Hauntings: The Ghost in You Too

By Ellee Achten

It’s important to me. It is. That’s why I’m telling you about it now. Just listen. I didn’t know I was falling until I had already hit the ground. I didn’t know why I had the sensation of feeling yanked up even as the porch railing and then the siding and then the window below went rushing above me until I felt that crack reverberate through my whole body. But, before that, my eyes said going down while that soft core in my gut said going up. And maybe both sensations were true. Maybe I was feeling that separation; my soul knew it was over and began leaving my body. I don’t know. All I know is I need you to get a message to my momma, even though I don’t know you and you don’t know me and you certainly don’t know my momma. But, like I said, it’s important to me. I can’t move on until you do. 

I saw you in the window the other day, your hands cupped around your eyes as you peered in. I saw you stand in the tiny square of green I call the front lawn and write down the phone number on the realtor’s sign, your car idling nearby with the baby seat in the back. I know that look you had in your eyes: you want my place. I get it, I felt the same way when I saw it too. It’s a sweet little house that gave me a sweet little home, one I sorely needed when I left Rick. I’m the one who painted it pale pink as an homage to all things girl since Rick was the reason I lost mine before she could enter this world. But you don’t need to know that. All you need to know is that I’m still here and I can’t leave until someone gets a message to my momma.

Oh, and you aren’t the first face pressed against the darkened windows since the house went up for sale. You’re the seventh, I think? But I know you’re the one, I know you’ll be back because I know your face: broken, desperate, and yet full of dreaming. It’s all about how long someone stands at a window and looks in. You looked for a long time. I know you’re planning that space as if you were mapping out your own heart. And, I’ll admit, I was waiting for you.

So please just tell my momma I’m sorry, that I didn’t mean to jump, that the text I sent had nothing to do with it, that I was sitting on the roofline to feel my feet dangle and nothing more, that I just wanted a moment to believe in freedom but not dive after it, that I was looking out on the horizon and watching a handful of turkey vultures circle some unseen prey and thinking about what’s coming next for me. Tell her I was thinking about death, but not like this. This was a mistake, a slip, and when I saw her going through my things, sorting and mourning over my sweatshirt from high school and the old stuffed elephant I still had from my childhood, I tried to comfort her. Tell her that I heard her say “I love you darling,” and that I tried to say it back. Tell her I was that sensation she must’ve felt around her shoulders that made her drop my nightstand lamp and cut her hand and go running from the house, tell her I was trying to comfort her. Tell my momma I’m not trying to haunt her still. I know I did that enough when I was still alive. For some reason, I feel sure you understand what I mean. I’ve seen your eyes looking in this house. I’ve seen the ghost in you, too.

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Ellee Achten is a freelance writer, editor, and photographer living in Southeast Ohio. She is a graduate from the New York Institute of Photography, and holds a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism and a master’s degree in creative nonfiction from Ohio University. She has been a regular contributor to Rewire.News, and has worked as the assistant editor at the New Ohio Review literary journal, and assistant editor for Proximity Magazine’s BORDERS and WILDERNESS issues. Exploring issues of home, health, and connection, her written work has appeared in Brevity, Proximity, Entropy, Alimentum, Ohio Today, and elsewhere. She writes news and features, cultural criticism, book reviews, essays, poetry, and fiction, and is currently working on a collection of essays about the connection of the body and mind during trauma as well as a memoir chronicling her 24+ childhood homes across the country.