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The light drizzle sprinkled his umbrella in a symphony from the sky. A soft pitter-patter melody, tapping beats like a soothing drum, removing the need for words to fill the air.
His umbrella was a faded grey, a melancholy reflection of the teary-eyed clouds above. Its sanctuary was perfectly small, leaving the only option for he and his belle to stay dry was for his arm to drape around her shoulders and hold her close; their hearts dancing a steady rhythm, stepping the maypole within their chests, completely unaware that it was a duet.
The scent of rain tried hard to envelop them in its loving embrace, but his sharpened coal and her sweetened coffee were all that could sweep them away in the city's slumber
Then, as all things must, it ended upon the concrete steps of home. The walk far too short for either of their silent wishes, the warmth between them had chased out the freezing rain, but the space left behind was colder than a half-empty wedding bed.
“Well, this is my stop,” Marianne said shyly, stepping up to her house. “Thank you for walking me. You are very kind, Corliss.”
“Thank you for letting me.” He gave a half-bow, holding his hat so that it may not fall from his head. A playful smile danced across his face, as they both knew they were far past such formalities. “I would be no gentleman if I let you walk alone at this hour.”
She amusedly turned away, sliding the key into the door and opening it, stepping inside but lingering. “You could always stay a while if you’d like. It must be a long walk to your apartment.” She paused, blushing shyly before trying to sweeten the deal. “My parents even have a bottle of Old Forester that I could open up.”
Corliss looked up at her, wreathed in the light coming from further in the home, she looked nothing short of an angel. This was not the first time he imagined nights alone with the two of them, innocent lovers, staying up into a new dawn with only the words of the other to keep company.
But, as the light behind her flickered, so too did his will. There was nothing innocent about his love. His heart lay bloody in the winter snow, left to rot along with his first lover.
“Oh, but Miss Aldworth, what would the neighbors think? Me, coming in so late? It would be most improper.” He looked away, but not quick enough to see the dismay paint her face. His mind captured that expression like a painting, hanging it on the walls of his memories, another grief captured immortal for him to remember while failing to sleep.
“Of course, of course.” She cracked the door, partially hiding behind it, eyes unable to meet his. “I apologize, I didn’t mean to…most improper indeed.”
Corliss’s heart, which had stopped beating a decade before, sank into his stomach. Her love—so pure, tainted by his rejection. “Goodnight, Miss Aldworth. I do hope to see you again come morn.”
“Goodnight, Mister Dodd.”
Corliss stood at the base of her steps long after she shut the door. The intimacy between them, seemingly so unconditional, yet shattered so easily.
He did not blame her for it, for the rejection to cause such a stir of unpleasantries. The whims of the heart are a heavy burden, one Corliss has long since struggled to carry. Struggled between the promise he made to his first love, and the adoration he feels towards his second.
But it would be a disgrace to them both if he ever were to pursue such whims. Eloise deserves to be carried with him always, not knocked off her pedestal for another, and Marianne…
Marianne deserves someone who could love her wholly. Something Corliss never could. To give Marianne anything less would be worse than this divide between them.
He knew this, intimately so.
So why did his heart still ache?
Marianne had been right. The walk to his apartment was a long one; long as a lonely road, longer than the repeating melody of a broken record.
Longer still was the time he spent awake, stuck in the cycle that was his own mind.
Of Eloise. Of the blood that stained the cursèd war helmet he never should’ve given her. Of red snow, falling tears, and cries of ‘erbarmen’. Of a throat bloodied raw as it screamed. Of ears that ignored, and khaki uniforms that snickered as their triggers were pulled. Of a love that was never signed before a preacher but was deeper than any golden rings. Of the promise he made near a decade ago.
Of Marianne. Her smile, her laugh. How she talked as if everything was a joke waiting to be discovered. How the light of the sun seemed to seek her out to wreath her in its glow. Of compassion, and a love he stumbled clumsily through, how it was still granted to him over and over, through every mistake. How it felt when her hand entered his, and how it may feel if his lips found hers.
Then he thought of Eloise and the embrace he once shared with her, and again the cycle continued.
Through the twisting, painful, agonizing, turn of his mind, one thought remained, night after night. One he tried to ignore because surely it was his own selfish mind putting words into the mouth of one who could no longer speak for herself.
Wouldn’t Eloise want him to be happy? If even not with her?
