haint that a shame

The Mrs. and I spent 10 hours yesterday moving furniture and knick-knacks, patching, sanding, taping, and painting the living room. We finished around 7:30 and I took a shower and cuddled up in a fetal ball with a book upstairs. Because she was playing the Peanuts Xmas CD I put on headphones and the Codex Faenza disc from Naxos. After a dozen or more holiday seasons in retail I can't abide the Peanuts Xmas music.

After a few minutes I heard Cha yell "What?" downstairs. She must have yelled loudly for me to hear it through the headphones.Then something thumped and I heard her yell something else. I took off the headset just as she came quickly bounding up the stairs and into the room where she sat on my lap and put her arms around my neck. "I thought I heard you call me. I was in the room between the rooms* and I swore I heard you call me right in my ear. I said 'what' and then I heard it again, louder. Nobody was there. It was very creepy."

"Old Will is upset about something," I said. Will was the previous owner of the house. He was married to the daughter of the architect who built our home in the 1920s, and we're the first outside the family to inhabit it. When we first looked at the place more than 10 years ago I knew immediately someone had died there, and this was later confirmed by our neighbors. Don't ask me how I knew. A maternal great-grandfather was a hex healer--maybe the juju is genetic? Will was an aeronautical engineer and wood-working hobbyist who flew stunt planes well into his eighties. He lived alone for a long time, and died alone.

"He doesn't like our paint job," Cha surmised.

"Or the fact we're listing the house for sale," I suggested. She refused to go back downstairs where she'd been decorating a small live tree. I went down there and it was horribly cold. I turned on the wall sconce light fixtures and both bulbs blew. Something rattled around over by the hearth. The dove, usually asleep after dark, was agitated and jumping around his cage. The closet in the room between the rooms was open and all the shoes from Cha's shoe tree were out on the floor. I put them away and went back upstairs as quickly as I could. Cha denied doing anything to the shoes.

*Her name for a small alcove off the living room and kitchen which houses a ceiling lamp all its own and a closet. It's about 3X4 square feet in area.