Without a Light
-You know, it's as if when you just strain your ears and listen, really listen, you'll hear her whispering in the murmur of the waves. Just try it.
-I... don't hear anything. Just the waves. What does she say to you?
-She tells me tales of another world, the world so beautiful and fragile. The world where dunes are made from transparent sand, and the waves never really stay in one place, but travel all around the sea, to return to their point of origin once and die.
I'm telling Shannon about her, but I'm lying. When I hear her amidst the waves, when her soft beautiful voice - beautiful even when she whispers - reaches my ears, the things I hear are much different. The voice tells me of a shadow on a ragged wall, a broken triangle with radiating lines, crooked, like a strange enormous spiderweb. It tells me of a carving on the wall, a figure, not entirely a human, not exactly an insect. The voice flows past my ears and forms pictures directly in my imagination, slightly frightening, strangely comforting. I'm not even sure if I hear it at all, maybe I do imagine all of it.
We're on the pier, one of her favourite places to hang out. Technically, it's closed for the night, but Shannon has the keys. She leans on the railings, staring at the distant lights of the boats in the Channel, falling into a dreamy state. I tear my eyes from the silhouette of the theatre and stare at the darkness below through the cracks between the boards until she shakes off her dreaminess and turns to me.
-It's personal questions time! You know, I've... always wanted to know. How did you really meet? She used to tell she was in a temple once, and she touched a statue of Buddha in an inappropriate place and made a wish to meet her soulmate, and you saw it and told her off for doing it. But that's obviously bullshit.
-Not so much a bullshit as you might think, she liked touching statues. But really, we met on a train. We sat opposite each other for five hours, all the way from Edinburgh to London. The toilet was busted, and some kid cried all the time, and just maybe those things were connected. There was also a group of teenagers who screamed loudly, just the name Mary, in different tones, every thirty seconds or so. Didn't get old for them, I guess. And she just asked me whether I liked it in hell so much. I didn't, but seeing her face made me smile even then.
-Maybe they meant 'marry'?
-Good advice, I suppose. We never did, though, did we?
Another lie, even if a harmless one. Not about the marriage - we really never did get down to it. But we swore to not tell anyone how we met. It wasn't something sinister, we didn't meet through Tinder or anything, just telling Shannon the truth would feel like betrayal of some of the good things that were. We actually met at a cemetery, believe it or not. I was visiting my sister and she was... just visiting. Something made her stop near the grave next to Jeanna's. She stood there in that violet coat, like Jeanna used to wear, and for a second I thought it was her. She wasn't, obviously. We talked in hushed tones all evening, all the pain pouring out of us, and bonding us, I guess. Not something you easily forget. Not something you walk away from, either.
It's been three months since she died today. Sometimes you just think that death follows you. All the memories that keep swirling in your head, all the things that you wish you said and didn't, all the warmth you want to share but have no one to share with should bring regrets, but they don't. I know she's somewhere around me, always. If I could just find the way to talk to her.
Shannon puts her hand on my shoulder. 'I miss her too, you know'. The water glistens under the pier ominously. 'I know', I say. You can tell when a person grieves for real. They were never good friends, but not for Shannon's intentions. 'Tell me this, though', she says and pauses. 'That mysterious episode with her uncle and the lemons you always used to joke about. What happened?'
'Oh, he was a strange man, uncle Jeremy. He drove from the optician with his new glasses once and nearly fell into a pit when he didn't notice the roadworks. So he got angry, drove to the nearest store, bought some lemons, and placed them under all the road cones, one for each. Have no idea why, but we tried to come up with theories. Lemon blood magic was the most harmless of them, I think.'
'Seriously?'
'Yep' - I tell the truth this time. Not that uncle Jeremy will mind or get angry. I'm not sure dead people really can.
Shannon frowns. 'Never, ever do this to me again'.
'Do what?' I ask.
'I can always tell when you're lying to me', she replies.
***
-You know, when you really strain your eyes and look at the shadows, really look, you can see her outline among them.
-Do you see her now?
