Each Remembered a Different House

She drove the minibus the way she always did—carefully. When they reached their destination, she opened the automatic door, and the passengers stepped out one by one, gathered together, and waited for the driver.

Not a sound disturbed the silence around them.

It was that chilling time before demolition.

The driver stepped out of the minibus after making sure no one was left behind.

The Veical was the minibus of the "Night Mover's Ghost Transport Service."

Darkness wrapped the house and Yard. There was a purpose to the nighttime pre-demolition ceremony.

Under no circumstances could the gathering ghosts be seen.

The little house awaiting destruction stood crooked beneath the moonlight.

Everyone in the group had known this house at different times.

Some knew each other; others were strangers.

Everyone expected the driver to open the gathering, and so she did.

"Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the demolition site of our house."

The driver looked at the ageless ghosts and felt grateful that they had agreed to take part in the demolition ceremony.

"Tonight we are going to free this house from its burden; hopefully, it will free us from ours as well. This prison will no longer be a symbol of our attachment to its crumbling walls."

The words came from the depths of the driver's heart and soul. She had been the house's last owner.

She already felt lighter and expected gratitude and agreement from the group. They were a pitiful gathering, bent beneath the weight of suffering, chained to the past.

The driver knew every one of their stories, but the group, now clustered closer to the empty, windowless house, seemed to have other ideas. Perhaps time spent away from the house had changed them.

The first owner was the first to speak, surprising everyone, though they listened with growing anticipation.

A murmur passed through the group like a swarm of flies, rising from years of things left unsaid.

The driver was quite surprised because, before the night's gathering, it had been unanimously agreed that they would remain silent, preserving unity and presenting themselves as one homogeneous group.

What a mistake, the driver thought, to trust ghosts.

People remain people—even as ghosts.

Each of them remembered a different house.

The first owner remembered bare earth, a water barrel, and walls that still stood straight.

The second remembered a narrow kitchen, damp cupboards, and a child coughing through winter.

The third remembered curtains, pills beside the bed, and the ceiling stain she watched until she died.

The dog remembered the fence.

The cats remembered the bucket.

None of them was lying. That was the trouble.

"The house was good. The best one could hope for in those days," said the first owner softly, though with determination, as though defending the sagging house.

Breaking the agreed silence caused considerable commotion—the very thing the driver had feared and hoped to avoid.

Among the gathering crowd were not only people, but also a dog and five cats.

Under ordinary circumstances, the dog was quiet and polite by nature. Under ordinary circumstances, he also possessed restraint. Tonight, anger defeated both.

“There was no fence in my time,” said the second owner.

“Then keep quiet,” said the dog. “You missed the fence.”

“Fence?” asked the first owner.

The dog stared at him.

“Are you really asking?”

For a moment, nobody spoke.

The dog remembered the barbed-wire fence surrounding the house. The first owner remembered a different fence and an entirely different house. That was the trouble with houses. They changed while insisting they remained the same.

“The fence you built between your yard and Mr. Finkelman's—that fence I hung on and died on after terrible suffering. Funny that you, of all people, put up a fence like a concentration camp barrier. Doesn't suit you to praise this house now."

The first owner looked shaken.

"What did you say, you son of a dog? Again, with me being a Kapo, accusations? Who are you to insult me so many years after I died?"

The cats seemed restless, as if they had things to say. They weaved among those present, wrapping their tails around people's legs.

The driver pinned her hopes on the silence that followed the dog's words. The ceremony may continue peacefully. Quietly.

One figure, so hunched as to be nearly invisible, stepped toward the green fence that still stood in place and was supposed to be demolished with the house.

"The land we're standing on used to be mine—and really, all the surrounding land too. But this particular plot was cursed. Peanuts never grew here. Neither did potatoes. Two men with knives slaughtered the guards right here, where the house still stands now."

"So what are you saying?" asked the second owner.

"That the new house built here will also be cursed? I doubt it. Sorry."

The figure moved closer to the crooked white house and looked at it with a strange longing.

"True, I lost a wife here to illness and a child too. Still, I don't believe in curses."

He returned to the circle in small, measured steps.

"Everyone in this village lost loved ones. What do you expect from a community founded for Holocaust survivors?"

The driver's father, a humble man, also stepped out of the circle, though he struggled to speak.

The cats approached him like tigers stalking prey.

"You drowned us in a bucket," they accused.

