Sycamore Trees

I woke up early in the morning about 3 a.m. Something just didn’t seem right in the house. I lay there awake for a while and then decided to go downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

It had been raining the night before and I could see outside through our sliding glass door that looks out onto the back lawn that it was a little misty or even foggy out. I filled a glass of water from the tap and then sat down at the kitchen table. I was looking outside at the lawn through the sliding glass doors. I could see our big sycamore trees next to the fence and just beyond them, the landscape was barely visible through the fog.

That’s when I saw it. That’s when I saw the ghost.
The sycamore trees seemed to be moving. Their branches were twisting and they seemed to be forming an image. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like a human face. It was so white that it seemed to glow. It was kind of billowing, too, like seeing a person who was swimming underwater. You can see them, but you can’t really make out the edges. The eyes seemed to be staring straight at me and I could feel the anger in them.
It floated there for a moment or two and then I guess it must have sensed that I was looking at it because it turned a little toward me and then… and then… it just dissolved. The sycamore trees began moving again and branches went back totheir original positions.

I stood there for what seemed like an hour, just waiting for it to come back. I didn’t even realize that I had been standing.
The next morning I was telling my mother about it and she got a strange look on her face. I could tell that the story had got her scared. She said “I never told you this before, because I didn’t want to worry you, but years ago, before you were born, before your father and I got married… I had a sister.”
“My sister and I were both in love with the same man. Your father. We argued all the time and fought over him. It was terrible. And finally, when your father proposed to me, my sister couldn’t take it. She went insane.”
“We found her the next day. Out by the sycamore trees. She had taken her own life. She had taken an axe and chopped off her own legs. She bled to death out there in the garden. Under the sycamore trees.”

“A few days later, we received a letter in the mail. It was addressed to your father…”
My mother broke off. Her voice was hoarse and there were tears in her eyes. I was almost speechless as well. She opened one of the kitchen drawers and took out a small envelope.
“It was from my sister”, she whispered.
My mother handed me the envelope and when I opened it, a small piece of paper fluttered out. It contained a poem, in a handwriting that was disturbed and scrawled. It read:

“I remember when
You took me for a walk
under the sycamore trees
The dark trees that blow
In the breeze
And I’ll always see you
And you’ll always see me
In the branches that blow
In the breeze
I’ll see you in the trees.
I’ll watch you from the trees.”