preparation 1

Once there was a rich man who lived under a curse.  He lived in his family's mansion in the country and everything around was big and beautiful.  But, there was also a ghost.  She roamed the halls of the mansion, leaving little trails of water everywhere she went, which was because she had drowned.  Why did she haunt the rich man?  Well, she was a family curse, the way the house was the family house.  The rich man's grandfather had been her employer in the city, in a big house with an old well in the basement.  One day, the girl had fallen in and nobody found her for months, not until they decided to renovate the basement and fix up the well.  Then, they discovered her poor body - and also a treasure!  The rich man's grandfather had immediately taken the treasure, sold the house in the city and bought the country mansion, and at the same time he had sent the girl's body to her village in a sealed coffin with no explanation.  Nobody claimed her and she was buried in a nameless tomb, which made her spirit angry and restless.

She actually hadn't haunted her master - she didn't know where he'd gone when he left the city house, and ghosts have trouble getting directions.  When she finally came upon the country mansion, attached to a painting commissioned for her master's niece and her first-born daughter, the man was already dead.  Just a month before, in fact.  Her anger did not diminish with this information, but instead boiled hotter than ever.  How dare he escape into the afterlife without having to confront her!  To sooth her bruised pride, she settled into haunting his son, who had inherited the house and all his father's wealth, and therefore his curse, too.  Unfortunately, he had been away when the death and discovery had occurred, and naturally his father had not seen fit to mention a drowned servant girl to his son.  He was completely unprepared for the haunting.

He spent months raging at the servants about the puddles and squishy carpets before it finally became clear that there was something strange going on.  Drawing on all her wrath, the ghost appeared to him one night in his bedchamber and demanded he do his father's duty and lay her soul to rest.  When the shock wore off, the man indignantly refused, saying he wouldn't stand for this slur on his father's character.  Now the ghost was shocked and lost concentration, making her disappear.  The next night she tried again, and a sort of grudge match began.  The man and the ghost glared at each other all night, each expecting the other to give in.  The ghost, of course, did not suffer for lack of sleep, but the man began to show his physical vulnerability.  He started sleeping in a different chamber every night, and when the ghost found him he was often too deeply asleep for her to wake him.  The best she could do was leave the rugs cold and soaking for when he arose the next morning.  It went on this way for years and years.

Eventually, her master's son also died, giving the ghost a haughty snort as his spirit left the house.  The ghost still couldn't leave herself, as she had found no more peace in the last years than she'd had on discovering she was dead and shoved aside.  She was forced to start haunting her old master's grandson.

The grandson knew of his father's troubles, of course.  He had felt the dripping fabric and slid and played on the flooded floors, much to his nurse's dismay.  He did not know the story behind it; he did not even know how the family had come into its current wealth.  One does not discuss those things.  The ghost was part of the family for him, and when she came to him with her demands, his explanation that he couldn't undo what his ancestors had done did nothing to soothe her.  But even more infuriating was that the oaf then just rolled over and went to sleep.  Try as she might, the man was never frightened or upset at her manifestations, falling asleep easily and waking in the morning saying, "Ah, just like when I was a boy," or "It's good the plants don't need watering."

The ghost spent many a frustrating year trying to make a mark on her new victim.  Although he was never perturbed, his servants had an extremely high turnover, his friends never accepted his invitations to spend the night when they passed through the area, and he was never able to work out a successful marriage contract.  When he was at home, he spent most of his time alone.  He was an amiable man, and hardly grumbled about the lack of backbone in servants and well-bred women as compared to his father's days.  Finally, he was able to hire a country girl as a maid.  She was from a poor and desperate family that was happy to place her in the hands any fortune, and the girl herself was not particularly bright.  She had no interest at all in things like ghosts or unnatural events, and thought only of consistently doing her duty.  The ghost ignored her entirely, as she did with everyone who wasn't her target, despite their sometimes suffering the consequences of her watery presence.  It took a remarkably observant day in the rich man's life for him to notice how much they resembled each other.  "She could be your granddaughter," he chuckled to the ghost just before dropping off to sleep.  At first the ghost was in a fury at his words, as she had died before even being kissed, but then her curiosity arose.  She flowed down to the kitchen where the girl was readying things for the next morning's meal.  She hardly seemed to notice when the ghost splooshed through the door.  It had been a long time since the ghost had seen her own face, but here she could compare her pallid reflection in a shiny saucepan with the girl's ruddy face as she sat at the table, squeezing wads of dough for breakfast biscuits.  Grimly, the ghost noted the similarities for herself.

