I STRETCH AT THE TOP of the stairs. My pieces are still consolidating.

Everything always resets at the top of the stairs. I pinch the bridge of my nose. It’s not broken now, but it was moments ago.

I grasp my stomach, my insides still burning from the fire poker she used to stir up my intestines...

Back to my twisted version of normal.

Even with all of that, I feel more put-together than I’ve felt in years, more real than all the time I’ve been here.

It seems to take longer each time I wake, but the touches I’ve shared with Spencer have shown me the light at the end of the tunnel—how it will feel when I am completely whole again, with a true heartbeat and blood rushing through my veins to flush my cheeks.

A thought strikes me, and I cringe. If I become more real, will the attacks hurt more?

I shudder. Each time I wake, they drag me into a fresh hell. How much worse will I have to pay before my mother’s debt is fulfilled?

My breath leaves me as the truth punches me in the stomach... a habit from once being alive.

A bang from above startles me, but I know this time is not the dark spirits come calling.

Roofers have been in and out of the house, crawling over it like termites, assessing what needs to be done and removing all of the limbs and loose bits that make it precarious to walk atop the house. There is a pile of debris near the front porch now and a square of wood is covering a large hole they’d revealed during their cleanup. At one point, before they blocked out the light, sun was streaming into the attic through the ragged, damaged mouth and it was bringing even that shadowy place to new life. I want to have the power to push the covering away and let the rays of glow back in to warm the place that holds so many fearful things.

With all the life in the house, I’ve almost lost my gray pallor. It may be just the echo of the heart I used to have, but I swear mine is beating in my chest now again, a tentative pitter-patter of rabbit feet. The veil between worlds slipped, and even the laborers ground me more in the physical world as surely as any have before. I’m still weak in a way though. Still trapped. I have to find the way to fully cross the divide and become real again ... Or disappear forever.

Behind me, somewhere on the second floor, I hear whistling. It’s throaty and rich. That will be Spencer. He must be back from his lunch now. He’s been working on the sagging floors up here today and there’s a fresh set to his shoulders and a reawakened determination on his face. I’m not sure why he’s decided to focus up here instead of continuing downstairs. He’s all but ignored the second floor save for when he’d followed me up after Sophie left.

I hope that means he wants me as much as I’ve decided to want him. Or maybe he’s convincing himself that I do not exist, so there is nothing barring him from working upstairs. I hope that is not the case. If it is, I will just have to increase my efforts to show myself to him, to make him see me again, to make him feel me again.

Another noise catches my attention, and I glance up. Again, it is not a sound that I associate with the evil that lurks in the chilly corners of this house.

“Mark it,” comes the muffled yell. “Zone A-4. Should we pull it?”

“We’ll get that once all the damage is mapped,” says another.

“There’s another hole here, too,” the first voice calls.

“10-4. Is it as big as the one under the tarp?”

“Nah. Couldn’t even put a foot through.” He’s dismissive. I look at my petite feet. Maybe he couldn’t put a foot through it, but I could. Not that that mattered. I stamp my right foot against the floor. It makes no sound, despite the ghostly illusion of a pale shoe over torn, other-world stockings hitting hard wood.

“10-4,” the more authoritative voice sounds again. “What did the forecast say again?”

I don’t hear the response. I’m too ridiculously heartbroken that I cannot even elicit the smallest of sounds from slamming my foot against the floor. A ghost... spirit... cursed soul. Whatever I am, I am so without power that I could not even throw a proper tantrum if I wished. I find that pitiful.

By the light flowing into the house from outside, it’s late afternoon, and I follow the noise from the workers on the roof. They’re nearer the opposite corner of the house, over the room across the hall from where Spencer is working.

I tried all morning trying to get Spencer to acknowledge me. I saw him flinch once and I think that’s why he ran away to get lunch.  He’s working with a saw now though, his whistling drowned out by its whirring. I’ve seen the damage those can do. I would prefer not to meet Spencer face-to-face just before he kills himself accidentally with the toothy, sharp blade.  If he moved onto the other side, I’d fall into unreality again. If he stayed because of unfinished business, or whatever tethered souls to this world, then I doubt he’d want to play boyfriend to the ghost who caused his demise.

Either way, I wasn’t taking a chance on scaring him while he’s wielding a power tool.

My avoidance is not just because I want to protect him. After all, I have plans that depend on Spencer being alive, not dead. I’m a self-serving wretch of a spirit. And I don’t care anymore. The thought brings a smile.

