Ghost Walz

I shivered and awoke with a start. The room was dark except for a single pale white hand reaching out towards me. My mouth was dry and I felt terrified, but the hand only cupped my face and then withdrew. The hand was attached to a beautiful woman in white with platinum blonde hair and silver eyes who looked down at me with an indiscernible expression and then took a few steps back, gesturing for me to follow.

“Who? Who are you?” I asked.

A light clicked on to my left.

“What’s going on?” Mai asked rubbing her eyes.

“There’s someone,” I gestured at the foot of the bed, but the woman was gone.

“Never mind.”

Was she a dream?

***

“Honey you’ve hardly touched your Bahn Mi. Is my cooking so terrible?” Mai scolded.

“Bó tay, I am just distracted. You are a wonderful cook,” I scooped a big mouthful of egg into my mouth to prove it. She smiled at me warmly before running off to fuss over Pá who was trying to get up from the floor cushion without help again.

“I don’t need your help child.”

“Let her help Pá, I’m not buying you a second replacement hip,” I said.

“Bạn đang không lắng nghe tôi,” Pá complained, but he allowed Mai to help him up.

“You are a sweet girl, much too good for my son,” I heard from down the hallway.

“I can still hear you,” I said but Pá didn’t hear me or more likely chose not to hear me.

Pá was growing more cantankerous every year, but I didn’t really mind. He was never boring.

I took a sip of my tea and started looking around for the sugar. I liked my tea a fair amount sweeter than Mai made it, but I never told her so, I just snuck a scoop or two when she wasn’t looking.

The sugar was on Pá’s side of the table. I was feeling lazy so instead of getting up and walking around like a reasonable person I attempted to reach across the table. Unfortunately, it was just a few fingers away from my maximum stretch distance. I exhaled and leaned back resolving to settle for unsweetened tea when the sugar bowl suddenly lifted up off the ground and flung itself at me.

“Trời ơi!” I scrambled backwards as the sugar bowl soared straight past me and shattered on the wall behind me.

“What happened!” Mai asked rushing back into the room.

“I don’t, the sugar just leapt at me. I can’t explain it.”

Mai frowned at the mess. “I liked that sugar bowl. It had those cute ducks.”

“Xin lỗi,” I said bowing my head. “I’ll buy you another one. I promise.”

Mai offered me a small smile as she swept up the last bits of porcelain and sugar.

I looked at the spot where the sugar had been and felt a line of needle pricks ran down my spine.

“Tell me Mai, do you believe in ghosts?”

“No. Well I’ve never seen one anyway. Hana always said she saw ghosts everywhere, but I think she might have just been looking for attention. Why? Do you believe in ghosts.”

I shook my head. “No, or rather I didn’t, but this ma nữ keeps waking me up in the middle of the night. She seems to want me to follow her somewhere. I thought it was just a dream, but it just feels so real and now this. It’s just very strange.”

Mai put on a stern face and put her hands on her hips. “Kẻ phản bội! You are not cheating on me with this ma nữ are you?” she broke into a slight smirk.

I shook my head. “No. It’s definitely nothing like that. It’s just a weird dream, nothing to worry about.”

Mai frowned at my serious expression and crouched down to hold my hand.

“And the sugar?”

I sucked my teeth. I felt like changing the subject.

“Pá is not doing well with the low table, I am thinking it is time for a change.”

“Yes! I have been saying this! We must get a western set. It will be so beautiful, and it would be easier for him to get up and down,” Mai stood to better outline her vision.

“I know, but this is an heirloom from ông nội. We’ve always eaten our meals here,” I looked down at the intricate lotus carvings across the face and legs of the old table. Mai had kept it in excellent condition over the years as Má had done before her.

“We’ll find somewhere else to keep it,” Mai put her hand on my shoulder, and I laid my hand on top of hers. Mai seemed to know exactly what I was thinking at times. I did love her.

“Perhaps we can put the gramophone on top of it. Pá would like that.”

“Da. A good place.”

***

That night, the silver woman appeared again. Her cold hand touched my cheek and then she stood with one hand outstretched at the foot of the bed. I looked at Mai, still sleeping, framed by her feathery black hair. The ghost did not wake her up.

I thought about shaking her or calling out again, but I believed that would just scare the ghost off again. That night I felt less afraid and more curious as I watched the strange apparition floating at the foot of the bed. The digital clock on Mai’s nightstand read 1:11.

I really should really let her sleep. It was bad enough to wake her up in the middle of the night once with my foolish dreams. As I thought the words I realized that that was what this was, a dream and there was no real harm in indulging a dream.

I stood to follow the woman. She flowed gracefully through the door. I slowly opened and closed the door, careful not to wake up Mai or Pá. The woman flowed gracefully down the hall and led me into the living room. She floated in place in front of the gramophone and held out one arm towards it.

“Do you want me to play this?” I whispered.

The woman just stared at me with her serene silver eyes.

“It will wake everyone up,” I argued.

The ghost looked at me imploringly, but my faith my dream hypothesis was beginning to waver. The living room looked too real. The coffee cup I’d left by the armchair this morning was still there next to yesterday’s newspaper. The details were all too clear and accurate. I shuddered and stepped away from the ghost and the gramophone. I shut my eyes.

