The Haunting
Once upon a time, a spectre left the delicate tracery of its presence on the window of an empty house. It was a fingerprint from another dimension.
The day before we moved into this house, I had sat on the floor of an empty room, gazing at the sea through the large French windows and planning where to put my furniture. College life demanded that all teachers live on campus and, depending on extra-curricular roles such as being in charge of a student residence, a teacher’s family might move house two or three times. This was to be our last move on campus, and the best. Pool House was a large L-shaped bungalow on top of the cliffs looking down on St Donat’s Bay and out across the Bristol Channel to Minehead. Before each move, the college craftsmen would give the empty house a facelift: at the very least the windows would be cleaned and everything would get a coat of paint. Sometimes the wooden floors would be freshly sanded and the kitchen fitted with new cupboards. It was always a time of new beginnings, though the distance ‘moved’ could be measured in yards rather than miles.
I knew who all of Pool House’s previous inhabitants had been back to the 60’s when it had been built for Admiral Hoare, the first principal of Atlantic College. Each of them had left their mark on the garden and this was part of the excitement of moving, waiting to see what gifts from the past would thrust through the soil as the first year went by. The cliffs had receded a little since the house was built and the brambles had encroached, so that first spring we uncovered hidden drifts of snowdrops, followed by tidal movements of daffodils, then bluebells. But it was the ghostly image of a glancing impact that left the lasting impression.
An owl had flown into the window: there was no body on the ground, but no doubt about its identity. It must have hit the glass at speed, its wings fully extended, its tail a fraction of a second later. Did it break its neck? Every feather was perfectly etched on the glass but where the head should be was just a smudge. The wings looked almost surprised, as if they had been taken unawares and snapped by the paparazzi. The shaft of each feather with its filaments could be clearly seen. The top primary on each wing was separated from the rest, like index fingers pointing upwards. The breast feathers were soft and downy and formed a tactile contrast with the sharply drawn tail.
On that moving-day, the low morning sun had lit the image like a sacred icon and proffered it as a house-warming gift. It was a work of art painted in dust but so beautiful I felt blessed. Superstitiously I refused to clean it away and left it to the rain and wind. It lasted for a week.