Marcia McGreevy Lewis

Marcia McGreevy Lewis

A Cold, Dark Walk in the Moonlight

We always wondered if there were ghosts at the log cabin where we spent summers when I was growing up in the 40s and 50s. The former owners of our summer cabin at Priest Lake in Idaho had long since abandoned it, but they left behind the detritus of their lives after their mysterious disappearance.

There was the weathered black leather couch with its clumpy horsehair stuffing and river of cracks. There was the screened cooling window for produce, the hand pump to get our water, and the ice box into which we manhandled with immense tongs mammoth blocks of ice. We loaded these ice blocks into our boat at the resort before we crossed the lake to our otherwise inaccessible cabin. There was no electricity and no indoor plumbing, but the woodburning stove was our greatest challenge. We seldom digested (almost) a meal less than charbroiled.

It was the little things, though, that made us feel our predecessors’ ghostlike presence. They left behind mustache cups for drinking mugs, so we pictured them as swarthy with dense mustaches. There was a foot-peddled grinding wheel for sharpening knives and axes that led us to imagine them as swashbuckling pirates posturing their swords or perhaps Natives hoisting their hatchets. The chamber pots they left received lots of use since the outhouse was a cold, dark walk in the moonlight. We spent hours with the stereoscope they left, holding it in one hand to look through the lenses at side-by-side pictures. The pictures morphed into one 3D image, showing elegant ladies in bustled gowns and gentlemen driving Model Ts.

We were endlessly curious about who left these things. My siblings and I terrified each other with stories about their ghosts haunting us. Every one of us found those ghosts petrifying. Did we scare them away? Had they left on their own, leaving everything behind, because of some trauma? Did they blame us for having displaced them? Were they angry enough that they sent the pack rats that dominated the attic, the daddy long legs that spun webs in our suitcases and the bugs that bit our ears while we slept? It’s undoubtedly the ghosts who the skunks spray when these apparitions roam at night. When we smelled that gag-inducing stink at night, we knew our predecessors were just outside the door hunting for us to make us pay for taking over their lives.

I was about eight when I realized my worst fears as I sat in the two-hole “Rose Room,” the outhouse, ironically named because it smelled nothing like a rose. I had waited until the last minute to make the scary trip because the outhouse was a perfect place for a ghost to catch us. When I could wait no longer, I streaked outside. Dusk, the haunting hour, had settled in. I latched the door, so it was only the odiferous lye spread we used for disinfecting our

excrements, the flies, and me. Believe me, the lye smelled not only unlike a rose, but totally unlike any perfumed soap in which it is often used.

Then I heard whistling, which I hoped was the wind, followed by crunching that could be porcupines, but then there was creaking. I held my breath and prayed the noise was the ever-present brown bears, not ghosts. I’d never prayed for bears before, but I was desperate. It didn’t work.

Now there was the definite sound of scratching. I pulled up my pants, rolled up the Sears and Roebuck catalog as my weapon and climbed stealthily on top of the toilet seat. I hesitated to show my eyes through the air vent that circled the ceiling, and I was barely tall enough to stretch that far, but I needed to eyeball the enemy. I stretched, gripped my cudgel, and readied myself to at least stare the ghost down. I was delirious enough to think I could even bludgeon the stalker if necessary. I saw nothing, so I silently rotated 360 degrees, not once, not twice, but three times before I ascertained there was no one there.

The next step was the hardest. I needed to “screw my courage to the sticking-place” as Lady Macbeth determined so she would not fail. I wasn’t into quoting Shakespeare at that very moment, but I did appreciate his prodding, so I jumped from the seat, jammed open the door, and raced for the cabin at Mach speed.

Outwitting the ghosts was successful once again. If only I could talk to them I’d tell them that they don’t need to scare us into listening. I want to ask them who planted the apple trees, if they caught lots of trout and who left the shipping crate-sized salt lick for the deer. I would listen if they could find a more appropriate way to tell us.