Ghosts

The nightmares are back. They kept me busy for almost all of last night.

The first was unimaginative, painful and not that rare. A drawn out, close-up incident with The Boy - so close I could smell him - from which I woke up crying my heart out on a wet pillow.

When I eventually got back to sleep, the second was a little more imaginative, but no less disturbing. The PE teacher at my school climbed out of my cupboard - I had my eyes open, and I actually saw him climb out, dressed in his PE kit - and started yelling at me.

"What are you sleeping for?" he shouted.
"I`m sorry," I mumbled in panic, jumping out of bed. "I must have drifted off."
"Have you been crying?" he demanded.
I shook my head.
"No."
"You have! You`re a disappointment. Get to school."
I stood in the middle of the room, looking around in the confusion I always get when I can see my dreams like apparitions in front of me and I think I`m awake.
"But... it`s dark," I pointed out.
"I don`t care! Everyone is waiting! Pull yourself together!"
"Sorry," I said, and then I bowed - physically bowed, in my pyjamas - and asked him to leave the room so I could get dressed. The PE teacher climbed back into my cupboard, and I promptly closed the door and got back into bed.
"I`m going to be in so much trouble when he gets back out," I mumbled under my breath, "but I`m so tired I just don`t care."
And fell straight asleep again.

The third dream I don`t really remember. I remember thinking something was coming through the window for me, and I remember being very, very scared. I remember not wanting to cry again. And, when I woke up this morning, my entire room was rearranged.

"What mean, room rearranged?" Harai asked this morning when I told him about all three episodes.
"My bed was on the other side of the room. My bedside table was in the middle. My computer desk had shifted a few feet, and the computer was under it."
He looked alarmed.
"You have ghosts?"
"No, I did it myself. I vaguely remember dragging my bed across the floor in a mild state of hysteria."
"Oh," Harai said, speechless and with wide eyes. He says "oh" a lot when I tell him these kinds of stories.
"I have a theory," I told him. "I think the three combined nightmares show that I feel guilty because my heart is still broken and I still hurt, that I`m scared of being judged for it, and I`m trying to change my whole life so that I move away from being hurt again because I`m frightened. And I moved my computer under the desk because I`m trying to protect my writing. But I`ve pushed it all down so far now that I`m acting them out in my sleep now instead of thinking about them when I`m awake."
Harai glanced at me doubtfully.
"Maybe you drink alcohol before bed?"
"I wish. Maybe I should start." There was a pause. "Do you think I`m craz...."
"Yes." There was no hesitation at all: he didn`t even let me finish the sentence.
"No, but, do you think I`m crazy to..."
"Yes."
"Let me finish! Do you think I`m crazy to still be crying in my sleep?"
"No. PE teacher in cupboard and moving beds, that`s crazy."
"You don`t ever get things like that when you`re asleep?"
"No. I think Japanese don`t. And you know what else crazy?"
"What?"
"PE teacher doesn`t speak English."

Harai was right, though. Not about my craziness - that`s probably a given - and not about the PE teacher (he doesn`t speak a word), but about the ghosts. That`s exactly what they are: the lingering remnants of the past, the present and the future, haunting me in my sleep, just as they did Scrooge. Picking and poking at me because I`m not talking to them anymore when I`m conscious. Climbing out of my cupboards and making me cry and rearranging my furniture. But without the natty songs and big fluffy faces they had in The Muppets version.

There`s nothing I can do. That`s what ghosts do: they haunt until they`ve got something better to occupy themselves with. And I can`t complain. At least I`m unconscious for most of it.

In the meantime, I`m going to set them to work on the rest of my house: see if I can`t get them to do the washing up or zen my living room into a different shape. Perhaps do my laundry. Cook me dinner. Make themselves useful.

And, perhaps if I ask nicely and I`m kind to them, they'll sing me back to sleep when they`re done.