Nocturne I
By Maggie Ewing
She used to see ghosts every night.
She would lay there in our bed, eyes darting around the darkness frantically until I was able to stroke the sleep into her hair, her white-knuckled hand clutching the extra fabric of the pillowcase.
“There’s nothing there,” I would whisper quietly, her clean, brown hair tangled on the three pearl studs that dotted her left earlobe.
She would remain silent, the only sound in the room coming from the rattle of the overhead fan spinning and the noise her throat made when she swallowed nervously.
She barely spoke at night, and when she did, it was only in soft whispers, murmurs, as if she were scared of waking a sleeping child.
“Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean that they’re not there,” she had told me softly once, “It’s like hope or love or fear,” she drummed her pointer finger lightly on the spot where my collarbone met my shoulder, the little ridge there, “you know that it’s real, you know that it exists, but you can’t look at it, it’s not viewable to the naked eye.”
I laughed quietly, the usually lighthearted sound taking on an unnatural, macabre tone as it split through the darkness. She said nothing, but in the shadowy light cast from the streetlamp outside our bedroom window, I saw her purse her lips, eyes flicking down to the bottom corner of our bed.
“Ruth?” she said one morning as I brewed coffee in the shiny, silver pot, which was about ten years newer than everything else in the kitchen, since the old one had been the first thing to break.
“Clementine?” I replied, closing the lid of the maker and pressing the “start” button.
“They talked to me last night,” she said.
“Who did?” I asked. I had thought she meant her parents.
“The ones who watch us at night,” she said.
I turned to face Clementine. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking frail, a wrinkled t-shirt that was two sizes too big hanging off her hunched shoulders, a doe-eyed child seeming to take the place of the woman I knew, “Clementine…” I trailed off.
“They said something to me last night about you.”
Her voice was as thin as the worn-down wool socks on her feet. I tapped my thumbnail against the edge of the retro linoleum counter. “What did they say?”
She shook her head, turning her eyes to the ground, scratching her wrist, right above the tattoo there that matched the one on my collarbone, “You’re going to have me committed,” she twisted her mouth somewhere between a grimace and a smile.
“No, I’m not,” I told her, “What did they say?”
“Do you promise you won’t think I’ve gone crazy?” she asked.
“I promise,” I assured.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a moment, then said, “They said that we shouldn’t live here anymore,” she said, “They said that I should tell you we shouldn’t live here anymore.”
I let out a breath, turning to the cabinet to get down our coffee cups. I knew she didn’t like this house. It was dated, in bad shape, in a neighborhood that was on the brink of seedy, but I had grown up here. My parents had lived here, had gotten married right in that backyard, and it had been left to me when my dad followed my mother to death three years ago. This house was a part of me, “Look, Clementine, if you want to move, you could’ve just said so. We can discuss it. You didn’t have to do a whole thing--”
“No, Ruth,” she cut me off, “I’m not making anything up just to get us to move. I’m fine with the house as it is. I’m fine with it because I’m with you, but they don’t want us here anymore.”
The coffee was ready. I pulled the pot out, “Clem…” I didn’t know what to say. Previously endearing paranoia had now turned on its head to a strange form of manipulation. I didn’t want to tell her that I thought she was lying, but I also didn’t want to allow myself to be played.
“I know you don’t believe me, but they want us to leave.”
She wasn’t a child. I couldn’t condescend to her and tell her she was being silly. All that I could do was nod my head, give her a cup of coffee, and leave for work.
After that, I started seeing ghosts too.