I’m Coming
Thabo Wells
I was seeing ghosts again, fleeting, cold images in my mind, here one moment and gone the next. They never called my name, nor did I remember theirs, if they had ever been a part of my life I would never have known in this moment. They just came, and sat beside me, vague outlines of memories that were stricken from my mind, so close I could touch them yet, I never could.
They just wandered forward and sat beside me, a faint smile on their lips as they looked down on me, sitting beside me with the drapes of dawn drawn, I could make out more than just faint silhouettes, like hair color, eye color, even skin color. I remember one ghost in particular, she had bright red hair. She smiled down at me; it was her turn to sit beside me, and she often seemed at my side more than most who came to visit. I smiled back, and she smiled even more, revealing perfectly straight teeth, pure white set into a perfectly innocent mouth, with pink lips and a small chin. I remember this ghost more than most.
She had been a part of my childhood, of my carefree days spent out in the warm golden sun of Sleepy Hill plains. In my dreams, she always wore a dark green cotton dress, sequined with ruby red and silver along the collar of her neck, and her hair was held back by a simple black ribbon, not silk or satin, just plain black wool. Dark against her strange red hair and piercing deep green eyes. Her skin was pale against my one, I noticed, because in my dream she was always holding my hand, laughing and pulling me along to some new sight or venture. We ventured a lot during those summer days, with no care for tomorrow save seeing each other, that was the only thing we lived for in those innocent summer days.
She was faster than me, always ten steps faster than me, as we raced over the deep green hills that rolled before us. She would stop halfway to the finish line to let me catch up. As soon as I was close enough to her she was off, red hair streaming behind her, her laughter carrying itself along the wind. I think the wind loved to carry that laugh, it was carefree and happy. And I always added my own screaming laugh to hers. She would stop and I collided into her, and we rolled down the last hill, dying for want of breath as we laughed and screamed and tumbled and tousled one another. And when at last the hill flattened out, she lay there, breath hiccupping and a trying to stifle a laugh, I lay there beside her, my laughter spent. Envying her, because she could always bring more laughter bubbling forth, and I could not.
Sometimes we wouldn’t run around at all. Those were the days I loved most, I remember the large and heavy Apple Tree that we lay beneath when we weren’t running. The Apple Tree was the one thing that was my own, I knew its secrets and had tasted its fruit long before she came to Sleepy Hill. On those days when we lay beneath the Apple Tree, she would tell me things about life outside of Sleepy Hill, of her mother and her brother; her father had gone off to fight, she hadn’t seen him since her last birthday a year before. And her brother was preparing himself to go and fight, I had asked her what or who was he going to fight, and always she fell quiet. I learned never to ask her who her family was fighting, sometimes I would think there were demons and monsters beyond Sleepy Hill, and her brother and father were going out to protect us from them. She never disagreed with my musings, but I don’t think she ever agreed with them.
I never pressed her for anything, I didn’t like hurting her, making her fall silent made me feel empty, so I would just lay and listen to her, never interrupting, and never asking too many questions. She would speak about a lot of things, some of them I never did understand, but I guess I just loved hearing her voice and she loved hearing her own voice so she spoke and spoke, until the afternoon waned and the shadows grew long. We always measured when it was time to go home by the time the shadow of the Apple Tree had reached the whitewashed painted fence several dozen yards from where we lay, beyond the fence was the dirt track riddled with apple seeds and stones.
I never did see her go home, I was always the first one to leave when she said, “Time to go home”. I never asked her where she lived or if she wanted a walk home, and she never asked me, so we just separated at the edge of the whitewashed painted fence, she always walked toward the thickening row of rowan trees and me toward the thin stream on the edge of the hills and valleys. I always arrived just a few moments before dusk and Ma would be standing on the wooden porch watching my return, a smile on her lips and gleam in her eyes.
My Ma was a hard woman sometimes, most times, and always she would be ready with a smile and comforting word for me. She never asked me about my day, only if I had been good. And I would always say, yes Ma, she would nod and I would follow her into the house. Where a small bowl of stew and hard cornbread awaited me, she would tell me often about what she had done that day and what was going on in the town of Sleepy Hill while I spent my days out in the fields, playing.
But tonight, was different. When I walked to the porch, my Ma was not standing on the porch waiting for me. I stopped and stared at the small wooden house with its timber-beamed roof, its single porch sheltered by a low hanging awning of rotted wood and iron. The rickety steps that creaked and croaked when you climbed them in a certain way, they were vacant of my Ma, and the front door was closed; I don’t know how I was standing by the door, but my hand was resting on the knob, palm wet with perspiration, and heart thudding in my chest. I could have called, but my throat felt dry, tongue thick and raw like sandpaper. When the door open, firelight flickered forward and I entered the small wooden house.
