by Diana Cachey
“My only love,” she whispered to herself.
Click cluck click. She heard again, interrupting her memories of lovely serenades.
As she crossed the threshold into the bedroom, the clucking abruptly silenced. Was it a doorway away from the ghosts? She thought about testing this by crossing back through the doorway but was too exhausted from depression and relaxed from her bath to do anything but drop into bed. With a huge sigh of pleasure, she curled up in an old wool blanket. She covered two more on top to retain heat and let minerals soak further into her skin.
Ah my plan worked. I feel much better.
She heard singing and this time it wasn’t the gondoliers. It was a woman. One woman, a woman who sounded more like an oboe or a flute than a voice.
“Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die,” sang the strange voice.
Louisa woke, trembling. She opened her eyes and glanced at the clock. She’d only been asleep for few minutes. Had time stood still? How could she possibly have drifted into a dream state so quickly. A vivid dream with singing? Surely there was no siren, no mermaid, under her window, down in that murky canal?
She tossed about under the covers for a moment or two until sleep overtook anxiety again and she dozed off.
Not quite awake but aware she was dreaming, Louisa heard more of the siren song:
“Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die. If I am caught in the seaweed, a drift or a hook, my gills, full of air, might burst. I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above. “
Louisa tossed, turned, tried to tame her brain, in her lucid dream state. She listened to more of the song:
“I’m a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill. Half of me snaps on a line of bait, though fake pulls me up, flips me over, and shakes. My fears all awake.”
This time Louisa woke up, suddenly, not slowly. She looked towards her bedroom window where a soft breeze blew the wispy sheer curtains towards her. She saw a woman’s face in the window plane, but the window wasn’t closed. The wind blew the curtains so the window was open, right? How could she see a face in the pane?
She squinted, blinked but still saw a woman’s face in a pane of glass.
Frozen momentarily, she next jumped out of bed to check the window. The second that she moved, the woman’s face vanished. Her bedroom window was indeed open and the window pane that appeared to reflect the woman’s face was covered with dew. She looked down at the canal and saw no one, not even the gondoliers. The fondamenta was vacant.
Before getting back into bed, Louisa got on her knees.
“Please help me,” she prayed out loud. “Let me know I am okay. I don’t know what is going on.”
She heard a response, from God or whatever was that intuitive voice in her head. It said:
“Go back to sleep. Listen to the song.”
She did. She heard the same shrill but harmonic voice. It began singing again as Louisa slept.
“Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die. If caught in the seaweed, a drift or a hook, my gills, full of air, might burst. I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above. I’m a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill. Then half of me snaps on a line of bait, though fake pulls me up flips me over and my fears all awake.”
When the dream song stopped, Louisa heard laughing. She saw herself twirling underwater, floating above a shadowy figure. She followed it. It was as if she were snorkeling above a large fish but without a snorkel. She could breath underwater like she had gills or could breath-hold like a sea mammal. Louisa could laugh under the sea too. She laughed and laughed. She felt like she was flying. Free. Away from something.
She wanted to sing along but didn’t know the words to the song. She hummed it in her dream while the sultry serenade droned on.
“Should I drown as a nymph, should I broil as a dish.”
“New lyrics from you, mermaid?” Louisa tried to asked whatever was swimming below her in her dream.
“Should I drown as a nymph, should I broil as a dish,” it repeated.
“Okay, la, la, la, I listen, la, la, la,” thought Louisa.
“Should I drown as a nymph, should I broil as a dish, Either way just the same, I decay.”
Louisa felt like she was being pulled further under the water as the dark shadow rose above her to the surface in her dream. She tried to wake herself up but couldn’t.
“I pull to left then the right then I stop,” the shadow sang, “for I’m caught or I’m sinking again.” The voice kept singing as the woman’s shadow, floated back down, under Louisa and vanished into the watery abyss.
“La, la, la, la, la.” Louisa hummed.
She wanted to hear the whole song. She wanted to sing it out. She began to twirl underwater. Soon she saw words written on the passing waves of water:
Half of me wants to live in the ocean, half of me wants to die.
If caught in the seaweed, a drift or a hook, my gills, full of air, might burst.
I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above.
I’m a fish with the will of a wandering wave,
sliding, gliding, taking my fill.
Then half of me snaps on a line of bait, though fake pulls me up flips me over and my fears all awake.
Should I drown as a nymph, should I broil as a dish?
Either way just the same, I decay.
I pull to left then the right then I stop for I’m caught or
I’m sinking again.
The words washed by Louisa a few more times then she floated a little longer in her dream ocean then it all went from blue to black. She slept for hours, after the fish shadow and the woman’s eery voice disappeared.
The daily five o-clock gondola parade floated below her window and its sweet serenade woke her from the nap. She jumped up to watch and listen, like always from her front row seat, but this time when she looked down, she saw a woman’s shadow in the canal. It reminded her of the song she’d heard in her dream.
