267. Ghost story (2)

I laugh. We've had this house for over two decades and he regularly mentions the ghost.

I glance towards the door. It has stopped moving and therefore creaking. I get up to have a look. 

'Well! There's your explanation ... The outside door is open here and there's a draft down the passage as usual. I keep telling you to close this door.'

I am annoyed because he has started leaving this door open lately. Is it to facilitate the ghost's movements?

'There. Rational explanation.' I say firmly to close the matter.

He pulls a face, takes a sip of his cold beer and mutters something.

'Maybe. But I did see it this morning.'

'What? You saw what?' I am hoping I do not sound panicky.

As I am uttering these words I am wondering what on earth my husband is going to tell me. I grab the bottle of beer and check the label. Some of these Belgian beers can have an astonishingly high alcohol content. I take my eyes off the bottle and look at my husband. He seems refreshed, rested and content. No crazy glare in his look. His eyes are still blue and not flashing red or anything. I pour myself some more wine.

'I saw it. ... The ghost.' He says again.

I cannot tell you how I felt but he must have thought me capable of hearing the rest.

'The ghost. I was in the bathroom this morning.' (My husband gets up ridiculously early) 'And I saw this dark shadow, like a human shaped shadow, coming out of our son's bedroom and crossing over the landing.'

'What? Like ... towards our bedroom?'

'Yes. It moved very fast. Just a shadow but I could see it was human. It actually turned towards me as it passed the bathroom door.'

My husband is looking at me, cool as a cucumber. So I say, trying to act just as cool.

'Man or woman?'

Very seriously my husband goes on.

'Impossible to tell. You can't see the features.'

He munches on his food and drinks his beer. Again I must have looked as if I was able to take in some more information.

'Well, you know there's a ghost in the house ...' 

Do I? I need to rummage around in this blog which seems to now have a new purpose. If I am not careful and before I know it I will be writing a ghost appearances log book.

Unfazed, he carries on on the subject.

'Remember? When we fist saw this house and had a kind of love at first sight experience? The house had been empty for years ... kind of abandoned ? Yet it did not feel abandoned? See what I mean? Do you remember?'

Did I mention this in the posts about our house hunting? And then, sounding so calm and rational, as if this was a perfectly normal conversation for a tête-à-tête, he concluded.

'It's just part of the house. That's all.'

I took a bit long sip of wine. Then I had a flash memory of two young kids arguing up on the top floor, one saying to the other 'You're just so stupid. Ghosts don't exist. You're just a silly baby.' I made a mental note to subtly interrogate these children of mine on the topic asap.

The conversation then quite naturally moved on to Muddy-Boots and her heavy summer schedule. The fact that we moved on to a normal topic after this discussion was unsettling. Ghosts in houses were a perfectly normal occurrence. A little like finding an enormous spider in your house is a sign of a healthy house ...

Images of Simone and Julien coming to check on me to see what I was doing with their house (do ghosts understand things like deeds and mortgages?) haunted me right up to bedtime. So I made them a solemn promise to do better and to start clearing up the landing off all the books. I would even hoover. I'd do it in the morning.

My husband went to bed. I sat up and waited for Baby. When she came in at the agreed time we chatted for a while. She pointed out to me that our dog was acting very strangely. He was sitting in the corner of his bed, staring at the empty space in front of him. 

AS IF SOMEONE WAS SITTING NEXT TO HIM AND HE DID NOT WANT TO DISTURB THEM.