April 8th, 1998
Heiligendamm im Mecklenburg, Germany
"Think it's abandoned?" A boy of a guessed thirteen or fourteen years of age prodded his companion with a large forked stick he'd picked up on the beach. The salty waves had worn it smooth and whitened, like polished bone. And the house on the hill, once also smooth and white, had begun to grow into the hill itself, it seemed, only a bit of white paint peeking out from the overgrown vines and shadows. It looked as though it was drowning.
"Nah. Father says that you can see a light in the window at night sometimes. There's probably someone living there, maybe they're just too old to do the gardening." A second boy with a calm, logical gait withstood the prodding patiently.
"Sheesh, Felix, you're as dull as ever. What about ghosts? That's what I'm obviously getting at. Your dad might be dull like you, but everyone else has decided that place is just haunted!"
"I dunno anything about ghosts, Philipp…" Felix's eyes were downcast as he kicked a flat rock out of the road.
"Remember three years ago? That nurse got shot and it was all over the news for like a week? They caught the shooter but then he turned up dead in his cell before he ever made it front of a judge."
"And they said that he killed himself and you don't believe it." Felix was starting to sound irritated. They'd talked about this nonstop for almost a month after it had happened. Philipp's father was a detective, for what it was worth in their tiny, quiet seaside town. And Philipp loved nothing more than to gossip magnanimously about the seldom occasion his father would have a case that amounted to more than a cat leaving a paw print on a slice of bread left out on a windowsill.
"He's still investigating. That case is still open," he hissed in a dramatic, conspiratorial tone. "He got murdered in his cell by a vengeful ghost, ya know?"
"You're full of it, Philipp," Felix sighed. "Let's go home."
"You're no fun at all!" Philipp scowled and ran after his friend, chucking the stick he was carrying into the overgrown yard. Craving baked beans in tomato sauce, his stomach rumbled and he picked up his pace as they started on their way home. And he missed out entirely as five long, white, skeletal fingers slowly emerged from the soil where he had thrown his unwanted stick. They wrapped around it and rested there, like some sort of macabre plant or vine.
Inside the house, Faust rested.
Reclining on a dilapidated sofa, he reached up to touch one of the purple crystals that dangled above him from the ceiling with a single withered finger. It spun in the twilight that trickled in lazily through the western windows, sparkling and twinkling prettily. He had two purple crystals in total, hanging there from bits of old decorative twine. They reminded him of her eyes and he could feel her weight on top of him, her beautiful face staring down at him. And the sun set and then rose again around her, her hair reflecting in shades of gold, buttercream, polished bronze. In faithful representation of that gorgeous phenomenon, he was drying countless buttercups that hung from the ceiling around his two favorite purple crystals, tied up in silk ribbons of myriad colors. Crystals, buttercups. And her gifts to him, for birthday and Christmas, and Valentine's Day, they lay around his sofa as he reclined there, wasting away into the rotting cushions. The room, no, the entire house, was filled with the smell of dust and the more insidious odor of something else, perhaps dead bodies, perhaps Death itself, but the smell was that of consumption, only what lingers behind, like one's breath after a heavy meal.
"We shall be going away soon, dear Eliza," Faust murmured, reaching up again to set a purple crystal spinning once more. "Going away, yes, going far from here, but I will leave the house just as it was so that when we return together, we can just go to bed. I know you will be tired, my dear. You never were terribly good at traveling."
He sat up finally, his motions sharper and faster than one might expect from his deteriorated appearance. "Eliza!" he suddenly called out loudly, his voice raspy but commanding. A series of clicks seemed to respond to him. "Come here!"
A skeleton appeared in the doorway, with bones that were very smooth and white. It was a very beautiful specimen, if not for the vicious looking hole in the skull, surrounded by painful cracks. If you looked closely at her, it was almost as if you could see her creamy skin, her slender arms and legs, the doll-like proportions of her womanly shape. She was a golden haired princess in skeletal form.
"I am sorry my dear, were you busy?" Faust moved into the fading light. The skeletal woman did the same and suddenly, she was just a woman, albeit a very beautiful and solemn one, too young and too pretty for the crumbling house that stood around her, and for the crumbling man that stood before her. Silently, she nodded. Her very long, very blonde hair rustled as she moved.
"You are very lovely as always," he murmured, reaching out to run the tip of his thumb over her long, light eyelashes. She did not blink or move her gaze to meet his. He smiled an admiring smile that suggested that he was proud of not only the beauty of his wife, but of the beauty of his work.
"Let us go, dear Eliza. You have packed the needed items?" She nodded again and the room was plunged into darkness as the last bit of sun disappeared below the horizon.
The taxi driver frowned as he peered into the backseat of his cab through the rearview mirror. He'd been ordered to pick up a passenger at the abandoned clinic on the hill, of all places, and if the location wasn't unusual enough, the passenger himself seemed utterly bizarre. The destination was the airport but the luggage he'd brought was strange; two of the cases were wrapped in what seemed to be bandages, and one of them had torn out sheets of a diary stuck all over it. The fact that it was dark outside did not do much to settle the driver's nerves and his hands felt sweaty on the wheel.
