; I wouldn’t be able to sleep here without them.

A sound in the bedroom, tears me awake. Something feels off. The room is a hazy red darkness. Suddenly I hear something, a breath? Someone moving around in the room? Then a loud bang above me, has me sitting up fast! There upon the ceiling, looking down at me with vicious blood red eyes, is the creature from my past. A red glow emanates from its tangled mass. It’s approaching me, and the putrid stench of it twists my stomach inside out. It is on the bed, creeping closer…when suddenly something miraculous happens!

The man from my childhood, the tribesman with the Taiaha, he wields it towards the creature, and it slowly backs off, it hesitates, not backing off completely. It comes at me again, only briefly put off by the tribesman. It’s on top of me, crawling up the bed, when I witness more tribesmen emerge from deep within the darkness, each holding Māori weapons in their hands, kicking back their feet, chanting words I do not understand. The creature’s claws are scratching up my legs, I want to scream but my voice is empty. In a flurry so quick I can’t make sense of; they are able to drag the creature back into the darkness with them. Then I rush into the living room, quivering beneath my blanket.

I go and sit next to mum, taking a gentle hold of her hand. We’ve a huge couple of days heading our way, I will need my strength to get through it. But I swear, as I drift off to sleep, I can feel her hand, warm in mine. It dawns on me that something inside me has settled, now the creature has been banished from this world for good, a calm of relief releases that heavy burden. The curse has finally been lifted.

Copyright © Gibson, Del 2022