The White Rook

CW: Suicide or self harm, mental health

It never occurred to Laurie that the driver that left her at the head of the garden path would be the recipient of the last words she would ever speak to a living soul.

She held the crumpled deed to the run down cottage in one hand, a suitcase hanging limply from the other. It had been her father’s idea to make this trip across the ocean, to the cottage of his late sister.

Aunt Isla had always been a point of interest to Laurie. She was an eclectic woman living alone off the grid, doing God knows what, but doing it alone.

It was the perfect place for Laurie to convalesce, her father said. The perfect place to screw her head back on, and get off the dark path she was stumbling down.

The door creaked as she swung it open, stepping into the the tiled foyer. It was small, with a sitting room to the left, the dining room and kitchen to the right, and a narrow staircase leading to the upper level where the bedrooms were. A thin layer of dust sat comfortably on every surface. Isla hadn’t been here in quite some time.

The house seemed to hold it’s breath as Laurie settled in. The sun went down outside, long after she’d turned on every light she could find. There wouldn’t be a second of darkness here, not if she could help it.

She heated a tin of soup she found in the pantry, cursing the ancient stove top when it began to smoke, then ate the soup straight from the pot. The silence pressed in on her from every angle, and she poured every ounce of concentration into scraping the bottom of the pot clean, tidying the kitchen. Don’t think, she thought to herself. Just don’t think.

Exhaustion hit her like a wave. In the foyer, she stared absently up the stairs. She wandered into the sitting room, gaze locked on the plush sofa in front of the fireplace. The sofa seemed to embrace her as she sat, tucking herself into the the corner. Just a moment, she’d sit.

It was well past midnight when Laurie woke.

She immediately panicked. The lights had all gone out, and the smell of smoke twisted it’s way down her throat. She sat up and looked around frantically, her heart rate gradually slowing as she realized she wasn’t in the dark. Flames crackled safely behind the grate of the fireplace. Relief gave way to confusion. She didn’t remember lighting a fire. She was prone to lapses in memory though, maybe the dose of escitalopram wasn’t quite right yet.

She stood, stretching. The room begged to be explored. The sofa sat in the centre of the room, in front of the fireplace. Bookshelves covered most of the walls, save for the windows. Moonlight shone down from the skylight over head, illuminating the delicate floral pattern of the wallpaper. Laurie drank it all in slowly, feeling content for the first time in a long while as she examined the teacups in the china cabinet. There was something comforting about being the only one awake in the middle of the night, while the world slept around you.

In the centre of the room, in front of the sofa, was an ornate chessboard set on a small circular table. Laurie didn’t even know how to play chess, but she picked up one of the white pawns and turned it over in her fingers. It was carved in marble, glinting in the firelight.

She placed the piece back, but set it a square ahead, so that it stuck out ahead of the row of pawns behind it. A solid opening, she thought, as if she knew any better.

The mantle coxed her over, trinkets of Isla’s displayed there proudly. Laurie stepped around the chess board and approached slowly, ignoring the many vases and dried flowers, rings and earring, reaching for a tarnished picture frame that sat dead centre in front of a clock that ticked slower than it should have.

In the frame was a sepia photo of a young man who must have been in his mid-twenties, although his eyes twinkled with a boyish gleam. He was very handsome, with a strong jaw and a straight nose. He wore a uniform and officers hat. A number— no, she looked closer, a year was scratched into the bottom right corner of the photograph under his lapel.

1942.

She stared into his eyes, and it was almost as though he stared back. He was familiar, somehow, a long lost relative perhaps? With the uniform he wore, he must have fought in the war.

She replaced the photograph and slumped down on the couch again. It was much too late to bother settling into the bedroom now.

Her eyes went out of focus as she grew weary again, but then—

A black pawn had moved out.

She scrambled forward to look closer. It couldn’t have.

Sure enough, the pawn from B7 had moved down two spaces to B5.

Maybe she’d forgotten about lighting the fire, but surely she hadn’t forgotten this. No, this was some kind of trick. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest as she reached out and captured the black pawn with her bishop from G1, setting the piece on the coffee table next to the board with a plunk.

Your move, ghost.

She sat back with her arms crossed, staring intently at the board. If something happened, she was not going to miss it.

