Love Like Ghosts / Autumn Fourkiller

“I am empty of everything. I am empty of everything but the thin, frail ghosts in my room.”
― Jean Rhys, Good Morning Midnight

I turn down two fully funded PhD offers, one complete with an extra four thousand American dollars on top to sweeten the pot and return to my hometown. It is in the extreme eastern part of rural Oklahoma, and I have spent the last three years in the Deep South, in graduate school. I am going to live in my dead father’s house, which is set back in the woods, and is a place I haven’t lived since I was two years old. I am going to finish my novel. I am going to learn how to live. I am going to be happy. I am going to learn how to manifest. I am going to be fun and free. I am going to stop thinking, quite seriously, obsessively and looping, about the best way in which to die.  

By all accounts, I have had a very good spring. 

*

In Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, Avery F. Gordon states: “Being haunted draws us affectively, sometimes against our will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling of a reality we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as a transformative recognition.” 

*

This is a recognizable story, I’m sure. I go to college, and I am depressed. 

Except – I am depressed before college. I have maybe never not been depressed. In college, instead of doing my reading for the political science major I chose after one, singular government class where the professor was nice to me, I read unassigned novels and write sad, self-pitying short stories. They are maybe not even short stories, but I want them to be. My mind has always been my only reliable tool, and my bane. So it goes, the poets say. 

I go to a small, small state school. I get a full, well-regarded scholarship. I am grateful. I am. I close my eyes at night and dream of – silver skies, silver air, silver people who are see-through and mirage like. The moon, strawberry red. Five maple trees. Myself in the water, again and again and again. 

*

A girl I met at a college prep program for our shared tribe, before she gets an incredible, well-paying job says – What happened to Princeton? Stanford? She adds an emoji to soften the blow.  

I don’t say – Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was. 

I don’t say – I am not afraid to die. 

I don’t say – Elitism, all of it. I could be that kind of poor person, but I’m not. I have expensive taste. 

I just laugh react and leave it. We never speak again. 

*

In What Does a House Want? Exploring Sentient Houses in Supernatural Literature, Cristiana Pugliese states: “That is why writers nearly always opt for houses that either have ghosts or contain the energies of dead people. They personify and psychoanalyze the house as if it were a human being: the house has a traumatic past, witnessed some evil deed, was exposed to evil thoughts, or was inhabited by evil people.” 

*

When I get to the Blue House in the Woods, it is still and quiet, nothing but the hum of the still going heaters to greet me. It is so evident that this house was a place for debauchery – whatever that means. I know what it means. My father allowed anyone to live there, to trash the place, even when he was dying. They cooked things in the barn. They did whatever was available. They drank until their livers gave out, and then some. Most of them had children, families. I don’t blame them, I do. Addiction is a disease, I remind myself. Why do I need reminding? 

Someone has spray painted her name on the concrete porch outside, on the walls of the house. It is stupid and pointless and trashy and I hate looking at it. It serves as a perfect reminder. Everything is chipped, the tile warped. There are holes in the wall. The sink leaks on one side. My sister’s vegan and granola soaps, cleaning supplies, and candles provide a contrast so sharp it hurts. 

I wrote a mildly well-received essay about his death, but it couldn’t come close to what I felt. Nothing ever could.

*

The truth of the matter – besides the obvious decline around me, and the rest of the world, I have no reason to be this sad. I am regarded well by my friends and most of my family. My mother thinks I am a genius, I am her prize, her reason for living (besides Jesus, she says). I am sharp and funny. I like ice cream and talking on the phone. I have so many things I need to write, that I want to write. I have this whole house; it is just mine. My father’s final, or first, depending on how you look at it, gift to me. Something in me must already be dead, captured, if not whatever had claimed it would not be working so hard to get the rest of me. 

*

That first night, I barricade myself in the guest bedroom. I think I can hear someone tearing off the screen from the window. When I fall asleep, I wake myself up gasping. My father died in the bathroom, shaving. It is right across the hall. I can’t stop thinking about it. Something pulsates, a second heartbeat that is not my own. In the morning, I swear I can feel something gently stroking my hair, soothing. I don’t open my eyes. Sickeningly, I find myself enjoying the small comfort. 

*

In Haunted Houses Elizabeth Wilson states: “And it was the permanence of the Victorian family and the permanence of the exclusion of single women from it that once seemed so oppressive, so deathly. With that gone, there is nothing any longer to haunt or be haunted; the family home is too flimsy and too provisional for ghosts to take root. Ghosts, or at least haunted houses, have had their day. As we have sloughed off the family, we have left the haunted house behind. Now our nightmares take the form of invaders, strangers, serial killers, since without the family that was so oppressive, we are more than ever alone.” 

