When the moon shines so brightly that it illuminates the night, causing you to see as clearly as if it were day, you are under a quicksilver moon. Sometimes reality is every bit as illuminating...
I woke gasping for breath!
It had happened a hundred times before,
but this time was worse. I wondered if anyone else was having the dreams, or was it me alone? My heart was beating like the flapping of wings from an entire gaggle of geese. Sweat poured from my body in torrents. If I had not know better I would have assumed that I had wet my bed.
I was trembling and more frightened than I had ever been in my life. What did the dream mean?I tried to tell myself that it was only a dream. I convinced myself that it would go away,
... it didn't. I was afraid to go back to sleep when the dream occurred. You see, each time that I spent a moment in dreams, the dreams seemed to suck me in
and become more and more real. I wasn't just dreaming. I was being haunted!
Memory of an old woman, who was like a second grandmother to me, crept into my sleep time. She kept me awake and beat me mercilessly into a scrap of fear. She had never hurt me and she never would let anyone hurt me, but in her demise she tormented me unmercifully. I cried!
She became ill gradually. Grandmother and grandfather looked after her. She would have done the same for them, and did, when Granny was so ill, that I thought she would die, just a few years earlier. Miss Carie was there from start to end. As was the custom in the days of my youth, my grandparents returned the kindness she had always shown them. The whole family pitched in, including my cousins Susie and Spooky. Oh, and I did my part as well.
Just why she chose me to haunt I will never know. Haunting me was an absurdity! I was twelve years old and had never done one thing to harm anyone. In any case, I stayed awake until I just couldn't. She never came to me until I was sound asleep. You know, in the kind of sleep that your body was, or could be used as a limp biscuit, kind of sleep. That is when the dream would start. I see it vividly, even now.
As I entered my house, it was dark, but the window on the west side of the front room was open. I felt the air coming in, and saw the curtains billowing as the wind came through the window. There was just enough light to let me see the shapes and shadows of furnishings in the room. I recognized the pictures and shelves hanging on the wall. The wing back chairs that sat beside the fireplace were inviting me to rest there, but I moved on.
There was a tiny little statue on the mantle. It had been there before, but today it was in living color. I thought that odd since all of the surroundings, including the curtains, was in black and white. It was significant, but I was somehow missing it's significance. The further I went inside the house, and the deeper into the room, the more brilliant the colors were on the statue of the doll.
The mantle came to life as I approached it. The doll was a Spanish one that wore layers of lace and petticoats. Her dress was lace and she was dressed in blue. She wore a bonnet that matched the lace on her dress. She was spectacular. Her complexion was a smooth olive color and her eyes were deep ebony. I picked her up to admire her. That is when she wiggled and pushed at my fingers. It was alive!
I didn't think this odd because the other "what-knots" on the shelf were dancing and bowing and moving back and forth. It was as if they were in a little world of their own. I was the intruder, like Gulliver. When the little doll broke free she fell. It was difficult to catch her and she continued on her downward spiral until she touched the hardwood floor.
The mantle gave a gasp! I heard myself squeal as if I had been stuck with a pin, or knife. It was too late! She fell against my shoe and her head fell off. When I stooped to pick her up she began to speak. She told me that I was a clumsy girl to have let her fall like that. It startled me that she could talk with her head in one hand and her body in my other hand. It was amazing to see her hands moving and her foot tapping at me while her mouth moved, but in different hands, different fields. It was frightening. I dropped her- again!
There on the floor was a soft throw rug. Where it came from, I cannot say becaue it was not there in real world, and not when I entered the dream. It broke her fall, causing her to bounce on contact with the rug. When I picked up her head, I did not pick up both pieces this time, she was no longer the little doll. Instead, the Doll was transformed into my neighbor, Miss Carrie. " You broke me silly girl. You should be careful with me. I am made of porcelain you know. I am more fragile than china, so be careful with me." As she spoke I held the little head in my palm.
"Miss Carrie, how did you become a doll?" I asked her. " Why are you on the mantle in my room." In reality, the room that she was haunting wasn't mine at all. "I am not on your mantle. Just look around you. You are on my mantle." I laughed at the silliness of what she said, but when I turned to let her head lay on my desk, I saw truth of the statement. Just beyond where I stood was a ledge. I had seen it earlier, and I thought that the ledge was the end of the room. When I approached the end of the ledge, to look down, there was a huge rug on the floor. It looked just like the one on the mantle by my fireplace.
Seated in her rocker, rocking back and forth was Miss CArrie. She eyed me, and glinted. She was smiling a most wicked smile. "I know that you are surprised to see that I am in a bigger chair," she said. I wasn't surprised about the chair; I was surprised about the Rooms...
I went over to the miniature sofa and sat down, with the doll's head in my hand. How in the world could I be on the mantle when the doll was on the mantle as well? How could there be a large Miss Carrie on the floor beneath me, when she wasn't supposed to be there at all? It made no sense to me. No sense at all!
"Miss Carrie," I said. She never answered me; she just kept rocking. "How can you be there, when you're not here at all?" I asked. She held up her hands and when she did she was transparent, she became completely clear, like glass, as she raised her hands up to the light. When her hands rested in her lap she was a milky white. She looked like the Spanish doll in my hands.
I looked down at the doll and realized she was dripping onto my dress. It was something milky white in color that came from the cracked porcelain. "Don't let the juices waste" came the appeal from the floor beneath the mantle. "If they spill," she said, "it will cause me to harden and I will not be able to sing or dance."
I turned the broken piece of porcelain upright as soon as she spoke. I could not imagine what it would be like not having the little doll dance on the mantle with the others. When her head was laid atop the body, the face changed once again, into the beautiful girl in blue lace and bonnet.
Coldness drifted up my legs to my arms. The breeze from the open window in the real room was turning cooler as the sunset approached. Time moved faster in this dream state and the sky seemed to change even as I watched it. Colors, brilliantly forecast, became subdued hues of crimson, orange, red. The sky was filled with the smoky colors, while the colors moved along like streamers from the baton of a child.
With every shift of my head something in the scene set before me altered. The china doll was gone and once again I stood on the real world floor. There on the rocker was Miss Carrie. She sat churning in a large butter churn and humming a song that I had never heard before. I listened quietly as she hummed, watching the light cast a silvery glow across the floor. The new fallen moon cast a silvery light on the porch and in the open doorway...
This is an excerpt from the story
'Quicksilver Moons'
a short story from the book
'Lights On In The Window'
written by
by Naomi Ululani Hoomalu
Copyright 2003
In "A Touch of Your Presence" are words that would inspire, encourage and strengthen one's soul when faced with challenges and difficulties and to know the awesomeness of God's power.
