Snap Shot of My Life: Lady In White
I walked out of the room quietly, leaving the night light on behind me and pulled the door almost closed. It was good to have Drew in bed and be able to relax for a few hours before I would head to bed myself. I went to the kitchen and poured myself a drink and took it out onto the verandah to sit and have a quiet cigarette.
“Ted, where are you?” mum called from the lounge room a few minutes later. We shared the house together for us both to be able to save a bit of money. For the most part it worked quite well. She would go off to work each morning and I was working from home so that I could be with my two-year-old son, Drew. When we were home together we got along most of the time.
“Oh, it was nothing really” I could tell by the look on her face, mostly confusion, that it wasn’t quite nothing. She was curled up on the end of the lounge, with the TV on in the corner, looking through the door to the lounge room and up the hallway.
“I … uhh just saw someone walking into the kitchen from the hall,” she said, still with that far off kind of look on her face. I wondered why she didn’t look alarmed now that she knew it couldn’t have been me. I listened for some sort of noise that would signal a stranger in the house but heard nothing except the music and voice over of the ad currently on the TV.
“What do you mean you saw someone?” I thought I knew where this was heading now.
“It was a woman, I think, she was wearing a white dress or something.”
Now I definitely knew. My mum believed in some things that a lot of people dismiss as being ridiculous. My older sister could certainly testify to that. According to my mum, my sister was the reincarnation of my mother’s grandmother. A cat my sister had as a child was apparently that same grandmother’s husband. At least that’s how I think the story went, I was too young to remember.
Within a few minutes my mum had gone back to watching the TV and I had finished teasing her for seeing things. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in ghosts, actually I wasn’t sure if I did or not. I just hadn’t seen this “woman in white” and to me in most cases, seeing is believing.
Several days later Drew was again tucked up soundly sleeping in his bed. My mum and I were sitting at either end of the lounge watching something on the TV when my phone rang. I raced down the hall to answer it before it woke up Drew. It was a girlfriend who lived in Adelaide, this was going to take a while. I picked up my cigarettes and carried them out onto the verandah to sit while I had my chat. A few smokes and a lot of talking later, I was in need of a drink. As I listened to my girlfriend tell me about her latest job I went inside towards the kitchen. I got to the lounge room door and there was mum, curled up on the end of the lounge with that confused look on her face again.
“I just saw the lady in white walking at the end of the hall again!” She said as I passed and continued on to the kitchen. I simply shook my head and proceeded to relay this and the previous story to my girlfriend on the phone. We laughed and made jokes, but both admitted it was kind of creepy. I eventually hung up the phone and said good night to mum, deciding it was time to get to bed.
More time passed, mum rising each morning and going off to work leaving Drew and I home. Life, generally, was going along just as it should. Mum would come home from work and enjoy spending some time with her grandson. Usually we’d all be in the lounge room with Drew playing on the floor and chattering away to us or to himself. He’d recently made a new friend, Toby, he was the only one who could see Toby though. Mum and I would listen as Drew would have conversations with Toby, he would speak for Toby as he played with his cars and they would both give commentary on the races. My son had his first imaginary friend and we found it rather entertaining.
On one particular afternoon mum and I were sat on our lounge talking as Drew wandered around the room from one toy to another. I looked over at Drew and listened as he chattered away, this time it was only one side of a conversation. I nudged mum and pointed, so he wouldn’t stop on our account. He was looking up as he spoke and seemed to stop and listen at regular intervals. We watched quietly for a few minutes.
“Who are you talking to, sweety?” I ended up asking him, expecting the answer to still be Toby.
“The lady,” he replied, in a tone that said this was something I shouldn’t have needed to ask. Mum and I exchanged a quick look.
“What lady?” at this point the hair on the back of my neck was standing up.
“The lady in white … there.” He said, in a matter of fact manner, as he pointed to the spot he had been looking up at.
© 2005
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