Confession of a Ghost. 36. 5. A monk

“CONFESSION of a GHOST”
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series

5 BEFORE/36 AFTER. HOUSE No. 11

*****HELLO, MUM…*****

***
Somewhere in the Universe


Music was clearly heard in House No. 12.

“What are these sad sounds, Angel?” I asked, looking around at the abyss of Eternity dotted with twinkling stars.

“It would be strange to hear the Hymn to the Sun here! This is the Moonlight Sonata, you’ll learn to play it on Earth,” the Guardian smiled.

Three women appeared out of the black abyss, one of them was emanating a mysterious silvery Light. I drew attention to her pendant with a white stone, iridescent blue and golden colors.

“Hello, Rukh!” the Woman smiled, catching my eye, and, having taken off the chain with the pendant, handed it to me. “It’s the Moonstone.”

“Hello, Moon,” I breathed out, afraid of accepting it.

“Take it,” whispered the Guardian.

I thanked the Moon, hung the pendant around my neck and looked inquiringly at her retinue.

“Later you’ll get acquainted with the star and the asteroid that are in conjunction with me,” the Moon looked meaningfully at her companions, the retinue disappeared, and the Moon gently took my hand and led me into the distance. “Has the Guardian already told you about the 12th House?”

“Yes, but almost nothing about you.”

“The stargazers call me the Night Luminary. I’m the Earth’s satellite, always facing it with the same side, and my invisible side is the subject of legends and myths.”

“So do you symbolize something secret, unrevealed, veiled?” I summarized.

“Yes, I coincide with the meaning of House No. 12 in that. Of course, I illuminate Earth at night, but not as brightly as the Sun, and reality is covered with darkness, hiding its face from a human, awakening one’s dormant fears, causing anxiety and worry. Night is instinctively associated with a sense of potential danger, something may be lurking in the night.”

“Are you responsible for fears?”

“For something hidden, I symbolize the Subconscious, the sphere of the Unconscious. Fears hide at the bottom of the Well, covered with darkness. If they are brought to the level of Consciousness, illuminated by the Sun, they can be eliminated. Although not only fears are hidden there, but also repressed painful memories, unconscious desires.”

“There is the Sea of Rains, the Lake of Dreams, the Swamp of Mist on the surface of the Moon,” said the Guardian. “So the stargazers called her seas.”

“Are you responsible also for dreams?” I asked.

“And for the seas, lakes, swamps, for any liquids, being a symbol of the Water element, and for dreams,” the Moon smiled. “I’m similar to Neptune in that.”

“Stop,” a sudden thought pierced through me. “There are three Signs of the Water in the Circle, the third is Scorpio-Pluto, right?”

“Yes, Rukh,” the Moon agreed, “we have something in common with Pluto as well. Aristotle considered me a magic mirror, some esoteric people considered me the ‘mother’s corpse’, a planet that gave its breath of life to its daughter Earth, but was so strongly attached to Earth that…”

“By the way, the deep rocks of the Moon are much older than those of Earth,” the Guardian added meaningfully.

“In ancient myths and legends,” the Moon continued, “I was associated with various goddesses, including Demeter, whose daughter was kidnapped by Pluto, that is, with the mother mourning the untimely death of her daughter, and with Hecate, the night goddess who binds the world of the dead and the living and calls shadows of the dead. Many magical rites on Earth are performed by Pluto magicians during the Full Moon, when I reach maximum strength, the Door to the Lower Spheres of the Astral World opens, and disembodied restless souls…”

“Pluto will destroy me,” I muttered.

“No, managing your health and work, Pluto will pretty exhaust you, which can lead to nervous breakdowns and lack of energy, since you have Neptune in the Sphere of Health and Work, with whom we are responsible for the psyche. But your killer is Saturn-Kronos, the Master of earthly Time and your Death in particular.”

“You don’t like Saturn, do you?”