Escaping to England was supposed to be their freedom, to break free from the chains of the war and live a life of peace. To take the things they wanted, to hold them not just in the reveries of the night.
Was he going against the wishes and dreams she died for by allowing himself to be imprisoned still by the happenings of Germany and the Great War?
He wanted Marianne.
Wanted to fill the space in his empty bed. To wake up every day and see her face. He wanted these things more than he wanted to be alive, and what would disgrace Eloise more than using her memory to wallow in his own grief? Abusing the thought of her and lying to himself about what she’d desired.
He sat up in bed, stomach lurching, causing him to make for the bathroom lest the greasy food he’d shared with Marianne expel themselves in places unwanted.
It was quick, but unpleasant, and flushed swiftly down the toilet.
And that is how he ended up in front of the mirror in the earliest hours of the morning. Cold water and sweat dripped down his face, reminding him of the cool rain and his walk with Marianne; reminding him of frozen snow and tears.
He could not continue on like this, in this same place night after night. Sick and shaking from the memories and grief, from the anger of his own actions and feelings. A tear-stained soul to match his bleeding heart.
He could not continue on like this.
So maybe it’s time he finally stopped asking, and got answers instead.
It was early when Corliss arose, earlier than even the sun, not that sleep had ever graced his weary eyes. He dug around blindly in his closet, grabbing the warmest coat he owned before departing for the first bus south.
The bus ride passed in a haze, mind still mentally elsewhere, both in past and future. It was a miracle he’d even gotten off at the right stop, as the whole journey from Bakewell to Oxford seemed like sand between his fingers.
It was late enough when he began walking that the streets were busy with morning traffic, busier still when he finally reached his destination.
The aged house before him certainly didn’t seem like a valid reason to abandon a day's work and travel several hours by bus, but as most things with Miss Merletta, things weren’t as they seemed.
Behind the tacky crystals, overgrown garden, and the Halloween-in-February decor, was a powerful medium and one he considered a dear friend.
However, at the front steps his footfall ceased, and not because of the raven knocker with ruby eyes.
What if the truth was worse than the grueling reality he had now? What if answers only added more questions? What if he’d only gain another thought to keep him awake at night?
“Miss Merletta, are you home by chance?” His voice came in weakly, quicker than his conscious mind could talk him out of it completely. He had come this far, he could take this last step.
Mercifully, there was only a short pause before the door was swung open.
A wave of recognition passed as Merletta looked him over. “Corliss? Sugar, what brings you all the way out here? Oh, baby, you should have called.” She took his hand and pulled him gently into the seating area, pushing him into a chair to close the large height difference and looking him over closely.
“I’m afraid it was rather early when I left this morning, and I didn’t want to wake you. Truthfully, I’m here over a matter I cannot rest on, one I must have answered immediately.”
“Is this about Eloise? It’s been an awful long time since you first came about her. Don’t tell me you’ve been carrying this all that time.” She placed a hand to his cheek.
His resolve was already worn weak. After having to stay so silent about his plaguing night-and-day-mares, it felt as if he was pulled from frozen waters and allowed to breathe again.
“I made a promise to her, that I’d never let her go. That promise is all I have left to carry. To break it—“ The words become stuck in his throat, the air he was just granted forced from his lungs. He took a deep breath to steady his voice. “I have failed her in so many ways, I cannot in this as well. But I refuse to use her memory in vain. I just need to know, to ask her and get answers, it will be short, I promise you, and I will pay for a full session.”
“Have you been sleeping? Eating? You look like a gust of wind could knock you right down.” Merletta’s voice was chiding, but it was adorned in a familiar concern.
“I’ve…” He swallowed visibly. “I’ve stolen bits and pieces when circumstance allows,” Corliss answered vaguely, but waved a hand to dispel that line of conversation before it could derail the more pressing matter. “But please, the best thing for me is to have this burden lifted. I just need to speak with her.”
Merletta looked at him solemnly, mouth opening as if to impart her well-worn wisdom, but she instead just watched with the same grief she’d worn when he’d shown up the first time, desperately scrapping pennies together to pay for a seance so that he may talk to Eloise.
“Please, I need this. You’re the only one who can.”
“Follow me,” She finally said softly, taking his hand and guiding him to the ritual room.
The curtains were drawn, blocking the sun outside and leaving only the dance of candlelight to illuminate the ceiling length bookshelves and circular table. It was adorned in an intricately woven green cloth, and in its center rest a swirling crystal ball.
