Irene

 

Irene

A tale as it happened to The Rogue Trader

They say ghosts are just memories with nowhere to go. I say some memories remember you back.

Decades back, I was seventeen, maybe eighteen, working on scenery for the fall play up in the top floor of the old Wells Fargo building, the space had once been an old community hall. Back then, it was our playhouse, Palace Playhouse. The high school drama troupe used it for everything: rehearsals, set builds, whispered crushes, and bad lighting cues. That year, like many others over the 80 years prior, Peach Days was in full swing outside, parades, booths, music drifting through the open windows, and activities stretching west down forest street. But I was inside, alone, painting a backdrop of twisted orchard trees under a harvest moon.

The festival was a riot of color and noise. Families strolled past with paper baskets of cobbler and fried dough. Excited kids darting between booths with sticky fingers and wide eyes, watching carnival games longingly. The air smelled of cinnamon and kettle corn, and laughter spilled down Main Street like a river. There were fiddlers on corners, clog dancers in the square, and the kind of joy that makes you forget the world ever held sorrow.

But, 30 feet above the crowd inside the playhouse, it was different.

The third floor held a hush that didn’t belong to the season. The windows filtered the sunset to the west into long, dusty beams, and the floorboards creaked like they were remembering something. The air was cooler, heavier. The kind of quiet that makes you whisper even when you’re alone. I remember the scent of sawdust and old varnish, and the way the backdrop I was painting, gnarled trees and a pale moon, this felt more real than the world outside.

That’s when I saw her.

She didn’t appear with a scream or a chill. She was just... there. Standing near the upright piano we used for performances, pale as moonlight, her dress flowing like smoke. Her mouth slowly opened and closed as if she were singing a silent ballad, forgotten in time. Her long dark hair was swept into a high bun, with auburn strands cascading down her back, styled like the performers of the 1890s, elegant and deliberate. The dress she wore was floor-length and nearly translucent, white as frost, with delicate folds that shimmered faintly in the dim light. It clung to her form like a mist, catching the moonlight in soft ripples. On her feet, colorful lace-up boots, stitched with care and flair, rising to mid-calf and laced tightly up the front. They seemed almost too vivid for her ghostly form, a remnant of the life she once lived on stage and in salons.

Her dark eyes were distant, searching, as if trying to remember where she’d left something important. I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. She turned to look at me, not through me, but at me. Like she somehow knew me. Like she was trying to place me in a-a story that she’d half-forgotten.

“Were am I?” she asked, “I don’t know where I am,” her voice, breathy, like wind through lace. “I was supposed to leave, wasn't I? I was going to the coast.”

Slowly I nodded, my heart pounding. Instinctively I just knew, “San Francisco?”

She smiled, the corners of her full red lips turned up slightly. “Yes... But I stayed... I sang... I waited. And now I’m still waiting.”

I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there, brush in hand, feeling the air thicken around us. And then, with a crash, the door crashed open.

Brian.

He and I used to be friends. Not just classmates, but real friends. The kind of friends you just know you will never loose, until you do. We built forts in the orchards, skipped rocks in Willow Creek, traded comic books and secrets. He was, then, the kind of kid who’d give you half his sandwich and punch someone for looking at you wrong. But something changed around our sophomore year. He got taller, louder, meaner. Started hanging out with the older crowd, chasing girls and trouble. I stayed in theater, in art, in stories. He called it “kid stuff.” Said I was soft.

We hadn’t spoken in months.

Out of the darkened entrance way Brian stepped into the hall like he owned it, smelling of peach wine and spite, eyes glassy and grin crooked, and menacing. He looked around at the set pieces, the painted flats, the backdrop I’d spent hours on, and laughed.

“Still playing pretend, huh?” he said, brushing a stack of programs from a desk at his side. “Thought you’d grow out of this.”

I stood my ground, heart pounding, fist clenching in preparation. “It’s not pretend. I'm part of something here.”

He sneered. “You sure are.” he couldn't contain his chuckle.

Pressing his beefy shoulder into it he shoved over a flats wall, sending it crashing into the piano. The chaos echoed through the hall like a gunshot. Stepped between him and the backdrop, I stood defiant fists clenched.

