allesthesia

The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and runs an ivory comb through its long, ghostly hair. The comb, thinks Elizabeth, looks like the type that Victorian ladies used to use to pin their hair up, an ornately carved piece that fits perfectly in the hand, ivory from a real elephant or a real whale or a real something that used to be alive. Just the same as the ghost used to be.

The ghost is dead. Transparent. Overall deceased-looking. The comb is dead and solid and as real as any other object in Elizabeth’s room.

The ghost is wearing a dressing gown. The ghost is wearing a nightgown under a dressing gown. The ghost is humming softly to itself as it combs through the insubstantial wisps. The ghost raises its head and looks straight through Elizabeth, deep, gaping holes where its eyes should be, but aren’t.

Elizabeth thinks how strange the word “comb” is, how it’s one of those words that loses its meaning with repetition. It’s an odd word to spell out, too, with that strange combination of the M and the B. She would close her eyes to visualize the word spelled out, but unlike the ghost, she can’t see without eyes, and it’s important to her to be able to see right now. Now, with a ghost with no eyes at the end of her bed.

Sydney is down the hall, in the kitchen. She is probably making toasted peanut butter and jelly, her favorite before-bed snack. She is probably untying the twist-tie on the bread, pulling out two pieces from the middle of the loaf, putting them in the toaster. She is probably laying out the peanut butter, the jelly, the knife and plate. Sydney is doing all of this without any idea that at the same exact moment there is a dead woman in her bedroom, staring at and through Elizabeth. Sydney has always been Elizabeth’s greatest defender but this time Sydney isn’t there. She is in the kitchen and she is not thinking that Lizzie is maybe in trouble, maybe paralyzed with fear. She is probably thinking about how she hopes she doesn’t burn the toast.

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(Another ghost lives in the space between their kitchen wall and the wall of the adjoining apartment. Every night between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. it floats into their neighbor’s kitchen and begins to make a ghostly meal. It chops nonexistent vegetables, dices spectral meat, stirs unreal pots of stew that nevertheless come to a real boil. One night, months from now, Elizabeth and Sydney’s neighbor will wake from a strange dream about a woman he once loved, and he will stumble to the kitchen doorway. He will be searching, he thinks, for a glass of water, and he will see his ghost standing at the stove, stirring a stew that will never be real enough to eat. He will look at it, and he will whisper, “Elizabeth,” shocked and hopeful. Not Elizabeth his neighbor with the beautiful eyes and quiet voice, but Elizabeth, the woman he once loved.

His ghost has no eyes either, only those same dark, gaping holes, but it seems like something’s buried down there, if only he could stare deep enough.)

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Neighbor-Elizabeth knows about portents and she knows that the eyeless ghost at the end of her bed is not a good one. Elizabeth’s mother was a gypsy, after all, and she instilled in her daughter the knowledge of how the world really works, along with a healthy dose of fear. Elizabeth knows what things to be afraid of, which signs are meant to reassure or give fair warning. She is not afraid of muggers, of flying, of getting hit by a car or caught in a fire. Her mother taught her that death comes in cleverer disguises.

Up and down, up and down the comb goes through the ghost’s long hair. Over and over, mesmerizing.

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(“A candle to burn to keep out the spirits,” her mother tells her, “and this charm to ward off the evil eye. This other one’s from your grandmother’s grandmother, for good fortune and safe travel, and… Are you even listening?” Elizabeth was, but not in the way her mother meant. “If you don’t take this seriously, who knows what will happen to you? The world is not a safe place, tehara. The world is not soft.” But Elizabeth is only fourteen and her idea of danger is still undeveloped. She nods and pretends to listen while she doodles hearts and arrows in her notebook, mixing her initials with various crushes, casting unwitting love spells of her own.)

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Elizabeth is sitting upright at the head of her bed, knees pulled to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. The ghost’s gaze hasn’t changed, but Elizabeth knows that now she is being looked at, not through. She can’t imagine this is a good change. From the kitchen she hears the toaster pop and a sharp intake of breath as Sydney touches the hot bread and quickly drops it on her plate. Elizabeth can hear all those little sounds; they are that close. She would just have to whisper, “Syd,” and Sydney would hear her, come down the hall, find out what was wrong, save her. But Elizabeth knows inevitabilities as well as she knows omens, and she is on a high-speed train hurtling toward a clearer and clearer fate, and no whisper or shout will derail it now. Why even try.

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(When their neighbor addresses his ghost by his departed beloved’s name, nothing happens at all. The ghost keeps stirring, staring at him with no eyes, and the ghostly pot keeps boiling, and the seconds tick by. But that is not what he will see. He will imagine a spark of recognition. He will think he sees his own Elizabeth somewhere in the depths of those black spaces. He will feel the air around him change to spring, to be infused with love like he used to know it, making the world Technicolor again. He will shake his head and turn around, glass of water forgotten, and he will go back to bed, to sleep. He will think it was a dream. He will feel somehow reassured.)

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The ghost sits on the end of Elizabeth’s bed and stops combing its long, long hair. It stares at Elizabeth without eyes, and wisps of hair fly around its face, lifting and falling as though in a breeze. Elizabeth’s mother taught her about portents and warnings, safety and danger, and somewhere in the back of her mind are all those lessons still. Elizabeth lets go of her legs and comes to her knees, leans forward. The ghost holds out its ivory comb to her, a solid thing in its spectral hand. The details of the engraving are so delicate, so intricate, so amazing, and their swirls and symbols never seem to end. In the kitchen, Sydney has started humming, and Elizabeth wishes she could stop for a moment and kiss her. Instead, Elizabeth reaches out her hand.