A Ghost

A Story by Lune

Our house settles into the side of the mountain like it has always been there. But it is only thirteen years old. The builders worked in the tiny patch of steep scrubland day and night in order to fit the tiny chalet into the space. They brought in diggers to claw back the side of the hill, flattening enough earth so that a building could be erected. It nestles into the hole like a cave, the back of the house fitting into the rock which surrounds it like a child in strong and protective arms.

I don't think the waterfall was diverted around the house, although it looks like it. When you stand at the back door and look up to the forest behind, you are overwhelmed by a thousand cubic metres of water cascading down directly on top of you; tumbling and gushing over boulders and rocks, trees precariously hanging over its edge. Sometimes, if you stand there long enough you can feel the weight of the water bearing down on you. The spray from the waterfall in summer shoots up and out, wrapping the garden in a veil of delicate mist, which clings in droplets to every twig and leaf. Although the spray often travels right the way over the roof, the body of water itself doesn't touch the house; it suddenly verges off to the right as it reaches the corner of the chalet and carries on roaring past the kitchen window down to the river.

Around this time of year the flow is monstrous from heavy rain and melting snow. We lie in bed and listen to the rumbling of the water pass by our heads, lulled gently to sleep. Our bed has taken on an aura of otherworldliness as I often enter another state of consciousness somewhere in between normal reality and dreamland, enticed by the tumbling water's sighs and moans. I once heard singing coming from the water as I fell into a fitful slumber - it sounded like the trill of many voices cascading up and down on the torrent. The music sounded so palpable, it seemed to move in through the open window and float around the bed.

When I sit out on the rocky arm of our garden, I can see ten far-off waterfalls falling vertically down from rocky shelves around me, coming from unknown places high up on the alpine plateaus where chamois and bouquetin - wild goats - roam. People say that wolves range up there. I try to listen for their calls at night, but the sound of the waterfall drowns out all other noises, wanting me to hear her melody alone. I often feel dreamlike sensations when I sit out on this rocky promontory, as I often do in summer. The rocks are piled up neatly in a made-man way, with grass on top where I grow vegetables. When I doze there in the heat of the afternoon, I sometimes feel another presence next to me, standing very still observing the scene. It's form seems to be oddly silent compared to the turmoil of the waterfall behind. As I bent over my vegetable patch one day, I heard a deep groan coming from the rocks themselves. But I never thought anything of it, telling myself that it must have been the song of the waterfall playing tricks with my mind as it often does. This isolated place is alive with strange sounds day and night.

Recently, I picked up a coffee table publication about the railway which threaded it's way from the town downriver up to the valley head here. In fact, the railway passed right opposite our door where a huge waterwheel used to stand. Whilst flicking through the pages, I caught sight of an old sepia postcard on one page, which showed two young girls, a boy and a goat sitting on a headland of rock over an iron ore smelting furnace. Iron ore was the commodity shipped down the valley in the 18th and 19th centuries, tourists filling the trains on the way back up. The girls wore the local off-white smocks found here around the 1850's, large brimmed hats and leather boots. Their faces were blurred, as is often the way with long exposed photographs taken way back then. Their outlines looked kind of ghostly. I was deeply moved by their pin-like eyes staring down out at the photographer from above the dormant furnace. The goat, which was tethered to a post was drinking from a small ornate fountain.

Looking closer at the postcard I noticed that the background to the left stretched away into a village showing the corner of a very familiar house - the old school. The very same old school house which is now inhabited by our neighbours two doors away. In front of the scene stood an oratory inscribed '1840', with a few scattered flowers left in devotion for the statue of the Virgin Mary found within it. Shocked that this was a postcard of our village, our school, our oratory, I scanned across and realised that the promontory the children were sitting on was our garden. The right hand side of the photo, where our chalet now stands, was still a green verge sloping up dramatically into the forest above. In the stillness of that moment - frozen within the ancient photo, the future did not yet exist. I had a strange thought, "Are we actually the ghosts?".

I read the words accompanying the postcard. The photo was taken a week after the furnace had to be shut down because one of the young workers had fallen in and been burnt to death. The whole village was in mourning. At this point, my hands went cold as I tried to make sense of what I had just read. I felt a pang of nostalgia in my stomach, grief in my throat.

Up there, on my little stack of rocks, looking out into the wilderness of the valley around me, I had been sitting over a tragedy which had devastated this tiny hamlet; the great smelter consuming the body without remorse. People looking on helplessly. I sense that the waterfall, with her powerful spray reaching across the garden, is still trying to quench those engulfing flames and sooth the harrowing scene. Her mournful voice reaches out into the wall of rocks that surrounds us, caressing the veil between past and present, soaking the grief in fresh mountain water. Dewy fingers displace the turmoil now and again to reveal a stillness where a lone figure stands - peaceful now - entrapped in a cloak of cool, memory-laden mist.