When one sleeps all the time, one begins to think of the strangest things.
Susan had not been dreaming so much as she had been remembering, digging through the oldest of memories to try and hang on to her family, which had already begun to slip away. Their faces were growing dim inside the walls of her mind and it made her blood run cold.
The funerals had been quick but not painless. A few distant cousins showed, in their automobiles and fussy black suits, and she hated them for their generic sympathy cards and floral arrangements. None dared sit near her at the wake, very few ventured to try and make conversation. They talked behind her back, though, freely and often. She had decided to pour herself a small cup of water when her mouth began to go dry and found a prim older woman making low remarks to the funeral attendant. He saw Susan coming and politely excused himself, but the older woman with her wide brimmed black hat merely gave her a stern glance and commented on the hor d'oeuvres. Susan said nothing. It was the last time she ventured away from the caskets.
Winnie joined her at the cemetery. It was slightly relieving to finally have someone to lean on as the priest finished the prayers and concluded the funeral. She stayed as long as she could before the grave diggers apologized and began to lower each casket one by one into the plots. A part of her stomach turned as she watch each one disappear. She had panicked, clutching Winnie by the arm and looking at her tearfully.
"What if I forget them?" She whispered urgently. Winnie looked pained for a minute and then at a loss for words.
"Susan, you won't." But even she did not sound as sure as Susan had hoped.
Now she sat and watched the rain pour down on the London streets, tucked in her greying sheets, and staring hard at the pictures of her family she had set on the windowsill. Each had its own beautiful frame, courtesy her mother, and she snuffled as she remembered her bringing them in her oversized carpet bag.
Helen Pevensie always seemed so harried before and during the war, rightly so, but her stress only intensified when her husband returned with a slight limp and a gruffness in his demeanor that hadn't been there before. She curled her hair and tucked it beneath a pillbox hat, but there were always a few strands that had come loose from their pins. Her eyelashes were never properly done and Susan had found herself one day wanting to tear apart the inky black clumps with a tweezers. Her carpet bag, a rough linen with a hideous floral print, was full to the brim with odds and ends she thought she might need, but there always seemed to be room for a present or two.
She dumped it on Susan's bed when she had first visited the apartment. Coming alone during the weekday when Father was out at his new job, she looked around approvingly but then clucked her tongue when she saw the empty expanses of her stand and dresser.
"Well this won't do. It simply won't. There's nothing here of you my dear!" Susan rolled her eyes.
"What ever do you mean Mother?" Helen did not explain herself in words. She pulled each framed picture out and designed them in comfortable manner across from Susan's bed on her vanity. Lucy and Edmund's current school pictures sat together in somewhat matching frames; Lucy's was a beautiful burnished copper while Edmund's had shone a muted gold. Then she had pulled a large frame with Peter's portrait. He stood straight and stern, with a tightly laced bow tie and suit, holding a few books and a pair of glasses at his side. Helen beamed at her eldest son and then placed a demure snapshot of her and her husband to his left.
"There. Isn't that more like home?" Susan had smiled, agreed, and ushered her mother out to show her the street shops. She was secretly very pleased but she was a young woman now. It was silly to be so attached, especially when one must worry about making a suitable match in the future.
Susan couldn't take her eyes off their pictures now. They had easily become her most treasured possessions, along with a shoebox beneath her bed that held a variety of items that tied her to them. Notes passed between her and Lucy during school that she had found crumpled in the pockets of her purses. Baubles that Edmund had bought her for her birthday when he had no other idea what she might like. Jewelry gifted from her parents.
There was a knock on her door. It was Winnie.
"Susan, there's a man here to see you. He has some boxes from...from your family." Susan swallowed thickly. She lost her voice. "Susan?" Winnie tried a few more times and then Susan heard her whispering quietly to whomever had come calling. A few minutes later the front door closed and her bedroom door opening, despite her never saying she could come in. Winnie sat on the edge of the bed with a package slip.
"What is that?" Susan croaked.
