The Lock (No time, part 9)

Haunted:

 Collaborative International Dictionary of English says this is an adjective meaning (1) Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost. (2) a location, frequented by a ghost or ghosts. (3) Obsessed (by an idea, threat, etc.).

Another source defines the adjective as referencing a place or person frequented by ghosts, or having experienced unsettling memories.

Yet another source includes the feeling of Nostalgia and the act of Reflection. It continues: On the emotional spectrum, "haunted" can imply a sense of longing or grappling with significant past events, suggesting a profound impact on ones psyche.

He had been thinking about all these aspects of the word as he tried to tell her about the items in one of the drawers of his Cabinet of Curiosities. He was finding it extremely difficult to express his thoughts… Here is what he was holding, ever so carefully, in his hands as he spoke.

This something haunted (a house, 

A lock of hair, next to a faded silk ribbon. A brittle flower.

He had inherited the lock of hair. He knew all about its origin. Its owner had been twelve. The hair, wrapped in fragile, translucent tissue paper, had been kept in a safe place by his mother. The accompanying scrapbook was filled with every one of the obituaries printed in a broad radius of the place where the tragedy had occurred. He was amazed that he knew the story. It wasn’t pleasant, but there was something else about it.

 The parents of the deceased were his grandparents. They never recovered from their grief; they twisted and became distorted beneath its weight. She - the person whose hair had been preserved - had been his mother’s sister and his mother spoke of her from time to time, telling the story in a pained and reverent tone. She told the story so often that she breathed life into the golden curl again. He had inherited the package with the scrapbook full of articles, the pressed flower, and the coiled hair.

He explained:

I think this collection of things that chronicle the story of her death is haunted. The story haunts me because one mother’s grief was passed on to her remaining daughter, who passed it on to me. Lillian was gone decades before I was born, but these objects are possessed by something inexplicable. I can hear them whisper, rustle, scream discreetly, and accept the fact that they are my inheritance now. I possess the same grief, as if it were poured into me. Years and distance are irrelevant. The lock of hair and the accompanying objects are a knife to my thoughts. I remember the girl even though I never knew her. Now, too, I am her keeper.

I can hear the girl’s laughter as she took turns skating around the block with another girl who met the same fate. I can hear their screams when they were sliced in half by a car driven by a stupid Cornell professor of Mathematics. I am at the scene, horrified. Young bodies, destroyed, yet unable or unwilling to be erased from three generations of memories. I can’t see the blood; I only recall the girls’ voices, their feeling of being betrayed by life. Life cut short, literally.

A reality more haunting than any fake ghost or skeleton on Halloween.

I have seen two pictures of her alive, and a third one of her in the casket, peaceful. I am sorry I don’t have the picture and its frame, because I remember how she looked so peaceful. Sleeping. 

She does not stop telling me her story, I think she wants to be near me even though we have never met. Although I am aware that she cannot hurt me, I am ashamed to say I always flinch when she tells me. Her voice is my mother’s voice (they were sisters, after all) and so it brings with it the memory of my mother, who also is no longer alive. She left her pain here with me and it often walks beside me, invades my bedroom, sits atop a pile of newly purchased books. I never invite her; she just appears, probably about once a week. She is just there, then fades until the next appearance.

This all happened a century ago. I, who never met her, am the only one who remembers her, and I worry who will tend to her when I am gone? Ironically, I had two sisters, but they don’t haunt me in the same way the lock of hair - gently coiled - does, lying in a box of time. Occasionally the haunting is too much. I know I have to resist it and little by little have managed to do that. You might say I have been rewriting that very haunting, telling myself it’s fiction, not a true story. Besides that, it’s a symbol of something good, of good things: memory and being the one who inherited it and will keep it alive, even as I wonder why I do it.

She listened, thinking how morbid the story was, but not telling him that because he looked so serious. She suggested that perhaps he could discard the box and its contents or, better yet, donate the items to a museum. She knew about the Victorian art form, although she didn’t know it already existed in the Middle Ages and was common in Sweden and Denmark. She didn’t know the famous Godey’s Lady’s Book published patterns for what was called hairwork. Nor did she know there was a society founded to promote it in 1994. All in all, it seemed a little creepy to her, even though she didn’t say that to him.

He didn’t know how his allegiance to a remote past contrasted fiercely with her memories. He wasn’t aware that she had spent her adult life trying to destroy each and every image from the past, had to, in order to survive. One struggling to understand his odd loyalty, the other working to erase everything, feeling no loyalty to the pain.

I wonder if I should tell him about my family? Would he believe me? Would he think I’m strange or something worse than that? I’ve never talked about any of it. I’m jealous of his family.

He saw the look on her face and thought he’d been wrong to tell her about the box, the lock of hair, the album, and the fragile rose tied with a stained silk ribbon. He worried that she might think he was strange for keeping such things, for his fixation with them. Then he said:

Maybe I’m haunted by the things in this box, not because of the items themselves but because they are memory markers. 

She responded: Why do we need memories at all? Isn’t it better to live in the present? He shook his head, thinking she might be right, but refusing to admit it. I can’t live without them, whether they are painful or not, I guess. These things seem haunted but also they help me see into the past. She shivered, never wanting to see into her own past, determined not to.

Neither of them realized how different they were, nor did they know what might happen if they ever figured that out. In any event, there wasn’t much more to be said about the old box, the lock of golden hair, the dry rose on the verge of disintegrating, the album full of obituaries. The fact was, everything had survived for a century and for the time being that was justification enough for inclusion in his collection of Curiosities. 

They would eventually discover the reason for that.