There is nothing as blunt as a cold hand in the shoulder, or the trace of decayed steps under the window, that night that your dreamt of her. It is never like that. That is the realm of bad movies and passed-on tales. You enjoy both, like everybody else. Perhaps you jump higher when the monster appears behind the unsuspecting blond girl, and you surely gasp deeper when the one telling the tale comes to the surprising, shocking and final revelation. But nobody notices. Just you. You know that bad films and silly tales are shadows of something else, even if the rest see them as short pieces of condensed fear with a long release afterward to know that the dead are gone and monsters do not haunt us.
You know better.
Years ago, in a book from Stephen King, you read that “haunt” comes from “haunting”, not the verb but the place where a beast hunts. The description fits. That is how it feel. You are haunted, but there will be no shout, no epic fight, no killing of no monster. Something is hunting you, but it will not get you. You walked in her hunting grounds and you feel her. Yet she is not that interested in really hunting you. She just looks at you.
In the half century (and two years) since you have been born, plenty of people have died around you. From some you expected some level of permanence, and from some you got it. You talked with your grandma when she left. It was a soft conversation, a farewell. You still smile when you remember. Your grandma had a long life, and towards her end it was fulfilling for her and for her family. So you smiled to each other, she said couple of things more and you saw her leaving, without regrets. You also do talk with V. and with R. dead fifteen years appart, in the mountains they loved. Those conversations are also soft, but sad. You still mourn all what was stopped, all what did not happen no more. Conversing with them is to talk about the absence of the future that should have been. But then they leave, and you are sad for a while, and that’s all.
Yet you know that at anytime she is there, haunting you. Does she feeds on you? On your fear of the dark, or in your almost compulsive wish to serve others? Or do you feed on her, deriving some sort of twisted uniqueness by something like her being there, always, really always, haunting you? Absurd questions. Right now, you know that she is observing you from your left, your skin crawling on that side. You will not turn, so the muscles of your neck are already hurting. It is enough to look somewhere else, and think in something else. You know that the pressure will disappear, that you might even forget her for a few hours. Close the laptop, fold it and bag it. Pay the bill with your two coffees and go home. It is time to cook. She will see you biking, from the other side of the street. And she will be between your cooking books. Don’t look now, you repeat to yourself.
Once you decided to face her. You know that you will try again, some day, but you also know that it is pointless. Against your better instincts you turned into that small street, and you walked to the diffuse shadow at the end. It was unbearable, an acrid taste in your mouth, and a weak stomach and the urge to puke. You closed your eyes and your mouth, hard, and made fists that hurt and walked on, with weaker and weaker legs. It hurt, and she was gone. And you turned and she was at the other end of the street, and she was still smiling, and you could not look at her no more. So you walked away knowing that facing her hurts, that you can’t do otherwise, that is pointless.
Breath in. She knows you are writing about her. Breath out.