“Don’t,” I said.

He looked at me, then really looked. And something flickered deep in his eyes. Maybe recognition. Possibly regret. But it passed.

“So what are you doing, spazz?” he snapped. “Talking to yourself?”

I glanced toward the piano. She was still there. Watching our interaction. Silent.

“She’s real,” I said, voice low.

He laughed at my fear. “You’ve lost it.”

Then, with a solid jab, he punched me, hard in the stomach, then a cut across the jaw. I hit the floor, dazed, tasting the metallic tinge of blood and paint. The room spun. Fireworks exploded behind my eyelids. The music outside, fiddles and laughter, felt a thousand miles away.

And then she moved.

Irene didn’t scream. She didn’t float. She strode, with a preternatural grace, eyes blazing, hair wild, her white dress billowing like a storm. She moved with a determination born of past trauma. Brian turned, confused, as she raised her hand. The air snapped, and He staggered backward, as if pulled by invisible ropes, and was driven toward the staircase.

But something was different. Her gaze wasn’t just angry, it was recognizing. She looked at Brian like she saw something else beneath his skin. Not the boy who’d once traded comic books with me, but something older. Something cruel. Something familiar.

And I swear to you, in that moment, I think she saw Griggs.

The man who ended her life nearly a century before. The man who pushed her down those stairs. Maybe it was the way Brian moved, or the way he raised his hand, or the smell of peach wine and rage. Maybe ghosts don’t see faces, they see patterns. Echoes. Wounds that never healed.

“No—wait—” he cried, but she didn’t stop.

She forced him down those narrow stairs, step by step, his feet desperately scrambling, his voice breaking. It was an echo of something old, something violent. I saw her face then, not angry, but resolved. Like she was finishing something started decades ago.

I ran.

I didn’t think, I just moved. My legs carried me to the fire escape, that old iron skeleton bolted to the side of the building like a forgotten spine. My boots hit the first step with a clang, the whole structure groaned beneath me. The ancient rusted bolts strained against the mortar, grinding and popping like teeth in a jaw too old to chew. My hand gripped the railing, flaking paint and cold iron biting into my palm. Each step down felt like it might give way, the metal flexing under my weight, echoing the panic in my chest.

I hit the alley and burst into the crowd.

The Festival was still in full bloom, music, laughter, the scent of roasted corn and cotton candy thick in the air. Families strolled past with balloons and paper baskets, not seeming to notice me stumbling into the streets, blood still rushing down my face from Brian's solid blow. Kids darted between booths with sticky fingers and wide eyes, I dodged a toddler chasing a bubble, nearly collided with a woman holding a tray of funnel cakes. No one saw me. No one saw what I’d seen. I was a ghost among the living, breathless and bloodied, stumbling through joy like a man fleeing a funeral.

I crossed Main Street, heart hammering, and reached the old City Hall.

It stood like a sentinel, a century-old red brick building with white fascia and tall white-pillared columns flanking the timber steps. The paint on the columns was crisp, the steps worn smooth by generations of feet. The walkway leading up to it, flanked on either side by well-groomed lawns and gardens, rose bushes trimmed to perfection, hedges shaped like waves, and a pair of maple trees just beginning to turn gold. It was the kind of building that stands watch over a city, even when empty.

I stopped at the base of the steps, turned, and looked back.

She was there.

Third floor window. Pale. Still. Watching me. Her translucent dress shimmered faintly in the moonlight, and her auburn strands had come loose from their bun, drifting like smoke around her face. The full moon hung behind her, reflected in the glass like a second face, cold, round, and silent. She didn’t smile. She didn’t wave, or even acknowledge me. She just watched.

And then she was gone.

After that day I never saw Brian again. He left school. Some say he moved. I have heard he never really recovered. But I remember. I remember her voice. Her sorrow. Her fury. And her need to be seen.

So when you ask me why I carry lavender sachets, or why I never sleep near staircases, or why I sell moonstone charms for protection, well, now you know.

Some ghosts don’t haunt places. They haunt people.

And Irene? She haunts me still.