Nameless

He used to see her when he was asleep - her graceful, tiny form stepping from slippery stone to slippery stone. She always walked that dangerous bridge, her pale white dress blowing out limply behind her. Sometimes, she held a compass in her hand, and it had a red arrow on it that always pointed back the direction from which she came. Her face was white, almost grey, a frightened, frightening color. She was thin beyond slender; sometimes he could see her blue veins pulsing slightly from beneath her damp skin. She never spoke, and at times he almost went mad trying to imagine her voice.

She came, every night, as if his subconsious was on a schedule he had no control over. Each time, she stepped bare-footed from stone to stone, watching the water. The water was grey and thin, if water can be perceived as thin. It rippled under the pressure of an unheard and unfelt wind, blowing against her. He knew that if her balance slipped, she would fall into the water, and he somehow knew that if she did, he would never see her again.

His dreams of her had become almost an insane comfort. He grew steadily more uneasy until he was asleep, until he could see her face, her unspeaking lips. The first time he saw her was the summer of his first real crush, and since then she had visited him in his dreams, every single night, until he felt her absence when he was awake.

A passion of his had been painting, ever since he was a child. It was an unspoken assumption that he would be attending college for art, and all the little things parents do to help you on your way were not unnoticed by him. Everything seemed to lead to the encouragement of continuing his painting. He did not mind, in fact, it eased his life.

The second year of the dreams passed, and things began to change. She now opened her eyes - had he never noticed that her eyes were closed before? -  and they were a startling green-gray. They looked as if someone was pouring emotion into them constantly, and yet, owing to the great depth of her eyes, they had never been filled. They were such a pale, but striking color. His insides recoiled uncertainly when he saw her eyes, and the next night he forced himself to stay awake so he would not have to see her.

But she had become a part of his life now, and he could not remove himself from her. She haunted his memories, he heard the soft stepping of her feet as they went gracefully from stone to stone, he felt the clammy coldness of the air. He saw the compass she held, almost carelessly, the red arrow pointing back to where she came from. When he allowed himself to close his eyes and see in his mind's eye his dream, her eyes would appear, staring at him, and he would quickly turn his mind to other thoughts.

Third year of her visits, he happened to be dating a girl named Lila, who he liked very much. She was a sweet little thing, always there when he needed to rant, always smiling, never shed a tear. Top of her class at school, she was an athlete, she danced, she sang, she acted. The only thing she didn't do was paint. She was very polite, however, and always pretended to be highly interested in his paintings, but she hadn't much of an imagination. He learned quickly that it is not easy to explain what comes from one's own mind.

At this point, his dreams took an erie turn. The girl would walk serenly over the water, as she always had, only the compass would fall from her hands into the depths. She would stop. Her empty eyes dropped to the water, and she watched the ripples fade away. The water was unspeakably deep. He was afraid she would jump in, to try to retrieve her compass. Her pale, tattered dress blew lazily in the stale breeze, and he could that she was shivering. And she would smile, as she stared down into the water - a cool, terrifying smile. She would look straight at him, straight at him with that ghastly smile, and lift one foot from the stone...

Each night, he awoke damp with sweat, shaking uncontrollably.

He began to paint her. Never could he get it right, but he drew the scene over and over and over again, filling his room with canvases. He finished each one, even if he knew that it was somehow incorrect. Her eyes gave him trouble, but something else always seemed to be missing when he thought he had completed it. At first, he always painted the compass in, with the arrow pointing stubbornly back. After the seventeenth attempt, he began to leave the compass out, since every night, it slipped out of her fingers. He tried to draw the compass just beneath the surface, as if it had just landed there. He tried to draw her eyes closed. He tried to draw the scene at night. It was always incomplete.

Lila surveyed his work with feigned interest. She traced her finger along the nameless girl's face, and asked him who she was.

"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I dream about her every night."

Suddenly Lila was intruiged. She had him tell her about everything - the girl, how she dressed, how often she had been holding the compass, what sounds he heard, the color of her eyes, when he first began to see her. All the while she smiled serenly, her head on his shoulder, her fingers intertwined with his.

He and Lila continued to date, and she continued to ask him about the girl in his dreams.

"She looks so frail," he would tell her. "Like she's about to faint. I can see her veins, she's so thin."

"Does she ever say anything?" Lila inquired, ignoring the subject of the nameless girl's thinness.

"Nothing, ever. Sometimes I wish she would."

"Where is she going?"

"I don't know. The compass always points back, from where she came."

"Can you see anything around her?"

"Just water. Just water as far as I can see, in any direction. And then the stones. They float, you know, halfway below the surface. They don't bob or anything; they're fixed. She can stand on them."

"How many are there?"

"I don't know. She walks until I'm about to wake up, and sometimes that's forever."

"Do you want to wake up?"

He didn't answer this question. He gazed silently at the setting sun and stroked Lila's soft blonde hair.

