Winter chill is not something that leaves us quickly around these parts. Spring time is here, but the bite of winter remains. Just yesterday I was standing outside and the wind began to kick up. I looked around and realized that my work on the grounds had been accomplished for the day. So, I went over to the tool shed located on our cemetery property. I was careful to leave the door to the shed slightly ajar so that if the Undertaker looked out of the window of the funeral home he would see the opened door and surmise that is where I could be found if needed.
Inside the shed, I picked up a broom to give the space a good sweeping. As soon as I started sweeping the wind outside intensified, blowing the door completely opened. The blast of wintery air encircled me. A panicked tapping caused me to turn around, and there, at the window outside looking in on me was a woman. Her dress was black as midnight, and her long, dark curls cascaded down her bone white face. Those black eyes pierced my very core with their iciness. I dropped the broom, rushed outside and found no one there. The headstones, tombs and vaults were all but silent, except of course for the noisy wind that touched everything.
Back inside the shed I propped up the broom against the wall and stood there again, looking at the window. In all of my years of service here I had never seen a ghost and so I began to wonder, if what I did see was really a ghost. Was I living inside of a ghost story right here, right now? I dusted off the top of a stool and took a seat, thinking back to Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, one of my favorite little ghost stories. James wrote The Turn of The Screw in 1898. The story is narrated in retrospect from the manuscript of a governess who is charged to care for the niece and nephew of a wealthy business man who lives in London. The business man lives in London while the governess cares for the children at a country estate, called Bly. In the story ghosts appear, but only to the governess. Her despair is in keeping the children away from the ghosts, as she is convinced the children have had interactions with these specters. What makes James’ novella so interesting to this day is that the reader is never given the satisfaction of knowing whether or not the ghosts existed or if they existed solely in the governesses mind.
A tap on the window made me nearly fall back off the stool. Before I could gain my full composure the Undertaker was standing over me, his hands behind him. He towered over me in his black suite, white shirt and black tie. As always his face showed little emotion, and his eyes scanned the room without turning his head. “I think you may have dropped this outside over there, by the window.” From behind his back he produced a withered copy of The Turn of the Screw. Before I could utter a word the Undertaker had left.
I am still unsure if what I saw was a ghost, but I am sure of this, the book in my hands was certainly not left there by me.
-Gravedigger
