The First Ghost Named George

Foreword: This story is part of a collection, tentatively called “Ghost Whisperer: Stories from a Nordic Witch Stranded in the South.” They were mainly written during my first year in the Appalachian Mountains, having moved from Sweden, living at the end of a road, with no green card to allow me to work and my husband, Michael, working at the Monroe Institute. Being a stranger in a strange land those days, ghosts started to talk to me. I hope you enjoy it. 

It was Michael who found George, but George then found Michael something Michael needed. It was a shell, a great shell: seven inches long, with a cosmic spiral and a generous, oval opening.

Michael had talked to me again over Skype, of the white beaches of Progreso  in Mexico, about our long walks and early swims in warm water: bodies tumbling around each other. And, of course, about shells: shells of all kinds, one more beautiful than the other. We mused over the shell altars we had built in the sand, as well as all over the small rental above the restaurant - sun-feathered, spiky, rosy, bluish, closed, open, round, shining, with stripes and sometimes leopard spots - as pleasurable to look at and touch as our love had been in Progreso.

Now, I was in the considerably colder Sweden, and Michael in the Blue Ridge mountains in the company of bugs and snakes.

           

So, he much needed a shell. But first he had to find George.

           

What he found first was George's cabin, though he didn't know anything about the previous owner of the place at the time. He had followed the creek right into the green forest for thirty minutes when he stumbled over the long-abandoned house. What he saw was a simple, wooden house with cracked windows, so small it made his two-room cabin look like a mansion, nestled in the middle of the greenery, and the remaining boards of a fallen down shed close by. Inside the cabin floor was rotting away, leaving dangerous holes, half covered by falling apart rugs. Michael was mostly curious, but he was also lacking most material things due to the last years of change and travels and thought he might find some treasures. Which he did: some unbroken plates and bowls, and a wooden bar stool with forest green, slender legs. He carried them home, cleaned them up and eventually went to bed.

           

It wasn't exactly a noise that woke him, more a memory of a noise, the fading sound of somebody mumbling in the background. Michael went into the kitchen and drank some milk. The sensation didn't go away though. It was as if something was pushing against his mind, just out of reach for conscious thought to pick up the signal.

           

"Maybe you brought something back with you," I suggested during our Skype session the next day, "or someone."

"Like a ghost?"

"Yes, like a ghost," I said, not totally comfortable with the concept.

"I think you might be right," said Michael, much to my dismay. And then he continued, in the sudden bursts of knowing unseen things that are so typical of him, "He lived there by himself at the end. But there was a woman once, and a child. He is trying to talk to me. I think his name is George."

           

To be separated from the one you love is hard, and the technology we have at hand is both a blessing and a curse. The flat, cold screen sending images of Michael’s face was so insufficient to my needs. The thought of him without me in the cabin, the place filled with bugs and snakes, and now perhaps also a ghost, was worse.

"Just make sure he means no harm," I said cautiously. "If he seems angry you took those things, do bring them back."

           

It took Michael days to hear George's voice, and it seemed muffled and far away.

"It takes great effort for me to keep the connection to you," said George.

"Do you want me to bring your things back?" Michael asked quickly.

"No!" said George with emphasis. "I want to wake up. Please go back to my cabin. I will show you something."

           

So, Michael went back the next day. At the fallen shed he felt George push his arm.

"Down there," said George, as if speaking through a tube. "There is something you will like there."

           

And it was. Under boards and rubble Michael found the perfect shell. A memory of another man's happy times, by another beach, with another love. Michael brought the shell back home, and put it on his cabin altar, and George's voice suddenly became clear. As if the years between the two men were gone. The shell a telephone through time, if not space.

           

First published in September edition of The Echo World.

Photograph: "George's shell," by Sofia Karin Axelsson.

           

Frida Kahlo in My Heart (and on My Porch)

Foreword: This story is part of a collection, tentatively called “Ghost Whisperer: Stories from a Nordic Witch Stranded in the South.” They were mainly written during my first year in the Appalachian Mountains, having moved from Sweden, living at the end of a road, with no green card to allow me to work and my husband, Michael, working at the Monroe Institute. Being a stranger in a strange land those days, ghosts started to talk to me, and so did the spirit of Frida Kahlo. I hope you enjoy it.

I lit candles on the porch, reflecting themselves in the crystal globes hanging in the window, and I was speaking to my Patroness of Protection and Creativity: the spirit of Frida Kahlo.

           

At this point in my life, I listened more to the Earth fairies and the song of the wind than to anything human. It seemed a step in the right direction then, to speak to an unmistakably and very spirited, human voice, even though it belonged to a ghost.

           

In exile from my birth country, out of the inevitable necessity of love, in the land between: in-between nation and nation, lawfully married and not exactly lawfully married, employable but not allowed to work, human and alien; all in the hands of slow-working, bureaucratic U.S. immigration officers.

I was more than this in-between state of nature and civilization, having chosen solitude in spite of the world-renowned southern hospitality.

"We all need people," purred Frida, leaning back on the pillows propped on the second-hand, wooden chair.

           

Virginia, shamelessly claimed by its inhabitants to be the greatest place on earth, ran thick with blood. Maybe that was why the vines grew so fiercely and bugs found their way through every crack in the thin walls. Wars, deportations, accusations, hangings, Native Americans, black slaves, poor people, the wrong-sayers, the truth-sayers - it was a place difficult to take to heart, had it not been for its lavishly, in-your-face beauty, with lifeforce leaking out of the very pours of fast growing plants and the plentiful animal kingdom.

           

"I don't know Miss Kahlo,” I said, already knowing that the woman was right. "People make so much noise and have needs that never seem to end."

           

Frida laughed and opened her colorful skirts, revealing her broken body, sorrowfully patched together with spikes and leather bands.

           

"They will crave more of you than that, little sister," said Frida and shrugged her shoulders. "But that is how art is created."

           

Frida’s gesture made me feel invalid. As if my suffering, a cold on a sunny day, was fake. Insufficient as the basis for creation.

           

"All separation is sufficient," smiled Frida, unexpectedly kind, "If your soul is broken in two in your childhood, when you come of age, to mend it is your creation for life. Just as knowing that all lands run thick with blood - my Mexico, Virginia, even your cold North."

           

This made me feel a bit better, somewhat worthy, but Frida would not give me time for self-celebrating respite. Her delicate face came closer, earrings clanging like windchimes,

"But now," Frida whispered, "you must go further."

First published in the August edition of The Echo World.

Photograph "Frida Kahlo on mural in Tijuana" by Sofia Karin Axelsson.