Chapter 24
You feel something bubbling within you over the next several days, but you do not know what the feeling is.
This is different from those early days when you first found yourself in the room again, when you wandered and found the jungle and its path, when you found the white picket fence with its gate and rusted lock and key. This isn’t a feeling that you think you could put words to if you only knew them; you have read so many things and started conversations, you have relearned words and learned new ones, and you have gotten better at pinpointing the exact right words to convey and label what you are feeling. But whatever this feeling is, it lays beyond all of that. You do not have words for it. The closest one might be unease.
You cannot say what is causing the feeling. Everything seems to be continuing the same as it was before – you wake, you converse with Jamie, you drink a cup of tea, and you read. When you are back in your room, you sit on your bed and you read more. You run your finger over the circled Violas in Twelfth Night, and you leave your room for more fruit and water. Sometimes you glance at the other side of the moat, at the gate and the lock, and you consider exploring before deciding against it.
Still, the scent of the fruit that you haven’t tasted is mouth-watering.
You pace in your room. You walk down your path. You tend to your trees, although they don’t need much tending. You explore your jungle and still find no birds, no insects, no animals. There is still no breeze. It is not quite like a moment frozen in time, but sometimes, it feels that way. You grow increasingly uneasy – or not quite, but that is the word that is closest.
Something is coming. Something is building. Something is—
No. That feels wrong. There is nothing to suggest any of that. You do not know why you feel that way.
You are uneasy and you are uncomfortable and the word for what you are feeling many would call anxious, but you have read the word and do not feel like it applies. Wary, maybe, but not so much as to be paranoid.
Something is off. You do not know what. You do not know why. You do not know how.
But, as most things in this landscape are connected to your host and her mental state, you feel that this, too, must be linked to her subconscious in some way, state, or form. It must be on her account. The question is whether it is a conscious decision or an unconscious one. You are not sure she would answer you if you asked.
But you know who might.
“I can’t tell you,” Jamie says, pushing a hand through her rumpled auburn hair. She leans back in the chair with a beleaguered sigh. This isn’t the first time she’s chosen the chair over the opposite arm of the sofa, and it probably will not be the last. You think it has to do with her conversations with your host. She grows cold during your conversations over Shakespeare. Sometimes, you share a blanket; sometimes, you share warmth. You are never very close to each other, but you think your host is not comfortable with the two of you growing comfortable with each other. You haven’t told her not to worry because you feel as though that would defeat the purpose. If anything, such a comment might only make her grow more worried.
At least this way you are given room to stretch when her legs grow cramped from being in the same position for too long. That is a relief. And yet, it is nice that her body responds with pain. Yours still does not bleed when it is scratched by the barbed wire. Perhaps it is because yours is only an image, and neither of you believes that you can bleed. Not enough for it to happen.
Your brows furrow as you stare at the other woman, and your fingers tap on the hardbound back of your chosen book. “Whyever not?” you ask. “Is there a particular reason that you are unable to tell me what the problem is?”
Jamie sighs again, teeth grinding against each other, and looks away from you. “I can’t tell you that either, ghostie. It’s between Dani and….” She pauses, considers, and then sighs again, kneading her forehead with one hand. “Dani.”
“Are the two of you fighting again?” You cannot think of any reason that Jamie shouldn’t explain to you if that were the case, but it’s the only thing you can imagine being the issue. Then again, there have been few boundaries such as this one put into place in your conversations, perhaps because it is expected that you could watch any of their conversations whenever you want, even if you rarely want.
You have taken great care to let your host maintain her own life the way she desires, if only to bolster better relations between the two of you. It does not seem to have helped much at all, but you know that if you did otherwise, it would be a detriment. Dani does not trust you. Giving her space seems to help with that. Sometimes.
“No, it’s nothing like that.” Jamie leans forward, resting her wrists on her knees, hunched almost completely over, but keeps her head out of her hands so that she can look directly at you. “I think this is one of those things you’re just going to have to ask her about.”
Your eyes widen, and you give one great, solemn nod, lips curving into a pleased smile. “So it does have something to do with her,” you say, measuring each word carefully. “I thought I might be going a little off-kilt again. Good to know that I’m not.”
“Yeah, sure, great thing there, Vi.” Jamie pushes a hand through her hair again. She groans. “It’d be best if you didn’t ask her at all. Don’t think she’ll much appreciate it.”
“Well, I don’t much appreciate someone else’s anxiety coming through so strong that it colors my own perceptions. It is most uncomfortable.” You place the book to one side and wrap one arm around your knee, holding it against your chest. “I am sure she would say the same thing, if I could do such to her.”
Jamie rolls her eyes. “Bloody good thing you can’t. Poppins would have been raging for months until you learned to calm down. That would have been a fucking fright. Don’t think I would’ve been able to stand it.”
