A Comforting Memory

The intruder met her gaze with eyes that widened in a silent scream. To her surprise, his fear wasn’t the embarrassment of someone caught where they shouldn’t be, but a crippling terror that left the man trapped under blankets that might have been cement. If her porcelain face could have emoted, it would have twisted in offense. The audacity to sleep in her bed and look at her like that. No one had ever looked at her like that, but then again, no one had looked at her in a long time. She loomed over the intruder, waiting for an excuse, an apology, anything. But the man only stared as a tension spread across his body. His eyes darted, as every muscle fought against the unbreakable paralysis that overwhelmed him.

She thought it a peculiar condition, and ventured to demand answers from the stranger, but her pale lips never parted. It’d been so long since last she spoke, perhaps she’d forgotten how. While the soft contours of her doll-like face harbored none of the man’s tension, it lacked the expressive elasticity as well, leaving her visage as frozen as the man’s body. Even her eyes failed to convey emotion, only glowing a little brighter at her anger.

The man continued to tense, so much so, that her anger vanished at the realization something was wrong. She leaned over him, wiping away the sweat from his forehead with a hand like finely chiseled marble and just as cold. The stress in his eyes grew and his futile struggling only worsened.

Franklin.

The name appeared in her mind like a distant relative boldly greeting her as if they were anything other than strangers. Laying in a cot that was no longer her bed, the intruder changed into this mysterious Franklin she knew so well, yet not at all. Her room melted away. Victorian architecture faded to a large stained tent once the color of her white apron that bore a red cross at its center. They were no longer alone. Packed tightly up and down the endless fabric walls were cots filled with groaning men, overflow from Somme. The harder she looked the more indistinct they became. It was only when she looked down at Franklin that her peripheral gave them any shape at all.

Franklin stared up at her. His gaze filled with the same silent terror as the intruder. It was that stare she remembered. That pitiful silent plea she’d never bothered to answer. Among all the men in her charge, all the faceless victims of German shells, it was Franklin she remembered. The only one who stayed quiet through the nights. The only one she could bare to ignore. It wasn’t until the night those eyes stared without fear that she realized, in a twisted way, he’d been her favorite. He wasn’t the first body she’d had taken away, but afterward, she couldn’t help but wish she’d done more to comfort the man in his final moments.

The memory vanished and she was back in England. Back at her family’s manor. Back in her room. Franklin was gone, but his fear remained in the face of the stranger. Her lips couldn’t offer a comforting word, nor could her hands even offer the reassuring warmth of living flesh, but this didn’t stop her. She sat next to him and offered a frigid hand, occasionally wiping the sweat away from his forehead. He tensed at her every touch, but she stayed with him until the orange rays of the early morning sun crept over the gray forest and seeped through the windows. The sunlight pierced her, replacing her color with a translucence so perfect, she wondered if she existed at all.

The intruder awoke soon after and sat at the edge of the bed for a long while, breathing as if he’d just finished a sprint. The next few nights were much the same. A few hours after he’d fall asleep, his eyes would shoot open and drunkenly scan the room, where they’d find her waiting for him. He’d spend his mornings writing about her in a journal he kept on her nightstand. Invisibly looking over his shoulder, she tried to smile when she’d read about the beautiful woman that haunted his dreams. She didn’t much care for the word ‘haunted’ but she took the compliment regardless. More interlopers descended upon her home that evening. She’d have been furious if not for the smiles they brought to her charge’s face. And while she didn’t appreciate the careless handling of her estate, when they were done and the dust settled, she couldn’t help but be pleased with the shine of the floor and the clarity of the windows, despite them washing her out further.

After the house was cleaned, she stayed by his side. Each night she comforted him through his terrors, ever thinking of Franklin. Little by little his terrors faded to irregularity, but during an episode, a ghostly hand offered a cold but genuine comfort.

A month went by without a night terror. She kept vigil from the foot of the bed, half her attention on him, the other half on the ethereal strand of gold coiling through her room and out the window, trailing high into the cloudy heavens. It had arrived shortly after Nathan, but then, it was only a wisp of tangled sunlight, now, it illuminated the room with gentle radiance. It was time. Taking one last look at Nathan’s peaceful sleep, her porcelain face cracked and fell away, revealing a beautiful smile underneath. Reaching up to the golden stand with warm fingers, she grasped her fate and followed it home. 

With a vitality that only came from good sleep, Nathan woke early and invited his friend Max to finally explore the basement of his new estate. For hours the two men dug through antiques, furniture, and assorted possessions of the previous tenets. Max, more a history enthusiast than himself, found a box of old picture frames that captured his attention.

He whistled, gesturing him over, “She’s quite the looker, isn’t she?”

Nathan blinked twice and pulled the dusty frame closer, studying it relentlessly. Even in the modest attire of a WW1 nurses’ uniform, there was no mistaking that serenely beautiful face.

“What is it?” asked Max.

“Nothing,” he smiled, “I just… feel like I’ve seen her before.”