Chapter 6
Nick’s POV
It hurts the most when something you were about to attain is snatched away from you. I never really understood how one would let this happen to themselves. But as I stared at the door that stopped me from leaving, I finally understood. In one moment, I had lost my freedom. There were sounds all around me and I saw Daisy move her mouth and try to speak something but nothing penetrated. All I could see was the now closed door in front of me that had denied me my whole life just because I delayed a few moments.
Like all things, the shock went away but it left behind guilt and anger. Directed at who? I have no idea. Maybe at myself. For delaying. For caring about her to make that delay. Maybe at her. For choosing this punishment. For not warning me properly. For letting me get stuck in here. Yes, that was it. I wasn’t angry at her or myself. I was angry at both of us. The guilt needed no target. Every wrong act I had done today was more than enough to make me an unescapable mark.
I turned to look at Daisy and she looked sad as she stared at me. At her pity, anger rose within me. “You look so sad. If you are done faking it, would you mind getting back to your celebratory mood? If I have to stay here for fifty years, then I might as well know the true colours of my house-mate.” She flinched, in pain and shock, as my words hit her but I didn’t care. So I offered her a choice. “Open the door, Daisy.” I growled at her. “LET. ME. GO! I WANT TO GO!”
She paled in my anger and opened her mouth to speak. She didn’t even need to speak. I saw her entire posture radiate her helplessness. Still, I gave her a chance to try to make amends. “I get what you are feeling. I understand it. But that act took a lot of my power. I can’t even control my form now. I really didn’t want you to be stuck here. Nick! Where are you going? Nick!” She screamed at my back as I walked away from her.
“Don’t follow me!” I screamed back at her and kept moving. A loud annoyed huff escaped me and I wished the ghost wasn’t a girl or that I wasn’t beginning to like her because I wanted to beat someone up really badly. But I never could raise my hand on a ghost. So I chose to walk away and heard the angry noises my shoes made as I tried to let the old manor have my anger. If I was thinking, I would have been careful. One of my angry hard step fell on a rotten floorboard and I heard Daisy scream as I fell down into the darkness.
For a moment, I assumed the idea that maybe Daisy had created the rotten floorboard in anger but when it didn’t repair itself, I realized that this was my fault. And as I looked around the almost dark basement around me, a strange fear began to fill me. Fear of the unknown. And then I heard it. A sound that made my blood freeze in the veins. And then, to my horror, the sounds began to multiply. Double. Triple. Thirty times. A hundred times. Then I saw one come into my visibility.
A rat. I jumped back. One rat wasn’t scary. One hungry rat wasn’t scary either. But one hungry rat along with hundreds of its relatives in a haunted house where there was no food so they likely ate meat? That was very scary. These rats could be carnivorous. So I did the only sensible thing I could do. I screamed. “Daisy! Help!” I really should have thought this through.
Before I was done screaming, she came in front of me. Her ‘glad-you-are-okay-after-that-idiotic-move’ face immediately changed into a horrified one as she saw the rats and screamed. “Rats!” And very helpfully, she disappeared. That wasn’t sarcasm. She disappeared and the spooked rats ran away in fear of what they couldn’t understand. Um. Awkward. And then my mind finally cracked. It began with snort and then turned into a full-blown laughter as I realized what had just happened. Oh God, it was the stuff of cartoons. A woman scaring away rats with her scream.
The small light coming from above dimmed a little as a translucent head peeked in. “Are you okay?” Her voice was still spooked and I couldn’t help the laughter that erupted once more. All the anger and guilt was now forgotten as I held my stomach while laughing. “That wasn’t funny!” She spoke as she appeared in front of me in an annoyed tone.
It took me several minutes before I controlled myself enough to speak. “Yes. Yes, it was. Think about it. Your scream scared away the hundreds of rats.” I ducked as she tried to slap me for being so rude and I began laughing again. Once this wave of laughter ended and I was trying to control any further laughter, she spoke in a peeved voice.
“Do you want to leave this basement or not?” I nodded and she moved her hand to light up the basement. Someone must have wired the entire place for modern electrical appliances because several electric bulbs, that seemed new even though they were covered with a thin layer of dirt, lit up. The sight before me froze me and I felt Daisy stiffen as well as she noticed the surroundings. And through some sixth sense, I felt her disappear from my side as I stared at the hundreds of black fat mice all around me. In the light, they were even scarier. I wished she had screamed again.
At least the door to the basement was in sight and though it seemed rusted, I was fairly certain that I might be able to pull it open. Just then, Daisy appeared above the hole holding a stinky but surprisingly fresh piece of cheese. And then she whistled. Just what kind of ghost is she? I felt my eyebrows rise and hide somewhere in my hairline as I and all the rats turned to her. She, in a moment of surprisingly extreme foolishness, threw that piece of cheese at me. “Catch!”
The first belated thought that occurred to me was I wish I couldn’t catch as the entire mouse family turned towards me with hungry eyes. “Idiot! Throw it behind you!” She hissed at me and I immediately followed instruction. And then I yelped as the hundred mice that were in front of me ran towards the cheese which was already being fought over in the back. The seriously disgusted feeling of feeling rats go over my feet almost made me sick but I controlled myself and ran, taking care not to kill a rat which might make them all focus on me – their living food who was escaping, towards the door. Before I could grab the handle, the door opened and I managed to control myself in screaming ‘ghost’. Even she would have agreed it was a little too late for that. Her head peeked out like she was scared of eaten – forgetting she is already dead! – and whispered at me. “Hurry!”
