Ghost, 1975
By Kat Lytkowski
Aunt Susannah was a forty-eight-year-old ex-nun with a crippling alcohol addiction and an enthusiasm for the paranormal. The obituary framed her in a nicer light.
Halloween could be considered an eerie time for a funeral, but the family had no other choice. My mother, Aunt Susannah’s sister, wanted the event to be planned for November. “A new slate,” she said. Our cousins were the ones that demanded havoc. My cousin, John, had a work trip planned to Rome. Jenny, his wife and not a direct relative, moaned and groaned that she would not attend without her husband. My mother, too much of a pushover, conceded. Now, we stood in a line, waiting to see my aunt. The gentle crooning of the organ paralleled the happy chips and cheers of the neighborhood children trick-or-treating outside. It felt morbidly ironic to wish Susannah goodbye on this day; she was closer to the paranormal plane than ever.
Finally, it was my turn to pay my respects. I surveyed her open casket, neat and frigid. The mortician had chosen to pull her hair back, revealing the deeply nested forehead crinkles from her time in contemplation at the convent. It felt all too real and yet artificial; Susannah hated the cleanliness of the nunnery. Wine glasses dotted the room, some still wreaking of merlot, others holding obscure objects like cigarettes or tea candles. When I would visit, I noticed scattered, half-written notes dotted around the living room. The ink on each vanilla card was bright red and leaked as if it were from a vein. The writing, however, was stiff from the many hours of practice. The addresses ranged from President Nixon to Led Zepplin to her father, of whom my mother wouldn’t even dare speak.
There was always some encouragement for the investigation of ghosts in question. Susannah would entertain me for hours with her newest ghost contraptions: metal rods that could detect insidious wavelengths, rulers glued together one by one for interacting with a ghost’s transitory frame. I always sought these moments for a quick laugh to break up the mundanity of my life, but by the size of Susannah’s eyes, I could tell she hung onto every single one of my reactions, looking for a confirmation of my belief. My mother had long dissuaded me from seeing her, in fear that I would resort to a bottle of wine a night to repress any childhood trauma. Despite that, I still went in search of whatever reality Susannah held.
However, at this moment, her big, bulging eyes were glued shut. Her cheeks were still rosy, as if she were drunk, which I appreciated. Her hands aged significantly faster than the rest of her body, probably from hours of repetition, practice, and prayer. Her nails were crooked and jagged from weird regrowth during her abuse in the nunnery. We never talked about her past; I never deemed it as relevant. Standing before the coffin, though, I longed for a deeper understanding. I wondered if God would grant her peace in heaven. I wondered if Susannah would find heaven peaceful. Before I knew it, the coffin was closed shut, and piled under six feet of Connecticut dirt.
I rejoined my mother on our way back out to our Renault Alliance. It was almost three hours back to Albany in the darkness that had enveloped this sleepy, suburban town. As I approached the vehicle, I noticed, in the distance, a cream-colored sheet. It had dark black circles placed at eye level, and was long enough to consume the child underneath who could not have been older than six or seven. I watched the little ghost bumble across the street, as if untethered from the world. Two seconds later he had disappeared. Maybe into the nearby woods, or even to a local home for a sweet treat. Either way, he was gone.
I gently smiled to myself. It didn’t take an alcoholic or a nun to believe in ghosts. I knew at that moment that Susannah had made me a believer.