"Our mother cried and cried while you killed us—helpless kittens."

The driver felt the event slipping out of control, turning into a disgrace.

"Cats, my father lost his sanity in Auschwitz. Don't judge him too harshly."

Her father cried silently, looking like someone who no longer understood what was happening around him.

"Dawn will be here soon," the driver called weakly.

"If we can't find the inner strength to say goodbye to this house—' May it disappear from the face of the earth, amen'—then we can return to the minibus, and I'll take you back to your graves."

"Let's light the memorial candles," the driver tried once more to direct everyone toward the purpose of their gathering.

"Wait, please," called the third owner—the one who had died in her bed inside the house.

"You have to understand—I still haunt the house. It would be strange to drive away my own ghost. I'm having trouble cooperating."

The driver hurried to her side.

"You can stay here. I believe both you and my mother—whom you've probably met if you haunt the house—can continue haunting the new house that will be built here, and the young family that will make their home in it."

The driver was hinting that staying wasn't acceptable or moral, though technically possible.

"Oh, your mother—the crazy one with the kitchen knife?" the third owner asked in complete astonishment.

"Yes. That's my mother," the driver apologized.

"I can't drive her away. I don't have the strength, and neither do you." The driver was still apologizing.

The moon was beginning to disappear in the east. Dawn would rise any moment.

"Friends, let's continue the ceremony or leave now."

The dog began howling at the moon like a rabies-infected wolf.

"Please stop. Our goal is the same, and you're waking the neighbors before we've completed our mission."

The driver continued, speaking quickly but softly.

"Each person takes a lit candle, walks to the house, and extinguishes it there."

And the driver began distributing candles.

Some accepted; others refused. The driver received power of attorney from the dog and the cats to light and extinguish candles on their behalf.

"I remind you, dear friends, tomorrow this house will no longer stand. Our old house will be crushed beneath a bulldozer. Easily destroyed—we all know this house has no foundation at all. Its walls are leaning toward collapse. No One can save it because no one wants to save it."

Murmurs passed like a soft breeze among the participants.

"True. That's true. So true."

Those who chose not to participate had already climbed back into the minibus, ready to return to their graves.

Silently, they sat, showing neither interest nor resistance. They withdrew into themselves and lowered their eyes—or eye sockets, depending on the condition in which they had arrived.

Meanwhile, the rest gathered before the house in an uneven line, each standing where they felt least threatened.

Even the driver did not dare approach too closely, despite the broken fence that allowed access to the house itself.

From where she stood, in the faint light of awakening dawn, the house looked menacing despite its sagging posture and crumbling walls.

From where she stood, the house also looked tired and ready to die. Yet something inside it still held its ground.

The candlelight faintly illuminated the walls, and for a moment, it became difficult to tell shadows from ghosts.

The ceremony took place behind the house rather than facing the street, to prevent nosy neighbors from opening curtains and peering into the neglected yard.

The driver felt that coming here—hoping to free the house from evil—had been the right decision, and she hoped with all her heart that the ceremony would succeed and peace would finally reign within those walls.

Though she knew she could never drive away her mother with memorial candles.

Her mother's memory was embedded in the walls, spreading like mold stains no substance could ever remove.

It was a compromise she had lived with all her life—and even now.

After the minute of timed silence, due to the late hour, the gathered ghosts blew out their candles and threw them toward the house.

Silently, they whispered:

“May it disappear from the face of the earth, amen.”

“Which house are we releasing?” asked the third owner suddenly.

No one answered.

“His house?” She pointed to the first owner. “Your house?” She looked at the second. “Hers?”

The driver then understood the flaw in her plan. She had prepared one farewell for many different houses. There was not one house here. There were several houses, layered one inside the other, each belonging to someone who had suffered differently in it.

There was no sense of unity in the air.

No sense of closure either.

Exhausted, they all—including the dog and cats—began walking toward the minibus parked along a side path.

A transparent, trembling hand suddenly touched the driver's shoulder.

It was the third owner, the one from whom the driver's father had bought the house. Beside her stood her husband, a small figure, much smaller than his wife, staring at the ground.

"My Child... sometimes there really are no endings."

The minibus drove slowly out of the village; luckily, this particular vehicle made no noise.

The driver was certain she saw one or two curtains move in neighboring houses, though it could just as easily have been the wind beginning to rise.

There was a sudden need to leave.

So she drove.