She sat stubbornly like that for another twelve minutes before she slowly slumped to the side, sleep taking her.

She awoke convinced the whole thing was a dream. The fire was out, solid evidence that nothing had happened, but the photograph on the mantle was face down now. She must have looked at it earlier. She stood, intent on getting a cup of coffee, then froze.

The chess board had been played, there was no doubt in her mind now. The pieces were exactly as she remembered them, but now a new black pawn had moved so that it was to the diagonal right of her bishop.

She let out a shaky breath, capturing the pawn with her bishop and setting it next to the first one. She scampered form the house in a daze. Maybe this chess-playing entity needed some privacy to make it’s moves.

She wandered around the garden for an hour, exploring the surrounding area. It was lovely, but she felt the pull back to the living room. She told herself that there was still much to explore, still photographs of a bygone era to absorb. For now she wasn’t ready to admit that she was hoping something had moved.

She spent as much time as she could outside drinking in the sun’s rays as they filtered through the trees, then raced back inside.

She forced herself to explore the upper level and finally changed her clothes then with her patience spent, she tiptoed quietly back to the living room. She didn’t want to scare it, whatever it was, off.

She let out a small whoop when she saw that her bishop had been taken by a knight, glancing around furtively to see where the captured piece had gone.

There it was, on the mantle. She stilled as she looked down on it. The portrait of the young soldier was now facing up, the white bishop sitting in the centre of his chest.

Her mind churned as she brought both the bishop and the photograph back to the board. She moved another pawn, this time determined to see the next move herself. A second later, the white knight slid across the board and she laughed in delight.

This entity was friendly, she was certain of it. Admittedly, she was glad of the company. She made her move, and with the entity’s next turn, she felt a strange energy fill the room, almost like she could reach out and touch it.

She was no Grandmaster and within another ten minutes the entity had beaten her, the pieces silently gliding about, picking off her pieces one by one. She only knew she’d lost when the entity moved the black queen directly in front of her king. With a clink, her king toppled over the edge of the board, pushed by an invisible force.

“I was just taking it easy on you,” Laurie said to the entity, and she could have sworn she felt a wave of amusement pass through the room.

A thought occurred to her, and she picked up the photograph of the soldier, taking the white rook in her other hand. She laid the portrait flat and placed the rook on his chest, mimicking the way she’d found the bishop earlier.

“Is this you?” She asked the empty room.

The lights flickered twice and she gasped.

“Does two flickers mean yes?”

The lights flickered twice, and a triumphant bubble swelled in her chest.

“Can you speak? What’s your name?”

There was a pause, and Laurie wondered if it was still there. The lights flickered, only once this time.

“I see.” Laurie tapped her chin. “So two flickers is yes, one is no?”

Two flickers.

She grinned happily.

The next morning, after spending another night down on the couch, she found the board reset with all it’s pieces back in place. Sitting in the middle of the board was a paperback book titled Chess For Beginners: A Comprehensive Guide.

“Oh, very clever,” said sarcastically, and the lights twinkled continuously as if they were laughing.

She used the book as they played this time, gaining a few more pieces than their last game and feeling quite proud of herself.

A month passed, and Laurie finally felt herself begin to settle. Their daily chess games became more competitive, more in depth as she began to understand the game better. She abandoned her medication.

On one occasion after winning yet again, the entity suddenly swept the photograph, which Laurie liked to keep by the board, onto the floor. The glass shattered and the photo fluttered out.

“Look what you’ve done,” Laurie said sternly, picking up the photo and turning it over in her hands. On the back, in delicate cursive writing, was a name.

“Your name is James?” She said, looking around the room as though expecting to see him there.

The lights flickered twice, then more excitedly.

“Pleasure to meet you, James. My name is Laurie.” Two flickers.

Now that he had a name, it was easier for Laurie to imagine him as a real person. She fixed the photograph by the board again, speaking to it as they played. He flickered the lights as she spoke, the most communication he was capable of, and before long she felt as though she’d shared herself with him completely. Every dark secret emerged, every terrible thought. He comforted her by dimming the lights til they were completely out, then gradually turning them on again in an ebb and flow. Laurie imagined it as equivalent to stroking her back. When she slept, he left books open by the chess board, the white rook standing guard atop the passages he wished her to read, and a picture of him began to form in her mind as she learned more and more about him.

