face now seemed to be wrenched more with revulsion than with fear, and her mouth opened in a silent cry of horror.
I looked behind me, but I saw nothing more than the knee-high wild dry grass fired by morning sun and as golden as the woman’s hair, the land sloping down to the north, and the first grove of oaks, this side of which I had earlier climbed the estate wall.
But the creepiest feeling possessed me, similar to the sensation that shivers through any of us upon discovering a letter from the IRS in the mail. I was overcome by the conviction that if only I tilted my head at a certain angle or possessed eyeglasses of precisely the right prescription, or could peer through the current sunlight to glimpse the dusk that was still many hours away, I would see what the ghost saw.
When I turned to the horse and its rider again, they no longer loomed over me. They were twenty feet away, at the edge of the woods. The woman gazed back at me, waving me toward her with her right arm, her gesture and her posture urgent.
No one knows better than I that reality is more complex than the five senses can discern. Our world with all its mysteries is a moon to another bigger and more mysterious world unseen, orbiting so close to the larger sphere that perhaps sometimes the curve of one passes through the curve of the other with no damage to either, but with strange effects.
Not daring to take the time to look back again, I ran toward the horse and rider.
Twelve
The vaulted ceiling of the cathedral of oaks was reminiscent of church windows, although there was more leading than stained glass, more darkness than light, in the sun-gold and leaf-green patterns that might have been an abstract depiction of Eden.
Trotting among the huge trees, the black horse almost vanished, revealed only by the sheen of its coat as drizzles of light quivered across it. As I chased after her, the woman remained easy to see, the white silk gown blooming brightly when touched by sun, still softly radiant even where gloom prevailed.
I don’t know why shadow and light should play across spirits, alternately obscuring and revealing them, in the same way that they affect living people and all things of this world. Ghosts have no substance either to reflect light or to provide a surface onto which shadows could fall.
A psychiatrist might say that this quality of the apparitions proves that they are not otherworldly. He might suggest instead that they must be psychotic delusions and that I merely lack the wit to imaginethem unaffected by light and shadows, which real spirits—supposing they existed—would surely be.
I wonder sometimes why those who theorize about the human mind can so easily believe in the existence of things they cannot see or measure, or in any meaningful way confirm as real—such as the id, the ego, the unconscious I—but nevertheless dismiss as superstitious those who believe the body has a soul.
The woman brought the horse to a halt beside a tree. When I caught up with her, she pointed straight up into the great oak’s laddered limbs, clearly suggesting that I climb.
The fear in her face—fear for me—was no less visible in this sun-and-shadow-dappled realm.
Although in the past I had encountered malevolent spirits that sometimes went poltergeist on me, hurling everything from furniture to frozen turkeys, I could not recall one of the lingering dead attempting to deceive me. Deception seems to be a capacity they shed with their bodies.
Convinced that this woman knew of something horrendous that was bearing down on me, I scrambled to the tree and climbed. Trunk to limb, that limb to another, bark rough beneath my hands, I ascended to the first crotch, about fourteen feet above the ground.
When I peered down through the screening branches, I could see part of the spot at which the horse and rider had been. They were not there now.
Of course, as spirits, they were free to be or not to be, and as neither the horse nor the woman
I looked behind me, but I saw nothing more than the knee-high wild dry grass fired by morning sun and as golden as the woman’s hair, the land sloping down to the north, and the first grove of oaks, this side of which I had earlier climbed the estate wall.
But the creepiest feeling possessed me, similar to the sensation that shivers through any of us upon discovering a letter from the IRS in the mail. I was overcome by the conviction that if only I tilted my head at a certain angle or possessed eyeglasses of precisely the right prescription, or could peer through the current sunlight to glimpse the dusk that was still many hours away, I would see what the ghost saw.
When I turned to the horse and its rider again, they no longer loomed over me. They were twenty feet away, at the edge of the woods. The woman gazed back at me, waving me toward her with her right arm, her gesture and her posture urgent.
No one knows better than I that reality is more complex than the five senses can discern. Our world with all its mysteries is a moon to another bigger and more mysterious world unseen, orbiting so close to the larger sphere that perhaps sometimes the curve of one passes through the curve of the other with no damage to either, but with strange effects.
Not daring to take the time to look back again, I ran toward the horse and rider.
Twelve
The vaulted ceiling of the cathedral of oaks was reminiscent of church windows, although there was more leading than stained glass, more darkness than light, in the sun-gold and leaf-green patterns that might have been an abstract depiction of Eden.
Trotting among the huge trees, the black horse almost vanished, revealed only by the sheen of its coat as drizzles of light quivered across it. As I chased after her, the woman remained easy to see, the white silk gown blooming brightly when touched by sun, still softly radiant even where gloom prevailed.
I don’t know why shadow and light should play across spirits, alternately obscuring and revealing them, in the same way that they affect living people and all things of this world. Ghosts have no substance either to reflect light or to provide a surface onto which shadows could fall.
A psychiatrist might say that this quality of the apparitions proves that they are not otherworldly. He might suggest instead that they must be psychotic delusions and that I merely lack the wit to imaginethem unaffected by light and shadows, which real spirits—supposing they existed—would surely be.
I wonder sometimes why those who theorize about the human mind can so easily believe in the existence of things they cannot see or measure, or in any meaningful way confirm as real—such as the id, the ego, the unconscious I—but nevertheless dismiss as superstitious those who believe the body has a soul.
The woman brought the horse to a halt beside a tree. When I caught up with her, she pointed straight up into the great oak’s laddered limbs, clearly suggesting that I climb.
The fear in her face—fear for me—was no less visible in this sun-and-shadow-dappled realm.
Although in the past I had encountered malevolent spirits that sometimes went poltergeist on me, hurling everything from furniture to frozen turkeys, I could not recall one of the lingering dead attempting to deceive me. Deception seems to be a capacity they shed with their bodies.
Convinced that this woman knew of something horrendous that was bearing down on me, I scrambled to the tree and climbed. Trunk to limb, that limb to another, bark rough beneath my hands, I ascended to the first crotch, about fourteen feet above the ground.
When I peered down through the screening branches, I could see part of the spot at which the horse and rider had been. They were not there now.
Of course, as spirits, they were free to be or not to be, and as neither the horse nor the woman
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