2018-02-27 - Here There be Ghosts

Morning sun diffuses against drawn curtains, painting the room in a glow of pale yellow light, warming hardwood. It always rains here, Logan said after the funeral, but how can that be true? It didn't rain the day they met all those years ago. It didn't rain at high school graduation, or college commencement, or their wedding day, or the day they bought the house. Sift through the memories, shake them loose, find the thread of sunshine that wound its way through a life together.

Lucy and the sunshine.

Lucy…

...and the sunshine…

Of course he's not asleep in the basement. Why would he sleep in the basement? Their bed is warm and cozy. She's asleep next to him, where she belongs, a narrow shaft of light slanting in through a gap in the curtains, drawing a bar of illumination across the end of the bed, over her legs, fading into shadow when it traipses across to Logan's half of the bed.

Everything is so close to perfect. The warm color of the room and the sight of his wife asleep next to him, the warmth of the blankets, the smell of the sheets, the taste of the morning air - why isn't it perfect when Logan wakes up to this?

There was warmth on his toes, the single foot that he kept out of the covers while the rest of him was buried under the blankets. He always slept like that, one foot out and the other in, it was something that was always amusing to her. ToLucy ... he'd gone to bed thinking of her, of the things that Emily had said to him before she left the house, those final parting words before he'd found a bottle of Jameson tucked way in the back of the cabinet and chugged half the contents before he went to bed. Oddly, his head wasn't throbbing - shouldn't he be waking up with a hangover, a parched throat? Yet..

Warmth. Sunshine

He shifts in the bed, wriggling his toes towards the heat of the sun spilling through the windows. Windows? Hadn't he fallen asleep in the basement? Certainly not in their bed, that little attic suite, he'd sworn that off, hadn't he? He draws in a breath - the fresh scent of cotton and laundry soap - and exhales it as he lets his eyes flicker open. There was supposed to be emptiness there beside him, nothing and no one and certainly not..

"Lucy?" His voice was scratchy, raw and quivering with emotion. The sight of her has him reaching out instinctively, pushing away all the thoughts that this was wrong and out of place. It was almost like.. "Lucy, I had the worst fucking dream."

His voice is scratchy. He can hear that in his ears, and the sound moves normally through the room, wakes the sleeping form next to him. She stirs, stretching languidly, back to him for a moment longer before she shifts into him, nestling against him, perfectly there in his arms.

The bar of sunlight dances when the wind ruffles through the big tree outside, and the leaves dapple through the illumination, a midsummer spray of foliage. Any moment, the sound of a bird chirping will break into the room, or the trash truck will rumble down the street noisily, or the house will creak. Something… something will make a noise.

But nothing does.

Even Lucy. Even when she finishes stretching and rolls halfway over, laying on her back amid their pillows, smiling up at him with sleepy green eyes and tousled red hair, is silent. Her face moves like there should be a sound - a questioning hmmmm? She blinks up at him drowsily, prompting him to go on with the story, she's listening. A warm, gentle hand reaches up to touch his troubled face, smoothing his forehead, and she kisses the side of his mouth softly. Were the lines so deep only a few weeks ago? She's worried for him, and it shows.

See her smiling up at him. Touch the warmth of her in his arms, the softness against him. Smell her perfume on her skin still, the scent of her hair. Taste her kiss, her lips. Hear only his own heartbeat in his ears, his own voice grating in a silence deeper than the grave.

It should have registered, the lack of sound. The way his voice seemed so loud in the otherwise silent room. But the little seed of doubt, of concern, wouldn't grow footing when she turns and he seems her again, all red hair and green eyes, exactly the way he remembered her. His breath catches in his throat, his gray eyes filling up with water, a single tear spilling as she touches his face and he buries his cheek into her hand. He feels her warmth, the soft pattern of her fingers against his brow, smoothing away his worry, and the past few weeks became dark shadows that were chased away with her light.

"It doesn't matter," he says, wincing at the sound of his own voice, at the thrum of his heartbeat in his ears. It doesn't matter, does it? No, he leans to kiss her, to smell the scent of her, and to wrap his arms around her waist. He clutches her tight, so tight, as though she might slip away and fall down the stairs all over again. "I love you, Lucy."

Oh, you poor sad soul. It matters. It very much matters. If it was only the "worst fucking dream," then there wouldn't come a wash of abject terror across that face he knows and loves. Lucy's mouth wouldn't drop open, still soundless. He wouldn't see the breath she draws and not hear it, and she wouldn't pull away from that kiss, suddenly and completely. Her hands flatten against his chest, and she pushes him away, recoiling to the edge of the bed, her mouth moving in the shape of his name - Logan Logan Logan, over and over, until the rising hysteria is evident in her. Tense, afraid, it's a soundless scream now, and her hands push at his chest, grab at his shoulders, shake him. Wake up - one of them needs to wake up!

Then it's no no no no no coming soundlessly out of her, fingers rising to cover her lips. Now the taste is gone. And, in the same instant, the smell, too. She realizes it first, and frantic tears overflow her eyes. Whatever she's saying is too hard to discern now, but she's screaming it. Wherever she is, she's screaming at him and grabbing him.

