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There's a peculiar stench to places such as this one, like ash and burning petroleum, like fires started on top of weathered rubber in old junkyards.
It reeks like death.
Crimson is a curious color, because crimson is red like nothing else-- red like fresh fruit and fresh life against a dark backdrop, red like wearied rust dried into peeling wallpaper. Crimson is red like a ferocious anger and vengeance, and red like a vicious desperation-- the kind that accompanies capitulation. Crimson is red like blood and Charlie sees it every corner she turns, smells it on every wall, in every memory.
In fact, she sees crimson dappled on the clothes of a little girl gazing at her in the middle of the hallway, expression so unassumingly staid-- childlike-- she finds it tragic.
Charlie had long, dark hair, but in this place she wanders only as an apparition with spindly fingers and an ebony body crawling up shadows looming on ceilings and walls. She chooses to stay in this home because if she wakes up in a body that is her own and feels the unhealing wounds in her neck she will cry.
But in places such as this one, her tears mean the least out of them all.
(She can't let herself cry.)
The girl isn't scared of her, just stares longingly with lovely blue eyes that hold the sadness of something she knows she can't comprehend, because it was the sadness of love and even though she loved her father, and she loved the man who visits her room every midnight to play lovely twinkling music, and the children who she saved that despite their hardship smile through their tears, Charlie can't remember the last time she's felt love for someone who was taken away from her life entirely.
She weeps for the girl. She knows she's stuck here.
"Hello. Do you want to tell me your name?"
The girl pauses for a minute, her expression changing. She's surprised-- surprised someone would talk to her out of years of isolation.
"It's no problem at all, miss. My name's Elizabeth."
"That's such a lovely name, Elizabeth. Can I call you Lizzie?" At that, the girl's expression changed again, far more solemn this time, never leaving Charlie's own gaze but still harbouring their inherent sadness, something she knew had been there for a long time but once never was.
"Daddy called me Lizzie. Please call me Lizzie."
"Of course, Lizzie. Why are you here? Does it get lonely?" Spirits don't like small talk, she's noticed over some uncanny encounters. Much easier to ask questions calmly and straightforward.
"Of course it gets lonely, miss, but I don't want to leave. Miss, what's your name?"
"My name's Charlie, darling. Don't be afraid of me, okay? Why don't you want to leave?" Charlie's tone softens as she realizes this girl really had no malicious intent; seldom do spirits ever have fully malicious intent.
"I was never scared of you. I want to stay here because daddy's here. I love daddy. He never sees me, but he comes here to work on the nice girl he built to look just like me. Charlie, please don't leave me, please...not like daddy did. I don't want to be alone. It's so lonely here. It's such a terrible feeling. Everyone left me." Elizabeth looks like she wants to cry, but has long ago since learned the futility of that.
"I know how it feels, Lizzie. Can I touch you? I will never leave you, Lizzie. You'll never be alone again." Elizabeth nods at the inquiry, and Charlie reaches in for a hug. Though she wonders about the things said about her father. Building children who look like ginger girls with pigtails and lovely eyes, pallid cheeks she knows were once rosy.
Charlie almost wants to weep at this revelation, for her, for this young girl, for her father.
Elizabeth's dress is cold, as if it hadn't been worn in decades.
She knows if she talks about the awful, dreadful things that've reared their heads from what Elizabeth's father has done since she's died it would ruin the young girl for as long as she's trapped down here, as long until some hopeless savior meanders into the room of death and frees her. Charlie knows she can't tell sweet Lizzie about the wound in her neck warmth dripping down her collarbones in her nightmares for all eternity, can't tell her about the scent of rotting flesh inside steel.
She's already known that ugly feeling, helplessness, too much already.
"My daddy talked about a Charlie sometimes. When he talks to his friend he talks about Charlotte." Charlie's mask is hollow and she can't shed tears, but she feels the same heavy phantom pain well up in her throat when Elizabeth mentions her father. Tears are meaningless now, remember?
(She can't let herself cry.)
"Did he? When he talks to his friend?"
"No, not his friend, sorry, miss. He didn't like him that much." Maybe her father and Elizabeth's father might have been friends one time, but time on days gone long ago means nothing to either of them.
"He didn't like my daddy very much, Lizzie."
"Oh, you're the Charlotte daddy's friend talks about! Oh...I'm sorry. My daddy doesn't like many people."
"He loved you."
(And for a moment she's almost jealous that a father might love a daughter enough to burn entire buildings to the ground for her.)
"Yes. And I love daddy."
"I know. What a good girl you are, Lizzie. Do you want another hug?"
Elizabeth starts to cry. It pains her to see girls cry with sallow faces and sunken eyes and beautiful red hair matted with misery, so Charlie takes her into her arms once again and squeezes so tightly it seems like she might never let go again.
If she lets go she might just slip through her fingertips, like dust through bitter wind, or blood down storm drains in icy rain.
She is never going to let anyone slip away ever again.