A ghost's dream

Black. Velvet smooth. Liquid. Drowning. It closes. Like a winter evening when it is suddenly dark. The light fades imperceptibly and the windows become mysterious oily black.

I become aware that I am awake. I am lying in my bed. I feel the cool pressure of the duvet above me, and the softness of the mattress below me. I can feel a crease in the sheets under my left thigh.

The room is silent. No music. There is no sound of birds outside. Or of cars. Or rain falling against the window. I can almost hear the dust settling on the mantlepiece. I think I have been dreaming. A velvet black dream. A sensation of company. Of others. Of not being alone. I feel their faces and voices still pressed against my mind. They are fading to shadows already. I wonder if they were the dead or the living.

I remember dreaming of my grandmother. It happened twice in the year after she died. She spoke to me in the dream. I could not remember when I awoke what she had said. But I remembered her face. I knew in the dream that she was dead. But she was not a ghost. She was my living grandmother. I found it strangely comforting.

The air is cold in the room. The curtains lift slightly as though there is a light breeze through an open window. There is no breeze. The window is shut.

I slip out of bed. Out from under the covers. And swing my legs round until my toes touch the floor. I feel my way onto the carpet with my feet and stand up. The carpet is hard and unfriendly. It has no underlay. I can feel the boards underneath it. The room smells of dust and stale air.

I go to the window and pull back the curtains. The pale wintery sun is just peeping over the rooftops. The watery sky looks as though it has just been painted. It gleams. I am seeing the sun through water. If I could reach out my hand through the window pane I could swirl the sky as I used to swirl my children’s bathwater, watching tiny whirlpools form in my wake.