Touch and sight. Hold on while you can, look while it lasts. It all matters.

Of course, he did see it, the horror that unfolds there on their bed, all while he clings to her body with every intention of never letting go again. At first, there was just an uncertain "Lucy?" against her lips as her mouth drops open and she jerks away. Then the panic starts to rise, watery gray eyes widening as she starts to push at his chest, push him away, and he curls his fingers into her nightgown, yanking on the fabric to pull her back, pull her towards him. "No," he was starting to gulp back breaths, and suddenly she was shaking him. "No no no no no. Lucy, please!" He wouldn't let go, not again, he couldn't let go.

It wasn't until tears spill down her own cheeks that he realizes he cannot taste her, his tongue skimming over his lips instinctively, as though trying to catch her there. But there was nothing, not even the scent, and that panic reaches frantic levels. "Lucy, no. Please, please stay with me!" Her soundless shouts were met with his too-loud pleading, as he reaches to touch her face, find purchase on her gown, something that would keep her here.

"Please, please Lucy, don't leave me again, I don't want to be alone."

There should be a noise when she falls off the edge of the bed, but there isn't. The empty silence is fierce in that instant, when a sleeve rips in his fingers and she tumbles away, landing on the wooden floor without so much as a whisper of sound. That bar of sunlight slices right across her pale shoulder, into the empty space in the bed next to Logan while she scrabbles soundlessly across the floor away from that bed, her face twisted into a mask of panic. Green eyes hold gray through terrified tears, and Lucy keeps saying the same thing over and over now in that awful silence: Logan no Logan no Logan no

She scrapes to her bare feet, reaching up into the bed, grabbing for his hand. There's still that, still warmth, still the firm fold of her fingers, and Lucy pulls on his hand desperately, pleading emptily. They can run! She pulls, pleading in her panic, fighting him out of that bed. please please please and the rest can't be told, the words unreadable amid hard sobs.

"Lucy, PLEASE!" The words ring in his ears, making him flinch, as she falls off the bed and onto the floor without so much as a dull thud. She leaves him there with her sleeve in his hand and his brain spinning because there was no noise and there should've been, there should've been a sound when she fell. He clutches the piece of her gown into his palm, winds it through the spaces between his fingers; he should be looking around to see where he is, he should be looking anywhere and yet his eyes were locked on Lucy and the mask of panic she wears. "Lucy, Lucy please," the words come out in a shuddery sob, more hot tears spilling over the day old scruff on his jaw, his hand reaching out to her before she's even on her feet.

It was there for her to grab, for her to pull, and he slides a bit on the covers that get tangled up in his feet as he tries to shove himself out of the bed. It means that he falls, too, onto the floor on his knees, his hand still grasping for her own. Were they going to run? He was ready, just as soon as he pulls himself up onto his feet.

A stab of cold, hard dread - her fingers slip. No, her fingers... fail...

NO!

In life, Lucy could send those thoughts to him. In death - is she dead? Is he dead? Are they both dead? Cold, hard dread knifes through Logan's thoughts, icy and persistent and its her and he knows it: logan they're coming logan they're coming they're coming logan run logan

And she does. She laces her fingers through his, and she pulls on him from the floor, as if she would drag him bodily. She stumbles, but she pulls, toward the door, she yanks it open, it slams against the wall but makes no noise still, just bounces back and whacks her in her sleeveless shoulder. Her lips keep moving, the no no no hounding her steps and now they're in the upstairs landing at the top of those stairs and don't look but you always have to look...

Logan's eyes bulge in pain as the dear slices through his brain, choking his breath in his throat. It comes out in a strangled sound, he clutches his chest with his free hand while his other gropes for her fingers, for her hand, for her. they're coming logan run logan Even if he was trying to resist, he could hear the words as though they were being spoken aloud, as if some noise other than the hammering of his own heart and the quickness of his own breath could break the deafening silence of this room. Their room, in this house that she loves.

But the dread, the terror, it permeates through, it soaks into his bones and cuts into his brain. He's on his feet before he realizes that he is, he's running with her to the door and wincing when it smacks into her shoulder. But before he can so much as ask if she's okay, if the words would even register, she's pulling him through the hallway and to the top of the stairs where he physically reels back and pulls her with him. "No. Nononononono," there was no color in his face, it had all drained away in that moment, and he's putting his arms back around her, trying to restrain her. "Nononono Lucy please, please not this, not this!"

Yep. This, too. There Lucy is, fighting and pulling and trying so hard to get him away from whatever it is. And there Lucy is, a broken thing at the bottom of the stairs, dead on the floor of this house that she loves. All the fight rushes out of her in an instant, and the frantic, mad dash is over, and she turns to him. Terror loses its grip, and the only things left holding her are an impossible grief and Logan. The wordless words, she's so sorry, because now she knows whose nightmare this is. She's the phantom. She's what's coming for him. She's the thing that will ruin him.

