She buys a Cape Cod about a mile from town\u2014on the small side, but it\u2019s what she can afford.\u00a0 Her realtor notes the curb appeal, proximity to the train line.\u00a0 A cleaning crew has left the place smelling like ginger and bleach.<\/p>\n
The ghost is angry about unrequited love or premature death; the house has been empty so long that even the ghost is short on details.\u00a0 The woman lives alone.\u00a0 The ghost pushes a few things around the kitchen, sticks a knife into an apple, spells \u201cEXEUNT\u201d with the magnetic poetry on the fridge.\u00a0 Later, it graduates to stacking sofa cushions Ziggurat-style in the living room then lets a feral cat through the screen door.<\/p>\n
The possession occurs accidentally.\u00a0 The woman starts with a wine cooler\u2014bad day at the office\u2014but graduates to appletinis.\u00a0 Around a corner, she and the ghost collide.\u00a0 For the woman, it\u2019s like being trapped in an aquarium.\u00a0 For the ghost, it\u2019s like becoming a plastic bag that must hold a small part of the ocean from all its other parts.<\/p>\n
Neither welcomes the arrangement.\u00a0 A few breakable items get broken.\u00a0 The ghost, so long without words, cannot express the problem save through increasingly manic gestures.\u00a0 A UPS driver gets slapped around the face and torso.\u00a0 A police officer investigates, then disappears, then phones from Atlantic City four days later with no recollection of events.<\/p>\n
The ghost draws a bath.\u00a0 Something, it reasons, must rend the woman\u2019s will from its will\u2014reunite the woman\u2019s body and soul.\u00a0 Indeed, somewhere in the back of its vapory mind, the ghost wonders if freeing the woman might somehow free it, as well.<\/p>\n
But the woman drowns.\u00a0 The ghost finds itself stuck in the same house, only now with a corpse in the tub.\u00a0 Weeks pass before the neighbors find the body\u2014the smell, etc.\u00a0 A distant relative, taking possession of the house without seeing it, contacts the appropriate people via the internet: movers, cleaners, realtors.<\/p>\n
House empty, the ghost waits again.\u00a0 Sometimes in the corner of its invisible eye, it catches a ruffle of air that only ghosts can detect, a shadow\u2019s shadow.\u00a0 It has seen this shadow before.\u00a0 But when it calls out in a voice no louder than breath, no reply comes, and when it tries to see more clearly, the only vision it is permitted is a surge of greater emptiness.\u00a0 Somewhere behind it\u2014not behind it but in another world\u2014a world filled with time\u2014time is filled with the things the ghost wants to know.\u00a0 But that world seems so far away it could never have been real.\u00a0 Without that dream world, the ghost decides, this world would be almost bearable.\u00a0 It lies down to rest, in a heating duct or behind the toilet tank, not wholly saddened when it can feel itself starting to forget.<\/p>\n
She buys a Cape Cod about a mile from town\u2014on the small side, but it\u2019s what she can afford.\u00a0 Her realtor notes the curb appeal, proximity to the train line.\u00a0 A cleaning crew has left the place smelling like ginger and bleach. The ghost is angry about unrequited love or premature death; the house has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-wr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10484,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions\/10484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}