The postcard for New Hampshire was less flashy than the two previous cards, but still was rather colorful. It seemed to either be a photograph or a very realistic painting of a house surrounded by trees just beginning to undergo the autumn changes. Darren settled back to begin the story
Better the Devil You Know
1
Jolene could feel the fingers resting upon her hand. Her hand moved down inside the sink drain, searching for the saltshaker lid. While she fumbled in the slimy remains of her meals from the past few days, a touch fell upon her skin. The impression of several fingertips was unmistakable. The pressure did not increase, Jolene noted, and she sensed no hostility, so she let herself relax and simply accept the sensation.
Carefully, in order to show that she was not withdrawing because of fear or repulsion, Jolene removed her hand and the shaker lid from the mouth of the drain. She knew better than to try and peer down the opening. Jolene already knew she would not see anything. This wasn’t the first time she had been touched. Sighing, she rinsed both of her hands quickly and wiped them first on a crumpled rag on the counter, then on her jeans. She liked these jeans. They had lasted surprisingly long, and had become so smooth they felt more like rayon than cotton. She’d even incorporated this pair once in an evening of self-indulgence, rubbing her naked flesh with the fabric.
Jolene uttered a quiet chuckle. Strange time to be thinking of masturbation. She wondered if not only the social habits of people but also their lines of thought became much less inhibited when not exposed to the company of other people for so long. She returned her attention to the dishes that still needed washing. She hummed a tune she’d heard on the radio on the way to work a few days ago, a country ballad that was doing pretty well on the charts. The house swallowed up her humming, devoured it whole, so that the silence seemed even louder than Jolene’s music.
Jolene didn’t choose the house. Thanks to her great-uncle, and also, Jolene supposed, to her cousin, second cousin, or her cousin once- removed, whatever the correct term for the son of a great-uncle might be, she was now the owner of this two –story house out in the fringes of New Hampshire suburbia. The house was left to her cousin Greg but he died sooner after his father’s death, in an accidental fire at the bar where he worked. Since the bulk of Jolene’s great uncle’s will had gone to Jolene, the executor did some research and discovered that nothing stood in the way of Jolene inheriting the house.
The entire whirlwind of the transition from Colorado to New Hampshire had left Jolene a bit dazed and she was glad that her mother and a few friends had helped her a great deal with the arrangements. She did land the job on her own, though, at the public library. She’d completed most of the Master’s degree in library science and the library had agreed to hire her on the condition she finish the few required classes left within the first year. She enjoyed her job, especially the children, even though she had none of her own. She had never married in spite of having one or two long-term relationships that could have gone that way. She could never quite completely commit, though. Her boyfriends would always sooner or later comment that she seemed to live in a dream world half the time, her eyes lost in dimensions they couldn’t see, understand, or find any interest in.
Perhaps that was why the children were drawn to her. They could sense she was not like most other adults in their early thirties. She still had enough wonder within herself to perceive things the same way a child could. She still bothered to lie out on the grass and stare at the clouds, and even though Jolene did not share the fact with her family, Christmas still caused an enormous flooding of excitement within her.
Her great-uncle often attended the Christmas gatherings at her maternal grandmother’s home, right up to the previous year, two months before his defeat by pneumonia.
After washing the dishes, Jolene moved on to the next chore, picking up an old towel dampened for the purpose of dusting. She didn’t mind taking care of the large house all on her own. She didn’t make much of a mess elsewhere in the house besides the kitchen and her bedroom, so everything was more or less neatly arranged. It was the sanitary chores Jolene disliked. Washing, scrubbing, dusting. How could a house accumulate so much dust, with one lone person occupying the entire place? Jolene found small solace that she was not as violently allergic to dust as her parents and brother were.
