When Past and Present Collides

Fiercely controlling
the compulsion to let
her gaze spiral beyond

control, she remained
fixated on her erstwhile
suitor sitting bolt upright

beside her in mid-serenade.
His unseen hands, gliding
on the bed of ivory at his

fingertips. The pungent
aroma of a perfume unknown
to her, assaulting her senses,

in a barrage of jealousy.
For what had been meant
to be a quiet afternoon of

leisure, touring the grounds
of Wilmington Manor, an
elegant display of Victorian

architecture, built in the latter
years of the American Revolution,
she found it to be anything but.

Its noble past gleamed in the
evening twilight, apparent by its
columned entrances.

Walking through the living room,
she marveled at the array of
antique furnishings, seemingly

untouched, despite the passage
of time. As a journalist, researching
local legends regarding the colonial

section of Charleston, South Carolina,
Serena Blake found herself drawn to
one legend in particular. An ethereal

pianist to be precise. Legend had it
that the ghost of one Colonel
John Wainwright killed himself in the

grand ballroom after discovering the
lifeless body of his beloved wife, Amelia.
Her skull, apparently fractured.

He was rumored to haunt the grounds,
most of the sightings occurring around
the parlor piano. The very place he

proposed to his would-be-bride.
Completely unaware of Amelia's presence,
he routinely mistakes female visitors for her.

No doubt, infuriating his one true love
“Ghosts simply have no place in our reality,
Serena, not in this house, nor in any other”

her father would reassure her on those
fevered nights he would find her huddled in
the corner of her bedroom, pearls of sweat

beading from her forehead. 
“Surely, they were drop-dead drunk!”
she thought, pouring over page after page

of delusion and paranoia. Yet, on that night,
she scarcely denied that her childhood fears
had come true. Her father had been wrong.

Dead wrong! On that night, it was almost as if
she could feel a stir of echoes igniting the
surrounding air, almost to the brink of asphyxiation.

Somehow, she knew that that any overt action
on her part to pull away would be met by icy stares.
So, there she sat; what little remained of her
resolve, trailing into silence.