"Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win."
Stephen King, The Shining
Sometime in 1990
The announcer was a tall Indian man with a white gown on. "So you're telling us you saw the ghost of your loved one?"
"Yes, he spoke to me."
"He sat next to me at my dinner table and I heard him many nights, his footsteps around my bedside in the early mornings, here in this house in Richmond, New York. He woke me up one morning, and I screamed! Sweating, I went to wash my face, and I saw him again behind me, looking in the mirror. He was walking in the hallway next to the coat closet."
"Okay, cut the tape." They cut the tape and began rolling again.
"Okay? Is the tape rolling?"
"Ready in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You're on," a member of the JVTS sound engineering for (EVP) Electronic Voice Phenomenon told the announcer.
"Okay, tell us your name and speak clearly into the microphone so everybody at home can hear you. Tell us about your out-of-body experience you described to me earlier, what was that like?"
"Well…I really don't think I'm alive. I have felt like this ever since I first saw my Bafadisha. When he whispered into my ears, three weeks prior to this morning, he reminded me of our time together in Tanzania. Everything quieted in me and I was close to his spirit, that of my dear Bafadisha. That morning, I went into the next upstairs room there," she pointed to it. "I lit a candle. Right at that time I could hear his voice around me, I said 'Where are you dear love?' I waited and soon he appeared before me."
An impatient bystander who had been listening interrupted, "...and I thought the war messed me up." This man was asked to leave.
"Continue, mother Egypt? Is that correct?"
"Yes, but Nichjeit is fine if you want."
Nichjeit was a large, rugged forty-nine-year-old Indian woman. She wasn't obese, but her large breasts were notable through the large brown overcoat that she was wearing and she appeared bigger than she really was. The tape recorder was still playing on a carefully decorated table with a red covering and several black candles lit.
"Tell us about him."
"Well, I will tell it to you as he told it to me before we fell in love. It was a calm day at dawn in Tanzania as I recall. He and a tall slender man were walking towards me."
"I don't think they are ignorant," said Bafadisha, laboring in a paddie. "He was a fine young man, well toned and built for the task of plowing. He went on. They rarely see the whole picture."
"Indeed, they only look at the chess game one move ahead, instead of looking at the board and looking three or six moves ahead," said his friend.
I think he was a teacher, a Brahmin, a Hindu priest, as you know.
"This is the difference," he suggested.
"I agree," said the priest, "many will only know how to play their current role in life."
"They will stay there and not progress?" my future husband insinuated. Now the Brahmin replied.
"We are obsessed by cell phones, credit cards with chips that become worn, and computer systems controlling our every move; yet, we must focus on expecting the unexpected. The future will not back down on how far people have advanced with technology. Younger generations born into this technology will see it as a normal part of their lives, it will cause damage to older generations. For every action you take, young man, for every event you are a part of, good or bad, there are ramifications. Life has a natural way of working itself out in the game of evolution. Unless people start planning three to six moves ahead, they will seem asleep and drive the thinkers crazy. You will not even want to speak to such a person, because it will only desensitize everything that you are meditating on. We must only aim our concentration towards what we believe the god Shiva tells us is correct. What does the god Shiva tell you, young man?"
"Everyone is pretty in their own way."
The priest laughed and pointed to the oxen the young man was controlling. "Do you think those oxen are pretty?"
"Yes, we all are, we all have unique idiosyncrasies that make us special. I think it is important to respect that even if people are wrong or they don't recognize what you are trying to do for them, you keep doing what you believe in, what the god Shiva tells us."
"You are speaking of emulation and empathy, which plays a role in our social communities everywhere. It's not about power or control, but about understanding the human spirit, the human condition. What do you do, young man?"
"I play the flute, I long for musical satisfaction and freedom. I want to fortify my soul and spirit as a human being through the god Shiva. I feel we are living at a time when the days of going into a night cafe and sipping tea are long gone. The governmental structures have been and will continue to be implemented, as was the case after Nam or the horrors of war in general for that matter. I don't feel there is much security here, even on this farm. I feel like the walls of security are easily broken down and people are under the spell of fear, under the impression that a uniformed system of thought and behavior is what they ought to follow. I don't feel they are very opinionated or have any real strong beliefs about the god Shiva, or anything else. I think they go along with the program because they are scared and feeble-minded, in so far as their system works for them and not against them."
The priest laughed again and nodded to keep plowing.
"You are a smart young man, but the people who think outside the box you have just described are often labeled as crazy. You are not crazy, are you?"
"Of course, not!"
"Of course, not! You are a risk-taker." Then, the Brahmin put his hand on the young man's shoulder and the two of them let out a giggle together. The priest asked more questions to the young man, but they were interrupted by a young lady who ran up to the priest and handed him a black umbrella to shield him from the sun.
"I think dictionaries and psychology books have conditioned us…"
"…You do, do ya?…And who are you, lovely dear lady?"
"I am Nichjeit." "What a pretty name, and thank you for this - the sun is unusually hot this morning."
"I'm being called away, bye Brahmin."
I wasn't needed, but I felt shy and awkward in front of the handsome young man - my Bafadisha, whom I married some years later. We started a life together and made love in the paddie on many warm nights. One night he came home saying he had been attacked by an animal. His leg was badly bitten into. Soon he died from his wounds after frothing and foaming at the mouth. His body rapidly seized up. This zoonotic disease they were calling rabies had taken my poor Bafadisha from me.
Twenty-three years later, I am here telling you my story because strange things have been happening to me and now I believe he is here, in this studio. I must go.
Nichjeit attempted to leave the foyer of the building, a stained vanilla-colored building. A decrepit, but characteristic building that had stood the test of time. As she grabbed the doorknob, it burnt her hand. The knob was now looking like coal in a fireplace that had just been freshly stoked. "Aweeeeyahh!" she let out in pain.
"This is what I feared, he has returned from the dead. He has reincarnated, my beloved Bafadisha has reincarnated, but in his rapid form - the God Shiva has given him supernatural powers." There were only two other people in the building hall - a sound engineer, and the emaciated Indian man wearing the white gown.
The Indian man ran to the door and used his weight to try and barrel through it. He and Nichjeit looked back through the foyer and into the small hall and couldn't believe what they were witnessing. The sound engineer was on his knees, worshipping the now crazed zombie Bafadisha, who was perched atop the makeshift shrine put there for the occasion. The sound engineer rose to his feet and, under Bafadisha's command, he pursued the announcer and Nichjeit who were by the door. As he got closer, the announcer picked up some books and started throwing them at him. It had no effect. Now the sound engineer was losing his strength, starting to transmutate before their very eyes.
"Get him, do something," Nichjeit cried out, standing behind her new bodyguard. Suddenly, the sound engineer reached in and ripped the heart out of the announcer and proceeded to eat it in front of Nichjeit. She gazed at the scene and could not believe what she was seeing. She was going into shock, but knew she had to do something. She looked down at the ground. In the dust and burnt under the debris that was starting to fall from the ceiling, there was an old umbrella, one that looked like the one she gave to the Brahmin in the paddie. It had a pointed metal rod poking out the top. She picked it up and darted it through the eyeball of the infected sound engineer, no longer a living person. He pulled it out of his eye, and maggots could be seen coming out of the socket. Nichjeit then finished him off by shoving the announcer's half-eaten heart down his throat, and yanking the umbrella out of his fingers she stabbed him in the chest with it multiple times, screaming "Die! Die! You infectious bastard!" Covered in blood, Nichjeit looked up; she looked at the shrine, where Bafadisha was standing in an anatomical position, when he suddenly crumbled away.
