a little chaos never hurt anyone

They say she waits at the cliff shores, always shrouded in mist and fog, hidden even from the moon’s light. Mother told me once that her hair was black as night and her skin pale as death, with eyes gray and sad. That she waited for centuries after her body failed and was buried, and would keep waiting until the earth itself was so changed her cliffs were no longer there to wait at.

They say she has a name, but to speak it was to call her to you. To speak her name was to promise her news of her lover’s ship, and when you failed to deliver she’d rip you and your kin to shreds and cast you into the ocean.

They say you can hear her sing when the tide is high and skies clear. That she calls for her lover in lilting tones that lure passerby to their doom. That her voice is so full of longing and heartbreak you can’t help but throw yourself over the cliff to help find her lover.

I saw her there, one clear evening just as the sun had set. I had long forgotten the warnings my mother would give in my youth, of the forlorn songs in the dead of night, and in that moment all I saw was a lonely woman standing forlornly at the cliff’s edge. I called to her, and as soon as she turned every story came crashing back to my mind. She watched me with dispassionate gray eyes, before vanishing when I blinked.

I thought that would be the end of it. The only true warning of retribution from the spirit was of calling to her by name, and I had only attempted to get her attention. My night passed quietly, calmly. As did the next and the one after that. For a moment, I even was so foolish to believe that the whole encounter had been my imagination gone wild.

Two weeks after my first encounter, I saw her again. She stood exactly where she had last time, however she now faced me. I was frightened, sure that I was her next victim. But then the most curious thing happened. She waved at me. I was unsure what to do, so I waved back. She seemed satisfied and turned once more towards the sea, and that was that. And every evening as I walked back home, the spectre waited for me on the cliffshore and waved as I passed, and I would wave back. This went on for nearly six months without change.

Then, after I’d gotten quite used to our routine, she wasn’t waiting at the cliffside one evening. It was strange, but ultimately I thought nothing of it and carried on home. I was frozen to my very soul when I saw that, standing ever so patiently at my door, was the ghostly woman. I stopped several paces from my home, frightened by the thought that she had apparently been following me that she might learn of my residence. The question was why? of course.

Though she was a spectre, and a notably cruel one when provoked, I had thought our interactions amicable enough. I do not believe a ghost would forget that to wave was to greet someone in a friendly manner, though maybe ghosts have a language of their own wherein waving is a warning--a threat.

As I stood there rooted in fear, all she did was watch me. And wave once more. She was closer than she’d ever been before and appeared to almost have a smile on her lips. At that point, the harm was done. She knew where I lived and there was no going back from that, so I gathered my courage and carried on up to my door. As soon as I put one foot to my walkway, she vanished. Simply blinked out of sight as if she were never there to begin with.

I was so unsettled that I could not sleep for the rest of the night. My brain was flooded with images of her waiting at the foot of my bed when I woke, or at the bottom of my steps, or just behind the kitchen wall. I closed the bedroom door in some vain attempt to keep her out, though everyone knows that doors will not stop a ghost.

As the morning light broke through my curtains, I stayed lying in bed far longer than I normally would. The fear of her waiting somewhere in my house was almost unbearable. How was I to live knowing she could and would leave her spot on the cliffs without my calling her name?

I was terribly late arriving at the shop that morning, and blamed my tardiness on having simply overslept. No one would believe me had I said I was late because I feared the spectre that I accidentally saw now followed me to my home.

I was plagued with thoughts of her all day, to the point of distraction. My aunt, the owner of the shop, sent me out to go home early. She believed I was falling ill and that was the cause of my unfocussed behavior. Maybe I was. I think that would have been a better fate--to simply be ill to the point of hallucination, and not be haunted by the woman from the cliffshore.

When I returned home--much earlier than normal--the cliff ghost was nowhere to be seen. Though, it was still early afternoon and everyone knows that ghosts do not haunt in the daylight hours. I spent the next several hours in a sort of anxious daze. I couldn’t recall any detail of the afternoon except for the constant buzzing of my soul. It was as if my whole being was waiting in dread of the setting sun.

I got myself into my nightclothes with shaking hands and eyes darting to the windows every second. I couldn’t even stomach any food, I was so nervous. Evening came. The sun set, and even long past when I normally saw the ghostly woman, she was nowhere to be seen. I went to bed, not content, but certain that for that night at least, I was safe from any apparitions.

Oh how mistaken I was.

When I woke next, there was no light from beyond the curtains. I almost closed my eyes and attempted to return to sleep, but a cold feeling in my spine urged me to stay awake. That same cold dread urged me also to stay still, but my curiosity was too great. I turned my head ever so slightly and saw there, at the foot of my bed right where I had dreamt of her the previous night, the ghostly woman watching.

I slammed my eyes closed and curled up tighter away from her--a feeble attempt to avoid what was so clearly there, I know. I heard nothing, but I felt her dead stare move and can only imagine she too was moving. I felt her gaze levelled upon my face, and if I let my imagination get too wandering, I could even believe I felt icy breath upon the tip of my nose.

I did not sleep the rest of the night, but I did not dare open my eyes until I felt the dawn rays weave through my curtains. I nearly screamed in fright upon opening my eyes, as for a moment my exhausted mind put the image of the woman right at the edge of my bed. It was, fortunately for my already frail heart, just imagination. What was very real though, were the faint muddy footprints all around my bed, leading into the hallway before vanishing at the top of the stairs. I felt faint as I walked their path. 