When she came to an area on one of her bookshelves that was slightly more dusty than usual, Jolene noticed with annoyance that the towel wasn’t picking up a lot because the dust was caked enough to prevent the moist fabric from doing its job. She picked up the towel to re-fold it, and some of the dust slid off onto her front shirt and dark hair. Exhaling through her teeth with frustration, Jolene stalked into the kitchen to find an elastic scrunchie to secure her hair in a loose bun. She flung the towel onto the counter, sending up a cloud of finer dust, and for the briefest moment, she saw the outline of a face within the floating motes.
Jolene drew back with a startled gasp. She didn’t have to think about what the face looked like. She had seen it before upon several occasions. A woman’s face. The face was tantalizingly familiar, but Jolene had not yet been able to match a name to the face from the recesses of her memory. Jolene knew she was the only person living in the house, but she also bore the knowledge that she was not the only occupant. The discovery of the ghost had occurred perhaps five weeks after Jolene arrived from Colorado.
Jolene had completed the last of her unpacking within three weeks. It was easy to furnish and decorate a house with the interior of an apartment. There was still a great deal of space left to fill, even after the first anniversary of Jolene’s inhabitation passed two months before. Jolene could remember what she was wearing the night of her first encounter with the other occupant, because she called it her “leisure suit”. It was May but the chill of the winter had not entirely passed, so Jolene had a pan of milk heating on the stove as she prepared to settle down on her couch with a copy of Maeve Binchy’s The Glass Lake. Her “leisure suit” was a pair of flannel pajamas bottoms, and a light cotton robe tied over these, nothing else underneath. She was past thirty, but not in need of any Wonderbras yet.
The milk heated quickly over the gas flame, and Jolene made two cups of hot chocolate. The first cup to serve as a quick warmer and the second to savor as she read. She drank the first cup standing at the counter next to the sink. She put the remainder of the hot milk into a Rubbermaid container to store in the refrigerator for later before taking the second cup into the reading room. Jolene would have liked to call the small room her library, but she didn’t have very many shelves in there and once she started working at a real one, she found the label a little pretentious as well.
Jolene pulled the tiny glass table closer to the couch so she wouldn’t have to reach over to the coffee table for her drink, and sat down on the couch. Once the mug was on the table, Jolene swung her legs up on the cushions and leaned back against the arm.
Her shrill scream should have rung throughout the house, but the thick acoustics of the house muffled it, and the vibrations sounded only in the immediate air surrounding Jolene’s ears. She tried to jump to her feet, but the robe was wrapped snugly around her knees, and she stumbled forward onto her knees just shy of the coffee table. Bracing herself with one arm, Jolene whipped her wide brown eyes around to see whom she had sat on.
The tears came to her eyes not because there was nothing visible on the sofa, not even an indentation an unseen weight could leave. Not because she was alone in a house with this chilling phenomenon. Because when she came in contact with that invisible body, it was a gentle contact, like being cradled by her mother when she was young. Jolene would even have thought it was her mother somehow, except for the fact that her mother was still alive, and not yet retired from her job as a secretary at one of the grade schools in Colorado Springs.
“What’s there?” she wailed. She didn’t question if something was there, for she did not doubt her own senses or perceptions. Her capacity to see the world through a child’s eyes allowed her to retain the open-mindedness most people her age had outgrown. She wanted to know what occupied her couch and perhaps to commune with it further.
Many of her friends supported her move and congratulated her on her new job, but many felt that Jolene should not be alone. Some had even hinted she ask Tom to move there with her. She no longer dated him, but they remained very amicable and both of them kept the possibility of a reunion ticked away in a small corner of their respective minds.
The first pangs of isolation struck Jolene weeks after her move. At first, she accepted with ease her separation from her old social life. Surprisingly, making new friends turned out to be a low priority for Jolene, and she allowed her correspondence with her circle of friends in Colorado to lapse. She realized that she enjoyed long stretched of solitude, an experience new to her after all these years of gregariousness. She found her work refreshing. Classes were interesting, even entertaining. Jolene did not feel separated from humanity until she cleaned house for the first time. The amount of dust had amazed Jolene. She did not see how one person could stir up so much, without children running down the stairs, lovemaking on the beds and bathroom floors, or even a cat running its barbed tongue up and down its fur.
