Phantoms

by Marie O'Regan

  I open the door and step inside. The adjoining room is white and striped with shadows.

  The woman lies on the floor. At least, I think it’s her. She is a skinless thing, curled-up like a comma on the tiles. Red and raw. Her eyes cannot blink. I try to move towards her but can’t. I’m paralysed. Through a lipless slit, she says, “I’m sorry.”

  Her arm lifts, sinews shining. She points.

  Someone is standing in the corner of the room. It wears her skin like a shroud. Breathes into her flensed breasts.

  I try again, to move, to run. Nothing happens.

  It shrugs off her skin, slowly. I see it for what it is.

  The woman rises. She takes up her skin, throws it over her like a cloak. The scalp flaps back like a hood. She walks out, slick feet sticking to the tiles. Slams the door.

  I can’t get back.

  I can’t look at the presence in the corner, but I know what it wants. It will let me out only if I trade places with the one in the adjoining room, as the woman did with me.

  An hour later, the door to Room 535 bleeps. I hear Henrik’s steps. His tentative, “Lisa?”

  And I can’t say anything back.

  * * *

  I’m in the Adjoining Room. There is one window. Sometimes it shows the sea.

  It has my skin and will only let me go when I let someone else in. I have two options. I’m not sure which is the braver.

  I can’t do it, though – offer someone else up to what lies in the corner. I’ve been close to it, I admit. I keep the bolt on my side of the door in place. It’s safer.

  In room 535, people come and people go. Some are alone. Some argue, some fuck. Most are alone while doing both. I talk, but the majority cannot hear. Those that can are already lost, but I still don’t ask them to open the door. Maybe they can find their way back.

  Henrik comes back to the room, once a year, every year, on the anniversary of my disappearance. Calls out to me when awake and asleep. Can’t say I live for his visits, for this isn’t life, but he’s all I have. I hear him breathing in there, right now. Don’t know how many years it’s been, but he wheezes. I hear the thud of his stick as he walks round the room. Hear it bang against the door.

  “Lisa,” he says. His voice is deeper, cracked. “This is the last time I’m coming here. If you’re there, now is the time.”

  There is silence as well as walls between us. Enough.

  “Henrik,” I say. The word feels jagged.

  The bed creaks. He walks slowly to the adjoining door.

  “I knew you were there,” he says. “Let me in.”

  “No,” I reply.

  “I’m not leaving till you do.”

  “No.”

  “There’s nothing for me out here, not anymore. We’ve got things to catch up on. Now let me in.”

  Pain shrieks through my nerves as I unlock my side; he unbolts his. Opens the door.

  * * *

  If anyone asks, we’re in the Adjoining Room. There is a window. Sometimes it shows the sea.

  THE GHOST IN THE GLADE

  Kelley Armstrong

  There’s a ghost that plays in an empty glade, in the woods behind my house. She tells me she’s lonely. She tells me she’s sad. She begs me to stay and cries when I leave and wants me to join her. To play with her forever. To lie alongside her under the earth, in eternal sleep and eternal play.

  * * *

  Mother used to say my father cursed those woods tucked in the midst of our crops. When I was little, I thought that meant he’d actually cursed them, the way a witch does. Perhaps that idea should have made me steer clear. Instead, it drew me like a magnet.

  What I found in those woods was not a cursed land, but a magical one. An oasis in our desert of fields, those ugly scars that sprouted endless, backbreaking toil. When I had to spend all day working the fields, I’d sneak into the woods for respite. There, I became a forest nymph, dancing through the trees and tramping through the stream, freer than I ever was outside them.

  I also ran into the forest when my father told me to go play. To me, alone, without brothers or sisters, those adventures were play. Then I went to school, and I learned that play meant games. Play meant rules. Play also meant interaction with other children, who mocked my dirty fingernails and patched dresses and lunches wrapped in handkerchiefs.

  One day, when I was ten, I was supposed to be inspecting the crop for weevils. I did until my vision blurred and my head ached. Then I slipped into the forest to clear my head with the rich scent of pine and spruce.

