Well, I’ve apparently run out of steam, after only a few days, mind you, on telling you my story. It’s not that I couldn’t face the facts of my reality, it’s just that amidst the rape and intrigue, I’ve realized that my life is just not that interesting to me. It’s just “life.” So, the writer’s block continued. But if I am to polish these writing skills, I knew I had to just sit down and write. Although I wasn’t sure what there was to say, until last night.

Last night, around 11pm, in the twilight of my sleep, a bit of a poetic thought occurred to me and I realized that there was a spark, an ember of thought.

In that moment, I decided to rework, with the goal of mastery, the novel I wrote many years ago called, “Cage of Souls.” To further my inspiration, I woke this morning not only to the sound of my roommate (who is also my soon to be ex-husband) showering and banging around on the floor above, the owl announced his seasonal arrival to my rooftop with her distinctive “who who,” which trickled down the chimney and whispered its echo into my room. I had given the owl meaning long ago, and I knew it was time, I had to write. So, I’m going to tear this book to pieces starting now. Here we go…

Cage of Souls

Preface

The fabric of time is as thin as an aged parchment, as fragile and delicate as the wings of a butterfly in its final hours. It melts away in the rushing waters, smolders with the rise and fall of the sun and turns to ash as the seasons stake their claim to each generation. But somewhere in the fibers of the fabric of time are the imprints of significance, no matter how big or small, that people, places and things leave behind. Stamped, embroidered and branded into history, each moment doomed to be repeated. The place where these moments repeat is sacred, it is the place where time remembers and the ghosts linger.

Sacred ground blankets this earth. It is hallowed ground, consecrated in the blood of thousands of souls. Among those are the souls left to wander, tortured by lives that were stolen too soon, or perhaps there are dues their soul has yet to pay. Unknowingly, they are now doomed to repeat their steps until the end of time, or until someone comes along to save them. The tragic truth is that no one is coming to save them; their souls are woven into time’s delicate, yet unravelable, fabric. Each step they repeat tangles them tighter and they become locked away for eternity. I suppose it is fortunate for them that they are none-the-wiser. But sometimes, for reasons I have yet to truly understand, a modern time will cross paths with these trapped souls and a unique individual will catch a glimpse of a world that no longer exists. When that happens, modern people wrack their brains for an explanation. They eventually try to dismiss their encounters as an overactive imagination or perhaps a random event that happens in the brain. As time marches on, only a handful of ghost stories are fortunate enough to be lumped in with stories told around a campfire.

I can understand the need to make sense of these events that lack any logical explanation or scientific validation, but sometimes there truly are no logical answers. Science has yet to explain everything, which is why science, like medicine, is a “practice.”

***

Among the places lost to time is a small desert town, its archaeology preserved by the arid climate and its sinful greed, lust, wrath, and pride preserved by the timeless pain of sudden, and swift, defeat. The tales of Wild West stories known the world over, and among the entertaining tales of ghostly happenings that occur on a regular basis in Tombstone, Arizona, there is a lesser known story that is worth telling. It is a ghost story that only the most avid ghost adventurers know, but truth be told, they only know a small fraction of it.

Throughout the years, it has been said that there is a woman in white who has been seen descending the basement staircase of the notorious Bird Cage Theater. Initially, I suspected that this lady fell victim to those Deadly Sins which had claimed so many. Whatever the reason, though, all we truly knew was that she has been repeating her steps, getting more tangled in the fabric of time, as she descended the backstage staircase of The Birdcage Theater every moment, day and night, presumably, since the doors closed in 1892.

The fragments of her story vanish along with her spirit, right before your very eyes. But her end is where my story begins. You see I know why she wanders and I know who she needed to set her free. It is her curse which runs in my veins. She has been waiting for me…and I, unknowingly, had been waiting for her.