Faust offered the driver a polite smile and pulled the brim of his hat lower over his eyes. The drive was silent, and quick. As he collected the fare, the driver did not even count the bills. Wordless, he stood by the curb, watching as Faust shambled away with his luggage. The suitcase covered in papers seemed to be of particular importance as he cradled it in his arms, almost lovingly. The driver shivered as he climbed back into the driver's seat and shut the door. Immediately, he covered his face with his hand.
"Fuck, it stinks!" he spat, immediately rolling down a window and speeding off.
With wide eyes, the stewardesses whispered to one another, in deep discussion regarding the customer in 26 A. Or, perhaps, the customers, as the gentleman in 26 A had purchased not only his own seat, but 26 B, as well, into which he had carefully strapped a mysterious brown leather trunk, pasted all over with pages scribbled in illegible handwriting.
"Where are we going after this, mister?" A brave one stepped up with a plastic cup of water. Faust turned to look up at her and she flinched. He looked like he had a broken nose for the grotesque purple rings under his eyes. He took the cup of water and silently swallowed several pills before responding.
"Japan," he finally said. He gave the stewardess the empty cup. "My wife is very eager to try on a kimono. She saw them in a fashion magazine a few months ago."
"O-Oh…" The stewardess faltered, unsure of what to say. "Well, you must bring one to her… It is good that you have a large trunk." She gestured to the trunk in the seat, hoping he would tell her what was in it. She knew her crew would feel much more at ease, knowing what could be so important in carry luggage that one would purchase an extra seat for it.
Faust scowled. He knew he wouldn't be so easily understood, but it irritated him all the same.
"My wife will be accompanying me," he said shortly before turning his head towards the window. The conversation was over.
"Geez Dad, what were you doing in this dang car?!" Felix grunted as he laid out across the backseat of his father's taxi cab with a vacuum cleaner in hand. His father had come home looking like he'd seen a ghost and his cab was filled with an unexplainable smell that reminded Felix of when he and Philipp had tried to bury a roadkill possum. No matter how hard Felix scrubbed the seats with the vacuum brush, the smell wouldn't come out.
"I picked up a bloke," his father said finally, slumped over in a lawn chair set up in the garage. "From the abandoned clinic on the hill."
Felix shut off the vacuum cleaner, his conversation with Philipp from earlier returning to him.
"What was he like?" Felix wouldn't be so easily spooked.
"Tall. White coat and hat. He had a muffler on even though it's warm. He had these two suitcases wrapped in bandages and one of them had pages stuck all over it. And when he left and I got back in the car, everything smelled so goddamn awful."
Felix said nothing. He turned the vacuum back on and kept scrubbing.
Faust turned the crystal he had taken from his house over and over again in his pocket. He remembered the way she would slip her hand into his coat pocket on a cold day and they would hold hands there, watching as their breath rose into the misty morning sky, grey and heavy with snow. Even though they'd bought pairs of matching kidskin gloves one year for early Christmas, it was rare for either of them to wear them for this very reason. It was like an unspoken rule, to never wear gloves even though they both owned them. Emerging from this beautiful memory, Faust shivered in the dry plane air, overcome with loneliness. How he missed her and how he felt forbidden from missing her all the same.
"August 6th, 1995
Father came to visit today, dear Eliza, and he asked if you were at home. I told him that you were out to tea with a friend, and I have told him that excuse the past six times he has been up to visit, but he forgets every time so it is new to him each time. Mother does not come any more; she sends Armand along to look after Father instead. I think she may sense that something is terribly wrong.
I sat in Frankie's buttercup meadow today and watched the clouds for a while. You would have scolded me, my dear, for lying there in my white coat. Indeed, everything had little yellow spots on it afterwards that took some trouble getting rid of.
I miss you every day of this life I've lived without you so far, my dear Eliza. Sometimes I resent you, blame you, want to scream at you. Why couldn't you have locked the door after I'd left you at the clinic that evening? Why did you have to leave this world before I did? Did you value the life we worked so hard to give you? Did you even care? But then I break down, knowing that if there's anything you are guilty of, my dear, anything at all, it is only being too innocent, too lovely, and too frail, perhaps, but nothing more. And I miss your feather voice and your blushing cheeks and the expression on your face when you are hungry for pasta and potatoes and cake all at once but can only choose one. I cannot be allowed to miss you, dear Eliza, because I cannot wait for you to return. But missing you somehow makes it feel as though you are still there so I do it anyway, and pray that I can return to that life we shared too briefly, if only in a dream.
Deflecting your death once forced me to savor every moment I ever spent with you, my dear Eliza. If there is one thing—"
There was a continuation, but it blurred to nothing, the bottom half of the page apparently ripped or burned in a way that destroyed the rest of the message. The paste that held it onto the suitcase gave way and the paper peeled off and disappeared between the seats, unnoticed.
"Almost there, my dear," Faust murmured. And if one listened closely, the suitcase beside him seemed to reply, a series of soft clicks barely audible over the roar of the engines beneath them.