“What’s there?” The wail vanished into the stillness. Jolene reached out towards the couch. Her hand trembled. Her heart was beating its hummingbird wings against her ribcage. Jolene suspected she might be trembling because there would not be a presence upon the couch.
Her belief proved correct. Nothing rested upon the couch except Jolene’s hand as it slid back and forth over the cushions. The whisper of her skin upon the couch evoked an odd memory. Jolene recalled a small residential street with long overlooked potholes with a sprawling farm on one side, the pasture filled with black cows. A girl rode her tricycle down the sidewalk, trying to keep pace with Jolene’s car. The condition of the road allowed the girl to catch up with the car often while Jolene slowly navigated the pitted surface. The whispering sounded just like the plastic streamers on the tricycle handlebars. They whipped weakly each time the girl hit her peak speed, pulling even with Jolene.
There was a sign, a warning sign, shimmering orange in the dull afternoon sun. It read in black lettering: DEAF CHILDREN AT PLAY. Jolene felt the sign unnecessary. Drivers should always look for children regardless of their physical parameters, coloring or religious beliefs. As for the children themselves, Jolene observed had deaf children once or twice at her mother’s school and noticed how these children relied on visual information so much more than their peers who could hear did. A deaf child with sufficient common sense playing in front of his or her home would not miss a car coming down the road, especially as it bounced up and down on the deteriorated pavement.
Twenty minutes after her shock, Jolene had recovered sufficiently to take her hot chocolate back into the kitchen to reheat in the microwave. Jolene disliked the microwave, a vague repulsion filling her whenever she deigned to use it. She had never bought into the urban legends of exploding dogs or erupting cups of coffee, but the idea of a machine that used radiation disturbed her slightly. More so after she read a book on the horrors of Hiroshima. When the microwave pinged, Jolene took the hot chocolate with her to her bedroom. She wanted to get into bed and think instead of reading. One night of not brushing her teeth or her hair before getting under the comforter wouldn’t kill her.
Once in bed, Jolene stared at the curtains drawn over her window, able to barely discern the movements of shadows cast by tree branches giving way to a late night breeze. The moon must be full, Jolene reasoned, for her to be able to see shadows at all in her lighted bedroom, dim as her nightstand lamp was. Her eyelids began to droop, and Jolene’s dreams that night were of bicycle wheels pinning endlessly, the sunlight flashing off the spokes in sparks of marigold.
Since that night of her first encounter, Jolene experienced perhaps a half-dozen more over the course of months. These never allowed Jolene any conclusive ideas about the identity or nature of what she came to think of as a ghost. She never saw a complete apparition. She might have glimpsed a quick flash of a face once in a mirror, but it could easily have been her own reflection seen from an odd angle. The manifestations were always physical rather of visual. She could feel the ghost. She wondered how it must be for a child without the ability to hear, the absence of an entire sense, to not understand or know that sense. The other senses could compensate, perhaps, but the idea still made Jolene rub her arms in apprehension. What of the blind? Unable to simply see all that lay before them, the blind could only conjecture through touch. Jolene had so far conjectured that the ghost was a woman of kind, or at least mild, disposition.
The spirit never spoke, as far as Jolene knew. Perhaps it did, but she could not be sure, in this house that swallowed sound so greedily. Jolene noted with a modicum of curiosity that she wasn’t really very interested in finding out more about the ghost. She did not do any research on the paranormal or the history of the house. She did not seek out the entity or try to communicate with it. She simply acknowledged that a presence existed in her house.
A sudden urge to see other people ran through Jolene, prompting her decision to postpone the dusting, and get out for a while. Jolene went upstairs into her bedroom, and inside her large closet, changed from the T-shirt she usually cleaned in into a green
V-neck shirt she knew brought out the amber flecks in her dark eyes.
