The Spirit Guide

Chapter 1 – The beginning of changes

I looked intently at the crack under the door. I thought there had been some movement outside my bedroom door. Had I imagined it?

The faint glow of the moon, which shone through the skylight in the passage, lit up its length with a gentle, pale blue glow. I knew the passage well. In my mind, I could see how the moon shine would be cascading over the half, by one and a half metre landscape. It had been painted by some unknown painter in nineteen eighty two, and was a painting of my grandmother’s farm. In the foreground was a lush green valley, with a river running through it. The river was the southern border of her farm. An old Victorian style house nestled amongst the trees at the base of a mountain. This mountain was the northern border of the farm. I loved to climb that mountain when visiting there during the holidays.

The moon shine outside my door would also be caressing the old oak dresser with its regal back set against the passage wall. The dresser took up its position, just outside, and to the left of my bedroom door. It was about a meter wide, by two metres long, and almost a metre high. It had no drawers, and was more of a trunk than a dresser.

Many times, the old dresser had been a prime hiding place, during the games of ‘hide and seek’ we played, when my cousins and friends came over. It had now been promoted to a more stately vocation. It stood as a “ghostly” sentry, covered with a white tablecloth, which reached right down to the floor on all sides. It held the family photos, which stood as testimonials to a happy past.

As I lay on my bed though, these were not what bothered me. I was watching the glow which crept in under the door. The dim light formed a small rectangle of pale blue on the floor, just inside my closed door. Although the crack under the door was only a centimetre in height, the glow stretched for nearly fifteen centimetres into my room. It was formed by the moonshine reflecting off the angled white skirting, at the base of the passage wall, opposite my door.

The gentle pale glow, invisible during the day, was comforting at night. It bore witness to the truth that beyond this door were the ones closest to me.

There it was again! A faint movement, as though someone had slowly moved past my door. The light faded from left to right, from the direction of mom’s bedroom, towards the small study at the end of the passage. Such fading was not uncommon though. I had seen it often when my mom or sister was awake, and walked past my closed door. But it was now two o’ clock in the morning, and I could not hear any sound from anywhere.

Two things were worrying me. The wooden floorboards of the passage were old and creaky in this big old double story house, in which my mom, my sister and I lived. It was hopelessly oversized for our small family, but it had been cheap. We had worked hard to fix it up, my dad, mom, and us two kids. Hammers, nails, sore thumbs, paint scraping, varnishing, paint under the finger nails and the like. Dad was not really a handy man, but he had done his best. As a result, the house was not aesthetically beautiful, but we called it home and it felt like home. “That’s what matters”, mom would say: “A house must be a home, or it’s not worth living in.”

I lay there in my bed, my eyes and ears straining, for any clue that could guide me to determine what I had glimpsed. My mind was racing. I should have heard something…

If it was our dog, ‘Sasha’ - our big bristling tawny coloured three year old German Shepherd, then there would be the tell tale scratching of her claws on the floor, as she walked by. But there was no sound.

It could not be my cat 'Tas', short for ‘Tasmanian Devil’ - a name dad had given her, when we first introduced her to Sasha. Most cats would have turned and headed for the closest high place, normally up the stairs or a curtain. Not Tas. Tas tackled Sasha with such ferocity that Sasha headed out the back door with a yelp. From the telling pressure at my feet, Tas was at her post, at the bottom of my bed curled up like a sofa scatter cushion.

Tas was white all over, except for her nose, and a stripe down her face over her eye, which was a scar from some previous encounter, probably with an intruding feline. Unlike Sasha, whom we bought from the pet shop, and who is as mild mannered as a teddy bear, Tas is a well inducted alley cat. Tas had come with the house, and as far as she was concerned, was its rightful owner. She granted us permission to stay for as long as we fed her, scratched her ears, paid attention to her, never locked her in, and stayed out of her way when she was in a bad mood.

We felt like her guests, especially when she sat up on top of the tall cupboard in the kitchen, and watched mom cooking, and us walking in and out of “her domain” below. Tas’s eyes were disconcerting to most visitors, and not without reason. One got the impression you were being sized up as an opponent, the way she looked at you with her left blue eye, and her right green eye.

I am not sure why she had chosen to adopt me as her personal pet. But I was grateful. We are best friends, Tas and I, even though we do not appear to seem right for one another. Tas is as tough as nails, and I am quite the ‘conflict avoider’. My black hair and slender features tell of a young teenager going through a growth spurt. My legs and arms are longer than my trunk and my feet are boats. In contrast with Tas’s perfect balance and control, I am often falling over my feet, knocking things over and pretty much being a ‘clumsy oaf’ as mom puts it. My eyes are dark brown, almost black, and I weigh in at forty eight Kilograms, against my one metre seventy five centimetres. I am not too short or too tall for my school class mates, but judging by the size eight shoes, I am already outgrowing, that will soon be changing too. I am not pimply like some of those in my grade. I watch and secretly dread the possibility that I might soon be afflicted with what is common to most teenagers. Being a young fifteen leaves me a bit between the ‘safe world’ I knew as a child, and the world of the adults I so want the freedom to explore, and be accepted into.

But at this moment, lying in my bed, in the dark, I feel as though I am in neither of these worlds.

The only light in my room was coming in from under my door, where it was reflecting up off the polished wooden floor, and throwing shadows of my toys and furniture against the walls. I took a little comfort from the fact that I was not alone in my room, but my companion lay purring, oblivious to my concerns. She was in her own dreamland. A dreamland I wished that right now, I could be sharing. But I could not sleep. Something was going on in my house.

Again the tell-tale grey shadow moved across the rectangular strip of moonshine painted on my floor, but this time it moved from right to left. As I watched it, it disappeared off my rectangular radar.

I waited… and then realised I had forgotten to breathe and so inhaled deeply, cringing at the explosive sound in my head as I exhaled sharply and inhaled again.

I calmed my breathing down and tried to think clearly.

The thing that was bothering me most was that I had woken up with a start, aware of something intangible… something unseen … Something, which made the hair on my neck stand on end. Strangely, I did not feel afraid when I awoke and sensed this presence. I was simply curious as to what was here and why, paradoxically, a gentle soft peaceful feeling was washing over me. How, I wondered, could such feelings be coupled with the hair on my neck rising and my heart beating faster? I could not make sense of it. But it was real.