Weird stories have fascinated me since childhood. For years I have been collecting them both at home and abroad. These stories come from that collection. A few seem to have their origin in folktales. Others come from old books or newspapers, Most were told to me by acquaintances or total strangers eager to unburden themselves to sympathetic ears. I have given them their voice in this book. Some describe haunting apparitions: some sad and lost, others terrifying, gentle ones bringing comfort and love that reaches beyond the grave to heal a grief-stricken mourner, Perhaps the most haunting of all are the stories of little lost children still seeking a way home.
There are also accounts of strange creatures that seem to have no counterparts in our world of realities, of malicious dancing lights, of a gap in time that dropped the unsuspecting travelers into a tragic past event. Taken together they give glimpses of the beautiful, sometimes terrifying world that lies beneath the sunlit realities of our everyday lives.
Margaret Rau was born and grew up in Shantou District, China, daughter of missionary parents. She came to the United States to attend high school and then returned to China to study the language, literature, history and customs of that country. She speaks reads and writes Chinese. The author is alumna of University of Redlands and Riverside Library College, then taken courses from Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Southern California, and Los Angles City College. She has traveled extensively in Europe, the Soviet Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and until the Tienanmen massacre in 1989, has visited China every year since 1978, staying for a three month visit on most of these occasions. She has given lectures in Chinese and Australian schools as well as schools in the United States. Has also given lectures to adult audiences.
Margaret Rau has written 21 books in children’s fields, and helped co-author 3 adult-orientated books with her husband.
A Black-Eyed Blob
Today Chumash casinos bring a newfound prosperity to the little native American reservation in Southern California. It was before the time of the casinos that I visited Tonie Zavallas and her young family. They lived in a small mobile home on the reservation where her mother and grandparents were born.
Nestled at the foot of the mountains the reservation is a sun washed place of live oak trees, dusty sand and small vegetable gardens tended by the old people who lived there in tiny adobe houses scattered among the trees. In the far recesses of the reserve there’s an ancient cemetery where centuries old skeletons lie sleeping -- or do they?
People told me all kinds of ghosts and strange creatures have been seen there, especially near the cemetery where long ago the shamans worked their dark magic. With secret brews and incantations they opened doors to the shadowy underland -- doors that perhaps still stand ajar, or so some people say.
It’s easy to laugh at such things in the daylight when the sun is streaming down through the dusty live oaks casting shadow patterns on the pale earth below and the sweet air is filled with the songs of mockingbirds. But when dark comes it’s a different story. Then the earth retreats into monotones of blacks and grays and the limbs of the live oaks fret the star strewn sky with their gnarled silhouettes. Then is when the breezes seem to whisper of old dark secrets. Then is when mysterious creatures start walking.
One is called the lady in white because from a distance it looks like a woman in a filmy white gown. Sometimes the lady in white appears in the doorway of an old adobe house standing in ruins under a live oak. Sometimes it wanders around under the live oaks holding a candle in one hand. Then very few venture out of doors and never alone. Certainly not Tonie who has seen the lady face to face.
Tonie was nine years old at the time and in the fourth grade. One evening she was doing her homework at the kitchen table when suddenly she lifted her head to rest her eyes. Glancing out of the kitchen window she saw a strange milk white filmy blob with a peculiarly shaped head skimming along the ground. It paused by the window without looking in. But it scared Tonie so much that she let out a scream.
"What do I see?" she yelled.
At the sound of her voice the strange blob seemed to drift backwards. It came opposite the window again and there it stopped, turned its crazy looking head around and stared straight at Tonie. The huge deep black eyes seemed to pierce right through to Tonie’s heart making it pound. There was nothing else in that face but those eyes.
Shaking all over Tonie jumped up and stumbled into the bedroom and into her mother’s arms, crying hysterically. That night she slept with her mother, squeezed up close. and her sleep was troubled with dreams of the white blob.
Tonie has grown up now with children of her own. But she has never forgotten those burning black eyes that seemed to go down forever into the dark underworld of the long ago shamans. Before I left her Tonie assured me that she was still filled with such fear she wouldn’t leave her home after dark unless she had to do so. She just didn’t want to meet the white lady again -- the lady who wasn’t a lady at all but a terrifying white blob with a peculiarly shaped head and huge back eyes.
