An Already Haunted House
An Already Haunted House
By: Jennifer Anne Gordon
I was a ghostly girl, playing with a Ouija board on the kitchen floor while our family…this is when we still had family—poured in. The house was warm. The air was sweet with sticky buns, and almost oppressive with turkey smells. My body felt starchy like I had a thin layer of mashed potatoes rubbed into my skin like a fine French lotion.
My mother stepped up and over me, as little Missy and I tried to conjure the dead. We were close to the kiddie table but had aged out of it. Thank God.
We had not gotten big enough for the grown-up table, so we knew we would eat in the living room, in front of the turned-off television. The carpet stained where my cat Casper would religiously spill any drink we brought in there.
This was before the family drifted apart, becoming wraiths. This was before my mother stopped coming home at night, before my father got a cancer diagnosis that he ignored, and before my cousin Jessica turned her first trick…she became a heroin addict before or after that…I don’t know.
Her eyes were haunted that day—I thought she was tired, but there was something inside of me that knew I could not let her touch that Ouija board. Instead, she watched, her eyes were wide and dark.
Missy and I talked to the dead.