“We have always caught our darlings with the Galin eyes,” her grandmother loved to say, reminding Jolene that the unusual coloring of her eyes appeared in almost every woman on her mother’s side. There was truth to it, too, for Jolene could remember almost every single boyfriend of hers composing a poem or writing a note attached to a rose commenting on her beautiful eyes. Even back in grade school, she received Valentines that said things like “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Your Eyes are pretty and I hope you like me.”
Only Simon never said anything about her eyes, but then again he had never said anything about any aspect of her, except crude references to her sexual parts. Jolene found him thrilling at first, but the romantic concept of a “bad-boy” type of man wore off quickly once Jolene discovered that a bad boy was rude, thoughtless, sloppy, and ultimately an asshole, basically. Jolene possessed high tolerance for people in general, but Simon had exceeded even her expansive limits.
Glossing her lips very lightly with Impulse, a light hue of brown with a touch of ocher, while staring in the bathroom mirror, Jolene decided she was ready to go. Then she noticed the dust streaking her hair, and grabbed her brush to get rid of it. Several minutes later, she appraised herself again the mirror, and liked what she saw. She wasn’t the greatest beauty, but she didn’t look bad at all.
She left her house in good spirits, mentally thumbing through an imaginary directory, She settled on What to Wear as her first stop. She wanted to look at some skirts that she might be able to wear in the hotter weather coming up ahead. The selection of merchandise at What to Wear was not the best, but Heidi, the owner and manager of the store enjoyed her conversations with Jolene as much as Jolene did. For more striking clothes, Jolene preferred Nikki’s. The prices caused Jolene to wince though so she did not frequent Nikki’s as much.
The “Closed” sign hanging on the inside of the glass door to What to Wear puzzled Jolene when she arrived. It wasn’t a Sunday, and Heidi kept very regular hours. The sign swayed the tiniest bit when Jolene put her face to the glass and peered within the darkened shop.
Jolene straightened up, sighing. Oh well. She could return another time. She noticed a small brown smudge on the glass, the result of her glossed lips brushing the surface. Out of deference for her acquaintance with Heidi, Jolene put her thumb to the glass and rubbed the mark away as well as she could.
“Don’t people usually do that with antique brass magic lamps?” Jolene turned her head to look at the grinning man standing a few feet away on the sidewalk. His smile was crooked, but contagious. She smiled in return.
“I just got some lipstick on the glass while I was looking inside,” she explained. Her hand rose unbidden to her hair, brushing it slightly back over her shoulder.
“Ah,” replied the man, nodding. His sandy hair was cropped short but just long enough to skew in several directions, betraying the fact that he had recently risen from sleep. Jolene noted that his eyes were a very light blue yet they did not seem empty of warmth, as many pairs of blue eyes appeared to her. Jolene had a sudden image of the neon blue ice cream flavor from Baskin Robbins, Daiquiri Ice. She had loved that flavor before it was discontinued in most of the franchise locations.
‘I’m Jolene,” she said impulsively, holding out her hand. The man stepped closer and shook her hand with a grasp that enveloped hers completely and firmly.
“Benji,” he replied, crooked smile wide, “and yes, it’s spelled just like the dog’s name.”
Jolene shook her head and withdrew her hand from his grip. “I don’t know the dog,” she said, but she smiled to show him it wasn’t important. Benji sighed melodramatically and feigned great relief.
“I’m so glad,” he said, “because I’ve grown quite accustomed to people telling me I look just like the dog, too. She went to see her daughter,” he added. Jolene’s blank look prompted him to clarify. “Heidi. She went to see her daughter. Apparently, her daughter’s an actress. Not in Hollywood, but you know, on a stage. Seems that her daughter was understudy for the main female role, and the lead actress got hurt or something, so she’s in the show now, and Heidi went to see her.”
