(Photo by Nick Wright on Unsplash)
“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties
And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!”
The Cornish or West Country Litany
TICK TOCK, TICK TOCK. The house was eerily quiet except for the loudness of the clock in the spartan spare room where I lay, rigid and uneasy. I was alone in the house except for my aged, ailing and bedridden grandmother down the hall. If I called out, she was too deaf to hear me, even if she were still awake, which I doubted.
Normally, my uncle lived there with her but he was away and asked me to keep her company for the evening then spend the night. I had no problem with that because I loved and admired my grandmother who, though fragile at this stage in her life, had been strong enough to come to America alone at the age of sixteen. Besides, I would have no heavy responsibilities since her physical needs were taken care of by a woman who came in daily and left after serving her dinner.
The dark, ebony furniture in the room was gloomy and its shadows played tricks on the white walls and on my mind. Though I sometimes complained of the annoying noises of my five brothers and sisters at home, that night I longed for their chatter.
I slid my head under the covers so I wouldn’t see my grandfather’s ghost. There hadn’t been any reported sightings and I wasn’t sure I believed in ghosts, but I wasn’t willing to chance seeing Pop-Pop materialize, though I had loved the gruff, old tugboat captain.
I don’t remember my exact age at the time, except that I was older than ten (the age I was when my grandfather died) and younger than seventeen (when I finished high school). In retrospect, I’m surprised a pre-teen or teen me was so afraid that night.
Part of it was fear of the dark, not the darkness per se but what the dark might reveal. It’s something I haven’t totally outgrown, since I sometimes prefer to keep my eyes closed or to cover my face while trying to sleep in a pitch-black room. Studies say I’m not the only adult uncomfortable that way.
The seemingly irrational fear of Pop-Pop’s possible ghost suggests I was on the younger end of that ten-to-seventeen age spectrum, when his death was a more recent memory. He was the first person close to me who died and his was the first dead body I’d seen. Combined with the fact that my grandmother was in her nineties and very ill, I’m guessing fear of death was in the mix of my emotions.
It was also fear of the unfamiliar. I knew the house in daylight. I had many happy memories of both my grandparents presiding over large family gatherings with their five sons, their wives, ten grandchildren and grandma’s niece in a living room filled with family photos and a dining room filled with delicious aromas and sun-filled windows lined with African violet plants. But the night gave slippery edges to things and unhinged me.