Part 1
The winter woods are eerie in the light of a dim flashlight, shadows of giant claws made by their branches. A cruel wind finds its way under my coat and through my shirt, and I start to shiver rigidly.
Just a few more turns ’till home, I tell myself behind frozen lips. A car comes down the main road with its high-beams obnoxiously blaring into my head. I put up my hand to shield my eyes, and the car stops abruptly. With a jolt of adrenaline, I look to the road just beside me for any obstacle that the car might have stopped for, hoping the car didn’t just stop to kidnap a girl wandering around town after midnight.
Nothing is there.
Another spike of adrenaline. It isn’t quite fear, because I don’t yet comprehend how helpless I am. But my senses are heightened, my strength increased, and my heart pounds with a new urgency. Clips of the future play in my eyes: me, running as fast as I can from a mad-looking man, as I prepare for the worst.
But the car drives coolly on.
I’m happy to be one street closer to home once I turn onto Arkly Avenue. My flashlight starts to flicker. Off, suddenly, then on again. Whew.
It flickers again.
The third time, it doesn’t come back on. I hit it with the base of my palm, and the lightbulb works again.
Finally, just as I turn onto my own street, Cherrywood Lane, the flashlight dies. This time, slapping it doesn’t work. I look around and give my eyes a minute to adjust to a dark, hoping some supersense would help lead me back home even if I couldn’t see anything.
By this point, I’ve completely lost track of where I am and there is no moon nor stars to light the way. It’s overcast tonight.
I try tightening the bulb, readjusting the batteries. In the process, I mix up the batteries and by the end I’m sure I have the positives and the negatives facing the wrong ends of the cartridge anyway.
At this moment, I hear footsteps. They are almost imperceptibly soft, as if intentionally so. And the steps are taken at half the pace of any person’s steps, even a decrepit old woman.
There is no beam of a flashlight on this pitch-black street.
I remember my defenses. “Stop!” I shout assertively, though the volume of my voice gets lost in the wind. My hands are at the level of my shoulders now, palms splayed open. But the footsteps continue, and nothing else in the world seems to have heard me. So I turn and bolt in the vague direction of home.
On the way, I hear a dog barking. Not my doberman, but my neighbor-across-the-street’s beagle. I get as close to the sound as I can, until I know I am at the house with the beagle. Then I dart across the silent street. While I search my pockets for my house key with my left hand, I rap on the door loudly with my right hand. The trick works as my doberman pincher, Lou, comes bounding around the house on his long chain, barking his head off. He leaps onto the railingless porch and wags his tail at my side, silent once he realizes who I am. “Speak!” I command, unlocking the house door at last. He barks with a passion as I bend down and unhook him from his chain.
I reach inside and flick on the porch light, then rapidly turn around to see what has become of my stalker.
The street is empty.
But what has now become raging fear inside me does not quite evaporate as Lou continues to bark without command.
“What is it, Lou?” I ask, searching the darkness.
He sits down and is quiet now, looking up at me and wagging his tail as if to boast: ’Whatever was chasing you is gone now, thanks to me.’
“Good boy,” I praise, stepping inside the house. I close the doggie-door before he can get in. He whines outside. “Play guard for a little longer, Lou. Then I’ll give you a treat.”
The hallway is lit with a few ceiling lights, and leads to the back door. Warmth hits me as I stride past the living room, where an artificial fire flickers under the mantle. I pass the kitchen and the two bedrooms before reaching the back door. My hands are still cold from the walk, but the doorknob is even colder. I grab it to double-check that the door is locked, and the knob resists my twisting fingers with a harsh click. I breathe a sigh of relief at last.
The bed makes a floof noise as I flop down on it and reach for the charging cord on the bedside table. I plug my phone in and wait until it comes on, at which point I call my friend on the other side of the world.
“Hey, CJ, it’s not a good time...” he answers in his faint German accent.
“I think I just got stalked.” There’s a moment of pause. “I just wanted to let someone know, in case.”