“Oh, okay.” Jolene paused to consider. “What’s the play?”
“Pardon?”
“The play? You know which one it is supposed to be?”
Benji shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest.”
“Then,” teased Jolene, “how do I know you’re telling the truth? Perhaps you did away with Heidi and are waiting for an opportunity to remove the body pieces you have hid.” She was startled as Benji’s eyes darkened violently. Then the flash of anger, or hatred, or whatever it had been, was gone, and Benji’s smile shone in the early afternoon sun.
“Would you do me the honor of joining me for a cup of coffee or tea?” Benji invited. Jolene decided that the strange coloring of his eyes must have been a trick of the light, an illusion created by her own mind. She smiled in return and inclined her head in acquiescence.
2
The scent of toasted bread pervaded the kitchen while Jolene considered the three eggs she held in both hands. She didn’t know how Benji liked his breakfast, and she didn’t want to choose a style of egg cooking Benji would not enjoy. The easy solution would be to ask him, Jolene knew, but he looked so peaceful asleep in the bed. She didn’t want to wake him until the last possible minute, with a meal prepared. She leaned forward against the counter and ran her tongue over her lips, thinking of Benji’s strangely soft stubble brushing across them.
The last two weeks since she met Benji in front of Heidi’s shop seemed like only hours, a continuous day and evening of discoveries, laughter, and companionship finally culminating in the previous night of intimacy. Benji was a gentle lover, if inexperienced. Jolene had expected a little more knowledge from someone his age, but she acknowledged that not every man seized each opportunity for sex or sought every one. She hadn’t asked, but if Benji turned out to be virginal up until last night, she would not have been surprised by the revelation. She smiled to herself. It might be silly, but the idea of being someone’s first made her feel honored.
The egg yolks splashed against the wall and into the sink when her hands clutched convulsively in fright. Something had grabbed her from behind and was enclosing her in its grasp.
“Oh, my- I am so sorry!” Benji covered his mouth in amused remorse. He reached around Jolene and held her hands under the faucet as he turned on the water. Rubbing her wrists and palms to remove the runny substance, he kissed her behind her left ear.
“You startled me,” Jolene said, knowing that Benji already perceived that. He was so silent, being able to step right up behind her without alerting her to his presence. “I thought you were still asleep.” She reached for a dishrag to wipe the wall clean of dripping yolk.
Benji ran one damp hand through his hair, causing it to stick up even more, and Jolene began to see why he could be compared to a terrier. He turned his body to élan against the counter. “I’m not sure I’m awake yet,” he confessed, “would you happen to have any coffee?”
“Just tea, I’m afraid.”
“Ah. Well, I can wait. There’s a great place over on Highston Street.”
“Yes, I know the place.” Jolene rinsed the rag under the running water. “Mule Headquarters Coffee, right?”
Benji beamed at her. “Yep, that’s the place. Want to go there now?”
Jolene gestured at the remains of the egg mess. “I was going to make
breakfast . . .” Benji reached over and picked up the eggshells. He dropped them into the sink. Jolene with a gentle smile removed them from the sink and opened the cabinet door underneath the sink to dispose of the shells in the trash.
“It was sweet of you, but I kinda messed up. Let me treat you to breakfast, okay?”
“Okay,” Jolene answered, placing her palms on Benji’s naked chest. His warmth startled her. She was still unused to this much contact with another person. Really, her only company up until now had been the ghost.
The ghost. Jolene abruptly realized that she had not experienced any manifestations in some time. How long? Since the day she met Benji. Was there a connection there? Had she created all these visions and hallucinated all the tactile contact, out of sheer loneliness? Jolene preferred to believe that the ghost had chosen not to appear for some time. Reality was easier to question than her own sanity.
“Where did you go?” Jolene’s eyes focused on Benji’s puzzled expression. She waved a hand in a vague gesture of apology.
“I’m sorry. I began to daydream.” Benji’s face broke into a broad smile.
