I heard that noise again. “Because I have a story to tell. A story about myself. Because I shall remain in this state until someone listens to this story. If I remain like this, caught between two worlds, I shall be unable to pass over. I need to pass over. Oh, how I need to pass over!” She’d started off with her voice reserved and careful, but gradually she got more and more emotional.
“Why me? I know, I’m ‘special’ and I can ‘see you’, but can’t anyone else see you? Like a psychic or a mind-reader. Or even those people who do séances. I’m sure you’d have a better chance with them.” Just leave me alone.
“But they are not like you.”
“How!” I was growing frustrated. I was tired and grouchy and not in the mood for conversations that just went around in confusing circles. Especially conversations with a ghost.
“Lady Amelia, you are your father’s daughter,” she told me, the smile in her voice easily detected.
The milkman must be relieved, then. “Please don’t talk about my father,” I said stonily. It grew harder for me to breathe. Tears started to well up. Stubbornly I blinked them away. I would not cry. I would not cry in front of her.
“You are right,” she said. “You gave me no leave to talk about your father. Yet that is why I am able to talk with you.”
“Why?”
“Because your father helped open your mind. That is why you are so receptive to my voice, why I am able to contact you. Do you think I would torment an ordinary girl?”
Yes.
“So I have an open mind, you don’t think other people do too?” As soon as I said it I felt my face flame. Here I was having an argument with thin air. I felt so sane.
“You don’t understand! I have to talk to you.”
I was momentarily taken aback by the anger in her voice. Momentarily.
“Why?”
There was a brief pause, as if she were forcing herself to calm down. “There are only a few years between the age you are now and how old I was when I died. You will understand me better; you will feel empathy for me. Of all things, I must have your understanding. And it shall be an interesting story, with princesses, forbidden love, and death. It will be worthy of your time, Lady Amelia.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
I sensed her surprise. Good; let her know I’m more than just a frightened girl.
“Yes,” she answered honestly, “but I am not to tell you until I reach the end of my tale.”
What a pitiful attempt at a bribe. “So go ahead,” I challenged her yet again. “Tell me your story.”
She was silent for so long I thought she’d gone. I didn’t feel as arrogant anymore. “Um, Alonsa?” My voice was hushed because I felt pretty stupid talking to thin air. “Are you still there?”
“Yes…” Her anguished whisper came right by my ear again.
I jerked away, my heart a sudden fist in my chest, pounding painfully against my ribs.
“You will really listen?” she asked, sounding so hopeful.
“Er, if that’s why you’re following me…” I was unsure of myself now. I felt like I still didn’t know what she wanted. There was that feeling like there was something else I was missing. I felt I was going to make a deal with her when I didn’t know what she desired in return.
“You will help me pass over?”
“I thought you just wanted me to listen to your story?”
“Yes,” she said, much to my relief. I didn’t want to get too involved with her and indulge my craziness further. “And for me to pass over I need someone who will listen to what I have to say and understand completely what I had to go through. To know my pain as if it were yours. It is what I wished for when I died; perhaps that is why I am unable to pass over. My wish needs to be fulfilled.”
Okay. All she wanted was for me to listen to her. I could do that, right? If I allowed her to tell me her story then she’d go, wouldn’t she? She’d ‘pass over’, whatever that meant. Pass over… Like, not exist? She’d be … gone…? Wow, that was a scary thought. One minute someone would be there, and then the next…
But I knew all about that.
“What if it’s the wrong thing to do? What if there’s something more terrible out there, waiting for you?” I asked in a rush.
“Yet what if there was not? I cannot possibly hide here for the rest of time, I must cross over at some point, whether I know what is waiting for me or not. We must go forth and confront the unknown; else there would never be progress. We all need progress. So, familiar or not, it is a step I must take.”
For a few silent seconds I could only sit and stare numbly at the patch of air where she must have been. Of course, those questions I asked must have circled around her mind for so long; no wonder her answer was so fluent.
“So you will listen, Lady Amelia?”
Her voice jolted me from my thoughts of if she could be trusted or not. She wasn’t human. I’d realised that when she’d led me from my dreams with that strange, faint illumination shining from her, almost as if she were made from starlight. But, trusted or not, I wanted to hear her story. I knew the saying: curiosity killed the cat, yet I was too curious to pay that any mind. Anyway, it was only hearing what she had to say. I could do that, right? Easy. Yet a voice whispered to me how I had to not only listen to her tale yet understand it too.
I cleared my throat. I’d probably regret this later. Probably? More like certainly.
“Yes,” I said, thinking of how long she must have wandered, searching for someone like me to give her that one chance she needed so much... “I’ll help you.”
My eyes must have adjusted to the dark while we had been talking, because it grew impossibly darker. Slants of grey light fell into ebony. Objects which I could only just make out faded quietly until they vanished. Everything was swallowed by the hungry black. Including me.