Silence met me first. Taking my hand and leading me forward, closing the outside world from me as I stared and was greeted coolly by Emptiness, as Silence joined, the two like two proud homeowners. The two beamed in the firelight, proud of the vacancy of my Ma, as if telling me that the house had been renovated to perfection. Silence beamed further, irritated only by the flickering licks of the fire that burned low in its place in the steel stove set precariously against the one end of the wall of the house, the funnel leading up into the roof and depositing the smoke out. Emptiness was irritated only by the familiarity of the furniture, the worn wooden table with its three chairs, one for me one for ma, and the last for a guest who would one day come, that was what my Ma always told me about the three chairs. The heavy wooden cupboard that separated one section of the house from the other, in the darker section were two beds, single beds for me and Ma, and between them the small table with the bible and a single candle-in-a-saucer occupying it.
The wooden house was taken over by Silence and Emptiness and they had made themselves at home. Reality slammed into me, in a heartbeat and I was thrust from the house as if I were dirty stranger, slamming the door behind me, leaving Silence and Emptiness to gloat over their stolen property. The beaten track beneath me applauded every step that I took, a crowd rising and falling with each track of dirt I threw up as I ran. The world spinning around me, the dark closing in around me, and I ran to the whitewashed fence, and the Apple Tree. The wind ran alongside my, coaxing me, soothing and taking the breath from me, and cooling me. Running its fingers over me. I stopped, the wind slammed in beside me, breathless I fell to my knees and the world blurred.
She was there, laying beneath the Apple Tree, still and silent, she hadn’t heard me come. I crawled over and lay down beside her, and wept. She held me close, whispering soothing words in my ear, I can never recall exactly what she told me that night beneath the Apple Tree, nor why she was there beside me. I clung to her all that night, into the early hours of the morning. And when I woke with the bright red and pale orange sun in my eyes, I was alone. The only thing that remained of the girl with the red hair was her simple woollen ribbon. Gripped fiercely in my hand, no trace of her remained, only memories and a black ribbon.
My Ma never did return to that wooden house, nor did I enter it since that night, I let Silence and Emptiness keep their house and I gripped the ribbon in my hand and turned and walked down the beaten track with its apple seeds and stones beneath my feet and the thick grove of Sleepy Hill before me. And I joined the battle that her father and brother had joined.
I lay there, with a great pain in my stomach, staring up at the muddy grey sky, dawn was close and I could taste the foulness of the air on my tongue, stinging my nose and filling my eyes with tears. The sounds had abated long ago, leaving me in that cold mist strewn place with my memories and ghosts, the tall rowans rose around me, silent and ominous as sentinels, yet welcoming in their rigidity. I lay there, back against the trunk of a rowan, somehow the black ribbon still remained in my hands and I held onto it fiercely as I watched the dawn drawn drapes of night pull away, filtering pale snatches of gold and pale pink across the land, as the silver of the mist receded, so did the ghosts.
She sat there beside for a while, and then stood up. I looked up from where I lay, pain coursing across my body, my mind already numbing down and a dizzying blackness began to settle upon me. Her figure flickered and twitched before my vision, tears stung my eyes, throat congested as I tried to speak. ‘Wa… wait… wait, please…’ I heard the croak escape my lips and she stopped in her tracks, the mist held its breath, the sun seemed to stop and she turned to face me, her smile drove a fire into me, and the pain seemed to recede.
‘Come.’ She said and stretched out her hand. The rowans had grown around her, twisted into a towering mist filled arch, at its maw was the faint image of the Apple Tree of Sleepy Hill. ‘Come’, she said again and I stood up. The pain inching back with every movement that I used to approach her, she took my hand. Her skin always pale against my own, her long red hair a contrast against my short stubble. And her eyes smiling, gleaming with a laugh ready to come forth and fill me with such peace.
She looked me in the eyes, and her innocent mouth with pink lips touched my own bloodstained lips, faintly, and I closed my eyes. The rowans swallowed her as she said in the faintest of whispers. ‘Come’.
I looked through the hazy view the rowans offered and, I saw her, sitting there beneath the Apple Tree, a bright red apple, too large in her small hands, she had already had the first bite, and was waiting for me to take the second.
I took a step forward and entered the rowan arch, ‘I’m coming.’
The End.