My Little Haunting chapter 13 by Emerson Van Wie

Seth continued his phone call with Daniel, as he looked over his shoulder again, it almost felt like he noticed me.

I have been trying to reach him for a long time.

Longer than he knows.

I have moved the things he leaves untouched. I have made the lights flicker, nudged the telephone from its cradle, and let the cold gather in rooms where he thought himself alone. I stood at the end of hallways and watched him turn away.

Sometimes, I think he’s seen me.

Sometimes, he thought he did.

He spent so long looking for a punishment that he has mistaken nearly everything for one.

The soup was mine. I made it because I remembered how he used to eat it on rainy afternoons, dipping his grilled cheese into the bowl even after insisting that the triangles were ridiculous. I wanted him to remember a day when the two of us were happy.

He threw it away, butI wasn't offended. 

The plant was also mine. I had always been terrible at keeping plants alive, and I wanted to see whether I could manage one now. It was a foolish experiment. The poor thing was probably better off before I interfered.

The shadows were mine, too.

Not all of them. Some were just random shadows.

I have tried to explain this to him so many times. I have tried to make him understand that the world is not arranged around his guilt. The dead do not appear every time the living remember them. A light flickering is sometimes only a light flickering.

But I have also stood beside him while he slept, watching his hand close around the amulet, and wondered whether I should simply tell him everything.

I could tell him that I was frightened on the night I died. I could tell him that I was angry when he didn't come. I could tell him that I found another way home.

I could tell him that I never believed he wanted me dead.

But the truth is not as simple as he wants it to be.

I was hurt by what he did. I was angry. I had spent months wondering whether we had become two people who were only staying together because leaving would mean admitting that something had gone wrong.

I had friends he never met. Places I went without him. Plans I had not told him about. I was not waiting for him to complete my life.

I loved him, though. I loved him in the ordinary ways that rarely look important until they are gone. I loved the way he read the last page of a book before deciding whether to buy it. I loved that he never remembered where he put his keys. I loved the fact that he could make an entire evening miserable by insisting that a film's ending made no sense.

I loved him even when I was tired of him.

And when he didn't come to get me, I was hurt.

Then I found another way home.

Then there was the road.

Then there was nothing I could do.

Then I woke up with my body below me, I floated there for a while and I cried. As much as I could anyway.

I have no memory of the moment itself that I can give him. There is no secret message hidden inside it, no final revelation that will make the accident fair. There is only the knowledge that I died, and that he lived.

He has spent all this time trying to make those two facts balance.

They don't.

They never will.

I know about the notebook. I know what he writes when he thinks nobody can see. I have read the same sentence so many times that I can no longer tell whether he writes it to confess or to keep himself from forgetting.

“I let her die.”

He writes it as though saying it often enough will change what happened.

It won't.

There was an amulet I wore for years. I found it in a little shop with a crooked sign and a woman behind the counter who insisted that it was ancient. I bought it because I liked the inscription.

“Memento Mori”, Remember that you must die.

I liked the idea that a person could carry the knowledge of their own death without being frightened of it. I liked that it made the small things seem precious. A cup of tea.

A terrible film. Trying a new shampoo. A friend laughing so hard she couldn't breathe.

The sound of rain on the windows.

I never thought it meant that death was good.

I never thought it meant we should stop being sad.

I only thought that if life had an end, then we ought to pay attention while it was here.

I don’t think he ever understood that.

He thought remembering death meant preparing for the worst. He thought loving someone meant being able to protect them from everything. He thought that if he failed once, then everything he had ever done before would become meaningless.

I wish I could tell him how wrong he is.

I wish I could tell him that I remember our good days. I remember the afternoon we got lost and ended up in a town neither of us had heard of. I remember sitting on the curb with him while we waited for a tow truck. I remember how he held my hand when I was afraid, and how I held his when he pretended he wasn't.

Those things happened.

They are not undone because of the way our story ended.

He has spent so long trying to find the moment that explains everything that he has forgotten how much of our life existed outside it.

I do not need him to forget me.

I do not need him to pretend he made the right decision.

I do not even need him to forgive himself all at once.

I want him to understand that he is still alive.

That is all.

I stand beside the kitchen table while he speaks to Daniel. I watch him listen, his face changing  as Daniel tells him what I had told him months before the accident: that I had been unhappy, that I had been thinking about leaving, that I had wanted us to talk. He tells him that I was angry, that I was hurt, and that I never said I wanted him to suffer.

Seth closes his eyes.

For a moment, I think he might finally hear me. He asks Daniel whether I ever said I hated him. Daniel is quiet for a long time.

“No,” he says. “She said she didn't know what to do anymore.”

Seth lowers the phone.I wish I could put my hand on his shoulder. I try to, my fingers pass through his shirt, and the air around cools.

He looks toward the window.

I am standing beside it, where the afternoon light falls across the floor. I am not trying to frighten him now. I am not trying to make him understand through another sound, another shadow, another impossible movement.

I am simply here. He looks at me. Through me.

I don't know whether he sees my face or only the shape of a woman in the light. I don't know whether he understands that it is actually me.

But he stopped running. He stands very still, then he says my name.

I have waited a long time to hear him say it out loud.

I cannot tell him that everything is forgiven. I cannot make the past different. I cannot promise that he will never grieve again.

I can only be here.

He looks at the amulet on the table. “Remember that you must die,” he says. He said it slowly and quietly, as though he is reading the words for the first time.

Then he looks out the window, at the ordinary street, the passing cars, the branches moving in the wind. He sits down.

For a long time, neither of us moves.

The world does not change. The lights do not flicker. The phone does not ring. Nothing rises from the floor or speaks from the walls, no bugs, no other ghosts but me.

But there is no final sign that proves I am here. There is only the man I loved, sitting at a table, looking at the afternoon light.

He opens his notebook.

He turns to a fresh page.

For a while, he holds the pen above it.

Then he writes:

“I let her die.”

He looks at the sentence.

He doesn’t cross it out this time. 

Beneath it, he writes:

“I did not want her to die.”

He puts the pen down.

It is not forgiveness. Not yet.

But it is the first time he has allowed both sentences to exist together.

I float beside him, and for the first time in a long while, I feel that I can leave.

Not because he has solved some mystery. Not because he has earned the right to stop grieving. Not because I have stopped loving him.

Because he has finally begun to understand that my death is not a debt he can repay.

I knew he’d figure it out soon or later though, he’s a smart guy. And honestly, it was pretty fun getting to haunt him a little bit. I think about sticking around for a little while so we get to spend some more time together.

Maybe I shouldn’t bother him.

I look at the amulet one last time.

Memento Mori

I have remembered.

Now, at last, he might live.

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