-I see white cliffs rising all the way to the purple sky. I see green crystals gleaming at the bottom of the sea. I see a flicker of light far away on the darkest night.
-But is she somewhere in these pictures?
-She is these pictures.
Today is the five year anniversary of our first date, so I skip work and call neither Shannon nor Peter. This is private. Later I will make my way to Broadwater, to see Jeanna's grave and to visit hers. it's raining creeps and dorks out there, but it hardly matters anymore.
I look at the shadows in the corners of my room, hoping to see her there, but see nothing. The shadows are just places with less light than in their surroundings, not the places with more ghosts.
But sometimes, just sometimes, when I look at the inky outlines on the ceiling in the darkness before going to sleep, I can see things, as if I'm both here and somewhere else. There's a face of a woman, obviously dead, her eyes open, her mouth distorted, as if she died in pain. There's a picture of a patch of earth in the darkness, and I feel rather than than know that there's a skeleton buried under it. There're less dark pictures too, a house, a ferry, a scenic view of a coast. There's a face of a child, and an old book, and some blueberry bushes. I keep searching for shreds of meaning among them, trying to connect them, but nothing is familiar and there's nothing to google. Is it a story she weaves for me, like she used to? Is it something real she guides me towards?
I glance around all too familiar room, for the millionth time taking in the mementos of our life together I didn't dare to put away. Some of her clothes lying on a chair, her outfit for adventures and evenings out at the pubs. Our happy faces staring at me from a portrait on the table, a relic of our trip to Canada, a keepsake from much better times than these. Her favourite pendant, with a ragged shape of Great Salt Lake inlaid in emerald, in memory of her former home in the States. Another photo stuck to the mirror... The mirror.
It seems obvious in retrospect, but I haven't tried contacting her through the mirror yet. Of all the times I tried to reach her, of all the touching and whispering to statues, interpreting random ads as messages, looking at the clouds and speaking aloud to the sea, nothing brought me closer to her, just to the memory of her. Maybe this time it'll work?
I fetch a knife from the kitchen, cut my hand and smear the mirror with blood, more for sheer dramatic effect than anything else. I take her pendant and sit down on the floor as close to the mirror as I can. I close my eyes and imagine her standing with her back to me somewhere, reflecting in the heated air in the sky, so I can see her, like a mirage. I try to imagine her reflecting in myriads of shards of broken glass precariously hanging in the air before finally falling down. I try to imagine her in an infinity mirror, trapped in an endless corridor of reflections. Nothing works. The presence doesn't diminish, but doesn't get stronger either.
At the cemetery I talk to her grave for a long time. I tell her I miss her sly smiles when she used to make jokes about my hair, that I still remember the pictures of penguins she drew on a napkin in a cafe in Toronto, that her story of miss Aurora Borealis, the thief of dreams, still warms my heart when nothing else does. I add that her makeup looks messy, half expecting to hear a snarky comeback, but nothing happens. Talking to dead girls is clearly not among my talents.
That night I dream of an old ferry taking me through foggy marshes. The ferryman is twenty feet tall, but nobody seems to notice. The ferry itself is a labyrinth of rooms with paintings, old clocks and mirrors. I'm searching for what lies in the center, delirious with both hope and dread of what's gonna be there, but I don't get the chance to find out. I trip over a stuffed eagle on the porch of a room and fall, and in the second before waking up some unfamiliar voice tells me 'Visit Raven Hall. We have affordable prices and the best accommodations for miles around.'
Still numb from sleep I boot up the laptop. There's pretty much only one search result for Raven Hall, and it's a hotel in a village of Ravenscar in North Yorkshire. I use Google Maps to look around, and find that many of those strange pictures came from there. The landscape, the houses, Raven Hall itself - I definitely saw them all before.
Unable to fall back asleep, I explore the village from my computer until it's late enough to call Shannon.
***
-You know, when you really concentrate on the smells to the point of forgetting where you are, you can really smell her presence.
-What does she smell like?
-Like smoke from a campfire to a traveller lost in the woods. Like a late-night whisper from a lover. Like an old piano for a blind teacher who's just gained his sight.
