PHANTOM LOSSES

[July 13th, 2005] Some ghosts are scary, while others make you want to cry. Loss can quickly blossom into full-blown possession, and when it does, the phantom is often more haunting than anything that went down on Elm Street. Gina Ochsner's new collection focuses on this later kind of paranormal activity. In "Articles of Faith," a childless couple live in a house haunted by invisible youngsters; "How One Carries Another" gets going when a long-lost brother, who probably died fighting in Vietnam, returns to a family in the form of a mysterious World War II veteran. No one gets away unscathed in their slugfest with grief here.

As upsetting as these interactions should be-one involves a budding mortician who speaks to the dead-their effect wears off. By the third time 'round, you know the drill. Each story begins with a rattled domestic situation, which then manifests itself in ghostly garb. There's the example of a failing marriage captured by a talking bird, which spits a couple's venomous insults back at them. One character or other then becomes fascinated with the disturbance, and decides to squash it-a bird is let free, say-and then we end with an uneasy kind of peace, with the no-longer-secret emotion lending a quivering tinge to the air around us.

Ochsner is such a skilled writer that she nearly disguises this interrelatedness to her project. "Articles of Faith" unfolds in a fabulously realized winter village. Her stories are also rich in delightful hit-and-run phrases, discreetly embedded like secrets. One person's belly is an "apron of flesh"; in another tale, a child mistakes her mortician parent's smell of formaldehyde for perfume.

But this isn't enough to keep the mind distracted from the presence behind the screen, pulling the levers and tapping those important fictional foot pedals. And when Ochsner decides to push a point home, which she often does, suddenly that bolt of fabric is yanked back, and the orbs and animals we are supposed to fear suddenly become just a trick of light, a domesticated pet. Sadly, most of us know these things could (or should) feel quite another way. JOHN FREEMAN. Ochsner reads from her collection People I Wanted to Be on Thursday, July 14. Annie Bloom's Books, 7834 SW Capitol Highway, 246-0053. 7:30 pm. Free.