– October 1984 –
“No!” he screamed at me, flailing his arms in my face. “No, that will not do.”
“Seriously?” I rolled my eyes and began to raise my voice, but instead I muttered under my breath. As if I didn’t have enough problems with the living, the dead were also critiquing me. “What were you assigned to me for again, Edgar? Umm, Mr. Poe?” I stammered. Honestly, what do you call the ghost of one of the best gothic horror authors? And how could I yell at a historical figure who was trying to help me? But then again, this man was known for being unstable, and I was starting to feel as if he was making me a bit nuts.
My English assignment was due in the morning, I was tired and crabby, and I just so happened to have the spirit of a famous author haunting me. Well, not necessarily haunting—he was supposed to be guiding me—but I felt more like I was in a really bad Candid Camera episode. Or maybe America’s Funniest Home Videos. Whatever was happening couldn’t be real. It couldn’t be true. But it was.
“Edgar will do just fine,” Poe muttered, plopping on my pink plaid comforter and staring at my lavender colored walls, obviously as unhappy with the assignment as I was.
Instead of feeling as if he was helping me in any way, shape, or form, I wondered how I was karmically chosen, or doomed, to babysit a madman.
“I am to assist you with your writing, amongst other things, but I’m not so sure even the genius that I am will be able to help.”
“So you’re saying I’m a lost cause?” I felt crushed and the tone of my voice reflected it.
The spirit slowly sat up on my twin-size bed and gave me a hard look, one eyebrow raised, as if my question jarred a memory. My gray tabby, Silver, jumped up on the bed next to Poe, and he mindlessly began to pet him, still lost in thought.
“Why you?” I lashed out. “Honestly, I think I need Einstein. I’m almost failing math and yet I’m getting As in English. Is it possible to do a trade like they do in sports?”
Frustrated and emotionally depleted, I slammed my pencil down on my Trapper Keeper, pushed my chair away from my whitewashed desk, and rushed to the bathroom where I began to cry.
“If it makes you feel any better, I was expelled from the University because of my failure to do math. That and my father stopped paying my tuition and I became a pauper.”
“No, no, that doesn’t make me feel better,” I moaned, sniffling. Nobody will believe this. I will for sure get thrown into a psychiatric ward, I thought.
“Kristy!” I heard my mom calling from the bottom of the stairwell. “Kristy, are you okay?”
I quickly blew my nose and cleared my throat before opening the bathroom door. “Yeah, Mom, just frustrated with homework,” I replied, trying to sound normal.
My mom had lost her eyesight the year before, when I was about twelve years old. Although she couldn’t see more than dark shadows, her other senses, including her psychic sense, were quite keen. A slight lift in my voice would set them off that I was crying, and I didn’t want to deal with explaining anything to her. She had her own issues, most of them mourning her mom, dad, and brothers who had all passed away within several years of one another, leaving her feeling orphaned. Then her various ailments ultimately led her sight to fade completely away. I couldn’t blame her, really. I tried to stay out of her hair as best as I could, even being a hormonal, thirteen-year-old Scorpio with a short temper, especially when it came to critical spirits.
“Okay,” she replied, hesitantly.
I could hear her taking a puff of her cigarette, something that frightened me to no end. Without her sight, she was known to light the wrong end of the cigarette, let the ashes grow too long where they would fall on the floor, or just set down the cigarette in odd places and forget about it. I was sure that one day the house would just burst into flames, and it scared me.
“Dinner will be ready in about a half an hour.”
Cube steak again more than likely. I sighed. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
I felt trapped. If I went into my bedroom I had to deal with an erratic and ornery spirit. Or I could go downstairs and deal with constant questions about my truly humdrum life, albeit minus specters, from my mom who was just bored and looking for some excitement, even if it came from me.
I screamed in frustration and slammed my fists on the canary yellow sink, which hurt. I cried, but this time the tears were because I bruised my hands on the porcelain. Maybe, just maybe, I could break my hand, or maybe just a finger, and not be able to write at all. That would solve the Poe problem. I wouldn’t be able to write and therefore he would have to go haunt someone else. I laughed at the crazy thought and instead took a washcloth off the mirrored shelf, wet it with warm water, and washed my tear-streaked face. Taking a deep breath, I walked out of the bathroom and down the steps to dinner. Poe would just have to wait.
Dinner was the same routine—Dad sat in his chair, television blasting, eating, while Mom and I sat at the dining room table and complained about Dad sitting in his chair, eating, with the television blasting. If ever there was a loop in time, I felt as if I were caught in it.
An hour or so later, I quietly walked back into my room and looked around to see if there might be a spirit or two hanging around. But to my delight, it looked to be in the clear.
I plopped on my bed and stared at the white ceiling. The difficulty of being a teenager, and then being a teenager who could see into the afterlife, was something of a curse most of the time.
I was only three years old when a family member on the other side came through with a prediction of death, a prediction that would come true. Apparently a door was left open afterward, because soon after I became inundated with what my family called imaginary friends, yet not all of them were friendly. No, I wasn’t just talking about the spirit of the famous horror writer; it was even more dark and dreary than that, and something Edgar Allan Poe would write about, if alive.
I was actually petrified of my room and my house. It was as if a dark shadow loomed about and as soon as I walked through the door I felt as if I was being pulled into an abyss of negativity. Everybody felt it when they entered, even though the home looked like a typical house from the outside. And even though I begged my parents to move, my dad was bound and determined that he wouldn’t be driven out of his house by what he thought was pure paranoia. My room wasn’t any haven either. Instead, it felt like a breeding ground for ghosts, where there was a constant elevator from the other side—and that side wasn’t necessarily a pleasant place.