-Any idea what we're going to do next?
-To live. There's not much else left to do.
It takes us more than five hours to arrive in Ravenscar, the trip a jumble of our favourite music and brief nervous conversations. We park near the hotel and finally get a chance to stretch our legs and look around, the smell of the sea barely distinguishable from the smell of impending rain. The landmarks I saw the night before seem familiar enough, but It feels like something else is guiding me, like I know exactly where to go. I've never felt her presence as sharp as I do now. The place she's pulling me towards is somewhere below, down by the cliffs. For nearly an hour we're trying to find an accessible way to get to the water, but all in vain, the tide begins to rise, and there's no way to get to the place we seek. We spend the rest of the day in nearby Scarborough, see the ruins of the castle and walk around the lake. It reminds us both of the time before I met her, when we were the best friends and spent almost every evening together. We talk of movies and books, remember our old acquaintances. It's awkward for both of us, nobody wants to mention her on this warm sunny evening filled with premonitions of inevitable rain. The first drops hit the windshield as she kills the engine near Raven Hall.
We spend several hours reminiscing of the old times, all awkwardness gone, our voices hushed in the darkness, our beds like islands of precious memories in the ocean of the night. Later I finally dream of her. I see her lonely figure standing by the lighthouse in the rain. I stand far away, and I know that if I come closer, she'll disappear. But I try to anyway.
And finally it's time. It's early morning, the tide is low, and we slowly walk on the wet sand, carefully avoiding seaweeds scattered everywhere by receding water. We walk for about half an hour until we find a small opening that leads to a cave. It's long and narrow. I expect it to smell musty, of putrid water and of rot, but it's mostly just clean air. Until I get a whiff of something else.
There's a hole in the cave floor that leads down. It's about a ten foot drop, and below in the scattered beam of the flashlight I see a figure in a heavy red jacket, laying in a pool of something black. Blood. We call out, but there's no answer.
We get out of there. As soon as we get reception, we call an ambulance, although we both know it's too late for the person in the cave.
***
-You know, when you close your eyes really tight and just feel, really feel, you can feel her touching your eyebrows, her fingers gently closing your eyelids, as if it's you and not her is dead.
-It's getting late. Let's get out of here.
-Let's just stay another minute.
I browse the news every day, until I stumble on several relevant reports. The photos depict exactly the face I saw in those strangely comforting nightmares before sleep. Her name was Olivia Caron, she was an amateur archaeologist from Reims. Apparently, she ventured into the cave alone in search for something, and used a faulty rope to descend into the shaft. That's the official version anyway. Her husband and a kid remained in France. She managed to die from her injuries before dying of thirst, which is a small consolation if any. I dread to imagine what she went through, dying alone in that remote cave, remembering her choices, knowing that she'll never see her loved ones again. Hope at least she found what she was looking for.
After a few months there's a flood of articles on the cave itself. They did find the skeleton there, and it turned out to be a pretty big deal, dating just a bit later than the cave art in Creswell Crags, from that moment in ancient history when the Ice Age briefly lifted. There were no reports on the carving of the insect-like figure, but I trust what I saw, the picture she showed me, probably the last thing before her eyes in the light of her cracked flashlight. The artist of Creswell Crags made their carvings deep inside the cave, accessible only through perilous climbing and invisible without a source of light. You can't help but wonder if these bones belong to another artist. Maybe the artist and a sacrifice both.
The presence is gone now. It's been gone from the second I set foot in the cave. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish voices of the living, let alone the dead. Its absence brings back everything you chose to ignore and buries you under the avalanche of lost hopes. Sometimes you manage to forget, but you still live with that feeling of wrongness, and it poisons every one of your seconds. Some things always stay with us no matter how much time has passed, no matter where we go, no matter what we do. In the end, there's no escape and no solace. But you keep living, because of some great design or some typo in the Norns' complex web of fates. The only thing I wish for now is the ability to step back enough to see its beauty. And if it's just entirely random, than to die hanging on to my delusions. We all need to hope for something after all. Right?
