Ghost Girls

Mr.Everill glances down the road, through the canopy of trees to the emptiness, spying no messengers in cars, or men in black suits.

He sighs and turns his attention to the patio, to the decanter of brandy, almost empty, from the previous night. The bank manager had managed to drink most of it, and had been jovially anticipating his return the next day to go into further detail with Mr.Everill’s business venture.

Mr.Everill watches his daughter, a glimpse of auburn in the tall grasses, weaving in and around trees, the hem of her blue dress flapping.

He frowns. There is another girl with slightly darker hair, mahogany almost, a paler skin, flitting among the trees with his daughter. He cannot heart her laughter but the fleeting glimpse he captures of her face suggests she is smiling. He can hardly see her, where the sunlight hits her she seems almost transparent. Ghost-like. He takes out his lighter and a new cigar, specially manufactured to spout plumes of royal blue smoke. He turns from his daughter in the meadow and strides across the patio, tapping his cigar against the frosted glass of the double doors, the ash drifting through the air as it descends.

The trees are bare black shadows against the twilit sky when Hazel emerges from the woods, a speck of dusky blue and glimpses of red hair. She hums lightly, twirling a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace. There is a grass stain on the hem of her cream white dress.

He places a hand on her shoulder and drops a kiss on her forehead. She smiles but does not relinquish her bouquet. “How was it?” he asks.

“Wonderful,” she replies with a voice strangely deep and earthy for a girl of her size. “We played hide and go seek, but she knows all the better spots than I do.” Her smile falters.

“Who is she, sweetheart?” He asks, having forgotten the strange girl in the meadow.

Hazel fiddles with the leaf before answering. “She’s my friend.”

In his mind he conjures the blue bedecked girl, yet he cannot remember her face. He had supposed she was a figment of his imagination, the result of a fatigued and idle mind. Knowing she is real makes him feel slightly at unease. At the time she had seemed barely substantial, in the interim he has almost forgotten her presence right beside his daughter.

“Your friend? What is her name? Where does she live?”

Hazel seems uninterested by the questions, as though she has already explained the presence of her almost imaginary friend. “Her name is Miranda. She lives in the forest. Sometimes.”

“She lives in the forest?” He is beginning to wonder if Hazel is telling her one of her fanciful ideas, but she does not seem to be in a storytelling mood as she twirls the stem of the leaf between her thumb and forefinger.

“Sometimes,” she repeats.

“Sometimes.” She does not offer further information, rather she becomes distracted with a crystal vase half filled with water and begins artfully arranging her bouquet inside of it. When it has is to her satisfaction she steps away and cocks her head to the side. She turns to her father, his silhouette looming before her against the patio’s lantern light.

“Goodnight sweetheart,” he says, patting her head affectionately.

She rises onto her toes and kisses her father’s cheek. “’Night Papa.” She walks down the hall, the candleholder in her hand casting dancing shadows on the wall, her white nightgown swaying around her ankles.

Her father follows some hours later, when the papers on his desk have been organized into somewhat less disheveled piles. His cuffs are stained with ink; his eyes are sore. He rubs them and reaches for his glass of brandy, yet it is empty when he raises it in the light. There is a photo album with a blue pearlescent cover on the edge of his desk in a circle of lamplight. Sepia photographs of a woman’s smile or hand raised in a gesture peek from the pages, yellowing pyramids of paper he tries unsuccessfully to push back into the bindings. He does not like to think about it, not at night through the bottom of a shot glass. When he extinguishes the lamps the photo album becomes a shadow.

Mr.Everill prepares for bed with a haunted expression, the feeling of something eluding him, on the surface of his conscious, too airy to grab. Something with dark colours, surrounded by flowers. He ponders his daughter’s story; he can only blame himself for indulging her so. She is young, he believes, she will outgrow such fancies.

He dismisses thoughts of foreign girls in familiar meadows and familial secrecy. He pours out another glass of brandy before retiring to his apartments for the night, the photo album shining in the moonlight. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay