A haunted house · Posted Jul 8, 07:40 PM by Todd Babiak
I’ve just returned from some northern holidaying. It wasn’t only a holiday. The novel I’m planning and researching will be set in the Yukon, barring some fantastic idea that interrupts it, so I was also busy noticing and note-taking and speaking to a spectacularly eloquent RCMP Sergeant. I was also trying to get a handle on the surprising number of mosquitoes, and the fact that no one complains about them in the Yukon. Here in Alberta, if one mosquito shows up at a garden party, a small festival of bleating, cussing, and hand-wringing is inaugurated.
It was less than two weeks in the land of the midnight sun, but coming home has been eerie. The house smells like someone else’s house. Cereal in the cereal cupboard appears odd, like someone else had purchased it. Crispex, for instance; I can’t imagine the mental state that inspired me to buy Crispex. The art on our walls isn’t new but newly exotic. I hadn’t understood the way the bottom of our arbutus painting is so dark, relative to the rainy sheen of the top.
Why have I allowed our bookshelves to become so crowded and messy? So many trees in the yard, and so much clover in the lawn. I determined that my house and my city had been replaced in my absence by another house and another city very similar to my old house and city but not quite the same ones. Had God done this? If so, God, get to Africa. People are starving! At the very least, allow the Edmonton Oilers to have a better season next year.
Either way, my discovery allowed me to sleep soundly. A logical explanation for a fantastic mystery is always satisfying. But this morning I came up with a new theory. For work reasons, I came home a couple of days earlier than my wife and two small daughters. Our daughters aren’t here, being delightful and needful. So there is a temporary void in my life, which has unleashed my five senses, allowing me to see, to smell, to hear what I normally do not see, or smell, or hear.
It’s becoming a bit creepy. But I’ve decided to make notes, in case I ever put my house in a story.
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I did plant some clover in your lawn a few years ago – here is ONE explanation…
— Karine Jul 9, 02:40 PM #