( december 1st )

They have had the moat filled in.

Moving through earth is tiresome and suffocating, she would rather drown three times over in water every night than drag herself through the dirt of times to which she doesn't belong. It tastes stale on her tongue when she breathes, crumbling down her throat, dusting her lungs. The earth is heavy where it sticks to her garments, caking in every little crease and seam. Where she treads, it turns to mud.

She always awakens in a grave that isn't truly hers, it's not wet enough by far anymore.

( december 2nd )

In the village, rumour has it, Erik Becker moved here, to rural Jutland from urban Copenhagen, because his wife suffers from melancholia and needs plenty of fresh air which is the only thing that truly thrives in these parts. Harvests are meagre, people are poor. It takes two years to renovate the buildings, another year for the couple to fully relocate. Caroline Becker's first walk around the Rosengaard gardens doesn't happen until late October, the year of grace 1885.

Autumn becomes the place. The branches of the trees are weighed down by fruit, apples like gemstones in the low-hanging sun. She takes a deep breath.

( december 3rd )

Not once since she awoke, did she dare turn her back on the fireplace, lit and crackling in the cold of December as it was. Her cheeks were burning, her lips felt parched. The tightness of her skin seemed only to worsen.

"By the mercy of God, Lord Rosengaard, your daughter has survived," said the doctor from behind a half-closed door. A ray of golden afternoon sunlight was crawling across the floor and hurt her eyes.

Is it God, then, she thought and inhaled noisily, so her father quickly shut the door to her chambers, who pours spices and fumes down my lungs?

The voices of the two men, debating her future in no certain terms, were now so muted, she couldn't make out any intelligible answer.

( december 4th )

There is a night owl in the tree and below it, her form in the thick mists lapping upon the slopes like quieter waves, from the darkness beneath them, she emerges. As she follows the outer walls of the manor, the moonlight weaves her in and out of existence. One moment, she is a vision to behold, the next she is stepping through stone and seen first on the other side of it.

Crossing the courtyard, under an endlessly waxing, then waning celestial body, she looks threadbare by degrees. As if every great or little thing she ever passed through has kept its own piece of her.

( december 5th )

In the village, they say, Caroline Becker talks to the deceased, that she won't let them rest in peace as any good Christian should and they are pious in these parts, if nothing else.

The boys run after her whenever she passes the church and the old cemetery in extension of it to go into town. They are hoping to see her gifts at work, at one and the same time excited and frightened that she might raise the dead on their watch.

Caroline Becker doesn't raise the dead, though, except in her dreams, when the old grief gets too overwhelming and leaves her bedridden for days. She simply knows they are still present, those spirits of the past and she can feel, the manor is alive too, it has a history.

A pulse, calming her.

( december 6th )

They left her in her chambers for months, she lost count of the days, only knew that at noon the doctor would pay his daily visit. Sister Gertrud, he repeated himself, tend to the girl's dressings - and the nurse had such lovely hands, but every layer of gauze removed was like skin peeled off and when she cried, her smoke-stung eyes would burn.

One day, this ritual could finally be repeated in front of a vermeil mirror, handheld, although not for long. See, they said.

When she screamed, her voice was so raw, it sounded exactly as sore-infested as she looked and the mirror broke upon the parquet floors, every soul within it escaping.

( december 7th )

The hallways of the west wing are abundant with mirrors. Like portraits of the current, among hundreds of pictures in crackling paint of former inhabitants who look aged now, when bathed in sunlight, worse so when shrouded in night.

For every mirror she passes, it fogs up, vapour wetting its surface, droplets sliding down the glass and leaving trails behind that lead nowhere. She carries onwards relentlessly, following in her own footsteps a century back and stopping only briefly by the hole in the line-up, framed girls in profile against dark backdrops. Someone has hung a mirror where she should be.

The waters of the moat have filled it, so she sees nothing but mire and mud.

( december 8th )

On the dining table, a single candelabra has been left alight, five small flames the only guard against the shadows filling the room. It's past midnight. The paper in front of her is blank, until she puts her pen to it and writes the first sentence.