  I wandered through the woods, eyes half-closed and resting, making my way by memory. I was nearly to the stream when I caught a glimmer of movement in the trees. I went still, hoping to spot a fawn I’d seen the week before. Instead, a flash of pink and white whirled through my fairy glade.

  I didn’t mistake the creature for a fairy. I knew there was no such thing. My mother was very, very clear on that. When she caught me reading a book of fae lore I found in the village shop, she threw it into the fire. Wicked words, she said. A good girl needed nothing but Scripture.

  I managed to rescue my book after my parents went to bed. Yet I knew Mother would notice it missing from the fireplace, so I replaced it with the only other book we had in the house: the Bible. I burned it beyond recognition and left it there, a changeling child for my fairy tome, which seemed appropriate. I had no illusions about the severity of what I’d done, but if reading about fairies made me wicked, then one must expect me to do wicked things. It took a month for my mother to notice the Bible missing, and even then she only thought she’d left it at church.

  After that, I kept my fairy book hidden under the floorboards. Most of the pages were scorched but intact, and I reread it often. I understood, though, that the mysteries contained within its blackened covers were mere stories. Calling the clearing my “fairy glade” amused me. I knew it didn’t contain actual fairies. But on that day, it did contain something that should have been equally impossible.

  It contained a ghost.

  From the moment I saw Amelia Carter pirouetting around my fairy glade, I realized she was a phantasm. The sun shone right through her pretty pink dress. Her white Oxford shoes danced inches above the ground. Otherwise, she looked as perfect as always. Even in death, her cheeks glowed, and her dark hair hung in ringlets that twirled out as she spun.

  She noticed me and stopped mid-twirl.

  “Hello!” she called. “I see you behind that tree. Come and talk—” Her pretty face twisted, as if she’d bitten into an unripe apple. “Oh, it’s you.”

  I walked over, staying in the shadows to hide my filthy work dungarees and my cousin’s oversized boots. Her lips still made that grimace I knew well.

  “Aren’t you ever clean?” she said.

  I wanted to shoot back that I was always clean. I probably bathed more often than she did. The difference was that a lawyer’s daughter didn’t need to dig in fields after school. She didn’t need to do anything except dress her dollies in pretty clothes and whisper hateful things about other girls.

  Last month, Amelia Carter had disappeared from a church picnic. For a week, the entire town searched for her. I’d wanted to join. Even if Amelia never had a kind word for me, it seemed only right to help find her. My father refused to let me. I’d overheard my parents talking about what they thought had happened – that a traveling laborer had stolen Amelia and done terrible things to her. My father feared what horrors the searchers might find, and so he refused to allow me to join them.

  I heard other talk, too. People saying that whatever horrors befell Amelia Carter, they came from much closer to home.

  Tommy Lyons. That’s the name they whispered. Tommy was fourteen and lived on the farm beside ours. At the picnic, he’d been overheard telling Amelia how pretty she looked in her pink dress. He’d been seen walking with her. Whispering with her. After she disappeared, the searchers combed his parents’ property, but they found no sign of Amelia.

 
Soon, the story changed, and people started saying someone passing through must have snatched her. She was such a pretty child that some poor childless rich woman could not resist her, and now Amelia was living like a princess in a big city. That’s what people wanted to think. But her ghost in this glade told a very different story.

  “Where am I?” Amelia asked, looking around.

  “On our farm.”

  Her face screwed up. “This doesn’t look like… Oh, it’s that horrible forest. My father came to see your mother again, didn’t he? To get his darning done. He has so much of it.” She rolled her blue eyes. “We’d best get back to the house. He’ll want to leave as soon as she’s done.”

  “Your father isn’t here. Do you remember… anything?”

  She flounced down on a log.

  “Amelia?” I said when she didn’t answer.

  I waited, and finally, she whispered, “I think something’s wrong.”

  “What do you remember?”

  She ignored the question and said, “I can’t leave.”

