Moored

Miriam was being haunted.

Initially, she thought it was a consequence of her recent move to a new city. Perhaps her body and mind were acclimating to being surrounded by a new environment— a new job, new people, new unfamiliar streets to navigate. Miriam didn’t know many people in Providence; it would make sense she would feel uneasy in new spaces and when turning corners. She attributed her feelings of unease to this change. It was enough to make anyone a little paranoid, she told herself. It must be the move.

The feelings started out manageable. A tightness in her chest when she opened her phone; a chill down her spine when a woman laughed across a café. Then Miriam started taking wide turns around corners and wearing sunglasses to the grocery store in fear she would have a run in. She felt on edge. When her friends asked her how the move was treating her, she would lie and smile and say, it's just the best! I love it; everyone is so welcoming. I feel right at home. She didn’t mention her unease, or her growing preoccupation with the elusive figure she saw in the corner of her vision at all hours. She told herself it would pass.

It didn’t pass. Sometimes, when Miriam blinked too long, she could almost convince herself she saw movement—a shadow shifting against the light, a flash of dark hair where there should be none. She’d turn quickly, face reddening, only to find nothing but empty air. The city began to feel thinner and less solid. Miriam felt it was slowly being peeled back, revealing something else beneath.

Miriam stopped going to parties. As her apprehension grew, so too did her obsession. She had to see her, to find her. Miriam knew she would be just around the corner; she felt it in her bones. After two months of this unease, of small changes in her demeanor, of miniscule shifts in the way she navigated the world, the realization finally dawned on her. Miriam was being haunted.

She knew it was Eleanor.

Miriam had only seen her clearly once, in an older picture online. It had taken Miriam hours of searching: through tagged photos, outdated profiles, digital echoes left behind. Then, she found her. Smiling next to him, faces squished together, thick as thieves. She was brunette, tall, thin, athletic. Naturally beautiful. Miriam could only imagine she was intelligent and witty. She had learned everything she could. Eleanor’s high school mascot. The instrument she played in the marching band. What her parents did for work. She knew her childhood dog had died in 2015—RIP, Scout. She found her old playlists. She thought about Eleanor’s mindset as she handpicked each song. What each lyric must’ve meant to her.

The more she learned, the more she appeared. In the museum where Miriam worked, she began to notice patterns. A woman with dark hair, her back turned, would stop in front of a landscape painting and Miriam’s heart would spike— only for a moment, just until the woman shifted, and Miriam could see her profile. Miriam would exhale with relief and disappointment. Wrong chin, wrong mouth. Not Eleanor.

Every café, every sidewalk, every gallery opening became an all consuming search for Eleanor. And Miriam saw her everywhere. Her eyes flinched toward every dark-haired woman in a bookstore, every low laugh behind her on the street. She scanned faces quickly, habitually. When, inevitably, none of them were her, the disappointment was almost worse than the fear.

Miriam’s haunting, and her subsequent obsession with the object of the haunt, made her slow in conversations. It distracted her at work. She would misplace things, forget names. She avoided the oil painting of the woman in red at the lake. It looked like it could be her. When older women would enter the museum, Miriam would think, I wonder if that could be her mother. Or her aunt. Or a friend that knows her. Every interaction became a search for a relation to Eleanor.

One night, Miriam dreamed of water. She was standing at the edge of the lake from the painting—the woman in red was gone now, but her shoes remained, neatly placed on a flat rock by the shore. The waves crashed gently against the reeds. Miriam stepped out of her own shoes and into the water, fully clothed. The water was lukewarm and pulled at her limbs. It wanted something. The trees on the other side of the shore blurred and flickered. She walked until the water reached her chest and looked out across the lake.

Eleanor sat in a small rowboat on the far side of the water, under a weeping willow. Her back was turned to Miriam, but Miriam knew it was her. Her hair was wet, clinging to her neck. She wore the same blue t-shirt from the picture Miriam had seen online, now soaked and heavy, but she didn’t seem bothered by it. Miriam tried to call out but made no sound.

Eleanor began to hum—something slow, almost childlike. Miriam couldn’t place the tune, but she was certain she’d heard it before. Maybe on one of those old playlists she’d found months ago.

The boat drifted closer. Miriam wanted to say something— to ask her to come back to shore, to ask her why— why her, why now, why this thick fog of despair that followed constantly. When Miriam opened her mouth to speak, water poured in.

Eleanor finally turned. Her face was exactly as Miriam had imagined it: intelligent, gentle, knowing. Behind her eyes was something else— she looked empty and gleaming, kind of like the lens of a camera, Miriam thought. She looked directly at Miriam and tilted her head, watching as water continued to fill Miriam’s lungs. Then the boat began to sink.

Miriam woke gasping. Her sheets were tangled around her legs and her pillow was damp. Her phone buzzed with a notification— she looked down in fear, thinking it was her. Of course it wasn’t. The light outside was sharp and thin. It was morning.

Clare

Cover art: Frantz Seimetz - Le Globetrotter