‘Do you believe in ghosts, Anne?’ Jan says.
We’ve just seen a rerun of the ‘Ghostbusters’ movie at our local theatre so it’s not a wholly unexpected segue.
‘You do?’ I say.
‘Well, not so much ghosts but rather spirits. Yes, I do. For instance, I believe my mother is still very much with me and that I can talk to her in a meaningful way when I need to. I can feel her warm presence too. But you haven’t answered my question.’
‘Let’s just say, I wouldn’t be the first to volunteer to walk through a graveyard in the dead of night,’ I say.
‘Come on, be serious,’ Jan says.
‘Well, I can’t say that I do. Although, now that I think about it, something weird happened when I was just a kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, that has always stayed with me. There’d been another party at our house. It was very late. As usual my father had got rolling drunk and obnoxious. I could never understand why people kept coming back to the next one. Maybe it was the free booze. Anyway, after everyone had left or been driven away, he started in on my mother. Usually she didn’t bite back and just walked away from him. But this night she stood up to him. And then he hit her in the face. I got between them somehow and dragged her from the room. She had blood running down her face from her nose. I cleaned her face up and put her to bed in my room. He stayed in the lounge where it had happened. I went to bed too but I was so scared it took me an age to go to sleep. And then something woke me up. A man was standing at the foot of my bed looking down at me. I say standing but really there was only the upper body and head of a man. He had long blonde-brown hair and a matching beard. He didn’t say anything. He…’
‘Jesus,’ Jan said.
‘No, it wasn’t scary at all. He had the most gentle and kind face and I felt so safe that I smiled, turned over and went back to sleep.’
‘No, Jesus as in Jesus Christ! You had a vision of Christ,’ Jan said.
‘Trust an old God-botherer like you to come up with that explanation. But I will concede that ever since then I have called up that same sense of being cared for or watched over in times of personal struggle. But, hey, this conversation is getting way too serious. Let’s see if we can scare up some coffee at that cafe you’ve been haunting of late. Casper’s isn’t it?
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