Whispers of ghosts
Scenario: Susan, young, vulnerable and 21 years old is haunted by the ghosts of her past and her family and is challenged to do her own searching for truth.
Rating: T
o0o
There are some things that are so binding, she thinks... cold, irrevocable, unchangeable. She shivers, remembering how her siblings, her cousin, her parents were all laid to rest in the unforgiving ground. It was surreal... it was as if she was standing outside herself, watching the events of another person, another life... not her, not her beautiful, untouchable family... She had been beyond tears, beyond all feelings of anything... She'd felt frozen inside, empty, broken...
She still feels broken...
Still, she is caught up in the sound of their voices, distant, ringing, too faint and glorious to touch...
"Susan... honestly... can't you run any faster than that...?" She hears her brother's teasing voice, his eyes bright and his golden hair wind-swept. She sticks her tongue out at him. "I don't want to play anymore..."
Susan...
Susan...
Susan!
And she pauses by the silver puddle of water where she had just seen Peter's face. Had it just been a play of the light?
"Susan... are you coming?" She turns, and instead of seeing the grey eyes of her beau George, she sees Edmund's dark eyes which laugh teasingly at her. Susan, stop being such a wet blanket! She opens her mouth, thinking of something witty to say in return when a firm hand clasps around her own.
"Susan..."
She startles as she sees George for the first time. And it hits her like a wave. The cold, crisp evening air, cars honking their horns, smog curling around the lampposts, the leafy foliage of the State Park, dappled light, mirrored water from the previous slushy rain...
Oh God
"I've been trying to have a conversation with you for the past 20 minutes and you haven't heard a word I've said..."
She covers her face with her mittened hands, not wanting to face the accusation in his eyes.
"It's been a month, Susan... a month..." And he draws a breath, dragging his fingers through his hair, looking up to the sky, his eyes painfully bright, "and you've barely spoken –"
"George – stop –"
"Stop what? Stop being worried...? Stop kicking myself every time I see you like this... Stop thinking what in God's name I can do to help you bear this...?"
She stands numb, her hair escaping from her woollen hat. Her mind is dimly aware of the evening traffic, of blurring lights, people wrapped up in layers of clothing, preparing for the on-set of Winter. She watches numbly as a child in a red, wool coat tugs on the hand of her mother as they tread on fallen leaves, burnt umber and sienna. She once had a mother, she muses. She feels like she's outside of her body, looking in.
"Su... I'm sorry" he says gently, trying to take her hand. "I honestly care about you... and it frightens me to see you so, so despondent... I... I don't know what to do..."
And she doesn't hear his voice break, the pain there... or doesn't want to. She looks at him with injured eyes, the light dead inside. "Please George – just... just take me home..."
They walk silently for the next half hour, cold night shadows wrapping around them. She shivers. He looks at her searchingly before dropping her off at the doorstep. "Are you sure you'll be alright tonight?" he asks, his arms falling limply at his sides. "If anything happens... you'll call me won't you...? Promise me you'll call if you need anything..."
She turns away from his concern and steps inside, numb.
"Goodnight George..."
But left alone, she has less resilience against the darkness. Her memories create a sort of personal hell and all the lipstick, nylons and invitations in the world can't save her. She is frightened of the shadows that manifest when she is alone, that creep on spindly legs from underneath the fringes of the curtain... from the banister of the staircase, somehow reminding her of her failure... her weaknesses... And she hears them, their echoes of laughter and footsteps down the hall...
Oh Su... Let's play hide and seek! Lucy.
And the curtains rustle behind her as she hears a peal of silvery laughter, as light and ephemeral as a string of pearls.
And she doesn't know what's worse... her own self-doubts or the memories... their presence here in the house... their ghostly whispers...
At their funeral service, she remembered how it had suddenly struck her... It was as if she was standing in a crowded room and no one even saw her... no one really saw her, no one cared that something inside her had broken, come undone ... something irreplaceable... And it was the first time she realised... that she was alone...
It was also the first time she had stepped into the little stone Church in years; her family Church she remembers bitterly. And she remembers the way the angels in the stained-glass windows had peered mockingly down at her. She ran away before the burial, through the graveyard... past the dying flowers, not strong enough to see her family swallowed by the ground...
"Have you become so blind Susan, so selfish, that you can't see what's under your very nose?" She remembers Peter's last words to her, his red-blotched face, the pain in his eyes at her outright denial of Narnia. He was standing on the doorstep, his face half in shadow.
"I don't know what you're talking about Peter," she scoffed, turning her back on him to hide her emotion, "but I refuse to believe in fanciful tales any longer..."
"Tales? That's all you think they were? Tales...? Su... How can you say that? Aslan said we were to find him in this world..."
"Yes Peter, but where, where? Aslan doesn't exist in this world!"
That night she can't sleep. The fog of the previous week seems to swirl in her mind and she feels guilty, torn, tormented. Why did you leave me? she cries,
Why?
What was it that you all had... that I didn't...?
"I need you..." She sits up in bed, tears blurring her vision, remembering the way she used to find comfort as a child in her mother's arms. Her mother...
A stream of soft spoken words and a familiar perfume waft through the open window along with a flurry of snow, the wind caressing her cheek.
"It is always darkest just before the day dawns, my darling..."
Shivering, she gets up to close the window, willing the words to dissipate in the night. But they stay and linger.
