So many young men never came back from that damned war. Even of those who survived, countless returned in body only. In spirit, their fight continued, the life and death of battle seeming more real and immediate to them than the trivia of everyday civilian existence. Some sought escape in drink or drugs, and some found more comfort in the arms of Asian whores than in the beds of their own wives.
So, Mary wasn't the only young wife who went to bed alone night after night while her husband lost himself in war movies and fell asleep in front of the television, bottle in hand. Nor the first to be abandoned for days whilst facing her own private battle with the black dog of depression, left to care for the needs of her infant son and demanding four-year-old by herself. Her solution - her final desperate act - while basically suffering from temporary insanity, was also far from unique.
But it didn't end with her taking her own life; the short in the light fitting she hung from started the fire that gutted the whole house, condemning not only herself but her husband and children too. John got to fight his war again, battling his monsters and demons in place of the Viet Cong, while her babies grew up in this limbo world, unconscious of the endless span of years that seemed just a normal lifetime to them.
They never noticed how this shadow show endlessly presented the same themes over and over, nor how the challenges they were set echoed their own fears and pain back to them. They were trapped as she was, caught in the same loops, replaying the same tragedies over and over, while she was forced to witness her boys suffering for her sin, never permitted to do more than watch.
So here she was again, standing at the top of the stairs, feeling the icy draught whipping at her white nightdress, helplessly watching her sons as they fought the spectral Constance, oblivious to the way the woman's story paralleled their own. They failed to see the uncanny resemblance between the Welch house and their childhood home, and they even overlooked the way their own bodies faded and stuttered in and out - like images on an old worn videotape – as they climbed into the car and drove away.
Some spirits only see what they want.
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