The Unseen by LC Hu

[mad_docs_of_lit]

"Hello?"

Joli's eyes fly open but she sees only darkness. She lays there for a long time, rigid, unmoving. At first she waits for her eyes to adjust, but eventually she remembers that they will never adjust. Since the fever, she's condemned to a world of never-ending black.

"Hello?"

It's a child's voice, high and faint and with the faintest tremble. Joli wonders why the nurse has let some child into her house. Pulling herself together, she says, crossly,

"Who let you in here?"

The child gasps.

The bed shifts, rocking Joli. She hears the soft thump of bare feet hit the hardwood floor. The child was in her bed! "The nerve!" she exclaims, groping beside herself, feeling the disturbed blankets, the warm patch on the sheets. She makes note to have a word with Nurse Chandra, next time the woman manages to bring her lazy self around.

The floor creaks. Joli's annoyance ratchets up another level. The child is still in the room. She can hear it breathing, now that she's paying attention to something other than her own anger.

"What are you still doing here?" she says. "You're not supposed to be here! Go on. Get out!"

The child gasps again. This time, the drum of its feet tell her that she has been obeyed. The door slams, making Joli jump and swear. When she finally recomposes herself, she finds she's sweaty, shaking a little. "Children!" she hisses, and then she suddenly feels a hundred instead of thirty-five. She allows herself a moment of self-pity. She might as well be a hundred. Without her eyes, she's useless.

She was an artist, before the illness. Not a brilliant one, but good enough to make a living. She'd just had her first major show, made some really good connections, finally thought she'd get somewhere--

The door handle turns. She expects it's the nurse, come to apologize. She hears a tentative, light step.

"I'm awake," she says, because she worries that the nurse might think she's sleeping. Even though she can feel that her eyes are open, the blackness tells her brain that they must be closed.

Another gasp. The child! Joli loses her temper. "Where's your mother? Nurse Chandra!" she yells. "Nurse, I want to speak to you, right now! Nurse!"

The child begins to cry. Joli sits up. She fully means to get out of bed, march that child into the hallway, take its mother to task. She swings her legs over the side of the bed. One of her toes brushes the cold hardwood.

She sucks in a breath and shivers from head to toe, realizing what she was about to do. Walk--ha! She'd probably walk straight into a wall. She'd probably trip over the edge of the sheets and kill herself. Oh, but Morgan would love that, wouldn't he?

Now she wants to cry. Now she is crying, stupid silly cow that she is. "Why do you even care about Morgan?" she asks herself. Why indeed. They haven't slept in the same bed for months, and she's known he's been sleeping with Ellen for at least that long, and she's not sure why she ever really got married in the first place, except maybe that she was expected to.

"Who's Morgan?"

Joli pauses her self-pity and her sniffling long enough to hear that the child is close, very close.

"None of your business," she says, but without much rancor. "Now why don't you run along to your mother?"

"Mom says I have to stay here. I have to sleep."

Joli swallowed her tears. Her mouth pinches. "Does she, now?"

"'S big enough for us both," the child says. Joli's world tilts as the mattress sinks again with the child's weight.

She hisses through her teeth: "Oh no, you don't! I'm not sharing my bed, so you get right up--"

The child brushes against her and her entire body tingles from head to foot, like she's gotten a good shock. Joli shudders. Cold lingers where the child's arm touched her own. An outlandish notion leaps into her mind, and she suddenly can't let go of it. There is no one else in the room. There is no child. The nurse wouldn't let a child come sleep in an invalid's bed. Not even Nurse Chandra, silly as she is. In fact, before she drifted off last, Nurse Chandra said she had to step out for some milk, hadn't she? Nurse Chandra is probably not even in the house.

She's dreaming. Or worse, she's gone mad. Or worst: she is lying next to a ghost.

Joli screams.

***

When she is done emptying her lungs, the child is still there. Joli considers her suspicions confirmed. A normal child would've run away, or started crying.

She hears a small plosive sound, and the long release of breath. She wonders if the ghost breathes just out of habit, or if they need to breathe, for some reason she isn't aware of, or if she hears breathing only because she expects to.

"That was scary," the child whispers. "Why were you shouting?"

Joli gives a great shudder, and then she's still, as if she's done with being scared at last. Or as if she's just so scared, her body has given up and returned to normal. She gathers up her nerve and says, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to frighten you."

"It's okay." The child is still whispering. Joli feels the covers shift upwards, wonders if the child is covering its head. Is it afraid of her after all? Can ghosts be afraid?

She feels the bed shift. She wonders if it is looking at her. Her skin tightens with goosebumps. The child says, "What's your name?"

She answers despite herself. What else is there to do, in the dark, confined to bed with her blindness and a ghost? "Joli."

"I'm Charlie."

"Charlie, that's a nice name. Nice to meet you, Charlie."

"I'm a girl."

"Oh."

There's a long pause, and then she feels cold slither over her right shoulder, along the cap sleeve of her nightgown. It's a delicate sensation, almost like flakes of snow melting down her skin.

"Your dress is pretty," Charlie-the-girl says.

Joli shivers again. "Nurse," she shouts, but she can't remember when she last heard Nurse Chandra in the house. "Nurse!"

