Chapter Four
From her eyes came tears, gently flowing
They caught the moonlight, the starlight
And their light flowed softly
Down her cheek.
I didn’t sleep well for the rest of that night, although I tried. I kept tossing and turning, shifting in and out of half sleep and waking dreams. All the time, Sarah’s music kept playing in my head, like some stupid pop tune that you can’t get rid of. I had seen a ghost! Not some dark movement out of the corner of my eye, not some vague bright patch in a photo, but a real ghost. My mind kept coming back to that and then reeling away. I couldn’t accept it and yet I had to. I had seen her and I was pretty sure she had seen me.
As I came, dishevelled and bleary eyed, to breakfast the next morning, I said to Florence, “Tell me about Sarah. If I’m going to live in a haunted house, I at least need to know about the ghost.”
Florence gave a quiet shrug and busied herself with the teapot. “There’s not much more I can tell you. Very few people ever see her. Occasionally a figure will be spotted down on the beach as the full moon is rising. The music is heard more often. That’s why the drawing room was kept locked up. No one dared to touch the ‘haunted’ piano or even sit in the same room. Again, the music isn’t heard by everyone and it hasn’t been heard by anyone for a long time now. Something has changed.” She looked at me curiously. “I think maybe it’s you. I think your coming has triggered something, some sort of awakening. Somehow, you have a role to play in Sarah’s story. Somehow, you call to her and she to you.” She shook her head. “That’s not a good thing; not for you, at least. As I said, bad things happen to people who hear that music. On her part, however…Why do you hear her? There must be some connection. She must need you for something.”
I frowned into my cup of tea. “I doubt it,” I said. “At least, I don’t think she agrees with you. Last night, when she saw me, all she did was scream – very loudly. Then … she ran away, back to the house.”
Florence smiled. “Well, that makes a nice change,” she said. “The ghost running away, screaming, from the mortal.”
I didn’t feel like laughing and, anyway, it wasn’t funny. “She only appears at the full moon?” I asked.
Florence nodded. “Yes, a day or two either side, although sometimes she apparently turns up during a bad thunderstorm. They’re the times related to her death.” She was quiet for a long time then; sitting still, as if in deep thought. Eventually she said, “Sarah is trapped John, trapped by the fear and guilt of her death. According to the story, she was always a timid child and now that very timidity traps her in this unnatural way. She needs to be free but she’s tied down by the events surrounding her death and the role she played in them. She needs help. Perhaps that’s where you come in?”
This was all very interesting but I didn’t see what it had to do with me. It all happened long, long before I was born. “Don’t know what I can do,” I said. “Sounds to me like you need a priest.”
“Sarah isn’t some demon to be exorcised,” Florence said angrily. “She’s a sad, lost soul who needs our prayers.” She calmed down very quickly and looked at me sternly. “You need to be careful, John. Sarah is trapped in a time of pain and despair. I’m sure it’s lonely in there but you really don’t want to join her. Men have been trapped by far less, believe me. Pray for her, certainly, but have nothing else to do with her. Do you hear me? Avoid the places where she is likely to appear. Interactions between ghosts and the living rarely turn out well for the living.”
I shrugged. “Still sounds like a priest job to me,” I said.
I sat and finished my breakfast in silence. I hadn’t prayed since the night my parents had died. That night came back to me then, as vividly as a movie. Our priest had come to the house. He sat with me and asked if I wanted him to pray with me.
“I can’t,” I said, stiff with shock. “I’m sorry Father, but I just can’t.”
“Don’t worry, son” he’d replied. “We’ll pray for you. We’ll say all your prayers for you. That’s what the church is for.” That memory brought unwanted tears to my eyes and I hurriedly left the breakfast table.
The next month passed quickly. I did my study modules. I worked around the farm and the garden. I even chatted with my old friends. I never mentioned Sarah and I really did try not to think about her, but, in truth, she was never far from my thoughts, and in my quiet moments I would hear her music playing in my head: beautiful and sad.
As the time for the full moon came round again, I came to a decision that terrified me: I would try to meet Sarah again and I would try to talk with her. Every time I thought of this, I panicked but the thought wouldn’t go away. After all, I reasoned, she was dead, so who better to ask about the dead? This was a decision that had seemed easy and logical at the start but the closer the full moon came, the harder I had to work to keep my fear in check. I debated with myself whether to meet her on the beach or in the drawing room. In the end, I decided on the beach, since in the drawing room I would have to interrupt her playing and I didn’t think I could be that brave.
