Just for a Moment - amended Ghost Story

Molly had a knack for pushing me into disagreeable situations. It was her eyes. The way they gazed up at me with such pleading, like the eyes of someone about to die.

I should have taken that look as an omen.

Little Orping was in the very centre of nowhere, and although father insisted that we ‘give the place time’, we decided in sisterly union to despise it. Festering there was the worst weather in Britain. Drizzly mist swept the length of the streets and seeped through the protection of our clothes until we were sodden and miserable.

My father had decided to uproot us from the grandeur of York shortly after mother died. The city held many difficult memories and too much noise for a suffering mind to stand. That night, in the attic room I shared with Molly, we had listened as he wept through the floorboards and woke in the morning to find our bags already packed.

The train had hauled us to Little Orping later that day, snaking its way through sweet civilisation until it petered out and died and all we could see through the smeared windows was the vastness of nothing and the thin tributaries of drizzle carving murky streams through the muck.     

Father started work the very afternoon of our arrival. Our landlord and owner of Little Orping was a friend from his schoolboy days and had offered father a generous sum of money to assist in felling the wood that sat on the boundaries of his meagre empire. As he put it, to ‘make room for the light’. His name was Greaves, only he insisted that Molly and I call him ‘Sir’ much to our dislike. We pulled faces as he turned his proud back and later received punishment at our father’s hand.

During that first night in Little Orping, sleeping side by side with our matching welts, Molly and I swore our loyalty to one another and our imminent return to York.

The following day we escaped the confines of Little Orping and headed for the condemned woods, our escape plans momentarily postponed due to our sudden need to explore. As soon as we entered we felt the familiar sense of awe that we had often felt when sneaking into York Minster. The tall trees were the high stone arches, but the dull light that filtered in through the leaves above bore no resemblance to the glorious sunlight that streamed in through the stained glass windows to make pools of swirling colour on the flagstone floors. However, the silence was the same. In the Minster it was as though the carved saints and angels had been talking right up to the point of our entrance, and were holding their breath until we left so as not to expose themselves as real. In the wood, it was as though the very trees were holding their tongues.  

We moved among the branches, mapping new paths and breaking the hush with our rebellious chatter. So concerned were we with our giggles that we failed to see the looming figures of a man and his drooling dogs striding towards us in the gloom. Seconds later, as we untangled ourselves from the heap of limbs we had become, our giggles reached new heights as we gazed up into the heated face of Greaves.     

His eyes were ablaze and, after hurriedly scouring the surrounding area, he demanded in hissed tones that we follow him back to Little Orping at once.

It was then that I felt it.

The sudden shift in the air. The strong feeling that something else moved among the trees. Before I could accept Greaves’ advice, Molly fixed me with those eyes of persuasion, seized my hand and pulled me into a run that took us away from the whimpers of his dogs and further into the suffocation of the thickening mist.

As we ran, I was struck by how large the woods were, how the trees created an illusion of a never ending world. I was just about to snap my hand back and demand Molly stop when she did of her own accord. I fell forward, being careful to miss her and landed with a thump on the leaf strewn floor. Molly made no move to help me up.

Her eyes were wide; her lips slightly parted as she stared across at a large wooden hut nestled in a circular embrace of trees. It was one storey high, the type of which had been erected during the war, and seemed to be in a case of serious disrepair. Windows hung like limp limbs from their hinges and not one single light shone to signify any life within the walls.

Naturally, Molly unfroze and leapt towards a gaping hole that had once perhaps held a door. She was gone before I had time to shout her name.

I scrabbled to my feet and entered the hut without hesitation. My only thought was Molly and the fact that the place looked as though it could crumble to dust at any moment.

So shocked was I, then, when I found myself in a most magnificent cinema.

The ticket booth stood empty to my right, the leather seat within dipped with the impression of having just been vacated. Ahead, a refreshment counter stood decked with sweets that I had never seen. As I drew closer and examined their names, I recalled a memory of my father reminiscing about his trips to the cinema in his youth and the sweets he used to buy. He had met my mother there, and had spoiled her with a packet of mint marvels. I saw them there in that cinema in the woods, nestled in the bottom corner of the display case as though plucked from my father’s memory.

As I moved to the only inner door Molly could have taken, I felt as though I was being watched and looked about sharply. Posters upon posters of film stars from a distant era plastered the walls haphazardly. It was the only decoration in the place that seemed untidy, as though they had been added as a rushed afterthought. On closer inspection, I noticed that nearly all of them held somewhere within their picture the same young woman; blonde, beautiful and decorated in fashions from an elegant time. As I looked at her closer still, I saw lines scored across her face, tears in the paper where her smooth skin and perfect cheekbones resided. Gentle slashes across her lips, her neck. I shivered, held captivated by that strange finding until Molly filled my thoughts again and I moved on towards the door.

I saw her, standing close to a wide stage above which hung the cinema screen. The plush curtains were drawn as though ready for an audience. Molly turned as she heard me enter; she clutched something close to her chest. It was furry and limp, and at first I was repulsed until I drew nearer and saw that it was a coat, similar to one our grandmother had worn whenever she had gone out in public. This coat was different though. Unlike our grandmother’s, which had looked rather ragged and matted by the time she had died, the one clasped in Molly’s hands looked brand new, as though it had just left the factory where skilled hands had sewn the pelts into a garment fit for a film star. Molly stroked it, stating how beautiful it was and how she had just found it lying there on the stage. How she would love to wear it, to try it on just for a moment.

Just for a moment.

He came as soon at her arms delved into the sleeves, as soon as a smile lit her face and scattered into an array of manic laughter.

The Wurlitzer surfaced like a terrible fish from the depths of the stage. His arms and legs flailed like those of a marionette as he created the music that would haunt me into adulthood. His hair was matted in clumps about his head, the skin around them red raw as though constantly scratched at by jagged nails. 

I never saw his face, only watched as he played and played, as my sister, laughing still and dripping in fur, drifted ever closer and sat beside him on the stool, as the Wurlitzer descended down again into the mouth of the stage, as terror pinned me to the spot. As I watched my sister go.

My father found me an hour later, petrified and alone. Greaves and a rally of men were with him. Without a word, he lifted me into his arms and carried me away. I screamed for Molly, I screamed for my little sister as the cinema disintegrated into the gloom. But she did not answer, and the last thing I heard before the mist swallowed the scene whole like a curtain across a screen was Greaves’ final condemning order:

‘Gentlemen, tear it down.’

Every tree was felled, every branch chopped and left for firewood. Two days later, when exhaustion finally gripped my father, I snuck back to search the debris. There was no sign of any man-made structure amongst the trunks and twigs. No sign of the cinema in the woods, and no sign at all of a smiling little girl in a fur coat.

We never spoke of the incident. My father took me back to York and fell into silence for the rest of his days, losing himself and his diminished family to drink.

I married young, to a loving man who wanted to ease the pain I held in my eyes. To this day, he knows very little about my past, about Molly.

We have a child now. A girl, Bella, and at times when she giggles or seizes my hand in such a way I am transported back to her, to Molly. I have learnt to not let those moments paralyse me as they once did. 

Now I feel I have written everything, and I hear my Bella calling. She declares that a parcel has been delivered. I hear her unwrapping it as she approaches. She exclaims how elegant, how beautiful the contents is, how she would love to wear it, to try it on just for a moment.

Just for a moment.