Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

“We should call Mr. Roche,” they said in unison, and laughed.

Julia said, “Jinx.”

Valentina said, “I’m better now.” Then she had the feeling she often had lately, of being watched. Sometimes it went away; she hadn’t felt it up on the hill. She turned and looked around, but they were alone on the street except for a young woman pushing a pram with a sleeping baby in it. The houses shut them out with blank narrow faces, windows curtained. The twins walked down some steps to the path along the Regent’s Canal; the canal was placid, with wide paths on each bank. The houses loomed over them in strange perspective, as though they were walking underneath a transparent street. Cold fat raindrops fell sporadically. Valentina kept looking over her shoulder. There was a teenage boy on a bike; he rode past them without a glance. Someone was keeping pace with them on the street above. Valentina could hear footsteps crunching alongside them as they walked.

Julia noticed Valentina’s unease. “What is it?”

“You know.”

Julia was about to say the same thing she’d been saying for days, which was: That’s crazy, Mouse. But suddenly she became aware of the footsteps too. She looked up. There was nothing to see but the wall and the railing and the houses. She stopped walking and so did Valentina. The footsteps continued, one two three four, then stopped. The water had exaggerated the footsteps; now their absence was enlarged by the canal lapping at its cement banks. Julia and Valentina stood facing each other, heads tilted to catch the sound. They waited and the footsteps waited. The twins turned and walked back the way they’d come. The footsteps walked on, away from them, hesitated, and then continued, growing faint as they moved away.

The twins came to the steps. They ascended to the street. In the distance was a man in a long overcoat, walking away from them hurriedly. Valentina frowned. Julia said, “Do you want to go home?”

Yes, but not in the way you mean. “No,” said Valentina. She had the feeling more intensely inside the flat. “Let’s go to the V &A and look at Queen Caroline’s clothes.”

“Okay,” said Julia. They stopped while Julia consulted the A-Z . Valentina stood watching, but whatever it was had gone.

Elspeth felt that she was on the verge of a breakthrough. She had been giving serious thought to haunting. There’s a balance between the aesthetics and the practical side of it. I’ve been muddling around trying to do the things living people do, messing with objects and such. But I can do things they can’t do: I can fly and pass through walls and blow out TVs. I’m not exactly matter so I must be energy. Elspeth wished she’d paid more attention to physics. Most of her knowledge of the hard sciences came from quiz shows and crossword puzzles. If I’m energy, then what? She didn’t understand why Valentina seemed to be able to sense her while Julia couldn’t. But Elspeth redoubled her efforts: she followed Valentina around the flat, turning lights on and off. Valentina complained to Julia about the old wiring and worried that the building was going to burn down. When the twins were out Elspeth gave herself exercises to do: cast a shadow, make a Tesco’s receipt float a few inches off the dining-room table. (She couldn’t manage either task.) She imagined grand tableaux: I’ll pull all the books off the shelves, break all the windows, play the “Maple Leaf Rag” on the piano. But she was too weak to sound even one note. She walked over the piano keys, stomping as hard as she could in her yellow Doc Martens. The keys depressed a few millimetres; she thought she heard the strings whisper, but really there was nothing at all. She was more successful with doors; if the hinges were well oiled she could close a door by leaning against it and pushing with all her might.

So she kept practising. If I’d worked out this hard when I was alive I could have lifted a MINI Cooper. The results were gradual, but definite. The most effective thing Elspeth did was simply to stare at Valentina.

Valentina didn’t like it. She seemed to pick up on Elspeth’s emotional states. But even when Elspeth tried to project brightness and smiles, Valentina was uneasy. She would look around, get up and move, abandoning her book, taking her cup of tea to some other room. Sometimes Elspeth followed her and sometimes she let her escape. Elspeth tried staring at Julia, just to be fair, but Julia was impervious.