I woke up with a start. I was slumped into my armchair with Mai shaking me awake. “Tôi không hiểu! Why are you out here?”

I rubbed my eyes feeling exhausted. “I don’t know. I had the strangest dream.”

I looked up at the gramophone still waiting to be played, where the ghost had just been. I looked back at my wife’s concerned face and forced a smile. It was just a bad dream, but then how did I end up in the living room? Was I sleepwalking?

I shook it off and muttered some reassurances to Mai before heading into Pá’s room to help him out of bed.

***

Night after night, the ghost returned. I indulged her for the first few nights, but eventually I began refusing her. Still, she continued to wake me up again and again, it was always the same, like a broken record.  

“Banh, did you hear what I just said?”

“Huh?” I looked up blearily from my plate.

“You’re even more absentminded than me son,” Pá laughed.

“This is getting ridiculous. We must do something about your sleep.”

“Yeah. She keeps coming. The ma nữ. It is hard to get back to sleep after that.”

“What’s this? You’re not sleeping. You’re a young man. You need your sleep! At least until you grow old like me and you can make Vihn take care of you, you have to make sure you’re sleeping well enough to put food on the table. My sweets aren’t going to buy themselves you know!”

“Thank you for your concern Pá,” I rolled my eyes.

Pá laughed and got to his feet with Mai’s help.

“Try a shot of Rượu Gạo before bed, that always works for me.”

Mai and I sat and drank our tea together. I still hadn’t gotten around to buying a new sugar bowl, so my tea was too bitter, but I didn’t mind. I looked at my beautiful wife as she nursed her teacup and felt a profound gratitude for my life as my eyes grew heavy.

My eyes shot back open as doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Mai said as she began to stand.

“Who is calling this early?” I asked.

“It’s Hana. I invited her. You are not sleeping. This ghost situation is out of hand,” Mai rattled off one sentence after another as if to overwhelm any theoretical complaints I had before I could even think of them.  

I did feel like arguing, but I was too tired. I set down my cup and closed my eyes for a second as Mai answered the door.

Suddenly, Hana and Mai were behind me whispering together by the sink. I must have nodded off.

“He’s being haunted by some sort of spirit,” Mai whispered. “It doesn’t let him sleep at night. He’s been like this for days now, maybe weeks. He says it’s just bad dreams, but there are other things happening around the house, strange things I can’t explain.”

“Yes, I see this a lot with malevolent spirits. It is not just dreams. The spirit must be weakening Bahn for some purpose.”

“For what?”

“Nothing good, to possess him perhaps so it can return to the world of the living in his body, or it could be a ma lai hungry for human flesh. I’ve heard of things like that.”

“On television?”

“No, not on television. In real life.”

“Just because it says based on real life, doesn’t make it real.”

“Chịu! Do you want my help or not?”

“Yes.”

“Good, then listen to me, we must purify your home of evil spirits. We’ll start by burning sage and incense in every room.”

Mai was right about this ghost situation getting out of control, it was only a matter of time before it affected my work, but somehow I doubted Hana’s store bought incense sticks were going to do anything. I came to a decision as I let myself nod off again.

***

I napped on and off during the day while the girls ran around setting up various wards around the house including more incense, lines of salt in front of every doorway, and mirrors and thorny plants in the halls. Pá complained intermittently about the changes, but his heart wasn’t in it. I could sense that he was worried about me too.

That night, I opened my eyes seconds before the ghost came for me again, I could set the clock based on her arrival by then.

She was beckoning for me to follow her and I did. Again, she led me down the hall towards the living room. She floated easily over the line of salt at the bedroom door, obviously. It’s salt on the ground and the ghost floats in the air, that one never made sense to me. She did, however, stop at one of the mirrors Hana and Mai had left out. She looked at herself and touched her own ethereal skin briefly before moving on.

We reached the living room and again she floated and pointed at the gramophone, it was obvious what she wanted and I had decided to indulge her, I’d do whatever she wanted as long as I could get back to sleep.  

I stuffed a sock into the horn to muffle the sound to hopefully let Mai and Pá sleep as played the record.

The record that played was not one of ours. The recording was something beautiful and slow, the song seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. It was certainly the product of one of those old composers. Chopin or Mozart or someone. I thought the song was a waltz. I didn’t know much about music.

The ghostly woman turned from the gramophone and approached me. I stayed rooted to the spot as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest. She placed one cold hand on my chest, then put the other hand on my waist and slid the first hand down my arm until we were holding hands.

She was somehow both substantial and insubstantial as she guided me through the steps of the waltz. One-two-three, one-two-three.

She seemed to become more and more alive as we danced together. We were suddenly transported somewhere far away, some ballroom with dozens of other couples all dancing in time. She became warmer as the dance progressed. Her hair, eyes, and skin darkened to their colors in life. Freckles appeared across her face and arms, and she seemed to be growing taller as she smiled at me.

“Má?”

I couldn’t help but smile as I felt my little Bahn’s tiny hands grasp each of my pinkies as I walked him through the moves of the mother son dance. He was staring down at his feet, his chubby cheeks were pushed down with his frown of concentration, but he still kept messing up the moves and his tiny feet trampled all over mine. I laughed, picked him up, and twirled him around and around. His cherubic little face was so beautiful and pure. I prayed I could stay with him in that moment forever.