-I... don't hear anything. Just the waves. What does she say to you?
-She tells me tales of another world, the world so beautiful and fragile. The world where dunes are made from transparent sand, and the waves never really stay in one place, but travel all around the sea, to return to their point of origin once and die.
I'm telling Shannon about her, but I'm lying. When I hear her amidst the waves, when her soft beautiful voice - beautiful even when she whispers - reaches my ears, the things I hear are much different. The voice tells me of a shadow on a ragged wall, a broken triangle with radiating lines, crooked, like a strange enormous spiderweb. It tells me of a carving on the wall, a figure, not entirely a human, not exactly an insect. The voice flows past my ears and forms pictures directly in my imagination, slightly frightening, strangely comforting. I'm not even sure if I hear it at all, maybe I do imagine all of it.
We're on the pier, one of her favourite places to hang out. Technically, it's closed for the night, but Shannon has the keys. She leans on the railings, staring at the distant lights of the boats in the Channel, falling into a dreamy state. I tear my eyes from the silhouette of the theatre and stare at the darkness below through the cracks between the boards until she shakes off her dreaminess and turns to me.
-It's personal questions time! You know, I've... always wanted to know. How did you really meet? She used to tell she was in a temple once, and she touched a statue of Buddha in an inappropriate place and made a wish to meet her soulmate, and you saw it and told her off for doing it. But that's obviously bullshit.
-Not so much a bullshit as you might think, she liked touching statues. But really, we met on a train. We sat opposite each other for five hours, all the way from Edinburgh to London. The toilet was busted, and some kid cried all the time, and just maybe those things were connected. There was also a group of teenagers who screamed loudly, just the name Mary, in different tones, every thirty seconds or so. Didn't get old for them, I guess. And she just asked me whether I liked it in hell so much. I didn't, but seeing her face made me smile even then.
-Maybe they meant 'marry'?
-Good advice, I suppose. We never did, though, did we?
Another lie, even if a harmless one. Not about the marriage - we really never did get down to it. But we swore to not tell anyone how we met. It wasn't something sinister, we didn't meet through Tinder or anything, just telling Shannon the truth would feel like betrayal of some of the good things that were. We actually met at a cemetery, believe it or not. I was visiting my sister and she was... just visiting. Something made her stop near the grave next to Jeanna's. She stood there in that violet coat, like Jeanna used to wear, and for a second I thought it was her. She wasn't, obviously. We talked in hushed tones all evening, all the pain pouring out of us, and bonding us, I guess. Not something you easily forget. Not something you walk away from, either.
It's been three months since she died today. Sometimes you just think that death follows you. All the memories that keep swirling in your head, all the things that you wish you said and didn't, all the warmth you want to share but have no one to share with should bring regrets, but they don't. I know she's somewhere around me, always. If I could just find the way to talk to her.
Shannon puts her hand on my shoulder. 'I miss her too, you know'. The water glistens under the pier ominously. 'I know', I say. You can tell when a person grieves for real. They were never good friends, but not for Shannon's intentions. 'Tell me this, though', she says and pauses. 'That mysterious episode with her uncle and the lemons you always used to joke about. What happened?'
'Oh, he was a strange man, uncle Jeremy. He drove from the optician with his new glasses once and nearly fell into a pit when he didn't notice the roadworks. So he got angry, drove to the nearest store, bought some lemons, and placed them under all the road cones, one for each. Have no idea why, but we tried to come up with theories. Lemon blood magic was the most harmless of them, I think.'
'Seriously?'
'Yep' - I tell the truth this time. Not that uncle Jeremy will mind or get angry. I'm not sure dead people really can.
Shannon frowns. 'Never, ever do this to me again'.
'Do what?' I ask.
'I can always tell when you're lying to me', she replies.
***
-You know, when you really strain your eyes and look at the shadows, really look, you can see her outline among them.
-Do you see her now?
-I see white cliffs rising all the way to the purple sky. I see green crystals gleaming at the bottom of the sea. I see a flicker of light far away on the darkest night.