There's no reply but silence, and the child's soft breathing. Bedsprings creak. There's a childish giggle. "My dad yells that too. When he's joking with mum. He's a doctor." Another chilly touch, then a tug at the cap of her sleeve. "Are you friends with my dad?"

"No," Joli whispers.

"Oh. Um. Did you hurt yourself?"

Joli opens her mouth to explain, but her throat has closed up.

Another tug. "Lady?"

"No. I need... assistance," Joli says at last. She blinks away tears and wonders when she started crying.

"Is that why you're stuck here?"

"I'm not stuck here!" Joli lashes out, but she is stuck here, and she knows it. She begins to cry in earnest, great, gasping sobs that rack her body, puff up her eyes. At some point the child presses up against her, a cold spot against her left side.

"Don't cry, lady," the child says, but Joli can't stop. She cries, shivering from the icy contact, from the stress and fear and exhaustion of the past few months, and eventually she cries herself to sleep.

***

It's late in the day when she wakes, possibly even the afternoon, or so she guesses by the warm patch covering her feet. She wishes she could see the autumn sunlight, streaming in through the windows.

The child is gone. The ghostly affinity for darker hours seems true. Even through her closed door, she can hear the tick of the grandfather clock in the hallway. She feels for and finds the nightstand, the glass of her medicine the nurse will have left. Sips it, tasting only water and wondering if the nurse is cheating her, stealing the medication for herself. She should quit, she knows, but it makes the days pass easier. At first the doctor would try to urge her out of bed, to meet with some associate of his or another, teach her to get about on her own, to read books, to pathetically tap her way around with a cane. She told him no. Maybe she hoped Morgan would come and convince her, but he never came. He saw her only once, when she first fell ill, and then she never saw him again.

She calls for the nurse, for Morgan, but nobody comes. She frets, her thoughts turning dark. She feels a little hungry, but mostly out of habit; her appetite is virtually gone. She starts to need to use the toilet, but she isn't sure if that's just her imagination as well. She only had a few sips of her medicine. She lays there, drifting between dreams and worries.

The warm patch on her feet shifts away. Eventually, she hears the door open and close.

"Nurse?" she asks, but she is beginning to suspect the nurse has been let go. She is beginning to think Morgan has left her here to die.

"Hello, lady," the little voice of Charlie-the-girl says. "Missus Joli."

"Hello, Charlie," Joli says. She hears the resignation in her own voice and can hardly be surprised. She is ready to die. She wonders if, when she dies, she'll get her vision back. Perhaps she'll see the little girl. Perhaps they can haunt this place together. "Is it night already?"

"Yes."

She hears Charlie's feet on the hardwood floor, Charlie's giggles as she bounces into the bed. Feels the cool tingle as Charlie brushes against her, wriggling under the covers. As ghosts go, Charlie is not anything like what Joli imagined; she is not melancholy or weeping or moaning or cruel or tricky. She is just a child.

Joli feels a measure of her self-pity shift and turn to pity for the child. "Charlie," she says, softly, "we're all alone now, Charlie, aren't we?"

"But mom and dad--"

It's probably unfair of her to tell Charlie she is dead, and her mother and father as well, most likely. "Of course. But other than your mom and dad. Is there anyone else in the house?"

"No..."

Joli shuts her sightless eyes. Wet seeps between her lashes.

"What's wrong, Missus Joli?"

"They've left me," she says. She doesn't add "to die," because, even if Charlie-the-girl is a ghost, she doesn't wish to scare her unnecessarily.

"Who?"

"My husband. The nurse. And even that--that woman."

"Oh."

There's a long silence. Joli turns on her side, away from the ghost child.

"I'd like to sleep now," she says, and thankfully, the child is silent.

***

"How do you know?"

Joli startles awake at the icy touch on her cheek. Impossibly, she feels sun on her face. It's mid-morning. Clearly the ghost prefers night, but can manifest in the day.

"What?" she asks, sleep-clogged.

"How do you know they're gone? My mom says, if you're stuck here how do you know?"

"Because you said yourself--there's no one else in the house!"

"There's my mom and dad."

"Besides them."

"They could be hiding. Like my friend Davy and me, we were playing hide and seek yesterday, and I thought he quit and ran away cos I couldn't find him, only, he was hiding in the tool shed and he popped out and I screamed and he laughed so hard I pushed him in the mud and then his mom got really mad at me. And my mom yelled at her. Like that kind of hiding."

"Grownups don't hide like that."

"Why not?"

"They just--don't."

Joli hears Charlie blow air and thinks she must be giving up at last. Instead, the little girl goes on: "But you should still," Charlie says, "get up and look for them."

"Little girl," Joli says, in a harsh whisper, "I am blind. I cannot look for anything."

"Oh."

"Don't you have school?" Joli says, forgetting that the child is a ghost, and that ghosts don't go to school.

"It's Saturday. The best day. Dad is home at one and then we always go for ice cream sundaes and today we're gonna jump in leaves cos dad says that's what you do only mom made a face at him. She made all these big piles of leaves and that's what we're gonna jump in." There's a pause, and then tentatively: "You could come with us."