“We are different. He is slow and I am fast. He likes to lead and manage. I prefer to be led. He prefers a rigid system and structure, sets boundaries, and I’m water, soft and vulnerable, not recognizing boundaries. He needs static and constancy. I need to keep changing, since I’m in charge of change. The Moon is the fastest and closest planet to Earth, passing the Circle in a little less than a month, my second name is Month, from the ancient word ‘measure’, indicating a constant change of my visual form. Speed allows me to form aspects with other celestial bodies more often than others, triggering various non-global events on Earth to avoid a monotonous and boring life,” the Moon smiled. “I’m responsible for the astral body – the soul, and its manifestations – emotions and feelings, for the processes in the Subconscious. I give the opportunity to feel the hidden in others, to see people through, to read their minds. The astral body returns to the Subtle World during sleep, being a part of it and connected to the earthly body by an invisible thread, breaking at the moment of the death of the latter. The soul has access to the memory of the Past and the Future, memories are not always brought to the level of Consciousness, but periodically appear as a premonition or a prophetic dream. People call it intuition and psychic abilities, the level of development of which depends on my location in one’s passport.”

“So, you are in charge of Memory, the Past and the Future, the Secret Knowledge and clairvoyance, right?”

“That’s right,” the Moon smiled. “I can consign to oblivion what is painful to remember, as if erasing one’s memory, but it remains and lives at the bottom of the Well, as the memory of pre-incarnation does.”

“People are connected to their memory through the astral body,” I muttered thoughtfully.

“Both personal and collective memory. The latter is often referred to as the Tablets, where everything is written about everyone and everything. The astral body, each atom of which is interconnected with others in exact accordance with the passport and saturated with the encoded information about your Path on Earth, one day will be reset. After that you’ll lose your personal memory – of a specific incarnation, but the collective memory, the keeper of each incarnation, is eternal. The task is to realize one’s Self, remember the pre-destination, understand the deep essence of the true Self in order to harmonize the soul, go through the predestined Path and enrich the treasury of the Spirit.”

“So, when I return from Earth, will I cast off my astral body and memory?”

“Yes, but your Spirit cannot be cast off, it’s a part of God, indivisible and eternal. You descend to Earth in order to return to Heaven with the fruits of your incarnation. If they don’t turn out to be rotten, they’ll replenish the treasury of your Spirit.”

“Will we be One again?” I asked hopefully, looking at the Guardian, and he silently nodded in response.

“Since I symbolize the Memory and the Past,” the Moon continued, “I’m a symbol of the roots, family, ancestors, as well as one’s Motherland, the country where the soul incarnates. I show the measure of involvement and attachment to the Source.”

“The Moon is also a symbol of the hearth and family,” the Guardian added. “She has a strong need for comfort and mutual love. She is responsible for needlework, family traditions and housekeeping. It’s important for her to feel ‘at home’, ‘behind the stone wall’, where she opens up, allows one to penetrate into her rich inner world, shows tenderness and care for loved ones. The Moon is always introverted due to hypersensitivity and vulnerability. Her location shows the Sphere where one feels protected and safe, it’s also the Sphere of one’s secret desires and aspirations, where or to what one is unconsciously drawn. The Moon also speaks about the mother of the incarnating soul and their relationship.”

“So are you my mother?” I exclaimed.

“I symbolize her,” the Moon nodded. “In the passports of souls incarnating in a female body, I’m responsible for motherhood, showing what kind of mother you will become, and what kind of relationship you will have with children. In general, I’m the female energy, representing all women. As the Sun, the male energy, represents all men. I’m the Soul, always the second after the Sun, the Spirit, but in your case, the Sun and I act on equal terms, because we are friends and have the same strength.”

The Moonlight Sonata sounded louder and louder in me. I froze in the air in the center of the abyss of Eternity and looked the Moon in the eyes.

“Will you leave me?”

“Not the time, Rukh,” the Guardian patted my shoulder with his wing.

“By the way, speaking of Time,” the Moon continued, without answering my question, “I symbolize periods of helplessness and dependence on others, that is childhood and old age. Many people consider me infantile, but it’s not entirely true. I’m gullible but deep.”

“All the basic habits, behavior patterns, reactions and reflexes are formed precisely in childhood, and then, being hidden in the Subconscious, lead a person through life, so on Earth they often say, we all come from childhood,” the Guardian added. “However, it’s time to go to the Library.”


***
Library of the Universe


“We are walking through the House of Secrets. I won’t know my mother, right?”

“Yes and no,” answered the Guardian evasively, letting me know that everything had its time.

I sighed heavily and, looking at the next title, “Come on!”, read a story about a girl from a boarding school who was disliked by the class teacher.

