A Ghost of a Song

February 2, 2013December 22, 2014 / Lisa / 2 Comments

Recently I posted a Ghost of a Story and since then have been trying to figure out how to add the song. I’ve failed and my teenager isn’t available to save me. Instead, I’ve transcribed the words.

First, a reminder.

This song was written by a friend, for a young woman who hung herself many years ago in an old hotel. People used to talk about hearing doors slam, seeing her in the window, and hearing her moving things in the kitchens. But once the hotel closed and started falling in, she was alone. The song nagged my friend, like all stories do that demand to be told. So he finally gave in and wrote it down. And then he sang to Annabelle in the hotel.

Picture the scene. A group of ghost hunters with all their equipment. My friend with his mandolin. A three-story hotel, built in the 1800s, empty since 2001. Windows broken, roof leaking, vandalized, no power. Can you hear creaking of old wood, swollen with Pacific Northwest damp? Can you smell mildew, feel cold? Are you struggling to see what is just outside the circle of light from your headlamp or flashlight? Can you sense sadness in the shadows?

If so, listen and you might be able to hear the notes of the mandolin as you read the words my friend wrote to Annabelle.

Annabelle’s Song

I’ve heard the stories

about your being here

in this cold empty space

you can’t shed any more tears

someone has done you wrong

now you wander these halls alone.

oh Annabelle

wouldn’t you like to go home?

Go on home Annabelle

go on and walk on into the light

the angels of mercy are waiting

to help you make it through the night

and your lover’s there wondering

wondering when it is you that might come home

so won’t you go there now dear Annabelle

you’ve done your time of being alone.

I can only imagine

how cold and lonesome

this could be

but for you I see

a stairway to heaven

or at least the next one

in the big spirit home

in the big spirit home.

So go on home Annabelle

go on and walk on into the light

The angels of mercy are waiting

to help you make it through the night

and your lover’s there wondering

wondering when it is that you might come home

so won’t you go there now dear Annabelle

you’ve done your time of being alone.

So won’t you go there now dear Annabelle

you’ve done your time of being alone.

I apologize for the weird formatting. I broke the sentences up by pauses in the song, trying to honor the phrasing of poetry. Hopefully the pauses helped you hear the tune. If not, the song will be released on a CD before too long, with a youtube video I’ll be able to link for you.

Until then, I like to think that Annabelle has gone home. And our town may just be the emptier for that.

A town without its ghost?

An Occasional Story

January 8, 2013December 22, 2014 / Lisa / 5 Comments

Please bear with me because some of you know bits of this story and experienced it first hand.

After my Irish Wolfhound/dog soul mate, Strider, died of bone cancer, my son talked me into letting him adopt a puppy. He had to do a lot of talking. On top of all the emotional aspects, this pup was barely seven weeks old and a mix of pit bull, lab, spitz, and I’m sure a bit of ketchup brand thrown in.

The animal shelter insisted on spaying her before we could take her home. It didn’t matter that I promised we’d do it and I can understand as I’m sure they’ve heard that line before. But I was concerned about hormonal imbalance, the higher risk of cancer she would be exposed to, etc. She was spayed at seven weeks anyway, and we brought her home.

I told her she was weird looking (she still is). I told her she would never be loved as much as Strider (maybe she is). I told her she had beady eyes (she does, but okay, they’re cute beady eyes) and I told her she was useless (she’s a great guard dog and has protected my son more than once). I’ll admit it here; she’s wormed her way into my affections, probably by using some nefarious dog spell.

One way she accomplished this was by getting stuck on a huge boulder on the granite face of an area rock climbers habituate. It was dark, cold, and pouring rain, and since her exact location wasn’t known, it was determined to be too dangerous to find her.