Was it a ghost in the canal or simply a reflection of somebody, anybody, nearby? Was it her own reflection? It couldn’t be hers or anyone’s reflection from that angle. She saw the hands of the ghost mermaid thrashing about, churning up the waters as if she were drowning. She saw the woman’s mouth open and she flew out of the water, rode the breeze up to Louisa’s window. The woman’s face disappeared.
The gondolas soon traversed the canal, maneuvered under a bridge then slid off into the distance where she could no longer see the gondoliers nor hear their songs.
The dream song. What was it? She couldn’t remember one word. She tried and tried. Why hadn’t she wrote it down each time that she woke up? She’d forgotten it all. The whole song.
She went into the kitchen, put on her shoes and decided to take the walk she’d wanted to do all morning. The walk she hadn’t been able to do while she remained still, lying in the bath and bed feeling sorry for herself.
There, lying on the carpet near the kitchen area, she noticed a torn piece of paper blowing about next the terrace door. She picked it up and saw two more pieces, also torn and that seemed to fit together with the other. She gathered them all, sat on the floor, crossed her legs and fit the pieces of paper together.
She read them aloud:
“Should I drown as a nymph,
Should I broil as a dish?
Either way just the same,
I decay.”
The song! It was the song.
How strange. Had someone come into her apartment and read this, singing while Louisa was asleep? Where had the song come from? What was it? Who wrote it?
“No,” she heard a man’s voice say. He spoke in a quiet and almost feminine way. She looked behind to see the apartment owner had come by to check on her. She saw no one. Next she searched her apartment, all two ro
oms of it then the bathroom and found no one.
“Was it a dream?” she said aloud, attempting to ask the voice, should it still be around.
“Yes, and no,” the man’s voice responded.
“Oh that doesn’t help me much,” she remarked. She didn’t fear the man who’d answered her but whom she couldn’t see. Shouldn’t it frighten her?
“It should.”
“I should be afraid of you?” She got up to run but had no where to go. She didn’t know who or what was there or where they were hiding. Her body flushed with blood and shuddered.
“No, don’t be afraid of me.”
“I don’t understand you. Give me another hint.” Almost in tears, she grabbed the bottle of wine, opened it faster than ever, which for her was very fast, and she drank straight from it.
“Ask me more questions?” said the voice.
“Was it a dream?”
“No,” he, or she, said and laughed. It was either a feminine man or a macho woman. That freaked her out because it made this voice seem less human to her
“I am a man but I project from your voice.”
“Great.”
“It is nothing to fear. I am a piece of your own mind.”
“So I’m crazy.”
“Yes, a little. That is why you were chosen. You have the gift.”
“Right. The gift. Of crazy?”
“Of sight, silly.” When the voice said those words it sounded exactly like Louisa.
“Please leave, you’re terrifying me.” Again Louisa wanted to run, but froze instead. Not just paralyzed frozen but freezing frozen. Her skin was no longer flushed but stone cold white. She gulped down wine then sat at the kitchen table trying to will the crazy, or prophetic, voice away.
Nothing happened. She still felt cold air, above and about her, then she noticed a cloud of pink wind blow by her.
“Please don’t ask me to leave again,” the voice of Louisa said from the pink fog. “It’s important. Drink more wine. Ask more questions.”
Louisa fought the thoughts then glared at the rosy cloud. It didn’t move so she relented.
“Why do I have this part of the song? It’s the part I hated.”
“Is this better?”
As the voice spoke, all three pieces of paper at once crumbled themselves up into one ball. Louisa jumped into the bathroom, peeked around the corner at the papers and chuckled nervously. Whatever or whoever this was, it was really fucking with her. What kind of stupid game was this?
“It’s not a game. I won’t hurt you,” said the masculine sounding Louisa from the kitchen. “You can trust me.”
“Yea that’s what every man says.” Louisa slowly came out of the kitchen, against her will, her feet moved.
“You trust the wrong ones.”
“Hey, stay out of my business.” She heard him or her laugh at that.
“Read it,” he said in a lower pitch.
She decided the safest thing to do was to obey, despite all advice she’d ever given to women about listening to kidnappers and criminals, to never do what they say because they lie. She picked up the balled up paper, which she remembered had been three torn pieces, but when she opened it, all three pieces were now together as one, as if they had been taped, but without tape. She could see torn edges, but couldn’t see any tape. The words were perfectly typed onto it across the jagged edges on one large sheet.
She stared at it for a moment.
“I said read it.” The voice’s pitch was now baritone and loud.
“I’m a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill.
“Better?”
“I’m a fish with the will of a wandering wave, sliding, gliding, taking my fill,” she repeated. “Much better.
“You are difficult sometimes,” said the voice, from a higher octave.
“There was one line in the song I really liked even more.”
“Put the paper back down.”
Louisa laid the paper on the table.
“You need to work on your voice. It is too creepy,” she said.
“Now turn it over,” it whispered.
Louisa turned it over and saw another line, handwritten not typed. It hadn’t been there before the ghost crumbled the paper into a ball. At least she didn’t think so.
“I’m waiting,” the voice whispered.
“That whisper makes me nauseous.”