“Oh, oh,” he teased, “you’re planning to clean me out with a humongous breakfast!”
Jolene’s laughter filled the kitchen; acoustic soap bubbles, floating up into the air above the heads of the two lovers, iridescent until the moment of disappearance.
At the coffeehouse, Jolene’s eyes sparkled as she listened to the buzz around her. The other people noticed how she held Benji’s hands, not as a friend, but as a lover. She knew a few of them and enjoyed the look of surprise that appeared on their faces. She knew she bore the label of old maid since she arrived. Wasn’t that what all unmarried women who worked in libraries were supposed to be? Spinsters finding solace in the company of romance novels, doomed to a life of solitude. She knew the gossip would spread quickly since this town was not that large. Let it spread. Jolene didn’t mind being talked about. It was being pitied that she resented, and everyone tended to feel sorry for an old maid.
Benji was talking about why he came to New Hampshirei, and a sudden surge of sadness swept over Jolene. She possessed only one reason for her move. An inherited house, from a relative she barely knew. No career decision or a conscious desire for change of lifestyle, just a house given to her. She hadn’t even asked for this, and here she was, two thousand and change miles away from her real home. Tears came to Jolene’s eyes before she could stop them, and Benji broke off mid-sentence, staring at the rivulets running from the eyes of the woman sitting across from him. She chuckled weakly and disengaged her hands to hide her blush. She rapidly wiped her face with the paper napkin from her lap.
“No, I’m-” she muttered, “I’m okay, really. I just got hit by a little homesickness.”
“Where would that be?” Benji inquired, taking another bite of his sandwich. Jolene felt the tiniest flash of irritation at this action, since it implied Benji was not too concerned after all. She reminded herself that they had met just two weeks ago, and she shouldn’t expect so much from a man, never mind that they had slept together the night before.
“Colorado Springs. I lived there most of my life, so I guess my roots pretty much belong there.” She picked up the discarded paper sleeve from her drinking straw and began to fold it carefully, making an accordion. “The house was a gift that I inherited, so I moved out here. It wasn’t something I planned to do, but the opportunity just happened to be there.” Benji leaned back in his chair to appraise Jolene. He shrugged slightly.
“Opportunities are always present.” Jolene consciously refrained from frowning. This casualness of Benji’s was disconcerting. Was he beginning to reveal some true colors now after having had sex with her? Was he going to prove cruder, sloppier and less attentive now that he had achieved his goal? Jolene felt a sudden chill, but smiled to hide her apprehension.
“So, what are you doing tomorrow?” She watched him carefully. His answer would reveal to her his intentions. She would know from his words and his attitude whether he was looking for something more permanent, or if he was done with her.
3
The ghost returned to Jolene’s home the following month, but it was not Jolene who encountered the ghost, it was Benji. Out of respect for Jolene’s desire of a separate solitude, Benji did not attempt to pervade her home with his presence. He did not leave spare clothes in the closet, or bring his own food to store in Jolene’s refrigerator. He stayed the night from time to time and on one or two occasions had left something of his behind, forgotten as he left her house, whistling tunelessly, turning to wave at her as she stood in the doorway, smiling at him. Otherwise, his presence was transient, fading from her house as his body heat faded from her bed when he got up, yawning and muttering about a cup of coffee.
The night the ghost manifested itself again Jolene had risen to read for a while, unable to sleep. Then she heard a cough and looked up to see Benji standing in the entranceway of the reading room, his eyes wide.
“There was someone in the bed,” he stated tonelessly. Jolene pushed back the anger that rose within. She was not angry that the ghost had returned, but instead that someone else now knew. The ghost belonged to her and was for her alone. The house belonged to her family, and she knew if she could get a clear look at the apparition, she could place where she had seen the face before. Perhaps an ancestress of hers. Not for others to encounter. Bitterness seeped into the back of her tongue. She wanted Benji to leave right away, to evacuate her bed and her home. She pressed her lips together and said nothing. Benji approached the couch and knelt besides Jolene, but she did not reach out to stroke his hair or to touch him in any way. She folded her hands on top of her book, which lay in her lap, and waited for him to continue.