That night, the girl in his dream held out her arms, as if for balance, as she stepped from stone to stone. The compass fell early, but she didn't stop to watch it sink. She kept going for twenty-seven stones more, and then she paused. He hadn't noticed, but her other hand was holding a slender blade, which was biting into her pale, transparent fingers. Horror spread over his body like a virus as he watched the blue blood trip slowly toward the water, turning red before it made contact. Her lips curved into that emotionless smile, her eyes unblinking.

How horrible it must be, to walk like that, he thought unexpectedly. How lonely. Wouldn't it be easier just to run that blade through her heart and end it all?

He awoke, again, shaking and damp.

"Lila," he said, breathlessly, when he met her later that day. "Lila, she cut her fingers. I saw her, she had a knife, and she was bleeding into the water..."

Lila silenced him by taking his hand and kissing his cheek briefly. "It's alright," she said, reassuringly. "She can do that. She's just a dream, remember? Just a dream."

His paintings changed now, but he would not draw the blood dripping from her hand into the rippling water. It stayed bright and clean in her hand, her whole, unscarred hand. These he did not show to Lila, because she said it was just a dream. Just a dream.

When Lila turned 18, he and Lila's family threw her a surprise party, and invited all her friends. She was immensely pleased, and kissed him in front of her family, which resulted in his ears going quite red.

It was all going satisfactorily well. Midnight came and went, and he gave no thought to sleep, for all her friends were still laughing and eating and enjoying themselves. Two in the morning came and went, and still he was having a good time, and no one was leaving yet. Lila's parents had retired at 11, but had left a good number of chaperones.

Three a.m. rolled around, and suddenly he remembered the ghostly girl and the knife and the compass. He quickly found Lila, who wound her arms around his neck and smiled dreamily up into his face.

"I need to see her," he murmured.

She froze. "Who?"

"The girl," he said, impatiently. "I need to go. I need to sleep, I need to see her."

"Why?" Lila's voice had become cold.

"I need to see her..."

It had never dawned on him that Lila may not understand. She removed her arms from his neck and blinked up at him, her ever-persistant smile stiffening. How was it that, as he watched the mirth slide from her eyes, that his own good feelings also diminished?

"I'm sorry," he said, mindlessly. "I need to see her, Lila. I'm sorry."

She stepped back, the fake smile still lingering on her lips. "See you later," was all she said, and then disappeared into the crowd of friends who had not noticed this encounter.

Relief spread over his body, and he left immediately.

Sleep would not come, though, as he lay in his bed, desperate to see the nameless girl's face again. His paintings taunted him, hanging on his ceiling, his walls, in every closet and rows of them covering every spare inch of the floor. His heart pounded unnecessarily loudly in his chest, and for a brief moment, he wondered why.

The hours slid by, and the fear that he would not be able to see her tonight grew steadily stronger. A small voice in his mind whispered that perhaps he was going insane... she was a dream, wasn't she? Another nagging voice joined the first... Lila.

Six in the morning and sleep had not come. He sat up in bed, holding his head in his hands. Something wasn't right; guilt crept over him, fear, anguish...

The day passed by miserably. Lila didn't call him. His paintings were blemished in his mind and incomplete.

That night, as he fell asleep, the girl was not walking. She had stopped delicately atop a stone and was staring directly into his eyes. Those green-gray eyes that were so unlike anything he had ever beheld before... she was cut, scars criss-crossing her arms, blood dripping slowly into the clear, poisonously grey waters below her. The blade she still held, holding it pointed directly at her heart. Her white, grave-light dress was stained a dark, deathly brownish-red. She smiled at him, and he felt cold, as if her smile was removing all emotion.

How long he stared at her, he did not know. He had a vague feeling that the dream should be ending soon, and she might keep walking, or perhaps drop the knife, or anything... fear bubbled up inside him, the panic that she would step into the water and he would never see her again...

And yet the dream did not end. She looked down at the water - he noticed that she had no reflection - and she bent down and touched the surface. Her fingers pressed against it as if it was solid; the waves moved underneath her hand, but she did not penetrate it. Her lips curved in a slight smile, and slowly she looked back up at him.

The slender blade in her other hand was trembling, the bright silver and red flashing in the pale light. Her hair fell over her face, and she gripped the knife tightly. Blood gushed out, and he opened his mouth to tell her to stop... to tell her to put it down, to tell her to keep walking, to tell her anything. His voice constricted.

She suddenly forced the blade down, into her chest, into her heart. He screamed, but she appeared not to have heard him. Water flowed out of the wound, and she smiled and opened her mouth and water came out of her mouth. Horrified, he watched as her fingers released the blade, and it fell down into the horrible waters. Water came from her eyes, from her hair... the only place where she bled was from the cuts on her arms. She laughed, the first time he had heard her voice, looked at him one last time, and fell into the water.

He awoke, soaked in sweat. His paintings had become dark and mishapen, the girl in each had been erased, and where she should have been, there was only water. The endless stretch of water. On every scrap of paper and every blank canvas, Lila's name had been painted ruthlessly across, in red and black.