*

On the drive to Oklahoma, I must stop at Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores to move my bowels in an increasingly acidic and concerning way. I am no stranger to stomach issues, especially those that can make you ache and cramp all over, necessitate a trash can placed in front of you to catch any vomit you might expel. There is a woman cleaning the bathroom and I feel the need to apologize to her for these next fifteen minutes of our co-existence. I do, but only with a brief sorry muttered while I am washing my hands. 

I swallow half a bottle of Pepto Bismol Ultra in the parking lot with no chaser. It is viscous and unpleasant and an old man sitting in the car next to me looks at me like I am taking a party drug. I chew a handful of Tums that have been sitting in one of my cupholders since August. I remember I bought them at Big Lots in a fit of desperation. Why are they so sweet? I can barely think about it without wanting to – 

The nausea overwhelms me when the only option in sight is an XXX adult store parking lot. It is in the last bit of ruralness before Mississippi ends, before a brief stop in Memphis, Tennessee and then straight on, on, on. 

I puke up a value pack of Red Vines I ate in my vicious nervousness, something pink, a few home fries from a combo gas station-diner in a town under a tornado warning, and the mix of Red Bull and ginger ale that kept me awake and functionally sane for most of the drive. I puke so hard I feel like I should see a few teeth in the mix. In the beginning, everything was torrential rain, lightning, Tanya Tucker’s birthplace – now it is sky and sick, nothing around for miles. Everything is blacked out curtains at the XXX emporium, but I imagine what lies behind it. I think I imagine a low noise, a voice, in the distance, gaining ground, but when I swivel my cotton-stuffed head, there is nothing. 

*

I often stay the night with my grandmother, between unpacking and getting used to living in a place I thought I may never return to – the house, yes, but my hometown even more so. I tell myself it is not because I am afraid. She runs the window unit for me even though it makes her cold. She comes to kiss me three times, once when she wakes up, once when she gets back from running errands, and once after she asks me when I am I going to wake up so that we can eat the breakfast she’ll make. It’ll be my favorite, biscuits and gravy. 

She’s from Arkansas, so not so far from home. Her trailer is only a few minutes from the state line. Like many children of my particular background, I have always been close to my maternal grandparents. They have all of my awards and trophies, my newspaper clippings and tassels. My grandfather’s urn is just a box, emblazoned with words I have forgotten. He is stored, here, in the room I am sleeping. He called me baby doll, sunshine, Little Victoria. He is just one of the people I have loved, deeply, that have died, but he is the one that still sneaks up on me. I’ll see the Sale Barn, or an old man with a cowboy hat on, or a proper mustache, and I’ll want to lie down and let the loss roll all over me. Where do I go from here, I think. Where. 

Granny, I ask, when she comes back – do you believe in ghosts? 

*

No, she says. I watch her smoke menthol after menthol. When I was little, I used to love to watch her and my grandfather smoke. I liked the way you could see it in the air, tiny plumes. Dancing spirits, if you have that kind of whimsy in you. It’s strangely hypnotizing, but I press on. You lived in a haunted house, I say. How can you not believe in them? She inhales, exhales. More specters. It wasn’t haunted, she says. Just. . . full. 

*

In One Is Somehow Suspended’: Elizabeth Bowen, Katherine Mansfield and the Spaces in Between Emma Short states: “With the unseen ‘IT’ lurking in the shadows, the deserted house recalls the haunted house that is according to Anthony Vidler, the ‘most popular topos’ of classic ghost stories. Emptied of her family’s furniture and possessions, the house is at once familiar and unfamiliar to Kezia, and she finds herself displaced, somewhere between being at home and being distinctly not at home, thereby fulfilling James Rissner’s argument that the ‘uncanny space is . . . a place of displacement’.”

*

My father and I had a complicated relationship. There is no way around this. There is only this. I wish I could stop writing about it, but where do I put him down? I lied before, we’re both still crossing the river. The ferryman has a face I have seen before. 

*

We buried my father the Yuchi way. We sent him off properly. My father was Cherokee, his first wife Yuchi – my half-siblings, Yuchi. My mother is white. It feels important that you know this, though I am not sure, not ever sure, why. 

*

In Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club, Christoher B. Teuton writes of Hastings Shade saying: “Because if you talk to an elder, the spirit will never leave. Only the form that you see here is going to be buried. The human, the solid form, is what we put in the ground when we bury somebody. The spirit, that gray spirit, is always going to be around.” 

*

Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I think I see something. A figure maybe, a shape. I shake my head and ignore it. I refuse to be another kind of crazy and I know better than saying that. I know better. 

