The House in the Bush

​I was driving along the dirt road with my mother as we were trying to find our way to a relative's house for a visit. I had made the mistake of relying on her for accurate directions and very quickly we became lost on the dirt country roads. We pulled into the closest town and I asked her to jog her memory and try to remember where the house was. She said she thought she knew and we decided to drive back into the bush and give it one last try. 

​As we were driving up a hill I experienced a vague sensation of familiarity, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I asked my mom if we had ever been out to this area before and she said we had come often to it when I was a child. I pulled over to the side of the dirt road and we both got out of the car. 

I looked into the bush that was directly in front of us and told her that I would like to explore it for a few minutes as I was getting the flashbacks from being in the area. She said she would wait in the car and seconds later I plunged into the bush. For whatever reason the hillside of thick underbrush and trees felt common to me. As I moved through them I seemed to be able to pick my way through and was able to anticipate which direction the path was going to take. I then called out, "Let's go Sport." Which was the name of my dog I had as a kid, but he had died long ago. I stopped and a shiver played like fingers down my back. There was something in the bush ahead of me, so I pressed on deeper. Three hundred meters later it came into full view. It was the farmhouse that I had seen in the bush as a kid, but why was it so important and why was I being drawn to it? 

I stepped closer and realized that it had long ago been abandoned, but the structure still stood solidly, but without windows. I stopped before it and let myself become immersed in the past, trying to figure out why I felt I had been here before. I could feel the connection in my mind coming but it wasn't quite there yet. It just needed a little more prodding, so I went inside. And there it was...

The table with the white blanket now brown from the ravages of time. The candlesticks were still there but had been tossed on the floor by the wind. And then like a brainwave from another dimension the past flashed before my eyes and every coin of the past fit into the slots of the present.

I was maybe seven years old at the time and was wandering in this bush with my dog when I saw an orange glow coming from the window of the small farmhouse. I walked up to it thinking it was a fire and opened the front door. But it wasn't a fire, it was candles burning. I looked around the farmhouse but there was nobody inside, except a coffin on the table. I walked up to it and peeked inside and there was a dead man in a suit. I screamed and ran out of the farmhouse, thinking I had seen a ghost. I had forgotten about it after all these years because I had dismissed it as a figment of my imagination. But now, years later, I was sure of what I had seen and fully understood it.

It was night before his funeral and the man was lying in his coffin and the lit candles were used to keep evil spirits from possessing his body. I remember slamming the door shut as I ran out, causing all of the candles to extinguish. Now, I wondered if by accidentally extinguishing the candles I had inadvertently caused evil souls to enter his body in the coffin, therefore possessing it beyond the grave.