Picture this. Me, sitting on a wet log along side a steep, narrow, hiking trail. Moss covered trees hang over me, a friend’s dog is shivering, soaked and plastered against my side. It’s almost dark. Every so often my friend’s dog would bark. And there would come back this faint, echoing answer from this dog I didn’t want and told myself I didn’t even like. We called off the search knowing she was out there alone except for bears and cougars and coyotes…

The next morning as soon as it was light lots of people showed up to help. Some had climbing gear, some hiked, and she was found still sitting on the boulder waiting. They said she was smart to know we were coming for her. I said she was too stupid to self-rescue and Strider would have known what to do.

Okay, so a few years have passed. This weekend I was scratching her tummy (she has a way of forcing a person to do her will) and found a lump under one of her tiny, undeveloped nipples. It’s about the size of the ball of my thumb. It doesn’t seem to hurt her when it’s touched, but it clearly doesn’t belong there.

The part of me that swears I don’t like her is saying wait a week or so and see what happens. But somehow, over the years, that part of me seems to be shrinking. Now there’s a bigger part shouting to rush her to the vet even though it’s at night and there would be emergency fees.

I really need to figure out how she works these mind control tricks.

See? Beady eyes working their spells.

Strider and friends

An Occasional Memory

December 6, 2012December 22, 2014 / Lisa / 4 Comments

My grandfather, a heavy drinker, raised my mom alone for a while. Until one night a woman drove by their house and saw a chimney fire. Ethel stopped to tell them and, as the story goes, ended up coming back as a housekeeper and to take over raising my mom. So to us, Ethel was like a grandmother even though we called her Auntie.

Her house at Christmas is one of my most vivid memories and has shaped what the holidays are for me.

Picture a short woman with ‘an immense bosom’ who never left the house without the wool suit, purse, gloves, heels, and pill-box hat matching. And then add a very firm, earthy, and fearless personality.

Her home was heated with oil and a boiler sat in the dining room. It made scary noises and the pilot flame was visible at the bottom. I knew the thing would blow up some day. There is a distinctive smell to that oil and it permeated the house.

A fireplace in the living room held a magic fire on Christmas Eve. Auntie had some sort of sparkly powder that, when tossed on the fire, made the flames a myriad of colors. From the mantle hung ugly red plastic mesh stockings full of oranges, walnuts, those gross hard candies that had some sort of mashed fruit in the middle, and bottles of school paste. As awful as the stockings were, I would have been heartbroken if they had ever held anything different.

The tree was small and the decorations quite old. I remember white birds sitting on the branches. A string of lights that were porcelain Santa heads. Another string of tiny metal bells. The Santa heads caught on fire one year. But I still have one left, strung with fraying ribbon, that I hang on my tree.

The presents were always functional. Socks, underwear, etc. Each package came with one stick of Wrigley’s gum taped to it. Occasionally one of us will still put a stick of gum on a package.

But the best part about Christmas Eve at her home was the smell. Not the oil burner. She was one of those cooks from an era of no recipes, just handfuls and pinches. There would be this heavy dark cake made with applesauce, cloves, allspice, and cinnamon, and no eggs. She called it her depression era cake. I called it a winter cake. I’m the one that makes it these days, and to me that dark, spicy denseness speaks of snow and packages and magic fire.

So house smelled of spices. Fried chicken and fried smelt. And candles and the resin sap of the tree. Of age and old mohair armchairs that scratched your skin. Of even older Reader’s Digest magazines stacked and unread. Of beeswax from polishing the upright piano. Of Pledge from dusting all the photos on top of the piano.

Christmas Eve to me was smothering hugs from Auntie (remember those large bosoms?), flour on the apron, firelight, Christmas tree lights on packages, all my favorite foods, the sense of being safe and loved, and the knowledge that if any dreams were going to come true, they would do so as I sat, dreaming, next to the multi-colored flames.

If I feel myself losing the magic of the winter solstice, of that slow turning toward sleep of the world around me, all I have to do is conjure up Auntie’s house.

I wish for you the return of good memories and old magic for your holidays.