I rinsed my hands in the sink, studying the dark circles beneath my eyes. I was thinner. More pale than usual despite the morning in the fields. I sighed, folding my hands together beneath the water as it heated, and when I glanced down to turn off the tap, I froze, fingers dripping. A red swirl circled the drain like a ribbon of crimson in the water. It almost looked like . . .
I lifted my hands before me and turned them over, bringing them close. There were still little dark half-moons beneath my nails, my cuticles a mess from the cutting and digging. Just dirt, I thought. Only dirt.
I squeezed my eyes shut, blinking furiously as I reopened them, and when I looked into the sink again, the water was clear. I turned off the faucet, forcing my exhales to slow before I pulled the towel from the hook. I counted slowly, pressing my wet hands to my face.
Most of the time, I could feel the episodes coming. It was like static in the air, the details of the world sharpening and brightening like the surge of a lightbulb just before my mind slipped. Other times, it snuck up on me.
I turned away from my reflection, taking the mail from the sink and making my way down the hall to the bedroom. It was the same one I’d slept in since I was a girl, a small corner of the second floor with a slanted, wood-paneled ceiling and a window that looked out over the electric purple blooms of the weeping cherry tree in the yard.
I tossed the stack of envelopes onto the bed and stripped off my clothes, leaving only the locket around my neck. I instinctively opened it, as if to check that the little watch face was still inside.
I slipped it over my head and set it gently on the dressing table, taking the robe from the hook on the back of the door. I wrapped it around me before I sat down on the bed and reached beneath the mattress. The notebook was right where I’d left it, the pen making the binding bulge.
July 2, 2022, was the date scribbled on the first page, and I still remembered the feeling that had climbed up my throat when I wrote it. It was a journal, for lack of a better word. A record of every single episode I’d had since they started. The ones I was aware of, anyway. I’d begun to wonder if they were happening more often than I was aware of and I just hadn’t caught them. Maybe the man I’d passed on the road this morning wasn’t really there. Maybe Ida hadn’t just been standing on my porch. How would I know? At what point would it all just bleed together, like it had for Gran?
Dr. Jennings had been the one to call them episodes, but I didn’t like that word, and neither had Gran. I understood why she said it was like being in two places at once. It felt like two slides of film placed one over the other. Like an overlap that got clearer and more real each time it happened.
I flipped to the page I’d written on the night before, when I got home from the funeral.
June 13, 2023
Approx. 7:45 P.M.—I saw a man in the window of the church who wasn’t there.
8:22 P.M.—I saw someone on the porch. The same man, maybe? I could smell cigarette smoke.
I stared at the smudge of ink where I’d set the tip of the pen down for too long on the last letter, remembering that pinprick orange glow in the darkness.
I swallowed down the lump in my throat, turning to the next blank page. The clean, lined paper was the color of milk, a contrast to the creased and stained cardboard cover.
I picked up the pen, writing the date at the top.
June 14, 2023
Approx. 11:45 A.M.—Song on the radio again.
I glanced at the clock on my bedside table.
12:12 P.M.—Blood in the sink, beneath my nails.
I couldn’t stop myself from stretching my hand out to check them again. I’d tasted it—that sharp tinge of copper in the warm air. I’d seen the bright red curling into the drain like a snake.
When my fingers started to tremble, I stuck the pen back into the notebook and closed it, shoving it beneath the mattress. They’d been sparse at first, a few episodes a week, at most. But for the last three months, there were entries nearly every day. Soon, the notebook would be filled.
I took up the stack of mail from the corner of the bed, desperate to put my mind to something else. It was mostly bills to pay and invoices for the farm, but when I spotted the corner of a speckled brown paper envelope, I paused. It was the same kind we used at the shop, but that wasn’t the strange part.
I slid the other envelopes out of the way, staring at the script.
June Farrow
12 Bishop Street
Jasper, North Carolina 28753
It was Gran’s handwriting.
I picked it up, inspecting it. There was no return address, but the stamp matched the ones we had in the desk drawer downstairs, and the postage was dated only two days before she died.
How long had it been sitting on the entry table?
I turned it over, tearing the envelope open. The scalloped edge of what looked like a small white card peeked out from inside. I pulled it free, brow furrowing when I read what was written there.
Nathaniel Rutherford and wife, 1911
Rutherford. It was a name I knew. Nathaniel Rutherford was the subject of almost every ghost story told in this town—the minister who’d been murdered at the river.
It wasn’t a card, I realized, feeling the thickness of the paper between my fingers. It was a photograph.
I flipped it over, and an old black-and-white image that was yellowed at its edges stared back at me. A man in a white button-up shirt leaned into the side of a brick wall with one shoulder, a cigarette in hand. The memory of the figure on the porch the night before resurfaced in my mind. Those broad shoulders set on a narrow frame.
He was handsome, hair combed to one side, with a sharp jaw and deep-set eyes that looked straight into the camera. A faint, painful twinge crept into the tips of my fingers.
The woman who stood beside him was turned to look at him, one hand tucking her waving, windblown hair behind her ear. The other was hooked into the crook of his arm. There was a smile on her lips.
The running water in the bathroom down the hall bled away into silence as I studied her. Every inch of her outline. Every detail of the simple dress she wore. I was looking for something, anything, that would explain the feeling that erupted in my chest.
Because it was a face I’d recognize anywhere, even if I couldn’t remember ever seeing it myself.
It was the face of my mother.
Three
My feet paced the length of the upstairs hallway until they were taking me down the staircase, my eyes still glued to that face. I held the photograph out before me, tracing the tip of her nose. The shape of her chin. When I reached the bottom step, I pried my focus from the picture, finding the one that sat framed on the table below the hall mirror.
It was the only photo of my mother displayed in the house. I passed it every time I came down the hallway, its image burned into my mind like a brand. I stared at it. The chill that had raced up my spine was now a cold blanket wrapped around me. I wasn’t imagining things this time. It looked just like her.
My eyes drifted through the sitting room to the basement door, and then I was walking again, pacing past the fireplace, the afternoon light pooled on its wide, flat stones. My hand tightened on the photograph, and I pressed it to my chest as I reached for the glass knob and turned it. The door swung open, bringing with it the cool, damp air. The basement smelled like fresh mud in the summer, and it thickened as I went down the steps, reaching into the darkness for the string that hung from the single lightbulb.