She sags into him, wanting closeness, comfort, strength, life. But the warmth is fading. Not a switch that gets flipped, but a slow fuzzy dissolve, the sense of the tangible. At first, it's just the idea that she's growing colder, but then it goes deeper. She's still there, a physical thing, but there's no feeling in holding her. It's empty. He could wrap his arms around the air and feel more. And she bows her head, shaking it, tears sliding soundlessly down her cheeks.

She's crying in his arms. And she's cuddling him in bed. And she's singing in the shower. And she's making love to him. And she's planting flowers in the yard. And she's painting the hallway walls. And she's hanging wedding photos. And she's laughing at the kitchen table. And she's bleeding out on the floor.

He was fighting so hard not to see the body that he knew was laying at the bottom of the stairs, clawing and grasping at the body that was right here instead. If he holds onto this, if he grips harder, if he digs his fingers into her skin, and pulls her from the stairs, she wouldn't have to be down there, he wouldn't have to see that scene down there. Desperation grabs hold of him as he grabs hold of her, and though her terror has faded? His is right over her shoulder, down the stairs, and bleeding out on the floor. But there was guilt, too, immense and overwhelming, overfilling his eyes with tears again so that they fall in an angry cascade down his cheeks.

"Don't go," he pleads, his voice raw with grief. But he could feel her fading, the warmth seeping from her body .. evaporating. It just makes him hold on to her tighter, as though he could force the warmth back into her, the life. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I love you," he nuzzles her cheek, into her hair, trying to find the scent of her, but there was nothing.

Nothing except the view from the top of the stairs when he opens his eyes and finds him looking over her shoulder, to see her dead on the floor below.

Rain drums quietly on the ceiling, little plink-plink sounds when droplets hit the panes of glass in the bedroom. The door swings on creaky hinges, whining softly, pushed by a stir of air that slips in through a crack somewhere - old houses always have cracks somewhere - and it touches the frame with the soft rustle of wood-against-wood. The house creaks to life; the heater tics away against the cold, January morning; a neighbor's dog barks a muffled but irritatingly persistent rawrf rawrf rawrf, that yappy little fucker that gets all hyped up when kids run through the puddles outside his yard.

Beneath those sounds, there's something softer, something closer. A shaking breath, a swallowed sob, the rustle of a torn nightgown when she pulls those hollow arms from around him. All the Lucys in this house wear the same, sad sorrow in their eyes, even while they laugh or love or lie bleeding to death. The whisper in his ears is the rustle of bird wings, more than a single voice, all the feathery-soft voices all at once. "...help..."

It's a fragment of thought. There's more - help who? help what? help where?

The Lucy in his arms steps away, backwards into the bedroom, through the door... the door that just closed but it's not closed now... into the bed with the slant of sunlight... but it's raining outside, he can see it and hear it...

One of the Lucys - or all of them? - force the thought into his poor, sad brains: stay help sorry

Still want to live in the haunted house, you twisted fuck?

With the house as grave silent as it had been, the first pitter-patter of rain upon stained glass sounds like someone scraping nails on a chalkboard. Logan's eyes wince shut, he buries his face into her neck and her hair, trying to pull the scent of her through his nose. Please, please. There are no words now, just sound of his shaky, nasaly breath, while he strains to hear those familiar scents from her. Then there is that whisper, the whisper that does not come with the familiar warmth of her breath and instead cuts like an icy dagger straight through to his heart. help.

He falls to the floor as she steps away, watching with sunken eyes as she moves backward through the house, through the door, into the bed they share. He wraps his arms around himself and squeezes so tight, digging his fingers into his biceps, trying to feel something solid. But he felt as empty as she had been. Stay. Help. Sorry. The words were on repeat, whispers rattling through his brains, and on his hands and knees he crawls to the top of the stairs. It was a dizzying sight, staring down now from this vantage point - all he had to do was tilt, lean forward just a little more, and he could send himself flying down the stairs after her. He could bleed out where she did. He could die, and then he wouldn't ever leave.

Somehow, though, he doesn't pitch himself forward to join her there upon the rug. Somehow, he grips the railing and brings himself to his feet, shaking. Somehow, he takes those steps one by one, until he's at the bottom, and he collapses into a heap right there where she died. If only he could bleed with her. If only he didn't have to be the one who was alive.

"I'll stay, Lucy," he whispers to nothing, to no one, wincing his eyes shut as another strangled sob rolls through him. "I'll stay, I'll help, I promise."

All the Lucys are gone. He's alone in his house, crying at the bottom of the stairs, and it's raining like it's supposed to. In a little while, the mailman will come and his life will go on and the Mormons will knock on the door and try to sell him a Watchtower or something.

But she's going to be at the edges of his mind constantly. When it's good, she's just a shadow at the edge of his vision, or a perfume wafting through the room, a whisper that tells him goodnight. But when it's bad... she's there but not, constantly picking at the frayed edges of his grief, unraveling him and leaving him in knots, always just -

so

fucking

close

but never really here. Not really. Sorry, guy.