  I inched closer, careful to stay out of her reach. I knew much of fairies, but nothing of ghosts, and I feared what she might do if I came too close.

  “What do you mean you can’t leave?” I asked.

  She pushed to her feet and strode toward the edge of the clearing. The moment she reached it, she bounced back, as if she’d struck a wall.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she asked.

  I moved farther into the clearing. Ahead, I could see a spot where the soil had been disturbed. A hole dug and filled in, the turf laid back over it. A spot big enough for the body of a twelve-year-old girl.

  Amelia marched over and planted herself in front of me, hands on her hips. “I asked you a question.”

  When I didn’t reply, she sniffed and spun on her heel. “Never mind. I don’t want to talk to you, anyway. I only ever do because Daddy makes me. I keep telling him I don’t want to. You’re boring. Stupid, boring and dirty.”

  I started to leave.

  “Wait!” she said.

  I stopped just past the edge of the clearing. I didn’t turn around. I just stood there as she sniffled.

  “Something’s wrong with me,” she said. “I can’t remember how I got here, and now I can’t leave. I’m sorry I called you stupid. You aren’t. You’re the smartest girl in class. If anyone can figure this out, you can.”

  I turned to see another familiar look on her face, one she’d get whenever she needed my help with her homework. She’d tell me I was clever and beg for my assistance, and I’d do it, but that never changed anything. She’d still whisper about me behind my back. Not always behind my back, either.

  I looked back at the place where the soil had been disturbed. I didn’t like Amelia. I might even hate her. But whatever she’d done, she didn’t deserve this.

  Did she deserve the truth? To know she was dead? Not if she couldn’t change that. Not if it wouldn’t help.

  “It’s a fairy trap,” I said.

  Her face scrunched up again. “What?”

  “You must have come here to see the fairies.” I settled onto a stump. “One time, when you came with your father, you followed me out here, and I told you about the fairies,” I lied. “Do you remember that?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I did. You must have come back to see them. Only they’ve trapped you. That’s what they do. They play music, and when you follow it, you get trapped in the dance. You were dancing when I walked by. Do you remember that?”

  She nodded.

  “Why were you dancing?” I asked.

  “Because I was bored.”

  “No, you were dancing because you heard the fairy music. You just forgot it.”

  “So how do I get out?”

  I told her I didn’t know, but I’d find out. I had a fairy book, and I’d look for the answer, and when I found it, I’d come back.

  I didn’t return for almost a month. I thought by then she’d be gone, that her ghost was only temporarily stuck here, and a gate would open, and she’d go… wherever. She didn’t. I went back, and Amelia was right where I’d left her.

  To my relief, she’d forgotten my promise. She didn’t even remember I’d been there. I found her dancing, and we repeated the whole conversation, as if for the first time. Again, I promised to find the answer. Again, I stayed away for a month. Again, I returned to find her ghost still in that glade, still trapped, still forgetting why.

  It wasn’t long before people stopped looking for Amelia. Two years passed, and her parents had another baby, a little girl. They named her Amy, in memory, as if even they’d given up hoping to find Amelia.

  Soon, the town seemed to forget about Amelia altogether. As she faded in their memories, so her own memories faded. The ghost in the glade forgot who she was. She forgot where she was. She forgot that she’d had another life before this and that another life existed beyond her glade. She stopped asking me to help her escape. The glade became her world, and she danced and played it in endlessly.

  She forgot me, too. That is, who I’d been to her when she was a creature of flesh and blood. I became her best friend. Her only companion.

  “Come play with me,” she’d say.

  “I’m too old to play.”

  “No one’s too old to play. Come. Come.”

  I tried to play with her. I didn’t quite do it right, but she no longer seemed to mind. She was like a child desperate for attention. Always desperate. Always lonely. Always alone.

  “Don’t go!” she’d say whenever I had to leave.

  “I have chores. And schoolwork.”

  “You don’t need that. Play with me. Stay with me.”