So it was, that for two nights before the night of the full moon, I sat on the beach and watched the moon rise. On the first evening she didn’t show up and I didn’t know if I was disappointed or relived. On the second night, however, she was there, at first as a translucent shadow but growing more solid as the moonlight grew stronger.
It was a cold night, with a strong southerly wind blowing scudding clouds across a moon bright sky. She stood there facing the moon with her night gown blowing around her in the wrong direction for the wind. I was sitting close to where she appeared and she turned to look at me but didn’t say anything. All month long I had been working out what I was going to say. Every time the music played in my head I was reminded of the questions I desperately wanted to ask but, now that I came to it, I couldn’t find the words. Indeed, I was shaking with the effort it took not to turn and run.
Eventually, she was the one who broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to scream or run away?” she asked. Her voice sounded distant, as if she were much further away than she appeared to be. I can’t even swear that it was a real sound, one that I heard with my ears, but I had no doubt that it was her voice and that these were her words.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and struggling to keep my voice under control. “I’m not afraid of you.” That was a lie and, since my voice was high and shaking, not a very convincing one. “I’m sorry for you.” That was the truth. “We have something in common, you and I. You mourn the death of your father and I mourn the death of my parents.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t your fault that your parents died,” she said flatly.
“Nor was it your fault that your father died,” I replied. “He was the one who decided to ride into an oncoming storm on a skittish horse. You didn’t force him.” I stood up and took a step towards her. She backed away. “Sarah, I have a question I need to ask you.” This was what had been plaguing me all month, yet now that I came to it, I realised that I was more afraid of the answer than I was of her. “What happens to you when you die?” She glared at me and turned away. “No, please!” I said. “Don’t go away. I need to know. My parents were killed in an accident and I need to know what happened to them. Please!”
She turned to face me again. “Were they good people?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so,” I said.
“Then I don’t know what happened to them,” she said. “I only know what happened to me. I’m trapped in my failure, doomed to forever live over the time of my death. Pray that this did not happen to them.”
“How can I know?” I pleaded.
“Have faith,” she replied, turning away. “Have faith and pray. I don’t know what happens to good people. They move on and I’m trapped.” She started to walk away, towards the house, fading to shadow and mist as she went. I raced back up the beach to the house, with the first notes of the piano echoing across the gar
den. She was sitting at the piano, still playing, when I entered the drawing room. I stopped at the door and listened, the deep sadness of the music reaching into my heart. The notes began to fade and Sarah became less substantial as the moon rose above the drawing room windows and the moonlight began to dim. She got up and glanced at me before running to the reading room. I followed her.
She was sitting on the cane chair when I got there, the moonlight still filling the room. “I cannot help you,” she said as I entered. “I don’t know what happens to people when they die. I only know it didn’t happen to me.” She turned to look at me, her eyes growing darker in the fading moonlight. “I’m sorry…” she said, as the moon passed above the reading room windows and the moonlight, and Sarah, faded from the room.
The next night I sat and waited in the drawing room. After the moon light flooded in through the windows, the first notes of the piano started and slowly Sarah seemed to condense from the moonlight and take form. There, in the moonlight filled room, I listened as she played her sorrow and her pain, the music crying into the night. Once again I listened and heard the notes rising in hope only to fall to ever greater depths. Rising again only in a kind of expectant hopelessness. My eyes filled with tears as the music called to my own grief and the moonlight shone brightly through the tears on Sara’s cheeks as she played. Her ghostly tears flowed freely – as did my real, salty ones.
As she ended her playing, she didn’t run immediately to the reading room as she normally did. She stood and turned to look at me and I looked at her. She was beautiful but becoming translucent in the fading moonlight. Her tears glistened on her cheeks even as the light passed through her. There, in the drawing room, we shared what we had in common; the almost unbearable pain of grief.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“John,” I replied. “John Riley. I live here now.”
She held out her hand to me as she faded, almost as if she were asking me to take it. “Don’t become like me, John.” A distant echo of her voice sounded in my head. “Don’t become trapped in the past, in pain …” The moon had passed well beyond the drawing room windows, the light faded, and she was gone.
The Haunting of Sarah Carew Page 4