"The moving company that cleaned out your parents' house and your siblings' dorms." She handed Susan the slip, which she had signed. "There's about six or seven boxes out in the dining room. Do you...do you want to go through them?" Winnie never had to ask. Susan bolted out of bed and ran towards the front of the apartment, coming to a halt in the doorframe to the dining room. The boxes were large but already she could smell the familiar scent of their home in Finchley and Peter's cologne. She sank to her knees beside the closest one and ripped it open, unaware of Winnie's wide and glistening eyes watching her as she pulled out one of Peter's ties.
"He wore this one often." She said devoid of emotion. It was red, a rich satiny red that was permanently crinkled from its wear. His eyes twinkled whenever he put it one, like nothing could stop him when he was wearing it. Beneath the tie were his treasured King Arthur books. Susan chided him once for reading them so incessantly. It was such a childish tale. Of course he argued with her. It was a great literary treasure. Since neither would win, they would simply scoff at each other and leave for separate rooms.
"Susan..." She was pulling the box across the floor towards her bedroom. Winnie tried to help but Susan roughly pushed her out of the way.
"I don't need help!" She nearly shouted. She didn't care if the wild look in her eyes was scaring Winnie. The blonde stood still in the hallway as Susan finished pulling Peter's box beside her bed. She went back for each and every one, until all of them were piled side by side so she could get to each and everyone at her leisure. After, she slammed the door and pushed her vanity partially in front of it, just in case Winnie should decide to interrupt her. Tonight she was going nowhere. Tonight she was going to drown herself fully in them.
So it came to be that Susan was still awake near three in the morning, though she couldn't tell how awake. She was wrapped in Edmund's favorite scarf and had put on Lucy's dainty Sunday gloves. They barely fit but she couldn't resist. Her mother's pillbox hat was perched on her head and she had draped Peter's school blazer over her shoulders. She was thought she might look absolutely ridiculous but lack of sleep and too many tears made it impossible for her to be sure. Finally, as the sky outside the window began to grey and the sounds of Winnie waking and walking softly to the bathroom filtered through her barricaded door, her eyes drifted closed and she shivered.
It was cold on the battlements of the castle. The breeze toyed with her loose, long hair as she gripped the stone balcony and stared longingly out over the sun-lit sea. The horizon had turned a radiant hue of red with the last vestiges of orange light peering through the onset of evening clouds. She felt at peace at the sound of voices in the room behind her. Lucy and Edmund were playing a card game as Peter played referee. They laughed and teased and called her name. She smiled and turned, ready to be with them.
But they were gone and in their stead was a barren and destroyed library instead. The floors were bare and strewn with dead leaves and insects. The shelves were in ill repair and were falling apart, with books lay over everything, torn and burnt. She gasped as a small hunched figure rose from an askance chair in the darkest corner.
"Why, my dear, what ever are you doing here?" The voice was that of an old woman but the steps were a bit too fluid for the splintered cane. She stayed ever so slightly in shadow but she could see the glint of thin silver hair peeking from beneath the tattered cloak.
"What do you mean?" She asked bemusedly. The old woman shuffled a bit more.
"Are you lost?" She asked sweetly.
"No." She replied. "Who are you? What has happened here?" The old woman chuckled low in her throat.
"My dear, I've lived here for a very long time. I have been waiting for you." She frowned at the woman's words.
"You still have not answered me." She said more firmly this time. The old woman hesitated.
"Do you not remember why you are here?" She croaked throatily. Her cane shifted and scratched on the marble floor. The voices of her siblings returned, mere echoes in the room.
Susan frowned, becoming aware of herself. She immediately felt silly but when she laid eyes on the old woman the odd chill returned and she fell utterly still.
"I am alone." She replied thickly. The crone moved from the shadows and smiled such a terrible smile that Susan backed quickly away. She was all white teeth and pale, blind eyes. It frightened her.
"And that, my dear, will be your first lesson."
She shot up, jolting the pillbox hat off her head and disturbing the pile of books next to her knee. There was a sheen of cold sweat on her forehead and the rest of her body. The dream remained vivid in her head but with each beat of her heart it was falling away from her until all she seem to remember was that something had made her empty and afraid.
As Susan snuggled deeper into Peter's blazer, she pleaded with him to come back.