Ghost Story Tuesday

I couldn't get warm.

I was so very cold. My friend gave me her fleece jacket and I huddled at my desk, my teeth chattering. The bathroom mirror showed a pale face and purple lips. Fever, I thought. I took tylenol, then ibuprophen, then waited.

I couldn't get warm.

The young girl ghost in Liam's room kept popping up in my mind. But I was at work; I had so much to do. I couldn't think of her.

By the time Rachel called to see if I wanted to go get some lunch I was miserable. I went to her office and laid my head on her desk. "What is wrong with me?" I asked, exasperated. She looked slightly to my left.

"You have a very bright energy with you," she stated.

"The girl!" I said, probably too loudly.

Rachel and I talked about the young boy in Caleb and Aidan's room, and the girl. I told her that neither of them truly understood that they were dead, although I thought they had been gone more than 100 years. Both of them felt at fault for what happened. Rachel nodded.

"A fire?" she asked.

"Yes."

It had started in the boy's room. The girl was in the room with the baby. She was babysitting; she was not their sister.

"The boy thought it was his fault; the fire...but it wasn't."

I was so cold, my teeth chattered.

"A racoon," I said. "A racoon had come through the open window and knocked the lantern over. It wasn't his fault." I saw it clearly; the animal sauntering in through the window, its shoulder giving the lantern the slightest nudge...

An immense wave of relief washed over me.

I went on to say that the girl had tried to save him, but couldn't...and that the baby had died, too. She couldn't understand what had happened. She felt it was her fault.

"She couldn't have saved him," I said. "It wasn't her fault. Or his. It just...happened."

"They just need to understand that they have to move on," Rachel said.

"Yes."

I took off the fleece jacket.

I was warm.

I had planned on helping them pass on that night...but they were already gone. I try not to think too much about that fire, or the three lives that were lost. Too painful. I don't think about the two sets of parents involved.

I just think about the relief I felt from them that morning, as my friend Rachel and I told their story.

Anyway, my house is blissfully quiet now, and I seem to have come down with the flu. At least now, the fever is real.