Merletta gestured for him to take a seat, then took her own across from him. Her cool wrinkled hands took his warm and she began to chant, calling Eloise’s name then continuing in a long dead language that was little more than static in his ears.
The seconds ticked away, and for each moment longer Corliss’s heart grew a beat unsteadier, banging against his ribcage like bullet fire, pounding like the one that stole her life.
There were many who doubted the existence of a world beyond. Corliss had been among that majority until his time in the Great War; until he saw those shot and never graced with a burial in flashes of lightning where the fighting didn’t cease.
Death echoes, they’d been called. Stuck forever in the moment in which they died.
They were a rare sight, but with the death tolls in the hundreds of thousands, it was the lucky man who never saw such gruesome visages.
It was the luckier man who could scoff at such stories.
But Eloise was no such echo, they were born of those who had traumatic deaths, and sweet Eloise was dead the moment the bullet sought her skull like a starved dog seeking a warm meal.
He wondered if it had hurt, if she even realized it had happened before falling lifeless into the snow.
She’d found him before in this very room, pushed through the thin veil despite the distance from her death-place, and offered him the words he needed to hear to continue on.
So where was she when he needed her most?
Why did Merletta stop in her incantation?
Why, then, did her eyes open to look to his apologetically? Why did she pull away, guilt framing her voice as she spoke?
“I’m… sorry.“
“No,” he whispered.
“I cannot feel her presence at all.”
“Please, you must try again,” he begged.
“The spirit world is… tricky, if you maybe stay in town a few days, I can try again, but Corliss, you may need to simply move on.”
Corliss’s hands found the tablecloth, gripping it tightly as if that alone may ground him. “I cannot. This is drowning me under its weight, I cannot so simply let it go. Eloise—“
“Would never want you to go through this because of her,” Merletta cut through calmly, a steady tone to brace his shaken.
“But I don’t know. I know nothing of what she’d ask of me, her memory is tainted by my own desires. And I—“ Corliss felt his throat close again, because the undeniable reality was that Merletta’s words held a heavy weight. She herself had been the channel for Eloise so many years prior, for a few brief minutes she lived as Eloise once did, memories and desires intertwined as her own.
“Her image will always be shaped by you, because she isn’t here anymore, and the memories you carry are nothing compared to the person she was.” Corliss closed his eyes, tears stinging nearly as bad as the sharp blade of the truth, eased in no way even with the gentleness in which Merletta spoke. “I have seen many people obsess over those who aren’t here anymore, and it destroys them. You have too much ahead of you to ruin yourself like this over her. She is dead, Corliss. You are not. But how you’re carrying on isn’t living, you need to free yourself and live.”
A long silence hung between them. The words tried desperately to pick through his resolve and sink into something forming belief, but his iron grip on the grief-formed walls couldn’t listen so easily to reason.
“I think I must take my leave now.” The chair scratched audibly against the floor, nearly toppling over with the speed in which he stood. Corliss took a deep breath, forcing a genuine look of gratitude, as it was not Merletta’s fault that the seance failed. “Thank you for trying, even though neither of us quite got the results we’d hoped for.”
His feet quickly found the path to the door, and Merletta followed silently.
She ended up refusing a payment, accepting only a hug and a promise to return soon. As he pulled away to depart, she squeezed on tighter and spoke.
“The spirits work in mysterious ways, I don’t want to give you false hope, Sugar. But just because she didn’t answer you here, it doesn’t mean she has nothing to say,” Merletta said, pulling away to watch him closely. “I can keep trying, if you stay in town for a few days. It feels wrong to send you away with nothing after you came so far.”
“It is a kind offer, but I did not inform my boss I was leaving. If I’m gone more than a day, I risk not having a job to return to.” Corliss took a deep breath, attempting to smile at the semblance of a joke. “Thank you, truly. It’s nice to just have someone who—who knows, about Eloise. Someone I can talk to.”
“My doors are open anytime to you, okay? No session needed. I always need more people to just share tea with.”
Corliss smiled more genuinely this time, promising more earnestly to return before long, then began his walk back to the bus stop. As he did he checked his coat pockets for his lighter, wondering if he’d forgotten it in the daze of the early morning.
Not his right pocket, nor his left, not his inner—
His fingers found an envelope. He pulled it out, gears turning in his head.