“I thought you were still in bed,” Benji explained, “and so I turned over, and put my arm over you. I could feel you” His hands jumped in the air agitatedly. “Then, as I tried to pull myself closer, to hold you better . . .” his voice trailed off. Benji’s eyes darted back and forth as he searched his thoughts for a way to describe his experience. “Okay, have you ever deflated a raft?”
“Yes.” Jolene’s voice was quick, impatient.
“That’s what it was like. Like putting your arm on a raft that’s full of air, then while the air is being let out, your arm just goes down, until there’s nothing under it. I had my arm around you, then you just went down to nothing. I opened my eyes and there wasn’t anything there at all.” Benji ran his fingers through his air, exhaling sharply.
“Of course there wasn’t,” Jolene retorted. “Because you were dreaming.” Benji shook his head, and plaid a hand on Jolene’s knee. Jolene resisted the urge to straighten out her leg underneath his touch.
“I didn’t dream this,” he insisted, speaking with conviction. Jolene stared at him coldly. A hidden corner of her self exulted in Benji’s discovery because proof now existed that her imagination had not created the apparition. The presence was as real as the cushion she lay upon. Yet the main essence of the emotions coursing through her at the moment was a combination of anger and jealousy.
“Whatever you say,” she declared, getting up and ascending the stairs. She wanted to be away from this interloper upon her secret, now, any way she could be.
She gritted her teeth when she heard his footsteps behind her. She made her way into her bathroom swiftly, and locked the door quietly behind her. Benji would not intrude on her there, but she felt the precaution to be necessary. She turned on the taps in the bathtub and slowly began to take off her leisure suit.
“Jolene?” Benji’s voice sounded a little hurt. Let him feel that way, Jolene thought to herself. He deserved no less.
“I’m” Jolene almost screamed, “taking a bath. I’ll be out in a while.”
When she opened the door to the bathroom nearly an hour later, she gasped. Benji stood there, his arm on the doorframe. His eyes were heavy with fatigue yet opened to full alertness at her appearance.
“Jolene, is everything okay?” Jolene’s anger transformed from a seething dark mass to a mist that evaporated through her sighing lips. His tenderness touched her and she smiled with forgiving guilt. She stepped towards him. Then the ghost touched her.
It ran a hand lightly across her cheek, and Jolene distinctly felt the knuckles upon her skin. She reflexively put her own hand to her face and her fingers brushed the hand as it left her face, to rest upon her shoulder for a brief second.
Benji saw the amazement in her eyes, “What is it?” he demanded, staring hard at her, as if he might be able to cause the apparition to materialize by sheer will. Jolene stood still, the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Her breathing quickened a little as the hand moved over the towel wrapped around her body, leaving a tangible pressure first on the side of her breast, then against her ribcage. Lower now, firm upon her hip.
Abruptly she broke contact by striding past Benji, keeping her gaze forward. She preferred that Benji learn no more, see no more. She got into bed naked, smiling. She intended to seduce him so utterly that he would forget the strange phenomenon from this night. She beckoned to the bemused man, and as soon as he was within reach, hooked her finger into his boxers and pulled them down.
4
The hot tea scalded Jolene’s tongue and she gasped, jerking the cup enough to spill more upon the wrinkled skin of her hand. Muttering angrily, she placed the cup and saucer on the table, and shook her hands as well as she could without rousing the arthritic demons that burned within her joints. She peered at the cup, and finally perceived the steam that had remained invisible to her weak eyes, fooling her into thinking the tea was cool enough to sip. She should have tested the damn thing with her finger first. Gingerly moving her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she winced at the tenderness.