One morning Elspeth came upon them at breakfast in the dining room. As she entered the room Valentina was speaking. “-I don’t know, it’s like, a ghost, just, you know, a presence. Like someone’s there.” Valentina looked around the room, which was bright with morning sun. “It’s here now. It wasn’t a minute ago.”

Julia obediently cocked her head and sat still, trying to feel the ghost. Then she shook her head and said, “Nope.”

Do something, Elspeth thought. She was excited because Valentina had actually used the word ghost. Elspeth walked behind Julia’s chair and bent over her, wrapped her arms around Julia’s shoulders and placed her hands over Julia’s heart. Julia let out a little shriek and exclaimed, “Yowza!” Elspeth let go of her and Julia huddled in her chair, shivering.

“What?” said Valentina, alarmed.

“It just got super cold in here. Didn’t you feel it?”

Valentina shook her head and said, “It’s the ghost.” Elspeth ran her fingers up Valentina’s arm. She was afraid to embrace Valentina the way she had just done to Julia; she wasn’t sure Valentina’s heart would stand it. Valentina rubbed her arm and said, “It is kind of draughty in here.” Both of them sat concentrating, waiting. Now, it’s now or never. Elspeth scanned the room for anything delicate enough for her to move. She managed a slight quivering of Valentina’s spoon against her teacup. The twins sat watching it, looking at each other, then back to the spoon. Elspeth illuminated the lightbulbs in the wall sconces. The room was bright and the twins didn’t see her do it so she went back to rattling the spoon.

“Well?” said Valentina.

Julia said, “I don’t know. What do you think?” Humour her.

“Something’s going on.”

“Ghosts?”

Valentina shrugged. Elspeth felt a surge of delight: We’re on the verge. Valentina said, “It’s happy.”

“How do you know?” Julia asked.

“Because I suddenly felt happy, except I’m not happy. It was like it came from outside me.”

“At least it’s not a mean ghost. You know, like in Poltergeist, where they put the house on top of the cemetery,” Julia said. She looked at Valentina doubtfully.

“You think it’s something from the cemetery?” Valentina imagined a vaporous slimy dead thing climbing over the cemetery wall, up the side of the house and into their flat. “Ugh.” She stood up, ready to flee.

“This is getting weird,” Julia said. “Let’s go out.” Julia could see that the Mouse was freaking; it would be better to get moving, to go outside.

Valentina said, “We’re going out, ghost. Please don’t follow us, I hate it when you do that.”

What are you talking about? I never leave the flat. Elspeth watched the twins as they dressed and then followed them to the front door. Valentina said, “Bye, ghost,” in a voice tinged with hostility, and let the door slam in Elspeth’s face. She tried not to take it personally.

T HE FOLLOWING night it snowed. Valentina and Julia walked carefully down the icy path that led from South Grove to Vautravers. There was only half an inch of snow, but they were wearing smooth-soled leather shoes, and the path descended at an angle that made walking without traction an adventure. They were discussing whether clearing the path was their problem or their neighbours’. St. Michael’s wall threw the path into shadow. Above them the night sky was bright; the full moon and the snow had turned Highgate Village into a glittering fairyland. Julia was smoking a cigarette. Its orange tip floated a few inches from her shadowed face, bobbing along as they walked, then arcing down as Julia took it from her lips and blew the invisible smoke above her head. Valentina was annoyed; Julia would smell like smoke in bed, and her breath would reek in the morning. But she didn’t say anything. Valentina figured if she kept quiet about it, Julia wouldn’t start smoking all the time just to bug her. Just then Julia inhaled too deeply and had to stop and cough for a minute. Valentina stood staring past Julia’s hacking frame and it was then that she saw a small white thing scurrying through the ivy, straight up the church’s wall. It was about the size of a squirrel, and Valentina wondered if they had white squirrels here in London. Then she thought of the ghost, and her throat contracted. The thing darted towards the top of the wall and then seemed to hang there, as though it knew it was being watched. Julia stopped coughing and straightened up.