The first time Charlie White nearly died, it wasn’t anything like Hollywood had promised. There was no tunnel of light. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes. Charlie’s most prominent, logical thought as she felt everything dim around her was, I didn’t expect to die today.
The second time she nearly died, something came alight inside her. A base, raw need to survive. With this survival instinct came panic, fear, and anger.
By now, Charlie had lost track of how many times she’d nearly died. She didn’t know when the calm had replaced the panic — hiding the fear and anger deep within her.
A chill wind rustled her fine, white-streaked ginger hair, pulling her from her reverie. The dewy grass had started to soak through her jeans, numbing her bony bottom. The wind wound its way inside her oversize woolly jumper, making her shiver. Brushing the grass off her pants, Charlie stood, looking out over the rolling Australian grasslands. Slim, white-barked trees and grey mossy boulders dotted the landscape. She took a deep breath; the air was fresh, enlivening. Here, in the native grasslands of rural New South Wales, Charlie felt serene. And she felt alive.
“It’s a good thing I’ve learnt to let go.” She sighed, stretching her back, as she appreciated the beauty around her. She’d finally had to give up work — the thing on which she’d based most of her identity. Well, until this point in her life at least. Now forty-six years old, she’d essentially retired and was struggling to figure out who she was out of an office. She’d given everything to her work, never allowing time for anything else — no partner, no children. Commercial law may sound boring to most people, but to Charlie, it had been life. It had been everything.
Stubbornly, when her health had first deteriorated, she’d thought she could pursue a career unchanged. No matter what life (or near death) threw at her. And she’d been good at her job. Good enough, at least, for a comfortable early retirement despite not being eligible for any disability support — not unless she was willing to go through the torture of being declared a sufferer of chronic, crippling anxiety.
As Charlie started down the hill, she paused. There it was again, in the wind. A sound like deep, guttural, tonal chanting. The type of hum you felt in your chest rather than heard with your ears. Rationally, she knew it was the sound of wind forcing its way through the rocks and hills. But in her calm, she could almost believe it was music just for her.
Charlie’s peace was pierced by a dark flash, glimpsed from the corner of her eye. A familiar rush of adrenaline sent tingles bursting down her limbs. The wind wasn’t her only frequent visitor since she’d moved to the grasslands. Another dark, fleeting visitor always seemed to be right behind her, at the edge of her vision. Sometimes she thought another person must be strolling these forgotten hills, just out of sight. Sometimes she was certain it must be a crow or another dark-coloured bird swooping for mice in the grass. Every time, however, as soon as she turned to look straight on, the shadow slipped away. She spun towards the movement; this time, yet again, nothing was behind her.
Charlie physically and mentally shook herself. It was time to go home.
Home was a three-bedroom cottage, a ten-minutes drive from the nearest neighbour and thirty minutes from Greenfields, the nearest town. Originally built in the 1920s, the house had since been lovingly renovated to a contemporary abode with white walls, polished hardwood floors, and modern plumbing. It was everything Charlie needed. The cottage’s original California-bungalow-style facade with its perfect white windows had been maintained, as had the old veranda that wrapped around one side of the house. This cottage was Charlie’s fresh start. Simple, peaceful, quiet, and most importantly, safe.
As she stamped her feet at the front door to loosen the dirt and any final blades of grass, her wall phone trilled. Charlie was one of the few modern Australians who still had a landline. This far from civilization, mobile phone reception was nonexistent, and a landline was her only connection to the outside world. At least until she could get her satellite set up.
“Hello!” she said, breathing slightly too heavily, ripping the handset from its receiver.
“Charlie, it’s Tess. Bonjour.” The woman’s accented voice crackled slightly on the other end. “Just checking in. How’s life? Not ‘smited’ yet?”
Tess was the only friend who had bothered to keep in regular contact since Charlie had moved from Sydney. Originally from the French city of Sceaux, near Paris, Tess had been Charlie’s instant and closest companion since their chance encounter ten-years earlier. Charlie’s law firm had once represented Tess’ employer — a big time department store. They’d caught each other sneaking cigarettes on company time behind the dumpster. As the legal case had dragged on, those daily cigarette breaks had been the highlight of Charlie’s day. The “smiting” inside joke was their weekly va-et-vient (or back-and-forth for the English speakers like Charlie). Every conversation over the past six months had started the same way, ever since Charlie had joked that the big man upstairs must be trying to smite her but doing a half-arse job of it.
“Nope, no smiting here.” Charlie laughed.
“Bien.” Charlie could picture Tess smiling into her mobile phone. “How’s the new place? I keep forgetting to ask each time I call.”
