The last ghost story

   Die. Ghosts cannot forgive.

~

   Her name was Renée and she always wore black Lolita dresses with white spots.

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    She hated flowers – they got in her way when she danced wildly on the lawn, a stereo planted between the ficus and the pink tulips.

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    She didn’t hate menstruation, she had a seven-year-old daughter and she made the best cookies in the neighbourhood.

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    At the age of ten she blew the icon-lamp under the Virgin Mary’s smiling face and wished to never grow up.
    Over the yells of her parents and the sound of breaking dishes her whispered prayer was heard.

~

    Sometimes, her best friend, the baby-sitter, would tell her through the bathroom door: “Renée, the child wants to say goodnight to you. Come now, sweetheart, and I promise I’ll track that bastard down and I’ll kill him with my bare hands for spitting in the face of his unborn daughter.”

~

    Her neighbours knew her as the barefoot girl who went shopping with a pram, the woman who listened to stories about the seaside with childish fascination and the mother who every boy could cheat and then she’d give him a lollipop.

~

    But no one knew about her ghost world.

    Everyone secretly has lived in dreams.

    Probably the realism of her imaginative life was a serious mental disease, a certain kind of schizophrenia, or probably, she had the gift of a medium.
    She called it “my invisible universe” and like little girls she sat next to the window, held her chin, elbows on the sill between two flower pots with pelargonium and she walked through people and she bumped only into ghosts.
    She saw sun spots and she was an elf, a dwarf, a fairy, sometimes she was the manager of a huge company but always, always she talked to ghosts, not humans.
    The baby sitter hushed her daughter and said “mommy’s deaf moments”.

~

    Sunday morning.
    Plates and a sponge and detergent and Renée’s eyes, blank, tracing a street lamp on the kitchen cupboard.
    She was walking down the street, almost asleep, sunny, weightless, strong, when a stranger caught her hand.
    “Renée?” he asked with a bass voice.
    “Yes, who are you?” her eyes widened with the wonder of a child.
    “You have to escape, you’re dying, you’re a ghost, come with me…”
    Outside that street she would have tried to escape, the naivety of a 60-year-old, the fear of a 10-year-old.
    But she followed.

~

    When she found herself in front of the house the stranger had disappeared. Like a proton and an electron the building attracted her, like a home. Probably because it was light yellow like an asylum, probably because it was light yellow like a sunflower.
    Walking closer, she didn’t head for the door. Her hands slid over the warm, sun-heated wall and she pressed against it like a moth – still having this instinctive thirst for protection, warmth, support.
    She felt something hot and wet soak into her dress.
    A curious look down terrified her.
    Like showers, blood erupted from every gap of the wall, she screamed and ran, ran and screamed.
    Screamed and ran and fell and got up and seconds later a plate broke, her daughter jumped from the chair and shook her.
    “Mommy, mommy!”
    Renée dropped on the floor shaking and sobbed tears of terror in her child’s hair.

~

    That night the stranger came and watched her chest heaving. He told her a story of Indian families, where children ran happy in ragged clothes, where husbands kissed their wives, where a dinner wasn’t served upstairs. Separately. Then he kissed her knuckles and moved the hands of her alarm clock backwards.

~

    Wednesday afternoon.
    An aisle and baked beans in rows of tins and a trolley and Renée’s eyes, blank, tracing sea waves on the shelves of the supermarket.
    She was walking up the drive, again in front of that house. She wore an umbrella this time and she slipped in as quickly as she could, as far away from the walls as she could pass.
    Inside, it was an evening.
    There was a fireplace and a fire burning and an armchair holding an invisible figure and a man talking on the phone and she was invisible, too.

~

    When he put the phone down she felt the asking eyes of the other figure.
     “I have to go now, sweetheart. Max called me, he needed me to pick him up from the airport.”
    Quickly, he changed his trousers and, now behind the armchair, checked if the condom was in his pocket.
    Then, rushed out.
    The hand of the figure slowly took the remote control from the nightstand and turned the stereo up to the max. It was opera.
    Renée leaned against the door case and listened. She liked to call this music sticky because pain and anger and felicity and excitement had adhered to it for years.