I heard a knock on the front door and then heard someone climbing the thirteen steps to the second floor.
“Boo!” my best friend Deanna said as she came in.
“Funny.”
Even though Deanna was my best friend for many years and had heard of each and every crush, had commiserated with me through every fight that I had with my mom, and had even vacationed with me, she didn’t know the full extent of my psychic abilities. If she did, she would have probably thought her entrance was even funnier than it was.
“What ya working on?” She peeked over at my homework.
“English. It’s a poetry assignment and I’m supposed to profess my undying love in it.” I pretended to gag. “I have never really been in love, so how realistic can this get?”
“Easy peasy,” Deanna laughed and pointed at one of the many posters that graced my walls. “Pretend it’s for Jon over there.”
Poe stood leaning against my very loud flowered wallpapered metal closet looking skeptically at my best friend. “With me, poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion,” I heard him say telepathically.
I thought for a second. “Not a bad idea,” I said, looking at Bon Jovi’s picture with his long, frizzy, blond-highlighted hair blowing in the wind. “Okay, I’m feeling like I have a muse, Dee. Thanks! I’ll give you a call later.”
“Glad I could help!” Deanna smiled, lightly brushed her shoulder as if to congratulate herself, and bounced down the steps. “Bye, Mr. and Mrs. Schiller. See you tomorrow.”
I heard the door close, grabbed my pencil that had a dancing Snoopy on it, and began to feel the inspiration of love pour out on the notepaper. Poe stood silently in the corner of my room, his left brow furled and exasperated. We obviously had a lot to learn from one another.
Within the matter of an hour, my assignment was complete and I felt proud and content. Poe looked over my shoulder at the final piece and just muttered, “Indescribable,” which I took as acceptance.
Love Scattered
Scattered on the ground your love is lost there.
I walk picking them up, but the winds do blow.
My hands are emptied feeling alone and bare.
In a dark garden, the sun shines without care.
Lost on a sorrowful road near a meadow.
Scattered on the ground your love is lost there.
Among the green leaves and flowers so faire,
A gloomy garden blooms in bright yellow.
My hands are emptied feeling alone and bare.
Without notice the weather turns dark around the lair.
The winds turn violent and bough the willow.
Scattered on the ground your love is lost there.
Afraid and lonely, the road leads to nowhere.
The lightning and thunder set the sky aglow.
My hands are emptied feeling alone and bare,
unknown to what will happen after this affair.
Looking down the new road shines a rainbow.
Scattered on the ground your love is lost there.
My hands are emptied feeling alone and bare.
“Love lost,” he said in more of a statement than a question. “You know, Kristy, you remind me of someone from my past … ” He bit his lip and closed his eyes, as if replaying scenes from a faraway time.
Grabbing some pink nail polish from my desk drawer, I began to give myself a manicure. “Who would that be?”
“Her name was Sara,” Poe began, but before he could go any further, I gasped and spilled my nail polish on my desk. As I ran to get some towels from the bathroom, I wondered if his assignment to me might actually have a method to the madness, or maybe just more madness to the madness.
I wiped up the nail polish and cussed under my breath at the smear on my thumbnail, frustrated that I would have to begin all over again.
“Edgar, did you say Sara? Did you know that I always, from the very beginning of time, believed my name to be Sara and not Kristy?”
Poe only nodded.
Since I was two years old, I would tell my family over and over again that my name wasn’t Kristy but Sara. They never understood, nor did I, but I knew deep in my soul that the current time and place was not my true time and place.
“Am I … her?” My eyes grew wide as I awaited his answer.
Poe let out a thoughtful sigh and shook his head. “I’m not sure. Maybe. Probably not though.”
Poe looked as if he was about to add something, but he stopped himself.
“I don’t think I believe in reincarnation anyway,” I pondered.
“You don’t think you believe in reincarnation, Kristy, or were you told that there was no such thing as reincarnation?”
He had a point. I was enrolled in a Lutheran school, and we were taught that ghosts, spirits, psychics, mediums, and reincarnation were of the devil. Well, I didn’t think I was of the devil, although my parents might have disagreed every so often. So why would reincarnation be any different?
I had a lot to think about and to research.
Two days later, before classes started, I went to the school library. My English teacher, Mrs. Bird, was sitting at the checkout desk grading what looked like our poetry papers.
“Kristy, can I help you?” she asked.
She sounded aggravated, but I had gotten up early for a reason. Normally, I would’ve just told her never mind but my curiosity was bubbling.
“Yes, Mrs. Bird, are there any books on Edgar Allan Poe here that I can borrow? Not books he wrote, but on his life?”
She gave me a crooked look, got up, walked to the biography section, pulled out two books, and handed them to me.
“I just read your poem, Kristy, and I’m wondering where you got it from.”
“I wrote it, Mrs. Bird,” I said, confused.
“Hmm, it’s good. I thought perhaps you copied it from somewhere.”
I was appalled. My cheeks began to turn red in both anger and embarrassment. “No, Mrs. Bird, I wrote it. My mom and dad can attest to that.”
“I may have to call them. I will see you in class, Kristy.”
She may have to call them? How could she even think that I copied it? I had never gotten in trouble before and I was getting in trouble for doing an assignment?!
Mrs. Bird did in fact call and my mom informed her that I spent several hours writing the poem. Even Deanna told her that I was working on it when she came over, but I don’t think she believed Dee, my mom, or me. It was going to be a long year.
After I got home from school and complained to my mom about how unfair I thought I was being treated, I was able to sit down and read more about my mysterious guide, with the hopes of understanding why he was even assigned to me in the first place.