  “I can’t stay. Remember? We’ve discussed this. I don’t live here.”

  “But you could. It’s nice here, in the sunshine. No chores. No school. We could dance and play forever.”

  “I don’t want to dance and play forever.”

  I don’t want to be like you, dead and rotting beneath the soil.

  Sometimes, I thought of telling her the truth, so she’d understand why I couldn’t stay. But I didn’t. I feared it wouldn’t matter.

  No, I feared she already knew. That she’d realized why she was trapped there, and she knew exactly what she was suggesting when she asked me to join her.

  As I grew older, I visited less frequently, going only once a month, as I had in the very beginning. As much as I dreaded those visits, I owed her that much.

  Soon, I turned fifteen and had to drop out of school. My mother said I’d had enough education. It was time for other things. Time to move on with my life, whether I wanted to or not.

  I didn’t tell Amelia that I’d be leaving home soon. That would’ve been cruel. So I played with her, and I listened to her. One day, when I was nearly ready to go, something caught her eye, and she spun, saying, “Who’s there?”

  I looked over quickly. The forest seemed empty. Amelia ran to the edge of her glade and shaded her eyes.

  “I saw you,” she said. “Come out and play with us.”

  No answer. Then, off to my left, twigs crackled underfoot.

  “Who’s there?” I called as I strode toward the noise.

  A figure stepped from behind a tree. Tommy Lyons. My future. That’s what my parents said. Tommy and I were to wed when I turned sixteen. Our families and our farms would join. That was my future. My fate. Standing in front of me.

  “Who were you talking to?” Tommy asked.

  “You.”

  “Before that. I saw you in that clearing. I heard you talking to someone.”

  “Myself,” I said as I brushed past him.

  He grabbed my arm, hard enough to hurt. “Only crazy people talk to themselves. You aren’t crazy, are you?”

  I considered telling him that I was. Maybe then he’d refuse to marry me. That wouldn’t help, though. If Tommy rejected me, I’d never wed, and I’d be trapped here with my mother’s endless chores and Amelia’s e
ndless pleas.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It won’t happen again.”

  He peered at the clearing. Then at me, his eyes narrowed. I tried to shake free, but he only tightened his grip and marched me back toward the house, saying, “Stay away from there.”

  * * *

  After Tommy warned me to stay out of the woods, I went there even more often. I couldn’t help it. I used to flee my chores. Now I fled my life.

  “You aren’t happy,” Amelia said, spinning through the glade. “I can tell.”

  “Am I usually happy?”

  “No, but you aren’t sad, either. You’re sad now. And I know how to fix it.”

  I didn’t reply.

  She kept dancing until she was right in front of me. She still looked exactly as she had at the town picnic, in that pretty pink dress with her face scrubbed clean, hair in perfect ringlets. Forever twelve years old. Forever playing. Forever dancing.

  “Join me,” she said.

  She spun around me, her skirt billowing. “Join me. We’ll dance, and we’ll play, and you’ll be happy.”

  “No, you’ll be happy.”

  She only smiled. “I will. If you join me, I won’t be alone anymore. I hate being alone. It gets cold when you’re gone. Cold and dark.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, just say—”

  She shrieked as a figure appeared at the clearing’s edge. I turned to see Tommy.

  “I thought I told you not to come here,” he said.

  I backed into the forest. “I just wanted—”

  “You knew I was coming over for dinner. You deliberately snuck out here to provoke me.”

  “What? No. I forgot.”

  “You forgot? That’s your excuse?”

  I kept moving backwards, away from the clearing. Amelia screamed, but he couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t see her. He advanced on me, his face twisted with rage.

  “I’m not sure what’s worse,” he said. “The fact that you forgot I was coming, or the fact you snuck out here behind my back because you forgot.”

  “I’m s-sorry.”

  He lunged and grabbed my arm. “You’re going to be my wife, and you still act like a child, running around the forest and talking to yourself.” He pulled me so close I smelled ale on his breath. “Or are you communing with the fairies?”