~

    The song ended and Renée turned to leave. Suddenly her ears caught a low sound.
    She heard the armchair soak tiny sobs, she heard the hand pressed against bitten lips, she heard the fingers dig in the coverlet, she heard the distant fear of a name hidden under the loud music.
    Another song began but to Renée there was no other sound now, no other sound in the room, no other sound but the sobs.
    As tiny as a fly, to her, they beat dementedly at the walls and resonanced over the carpet.
    One step further terrified her.
    Like a deluge black blood spilled from the chimney right onto the fire and the last spark of warm light revealed rivers, snakes, crawling down the floor.
    She ran and tumbled and ran and tumbled and seconds later her face met the polished supermarket floor reflecting the fluorescent lamps and tins rattling all around her and odd stares and the baby-sitter pressing her against her fleshy chest.

~

    That night the stranger came again. He put a blanket around her legs as she clutched them sinking between the bookcase and the window. He told her she looked beautiful when she had been crying and then put a rainbow wig and hugged her and didn’t sing to her and whispered his name in her ear when she fell asleep. Her window looked over to the east so he pulled down the curtains before leaving.

~

    Tuesday evening.
    Stitches and needles and a child’s shirt and a sofa and she, sitting, and a little west window and her dark tresses unusually golden.
    This time she was in the corridor next to a fridge, which shook in shouts and cries.
    Scared, she pushed the door ajar and peered in.
    There was the same golden window and a furious blinding sea and two furious silhouettes like two rowing boats, sinking and re-emerging, lost in a furious storm of furious yells and furious gestures.
    She started to suffocate and there was no one to wake her up this time and yet she woke up – the needle sticking out of her thumb and a little drop of blood around it.
She pulled the needle in panic and sucked the blood away.
    Shook, freezing cold.

~

    That night the stranger came again and listened to her. She asked him a thousand of questions but he told her everything will be alright in the end. That night he was the first who told her she was strong and brave. He reminded her of merry-go-rounds, the years before she started wearing thongs, the ice-cream smeared on her mother’s lips and how she sat in her boyfriend’s lap reading the poems he’d written for her and blushing, blushing madly. She slept that night, smiling.

~

    Saturday noon.
    The lawnmower and two fountains of grass and earplug erupting in her head and the vision of lots of coffee and a toast.
    She didn’t think this time. She didn’t think but the woman was there again. Who was that woman? A room with no furniture.
    “Look, I really love you but we’re both too young,” he said softly to the woman and banged her head into the wall.
    “You know I can hardly afford the university fees, “ he continued and threw her on the floor like an animal, like a grass-snake.
    “I told you not to expect anything, at least until I get a decent job,” he whispered, guiltily, and kicked her violently.
    “It’s not my fault that you didn’t listen to me…” he kicked her again and punched her in the chest.
    “… and you said you were on the pill so it’s your own [fucking] fault that you got pregnant, [bitch]!” he finished and knocked her head against the floor.
    “You see, I really love you, honey,…” he grabbed her hair and pulled her face closer to him, “…but I can’t help you here. It’s your child.”
    He stroked the woman’s face and threw her head back on the floor.

~

    Alone now, Renée stepped towards the woman’s body. Limbs bent unnaturally and bleeding hair.
    Gently, carefully, Renée turned the woman’s head towards her and she saw a familiar face.
    She saw a face she knew from family albums.
    She saw a face she knew from her daughter’s eyes.
    She saw a face she knew from the moments she made herself up every morning, alone in the bathroom.
    This time she didn’t scream, she didn’t run.
    In the blood she saw not terror but hope.
    The woman was still breathing and she realized – they had both survived.
    Renée helped the woman to her feet and watched her as she wiped the blood off the wall and smiled.

~

    The stranger reached out his hand and pulled her up. She watched him for a few minutes and oh, how sunny he was!
    Nose to nose he whispered to her, “welcome to life, little fighter, alive means forgiven and forgiving.”

~

    “Mommy! Mooooooom!”
    “Renée! Stop, stop! Oh God!”
    When she turned away it was too late.
    Sun,
brakes,
a black dress,
white spots,
a lawnmower,
a smile goodbye,
and…….  

a van that couldn’t stop.

In her invisible universe she finally healed and fell in love.