Feeling glad to obey this safe decision, I followed her and both of us were out of that terrible room. And with complete seriousness, I told her a true fact. “You need a dynamite to take care of those rats. Did you see their size?” I slid to the floor against the door. Then I heard a giggle escape from someone above me. I sharply looked up and saw that she was trying hard to control her laughter. Considering I had just laughed at her and the situation really was hilarious, I felt my own lips smile as I told her. “Go on. There is no need to hide it.” She finally let it all out and I was struck breathless as I heard her laugh, her true laugh, for the first time.
Nightingales? Nah. Wind chimes? Nope. It was her voice that sounded me like the most pleasant music I ever heard. I could never get tired of hearing her laugh. It felt refreshing. I felt an honest smile grace my face as she laughed. It was like basking in sunlight after a long stay in the dark.
Or it was until she began to snort. It was cute. It was embarrassingly hilarious. It was also a mood-killer as it brought forth two things at once. Her laughter stopped as she looked away in shame while I began to laugh. Teasingly, she said, “Yeah, yeah, keep laughing. Like you don’t snort.” I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. So I didn’t tell her that on her it was very cute and amusing.
And then she crouched in front of me and the laughter died a surprised death and I inhaled a sharp breath. She leaned in and reached her translucent hand towards me. But she didn’t touch me. I moved my eyes from her outstretched hand to her face and I controlled my gasp at what I saw. Pain. Loss. Longing. Regret. Then in a voice so low that I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to hear her, she spoke. “You remind me so much of him. Your behaviour, your actions, your words. It hurts to see you. But it also soothes me to have you in my company. I know why it hurts. But why does it soothes?” And she faded away in front of my eyes in that same position.
I sat still because I knew she was as well. We could have been in that way forever but the moment broke when the carnivorous rats began to rub against the door on which I sat against on the other side. I felt her move when it broke and then she was gone. I too heeded the wisdom of her actions and ran upstairs, emerging into the old eastern parlour. Once I found my way back into the main hall of the mansion, curiosity rose within me. But first, I felt a need to find my new dead house-mate. The thought was now filled with resignation and acceptance instead of anger and guilt. Guess that visit to the rats helped me get through those feelings.
I made my way back to her room, this time with a lot more confidence than the last time – after all what was the need? She knew my secrets, I somewhat trusted her and we were now house-mates for the quite a long time now – and found that it was locked. I gently knocked on the door and asked her. “Daisy, are you inside? Can we talk?” When there was no response from within, I continued. “Daisy, I need to apologize for the way I talked to you. I was controlled by my emotions and I lashed out at you. I’m sorry.” When there was still no response for a few moments, I turned around to go back downstairs into one of the parlours to find a relatively clean place to sit and jumped when I saw a large moose head trophy so close in front of me that our noses could have touched. Then I took a few steps and pressed myself against the door and called out to Daisy while staring at the moose head that hung mid-air. “Daisy? Nice pet. Would you mind calling it off?”
There was no response from behind me. But the moose head dropped and I heard the girl’s laughter fill the place. Remember when I said it was refreshing? I take it back. It was actually annoying. Then her voice came from in front of me. “Oh goodness, you should have seen your face. Such a priceless expression. I wish I had one of these modern cameras to capture it. So hilarious.” I counted from one to ten, to let her have her moment, before I interrupted her.
“Are you done? I actually wanted to talk when I came here. And would you mind becoming visible? This invisibility is kind of disturbing when you think about it.” There was long silence of several moments, so long that I could have suspected her gone. But I knew she wasn’t because of some sixth sense that made me feel her presence even if she wasn’t close to me. Then she released an annoyed huff and I realized that she hadn’t been joking when she said she couldn’t control her form anymore. “You can’t, can you? I wanted to talk to you, to know about you. Would you mind telling me about yourself?”
Her voice was now sad, raising a protective feeling inside me, as she spoke. “My life was a short one, Nick. I lived and was about to be married on the day after I was murdered. All this while, I never knew the truth about the feelings I had for a childhood friend of mine.” Wow. Talk about a soap opera. “What else would you like to know?”
“You are going to explain about your life to me. But I also want to know about your afterlife. Why did you become a ghost? What powers do you have? Why are you losing control over your form? Will you live forever?”
“So many questions, so little time.” She murmured in a low voice before continuing. “Let us take seat in the eastern parlour then. There I will tell you about everything.” With that I felt her leave me alone on the first floor corridor. I cautiously made my way back to the parlour room and as soon as I entered, I saw that the room seemed to have gone through a partial restoration.
The light bulbs glowed in their sockets and every surface of the room was clean. It was obviously impossible to restore the walls but she did such a great job of re-decorating the room that I couldn’t even notice the walls. Little items, like photos, paperweights, and other things that could be safely kept aside for long-term storage were decorating the room. “How…” I couldn’t even finish the question at no one in particular when I saw her.
She was visible once more and she sat in a perfect posture on one of the plush chair that had been covered with white cloth the last time I was in here, which was about five minutes ago. “Come on, Mr Peters. Please take a seat.”
As I took a seat, I realized like the rest of the room, she too had gone through a partial restoration. Her behaviour was strictly controlled, as it would have been preferred for a woman in her times. Her face was a blank canvas and her clothes had changed from the night-dress into one that she probably wore while going out with friends.
Her skin was still translucent but my attention didn’t remain on it. She wore a cream-coloured dress that looked absolutely beautiful on her. For the first time, I felt that maybe people of that time had something to enhance a beauty of a woman. It wasn’t that I minded what a present-day girl wore (or didn’t wear) but Daisy’s dress was like a vision of angel realized. Or maybe it was just the girl.
She looked at me with her expression calm and her eyes haunted by the past and spoke, “Let’s begin then.”