Sometime in the early hours of the morning, she hears the creak of her bedroom door as it swings gently open as if on a breeze. She can't bear it. Not anymore... Hands trembling on the duvet, she shuts her eyes tight and pleads;
"Go away, go away, please, go awaygoaway... please..."
But she is struck by the sudden stillness in the room... a certain peaceful warmth... She raises her head tentatively...
And Lucy's standing there, light in her eyes and on her cheeks.
Just standing there... no memory, no ghostly imprint...
"Lucy..." she breathes the whispered word as her sister comes slowly forward, shining... no glowing in some unearthly light. Surely, she's not dreaming. Her heart hammers in her chest.
But Lucy only smiles a real smile and steps closer. Susan makes no move to wipe the tears that stream down her face; instead she opens her arms to allow her baby sister to come to her.
And she cries and cries into Lucy's warm, chestnut-brown hair, "you haven't really left me, have you?" she sobs. "Please... don't go... I can't bear this without you all..." And she feels Lucy gently stroke her back and when she pulls away, she is struck at the wisdom and beauty in her sister's face... somehow, it reminds her of Narnia...
Of golden crowns, of thrones and castles, and a great high cliff above a shimmering sea, flags caught up in the morning breeze...
"But we're not too far away at all Su... we're much, much more closer than you think..." And she smiles and Susan is comforted by the same, warm Lucy smile that she remembers and loves well.
"Please don't leave me Lucy..."
"But we never really have Su... we're always with you..." And she proceeds to tell Susan, in typical Lucy fashion, of the place beyond the veil... of the sunshiny place where there is no more pain, no more suffering, no more tears... and her face is radiant, passionate when she speaks of Him, of Aslan...
"Oh Susan... if only you could see him..."
And as Susan holds onto the strong, warm body she remembers a time when they played together as sisters, under midnight skies, stars raining down from the heavens.
"Take me with you..." she whispers.
"I can't Su," she whispers sadly. "This is something you must do on your own..."
And Susan is not aware of the hour, or the time when Lucy leaves, all she knows is that she sleeps peacefully for the first time in weeks, her dreams filled with white-hot shooting stars, nymphs dancing in a twilight clearing and the battlements of a castle on top of a wind-swept cliff, the clear blue of the sea below Cair Paravel piercing her heart.
o0o
George calls the next morning... to apologise... and even though she remembers well the conversation of last night, and that she should probably be the one apologising she is grateful for his patience, his understanding. She presses her nose against the frosted window, seeing a changed white landscape and tells him that there is something she must do...
They drive together in peaceful silence for a while, the world white and frosted like icing after the first fall of snow. Soon Susan spies the melancholy tops of the graves, left to the ravage of time and the elements, dusted with powdered snow. George pedals the break and opens the car door for her. She rises on tippy-toes in the cold, clear air and kisses his cheek.
Thank you, her eyes seem to say. For everything.
And he smiles, knowing that this is something she needs to do on her own.
She walks among the graveyard, making deep imprints with her snow boots, pulling her coat more snugly around her, struck with the strange sense of closure that has been brought about by Lucy's visitation. Carefully, she kneels in front of the grave stones, the snow, wet beneath her and touches the etched names of her siblings, her parents... She knows that not too far off are the graves of her cousin, Eustace and his friend Jill... Professor Digory... Mrs Plummer... all these people that have impacted her life in one way or another. She whispers one name after another.
"Goodbye... my loves..." she murmurs to the wind, light, cold flakes touching her face.
And getting up off the ground, she dabs her eyes with her lavender-scented pocket handkerchief and meanders slowly to the steps of the little stone Church.
As soon as she is inside, she feels... strangely vulnerable, shut off to the rest of the world, surrounded by warmth, wooden panels, mahogany, sandstone, the quiet hush of something not quite tangible. She walks forward to the front and stops, a play of light on a side window catching her attention...
She turns and gasps.
It is a stained glass window set high in the sandstone, featuring a golden lion that has been wounded... The sad eyes seem to look out of the multi-coloured glass and capture her. Her heart beats painfully within her. She walks slowly, almost frightened towards it... Oh Su, she thinks to herself. What game are you playing now? But something edges her onwards until she is almost against the wall, palms on the rough sandstone, head arched back, transported by wonder at the tinted glass, the workmanship... the way in which the beautiful amber glass eyes seem to pierce her soul.
Do not weep; behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah... has overcome...
The words touch her, and she doesn't even know why... She stills for a moment, looking up into the kind, passionate eyes that seem almost human and a sudden inexplicable chill sweeps through her. Defying all reason and rational thought she kneels right then and there in the stream of sunlight that comes through the window, caught up, suspended like a dust mote within the fragile beam.
"Oh Aslan," she whispers through sudden tears.
"Teach me what to say... for I... I do not know where to begin..."
She closes her eyes as the memories of her family touch her softly, no longer ghostly imprints... but whispers of grace. Time stills as she is caught up in something older than time, something stronger, something more beautiful and real than she can comprehend...
She recalls the touch of a soft mane against her arm, a Lion kiss on her brow, warm breath stirring her hair... and she leans into the touch, wanting it more than is humanely possible, and hears a whispered voice resonate within her.
My Child... I am here...
And as she bows her head in surrender, the shadows flee her mind.