I know. It's that time of year.
My ghosts aren't the kind dressed in an old cotton sheet, ringing the doorbell and holding a bag already half-filled with future cavities.
They aren't the wispy, ephemeral kind either - the Jacob Marleys made of smoke and fog.
They aren't even the kind that rattle chains and throw crockery.
But this time of year, I'm always haunted. And never more so than on this day.
It was nineteen years ago this afternoon that Mouse, my big sister, my protector, Butterfly Woman walked on with the aid of a shotgun, wielded by a stranger, and left me behind.
Some years I handle this date better than others.
This is not one of the "better" ones.
You know, it's not even Kaye's ghost that haunts me. she comes to me sometimes; I always know when it's her. She shows up on wings, as a butterfly, usually. A couple of months ago, on her birthday, she arrived in the dress of a neon lime-green dragonfly - leading a black horse.
But she doesn't haunt me, and I don't think of her spirit as a ghost.
The ghosts that haunt me are far less kind, far less generous of spirit.
There are so many.
Her murderer, even though he's still alive. And his family - what happens in childhood to warp someone that way? To make it acceptable to take someone else's life, and destroy untold other lives in the process, for . . . what? A coffee can filled with change and a couple of old hunting weapons? Where, in what I am reasonably sure was a history of childhood abuse, did the tweak in the wrong direction become irrevocable?
My other sister's boyfriend, who thought it was great sport to use Kaye's murder to stroke his own ego. A fake, a fraud, a fabulist. A cheap criminal and a loser. And he played her death for all it was worth - to him - and quite happily helped further tear our family apart. He's gone now, too.
My [then] surviving sister. Her boyfriend's enabler and chief defender. A woman who used the wedge he provided, upon the fulcrum of Kaye's funeral bier, to finish the job of rending our family in twain. I on one side; everyone else, including her boyfriend, on the other. I would later come to learn that she hated me - had apparently hated me since we were kids. I had never allowed myself to put some of her words and actions into context - so a friend of hers did it for me after her death. Yes, she's gone now, too.
You know what they say about karma. I'm not sure they're wrong.
Other family members. Those who weren't there, couldn't be bothered - or who showed up for all the wrong reasons. Those who thought it a perfect opportunity to save my wretched pagan soul (their interpretation, not mine; I know the difference between Paganism and my own tradition). The hymns, the tracts, the offers to pray for me. Not for peace or comfort, but that I might find my way to [their] God - a "god" of hellfire and brimstone, persecution and wrath, destruction and death. The same "god" used to bully me into submission in childhood, with dire imprecations about my body burning in hell for all eternity, along with every single possession I held dear. Including the early-generation "boudoir doll" Kaye passed on to me as a child. I used to have waking nightmares of that doll's beautiful face, representative, in my little mind, of the older sister who loved me unconditionally, melting among the flames, her hoop skirt of magenta satin and lace blackening, curling, finally dissolving into ash.
Ghosts.
I don't believe in any of it anymore. It didn't even make sense to me at the time, but I tried - oh, how I tried! - to live according to all The Rules. Of course, I never succeeded.
Neither did Kaye, although she tried for a lot longer than I did. In fact, she found her own peace, some kind of accommodation with life, in her religion. It was the one thing, as adults, that we didn't talk about much, because we knew we disagreed utterly. And still, we loved each other unconditionally.
She's gone, and some days, all I have left are the ghosts.
Today, that feels appropriate: It's cold, and we're caught between two separate storms coming at us from east and west. The leaves are a cascade of colors - green, gold, scarlet, bronze - against a violet-gray sky threatening rain any moment.
And tomorrow, perhaps they'll leave me again, for another year, or even just another day.
But today, it's the haunting season, and my ghosts are with me.