Rogue Monk

Hungry Ghosts

William F. Buckley got trapped, as cats do, when the door between the former Hospice and the Zen Center closed by accident, so we got into the habit of leaving the door ajar. Buckley liked to prowl the empty halls and rooms of the vacant Hospice looking for old friends. One night, through Issan’s illegal doorway, he charged into the dining room, his tail the size of a watermelon.

Then, after we had retired for the night, we awoke to muffled screams, moans, and what sounded like chains being dragged across the floor. The driving rain, with thunder and lightening, added to the mystery. The racket even awoke our humorless Zen Master. Zenshin demanded a meeting at the dining room table right then, in the middle of the night.

Bob, who lived across from me on the third floor, brought candles and a Ouiji Board. Zenshin was not amused. Zenshin would not even smile. Nobody used the word ghost or suggested the empty Hospice could be haunted, but in the middle of our chatter came a loud thud from next door that sent Buckley into mid-air.

We decided to chant, one more time, for the dead. Everyone disappeared with excuses. By default, I found myself alone on the third floor of the empty house, white cane in one hand, sage smudge in the other, with a bell bulging out of my pocket. I opened all the windows, using Zenshin’s instructions. The hungry ghosts (the Japanese term implies that ghosts are never satisfied) needed an escape route.

Following the next instruction, I descended to the basement to invite the hungry ghosts to depart, one room at a time, hallways and stairwells included, even bathrooms and closets. The burning sage generated great clouds of smoke; the bell echoed. The third instruction stated all doors and windows should remain open until the very end. After the basement, I moved up to the first floor, chanting the Dai Hi Shin Dharani (the usual chant for the dead), smoke swirling around me.

Each room brought back memories. I stood in the little blue room that Zeke would not enter when Henry died. In George’s room, I ran my fingers over the sill of the window through which he shocked the Christmas carolers by mooning them. I found a thumbtack on the windowsill, and wondered if George used it to hang one of his self-portraits as he went blind, the last drawing nearly a blank page? Blair lived there after George died. Then Jim. And Mark.

On the second floor, I came to Greg’s room with its big window over the front door. I smudged the raised closet where he always stubbed his toes after he lost his sight. Paolo loved the yellow room overlooking the back garden. I chanted my way to the room facing Hartford Street and the front yard. I found empty space where Gary’s bed once stood. I could still feel the lumpy floor where he overturned his aquarium. When smoke and chanting had filled the last rooms on the third floor, I closed everything tightly and went back to the first floor through Issan’s illegally cut door into the dining room where Zenshin and Buckley waited for me.

Zenshin sat at the table eating Fritos^™. “Did you remember the apartment...?”

“Do you really believe in hungry ghosts?”

“If ever a place should have been haunted, it was that place,” and he pointed toward the open door.

“You didn’t answer me.”

“Did you tell them it was safe to leave?”

“You do believe...”

He cut me off. “I didn’t say that. I just asked if you invited them to depart.” He fumbled with crumbs. “I don’t know if we will ever know.” He rested his arm on the table. “I wonder how long that doorway will remain? Issan used a sludge hammer, not a building permit, when he put it through to the Hospice next door.”

I said, “I think we should paint a mural on that wall, rather than make it look like the door never existed.”

“A mural of what?”

“The door, standing ajar, with Issan looking back from the other side, grinning…”

Zenshin was not amused. “The Hospice ruined the Zen Center.”

He uttered the forbidden, unorthodox sentence. “Zen is about sitting. The Hospice was Issan’s Folly.”

Zenshin looked blankly into space. Glaucoma had taken his vision.

Rain pounded the dining room windows while we finished off the Fritos^™. He rose unsteadily and limped into the living room, thumping the rug with his cane. “Americans don’t understand. Gringos only imitate Zen Practice. They are Presbyterians, behaving rightly, rather than politely! They have it all backwards! Nobody in this country has a clue about Zen!” He lifted his cane, hitting the fireplace screen that saved us from winter. He grimaced.

All we heard that night was rain. We never heard another unusual sound out of the house next door. By the end of the month, the wall in our dining room had been restored, illegal passage removed. The old Hospice, with its Edwardian exterior, was transformed inside into a sleek, twenty-first ce