One of your brows raises. “You would have left her?”
“No. ‘Course not.” Jamie reaches over, lifts her cup of tea as though it is a toast, and then takes a deep drink of it. “Just would’ve made things harder, is all. We’ve already dealt with hard. That would have just been another obstacle. We could have made it.”
Unless she told you to leave, you think, although you know better than to say it. Your host might, in a fit of temper, cast Jamie out, but she would regret it soon after. From their previous experience, you would expect that Jamie would stay long enough for them to reconcile, but you know better than to hope for it. Besides, none of that matters. It didn’t happen, so why consider it?
“Well, if we cannot talk about that,” you say, taking the book again, “perhaps we should resume our last conversation.”
If it is possible, Jamie gives an even deeper, more disgruntled sigh. She doesn’t enjoy this. You know that she doesn’t enjoy this. But Dani hasn’t offered to talk with you over these things, and you like to discuss the stories with someone. Even if they hate it starting out. You’ve found that Jamie doesn’t hate the stories so much as she hates the way they are written. She has a hard time understanding him.
You find it easier to read Shakespeare sometimes than it is to try and translate what Jamie and Dani are talking about. And translating Shakespeare into bite-sized pieces for Jamie helps to stretch your understanding of their language. It is a good thing.
This is what you tell yourself as you deal with her groans and frustrations during your continued conversation.
It is that time of year.
Dani doesn’t like to think about it. In fact, she tries to avoid thinking about it. She finds ways to keep herself busy – distracted, even, some might say – so that she doesn’t have mental space to think about it. But the problem is that no matter how much she tries to avoid or ignore or distract, the thought still worms its way into her chest like it might through an apple just fallen from the tree and beginning to rot.
The anniversary of Eddie’s death.
Even though she hasn’t seen his ghost since their time at Bly – and even though his particular ghost was not the same as the ghosts she had met there – Dani can’t help but be apprehensive that he will return, just to see her on the day of his death. Viola – the lady of the lake – is proof that people could come back, vengeful and angry and empty and undiscerning, to hurt and haunt the people left behind, and while Dani doesn’t think that Eddie will do the same, it’s…hard to pretend that ghosts can’t or don’t exist when there is one literally living in the back of her mind.
Truth be told, Dani doesn’t even think about Eddie very often anymore. She still has a few pictures of him, but they’re hidden away. Far away. At first, it was because she hadn’t wanted to remember, hadn’t want the pictures to bring back the guilt that caused his ghost, but eventually, it became a way of hiding them from the other ghost, from Viola. It isn’t something she wants to share. Not that Viola has particularly nosed her way into a lot of Dani’s things. Not as far as she knows, anyway.
Just her mind.
Just her body.
Just her—
Dani shakes her head. Not thinking about that. Not thinking about ghosts at all. Not at all.
And yet her stomach churns as the day grew closer.
Last year, of course, it hadn’t been so bad. Dani had spent most of her time with Jamie. She hadn’t woken up on the sofa, left there by a ghost who hadn’t thought to return her to her bed before abandoning the use of her, and they’d had a normal day – flower shop, library, cooking, dinner. It had been almost normal, save for the anxiety and guilt making Dani feel nearly sick all day.
Jamie had told her to stay home, she remembers that, but she couldn’t. Being alone was worse than being with people was. She’d needed to be with someone, needed to distract herself. And work – even retail work – was a worthwhile distraction.
Still.
Dani takes a deep breath and pushes her hands through her hair and shivers with anticipation.
You feel the something bubbling up within you again – the anxiety that is not yours and which you cannot control – and you think that while now is not the best time to meet with your host, it is unwise to put it off any longer. She doesn’t like when you interfere with her life, and this – whatever it is – you don’t like it interfering with you. There’s something about it that is upsetting and unsettling, and while you do not worry that it will stroke the flames of that almost endless rage that still boils within you on the odd occasion, you do not want to take the risk.
Murderer or not, you don’t want to be out of control again. You don’t want to feel insane again.
Truth be told, you never really felt insane, but from what she says of the you that could not remember, somehow that seems like one of the best words to describe you. Not truly sane, not truly stable, not truly there at all. Perhaps it is not insanity as some might now call it, but it certainly felt like it to you.
Now it just feels like an odd case of amnesia.
That doesn’t matter. You close your eyes and ignore the wall and the moat entirely, making your presence known to your host.
The pressure builds in the back of Dani’s head, and before she can even think about it, her fingers are at that soft spot between the two muscles at its base, not that it does much good. The pressure travels between her lobes, across her skull, and rests between her eyes. She doesn’t pinch her nose this time. It doesn’t help. It never helps. She cannot get rid of the habit that Hannah Grose once had, but that one?