“The girl was told that her mother had gone on a business trip abroad. Christina’s grandmother, my friend’s mother, liked neither her daughter-in-law nor Christina. So I advised my friend to bring the girl here.”

“Why didn’t she come?”

“Christina and her father… disappeared…”

“Disappeared?!” I was stunned.

“They went to the sea and never came back. The police are still looking for them… By the way, Alice, she was in your class, wasn’t she?”


*****A MONK*****

***
Moscow

I was frantically walking back and forth through the walls of my former flat, almost about to enter the kitchen of my neighbor Lena, but Ray stopped me in time, appearing from the window,

“When you do something automatically, you succeed!”

“You knew!” I exclaimed in despair. “You knew in advance that Boy the Lawyer wouldn’t be able to help me! I wasted two nights for nothing!”

“Oh women!” Ray chuckled. “They are always right about everything!”

“Okay, I agree, the Boy told me about the icons! What to do now, Ray? How am I supposed to do that? I have only 3 nights left!”

“Wow! You have 3 more nights! I hope you asked the Boy who the girl with your name was.”

“Do you think there was enough time for questions?”

“Can’t you stop Time? No doubts, you remembered what you had done in that flat during your lifetime.”

“Stop mocking me! Those walls were pulling me towards them, I heard my voice and…” I stopped right in front of the kitchen wall, and my gaze settled on an open shelf with mugs and a small souvenir of a miniature map of Italy. “Boots! Damn them! There! The voice, man’s voice! Those walls keep it in their memories! I heard it tonight, just as well as my own! Yes! It was he who told me, ‘Don’t take off your boots!’ In that flat!”

“You’re charming,” Ray smiled. “And?”

“How do I know? It doesn’t get easier!”

“Did you find out from the Boy about the two-faced Woman?”

“No, I didn’t! And what difference does it make now, if I’m sure to meet her on the Full Moon in the abandoned building? I need to finish what I haven’t done! Books and icons, Ray!”

“Well, explain to me why the Higher Forces sent to you not only Vadim with the hint of a children’s library, but together with Svetlana in boots. Why did the plastic necklace hook you so hard? Perhaps the girl with your name is just a random guest in your posthumous visions. However, you have passed by so many faces visiting you in the Court, but why does Woman the Love stubbornly persist?”

“What should I do with my books and icons?” I screamed with all my might so that the chandelier in the kitchen frantically started swaying from side to side.

“Wow! What a terrible power is dormant in you!” Ray smiled. “What’s in the diary?”

“Iversky Valday Monastery,” I collapsed to the floor.

“What were you doing there?”

“I was changing the Future. Something to do with Death. It was as if one’s death automatically set off a chain of events leading to another death. I arrived at the monastery on the Full Moon. I felt good there, like at home. The monk said I would write about them in my book. I promised, but… I confessed to him I was drawn to windows.”

“So?”

“Leave it alone, Ray! I’m doomed to be stuck here forever! What’s the point of talking about the monastery now? I have no time to write that book and the will.”

“It seems I’m doomed to the eternity in Hell,” Ray sighed. “You were my last hope! By the way, weren’t you going to Hell to remember why you had gone alive? Why didn’t you ask the Boy to order a 40-day prayer for you? And when do you plan to organize your funeral liturgy?”

“Do you suggest that I do it all in 3 nights? Stop, Ray! The Boy knows that I was in Hell! He…”

“And why you were there, he, apparently, knows too. You didn’t ask him about it because of your fear, did you?”

Suddenly, there was the sound of the front door opening. I jumped up from the floor and snuggled up to Ray. Footsteps sounded in the hallway, an alive woman appeared in the kitchen. She began to inspect the contents of the cupboards, then mentally issued her verdict, “Not much!” and froze against the opposite wall with icons, thinking, “It’ll be at least something to heat the oven in the cottage in cold weather!”

“What’s?!” I flew up to the stranger. “Who are you?! Where did you get the keys to my flat? How dare you talk about my icons like that?”

The chandelier swayed. The woman glanced at the chandelier and then at the window – was it open? – closed. “That’s a hell of a thing,” the woman muttered gloomily under her breath and stopped the chandelier with her hand. Infuriated, I tried to grab the stranger by the hand, but she went to the fireplace room. I shouted following her,

“What are you doing here? Get out!”