Where are you?

The chalkboards are bound together with string, front to front, a hard parcel left off to the side, out of reach. When Caroline leans over for them and loosens the knot, revealing the insides, a word has appeared in childlike handwriting.

Here.

She asks again, where are you? Four times. The same answer. Finally, Caroline Becker who does not awaken the dead unwraps the chalkboards and smashes them on the floor with a scream.

( december 9th )

Time became a fluid entity, the only fixture the pain in every of her cells, her overwrought nervous system, scars healing and pulling her skin too tightly around her bones. Some days, she would walk ten steps about her room before collapse, others she would make it down the hallway, always halting in front of her portrait. The beautiful girl she once was.

The fall was greater there. It hurt more.

Her parents were advised to remove all paintings of her, for there were many, so as not to aggravate her further, but she begged them to let her stay, please.

I do not want to be forgotten.

( december 10th )

She spends the days forgetting how it feels to ascend the stairs, she remembers only running, tumbling, falling down its steps.

Up, she leaves trails of mud and stale water, she leaves dirt and death behind. How it smells like years gone by, she is faded like them. Away, away.

Climbing the staircase may take a lifetime, one that she repeats every night, but likewise landing at its bottom nearly robbed her of her life, first. As her grave may be in the moat, it is still here the certainties she held most dear lie buried, beneath these newly changed rugs.

The stairs carry the echoes of it. It carries the echo of her now, too.

( december 11th )

The housemaid overhears them and relays every word to the villagers who don't know what to believe and thus, believe the worst as is common in these parts.

"She is here, Erik," says Caroline Becker over breakfast, touching none of it, not even the hardboiled eggs that have been made to her specifications.

Erik Becker is not an easy man to unsettle. He eats his daily bread graciously, gets to his feet and replies, "then tell her hello from me, my darling."

Nearly an hour, she sits alone by the table, staring into space, pale as the dead she is said to awaken. Once she rises, the housemaid takes out the food quietly, hardboiled eggs still unshelled.

( december 12th )

The news of your great tragedy have reached me, he wrote, meaning our great tragedy. The letter crumbled from the strength with which she was grabbing it.

And although you will continue to be in my prayers, I feel I would do us both a disservice, he wrote, to continue our arrangements as hitherto planned.

She could not carry on, but called her maid and had her read the rest aloud.

I shall need a strong, capable wife to manage my estates, he wrote, meaning beautiful, a beautiful wife. However, I wish you well in your future endeavours, he signed off, in humility.

Despite how she had vowed never again to touch fire, she burned his letter to ashes.

( december 13th )

All the manor is theatrical in its style, except the east wing, it is a little less. Baroque meets neoclassical, they didn't finish the new quarters until 1809. She never went there in life. Now, she never goes there in death. The doors, even when open, prevent her, her footfalls sound until that borderline, then they fall silent and go still. She stands in the divide for very long, looking at the place she cannot access, the things she cannot touch, longing for the sunrise that she will never again see.

Everything began in the east wing and because everything begins there, it is where she ends.

They have moved her portrait. It doesn't belong in those rooms, but there it is, her name and her face, out of reach. She breathes hard into the overlap between curvaceousness and columns, you will hear her presence like bodiless gasps, ah, ah, ah.

( december 14th )

One day she walks a familiar hallway and she is no longer alone, someone else is walking it, too. Someone else is restless and knows not sleep. Sleep knows not her or them, in the plural. They are foreigners in the night, but not of the night.

Caroline Becker does not disturb the quiet when she sees her, she makes no sound of surprise, only her singular breathing echoes, coldly, between the walls, ah, ah, ah.

"Who are you," she whispers finally as the other draws nearer. Ghostly limbs pass through her body like she is a barrier to cross, dew forming on her skin, trickling down, running. She is frozen. A little piece of Caroline's own spirit clings to the muddy hem of shapeless skirts while her fellow nightwalker strides onwards, leaving nothing but wet surfaces behind.

No answers offered. Only holes where she was.