*

In “Walking Alone Together: Family Monsters in The Haunting of Hill House,” Richard Pascal states: “For in the media (if necessarily in actuality) the iconic households that aspired to keep the outside world at bay were spaces besieged from within - "haunted" is an appropriate metaphor - by family members intent upon usurping complete control over premises in pursuit of their own whims and desires, thereby undermining communal basis of the familial model. Overly needy personal lives too self-seeking threatened to usurp all the family's energies unto themselves.”

*

Okay, one second, I say. I am getting out my notepad. Don’t say anything else. These moments of single-minded focus exhilarate me, make me thrum from the inside out. I can’t lose this. So, tell me about the haunted house. Granny looks at me and I correct myself – tell me about the house under the hill. Okay, she starts. We bought it from Toots Abbott and had it moved. I stop her there. Toots, really? Yes. What was his real name? I don’t know. Okay, so the house under the hill. The only part of the house that was new was the bedroom. I was afraid of the house, and your grandpa knew it. Once he raked the hot coals out, but when we woke up they had burned all the way through the floor. There was a huge black hole left. I was reading Helter Skelter, but I burned that book. Your Aunt Doris came up to spend the night and started screaming. I was mad at your grandpa for running into the bedroom while I was in the bathroom and turning off the light, he knew I hated that house, so I kicked his pants under the bed. So your Aunt Doris is screaming, screaming. And something is trying to claw off the window – but it wasn’t a bear. It wasn’t. 

*

I don’t ask my mother. She won’t talk about it. She says she doesn’t remember, but I am doubtful. Still. I don’t blame her. I hardly blame anyone, anymore. 

*

In Cherokee History, Myths, and Scared Formulas, James Mooney states: “The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and the worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are afraid of this.” 

*

Global warming and demons. Infection and disease. Driving and the grocery store. Germs and severe burns. Bodily horrors and pregnancy. Being humiliated and being unrecognized. Tongue kissing and physical intimacy. Gory movies and porcelain dolls. My mother dying and leaving me to live without her voice. Never finishing anything ever again. Being catatonic. Losing this. 

I am afraid of almost everything. 

*

I tell my sister about the first night and she asks if I believe we can be visited, if I believe the dead can tell us things and I say, I think there are more mysteries here than we will ever unravel, but what I really mean is I just told you a ghost touched my hair, what do you think? 

*

It wasn’t a bear, I say. No. And Aunt Doris was screaming and grandpa couldn’t find his pants because you had kicked them. Yes. And your Aunt Marilyn brought something there and left it even though I told her not to. Left it? Left him. His name was George Jelly. Or he told her that was his name. He was buried in Hall Cemetery. Where your mom and dad are buried? Yes. I would have bloody, bloody nightmares. I never saw anything but when I was doing dishes I could feel something watching me. My grandpa told me if I had the nightmare more than three times I needed to get out of that house. But we couldn’t, we had just spent all that money to get it moved. Oh. We lived in a shanty shack before that. I felt safer there. Oh yeah? That house burned, later. How long? About a year after we left. Oh no. Yeah. Let’s go sit on the porch.

*

I don’t know what questions to ask. I only know the ones that repeat. The ones that ask – Will I ever find any satisfying answers? Will I ever be satisfied with anything? Where is the end for me? Or am I, too, merely a haunting. My ancestors came here on the Trail and never left. I tried to, but here I am again. It is in my DNA, my very blood. See. There I go again. The dramatics. What else is there?

*

Gordon, again: “Because ultimately haunting is about how to transform a shadow of a life into an undiminished life whose shadows touch softly in the spirit of a peaceful reconciliation. In this necessarily collective undertaking, the end, which not an ending at all, belongs to everyone.” 

*

I go back to the house. I sit on the porch and look out into the field. I take my pills. I drink Blue Gatorade, which tastes like blue, nothing else. I start sleeping with the door open. I read and I write. I go to Zoom meetings and email people back. I interpret dreams, or I don’t. I text my friends. I think I am getting better, and I try to move past the fear that I never will. I spend long hours thinking about my parents. I listen to my music, loud. My podcasts, quieter. 

One day, I arrive from getting groceries and open the door and the house is freezing. I finally have air conditioning. Nothing feels out of place, everything feels familiar. Like a door clicking closed. Like unfinished business finally finished, or, well, something in progress. A moving wheel, a warm flood.

Okay, I say. You win. I’m home. 

And if something wishes to rush to meet me, I open my arms and let it.

Autumn Fourkiller is from rural Oklahoma. She is currently at work on a novel about ghosts, grief, and Indigeneity. A 2022 Ann Friedman Weekly Fellow, her work can be found in Longreads, Atlas Obscura, and Catapult, among others. You can follow her newsletter, Dream Interpretation for Dummies, on Substack.