first ghost (and granny creeps)

I dreamed last night that Stephen Beard (pronounced "Bay-yurd") came into my grandfather's room. The dream was short. Nothing happened, he just stood there and looked at me. Stephen was the boy who lived across the street who had orange hair and freckles. He was enormous (not fat, but what you might call big-boned -- much larger than the other kids, and held back a few times in grade school). The neighborhood girls called him Moose. I was afraid of him and tried to walk in the opposite direction or not go outside when I'd see him. He shot himself, and died, in the garage behind his house when we were teenagers.

I know, morbid.

The other thing is that there is that there is this doll in my grandfather's room.

My grandfather (a master story-teller) made up stories for my mother and her siblings when they were kids and later, when my sisters and my cousins and I were kids, told them to us. The characters were named Blackie and Whitey, taken from the black and white dogs that appeared on the label of a brand of Scotch he was (quite) fond of drinking. Blackie and Whitey (in my mind they were fully racialized) spent a lot of time running from a character named Granny Creeps, an old woman who lived in the woods. She caged and tortured children for a living. I remember being on long car rides with my grandfather, and he'd point out the window to some dense trees: "Back in there -- that's where she lives, kids."

At some point, my Great Uncle Tom (my grandfather's brother) made a Granny Creeps doll. When I hold her to her full height, she reaches the bottom of my rib cage, which makes her about five and a half feet in length. She is stuffed, like a huge sock doll, but built to realistic little-old-lady proportions. Her head is weird, thin and flat, about the size of a medium pizza, but more football-shaped. It's made out of some kind of plaster that is painted pink and white, but it has cracked and faded over the years, so the wrinkles around her eyes, mouth, and chin appear even more exaggerated. Her face is painted on, and she has heavily lidded eyes and a mole on her left cheek. There is grey and black yarn that has been glued to the head, which is tied in the back into a bun. One of the strands of yarn has detached, and hangs like a dreadlock to her shoulder. There is a bobby-pin that pretends to hold back one side of the hair. Two gold hoops hang from either side of the head, even there are no ears. She wears muslin [sp?] bloomers, and a greenish-black dress decorated with tiny gold flowers, topped with ancient-looking lace at the neck, and held in place by an amber brooch. Her hands are cartoonish, like pink mittens. Her legs are covered by a dark plaid hose, and her feet are black pointed cloth boots with three white buttons on each one. The dress comes down to about her knees. She can sit upright, cross her legs, and fold her arms. As I write this, she is sitting next to me.

I should get a digital camera.