This had been his home, abandoned when the war started and he’d been called away. He even left his obituary. He’d died in battle barely a kilometre away in the year 1943, leaving the cottage to his mother. It had been passed down until her own Aunt Isla had purchased it fifteen years ago.

There was a sadness to his flickers when she spoke of Isla, and with a few questions she deduced that they had been good friends.

“You must miss her,” Laurie said one day. Two flickers.

On another day she learned that he held a grudge against the game of checkers, made immediately apparent when she replaced the usual chess pieces with round wooden pucks and he flung them off the board to scatter into the room, where Laurie had to crawl on her hands and knees to collect them.

“You could have just flickered!” She hollered at him, and the lights twinkled in amusement.

Sometimes she thought she saw him out of the corner of her eye, standing dutifully in his uniform with a small smile on his lips. He was so handsome and she wished to see him properly, but as soon as she turned to face the glimmer of him, he disappeared.

An ache had spread in her chest. He was so close to her now, but still a world away. If she sat very still and closed her eyes, sometimes she could feel him settle in her bones, the very faintest sensation trailing across her neck and down her shoulders. He was right there, she knew it. A pressure built in her chest as he tried to hold her, but the second her eyes opened it vanished.

By her thirtieth day of solitude there, she needed more.

“James, did you hear me?” She shouted to the house. “How can I see you?”

There was no answer and for the first time since her arrival, she slept upstairs.

The next morning, Laurie walked past the living room where the lights flickered impatiently. The chessboard was set up, a white pawn pushed forward, but she ignored it and instead spent the day outside. She couldn’t resent him for his death. But still, she could barely stand to be at such odds with a person she cared for so deeply. A storm rolled in that evening, hurrying her inside.

She couldn’t ignore James forever, so with a resigned sigh she entered the living room.

It was in complete disarray. The books were pulled off the shelves, pictures hanging crookedly on the wall. She barely noticed the rest of it though; her attention was glued to the centre of the room, where the chess pieces lay discarded on the ground.

Sitting on the chessboard was a crumbling map of the property, and sitting on a point a kilometre away was the white rook.

The lights began to flicker, urging her into action.

He still had no words. But she was sure of what to do, as sure as she knew her own name. She snatched up the map and flew out of the house.

The rain beat down on her in the dusk, her bare feet sliding in the mud as she careened through the brush around the cottage. She forged ahead through the trees until she finally reached it, the spot on the map.

She stood on the edge of a dried ravine, peering over the edge at the fifty foot drop to the rocky bottom.

Her heartbeat pounded in her head, and just as suddenly threatened to stop when she heard his voice.

Laurie.

He called to her, and then there he was, standing at the end of a log that jutted out across the ravine. The rain did not land on him, he shimmered in a transparent silver light that lit up the trees around them.

The rain masked Laurie’s tears of joy as she cried out at the sight of him, and he beamed back at her, reaching out a hand. There was an understanding. This was the very spot he had died all those years ago.

“You’re here!” she screamed into the sky, bursting at the seams.

Just a little further. He beckoned her to him, and she clambered across the log, blood roaring in her head as suddenly there was nothing but open air around her.

She stopped at the very end of the log, shuddering in the cold.

She stood nose to nose with him, his body thrumming with energy that she could feel tingling on her skin.

Isla told me all about you. I’m so happy you’re here…

Tears streaked down his cheeks. She reached for him, but there was nothing to hold, he was just a wisp screaming silently as her hand passed through his body, realizing too late that all he’d done was lead her too far—

His apparition dove after her as she plummeted from the log, wind howling.

As her death neared, he wrapped his arms around her, his body finally becoming solid in her embrace.

She called his name and he brushed his lips to hers, sweetly and sorrowfully welcoming her to his world.

Laurie did not feel anything but his kiss as her body shattered on the rocks.

The cottage decayed over the years, no one left to tend to it.

But had anyone been brave enough to sneak inside, they would have seen the pieces of the ancient chessboard gliding lovingly around each other, playing game after game for all eternity.