It whimpered. “I’m working on it. It’s the best I can do so far.” It sounded like Truman Capote, or Norman Bates dressed as his mother.
The mental picture made Louisa laugh and tremble.
“Please. Don’t laugh at me,” the ghost said. “I am dead, but I’m not the six feet under kind of dead, unfortunately. I’m this bullshit pink, this floating around pink dead. Isn’t that bad enough?”
“I suppose so,” said Louisa. Something sounded familiar to her, not the tone or octave of the whisper, but its cynicism and self-pity.
“Yes, Louisa, you know me, knew me, but that is not important,” the voice whispered, “read it. Read the paper.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“I know. I am going, fading. Read it fast.”
She read the typed words with the newly added handwritten line.
“I swim in the salt, my new found love, not hiding in caves with no light from above . . .”
“That’s the line from the song that really sang to you,” he said in such a way as to let her know he thought his play on words was humorous. “Like it?”
“Yes, that’s it. Love that line. There’s more of the song. Where is it?”
“You will remember more. Later. Go for a swim.” The ragged voice pushed out sounds like a last gasp of breath.
“What?”
“You will know,” he choked out, “where.”
Louisa heard wheezing.
“Go swim?”
More coughing.
“Ciaooooooo.” It whistled out the final sound.
A strong cold breeze blew through the open terrace door and pink floated out. The door shut itself quietly. With a click, it locked itself too.
Louisa sat motionless except for eyes darting about the room. Her mind repeated the lines she’d heard the mermaid singing in her dreams, that she’d seen rise out from the canal down below her window and that the ghost sent her on torn pieces of paper. She decided to read the words again and got up to retrieve the ghost papers she’d laid on the kitchen table. They were gone. Not just the lines from the song, but all the pieces of paper. She paced through the entire room to find them. Nothing.
She remembered the wind had blown while she was asleep in her room so she searched the hallway between the kitchen and her room thinking they may have blown somewhere else in the apartments. Still nothing. She ran back to the kitchen, her eyes covering every inch of the small space then drifted onto the terrace. There sat all three pieces of torn paper outside, lying on her typical Venetian concrete deck. She went to retrieve the torn pages but when she opened the door, wind blew them all into the air.
Oh no, she thought then shut the door again. They papers fell to the patio floor. She reopened the door slower this time and the three torn papers didn’t move. She crept over so as not to disturb the small pieces of torn parchment.
She heard movement from above the cast iron winding staircase that led to another terrace, or altana. She saw only the head of seagull, which sat alone on the wooden altana.
“Silly bird,” she said to it. It squawked at her. Strange, she thought, it sounded like a voice, like the whisper of the ghost mermaid man.
The gull clucked and gawked at her from above the staircase.
Had the ghost voice echoed from somewhere else? Had it come from below her, from another roof, or nearby window? Apartments, stacked upon one another, often bounced voices around the quiet Venetian passageways.
“What did you say?” She asked but the gull only stared back at her.
She turned to retrieve the pa
pers and heard the bird say, “Not a dream, not a voice, just a bird.”
It spoke words like a parrot. A seagull?
Then the seagull flapped its wings and flew off. Louisa turned back to pick up the papers but they sailed away too. In perfect formation, the papers trailed behind the gull like its flock.
Maybe that nap wasn’t long enough, she thought.
“Go for a swim,” she heard what sounded like the same parrot-seagull say.
“Go for swim? It’s freezing,” she yelled at the bird.
Far off in the distant, the gull glided over the same canal that the gondoliers negotiated during their daily serenades below her window.
Swim, she thought, but where?
She peered into the murky canal and no haunting faces, singing gondoliers or talking gulls answered the question.
Louisa remembered a story her sister told her about something that had happened on an earlier trip to Venice. Walking to her hotel after dinner, Barbara noticed a drunken blonde woman in front of her with her handsome Venetian boyfriend. He’d stop to kiss the girl, but she pushed him away each time, which reminded her of Louisa and Matteo, so Barbara wanted to see what transpired. The blonde stumbled, he attempted to hold her up. They argued, she stomped away, he followed. More weaving and arguing ensued.
Later, Barbara heard shouting from the canal below her hotel room. From the window, she watched the girl jump into the canal to swim amidst heavy boat traffic and she had recalled some of the dangerous things she’d done when drunk.
Well, I ain’t drunk and I ain’t swimmin in no canal, Louisa told herself. What else did Barbara say about that event?
Louisa strained to remember more details because, perhaps, this was where she was supposed to “go for a swim” though she didn’t know why she thought so. The man had waved his arms furiously at the blonde and pointed at passing boats but failed to persuade her to come out of the canal, and eventually dove in with her. He pulled her away from the boat traffic and soon took advantage of the situation, embracing and kissing her.
Barbara had said the couple had been dressed in white. With his round Venetian rump, the light fabric of his pants draped perfectly over it when wet. The woman’s drenched shirt became sheer. Upon their exit from the canal, Barbara couldn’t help but note these two details: his butt and her wet T-shirt.