shadows and dust

Antique stores are depressing. Sure, there’s the odd thing here and there that contains a kind of beauty, or at least it holds a memory, a history, but most of the contents of an antique store are nothing but unwanted discards from people who’ve moved on —people who grew tired of the clutter, or survivors trying to make a buck off their dead relative’s junk. I look at these things and I don’t see them happily placed in someone’s home, I see them in a land fill, half-covered with steaming debris under the occasional shade of an overpassing seagull. They’re also depressing because the junk, sorry, the “treasure,” is exiled from the place where the spirit of the owner may still remain. How’s a lonely ghost to dance when her cherished Victrola is priced ready to sell at Uncle Joe’s Antique Emporium? Is she ripped apart, with some of her spirit in the home and a piece of her clinging to the record player? Back in the days of radio broadcasts, disc jockeys would interrupt their nearly constant Halloween rotation of “Witchy Woman,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Monster Mash,” and “Black Magic Woman” with an occasional confab staring a spooky celebrity or they would conjure up some ghoulish banter between a couple of on-air personalities. But this Halloween, Rock 106 pauses its worn-out playlist to feature an interview with a certified exorcist from the Church of England. Being your average student, I have nothing better to do than spend an hour or so listening to the exorcist speak of rites, rituals, and strange occurrences in the spirit realm. While I’m listening, my thoughts turn to a grainy photograph that has been circulating around campus of a supposed ghost caught in the reflection of a mirror located in the mansion that serves as the centerpiece of our campus. So, when the interview is over, I call the radio station, identify myself as a reporter from the campus newspaper, and ask for the exorcist’s contact information. They give it to me. One can do such things in the days of radio. Her voice echoes on the other end of the line. I imagine her standing in the middle of a gothic corridor that stretches dark and dank into oblivion. I ask her if she thinks our mansion is haunted. She says that she is certain of it and asks if the spirits are disturbed or are causing any trouble. I tell her no; they seem to be docile. She says that we should leave them be then, that they’re just reliving their lives and enjoying themselves. Before hanging up, she tells me that she has just received a recording of an angelic choir captured by accident in a church near the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury and asks if I’d like to come to her home to hear it. I decline. Being the photographer for the campus newspaper, I feel it is my duty to first scientifically determine if the photograph of the ghost is real or just some sort of mass onset of group pareidolia. So, I gather some willing accomplices and enter the mansion through secretive means in the middle of the night. We find the mirror in a room upstairs and I search for patterns on the wall that might be mistaken for a ghost by minds eager to put human form to random stains or shadows. I find none. But when I compare the scene to the picture that I’ve brought along with me for reference, I find the mirror is missing something—a mantle clock. We search the mansion and find that it’s been moved to a downstairs fireplace. We set up the corrected scene. The mirror is in its proper position, mantle clock is in place, everything is in order. I snap several shots and head for the darkroom. As the image slowly appears, I believe I see that same ghostly image that is in the original photograph. I fix and wash my picture and hang it up. And there it is; a transparent formal dress from the early 19th century. No face, no head or arms, just the dress. I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what the exorcist would think. But I decide that the most plausible explanation is that objects like mirrors, fireplaces, and mantle clocks can record a kind of energy that produce faint images when exposed to film processes. That’s my science and I’m sticking to it. Eddie is unsure why the little shack he’s standing in causes him to feel uneasy. But he has an idea that he feels nauseous due to the fact that he can’t account for recent gaps in time and place and now he stands in a room from the distant past that seems to float in a heavy bright fog. He feels the presence of people who have once stood where he is standing, who have sat in that chair and cooked in that fireplace. He looks around the tiny room and can almost make out their faces as they stare blankly at him as if from a great distance. A child by the fire eating a potato fades in and fades out.