“Why don’t you call someone, um, closer to home?” He asks with a nervous chuckle. I can tell he cares, but it’s not like he can protect me.
“It’s one-AM here. No one’s awake. Just check on me every few hours, and if I stop responding, call Evelyn or someone.”
We talk about calling the police, but decide not to. Karl doesn’t have much time to talk anyway.
“I’ll call back in two or three hours to see if you’re alright. If you have any more suspicious happenings, then call the law enforcement, please! It is better that the whole neighborhood be awake in the middle of the night than you be raped and murdered because you didn’t want to embarrass yourself!”
If only he’d known that the reason I hadn’t called earlier was because of an uncharged phone, he would have lectured me on keeping my devices charged at all times, always bringing a charging cord everywhere I go and so forth.
But I was not thinking straight when I left this afternoon to go to church. I was not thinking about what Karl would say if he were there with me, because he simply was not there. I had someone else on my mind.
No one was there at the church building. I don’t know why they would be. In fact, I’m not sure why I was there. I guess I felt alone, and I wanted to go somewhere safe where I could be alone, but not feel it. But I didn’t even feel God there. Only emptiness inside. Someone should have been there with me, to hold me, to be a witness to my tears. But who’s to say I even cried?
I’ve thought about living with Karl. He offered once to marry me, and the second time he just offered to be an unmarried partner. I turned him down the first time, not because I was afraid of marriage, but because I was afraid of him. By the second offer, I was no longer afraid of him, but I was in love with someone else. A young woman, a little younger than myself.
But now that I’m alone again, Karl has finally moved on and found himself a girl.
Suddenly there’s a crash in the kitchen.
I should call the police.
The thought comes, lives half a second in the light, and dies as my curiosity gets the best of me. But it’s much more than curiosity that drives me out of my bedroom to investigate the sound. I remember how alone I felt in the church, how long I sat there thinking about my life and its worth. I waited until it was dark outside to leave and come home, and I might have done it on purpose just for the thrill of it. I might have exaggerated every little sound to make it into something exciting and worth running from, even if they were nothing to really be concerned about.
As I turn into the kitchen, I see a figure standing over the sink. She wears a long black robe that trails behind her clumsily. The folds of the robe betray little of her figure, but her head barely comes to my shoulder. Cascading down her head is a tangle of black curls, shining in unified locks.
“Hello–Who are you?” It’s hard to feel suspicious and wary towards a creature so much smaller than myself.
She turns around, revealing one hand under the sink faucet. Her eyes are black and endless, and their beauty is nearly abrasive. I know that I am sensitive to beauty, but her gaze could pin down a soldier. Her complexion is like stained glass, smooth but slipping and sliding in different directions. It is an almost-translucent tint of violet-rose, and the shading around her neck and thighs has a warmer tone. I don’t know how to describe glass-stain shading on a three-dimensional human figure. It was flawless.
Then I see her hand at the faucet. The water falls straight through it without interruption.
“Are you a ghost?” I ask flatly. Am I hallucinating?
“I think so,” she says, with just as much fear in her face as I have in mine.
“You don’t seem to mean any harm,” I suggest, my thoughts turning warm and inviting.
She shakes her head and pulls the robe close around her body. I glance away for the moment she does, realizing, she’s naked. “Are you going to make me leave?”
Or worse, she seems to plead.
I shake my head at her, slowly and calmly. “If you are a ghost in need of room, I have room. However…” I look at her hand under the running water, trying and failing to capture the liquid. “I’m not sure I can help you with that.”
She bites her lip as she sees the stream of water running straight through her hand, plowing through her flesh as if it weren’t there, and her eyes well up with tears. “I…I… I miss water,” she says with a tremor in her voice.
Without thinking, I take half a step forward. There I stop, imagining what will happen if the same physical laws apply to the water also apply to me. If I were to embrace her, I might cut through her, feeling nothing but air.
Besides, friendly or not, she’s still a ghost, and it’s usually best to avoid death in any form.