Joli can't quite keep the bitterness out of her voice. "You've got quite an imagination."

"Huh?"

Joli turns away from the child.

"Come on," Charlie-the-girl tugs at her sleeve. "You should come. We'll have fun."

"No thank you."

"Aw, c'mon! Why are you always lying there, anyway? It's stupid!"

"I was very sick," Joli says. She doesn't know why she's bothering to explain herself to a little girl and to one who is dead, at that. "It wasted my body and wasted my eyes and so I am confined to my bed with no way to reach the world outside! So if you think I choose to lay here, then you're a silly fool!"

"But I saw you get up."

"When did you see me get up?"

"I saw you, when you were going to yell at me, the first time. You almost got up."

"Go away," Joli says, angrily. "Go and play in your little fantasy land."

"But--."

"Go away," Joli repeats, and yanks the covers over her head.

***

Charlie doesn't appear that night. Joli waits for her, but she doesn't come. There's no patter of feet, no creak of the mattress, no chilly touch. Joli is surprised to find she feels sad.

She has been rationing the medicine in the water glass carefully, but it is empty when she tips it to her lips this time. She feels thirsty, but not hungry. She'll need to get up for water, even though it's impossible. She hasn't used the toilet in days. She must be sicker than she knows.

She pushes herself up off of her pile of pillows, carefully eases the cover off herself. She shivers in the cool night air. She takes a long deep breath, slides one leg and then the other over the edge of the mattress.

Her big toe touches the smooth, dry hardwood.

She is sweaty, and shivering. She flattens her foot, feels the wood with her flat arches, her heel. Puts the other one down.

"It isn't so hard," she tells herself. Tries to rise, pushing up. Her heart is a galloping rabbit in her chest, pounding out alarm. She feels herself teetering, but she stands, feels dizzy, but she stands.

"I've done it," she gasps. "I've done it!"

She takes a step forward, another, and another, dragging her feet to feel out any obstacles with her toes. Realizes, after a dozen steps, that she has no idea where the door is. She is facing the north wall, if she hasn't some how angled herself. She reaches out her hands and gropes for the wall, but finds nothing. There's the dresser, she'll have to find that soon, she'll--

She rams a knee into the dresser drawer and screams; then she is tipping over, her exhausted, withered body giving up, and she is falling, falling hard into the floor.

***

Joli wakes, back in the bed somehow, impossibly. She wonders if Morgan and the nurse are playing some sort of trick on her. She finds she can hardly care. The bed is safe, and warm. She doesn't even feel thirsty any more. She supposes she must be dying. She has no idea if it is night or day. Her knee shrieks at her cruelly, but even that is distanced, as if she's aware of it happening to someone else.

She's sorry she was cruel to the little ghost--at least Charlie was pleasant company. Not a bad deathbed companion. If Charlie were to ask her to come play today, she thinks, she would do it. She would get up, and walk through the bedroom door, and probably break her neck on the stairs, led to her death by a malicious little creature, but that would be fine as well.

She counts the ticks of the grandfather clock. She traces the wrinkles of the sheets under her with her mind. She waits to die.

***

"Hello."

She can barely speak; she feels as if she's going to fade away. Not die, just fade into nothing. "Hello, Charlie."

"Sorry I went away. I was scared. But mom says I have to be a big girl, now."

"It's all right," Joli whispers. "I won't be here to bother you much longer."

"Oh." Joli thinks Charlie sounds sad. She wonders if that's true. "I'm sorry. Um. Should I go away?"

"No," Joli says, reaching out a hand towards the sound of Charlie's voice. Charlie's cold touch seems almost warm, now. At least, it feels closer to nothing.

"Why are you crying?" Charlie says. Joli touches her wet cheeks, surprised.

"I don't want to be stuck here any more," she says, honestly.

"Oh."

"I want to go outside. I tried to, yesterday--I think it was yesterday--and I fell. I can't see where I'm going. It's horrible. I--I--."

"Are you scared?" Charlie whispers, as if she's scared, too.

"Yes."

"Um, I could help you."

Joli takes a deep breath; it is wheezy and unpleasant tasting. "Please?"

The cool little hand in hers squeezes, tugs forward. "Come on, okay? I'll look for you."

"Ok," Joli says.

Charlie is a patient guide, waiting for Joli to find her feet, to get her strength up enough to stand. She walks in little steps that are easy for Joli to keep up with, shuffling along, like an old woman. Finally they stop and Charlie takes Joli's other hand, raises it. Rests it on something cool and round and metal: the door knob.

"Open it," Charlie says, so Joli does.

Brilliant light pours out, light Joli can see. For a moment, she is bewildered. Has her blindness been a ruse all this time? But then she understands, steps forward, smiling. Her face is wet and her eyes are bright as she crosses the threshold and into that golden, warm, light. She turns, just before the door closes behind her. Sees the little girl waving, a gorgeous little girl with black curly hair in two pigtails, and she says, "Thank you."

And then there is nothing but light.


Copyright

LC Hu

"The Unseen"

© 2011, LC Hu
Self Published
mad.docs.of.lit[at]gmail.com