Spirits seem to follow me around. Jagged white tails of steam and soul, trailing behind me like toilet paper streamers.
Is it because my travels take me through strange portals? Or is it because I am a walking portal myself, a vessel for an internal door that invites entry to those who wait for just such a garden gate to pass by?
Reed College, Portland. I was there just last month. My dorm room didn’t have to be haunted, but I’m not surprised that it was.
As I slept in my narrow bed, I could feel a presence. Not a dream presence, I know the difference. So do you. But a soul presence. The way you know when someone enters the room. When you know you’re not alone.
That something – or someone – had strong, capable fingers (strong invisible fingers) that slipped beneath the sheet. I was facing the wall, my back toward the center of the room. I felt the heat of their hands as they held me on both sides of my rib cage. The hands crept toward my breasts, insinuating, insisting, between my arms, which I held tightly to both sides. Not from fear, but from ritual. My normal plankish sheep, sleep position.
The fingers urged themselves forward, curving toward the front of my body. I could feel both palms, large and hot, moving toward my heart.
It took some concerted, dreamy effort to get my constricted throat to work, but I finally managed to scream. A horrible, bleating kind of scream — part gargle, part shriek.
The scream broke the spell. Scared the crap out of my ghost, who nearly managed getting to second base without my consent, like some junior high trickster, trying to get what it could.
I did not open my eyes to check to see if anyone was in the room.
I never do.
I went back to sleep.
It just happened one night.
The ghost never came back.
How about you? Do you welcome night visitors or send them away?.
