Our commune finally made the move to New Jersey. Big old Victorian house. People bustling about, fixing it up, fighting over choice rooms.

I jump into a woman's head, the Matriarch. She's in a small second-story room above the courtyard, setting up a bed frame, when she senses something's about to go wrong. She looks up.

A single large, brown, staring eye appears on the wall.

The Matriarch screams, "SPOOK! SPRITE!"

The eye blinks, is gone, and reopens in a different spot.

The Matriarch panics, stumbles backward…and trips on her skirts. She falls through the open window. As she rolls down the steep roof, she knows she will probably die, and that this is what her intuition tried to tell her: fear not the fright, but the fall.

She crashes to the cement. Blood wets her gown from shattered ribs. People rush to her side, including me. The Matriarch gasps, "Spook...room..." and passes out.

A man runs into the house, gone to do battle with the spook. Then he, too, falls from the window, rolls down the roof. I wonder if he's going to die as well, but he lands on the grass. He sits up, dazed, and I recognize him--it's Tall Will from school.

"Will!" I scream, run over. He sees me coming and flops back, pretending to be gravely injured. I fuss over him until others come to handle it.

Then I go to see the spook.

The room above the courtyard is quiet and has a strange electrical feel to it. There is no sign of the spook. Then suddenly it blooms on the wall, a disembodied eye. Round, bright, big and brown. It blinks, moving slowly on the wall.

"Why are you here?" I question.

This room is mine, is the answer. It neither speaks nor uses telepathy; I know I'm dealing with something entirely different.

As I open my mouth to ask my next question, my younger brother crashes in, salt in hand, ready to perform an exorcism.

"No, no! S'okay! It's okay," I yell, as much to the eye as to my brother. "It won't hurt you. What's your name?" I ask the spook.

It fuzzes out. Nothing you can hear, it says in our heads.

This is too much for my brother, who leaves as hastily as he arrived, slamming the door after him. I ignore him. "What's closest to it?" I prod.

A pair of kanji characters appears on the wall where the eye was.

They mean 'neutrality', says the spook. That is my name in visible form. I know it means the characters, not the word.

"We will be living together," I say. "Hello. I'm called Emily."

Hello.

Throughout the conversation, I've become increasingly aware that I'm sweating and shaky; the energy in this room has become much stronger. As the spook greets me, I'm suddenly seeing more than one eye, and golden pinpricks of light drifting in clouds across--and through--the wall.

One thing is clear: this is no ordinary, homicidal little spook. The people who fell out the window did so on their own--it didn't push them. I'm not so sure we should drive it out; it's not necessarily dangerous, and it was here first. I decide I'll live with it--we'll share this room.

"I have a lot to do," I tell 'neutrality'. "Here's the deal. This is your room, and I'll make sure no one tries to make you leave...but it's now my room, too. All right? See you later."

The gold lights change rainbow colors and a jingling sound fills the air. I have no idea whether it is really "all right," but I can feel the entity's innocent shock. I have to get out of here now; too much energy. I hope I'll get used to it after a while.

So I go alert a few people to this. My brother is incredulous: "You're really taking that thing as a roommate!?"

"It has a name," I growl. "And it's not malevolent. I talked with it; this is its home. In fact, it's taking me as a roommate, get that straight!"

Suddenly I realize that 'neutrality' was with me all along, in my head, listening. A sense of welcoming fills me; it's pleased. I feel it now as a guardian presence in this house, not just in our room but in all of this structure. Like a djinni.

Later, my brother and I race around the block. I remember running around a corner, feeling joy as I look at the house, knowing 'neutrality' wants me to live there. I can't wait to go back my room, our room, and talk to it some more.

Just as I reach out to grab the front door handle, I wake.

NOTES

Oh, boy...this one's really opaque...

1. "Fear not the fright, but the fall"= It's true, fear makes people careless. And that's what kills them—the accidents. I think maybe I should be extra careful for a few weeks. And keep an eye out for trouble.
2. Neutrality = ??? Something I need? Something I must learn to live with? How and why?
3. Kanji: My dreams have begun using Chinese names and characters to label important things. At least I know this much: the dream is important.

This probably is not an example of prediction; I started to teach myself some Chinese calligraphy about five years ago, and I must have seen or read something then.

Although...these characters are not in the book I used, and I was not consciously aware of their meaning. Prediction after all? Deep memory? Who knows?

The important question is, what does it mean? Really…I have no idea.

--Emily Joy

EDITOR'S NOTES

• Last year Emily dreamt of another friendly spirit: Trio, in Break Free, who helped her find the Family Skeleton. So maybe this dream also critiques what Emily absorbed from family and school.
• Will sure acts strange--not crippled, but pretending to be! I smell a pun. Maybe Will = Emily's willpower? Is she acting and feeling helpless, but really not? (I suspect the pun because of a dream of my own starring a Will whose full name turned out to be Willful Conformity.)
• Will's weird behavior makes me wonder about all these other people in the co-op. Yeah, maybe they're Emily's desire for a real community, support for her dreams... but maybe these folks are all inner qualities.
  • A rigid matriarch who panics and hurts herself = mistrust of the paranormal, ESP, etc? The dream may have a predictive element--maybe that freaks out her inner Mom.
  • Will who malingers for sympathy = playing helpless?
  • Her brother, ready to exorcise the unfamiliar = conventionalism?
• All those eyes! = seeing from multiple viewpoints? I'm reminded a little of the Cheshire Cat's transparent grin; but instead of a passive, mocking watcher like the Cat, this spirit is full of unsettling, exciting energy. Takes some getting used to, but it sure as hell isn't passivity.
• Those kanji! The phrase "zhong li", translated 'neutrality', literally means 'middle stand'. It's not passive standing, though; li means to stand up. So this middle stance Emily's calling 'neutrality' is an active thing--not indifference. And its energy confirms that. Sizzlin'! So how's this for an alternate translation? Centering.

--Chris Wayan

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