But she does not seem dead. She is not rotting, nor does she reek of sickness. Perhaps she is the part of a person that never dies, the part that usually can only be seen through the heart. Instead of living on in another world like she ought to, she stays here, missing her body and the world in which it was born.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asks, more tears rising.
“No,” I answer. Whether or not I’m lying doesn’t matter at this moment; I’ll say what this poor soul needs to hear. What if this is all in my head, and none of it’s real? I wonder, but the replying thought quickly resolves it. I might as well be kind to her, whether she’s a ghost or a part of me manifested in a hallucination.
Upon my invitation, she takes a seat on the sofa. To my surprise, the cushions cave in where she rests her weight. “Look,” I say to her, pointing it out.
“It listens to me,” she says, running her hand along the pale green corduroy fabric of the sofa. There is relief in her face, and it fills me with contentment.
“I’ve got an idea.” I hop down the hall and step into the kitchen, throw open the cupboards and find a plastic cup. Glass will not do if this plan doesn’t work. I fill it with water, and offer it to the girl, kneeling beside the sofa. “Maybe this will listen to you too.”
She reaches out to take the cup. I am careful to avoid her touch, despite myself. She undoubtedly notices, but proceeds to bring the cup to her lips.
I know it doesn’t make sense, but the trick works. I don’t question it when I see the glow on her face. “Thank you,” she says, beaming.
But when she returns the cup to me, I see that not a drop of water has gone. I meet the ghost’s gaze and smile at her. “No problem at all.”
“What is your name?” she asks as I set the cup on the mantle over the fake fire.
“Christine,” I answer. “But you can call me Chris.”
This elicits a positive response as she jumps to reply: “My name is Elizabeth, but my friends say Eliza.” Then she frowns. “I suppose, they did in the year 1820, but I’ve lost track of how long ago that was.”
I can’t help the shock on my face. Two hundred years!
Perhaps it’s best she doesn’t figure out that she’s two-hundred years old.
“Where do you come from, Eliza?”
“I was born in Virginia, but…” she looks away and blushes. “I followed you home from the church. I’m usually there.”
The cemetery behind the chapel.
Her voice is barely above a whisper. “I listened to you pray.” I clench my jaw. I had been depending on the solitude of the church when I wailed to God about my petty struggles. Indeed, they seem petty now in the face of this spirit stuck in a world where she can’t drink water. I am only grateful to be alive now. “I understand how you feel. I wanted to comfort you, but I don’t think I can give you what you need.”
“Is that why you followed me home?”
She nods tenderly. “I’m alone too. I have been for a very long time. But I don’t feel alone here.”
A chuckle escapes me. “This is the loneliest house in the whole town,” except for Mr. Perkins’. I used to visit Mr. Perkins somewhat frequently. He made me feel both happy and hopeless, because he was just as lonely as me, but three times as old. His house caught on fire several years ago, and there was no explanation. It seemed like God’s last laugh in my face.
But this ghost-girl has a similar effect on me as did Mr. Perkins. It is amplified, probably because she’s not sixty years old; she’s two centuries old.
She looks so cold, sitting a rigid few inches from the arm of the sofa, tugging on the robe around her shoulders.
“Would you like some clothes?” I ask awkwardly.
Her eyes turn so gloomy that it makes her previous expressions seem utterly cheerful. I wanted her to smile again. “I… I’m sorry…”
“You’re not the first of the living to offer me clothes, since I’ve been a ghost. Last time I tried to wear something besides this robe, it caught aflame and turned the entire house to ashes.”
A small gasp breaks open my lips.
Mr. Perkins…
Suddenly I am afraid. This ghost may look sweet, and she may even mean well, but as I told myself, it is best to stay away from death.
“But please,” she begs. “Come and make me warm. I am so cold, so alone.”
What have I got to lose?
I come and sit beside her. Nothing happens. I rest my arm tentatively over her shoulders, and she gently sinks into my side. Her weight is not the weight of death. She is soft and light, and the way she moves her hands reminds me of a child, though they are more slender.
