For All Life Has to Offer

Hide and Seek

There's a ghost in my closet.

There's a ghost in my closet and no one believes me. I'm alone in my bedroom with nothing but a door separating the ghost and I from each other.

I hear her giggling.

She's playing with my shoes and keepsakes I have buried behind those white accordion doors.

I know she wants me to look, otherwise why would she be so loud? But the idea of leaving the safety of my bed and opening my closet door frightens me.

When I do sleep, I dream of before the funeral...when my sister was still here and the bed next to mine was hers. I dream of my brother playing with us in the backyard, to close to where the land drops off and the forest begins at the bottom.

My brother and I don't play hide and seek anymore.

The weather that day had been gloomy; rain all morning and with just a few hours in between the falling raindrops, we three bored children decided to play outside.

Naturally our mother was asleep, not far and completely unaware of our wanderings outside the home. My adorable little sister had begged us to play, hide and seek was her favorite. My brother and I, feeling particularly cooperative, agreed to the game.

If we'd only known that with the next rainfall, a hearse would be carrying our sweet sister away.

I'm awake again, but not alone. The ghost in the closet is crying now, calling out to the living. She doesn't want to be alone either.

This time I muster the courage to throw back my comforter and pad across the carpeted floor of my bedroom to the closet doors.

The crying stops and for a moment I fear the closet will be empty. I've come this far; I have to know. So, I pull open the squeaky accordion doors and peer inside.

The transparent, shiny, white image of large, brown, innocent eyes and babyish features stares up at me in alarm.

"Sister." The ghost cries.

My tongue feels like lead inside my mouth and my body freezes, it seems that in my surprise I have become the dead and the ghost before me is the living.

"Sister!" the ghost wails and begins to cry again, sadness radiates from her form and the divide between her current state and mine is broken. I kneel to be closer to her.

"Don't cry." I reach to touch her as I would have done before the funeral, "why are you crying?"

The ghost of my sister turns away from my hand, I know that I cannot touch her anyway. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" I want nothing more than to see her smile again.

"I'm sorry I have left you here alone." My little sister fades, and when she's gone this time, I never see her again.