The woman examined the icons in the room and stopped opposite the “Gatekeeper”, Iverskaya. Having noticed the drops of blood depicted by the icon painter on the face of the wounded Virgin Mary, the woman grunted, “Yes, she was clearly out of her mind, witch! She also smeared the icons with blood! Into the oven! Everything into the fire!” I turned on the fireplace with a glance. The woman approached it and…

“Get out!” I shouted in her ear, and the fireplace turned off.

“Even the fireplace is broken! Why the hell is it here? The chairs are old … Although … to take a picture of what is left and sell it via the Internet!” the woman thought. Horrified by what was happening, I instantly slipped through the wall into the locked room, grabbed the first book that came to hand, returned and threw it with all my might against the wall near the chair where the woman was standing. She shuddered, leaned over the fallen book, picked it up and read the title, “Do you believe in ghosts?”


***
Ouranoupoli


“You’re already going back on Sunday,” Leah sighed, handing coffee to me. “Are you missing home? No? I am, very much.”

“Do you want to return to Georgia?”

“According to the law, in order to get Greek documents, I can’t leave yet, but my daughter is there, my parents are there. And what’s here? I thought I’d start my life from scratch, but it turned out… I live in Thessaloniki in winter and work at Janis during the season. I want to swim, it’s so hot in summer, and we are in the shop from morning to night. His parents are strict, but good. They give accommodation to employees. There was a girl here, really a witch, it was so hard to deal with her. So I took Iverskaya, the ‘Gatekeeper’, and prayed to her. I put the icon on my bedside table, a strong icon, my favorite, it’s considered Georgian.”

“I love it too, Leah. I lived in the Iversky Valday Monastery, the brother of Athos’ Iviron. Probably I felt nowhere as good and calm as there. There are no icons in the monastery, except for Iverskaya, a huge, alive, on the right, in a silver setting, a copy from Athos, given to Valday in 1656. There is the story of its appearance on Athos on the wall, on the entire wall from floor to ceiling with oil paints. The way it sailed by sea from Nicaea to the monastery, wounded with a knife. Janis sent me a photo of the Athos icon. He was in Iviron when it was taken out of the monastery.”

“Oh, Alice, how happy you are! You have a place to go in hard times. I can’t even go home.”


***
Tower of Ouranoupoli


“Joice,” I thought, finishing my tea in the fireplace room of the Tower, “why don’t I fly to the Valday Monastery?”

“A great idea!”


***
Library of the Universe


“Moony, why does the Moonlight Sonata sound all the time in the Court?”

“Because you hear it.”



“Silence always tells us something and is never silent. This is what people call the moment when they are silent, only they are.”

“I gave video cassettes of old filming for re-recording (I’m 12 and 16 years old, last bell at school, graduation, dacha, etc.). Then I re-watched it with my son. He looked at Me the girl with interest. I was playing the piano what was pouring from Other World online. If you give someone listen it, they won’t believe, it’s too deep, too piercing, the energy is colossal, right from There… and my son said, ‘damn great!’ Listening to myself, I understood why I was predicted to go to the conservatory.”

“At the presentation, I turned to the audience, ‘Have you ever seen an angel?’ Everyone answered ‘no’, and the presented author was just one of them. She wrote to me that her Time on Earth was ending, so she tried to say goodbye to the world to leave for God in peace. She had already given away everything, and the other day she had a terrible car accident, returning from the Optina Pustyn Monastery, the minibus turned over, but she had not a scratch. Not an angel? We think people. And not everyone around us is human.”

“The head of a Literary Union called me from the maternity ward. I congratulated her on her third child. So lonely we all are, and sometimes we need to call someone and feel someone nearby very much… so that someone strokes our heads, nods in agreement. I really need that too. Public loneliness, as my friend’s husband said at my speech in Prague. One is surrounded by people and events, and in reality is absolutely alone. They think, everything is super and keep their distance. They will say later, how many men she had! Show me at least one! Ghost people. They call, write, ‘Let’s meet,’ and disappear. As if some Force is taking them away from me.”

“I called Mr. W. He didn’t pick up the phone. Offended? Answer calls or call back. While someone calls you. I read on the Internet that something bad happened to a person well-known in political circles. He called me, and I told him, ‘It’s good to lose something, we are rewarded in what we need more here and now. Besides, today we are always something more than we were yesterday’.”