-But is she somewhere in these pictures?
-She is these pictures.
Today is the five year anniversary of our first date, so I skip work and call neither Shannon nor Peter. This is private. Later I will make my way to Broadwater, to see Jeanna's grave and to visit hers. it's raining creeps and dorks out there, but it hardly matters anymore.
I look at the shadows in the corners of my room, hoping to see her there, but see nothing. The shadows are just places with less light than in their surroundings, not the places with more ghosts.
But sometimes, just sometimes, when I look at the inky outlines on the ceiling in the darkness before going to sleep, I can see things, as if I'm both here and somewhere else. There's a face of a woman, obviously dead, her eyes open, her mouth distorted, as if she died in pain. There's a picture of a patch of earth in the darkness, and I feel rather than than know that there's a skeleton buried under it. There're less dark pictures too, a house, a ferry, a scenic view of a coast. There's a face of a child, and an old book, and some blueberry bushes. I keep searching for shreds of meaning among them, trying to connect them, but nothing is familiar and there's nothing to google. Is it a story she weaves for me, like she used to? Is it something real she guides me towards?
I glance around all too familiar room, for the millionth time taking in the mementos of our life together I didn't dare to put away. Some of her clothes lying on a chair, her outfit for adventures and evenings out at the pubs. Our happy faces staring at me from a portrait on the table, a relic of our trip to Canada, a keepsake from much better times than these. Her favourite pendant, with a ragged shape of Great Salt Lake inlaid in emerald, in memory of her former home in the States. Another photo stuck to the mirror... The mirror.
It seems obvious in retrospect, but I haven't tried contacting her through the mirror yet. Of all the times I tried to reach her, of all the touching and whispering to statues, interpreting random ads as messages, looking at the clouds and speaking aloud to the sea, nothing brought me closer to her, just to the memory of her. Maybe this time it'll work?
I fetch a knife from the kitchen, cut my hand and smear the mirror with blood, more for sheer dramatic effect than anything else. I take her pendant and sit down on the floor as close to the mirror as I can. I close my eyes and imagine her standing with her back to me somewhere, reflecting in the heated air in the sky, so I can see her, like a mirage. I try to imagine her reflecting in myriads of shards of broken glass precariously hanging in the air before finally falling down. I try to imagine her in an infinity mirror, trapped in an endless corridor of reflections. Nothing works. The presence doesn't diminish, but doesn't get stronger either.
At the cemetery I talk to her grave for a long time. I tell her I miss her sly smiles when she used to make jokes about my hair, that I still remember the pictures of penguins she drew on a napkin in a cafe in Toronto, that her story of miss Aurora Borealis, the thief of dreams, still warms my heart when nothing else does. I add that her makeup looks messy, half expecting to hear a snarky comeback, but nothing happens. Talking to dead girls is clearly not among my talents.
That night I dream of an old ferry taking me through foggy marshes. The ferryman is twenty feet tall, but nobody seems to notice. The ferry itself is a labyrinth of rooms with paintings, old clocks and mirrors. I'm searching for what lies in the center, delirious with both hope and dread of what's gonna be there, but I don't get the chance to find out. I trip over a stuffed eagle on the porch of a room and fall, and in the second before waking up some unfamiliar voice tells me 'Visit Raven Hall. We have affordable prices and the best accommodations for miles around.'
Still numb from sleep I boot up the laptop. There's pretty much only one search result for Raven Hall, and it's a hotel in a village of Ravenscar in North Yorkshire. I use Google Maps to look around, and find that many of those strange pictures came from there. The landscape, the houses, Raven Hall itself - I definitely saw them all before.
Unable to fall back asleep, I explore the village from my computer until it's late enough to call Shannon.
***
-You know, when you really concentrate on the smells to the point of forgetting where you are, you can really smell her presence.
-What does she smell like?
-Like smoke from a campfire to a traveller lost in the woods. Like a late-night whisper from a lover. Like an old piano for a blind teacher who's just gained his sight.
