BY CONSTANTINE JONES
G H O S T C H O R U S
First Choral Ode
excerpt from IN STILL ROOMS (Operating System, 2020)
We lived in that house before. Died in it too.
Long time ago this was, you wouldn’t remember. No, we don’t imagine you’d even been born yet. If only you’d of seen it back then—you’d hardly recognize it now, that’s for sure. It was a real beauty, that house, back when it was ours. Or suppose we should say back when it let us live there. Maybe you won’t understand, or maybe we just can’t tell it right. But a house like that, it don’t belong to nobody. House like that, it owns itself. And you’d be lucky to spend yerself a couple years under its roof. Least that’s how we felt anyway, and you can decide for yerself once we’re done.
Thing about that house, like many others in its time, it was a hodgepodge of styles on account of standing so long. Times came and went and families moved in and out and every decade some new little portion was added to the existing body, each generation tacking on their own addition. Built from sturdy lumber and set precisely at the top of some little hill, nothing around for miles save the mountains. It was only three other properties between it and the Comona Lake to the south. Wasn’t til they laid down the railroad did you start to get families coming and settling down. The highway took another good while, and even then we mostly just used the old roads. Least we knew about those. Trusted em to take us where we needed. But through it all somehow, the wars, the riots, the weather, that house still stood. It came up out the ground a fresh white against the sky, and when you looked at it coming up the hill you’d be forgiven for mistaking it one of the Blue Ridge mountains itself, propped up like that against the horizon.
If you’d of asked us back when we was alive do you think this old house’ll still be here come a hundred years we’d of never said so. But through all the additions and removals, the comings and goings of we couldn’t even tell you how many folks anymore, this house it’s still standing. These rooms are still here. And we do suppose we’re more’n a little bit proud of that fact. Maybe it don’t mean much to you, not yet. But every house it’s a strange beast. A house, it’s less like a place to live and more like a family itself—all dressed up in its own history, its own secrets. And this house here, it’s not done telling itself, not by a mile. Not done remembering neither. We been part of this house just about as long as we can remember. And we don’t resent it none, truth be told. We were there when the walls were white and we were there when they got turned green. We saw the iron staircase sprout from the nursery window upstairs all the way round to the kitchen out back, the little maid scuttling up and down like a bug, rain or shine. Why, that’s how old Earlene went, back in her time. Remember that—fell clean off the side of the house, yes she did, broke her poor neck right there on the pavement, isn’t that right Earlene. We were there when they stuffed up the attic with insulation, when the walls were stitched through with electricity. We were there when they strung the lights and painted the baseboards, pulled em up, painted em again. When the pipes and the wires came through we made room, and when the wallpaper covered us up we just snuck inside the wood itself. Why, we know that house like we knew our own skin. And it’s alive, all right. Only now there’s more than one life wrapped up inside. And this one, it ain’t like us. We got nobody left to miss us or remember. Not a soul in the world keeping us here. We’re only here cause where else would we go, and that’s the honest truth.
But now there’s another one here with us, stuck between the walls. Hear her moving about at night. We feel her, like a warm vapor. We heard her when she first come, yes we did. Heard her shuffling up the walk and watched her come on back. Cause we always find our way back. Back’s the only place we got to go. She came quiet. Like she’d been away a while and was testing the locks. We all felt her come back. Cause when you come back you come back to the here. Don’t matter what was there when you was there. Or what’s like to be there later on. We’re tied to this here. We knew this here back then and we know it across time what it’s like to become and still we stay here all the same. Here you are. Here we are, anyhow. And here she was. Not knowing. Not knowing a single thing at all. Knowing only she can’t leave. And it’s not for us to say whether she wants to or doesn’t she. All we know is she’s restless. She got to be put at peace somehow. She got to be allowed to rest. All these years and all these folks coming and going and now somehow we got no room at all. Why don’t you come on in. Have a look around. See it for yourself, why don’t you.
Constantine Jones is a Greek-American thingmaker raised in Tennessee & currently housed in Brooklyn. They are a member of the Visual AIDS Aritst+ Registry & teach creative writing at CCNY. Their work has been performed or exhibited at various venues across the city & their debut hybrid haunted house novel, IN STILL ROOMS, is forthcoming via The Operating System on March 4th, 2020. It is currently available for preorder.