The air reverberates with the sound of ripping wood. That’s not good. It’s coming from the perimeter of the house, where the roof touches the second story walls. Still localized over the bedroom to which I’m heading. The noise echoes in my middle. The sensation is nearly painful.

Quickening my pace, I finish following the sound into the bedroom that’s piled with old things and covered in sheets. In one corner, there’s even a bed. It is so riddled with dust that I feel even I, a weak ethereal thing, could touch it and send the particles swirling about the air.

I move towards the window. It is open, letting in fresh air. I lean out and see that two men are huddled together, tools in hand, right at the edge of the roof.

As the workmen peel back a corner of the rotted roof, a wave of pain rolls over me, as though my mother is peeling back the fingernails on my hand. I can even hear her cackling from faraway, trying to convince me that I should have been her apprentice all those years ago. I cradle my hand against me. My knees weaken, and I fall to the floor, gasping. Every swing of the hammer lands with a thud against my sternum. I can’t bear the pain. It’s worse than the work of the trapped attic inhabitants, those poor souls my mother tortured, the ones who waited for their turn as the torturer but got me instead. So, I am paying the price for my mother’s sins.

“Hey, it’s almost quitting time,” the first voice calls to another. “Should we tarp it?”

The sensations fade as the activity halts.

“Nah, we’ll just leave it. We’ll be back at it bright and early in the morning,” the other answers, stepping away.

I climb to my feet, propping myself up with an elbow rested on the windowsill, still holding my aching hand.

The afternoon light streams in. It’s as bright as I’ve ever seen it. It’s as lovely as I recall from the bayou sunsets on the delta. I stand fully and move away from the window until my body rests at the edge of the light. I’m not visible in the strictest sense of course, but with as lively as I am today with all of these breathing humans about, I might scare a clairvoyant from the roof. And I’d rather keep my hands innocent, if I can. I shouldn’t have even leaned out the window to look the first time. That was taking a chance with someone else’s life. It was risky and not who I was.

I may be the daughter of a twisted, sick, murdering woman, but I never willingly participated. Logically, I know Richard’s death is not my sin to bear, that I’ve only been a scapegoat. Scapegoats, by nature, are completely innocent, but punished for the transgressions of another.

Yet... I feel I will never free myself from the guilt I carry. Had I not loved him and encouraged his affections, he would probably have lived a long life. Found another. Fathered beautiful children, some of which would have his lovely eyes.

Yes, I have killed an innocent because I loved. Perhaps I am not worthy of release.

If my own merit won’t free me from the magic that binds me to his cursed home though, I’ll hide in the shadows until the workers have gone. And then I’ll twirl in the corner of this bedroom, dancing in the sunlight that hasn’t warmed my face in hundreds of years. I can give myself that small happiness, at the very least.

Footsteps recede to the other end of the roof, and I stretch one hand into the light. It feels... warm. Almost as good as touching Spencer for the first time. There’s a knock at the front door, and I can hear Spencer headed down the stairs.

I move the other hand into the sun rays. When I turn my hands over to warm their backs, I see a drop of blood under one of my fingernails and the nail bed looks bruised, purplish and sickly. It will fade quickly, this proof that I can be hurt. I have been tortured, my mind warped in the gloom by evil spirits, my body bloodied and broken in more places than I can count. It all fades eventually, and I am left unmarked and ready for my next altercation with darkness. Yet, it has been long enough that the blood beneath my nail should have faded, the bruise should be gone. I wonder again if the magic that traps me has weakened with time. At the thought, I’m filled with elation.

If Spencer is not my savior, I can continue to wait. Another fifty years. A hundred years. One thousand years.

Until the spell is gone for good. It has to break at some point. It has to.

Engines hum in the driveway before speeding away, leaving me to my enraptured illumination.

The Fates smiled on me when they sent Spencer to rebuild this home. He’s brought hope for a connection and even hope for an end to the curse.

I freeze when I hear a creak of flooring behind me. I know who it is without turning for there’s only one it could be. Everyone else has gone from this place, everyone with a pulse.

“Who are you?” Spencer’s voice is raspy, not without fear, but also laced with a lusty curiosity. “I wondered if I would see you again. I can’t explain why, but I knew you were here.”

I straighten and rotate slowly on my heel. My dress swishes against the floor, silkiness against unyielding wood. It isn’t as ragged as before, as if my closely-guarded hope is stitching it back together and making it new again. Maybe that means even my form is lusher than days passed, an inviting softness of womanhood to welcome forward the hardness of him.