-Any idea what we're going to do next?
-To live. There's not much else left to do.
It takes us more than five hours to arrive in Ravenscar, the trip a jumble of our favourite music and brief nervous conversations. We park near the hotel and finally get a chance to stretch our legs and look around, the smell of the sea barely distinguishable from the smell of impending rain. The landmarks I saw the night before seem familiar enough, but It feels like something else is guiding me, like I know exactly where to go. I've never felt her presence as sharp as I do now. The place she's pulling me towards is somewhere below, down by the cliffs. For nearly an hour we're trying to find an accessible way to get to the water, but all in vain, the tide begins to rise, and there's no way to get to the place we seek. We spend the rest of the day in nearby Scarborough, see the ruins of the castle and walk around the lake. It reminds us both of the time before I met her, when we were the best friends and spent almost every evening together. We talk of movies and books, remember our old acquaintances. It's awkward for both of us, nobody wants to mention her on this warm sunny evening filled with premonitions of inevitable rain. The first drops hit the windshield as she kills the engine near Raven Hall.
We spend several hours reminiscing of the old times, all awkwardness gone, our voices hushed in the darkness, our beds like islands of precious memories in the ocean of the night. Later I finally dream of her. I see her lonely figure standing by the lighthouse in the rain. I stand far away, and I know that if I come closer, she'll disappear. But I try to anyway.
And finally it's time. It's early morning, the tide is low, and we slowly walk on the wet sand, carefully avoiding seaweeds scattered everywhere by receding water. We walk for about half an hour until we find a small opening that leads to a cave. It's long and narrow. I expect it to smell musty, of putrid water and of rot, but it's mostly just clean air. Until I get a whiff of something else.
There's a hole in the cave floor that leads down. It's about a ten foot drop, and below in the scattered beam of the flashlight I see a figure in a heavy red jacket, laying in a pool of something black. Blood. We call out, but there's no answer.
We get out of there. As soon as we get reception, we call an ambulance, although we both know it's too late for the person in the cave.
***
-You know, when you close your eyes really tight and just feel, really feel, you can feel her touching your eyebrows, her fingers gently closing your eyelids, as if it's you and not her is dead.
-It's getting late. Let's get out of here.
-Let's just stay another minute.
I browse the news every day, until I stumble on several relevant reports. The photos depict exactly the face I saw in those strangely comforting nightmares before sleep. Her name was Olivia Caron, she was an amateur archaeologist from Reims. Apparently, she ventured into the cave alone in search for something, and used a faulty rope to descend into the shaft. That's the official version anyway. Her husband and a kid remained in France. She managed to die from her injuries before dying of thirst, which is a small consolation if any. I dread to imagine what she went through, dying alone in that remote cave, remembering her choices, knowing that she'll never see her loved ones again. Hope at least she found what she was looking for.
After a few months there's a flood of articles on the cave itself. They did find the skeleton there, and it turned out to be a pretty big deal, dating just a bit later than the cave art in Creswell Crags, from that moment in ancient history when the Ice Age briefly lifted. There were no reports on the carving of the insect-like figure, but I trust what I saw, the picture she showed me, probably the last thing before her eyes in the light of her cracked flashlight. The artist of Creswell Crags made their carvings deep inside the cave, accessible only through perilous climbing and invisible without a source of light. You can't help but wonder if these bones belong to another artist. Maybe the artist and a sacrifice both.
The presence is gone now. It's been gone from the second I set foot in the cave. Sometimes it's hard to distinguish voices of the living, let alone the dead. Its absence brings back everything you chose to ignore and buries you under the avalanche of lost hopes. Sometimes you manage to forget, but you still live with that feeling of wrongness, and it poisons every one of your seconds. Some things always stay with us no matter how much time has passed, no matter where we go, no matter what we do. In the end, there's no escape and no solace. But you keep living, because of some great design or some typo in the Norns' complex web of fates. The only thing I wish for now is the ability to step back enough to see its beauty. And if it's just entirely random, than to die hanging on to my delusions. We all need to hope for something after all. Right?