How odd… I haven’t worn this coat since…
‘An Mutti und Vatti’
Since…
It really had been so long since he could bear the weight of this coat, hadn’t it?
A long forgotten promise to send these words to Eloise’s parents once they reached safer land. After her... After he’d been so stricken with grief it lay entirely abandoned in this very pocket. The reminder of what this coat had seen kept him from dawning it again, and in his haze he’d simply… forgotten.
His fingers were tearing open the sealed envelope before his conscious mind could intervene. These words were not for his eyes, but after so many years, so depraved—he had to know, had to see the final piece she’d left behind.
His eyes scanned over the page, mind translating the German so naturally even after having abandoned his home tongue for so long.
‘Mother, Father,
Firstly, I beg you to forgive me. I know I left you suddenly, and without a proper goodbye. Believe me when I say that it was not wholly by my own choosing, the circumstances that compelled me are not ones I want to commit to paper, nor ones I want you to see and cast judgment for. Farewell is the hardest sorrow, a burden I could never perform in person, which is why this letter is all I leave for you. What I must make clear, above all else, is that you bear no fault in this. You gave me a love so steadfast that it will never flee my heart, and if I can do anything in this world it will be sharing that gift with others.
I have gone on to a better place, far kinder than the weary world we call home, and I am blessed to not walk it alone. I have found the gentlest and truest of lovers, one whom I will be devoted to until my last breath. So do not grieve for me. Do not keep awake in the night, hoping for the sound of my step, for I will not be returning home. Instead, I ask you to live as free as I am now, secure in the knowledge that I am more happy than I could ever be in Germany. Let your days be filled with laughter and light. If you would honor me, let it be by your joy.
I shall miss you more with each passing day, and I carry you ever in my heart.
Your dearest daughter,
Eloise’
The paper began to wrinkle in his clenched hands. His knees weakened until he fell onto them. Tears stung his eyes then wet his cheeks, and oh, no one could make him cry like Eloise could. A band tightened his chest, but the words struck deep into his core.
“Danke, Liebste,” he whispered, holding tightly to the letter and to the memories before slowly letting them go. He tucked the letter back into the envelope with the promise he’d send it, and a letter of his own explaining the truth to its intended recipient, then he continued on with purpose this time.
It was late by the time Corliss made it back to Bakewell.
For the first time in… well maybe ever, his mind was clear. Not burdened by the looming threat of war, or grief, or survival. He simply saw the path ahead and it seemed so bright. He finally let go of that snowy scene, finally stopped letting it freeze him to the core. His heart could thaw and accept the warmth Marianne continuously granted him despite how stubbornly he remained in the cold.
When the neon lights of the diner washed over him, it was like the heavens opened their gates.
Marianne was wiping off one of the tables, face scrunched in focus and fatigue, hearing the bell of the door she called over her shoulder.
“I’ll be with you in a moment!”
“Oh, please, take your time,” Corliss replied back.
Upon hearing his voice, she immediately faced him. Her hands smoothed out her apron furiously, and a hand tucked her messy hair behind her ear.
“Corliss! You didn’t come this morning. I thought after last night… I’m sorry, I should never have suggested it—”
Corliss barely heard her words, focused only on stopping them. The apologies, the fear, he wanted to silence it before it could whisper one more lie into her ear.
He took her by the waist and pulled her lips against his. It was sparks and fire, like when his heart beat with innocent love for the first time in that forgotten tent as a war raged around them.
He broke the kiss, only because he was so desperate to say words echoing in his skull.
“I wanted nothing more than to join you last night.” He admitted, laughing and tearful. “I want to spend days and nights by your side, to have drinks and watch movies and do all the things lovers do.” Corliss’ breath escaped him, emotion welling within him again. “I want you more than I want breath in my lungs. I want you more than a thousand suns and a thousand heavens. Please, allow me to hold you, to love you with everything I am.”
Marianne’s eyes reflected the lights of the diner, looking like a galaxy of stars as she looked up at him.
“I don’t understand. Why now? What changed?”
“You… you make my heart jump and dance in my chest, Marianne, and I didn’t know what that would mean for the two of us. I’m not… good at this, at love, but I want to try, to love you, and I finally like I can. I finally feel like I’m free to just love you, with all that I am.”
“Well, then, my shift is over soon. Would you like to walk me home, and stay for whiskey?” Marianne asked, looking up at him.
“Oh Miss Aldworth, I would love nothing more.”