I was unable to bring myself to go to the shop that day, or the next after she came again into my home. Every night for weeks I would see her standing, watching me from the end of my bed. I couldn’t sleep. I could hardly eat. I both wanted nothing more than to run as far as I could from my home, and never leave for fear she’d just find me again anyway. I’m sure my family gave up trying to get me to answer the door. I hadn’t gone to the shop since the first incident, and I never made any move to respond to the pounding and yelling at the door.

The spectre never disturbed anything except my sleep though. Sometimes I would feel her ghostly breath upon my face, or a cold touch against my spine, and then still other times she did nothing but stand and watch. I just couldn’t understand it. What could she want from me? What was she doing? When I could stand it no longer--weeks turning into months of restlessness--I set out for her cliffs at dusk, and there I sat and waited.

There was a quiet step beside me, which was odd. In all the time she had entered my home, never once had she made a sound. Then, her haunting voice spun through the night. It was beautiful, and heartbreaking. She sang ancient songs of love and loss. She sang of sailors lost to sea, leaving behind their lovers. I found myself lost to her melody and with tears brought to my eyes. My heart ached in a way I didn’t understand and it felt as if my very soul burned with loss and longing as I listened to and watched her. I was weeping by the time I realized the air was quiet.

When I looked to where I had heard her, she was sitting next to me watching the sea. Her songs had wrenched open my heart, and I came to the realization this lonely ghost was still waiting for her lover because no one had ever told her he was truly gone. Or maybe she had never been willing to listen. But she was an old spirit, tales of her haunting songs had plagued my home for centuries, maybe all she needed was to be told once more. And maybe I, in this strange acquaintance I had formed with her, would be the one she’d listen to.

I told her that her songs were beautiful, if sad, as she gazed at me with her dead gray eyes and no emotion. I swallowed back my fear. If I was wrong, if she was not waiting for someone to release her from an eternal undeath and we did not have the strange connection I thought we had, she would kill me as she has others. But if I was right, I would be setting free a soul that has waited to see her love for far too long.

Quietly, slowly, I began to tell her how long she’s been haunting these cliffs and that no person can live for that long. Her lover never returned to her, and she was dead, and he was dead. Her lover would be waiting for her though, probably just as lonely as she had been.

I did not think ghosts could cry, but as I spoke her eyes became bright in a way reminiscent of those on the verge of tears. She never interrupted me, never cut me off with spectral retribution. She just listened in that quiet sadness that has haunted the night for centuries. When I finished speaking and fell into silence as well, I could no longer bear to look at her crestfallen face any longer--it pained me too much to see her so.

I sat there the whole night, freezing and damp from the night’s dew. I never dared to look at her again, nor did I dare leave my spot. She made no noise, sang no more songs. I did not feel any icy touches against my skin, or cold breaths on my neck.

When the dawn finally broke, and I was well and truly exhausted, I finally gathered the strength to look to where she had been. There was nothing in the dew-damp grass next to me, save for the barest imprint of footsteps leading to the cliff’s edge a distance off. I followed for as long as I could, but they led over the edge. Tears welled in my eyes at the realization of what I’d done, but refusing to let them fall. I went home, unsure of what exactly had transpired but knowing that something too big to understand had changed that night.

I slept all that day and awoke with the moon. I strained my ears for even a single note of the ghostly woman’s song, but it was silent. I can’t say if I felt relieved or sad. She had haunted me for months, but in the beginning I had grown quite used to passing her cliffs with a wave. And I’d spent all my life listening to her lonely melody at night. It was strange for it all to just be gone suddenly. A heavy weight settled into my chest, one that burdens me still to this day.

The evening after, I went out to the cliffs and waited. There was nothing except a silent, peaceful night. I can’t deny the tears that sprang to my eyes at the realization she truly was gone now, and how immediately terrible I felt for mourning her loss. She was at peace and presumably with her lover, and furthermore, I’d spent the better part of her haunting being terribly frightened of her presence. How could I possibly justify being sad at her absence?

Life carried on as it always does, though somehow the quiet nights were even more somber than the mourning calls of the spectre. I missed her, genuinely and truly. The feeling was that of seeing someone in the shop for months or years on end, and then one day they just stopped coming in. You never knew what really happened, only that they were gone and you were left with an absence in your life you hadn’t expected.

Sometimes I go to the cliffs at night still, just to see if she’ll be there. She never is. Even when I would sing her longing songs into the night--never with as much skill, mind you--there was never an answer.

I think I understand now, why so many she’d sing to would throw themselves from the cliffs. A song so beautiful, so true and loving, once taken leaves you more hollow than you ever thought you could be. When I stand at those cliff edges, I find myself leaning towards the ocean more and more each night. If I die, could I find her once more? But no, she has her lover finally. She has no further need for my company, what little I may have provided her.

Sometimes I think of what it would have been to have never told her the truth, to have kept her peacefully by my side. I think she would have stayed, an ever haunting shadow in my life--mournful, but not malicious. I think I could have kept her here for all my life too, my quietly shy songbird in a cage of undeath.

That would have been a cruel thing though. And while I ponder what it would have been to have let her stay quietly haunting me, I know that what I did was for the best. Still, I miss her presence. I miss her songs. I even miss the dread cold breath on my face and icy touches to my skin. God above forgive me, but if only I could join my ghost in her final rest.