Beckoning

When you hear ghost stories, they never involve physical harm, so that there seems no reason to think of them as dangerous, and yet they still terrify us, perhaps all the more because of it: if they cannot act on the world around them, then why are they there? It's as if there is a purpose in their mere appearance to us, as if they can make our own minds turn against us. But the truth is always more terrifying than the fiction that tries to cover it up. That's why I'd rather believe in ghosts, ghosts that merely pass into this world, keeping me from considering the terrible question: If they were always just inside my own mind, then how can I ever get away from them? So without even knowing it I try to give them a reality, to try and contain it into a form that can be localized some distance away from me, making me feel like I have some chance to fight or flee. I can't run away from something that's inside my head, and that's why I try not to look at them, lest their image would enter into my head. Whatever they are trying to tell me, I know that once I know, I will never be able to forget it; so I contain my curiosity, and ignore their beckoning.

One night I woke up to see a shadow standing at my doorway. As I stared at it I tried to think of what I could have left there that would assume a form so similar to that of a person. It could've been a shirt, had I left one hanging on a coathanger from the doorframe. It was so still, and I as still as it, that it left me to these speculations for some time, before I saw it raise an arm with a deliberation that still left some doubt in my mind whether it could not somehow have been the wind or gravity that somehow moved it in this fashion. I didn't move, hoping that I would likewise not be recognized as a person, when the hand motioned me towards it. I panicked and reached for the lightswitch, and the light punished me with an unusual glare that made me blink. When I looked at the shadow, the light became a tunnel that took up all my field of view. It felt as if my brain was sucked into it through the back of my head and back through the middle. Something was seeping into my mind through the tunnel of light, as if countless tiny runes were written into its walls. When I resisted it with all my might, it was only to faint, and slip into the tunnel unconscious.

That was the first time I saw the shadow, and every time I tried to see the shadow clearly, I would see the tunnel again, leaving no memory of their face in my mind, as if I'm not allowed to see it. I fainted several more times over the next few days, and no psychiatrist or neurologist could find out what's wrong with me. So of course all my friends kept asking me what it is, trying to label it as a ghost or alien, so in the end I obliged and called it "my ghost." It's almost comforting to give some name to that amorphism that I can never quite place in one shape or another: it's about human in size, but it might just as well be an ellipse with appendages of sorts. It looks like it's shifting in shape as I look at it, and the more I pay attention to the fact that it's shifting, the more it does so. Perhaps I'm just recognizing things I understand in it in trying to place it.

When I woke up to see the shadow in my room again, I didn't turn on the light. I waited and waited for it to go away. When it didn't, I whispered: "What do you want?" It could impossibly have heard it, and yet it replied in its own whisper: "Enter the tunnel." The sound of the whisper was subtle somehow, as if hiding just below the layer of reality that pokes holes in it like a mole, except that the creature doesn't feel like a mole, but more like a giant that claws at it in boredom, ready to crush it around me any moment and snatch me into the depths of madness beyond recall.

"What does it mean?"

"Nothing." "You and your meanings!" its mocking tone seemed to say, as if there were no such mythical creature.

"Who are you?"

"I'm a feeling." The whisper became more subtle, burrowing deeper into my mind like a worm. "Sometimes feelings blow from the east, sometimes from the west. Sometimes a solar wind comes from above." Or more like a firestorm, I thought, thinking of the tunnel, the all-consuming vortex of fire that reminds me more of Dresden than near-death experiences. Whatever this thing is, it's clear that it's something very rare, since no doctor has been able to find its cause.

"Where will the tunnel take me?"

"Nowhere," it says. I see its hand reach out for the lightswitch, and as it turns it on, for the first time I remember seeing its face. I don't remember what it looks like, only that I remember that I saw it. I don't even remember what emotion it evoked, or if it was a strong one. The tunnel took me farther down its winding path this time, my resistance having been weakened by the confusing dialogue in my head. But at the end, I didn't remember it taking me anywhere. I only remember the sensation, which is impossible to describe: the flames seemed to be both hot and cold, sharp and smooth, fast and slow, bright and dark all at once, as if all the possible sensations came together into a formless whole, imploding my mind into a black hole.