Darling Clair,

Your sickness was born from a wish. A wish that was only a whisper in
your fractured mind. A whisper that soon became screaming, that told
you your daughter was still alive. A wish that grew into a deathly
obsession, and soon led you to overdose on your own delusions. You sit
each day, pale and shivering, alone in your room; speaking to
something that isn’t there. You watch her walking in her nightgown,
you find her sleeping under her bed or reading in the bathtub, she
came to you in the middle of the night weeping. You build fires for
her in the woods to keep her warm each night. But she is not there.
She was never there. I held her in my arms after she took her own
life. I felt that death had crept into her own veins. Don’t you know
that she is resting in a soft bed of earth? Now she has silent lips,
lips that will never kiss you or speak to you again. My dear, you are
trapped within your own haunted mind; you have created your very own
prison. You are suffocating in your frozen thoughts. You will never
return to the world if you continue to allow yourself to descend into
this madness. She is gone, and for you I hope your weary mind will
mend. I pray you realize you must keep living. Putting your daughter
to rest and accepting her death is the only way you can escape your
own destruction.

Michael

He found her sleeping in the woods again. Snow and ashes were upon the
ground. She did this every night. She came into the forest, the moon
touching her in solitude and whiteness, and she sat before the mouth
of the cave, building a fire to keep her daughter warm. Clair believed
she was there, too afraid to come out because it was so cold and dark,
and she kept the fire roaring all through the night to tell her
daughter she was not alone. Clair sat in her dreaming madness,
watching snow fall into the glowing red, humming childish lullabies.
Michael always found her in the early morning fast asleep, the fire
smothered. He would carry her back to her cabin and lay her down in
bed, where she would wake and begin to cry for her daughter. Michael
then would make her a cup of warm tea to soothe her back into sleep,
and wipe the soot from her face. She slept in the pale days – never
seeing the winter sun – and only awakened during the icy nights.
Her young daughter, Nora-Jane, had committed suicide the first night
they came there. She had run away into the snowy woods, freezing in
her thin nightgown. The cave was deep amongst the ivory trees, and she
settled into the hollow murkiness of it, opening her veins feverishly.
There was black all around her, she could not see the blood flow from
her fragile wrists. She only laid down on the stone floor, waiting to
be emptied of her sadness and fear, falling asleep as her arms dripped
quietly.

Michael heard Clair screaming the next morning. He came out to see her
tearing away from the cabin in her green wool gown, going into the
woods. His heart pounded as he followed her, knowing what must have
happened. We came here to escape for awhile. My daughter was just
released from the hospital. Depression is so heavy and unfair for such
an innocent creature. I hope she will rest here. The morning light
shed pure blue upon the swallowing cave, and Clair had fallen to her
knees there weeping. Michael fell shortly behind her, his entire body
sickened by the sight of the dead girl with blood dried black upon her
arms, and the sounds of Clair’s moaning sobs coming from deep in her
heavy chest. Inside of his head he cursed himself for saying such
careless words the day before. There’s a haunted cave in the woods.
You should try to find it, it may interest you. There were families
who hid away there during the first war. He thought a harmless ghost
story would help her from becoming bored in the small cabin, he had
told it to all the youthful visitors, but now she had become the
wraith who would see or hear no one. He had led her to a place where
she could take her life in silence.

After the girl’s burial, Clair had refused all comfort from her
distant family and had came back to the cabins. Michael knew he would
forever be ensnared by her, after watching her in such raw grief. She
was the only one staying at the resort, and so he spent as much time
as he could helping her. She was an older woman, with strands of gray
glittering in her dark brown hair. Her body was round and white as the
moon, and her clothes plain and soft. She had the scent of a mother,
but her child was lost from her. Michael mostly sat in the living room
while Clair slept, locked up in her bedroom. She would not eat, though
he cooked for her each night. She did not need food where she was. She
forbid nourishment, and blamed herself for Nora-Jane’s death in her
waking hours. Michael tried to speak with her, through the oak wood of
the door, but no sound would come from Clair’s broken throat.
It began to happen one night in early December. Michael was sitting in
the kitchen reading the newspaper when he heard hot murmurs floating
in the hallway. He set the paper upon the table and moved into the
hall to see Clair crouching down in the corner. It was eerie for him
to see her speaking to the wall in the dark, her body bent strangely,
but he stood in allure as he watched. Shadows covered her as she
whispered to her imaginary daughter, telling her not to cry, that
everything would be all right. And then a button sewn into Michael’s
shirt scratched against the wall, and Clair looked up at him wildly as
though he were an intruder.

“Leave us alone!” she shouted, and hurried into Nora-Jane’s bedroom.
When he heard the icy sound of a music box, Michael cracked the door
open silently to find Clair sitting upon the floor, holding a dim
candle and rocking back and forth, singing to the dark space beneath
the empty bed. The green and gold music box played hauntingly at her
side, and her gloomy words seemed to match the melody. Do not cry for
I am here, I will stay for all the years, Dry your pretty eyes my
dear, I will stay forever here Michael was pulled deeper into Clair’s
devastation, listening to the sorrow of her voice and knowing he was
the only one who could help her.

