And hey…maybe it’s a good thing I don’t know who I was before. Some part of my life must have gone very wrong for me to end up like this. Maybe this is the universe’s way of giving me a second chance.
She turned to watch the rain flow down the window. Mist coalesced just beyond the glass, seeming to caress the frame as it passed.
Keira frowned. She could have sworn she’d heard something. A deep wailing sound, distorted and muffled by the fog until it was close to inaudible. She waited, holding her breath. The mist beyond the window seemed to thicken. It was like a soup, swallowing the cottage, cutting her off from the rest of the world.
The noise came again. A woman howling deep, wretched cries.
Keira rose, her bare toes curling lightly as she paced across the dusty wood floor. She approached the nearest window: a pane divided into six squares, overlooking the cottage’s dead front garden and, beyond that, the graveyard.
The noises had sounded close, like they might be coming from the cemetery itself, but at the same time, they’d been heavily muffled, as though Keira were wearing earplugs. Only the faintest strains of sound came through.
Her breath formed a cloud of condensation on the glass. The night was too dark and too wet to think that anyone would have come to mourn at the gravestones, but Keira couldn’t stop herself from searching the dark monuments. They were disturbing; some were as tall as a human, many had tilted, many others grew lichen and robes of moss. In the smothering fog, their irregular outlines almost looked like sentries surrounding Keira, motionless as they stared at her.
One shifted. Keira’s heart caught in her throat. Her eyes burned as she stared toward the space where she was certain a gravestone had existed seconds ago. It was now just empty space, filled by tendrils of mist.
It’s not the men. No. This is something else.
The wailing noise teased at the edges of her hearing. It was deep and low, and although it was growing quieter, Keira thought it was also moving nearer.
The sudden urge to barricade her windows and lock the doors took hold of her. She reached for the curtains and gripped a fistful of musty fabric in each hand but still hesitated. The moving fog and sentry gravestones played tricks on her eyes. She thought she heard dead leaves crunch somewhere to her left, but it could have just been the effects of the rain.
The sounds of wailing had blended so thoroughly into the droning rain that they caught Keira off guard when they stopped. The sound strangled out mid-howl, killed as thoroughly as though someone had clamped a hand over the victim’s mouth.
Keira waited, her breathing shallow, hands still gripping the curtains, fearful but reluctant to block out her view of the surrounding land.
A woman’s hand reached past the window frame. It came from Keira’s left, the owner’s body hidden by the stone wall. Twitching fingers felt along the metal joining the glass panes. Ragged fingernails tapped the glass.
Keira smothered a gasp and lurched back. The curtain rods rattled as she belatedly let go of the fabric, and the curtains swung on either side of the view they framed. The hand retreated back out of sight.
Something had been very wrong about the hand. Shock rooted Keira to the spot, and it took a second for her to register what she’d seen.
She’d been able to look through the skin. Even as the hand had pressed against the glass, scrabbling along the panes, she’d still been able to see the twisting fog and black monuments behind it.
No. Not possible.
She swallowed and edged to the side, trying to see around the wall that blocked her view of the unwelcome presence. Something flickered on the edge of her vision. Something translucent: a layer of pale white blending into the mist, barely highlighted by the glow flowing out from her cottage’s windows. Keira took a step closer, craning her neck, trying to see the shape more clearly.
Two dead eyes stared at her from behind curtains of flowing hair. The specter moved forward, closing the distance between them, and Keira scrambled back. The ethereal form dissolved into the rain as easily as a breath of warm air on a cold night.
Keira’s back hit the chair she’d rested on. She clutched for it, digging her fingers into the soft fabric, as her mind scrambled. The figure was gone, but she still wasn’t alone. At the edges of her hearing were the heavily distorted wails.
What was that?
The answer came quickly. Ghost.
Sticky fear filled Keira’s mouth. That answer had come from her subconscious—and it had come easily. Whoever she had been before her memories were wiped, she’d not only believed in ghosts but knew them well.
“Normal people don’t see ghosts. Normal people probably don’t even believe in ghosts.” Keira held still, pressed close to the chair as her heart thundered. Her eyes darted between the windows, waiting for the woman to reappear. The fire no longer felt warm on her skin.
Can she get inside? The idea sickened Keira. Closely followed on its heels was a more unpleasant question: Can she hurt me?
Her subconscious remained silent, but she had the unpleasant sense that the answer was yes to both. Mist continued to swirl outside, but there was no sign of the woman. Slowly, cautiously, Keira approached the window again. She reflexively rolled her bare feet as she walked, minimizing any noise she might make on the wooden floorboards.
The storm was fading as the clouds’ load diminished, but the drizzle was still thick enough to block most of the outside world from her view. She could see faraway lights from the parsonage and, even farther beyond that and barely visible, the distant town’s lights. The rain-slicked tombstones protruded from the ground like rotten, crumbling teeth.
The ghost came out of nowhere, long fingers splayed as they pressed against the window. Keira flinched backward. If the glass hadn’t divided them, she was certain she would have felt the specter’s frozen breath on her skin.
Keira stopped an arm’s length from the window. She and the ghost stared at each other, neither willing to break eye contact, neither moving. The woman was close to indistinguishable from her surroundings; if Keira let her vision blur, the figure faded into the background. But when she strained, she could make out a myriad of details.
The woman wore an old-fashioned sundress with a high neckline. Although the ghost held no color, the sunflower pattern made Keira think the dress might have been yellow in life, and it looked as though it could have belonged to the seventies or eighties. Her long hair hung limply around her shoulders but was dry in spite of the rain. The drops, wholly indifferent to the ghost’s existence, passed through her.
The woman’s eyes had no pupils, iris, or whites but were completely black. Dead eyes, Keira thought again, and she took a slow, cautious step forward. The woman mimicked the motion, leaning toward to the glass. Keira didn’t know if the apparition could move through the walls, but the hand resting against the windowpane did nothing to interrupt the water droplets rolling down the surface.
A dark substance drenched the left half of the figure’s face and stained the sundress, contrasting with the summery floral pattern. It came from a hole at her temple. When she focused on the area, Keira could make out tiny bone fragments jutting from the injury.
She was murdered. Is that why she didn’t pass on?
The spirit’s lips moved. She was speaking, but Keira couldn’t hear the words. Against her better judgment, she stepped up to the window and angled her ear toward the glass.