She tries.
“What is it?” she asks, not staring at herself in the mirror, not willing to see the potential reflection she might see. Now that Viola has a face, she is unsure if she would see the creature she once saw or if she would see Viola herself staring back at her. She isn’t sure she wants either. The latter is certainly not better than the former. It is only slightly less terrifying. “I’m not in the mood for a conversation right now.”
Dani pulls her hair back into an untidy ponytail and then grips the sink with both hands. She stares into the bottom of the sink. The faucet isn’t on, but she can still hear it dripping.
Drip.
Drip.
Dri—
Something is wrong with you, Viola says, and her voice echoes in Dani’s head like a second conscience.
“Something is wrong with you, too,” Dani replies, taking a deep shuddering breath. She feels sick. She shouldn’t feel sick. Why does she feel sick?
Dani can hear the woman sighing in the back of her mind, can almost feel the harsh breath puffed out inside her skull. There’s no pressure to it. She can’t describe it. But it feels unnatural. She closes her eyes and, after a brief moment of focus, finds herself back in the jungle, on the side of the gate that the ghost considers hers. She stands just inside the gate, staring out across the moat, and sees Viola staring back at her.
“Just because there is something wrong with me does not mean that there is something wrong with you,” Viola says, and although the moat is thick between them, Dani can hear her as though they are standing just next to each other, as though she isn’t yelling at all. And maybe she isn’t. Viola smiles – a smug thing, which strikes Dani because it feels like the ghost is always smug about something, and how can she be so smug when she is dead? “I’m dead,” Viola says as if Dani wasn’t just thinking about it, “but I can still speak and breathe just as well as you do. I’m not sure I would consider that something wrong with me. The dead part, perhaps.”
Dani’s eyes narrow, and she wonders if she appears just as clear to Viola as the other woman does to her. The breeze pushes her hair back out of her face as she crosses her arms. “The taking control of my body and intruding where I don’t want you are also problems.”
Viola’s face blanks, as though she is trying to appear serene. “Those are problems you have with me, not something that is wrong with me. I believe that it would be far better for you to say that I have problems with boundaries or invasion of privacy.”
“Quit nitpicking my words when you know what I mean.” Dani glares at the ghost. “I was trying to have a moment out there, and you interrupted me—”
“What do you mean have a moment?” the ghost asks, blinking at her. “I don’t know this phrase.”
Dani groans. “Never mind. It isn’t important.”
“It is important, or you wouldn’t be chastising me for interrupting.”
The breeze pushes at Dani’s back, harsh, as though it wants nothing more than for her to go forward, to the other side of the gate. It blows her hair in her face, and she coughs a couple of times, trying to pull it back into a hasty, impromptu ponytail. “Just drop it,” she says, still glaring at the ghost. She doesn’t want to go to the other side. It is far too quiet there. At least on this side of the gate she can hear cicadas chirruping away in the jungle. Which, to be fair, doesn’t make sense because cicadas don’t really live in the jungle and even if they did, they shouldn’t be around during the winter, not that it’s entirely winter here—
Who decides the weather here, anyway?
And Dani knows, without asking the ghost, what her answer would be. Subconsciously, she must control the weather. It’s just another thing she would be blamed for that she doesn’t know that she controls and doesn’t know how to change and likely wouldn’t change if she could.
“Something is wrong with you,” the ghost repeats, staring at Dani from the other side of the moat. “You are anxious for something, and if you will allow me to help soothe you, then—”
“You can’t soothe anything,” Dani finds herself snapping without thinking. “You make things worse just by being here.” She groans and kneads her forehead. “I don’t know why I’m even having this conversation.”
Because you actually want the help, you think but do not say aloud.
It is enough that your host has come into this shared world at all. You had expected her to remain in the real world and communicate with you there instead of returning here, and while she maintains her position on the other side of the gate, it is still something. More than normal. More than you expected.
That’s a step in the right direction, albeit a small one.
You wonder if she thinks the gate will protect her. You have already explained that it does not do what she subconsciously wants it to do – it doesn’t keep you from traveling to the other side if you so desire. The wall is high enough that someone jumping from the top of it should shatter their bones when they land, and yet you never do because your true bones likely turned to dust centuries ago. The pikes and barbed wire should scratch and pierce your skin, and while they can do both of those things to some extent, they do not cause lasting damage and you do not bleed. The moat should be impassable for anyone who needs to breathe, and yet you can walk along the bottom of it and up to the other side without any issue. That is, of course, what you have been doing for the past however many centuries you were stranded at the bottom of the lake.
But you do not move closer to her. You know that doing so would only spook her.
Still. You are growing quite tired of appeasing her skittish nature. Every so often, you think that you should do something that would prove to her….