“Clair,” he spoke gently, and came into the unlit room. Clair blew out
the candle furiously to hide in her dark madness, and screamed for him
to leave her and her daughter in peace. “Clair, Nora-Jane is not
there, she is dead,” he said to her firmly, with shadows in his hands.
“That is not so! She is here, she is laying under her bed, she is
lonely, and I know she barely breathes but I can hear her! Do not tell
me such a wicked lie!” Clair’s hands were fluttering desperately as
she spat at Michael, demanding for him to leave.

And he left the sad and fanciful woman alone. There was nothing he
could do to soften her denial, not unless she wanted to believe
Nora-Jane was gone. He could only sit back and watch her intoxicate
herself with madness, pretending her daughter was still with her so
she would not have to feel the sorrow. Clair still slept throughout
the day, and when she awoke at night she gave birth after birth to her
ill illusions. She no longer paid attention to Michael, it was as if
he did not have flesh, he was not real to her. She only knew her
daughter. Nora-Jane had loved to fill up the bathtub with pillows and
read, and Michael witnessed Clair doing this; taking all the pillows
from around the house, shoving him from the couch and bringing the
pillows into the small bathroom. She then sat on the cold tile and
watched the empty porcelain tub, listening to a ghost read to her.

When the fires began, Michael knew Clair was not aware her fantasies
were becoming thick in danger. They were small and meek, but the
winter winds could make them burn stronger, and lengthen them to the
naked trees above. Nora-Jane had moved out of the house now, and
stayed hidden in the cave. Clair went to her night after night,
begging for her to come home, her tears turning to frost. Michael
could see the fire through his window, pressing his hand to the chill
of the glass, and leaving an imprint in the cold blue. He did not know
how to help this woman. The words that came from his mouth were too
simple and she ignored them all. She is resting now, she is watching
over you, god has her. Clair would not believe such dull words, and
Nora-Jane was not at rest, she was in turmoil watching her mother. And
so Michael wrote to her. He left the letter at the mouth of the cave,
so that Clair would see it during her grief-filled nocturnes.

She came to him weeping; her tears were frozen pearls upon her tired,
thawing face. She held the letter up, it trembled in her hands. “I’m
so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” her voice was
shaking, and Michael led her to his couch, bringing warm blankets to
wrap around her.

“You are not helping her with your selfishness,” he sat at her side,
watching as she rubbed tears from her eyes and hugged herself in the
blankets. “You have to believe she is dead, you have to accept the
pain,”

“I,” Clair’s voice came in weak shards. “I can’t bear that,”

Michael’s dark eyes hardened. “You will drown Clair. That is what you
do when you slip away from life. You drown, and you go back into the
shell you came from. The shell from which we have all tried so hard to
break free. You will be enclosed in it once more. You will go
backwards, alone for all time. You must choose life,”

Clair began to cry once more. “I still need her, I know I have slipped
away, and I don’t know where I am now. But please let me stay here,
because it is all I know,”

He would not allow her to be so feeble. “This is not all you know.
This is not a life. I know it will take time for healing, but you must
put her to rest, you must free yourself. She would not wish for you to
suffer this way,”

“But I am only happy when I dream of her. I do not care if I am alone,”

“And you can still dream of her. But you must find a way to be happy
with life again”

Clair fell asleep to a lullaby of her hushing grief, and Michael let
her stay the night. She dreamed of taking the same path as her
daughter. During her haunted slumber she saw herself open her own old
veins, bearing the same pain that Nora-Jane had. She watched herself
lay down and close her eyes; but what spilled from her veins was not
blood, it was dust. She woke in the stillness of the dark, looking at
Michael’s electric clock to see it was almost four in the morning. She
covered her face crying, so tired of being in between, sleepwalking
with grief. A sweet warmth came to her side then. Nora-Jane’s
fragrance of vanilla woods filled the room. Clair peered around in the
heavy dark, searching for her daughter’s face, and seeing only her
hands. There was a lightness in her chest, like the touch of a
feather. Her deep misery was softened as she realized she was the only
one in the room, and that Nora-Jane remained in her heart. She smiled,
and lowered her head back upon the pillow. Nora-Jane was still calling
from the depths of the forest, and she always would be, but Clair no
longer had to search there.

When summer had fallen in the woods, and the bitter frost and snow had
all gone; along with the blue hollowness, there were no more forest
fires. Michael decided to give Clair a job, and she now helped him
with the mountain resort. They told no one of the cave, they wished
for Nora-Jane not to be disturbed. The cave was only seen by whoever
could travel that deep into the pit of the forest, and who happened to
come across it. Mothers and daughters came endlessly to rent cabins
for their vacations, and each time Michael watched as Clair only
smiled upon them with shining eyes. There were still days when she
could not bring herself to come out of bed. At times she found herself
lingering in memories for too long. But now that her days were filled
with faces and work she could not allow herself to remain in between
for too long. When she heard the somber weeping of a ghost in the
night she did not open the door. Slowly it became a lucid dream,
slowly she had found peace, and her happiness was frail but true.