The Ghost in the Parlor

The rain tapped a requiem on the windowpanes.  A sad and soft song that crept into her ears and hid deep in her brain.  It was the only sound tonight, not even the distant rumble of thunder broke the unsettling silence.  She glanced out of the dark house into the even darker night, and let out a soft sigh that dusted the glass with a fine sprinkling of frost.   

"Why the long face?" a voice as fine as the frost danced acrossed the air to her.  She turned with an evanesent smile to look into his violet eyes.  He dropped a kiss to her forehead, and she liked to believe and pretend he had actually felt her skin beneath his beautiful lips.  But she hadn't had skin in a long time.   

He padded acrossed the hardwood floor of the parlor barefoot as he always went.  His gaze danced across the insubstancial form of his dear Cecelia.  She should have moved on back in 1826 when she had died at the tender age of 18, but she stayed...haunting the parlor whenever it rained, and haunting the rest of the house when it didn't.  He was glad for her presence, she'd made the decades since he'd bought this house more bareable.  Even fallen angels needed company after all


Several decades earlier....



The house, like most that resided in this little socially bigoted part of Town, was elegant and grand.  But it was not ostentasious in the least for all its silent granduer.  The face was white, the shutters a storm cloud gray, the door a deep ruby red...there were pillars and a porch, and a black wrought iron fence around the front yard, a little overgrown with climbing roses.  It was charming on the outside, until you looked in the gleaming gaping blackness of the windows.  No warmth and welcome seeped out of the panes and invited you inside.  Instead it looked like it was abandoned, and had been for sometime.  Perhaps thats why he'd bought it from the ruddy faced lawyer all to eager to get it off his hands.  A waste is what he had called it.  No one ever leased it for long before promptly moving out and the upkeep was far too much.  The house never paid back what it took...and so it was a waste to keep it at all.  Even so the price had been steep and nearly insulting for a house deemed such a loss...but he'd paid it because he'd felt such a kinship with the elegant little home, both abandoned and cast aside because of faults and circumstances not of their own.

As he walked though that gay red door and into the marbled foyer, he felt a bonechilling cold permeating the air among the scents of stale linens and dust.  He looked around into the shadows and dim rooms beyond the reach of the outdoor light spilling in behind him from the door.  He turned, reached out a hand covered in thick black leather gloves and shut the door, noticing right before it latched shut that rain was beginning to fall.

As he explored the rooms, first upstairs and then down.  He found furniture in all that carried a style of nearly a decade earlier.  The pieces were worn  a little with age and neglect, but with proper care would be lovely again.  He was glad to find the house so fully furnished, less he'd have to buy after all...and less he'd have to venture out to buy it.  It wasn't that he was shy.  It was that he prefered his own company.  After all he was unique, immortal, and noticeable.  The less he was seen the longer he could stay without suspicious glances from his neighbors.

The last room he entered was the parlor.  Here he pulled the dust covers off the couches and chairs, lit the few candles he'd brought with him in his things, stripped off his jacket, gloves, hat, and waistcoat.  He tossed them into a faded green damask chair and pulled a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein from his bag.  As he sat on another faded piece of furniture and turned to the first page...the chill increased, he noted that it did just as the rain outside intensified admist the last dying light of twilight. 

"What are you reading?" a soft little voice whispered in the cold air.  For a moment he wasn't sure he'd even heard it.  But as his violet eyes looked toward the windowseat and he saw the pale figure shimmering in the dark, he knew for certain he'd heard it.  He wasn't scared, startled, or concerned.  Her luminescant green eyes looked at him with such sorrow that he was sure she expected him to run screaming from the room.  "Frankenstein, its a rather good book..but its a tad scary." he answered with a gentle smile.  The little spirit looked startled as he spoke, clearly she'd not expected he'd respond.  She said nothing more, just sat there primly her hands on her lap, staring at him.  "Would you like me to read aloud so you may hear it?" he asked softly, his smile grew as he noticed the slight nod of her head.  He looked away, but knew she was still there...listening intently as he read the first sentence... and as he read on and on... he realized, he was very glad he'd bought this house.

(To be continued...)