Ghost

Ghost

The tattoo parlour ghost was rarely seen but people often felt its presence. Some customers claimed to have felt a cool breeze brush against their skin, sending soothing shivers down their spines. They said it lingered with them like a gentle hug that wouldn’t go until they left the building when a soft wind would carry it away from them. The non-believers attributed this to wishful thinking, but those who believed would gaze around the corners of the shop when a strange noise echoed through the space.

The ghost lived in the dimly lit back room which was cluttered with a pile of documents waiting to be filed, stacked on a three-legged stool in a corner. A heap of kitchen rolls sat on top of an old wooden desk pushed against a wall waiting to be used to dust the shop's collection of curios, take excess ink from the needles and wipe the blood from customers arms. The ghost sat on the papers and watched and waited, ready to be seen. The ghost’s clothes hung large off its pale, gaunt frame. Occasionally it left the back room to aimlessly roam the shop. It searched inside for any trace of its past, grasping at straws in a desperate attempt to remember something, anything. The harder the ghost tried, the more the emptiness consumed it. It was left with a deep sense of loss and confusion. It knew there should be memories, but they were always just out of reach.

The woman who owns the tattoo shop is its only consolation. It wishes she could place her hands on its skin and cover it in colour. The name the artist has chosen is Wren and she lives in the small decaying flat above the studios. Its walls are cracked, and the paint peels off like scabs. The wooden steps are worn smooth by years of footsteps and the floors are covered by mismatched, inherited rugs. Wren has encountered the ghost more than anyone, but she has been here longer than any other person. She started at a time when women tattooists were rare and her apprentice years were studded with crawling looks and whispered words. Intruding touches and the feel of sweating fingers on her bare arms and neck remain forged onto her skin.The ghost has never witnessed this; it had only been there since the place became full of vibrant young women who wielded their pens with tender assurance to inscribe other young people. The ghost's presence doesn't bother Wren.

The ghost is tall and thin, with sunken eyes like two dark pools of ink. Its bony frame reminds her of the skeleton hand that a fellow tattooist she once cared for gave her. It’s a right hand and when she cradles it on her own warm palms it’s pale fingers feel cold and smooth. Wren is reminded to keep going, to feel alive as she holds the bones of someone who once laughed and cried and loved and hated before they left this world. The ghost is certain that the hand does not belong to it. It has spent hours comparing it to its own. The finger bones are too short and fragile. He has traced the wrist’s carpal bones with a wispy tendril of smoke. Something about the hand's delicacy makes it inexplicably mournful. Wren often feels sad although her life is steady now. The ghost has seen her cry, it thinks it can taste the tears on its tongue, warm and salty like the ocean. An ocean it is starting to remember.

Wren has tried to speak to the ghost hoping that it hears her. The ghost doesn't know this as her words blend into the other noises that overwhelm it as they rattle muffled in its head, driving it back to his safe corner where the only sound is the creaking of plaster as it pushes himself into it, its form melting away but leaving, just for a moment, a pale, blue mist.

Wren finds comfort in the words of the Shipping Forecast. One night she is repeating the phrase ‘Thames, Humber, German Bight’, when an idea comes to her. She quickly turns to her small wardrobe that just fits into a corner of her cramped bedroom. She throws out its contents and her room is quickly in disarray as if a gale had come through her window leaving her with an avalanche of the clothes and shoes she had not the strength to part with. Wren shifts through the mess and finds the object she was looking for, an old wooden box, its surface worn and weathered with small cracks and crevices. The scent of aged wood and forgotten treasures seeped from within.

Inside lies her Great-Grandmother's Ouija board. Holding it carefully she descends the stairs to the shop below. The board is heavy in her hands, she can feel the weight of it tugging at her wrists, but she manages to clutch it tightly to her chest.

The studio at night is cold and dark, the air is heavy with the cloying stench of disinfectant making her nostrils twitch. Wren is overwhelmed by the silence, it’s as if the building is clinging to its breath waiting for her to shatter it with one tiny sound. She sits at the table she normally uses to place her inks on and clicks the switch of a small lamp that gives enough soft light to see the stained surface before lifting the lid of the box and taking out the board. It is beautiful, made of dark wood with a sheen like ice. The letters are painted with gold enamel. She grabs a water glass and turns it upside down, places it on the board. Wren begins to chant the first words that come into her head ‘Dover, Portland, Biscay. Dover, Portland, Biscay’ over and over until she slumps back in her seat in exhaustion. She has no idea that the ghost has heard her call to it, clearly, for the very first time. Whether it was due to the stillness of the night or this new, strange method of communication it couldn’t tell, however her words were familiar yet still meant nothing to it. Sadness engulfs it as he watches her turn off the light and leave the room.

Wren wakes, makes a coffee which warms her hands and ponders the events of the night before. She slowly descended the staircase and saw the Ouija board still on the table, her hands shook a little as she put down her mug and carefully picked it up returning it to its box then retreating quickly into the back when suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, Wren saw a black shadow of a figure. Its arms were outstretched as if trying to balance on top of the paperwork on the three-legged stool. They stared at each other in silence until finally the quiet was broken by the ring of the doorbell as Wren’s first customer arrived.

The client rubs her arms with her hands and clutches the sides of her chair tightly, she says she feels a presence and wonders if the parlour is haunted. Wren laughs and kindly replies that she thinks a ghost would have better things to do then hang out with her. The ghost can’t make out the words, but it senses they are talking about it and moves so close to Wren that it is between her and the customer. If the ghost were flesh he would now be covered with the tattoos that were appearing on the outstretched arm of the young woman who has felt it. Wren can feel the air crackle as the indigo stars begin to dance on her customer’s skin.