“Eliza,” I begin. “Do you mind if I call you that?”
“I don’t know what the difference is…” she hesitates with her lips parted. “Chris.”
We both smile. Hopefully she doesn’t catch my burning ears.
She has tiny flecks of blue in her skin, like freckles, but more geometrical.
“You’re very pretty.” The words come leaking out of my mouth before I can stop them.
She giggles, a sound like crystal wind chimes. I can’t tell if she laughs at my audacity or my embarrassment. “Thank you.” She reaches out a hand over my belly, and bunches my shirt in her fingers. She presses the back of her hand against my bare stomach, causing me to involuntarily clench. I can only feel the iciness. “You are warm.”
Her eyelids flutter sleepily. I wrap my fingers around her shoulder, softly squeezing as I try to find the texture of her skin beneath the robe, aching with curiosity. I want to know, What does glass feel like as skin? I touch it as if it is brittle, thin and fragile, but with just a little bit more force, it caves like real flesh. I still cannot tell exactly what it feels like through the thick, wrinkled robe.
She glances up at me, looking much more alert, and I release my hold on her. “Sorry.”
For a moment, she pulls away, and I worry that I have hurt or offended her. With the movement of her shoulders, the robe falls down her arms. She is not leaving, but she has taken the cloth off her shoulder so that I can touch it, bare.
It is the texture of milk, smooth and silky at the same time. I cannot feel her bone as I gently press my fingers into her shoulder.
“I have been trapped, and freed,” Eliza readjusts her hips, “...only to find myself within a bigger cage.” Her hand is warmer now as she slides it further up my shirt. My breathing is staggered, and I wonder if it’s the magic of the ghost. “It is nice to have company in this prison of a world,” Eliza mutters.
Upon sudden impulse, I move my hand down to her waist, pulling down the robe as I do so. My head is so unclear, my heart so unsteady, as the fabric drops down her chest. She hastily holds the robe in place with her elbow just before it drops entirely to her stomach, pinning my hand against her side in the act. But as I meet her eyes and silently offer reassurance, she relaxes her arm and the robe falls away entirely. Her breasts swell and sink with the motion of her breath, and I begin to breathe in sync with her.
It feels wrong to touch her in her most tender and sensitive of places, but she pushes against my hands, summoning me. I can’t resist the plea of her innocent eyes, glistening in the flame.
“Eliza,” I whisper into the curve of her neck. Swirls of violet hues travel all along her chest up to her jaw, and around her ears. I trace it all with my fingers, lost in the accidental pattern. “The Devil must have made you just to spite the beauty of God.”
Her chest caves. “Is it the Devil’s will that I lie with you? Does he still tempt me even in death?” She recoils her hand from me and places her fingers against her lips. “Father Emory always said the Devil had a firm hold on me.”
“Father Emory has been gone for a long time, whoever he is.” I grab her wrist and rest it on my shoulder. “And it is not the Devil you lie with now.”
She looks at me with a broken hope that makes me wonder what she went through in her previous life. Who hurt you?
“Father Emory tried to fix me. He said that the reason I loved Catherine was because I hadn’t known a man’s touch.” I know exactly what she means just by the way she says the name Catherine, with wisps of desire and pain. “So he touched me.” She runs her fingertips along the line of my jaw, trembling. My heart is pounding as the pieces come together in my own mind.
“I don’t think Father Emory was trying to fix you.”
She doesn’t say another word. But she comes closer in one swift movement to press her lips on mine. I feel not only her desire, but the final satisfaction of something she has sought for too long. Too long she lusted, and never found what she was looking for. People told her what she wanted, and gave that to her, but it didn’t satisfy a deeper need. As she kisses me, I can feel that she knows she has found it. If only it had happened two hundred years ago, then for her, all would be set right. But she had to wait so long.
Elizabeth is tired. She has been wishing far too hard for more years than anyone should endure.
“Some things are lost to the wind,” she says, and vanishes.