“I warm up with the fireplace (‘I want to live in a house with a fireplace’, there is a fireplace in my flat), it’s so cold at home. I lead a hermit lifestyle and very slowly continue to go through my things. I pull out everything, make a revision. What is possible to live without. I throw something away, take to church, give to school, etc. An acquaintance who has already come many times to dig into my earthly things, laughs, ‘Is it possible to take something else away from you?’ I reduce the contents of my flat 2–3 times a year. As Svetlana once said, ‘Look, don’t fly to Heaven alive!’ So many things suddenly became unimportant. I used to have a desire and a joy to buy something, or, for example, to take a picture, marking my presence somewhere, or, on the contrary, it caused disappointment when I could not appear at some event, now I have zero emotions. The Moon is in the 12th Sphere. Too bad the 12th is being played out so early.”

“I went to my 'mountain', our family nest, a piece of the Past, not absorbed by the Mist. When it’s cold, I sit on the veranda in the pines (in a cafe), drinking coffee and combing my verses. It’s very cozy there – wicker chairs, pots of geraniums and pines – pines – pines. Then it gets dark, lampshades are lit, you can wrap yourself in a plaid and breathe the air of childhood stolen from me. When it’s warm, I go down, lie in the grass by the river, swim against the current. Every year it gets shallower, so the Mist absorbs my river, but it’s still there, with me, in earthly reality.”

“Yesterday I was walking near the Kremlin, looking for the mansion, my mother and I had visited my grandmother’s sister there. It’s always scary to look for something that is dear to you as a part of your Past, gradually absorbed by the Mist. I fear not to find it any more in earthly reality. Today I’ve woken up and found the World of Mists outside the window. I found my favorite edition of the Hedgehog in the Mist called ‘We’ll be always, won’t we?’”


***
Valday Monastery


I opened my eyes by the wall of the Valday Monastery and walked right through it. A dim light of a candle flickered in one of the cells. I flew up to the window, saw an elder praying and got inside. The old monk froze.

“Good night! Excuse me, can you see me?” I asked hopefully.

“Lord, have mercy, who are you?” whispered the monk, clutching his pectoral cross with his hand.

“For God’s sake, don’t be afraid!” I exclaimed, rejoicing that alive person saw me even in reality and not in a dream. “I need help in praying for the peace of my soul!”

“So are you a ghost?” the monk whispered and kept holding the cross.

“I died 36 or already 37 days ago. Once I came to live in this monastery. I felt at home here. A monk told me at my departure that I could always come back here.”

“What was the monk’s name?” the monk asked.

“My memory has been erased. Every afternoon I return to my flat where I died, but I neither managed to write my will for the icons, nor transferred the children’s library to the orphanage. Every evening, on the border with Greek Athos, I read the Akathist to the icon ‘Seeking for the Perished’. At night I flip through my diary in the Library of the Universe. Last night I read about my trip to your monastery. Unfortunately, I didn’t mention the name of that monk in my diary either.”

“Tell me, Ghost, everything you remember and know. I’ll pray for you to the Virgin Mary,” the monk asked me, and when I told him my story, he suddenly smiled, “So you haven’t written the book in which you promised to mention me as well!”

“You? Are you the monk who was so kind to me?” I was delighted and soared to the ceiling.

“36 days ago,” the monk pointed to a mark on the wall calendar, “during the liturgy, when I was censing at the Iverskaya icon, I heard a voice, perhaps of an Angel. Since then, I have been praying and asking the Virgin Mary to clarify what that voice and the uttered name meant. It was your name, Alice.”

A shiver ran through my astral body. I knelt before the monk and bowed my head low. The elder blessed me in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and said,

“Lord, Glory to You! Blessed Virgin Mary, save us and have mercy on us! What a happy soul you are to be cared so much by Heaven! In the morning, I’ll tell the brothers about you, and we’ll hold a funeral liturgy and start the 40-day prayer. Don’t worry about the handle, it doesn’t decide your destiny. God sees and knows everything.”

“Thank you! And what about the books and the icons? When I imagine them being burned in a fireplace instead of firewood…”

“You’ve said that your friends were icons, that is, Saints. I’ll pray so that they let you know what to do. And let me know if you can, when the Virgin Mary takes you to Heaven, and then, in the Kingdom of Heaven, remember me, a sinner, in your prayers.”