Tag: short-stories

the spirit of a sad woman

I NEVER DID FEEL comfortable walking by that room. It was on the second floor of the house and faced the rising sun. I suppose the house was here in Estonia, but it could have been anywhere. I knew, in a way, that it was haunted or occupied. It had such a terrible feeling to it. Some might say it was possessed. Some might say it was a poltergeist. Whatever spirit, entity, or otherworldly presence or being was rooted within those walls, I never knew of it or saw it. Until one day, when I walked by the room and saw that the door, usually shut tight, was ajar.

“There are two kinds of people in this world,” I whispered to myself. “Those who dare and those who don’t.” It was time to confront the darkest aspects of my subconscious. I opened the door and went in. To my surprise, this off-limits, evil-feeling room was in proper order. It was furnished with Art Deco pieces, a few velvet chairs and one long green sofa. At first, I thought there was no one in the room. On the wall, I saw there were a few paintings, also from the interwar period, except of boy band stars. Robbie Williams and Justin Timberlake leered out.

Who knew they had both had careers and been so popular a century ago?

Then, when I turned, I noticed the ghost woman. She was not quite transparent and floating by the window. She had shoulder-length brown or reddish brown hair and a white dress. Her back was turned to me. The spirit of a sad woman. Was she the embodiment or origin of the awful feeling coming from this room? Her hair was cut in the old style. I couldn’t make out any of her features. “Hey,” I said, reaching out. “Who are you? What are you doing in my home?”

My hands went right through her and she faded.

Puzzled, I looked around the room again, and noticed there was another room attached, with the door slightly ajar. The sad, horrible feeling was stronger there, I felt. I needed to go and look in that room too. At the door, I peered in. This room was dismal and purpleblue. The walls were painted the same, and the furniture was also from the 1920s. There were clothes tossed everywhere, the drawers to the cabinets and dressers were half open. This must have been the woman’s room. What was strange about it is that it was rendered in a different kind of spectrum. It was if Matisse had dabbed his brush over all. The room was soaked in colors.

So that was that. I stood there looking around the messy Henri Matisse room and then went back into the hall. But I had seen her, I had at last seen her. I didn’t know who she was, but she did exist. The source of the dread, the source of the unease, floating transparently in a corner with her back turned, fading into light. What would I do the next time our paths crossed?

train blues

I USED TO TAKE THE TRAIN from Albertslund to Copenhagen Central Station, or Københavns Hovedbanegård, on the line that if you took it west, led all the way out to Høje Taastrup. I remember those sleepy gray mornings staring out the windows at sad-looking greenery and gray blue shadows on the trestles and tracks. At some point they must have created a similar environment as a part of the Rail Baltica project, because just yesterday I took a train that looked just like the Danish one from Pärnu to Tartu. When the Pärnu-Tartu train stopped at Viljandi, a host of Argentinian and Chilean musicians got on. From there we traveled east to Tartu, and again I stared out of the windows into that melancholy light, listening to the gentle lullaby of a slowly rocking northern train as it mechanically glided ever forward to infinity.

I must have fallen asleep, because by the time I opened my eyes, I was westbound again, rolling across the green plains outside of Tartu City. About 25 kilometers outside of town, I disembarked, not sure if I should just try to walk the distance, or if I should take a Bolt or even hitchhike. To my surprise, a music festival was being set up here, and there were a lot of people streaming out of the train and ambling down the steps to the dirt paths that led to a small country village. Celeste had even come with her children, although these “children” looked more like dolls. There she was, eyeing me with her blue eyes in small portions, while she combed the hair of her doll children. She was wearing a light blue summertime dress.

The dress seemed to blend into the sky with its clouds behind her.

At the center of the village, there was a church, just like all of the old churches that you can find out in the countryside. Inside, the pews were already filling up. There were two other priests waiting at the doorway. One of them looked like Pope Leo. He said, “Which one of us wants to be the first to start hearing confessions?” I volunteered and made my way down the aisle to the confession booth as everyone watched. It occurred to me that I wasn’t wearing a cassock or any other item that would represent the priesthood and that I didn’t even have a cross on my body and that I wasn’t quite sure if Jesus was the son of God, as they said. The Holy Trinity was a mystery to me still, but when Pope Leo commands, what else is there to do? Then, crossing myself in a brief moment of religious courtesy, I opened the door and went in.