“Marie” I say only my name, wondering if he’ll hear me.

His eyes widen. “You speak.” It’s a statement that wants to be a question.

“Indeed,” I say.

“I’m not drunk today.” He rubs a hand over his face, his head, and then his neck, as though he can’t quite understand what’s going on, as if the movement of his fingers across his skin will bring reality crashing back in and erase the illusion of me.

I can’t blame him for thinking I am nothing more than his imagination, so I only nod. I don’t have the right words to feed him my truth in a way that he can stomach. In fact, I have never, as a ghostly thing, stood in the corner of the room, washed in sunlight, speaking to another as though I have been returned to the land of the living.

“Is there a place to sit in here?” Spencer asks, leaning heavily on the doorframe. His eyes are closed, but he opens them then. His gaze searches for anything that will support him better.

I point to the bed, but he has already seen it and his gait is crooked as he crosses the floor. He throws back the dusty white sheet that covers the quilted bedcover. Particulates are thrust into the air in a great cloud and they float lazily back down to find new lodgings along the floor. He seats himself heavily, one leg bending less smoothly than the other; the frame of the bed sighs as he himself sighs. It is like they are suddenly become one creature. Furniture and person, an amalgam of a thing that is strange and somehow right. The bed, along with the quilt, belong to the house. Owners have come and gone, but the bed has always stayed. It has been a constant for me when other things have often changed. Maybe that’s why I favor this room.

Back straight, Spencer places his hands on his knees, meeting my gaze. “I dreamed about you. You wore a scarlet dress, low...” He makes a movement with his index finger, vaguely tracing an upper bodice line. I’ve never worn a dress like that. Except Annabelle’s. He could not know of it. It’s an impossibility. Yet, I shudder at the thought of that night, of Spencer taking Richard’s place. Of how bold this modern man would be in comparison to my gentleman. “We were outside. Almost here...” His voice trails away. “I’m tired of fighting memories,” he adds. “But I don’t remember you. Not exactly.”

“I’ve been here for a long time. Waiting,” I say, but explain no more as I study this dark-eyed man. “You cannot know me.” I want it to be truth, but... No, he has imagined me in some other dress. Nothing more than a flight of fancy. Richard was the only one to see me in Annabelle’s seductive gown.

Yesterday echoes forward in the universe.

And something about the silent sound, bouncing off the walls around us, makes me feel like I will, all at once, become human again.

“Waiting?” he prompts. “For what?”

“For you, maybe.” When I ease closer, he doesn’t lean away, but tilts his chin upward. His nostrils flare and his pupils dilate. I wish I could see myself the way he sees me. And then I do. As a reflection in his eyes.

My pre-seduction jitters have gone. I think they died with Richard. Spencer is the first bachelor that’s taken residence in my walls. I’ve come as far as his knees, and I can see that my skin is healthy, glowing, and my hair is auburn. My silk dress drapes in all the right ways, hugging my curves. My breasts are visible just above the square neckline.  I feel the tears begin to build, like little promises they fall from my eyes.

He reaches for my cheek, brushing the moisture from my skin. “Why are you crying?” He drags his fingers downward, his touch soft as feathered butterflies, tracing my jaw.

I lay my hand over his. He doesn’t recoil or gasp from cold. I can’t see his breath in the air. And all I can think of is that I want to feel him moving against me as I move against him, sharing the warmth of life and passion between us. I never want to let go of this moment and how permanent I feel.

For once, I hear the demons above me and I don’t fear their punishments.

I nudge his knees with mine, separating them so that I may step forward once more until I stand between his bent legs. He keeps his hands pressed down against the tops of his thighs, resolute to not surrender.

“Wait. There’s something you need to know,” he says. “I’m not whole.” He tries to lean away from my hand.

I follow him, ducking until I can see the pain drawn in angles on his face, and I smooth my hand against the scruff on his cheek. “I’m not either.”

“I see ghosts,” he whispers, but he lets me lift his chin. “I think I’m going crazy.”

His brokenness is beautiful, and I want to wrap him in comfort while stealing some for me. “It’s not so bad,” I say, pressing my lips to his.

He groans against my mouth, and he wraps an arm around my waist, crushing me against him.

And he could, crush me if he wished. In this moment, I would not care. I would go willingly into whatever lay beyond the living world and the waiting world. I would venture into hell without regret, an opium den addict, high on the feeling of him.