The Land of Stuffies
There was a time when, if you asked Suzanna do you believe in ghosts? she would have told you with absolute certainty that she had met them, or something of the like, and so yes, she did. When she said she had met them, by met, she would say there had been doors in her childhood home which had slammed and locked on their own, lights and vents turned on, and shadows crept beneath into the hallway to remind her that she was not, in fact, imagining things. Or maybe she would have told you about the way she woke up at night unable to move and speak on countless occasions, and how on those nights, a darkened figure standing just out of eyesight spoke to her, but only in her thoughts. By them, she would have told you she wasn’t sure of their name or appearance, whether ghost, alien, demon, or whatever you may have preferred, but that she was certain they had done something to her. She had chunks of missing time, mysterious bruises, and she constantly found herself waking up on the rough beige carpet– seemingly having attempted a crawl toward the door–or maybe she would find herself with her feet on the pillows, and her head beneath the covers all nonsense-like.
One by one, in response to the torment, Suzanna lined her stuffies up at the end of the bed. A mint green bear with a shooting star across its white stomach, whose hard and shiny eyes she liked to rub in circles. A black and white horse she got for Christmas whose mane had become ratty from combing her fingers through. A pink rabbit she named Magenta who wore a lacy bonnet that had been stolen off of an ugly doll at the house of a friend from class. These were her favorites, and so they were always at the front. Eventually the stuffies she amassed were so many, they had to wrap around the entire bed, encircling her like a small, fluffy army. They were her protectors, she would tell them, and at times, she would beg them to let her know they were alive.
“I know it,” she said straight to the horse's mouth, “you can just give it up and tell me already.” But none of them so much as blinked.
Still, during the daytime hours they would protect her. When her Mother bought her underwear with the days of the week written in the colors of the rainbow, she liked only Tuesday–because it was the color purple. She chose to wear the pair for several days in a row. When she finally took them off, she picked the crust that had gathered off of the crotch with her finger nails, but knew she would not get away with what she had done, so she then shoved them behind the army so that Mom wouldn’t find out and spank her for it. Once, when she did this, there was an empty bottle of Jim Beam, which she knew the stuffies had confiscated from her mother as well. They were good to her.
“Please,” she said, “I know you can hear me.”
During the nighttime hours for many weeks after closing the circle of stuffies, nothing changed. The visitors continued, and so did the awkward awakenings.
“Do you know why I’m here?” the visitor whispered one night, telepathically, of course.
“No,” Suzanna thought, “am I going to be okay?” After that her consciousness melted away at the edges, and she woke later on the floor, screaming and crying but not knowing why. Suzanna would look back on this memory and wonder if it had been something akin to sedation, but of course, as an adult she would think it was probably just a weird nightmare, because they– the adults– stop believing in those things- the ghosts or whatever- as a rite of passage into maturity.
But Suzanna never did forget the night the stuffies finally spoke. She awoke, as she often did, with her feet on the pillow, and her head at the foot of the bed. This time, she was buried beneath a mountain of stuffies, but it was not dark as you’d expect. There was a bright light, almost like sunshine, and Suzanna crawled toward it.
“Come on!” the stuffies cheered, “you can do it, keep going!” Their voices were high pitched and airy, just as Suzanna expected. Some of them, including Magenta, had perfectly shaped tears sprinkling into the air from joy.
“Where am I?” Suzanna asked as she crawled from the tunnel beneath her mountain of stuffies into an orchard with perfectly red apples on each and every tree. The stuffies, many she recognized, and some she did not, were playing with each other on swingsets, kicking soccer balls back and forth, typical recess behavior. But many were simply waiting, smiling at her.
“You are with us in our world,” her Christmas horse said, “you asked and we listened.”
“I knew you were real,” Suzanna said, hugging her horse, which was the same small size as always. She couldn’t tell you how many hours passed by thereafter, just that it was the warmest she had ever felt in her entire, short life. For the rest of her years, she could only remember how they made her feel. That was what lasted.
“It’s almost morning,” her horse said, “you could stay with us, if you want to.”
And Suzanna did want to, but she thought it was best to simply return the next night.
“My Mom will be mad,” she said, “but I’ll be back. I love you so much. Thank you for showing yourselves to me.” and with that, Suzanna crawled back through the tunnel beneath a tree on a grassy hill, until her head was right back on her pillow and the light from the meadow disappeared at her feet.
There would be many nights thereafter where Suzanna would crawl into the lifeless mountain of stuffies hoping for the same tunnel to unveil itself, but no such luck. One of those nights she became so frustrated that she threw them all at the wall and cried until her eyes felt they would explode from her skull.
“How could you!” she screamed as she shoved them all into the dark corner of her closet.
Eventually, when you asked Suzanna do you believe in ghosts? She would think about the visitors, but she would also think of the stuffies. She would tell herself that if one did not make sense, then neither did the other, and she would answer simply, “No.”