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# A few weeks after our first meeting, reality, or maybe the lack thereof, hit me. I hadn’t seen Rysia vanish since that day with Daniel, but we were in the middle of a conversation when she suddenly disappeared. Just like that, with no warning, she was gone. I didn’t even have time to blink. Before my mind could register what had happened, she re-appeared. Her body lay on the ground where she had been sitting, her eyes closed as though asleep. I touched her cheek, thinking my hand would pass right through her. Instead, my fingertips met her warm skin, and those sleeping eyes fluttered open. “Oh!” she said, “I’m so sorry. How long was I asleep?” “Uh. Not long -- Rysia, where did you go?” “Go? I haven’t gone anywhere.” “No . . . no, you disappeared. You had to have gone somewhere.” And so Rysia learned that she disappeared, and I learned of how she became trapped. # Some years ago, maybe fifteen, Rysia had attended Saint Anstey Royal College as a sixth form student. She was popular enough, being one of the few girls allowed to attend, and would occasionally find a reason to run away from her daily life. The tower was her sanctuary. Few people would look for her there, and on late afternoons she could admire the sunset and no one in the near-empty schoolyard would think to look up. The day she had come and never left started off normally enough: a grueling lab, a tough math test and a free period of non-productivity. She had wanted nothing more than to get away from the gossip and the headaches, to be alone with her own frustration. “I fell asleep,” she told me, “and when I woke up, it was late and I left. Only, I woke up again . . . and had never left. I think I just dreamed the part about going home the first time. But then, I couldn’t leave. The door wouldn’t open and no one was around. I screamed and screamed until I was hoarse, then I think I just fainted.” She said that she woke up sore, and the following morning still no one could see her, or hear her. “I just gave up, in the end. Sometimes I faint. I don’t know why or how -- it seems completely random. I hardly ever fall asleep on my own. When I do, I dream of bright lights, and these horrible acrid smells that burn my nose . . . but only sometimes. Only, sometimes . . . .” She trailed off and I gave her a hug. I felt a few tears on my shoulder, but she didn’t sob or cry out loud. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to handle it; we still hadn’t talked about the fact that she either became invisible or disappeared altogether when fainting or falling asleep. I was afraid, confused, and more than a little disturbed by the whole thing. I heard a sniffle, and when I looked down, Rysia’d stopped crying. Her eyes were red and a bit puffy, but she was still so pretty. She opened her mouth to talk, and shut it quickly. I guess she changed her mind. She was quiet the rest of the time, and we spent it watching the room darken as sunset passed. I left when it was dark, and she hugged me goodbye. I went home that night and read as many articles as I could find about missing people in the last twenty years. I found nothing about a seventeen-year-old girl gone mysteriously missing in our town. # “Maybe I’m a ghost,” she said the next day, “maybe I died a long time ago, and because I was so young, I lingered. Do you think I’m a ghost, William?” I
didn’t reply. Instead, I watched her pace up and down. I
thought that if she kept going she’d burn a path in the
floor. Eventually, I closed my eyes and tried to think of her
question. I had no experience with ghosts, I didn’t even
believe in them. If they did exist, was it possible that I’d
had a friendship with one all this time? No, Rysia couldn’t
be a ghost, could she? She was too lively. Ghosts were supposed
to be horrible, pale things. Dead things. Not my Rysia. |