"Where are you from, girl?" she asked after a few moments.

"From the Town of Cherry Trees," replied the girl obediently, without looking up from her task.  Indeed, that was were the ghost herself had come from.

"Who was your grandfather?" she asked next, and the girl stopped her kneading and looked up at the ceiling to think.

"My mother's father was called Carlito and my father's father was Anaclitor."  Heavy thinking completed, she looked down at the dough again.  Then she commented, off-hand, "His family was famous for a time because his aunt disappeared in the city and his father almost went to jail because he accused her employer of having something to do with it."  The girl looked up again, struck with enlightenment.  "Why, he was the man who bought this house, my master's grandfather!" and she went back to her work, pleased with her good memory.  If she'd had a spine, the ghost would have felt a shiver down it.  In all those years she had never considered what her family had done when she died, she had only been consumed with her personal revenge.

"But he didn't go to jail?" she asked softly.

The girl's forehead wrinkled as she tried to remember the story.  "No," she answered slowly, "The mayor in the city wanted him arrested, but the chief of police didn't like the rich man much and felt sympathy for great-grandfather.  But there was no evidence the rich man had done anything, so in the end the case was forgotten.  The family left the village, though."

"Left?"

"Yes, the sorrow was too strong.  My parents only returned because they were left landless when their parents died, and nobody had wanted to buy our old fields in the village.  Enough time had passed by then that nobody was much reminded of the lost woman."

The ghost was now sitting on the kitchen bench and brooding.  "So, my family is on the old land.  Do they not visit my grave?"

"Nobody knows if she was ever found," replied the girl, seeming to ignore the ghost's claim to be her relative.

The ghost slowly flowed out into the hall, leaving a trail of icy puddles in her wake.  She wandered the halls aimlessly all the night and next day, before making her way late the next night to the rich man's bedroom.  He was not yet asleep.  He had recently taken up reading crime novels before bed and spent hours and candles getting to "just one more page."  The ghost had to soak his slippers through the rug to get his attention.  A bit surprised by her solemness in place of the customary rage, he listened carefully to her new instructions.  Once she had finished, his face lit up and he exclaimed, "Oh, what fun!  It's like one of my stories!" and at the ghost's suggestion, he put down the book and tried to rest before beginning his adventure the next day.

In the morning, the rich man hitched the horse (there had been no stable boy for many months) and called his maid to direct him to her village.  She seemed neither surprised nor excited, just accepting the task like any other.  The ghost tried to be discreet and travel in a large vase, but the horse was soon dripping with nervous sweat rather than paranormal secretions.  Upon arrival, the rich man sent his maid to take the vase to the cemetery and then visit with her parents until he came for her, and then he went to the mayor's house to examine the village records.  After receiving the gift of a bottle of fine red wine, the mayor left the rich man to his investigation, which in only a few hours uncovered the delivery of a coffin from the rich man's grandfather and the burial of said coffin in the cemetery.  The man raced to the maid's parents' house to share the news.  At his and the maid's urging, her parents went with them to the cemetery, bringing sprigs of toad back vine, what the locals preferred to decorate graves with.  At the graveyard, they moved the vase to the side of the blank stone that marked the site of the mystery tomb.  The ghost emerged from the vase with water overflowing the lip like tears from a mourner's eyes.  "Great gods!" gasped the maid's father, "How alike they are!"  That was enough for the older couple, and they set about clearing the weeds from the grave, carefully arranging the vines with their dark purple flowers, and planning to have the relative's name painted on the stone at last.  The rich man eagerly offered to pay for the cleaning that the stone would need first, as he was terribly pleased with having solved this little mystery and wanted to celebrate it somehow.  The maid was using her apron to brush leaves and petals from the top of the stone.  The ghost felt all her rancor and spite melt away as her life was remembered and her end was recognized, and she sank into the soil like a gentle spring rain, full of peace.