“Good,” Charlie mimicked her friend, though in English. “You know, peaceful, cosy, quiet.”
“And peanut free.”
“Yes,” Charlie chuckled. “Not a whiff of a peanut since I moved in.”
The Oxford Language Dictionary entry recited itself in Charlie’s head:
“Peanut: The oval seed of a tropical South American plant, often roasted and salted and eaten as a snack.”
Small, common, and in Charlie’s case, absolutely deadly. Now, even the smell of a roasted peanut would send her into anaphylactic shock. Adult-onset allergies — while relatively uncommon — were generally more of a nuisance than life-changing. That’s what the medical professionals had frequently reminded her at least. Yet within five years, Charlie had gone from a regular, peanut-butter-loving middle-aged woman to a recluse. Now she couldn’t even walk through a food court, grocery store, Sunday farmers market, or public park for fear of a small South American oval seed.
“Has the paint smell settled?”
“Weeks ago,” Charlie replied, looking around her large living room. The kitchen to her right was on the small side, but modern, and gleamed cleanly. A fireplace took pride of place in the centre of the living room, with comfortable leather lounges and armchairs surrounding it. There were only two matching cushions on the couch, and no throws in sight. Charlie’s style was classic and minimalist. The only artwork on the walls was a woman standing in the middle of an empty field, in the rain. Though she’d bought it years earlier, it somehow seemed to encapsulate how her life had turned out for her.
To her left was her desk. No TV, but what good was a TV that couldn’t connect to anything anyway? Ahead of her was the door to the long hallway, from which her bedrooms and sewing room were reached. If you were to enter the hallway, only bright white walls would greet you. The only family photo Charlie owned was a silver-framed picture of her parents, sitting lonely on her bedside table. Over her shoulder, through the open front door, she saw the old gum trees waving slightly in the wind and the hills sloping upwards beyond.
“Good, well, maybe I’ll finally visit you then,” Tess said wistfully. “You’re keeping well otherwise? Not bored? Not…mad yet?” She was never one to mince her words.
“Not yet.” Charlie smiled. “I’m still walking every day, which is easier now that spring is finally here. It’s nice to be able to roam outside as long as I like. I’m still sewing too. I finally sold my first pair of culottes.”
“Ha-ha, wonderful. I wish you didn’t live so far, darling.” It wasn’t the first or last time Charlie would hear this. All of her former colleagues, family (what was left of them), and friends had tried to convince her not to move so far and so remote. Allergies could be managed in suburbia. Hospitals were closer. Company was crucial. But with Charlie’s feeling of calm acceptance, she’d reasoned it was better this way. This way, with her own piece of Australia, she could have some freedom. She could walk as long as she pleased. Above all, she could expand her bubble of safety. In the city and towns, she never knew when the slightest whiff of someone’s lunch would send her spiralling into anaphylaxis — and into the closest hospital bed. Here, there was just wide, open space and clean, fresh air. She didn’t feel so confined – so claustrophobic.
“When I’m old and decrepit, I’ll move in with you,” Charlie said. “For now, keep calling me as often as you can. And get your arse down here and visit me. That guest bedroom has been empty since I moved in!”
Tess’s laughter was momentarily interrupted by a loud bang. “Ah, p’emmerdeux.”
“Leon is home I take it?” Charlie asked wryly.
“Yes, darling,” Tess answered. Leon was Tess’s twenty-seven-year-old son who still lived at home. He’d been the reason Tess had dropped out of university to follow her Australian lover halfway across the world. A torrid romance that had ended violently some ten years later when her ‘lover’ and his fists had finally pushed Tess too far. This was not long after Charlie and Tess had first met, and it had been Charlie’s couch she’d slept on until she found her feet. “I promise I’ll call again soon. Salut, ma chérie, Charlotte. Je t’aimerai pour toujours.”
“Goodbye, Thérèse.”
The phone clicked as Tess disconnected, and Charlie sighed as she put the handset back into the receiver with a dull clack. “I promise I’ll love you forever too.”
As the wind picked up outside, Charlie focused on its deep sound, feeling that familiar sense of calm wrapping around her. Once again, a dark shadow flicked at the corner of her eye. Charlie turned slowly this time, expecting to see her empty lounge, as she always did. She gasped as, instead of melting away this time, the shadow formed itself into the shimmering outline of a tall, distinctly human figure. Despite its near translucence and her difficulty focusing her eyes on this stranger, some details stood out clearly. The pointed white loafers on its feet. Its white pressed suit. The white top hat perched wonkily on its head.
“Fuck!”