Adelie

It had been warm in the centre of town when Adelie had got into her taxi outside Tenebrae HQ. Now, though, as she stood in front of Soot's old barn, wind up the hillside stripped all the heat out of the sunlight. The ground was slightly muddy with the burgeoning onset of autumn, and the weeds at the perimeter of the yard were higher than they had been.

The accoutrements of a crime scene were long gone, but no-one had taken over the site. The smashed stable door was gone, as was the broken light fitting, and the barn was a cavern, green shoots already poking up here and there in what remained of Soot's sand-pile. It wasn't the barn she was here for, though.

Legs stiff, she turned and walked towards the house. The corpse had been removed from the doorway, and she saw as she approached that the bloodstain had been scrubbed away. Here, too, the door had not been replaced. There were cobwebs in the corners of the porch, and black spots of dirt. At least she couldn't smell death anymore, but the freshness of the day didn't penetrate the threshold. Instead, there was a hint of damp carpet hovering about the entrance.

The hallway was dark, and the staircase ascended into darkness too. The ghost had written 'I mean you no harm'. Purity had said the ghost had probably fought to defend the farm when it was raided. Petunia claimed to have befriended the ghost.

Adelie wished she'd found the courage to ask Petunia more about that last one.

Maybe it would be ok to shout into the house from out here. It couldn't make any difference to whether the ghost would hear, right? And it probably wasn't a great idea to step into a house that had been open to the elements like this for two months at the warm, damp tail end of summer. There'd be all sorts of mould and stuff.

She stepped over the threshold. She didn't really know why she was here, what she wanted to achieve, except maybe to put an end to the murky, nebulous dreams she'd had of this place for weeks now. It felt like cheating to stay outside, though.

The smell pressed in around her. She pulled her sweater sleeve down over her hand and then pressed it across her mouth. It wouldn't do much to filter the air, but it might help a little. It definitely didn't do much for the chill, which immediately began to creep under her clothes. She forced herself not to look back at the light behind her.

Standing in the hall in the dark didn't feel that different, even with everything that had happened, from when she'd been living here earlier in the year. They'd never done anything to decorate the place, it had existed in a state basically indistinguishable from a new-build prior to move-in day. Under the damp and the inescapable memory of the violence that had happened here, the chill aura of absence was a constant. Familiar, if not reassuring.

Except that it wasn't, had never been, absence. Adelie drew a tickly breath through her cuff, then lowered her hand. She still hadn't thought of anything smart to say, despite hours of trying fruitlessly to concentrate on the problem of doing so. She settled on, "Are… are you there?"

The house held its silent breath in response. When she'd stood outside, there had been constant rustling from the breeze through the plants, but now there was nothing. The darkness seemed to swirl in front of her, as if a liquid presence, six feet out of reach. Adelie held her ground, unsure whether her legs would answer even if she decided to move.

Her pulse didn't feel like it was racing, though her breathing was loud in her ears. The cold was intense, enough that she felt like her breath should be steaming, but she couldn't see it. It wasn't that it was too dark – at the corners of her eyes, she could still sense the walls, the floor, the faint outline of the skirting boards disappearing into the gloom ahead.

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And then, small so that it looked far too distant to fit inside the hall's length, a mote of light. Like the darkness, it was liquid and vague, off-white with a hint of pink. There was no mistaking it for a trick of her eyes. Her skin began to crawl.

The shifting of the light's shape made it hard to tell at first, but it was expanding, slowly. The impression that it was a long way away didn't leave; it seemed to be walking towards her. She felt her fingers tightening and twitching.

The fear that welled up in her was the kind that makes you hurry when walking alone at night, not looking behind. A ballooning presence at her back so that some part of her felt a powerful urge to turn, or step sideways to press her shoulders to the wall, but she did not move. What if when she looked forward again the light was gone? Would that be less terrifying, or more?

Still growing, ever so slowly, features began to form in the light. At first, Adelie thought it was splitting down the middle, that something was crawling out from its centre like a portal, but no, the black was the figure, its strange shape conferred by voluminous sleeves from which fuschia cuffs dangled like torn petals. The light was curls and swirls of grey-white hair spreading behind her from head to calves like clouds.

Under a heavy fringe, she had paper-white skin. Her cheeks and chin were softly angled, the curve of her colourless lips downward and sad. Under her eyes were smudges that looked more like the bruises of long, persistent crying than fatigue bags. Her irises were a striking deep pink, her pupils framed by large beads of what looked like polished white quartz.

Adelie stared into those eyes, struck speechless by feelings that had nothing to do with the chill in her bones or the memory of a dead mobster sprawled over the doorstep. The ghost slowly lifted one of her sleeves, reaching up to Adelie's face. Adelie held her unblinking gaze. Ice played over her skin at the fabric's touch.

She tried to clear her throat, the sensation like swallowing a hard-packed snowball. Although she felt too rooted to the spot to tremble, when she spoke her voice was unsteady. "Who- What's your name?"

"Marisa." Her voice came on a bed of rustling almost-echo and ancient dust, but her tone was clear and bright. There was an unfamiliar accent to her speech, as if she had learned to speak centuries ago. She started to lower her hand, and Adelie automatically lifted her own to catch it.

Their fingers met and mingled, passing through one another with a depth of chill that made Adelie's knuckles ache. She kept her eyes on Marisa's. "I'm Adelie." For a moment they were still. Then a shudder ran through Petra's body and she had to take her hand back. "Sorry, I don't- I've never met a ghost before."

Marisa tilted her head slightly, frowning. This time when she spoke the words came stronger, somehow more real. "Are you scared of me?"

Adelie looked down, to the straggly daylight that just about made it as far as the rotting carpet between her feet. "Yeah."

"Bitch, what?" The taunting sharpness of the ghost's words startled Adelie, brought her head up again. Marisa pressed, "When did I ever do anything scary?"

"I don't know, I said I've never met a ghost before!" Adelie could feel herself shrinking defensively, the beginnings of a blush warming her back and neck. "Wouldn't you have been scared, when you were alive, I mean?"

"I literally wrote out 'I mean you no harm'! What more do you want me to do?" Marisa stepped closer, and Adelie realised she was at a distinct height disadvantage. "Lifting that pen was really hard! Even worse when you made me do it right by the open door!"

"I don't know, I didn't know what I was doing!" Adelie forced herself not to shuffle backwards. "And you killed a man! Right there!"

"Yeah, because he was breaking into your house, bitch! I was trying to protect you!"

"But… but why?"

Marisa's face was very close. When she put her hand up to Adelie's cheek again, her touch didn't seem quite so cold. "Because I love you. I've loved you since the first time I heard you singing in the shower."

Adelie's cheeks burned around Marisa's fingertips. "I… you heard that?"

"Of course." For a moment it seemed like the ghost would get angry again, but her face softened. "I couldn't help it. But you sing so beautifully. I miss singing."

Adelie bit her lip. "Would you like to… sing together?"