Swamp People

I followed her down the muddy path that traced its winding path from the back country road to the swamp. It twisted like a snake through the woods so much I had no way of knowing which way I faced or which way led back to my car. I did not care, though. When I saw her standing by the road, her slip the color of bone in the shadows, I had to follow her. Not to help her, mind you, though she did look every inch the damsel in distress the little girl lost in the woods. No, not to help her, but to help me. If I just went with her, my every wish would be granted. She never said this aloud. Something in those mournful eyes told me everything I ever wanted, desires I never knew I had that now stirred deep within, all could be mine if I just went with her, down into the swamps. So I did.

Now I stand barefoot beside back country roads, wearing jeans and a shirt the color of bone, and with my deep mournful eyes, I promise travelers everything their heart desires if they but follow me along winding paths down into the swamps.

- Originally mailed to C. George in San Diego, California

Ghost Church

There is a small country church that only appears when it is raining. To say where this church is, however, is impossible except to say down lonely roads wherever it is raining, for indeed people have reported seeing the church in countless cities spanning several continents on the same day, perhaps during the same storm. There are those who say that it is a ghost church whose congregation of the dead and the damned beckons new parishioners to join them. They say the church is atoning eternally for some past sin. Perhaps. Who can say with certainty, for if legend is to be believed, none who enter are ever seen again to tell tale of the sermon. Of course, legends have a tendency to exaggerate, and if the church truly does appear all over the world, it would not be impossible for a man to enter in Topeka, Kansas and step out in the Amazon rain forest, and how should he get home then? He has not been taken by the ghostly church, but the difference is semantic to those back home. Then there are those who dare to wonder where the church's inhabitants go when the rain stops. To this, I say, I do not know, but it is always raining somewhere, so should you find yourself in a strange church on a rainy day, rest assured that if you step outside after the sermon and find your are not in Kansas anymore, you may at least take comfort in the fact that you are not lost forever, but merely misplaced for the time being.

- Originally mailed to D. Garner from Biloxi, Mississippi

Bathroom Ghost

 

All my life, I've had an irrational fear of bathrooms. Once I wondered if perhaps it was religious in nature. After all, we're trained from birth to be ashamed of nudity and anything involving a toilet. Upon closer inspection, I realized that couldn't be the case. I didn't have an issue relieving myself in the woods and there I had no walls for privacy. No, my specific fear was ghosts in the bathroom, no doubt a result of countless horror movies. Bathrooms in horror movies are always grim, terrifying affairs with rusty pipes and flickering florescent bulbs that wash out all colors but blue and gray. For years, I convinced myself that this was an irrational fear, that while doing my business, I didn't need to cast my eyes about at every sound, peering deeply at every shadow, begging it not to move.

A year ago, as I finished bathing I found myself staring down a ghost, a skeleton hanging there in the shower where I had been only seconds ago. I trembled in terror. All of my fears, all those years of worry. They had been justified. How long had that ghost been there, I wondered in horror. Did he only now manifest, or had he been in the shower with me, my eyes too full of suds to realize. Did he see me? Had this suicidal skeleton been watching me? Only then did I realize the true nature of my fear. Maybe it wasn't the ghosts at all. Maybe all this time it was just the fear of someone walking in on me.

- Originally mailed to L. Sims in Hattiesburg, Mississippi