sight. This year I was content with my small tokens of admiration.
Despite being midweek, Wednesday, the bar was a bustling place, so after an early supper (alone), I took a slice of chocolate cake and a carafe of tea to my room and prepared for an evening with my novel Tempest and Sunshine. The first sentence, “It was the afternoon of a bright October day,” transported me back to the October day when I boarded a train bound for Texas.
The novel proved to be a perfect companion for the evening. I’d lived a long life without love, a short life with it, and faced an uncertain future with only one constant: myself. I curled up in bed, heedless of the crumbs. Outside the night was biting cold, but I’d cocooned myself in warmth, wearing my nightgown and robe beneath my pile of soft quilts.
This sense of contentment and satisfaction lulled me as much as did the tea and cake, and I fell into the sweetest sleep. Heavy and deep—aware of being overtaken, and quite happy to have been so.
Not so deep, though, that I didn’t hear it. Hear her.
Faint and familiar. The scratching. Like whispers on wood, inviting me to wakefulness.
Tendrils of sleep tied me to my bed. Fear ripped my warmth away, even as I lay beneath the weight of comfort.
Scraaaaatch. Scraaaaatch. Scraaaaatch.
All of my bravado, my boldness, my challenge, lodged at the base of my throat like ice. But then I opened my eyes.
Most often, Sallie would come to me in darkness. Midnight hours and after when it was too dark for shadows. This night, though the hour was late, my room was fully lit, and while the scratching on the other side of my door held its same menacing quality, on my side, I saw home. My empty teacup in the folds of my bedding. My wash-stand with its collection of perfumes and creams and scented soap. My desk with its modest collection of books. Dresses draped across the furniture, stockings drying over the grate. My trunk with its lid gaping open, all of my worldly possessions within.
This was my room. My home. My territory to defend. Courage my only weapon.
I flung off the covers, sending a clattering of plate and fork and cup to the floor. In less than a breath, I was at the door, my hands steady as, in one fluid motion, I removed the chain and twisted the knob. I felt a whoosh of air as I opened it, heard my voice screaming curses to the wretched phantom, damning her to a hell of my choosing.
But again I was too late, moved too slowly. Hesitated too long. As before—as always—the hallway was dark and empty.
“No, no, no, no, no …” My protests grew in volume with each repetition. My mind swirled with madness, and I cursed her again in a stream of vulgarities I’d thought long buried. Strips of light appeared beneath two of the doors across the hall, and I clamped my hand over my mouth to bid silence.
And in that silence, my name.
“Hedda Krause. Hedda Krause.”
The same broken-throated cry coming from the end of the passageway. The darkest corner, where it turned.
“Hedda Krause.” Spoken from a deep, black place. The place where I’d cursed her spirit. Was she there? Calling out to me?
“Hedda Krause.”
I stepped out of my room completely. The chill of the hall iced the back of my neck despite the weight of my loosely braided hair.
“Sallie.” The whisper barely more than a hiss against my clenched teeth. Then again. “Sallie.”
And there she was. Gruesome and gray, her work dress lank on a thin frame. I saw her first in profile, head bent down, towel draped over her arm as if ready to knock on a door in delivery. I might have thought it merely a maid, summoned by one of my fellow residents, but for the fact that I could see the darkness through her. Subtract her flickering transparency; I simply knew. How long had I called her name? How long had she called mine? And here we were, face-to-face. Almost.
Then, she turned.
We think we scream in our nightmares, and I suppose some do. Things I’ve suffered in my waking life pale in comparison to the most terrifying of gothic novels, and too often those memories roar to life in sleep. My late husband would often wake me, roused to find me shaking, my mouth open in a silent scream. Real screams, those loud shrieks women are supposed