“Well, looks like I’m getting to where I can’t take care of myself anymore,” she said to the ghost. The ghost, who she had called Mrs. Sheldon for over thirty years now, was her favorite and only confidante these days. Very few visitors came to see lately. No one had time for an old spinster who had once worked at the library. She stood laboriously, groping for her cane. She dreaded going up to her room, and spent most nights in her reading chair, dozing off while reading and then waking in a few hours. Her friends insisted that she move her sleeping quarters downstairs, to save herself the trouble of using the stairs, but Jolene simply told them it was her house and she would do as she chose.
Grunting slightly with effort, she peered up at the stairs. “Well, Mrs. Sheldon, here we go,” she declared, and felt a hand upon her shoulder in encouragement. She knew the ghost was an older woman, but she still had never seen the ghost in its entirety and had yet to solve the mystery of its identity. She supposed she would find out one way or another by the time she was pushing daisies.
Halfway up the stairs, Jolene paused to catch her breath. The cane was slipping a bit on every fifth or so step. She wasn’t ancient yet, but the weight she gained over the years pulled her down to the earth where her bones would lie eventually. She raised her cane to inspect the end, and grunted in annoyance. The rubber tip was wearing smooth, and causing the cane to slip from time to time. She rolled her eyes as she thought of the hassle involved in a trip to the shop to have the cane fixed. Jolene resumed her ascent, exhaling heavily.
“Jolene.” The whisper exploded around her, shattering the dense silence of the house. Only a whisper yet the name pounded against Jolene’s eardrums.
The old woman spun to see who had whispered her name. Mrs. Sheldon, of course, for who else but the ghost could have said her name. She twisted her large torso, and moved her cane to the step below the one she occupied. Leaning on this as she began to turn, Jolene let out a cry when the cane slipped and her body fell inexorably down the stairs.
Flashes of memories and incomplete thoughts inundated her brain as her body tumbled painfully. Benji, her last and final lover, grinned in her memory. She remembered how she pushed him away, alienating him after that night she seduced him, committing wild acts of abandon she had never tried before and never did again. Benji was patient and tried to understand but eventually drifted away to seek a relationship in which the woman did not make so much effort to dissipate his feelings for her.
She thought of how she had focused on her work, throwing herself into her daily contact with the children, replacing the dull ache within her after Benji was gone. He had moved on to another town, and she had heard that he was married, but knew nothing of his life since.
Jolene’s neck broke before she reached the bottom. Since her final expression was composed, a trickle of blood dripping from her slack mouth was the only sign that she was not napping at the base of the stairs. She had accepted her fate with nobility worthy of a woman who had the strength to be alone for so long, if the ghost was not considered as a real companion.
Jolene stood gazing at her body. The mystery was now clear. A reflection in the mirror was always distorted, a reverse image of a person. The image in a mirror never resembled an image of the same person in a photograph, or on videotape. Jolene looked at herself, at the thin hair that hung askew above her still face, framing her calm and open eyes. She knew the true identity of Mrs. Sheldon.
“Jolene,” she whispered. Her eyes flew wide open in shock as she saw her face turn swiftly towards herself. Time flowed tangibly around her, pinpricking her insubstantial flesh. She realized that she was in a different moment in time now, minutes earlier, next to herself on the stairs. Sadly, she watched as her mortal self tried to turn for the purpose of better ascertaining where her voice had come from, and started to fall down the stairs.
She should never, would never speak again, Jolene realized, as she moved again through time, her incorporeal body slipping through the channels of time. She willed silence upon herself, an unbreakable weight. The silence spread out from her tight lips throughout the entire house, shrouding the entire interior in soundlessness. Now she stood in the kitchen next to a much younger self washing the dishes. She saw the young woman drop a saltshaker lid down the drain and without thought reached for it out of habit at the same time as the young woman. She saw the mortal react to the touch of her hand. Jolene closed her eyes. She knew how the ghost was beyond any doubt. She had haunted herself all these years.