What?
Anything of true power you could do would only serve to frighten her more, would only destroy the little good will you have built up over the past several months. At worst, it would cost you your conversations with Jamie, and while you are certain that the gardener still doesn’t truly care for you, it’s…more than you would have otherwise. It appeases your loneliness. It isn’t worth the risk.
You step forward anyway, and you watch her flinch. You have no intention of crossing the moat. In fact, you only bend down just on your side of it, fill your cup with cold refreshing water, and then brush your hair out of your face when it falls about it.
There is a breeze on her side of the gate. You have seen her reacting to it.
Of course, there is a breeze on her side of the gate. Her side is full of life. Yours is full only of you.
“Forgive me for trying to help. Your anxiety is seeping through the gate, and I am growing tired of feeling panicked with no aim and no way to quell it.” You glance up and across the moat then crook a finger at your host, gesturing her over before she says anything. “Let me make you a cup of tea, and let us talk for a few moments. You might not like me, but I can be a good listener if you allow me to prove it.”
“You always listen to him, and you never listen to me!
You are my sister! It was supposed to be the two of us against the world!”
“I am married, Perdita.”
You do not grit your teeth,
do not try to argue with her.
You would win an argument.
That is one of your strong suits.
All quail beneath your barbed tongue.
“My husband must take priority over your pettiness.
You would do well to learn how to run the manor,
should anything happen,
and yet
you refuse to do anything that might distract you
from what you desire.
You have no sense of duty.”
Your sister’s face scrunches up into an angry scowl.
She is always doing that now.
Her hatred of you radiates outward,
mingling with your constant frustration with her.
“You are so caught up with duty that you forget what it is like to live, dear sister.”
You shake your head, pressing your fingers to your temple, and glance up. Your host has said something. You know she has said something, the lingering presence of her voice echoes in your ears, although you cannot guess what it is that she said. Something venomous, no doubt. Something distrusting.
And yet, there is still that small hope that she will do otherwise.
“What did you say?” you ask, focusing on her once more, refusing to dwell on the fact that this new memory has made mention of your husband. “I couldn’t hear you.”
Couldn’t hear me?
Dani stares at Viola, not certain she believes her. If she can hear Viola’s voice as though the other woman is standing just next to her, then she is certain that the reverse must be true for her as well. There is no reason that the ghost should not have heard her. She just wasn’t paying attention. Ironic, considering her claim to be a good listener.
“Are you going to show me how to make tea, too?” Dani repeats, unable to keep the slightest bitterness out of her voice. She hates to admit it – and won’t, if asked – but Jamie had been grateful to find that she’d learned how to make better coffee. It was an uphill learning curve for her, but she is getting better at it. Slowly but surely.
It is hard to remember not to doctor the entire pot when that is how she has always made coffee before. Dani guesses that it is similar to having to learn how to make smaller portions in cooking instead of making bulk to feed an entire family. She isn’t very good at it. But it makes Jamie happy, so she will learn.
Dani doesn’t wait for a response. She looks at the gate, at the wall, at the moat. Viola might have no trouble getting across, but she has no intention of climbing steep walls and jumping and ripping her clothes against barbed wire and pretending she can swim across that great big moat. No, thank you. Not smart.
On the other hand, she isn’t going to invite Viola over to this side either. Not when she’s still frustrated with her for interrupting her in the first place.
(And yet, a part of her aches to sit and drink tea and talk, even if it is with a ghost. Jamie knows so much already. Viola knows nothing. That might be a better distraction. Doesn’t that sound crazy? Spending time with a ghost because she is tired of previous dealings with another ghost; spending time with one dead person to avoid her guilt of not spending time with another one? Might as well just visit Eddie’s tomb and get over with it.)
(She hasn’t been to Eddie’s tomb since they buried him, and she has no intention of ever doing so again.)
Dani sighs and closes her eyes, thinking again. How did she end up on the other side of the gate that first time? Was it simply because Viola had been expecting her, because the ghost had been open to her visit? If so, then why hadn’t she ended up there this time?
She takes another deep breath, keeps her eyes closed, and wills herself to the other side of the gate.
The breeze stops. The buzzing of insects and the chirping of birds disappears. The world feels cold.
Dani shudders once before opening her eyes, knowing that she has made it to the other side of the gate before she even does so. She stands on the path just next to Viola – closer than she had intended – and she jumps when she realizes how close they are. She backs up, away from the ghost and away from the moat, hands out.
Viola watches her with that overly steady gaze, and that makes her uncomfortable, too. “I’m not going to hurt you. You know that.”
“Knowing it and believing it are two different things entirely,” Dani says, letting her hands drop to her sides. Her fingers ball into fists without her even thinking about it. “You said something about tea?”