Chapter 6
ZAK
Isit on my too-small bed, staring out the window, waiting. Like clockwork, the sun dips below the horizon, the sky darkens, and a familiar green glow appears inside Rose’s house, barely visible through the layers of dirt and pollen on the side window — one of the few glass panes still intact.
It’s her.
I go through my usual routine; the one I’ve kept up every day that I’ve been home this week.
Check that the coast is clear — I can’t be bothered explaining this situation to my flatmates, and I wouldn’t even know where to start — and then head out the front of the house, slipping on my slides and going over to Rose’s place.
She made a comment to me about wearing “inappropriate footwear for wet weather” the other night, exclaiming, “Your poor cold toes!” and now I’m just wearing them to rile her up.
I’m half-tempted to turn up barefoot one of these days just to see what she’d say about that.
She’s already waiting on her porch, a smile lighting up her face as I wave to her. She really is beautiful. I suck in a cold breath of air, feeling the tightness in my chest that’s been there since last Thursday when she first disappeared into thin air on me.
I’m falling for this girl, and she’s not even really here. I am the biggest idiot of all time, because there’s no way this can have a happy ending.
It doesn’t matter. I can’t stay away. “Hey!” I greet her with a grin.
“Hello, Zak.” Her eyes dart down to my feet, and a small frown appears between her brows. “Are you not cold?”
“Nah,” I lie. It’s fucking freezing, to be honest — there’s snow down the line — but she doesn’t need to know that. I’m pretty sure she can’t feel temperatures. She’s not exactly dressed for the weather either.
“You’re shivering,” she says, folding her arms across her chest, unimpressed.
“Okay, I’m a little cold,” I admit.
The frown between her brows is deeper as she looks over to my place. I follow her gaze to my window. I’ve left the light on, and you can see everything in my room clearly. “You should go back inside where it’s warm. My company is not worth you falling ill.”
“I call bullshit on that. You’re worth everything. Besides, like I said the other day, orcs don’t get sick like humans do.”
In the nights since I first shocked her with the knowledge that she’s not fully human, I’ve explained the two realms and the existence of non-humans to her as best as I can.
“I suppose we both know what it’s like to wake up one day and find that everything is wildly different,” she’d said quietly after I’d told her what it was like in the early days, post-Unravelling, when the whole world seemed to go to shit.
I’d thought Rose was an elf, and that’s what I’ve told her, but now I’m not so sure. I’m about as non-magical as an orc gets — spell casting is not where my talents lie — but every now and then I feel like I can sense her magic, something more than just her being ghostly.
“I don’t like you freezing out here. It hurts my heart to know you’re injuring yourself to see me.”
“I am not injuring myself,” I laugh, just as a low rumbling sound starts up.
It takes me a moment to register what it is — a heavy downpour coming this way.
“Oh shit!” Without thinking I jump up the porch stairs, avoiding the holes in the wood, as fat raindrops hit my back.
The wood under my feet creaks but holds, and I grin down at Rose’s shocked face.
She’s a little less translucent today, which is a good sign.
She tends to stick around for longer when she starts off like this.
The rain is still hitting my legs here, but the door to her house is open. I can barely see inside, and hesitate, glancing at her. “It’s probably warmer in there, right? Can I come in?”
She nods wordlessly.
“Mind if I keep my shoes on?”
“Please do. It’s a mess. I’m terribly embarrassed by the state of it.”
“Don’t be; it’s not your fault.”
I duck to fit through the doorway, shining the torchlight on my phone, thankful that the build of all of these old houses includes the extra high ceilings.
It’s actually not as bad as I thought it would be; there’s dead bugs and what I’m going to assume are mice and rat droppings on the wooden floor, torn and chewed on wallpaper, curtains that have disintegrated, but there’s also furniture that remains standing.
An old table that looks like it’s made of kauri wood, one of its matching chairs tipped on its side, and a huge wooden chest in the corner.
Rose waits behind me. “Is this how you remember it? Where the furniture is, I mean, and the wallpaper. Or is it newer than when you lived here?”
“This is how it was.”
“What year was it, for you, when you were last here?” When I talked to her about the Unravelling, I hadn’t mentioned specific dates, just that it’s been five years.
“I’m here right now.”
I nod. “Yeah, but —”
“When I was alive,” she begins, and hearing those words hurts more than I thought it would.
I think she’s feeling the same, her sentence cutting off as she takes a deep breath.
Is she even breathing? I wonder suddenly, observing the rise and fall of her chest. I guess it’s a habit; I’m pretty sure ghosts don’t need air.
“When I was alive,” she begins again, her voice a little shakier, “it was the Great War. 1915. That was when I was last here.”
We stare at each other for a long time, the only sound the noise of the pouring rain outside and the continuous dripping of a leak somewhere in the house.
“How did you die?” My voice is barely a whisper.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember being ill. I don’t remember anything terrible here. I used to wonder if perhaps the war had reached here, but then how would this house still be standing?”
I shake my head, suddenly finding a new use for my old research for that WWI play. “The war never reached New Zealand.”
“The last thing I remember was the back garden. My father had planted roses for me. I sat under the arbour where the pink climber grew — it was in bloom, and it smelled so beautiful. There were mushrooms in the grass. That is, as far as I know, the last time I was alive.”
