Cinnamon Twigs: The Life and Pseudocide of a Celebrity

CHAPTER NINE: A Ghost from the Past

CHAPTER NINE

A Ghost from the Past

Someone singularly special swam among the first years, when I entered my second year of college. Her golden hair fell just below her shoulders, and her wide green eyes smiled at me whenever she passed me in the corridors. I asked around and found out who she was.

     Could this be the same gummy-mouthed girl I’d known throughout my childhood? The tomboy I’d once promised to marry, so we could be mates forever? Lisa Cartwright had become pretty darn gorgeous in my absence. I could tell she recognized me. But we still hadn’t spoken in college, so she might have thought I’d been ignoring her.

     Sunbeams ignited the concrete path on the September afternoon that she spoke to me. I smoked a cigarette outside the main college building. Students chatted away in the background, filling the air with jovial laughter.

     ‘You don’t recognize me, do you?’

     Her voice travelled through the laughter. I turned around and smiled broadly.

     ‘You’ve changed, Lisa.’

     ‘In a good way, I hope!’ She chuckled.

     ‘Of course.’

     ‘I switched colleges. The one I went to didn’t do Film studies, so I’ll finish my A levels this year and just do Film as an AS.’ She ran her fingers through her silky hair.

     ‘You always loved your films.’ I lit another cigarette. ‘How’s your mum?’

     ‘Same as ever. How about yours? Still crazy?’

     ‘Yep. Where do you live now?’

     ‘Same place. Still in our old neighborhood.’

     We sat on a bench under the cool shade of a tree and talked about old times. She brought many memories back to me. We chatted about our ghost stories and bike rides. We laughed hard when she reminded me of the time we’d ventured into the mysterious warehouse at the end of the street.

     The building had always fascinated us. So at the age of eleven, Lisa, Elliott and I wandered through the shady summer night, gazing up at the proud building with its two large, circular windows. The windows surveyed the street like a pair of phantom eyes; they reminded me of the movie, The Amityville Horror. A melancholy mist crept under a rusty door protruding from a moldy wall at the side of the warehouse. The naked moon bathed in the twilight darkness, and a parliament of owls cooed conspiratorially among the trees as we tried kicking the door open.

     Our hearts raced when the door finally opened, revealing broad shadows. We couldn’t go back. Lisa’s parents thought she was staying over mine. My mother thought I was staying over Elliott’s, and his parents thought he was spending the night at my place. The lies had been told, the die had been cast - jacta alea est.

     We wandered through the blackness until we found a switch. Light spilled into the room, revealing old washing machines and other household stuff. Frankly, I’d expected something creepier. The scents of dust and damp earth filled the air as we crept up a wooden staircase, which creaked under our footsteps. Moonlight filtered through the circular windows, submerging the upstairs storeroom in white light. Our neighborhood looked small from such a high viewpoint, the grey rooftops mere flecks under the shadowy warehouse.

     ‘Let’s sleep in here,’ I said, running my fingers across the soft carpeted floor.

     We lay next to each other, telling ghost stories as imaginary figures emerged from the various cardboard boxes dotted around the room. I eventually closed my eyes and drifted into sleep as Lisa’s soft hair caressed my cheek.

     Red light streamed through the windows when I reopened my eyes, awakened by a piercing scream.

     ‘What is it?’ I murmured.

     ‘I saw a ghost!’ Elliott danced around the room as if a hot poker had been jammed up his arse.

     ‘Yeah, right,’ Lisa groaned.

     ‘I saw a woman, just over there.’ Elliott pointed at a corner of the room. ‘She had blonde hair and blue eyes.’

     ‘What was she doing?’ I asked.

     ‘She was looking at you, mate.’

     ‘We need to go.’ Lisa’s face looked as pale as any painted spectre’s.

     A door slammed underneath us, the crashing sound echoing through the walls. We crawled on our hands and knees, hiding behind three large boxes. A figure emerged at the top of the stairs, wielding an axe.

     ‘Who’s in here?’

     Elliott jumped up and apologized.

     ‘Coward,’ I grumbled.

     ‘Kerist! You scared the shit out of me. Get out of here right now, you little bastards!’ The woman lowered her axe and wiped her moist brow as we rushed past her.

     Lisa giggled when she finished reminding me of that night.

     ‘It’s strange, but Elliott had a nasty bruise on his cheek the next morning. He blamed the ghost!’ she said.

     ‘That’s nonsense,’ I told her. ‘He tripped over and banged his head on a washing machine as we were running out of there…’

     Lisa fitted in perfectly with Michael and me, and we spent hours discussing stuff like the film business and how to make it in that profession. Under the pendant branches of our favorite oak tree, I would lay next to Lisa and Michael in a vibrant scene of splashed colors and primy flowers. That summer, Ox-eye daisies had sprung from the fields and a fluttering haze of white butterflies descended on the distant meadows. We would inhale the salubrious air and the sweet scents of blooming vegetation. Michael would grab clumps of grass and toss them. Lisa and I would fix our eyes on the wispy clouds drifting in the oceanic sky, the warm sunlight spilling onto her pretty features.

     Our conversations about the film industry and whatnot might have seemed odd to the other students playing rugby or smoking weed on the benches. But I craved those talks because I knew we weren’t regular college students. We had dreams, aspirations of making something of ourselves before we grew old, and we never conformed to the norm. Those days were great fun, those butterfly memories, full of intelligent debates, smiling faces, youthful hues and the expanding cosmos in Lisa’s eyes.