“Mushrooms?”
“Yes. Pretty white ones, with big caps.”
Oh my god. “Did you eat one?” I ask, my voice serious. I saw a doco once, where a family ate poison mushrooms and their livers melted, and I couldn’t even stomach supermarket-bought mushrooms for years after that.
“No!” Rose replies, her nose scrunched up in disgust. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
“No,” I let out a breathy laugh, “but you had me worried there for a second.”
She shakes her head. “I am not that silly, but I suppose it doesn’t make a difference anyway, does it? I’m dead.” There’s a finality in her words that’s painful to hear.
“You’re here, though, right? I’m talking to you.
You’re here and you’re real. That’s pretty amazing.
” I don’t know why I’m trying to give her a pep talk.
She’s dead. That is pretty fucking serious.
It’s not like there’s any coming back from that, and yet here I am trying to see a silver lining, hoping for some sort of miracle.
That’s impossible, though. Her body… I shudder, thinking about the fact that she’s probably buried somewhere in that old graveyard under Grafton Bridge. Fuck.
“How long have I been dead, then?” Her voice pulls me out of my thoughts.
“Ah, if it was 1915? Over a hundred years — no, wait — more like a hundred and ten.”
“Are there others like me?” she asks, her voice small. She holds up one translucent hand. “Like this, now that the Unravelling has occurred?”
I’ve never been this close to her before. I lift my hand, until our fingers should be touching, but I feel nothing. When I look, the pads of her fingers are disappearing into mine. Damn. I’d been hoping she was a little more solid.
“Nah,” I say, pulling my hand away, staring at my fingers for a moment. “You’re the only real ghost I’ve ever heard of.”
In the daylight, without Rose following me with her silent, ghost footsteps, the house next door just seems sad.
I don’t quite understand how a house can be this old, and yet still have items in it from when she was alive, but then again, Rose is a literal ghost, so I suppose anything goes these days.
Last night she’d given me a tour of the house, her ghostly hand rising to point out various things as she told me stories of her old life along the way.
I’d run my hand over the notches in a door frame, each one recording the height of one of her family members — there was even a tiny one at the base, barely past my ankles, that represented the family’s cat — and stopped by the back door, listening to Rose talk about gardening with her father.
As we stood in her old bedroom — once shared with her two sisters — she’d drawn my attention to the moth-eaten dress on the back of the chair that was hers, and the little doll on the bed next to the window that had belonged to her youngest sister.
“That one worries me the most,” Rose had admitted.
“Iris loved Dolly; she wouldn’t have left her there willingly. ”
Walking through the room felt like being transported into a different time, Rose supervising from her spot in the doorway as I turned in a circle, marvelling at the life she once lived.
“You should open that drawer,” she’d said, pointing in the dark to a small piece of furniture in the corner — an old school vanity, its white paint covered in a thick layer of dust, the mirror attached to it tarnished with age.
I’d done as she’d instructed, trying to be delicate, the wood squeaking as the drawer slid free.
Inside had been sketches, surprisingly well preserved, of two different girls who both looked very similar to Rose.
“Are these your sisters?” I’d whispered.
“Yes.” Her smile had been sad. “The older one is Amaryllis, and the younger one is Iris. Both flower names; my father loved gardening. We all did.”
If she noticed the fact that my hand was trembling as I turned the paper over, spotting the words Rose Copthorne, January 14th 1915 on the back of one, she didn’t say anything.
“And you drew these?” I’d asked, amazed.
She’d nodded, and I’d said, “You’re so talented!
” while my mind had screamed were. You were so talented.
Now I stand in the doorway to her bedroom again, staring at Iris’ doll, wondering what happened to the rest of her family. Maybe they were all murdered?
“Jesus Christ, you’re a fucking box of sunshine and rainbows,” I mutter to myself, shuddering at the thought. I don’t want to go there, and I don’t need to. It’s not going to change the fact that Rose is dead.
Nothing is going to change that fact, and I find it so incredibly devastating.
It’s hard not to get choked up about the situation. It makes me feel sick every time I think about it.
I used to be more of an optimist. I’m trying to be that again; to find my old trust in the universe that things will always work out in the end. That was all the naivety of my youth, but I could do with a little more of that these days.
I suppose that’s what I’m doing here, now — wishing for a miracle, trying to find happiness even in the worst circumstances.
I’ve got plenty of time on my hands between small gigs, and I’m going to put it to good use.
I went to the hardware store this morning and grabbed a bunch of budget cleaning supplies and plastic sheets to cover the broken window panes.
If Rose has to exist in this house, this is the least I can do for her.
The way her face had lit up when I suggested cleaning things up for her makes sweeping up all the gross mouse droppings and scrubbing the floors worth it.
It takes the entire day to sort the place out to a level that feels hygienic, and when I’m done my arms and back aches, but the place looks and feels a thousand times better.
With the last of the windows patched up, I find myself lingering in the empty house, thinking about what life must have been like when Rose was alive.
It’s surprisingly easy to imagine her going about her day in that old-fashioned outfit of hers, playing the piano for her younger sisters, gardening alongside her father, and reading about the war in the newspaper.
I know I’m a little bit obsessed with her, and it’s a problem.
She’s a fucking ghost, but I can’t shake the feeling that she’s meant to be so much more.