The space between worlds is cold and fragile, thin as a film on still water. Sound is like an echo from underground. My vision is hazy, like looking through a windowpane streaked with handprints.
       I cannot find my voice at all.
       My fingers creep toward the ring of bruises around my neck. I trace the inflamed circle, remembering the months of endless despair, the suffocating pressure, the flash of inescapable terror. There was a moment when I realized that what was happening could not be arrested--a pinprick of clarity before everything went black. When I opened my eyes again, I was here.
       I've heard this place described countless times in books--a veil, a membrane, a threshold. And yes, there is a boundary, but breaking through it is effortless. The world bends and gives before me, like pressing a finger against a soap bubble.
       I drift between the stone slats paneling my house, and ease through wooden walls and doorways. I float from room to room, retracing familiar footsteps. I'm drawn to some places in particular--the ones that still hold the shadow of my warmth, the lingering ghost of my perfume. The spinet piano in the drawing room. The mirrored vanity in the corner of my bedroom. The tiny alcove above the library. But most of all, I'm drawn to you, sitting stoic and somber in your worn armchair at the center of it all.
       I lunge for you, but my fingers slip through your form like sliding into smoke. I cannot touch as I am now, without form, without substance. I am helpless. I am no one. I am nothing.
       And so, I practice. I retreat outside, making use of the empty amber bottles strewn on the back porch. I reach out, attempt to send them toppling, to grasp their slender necks. I try again and again as the leaves of the pecan trees turn from green to gold, and in that space of time I teach myself how to be solid.
       By then, there is a new woman curled next to you on your armchair. She is my opposite in so many ways, this woman. The dawn to my midnight, the dove to my raven. She's smooth and angled in the places where I was dimpled and curved. I watch through the window as you draw her to you, your thick fingers nearly meeting around the willowy wisp of her waist. The sight enrages me so much that I seize a bottle and shatter it against the stone steps of the porch.
       I must get her to leave at once. The thought of her staying here with you is unbearable, intolerable. And now I have the means to make her flee. I pace up and down the hallway when she sleeps, with heavy, striking steps. I slam doors and cabinets in moments of quiet stillness. I breathe a cloud of white fog onto the mirror as she pins up her hair in front of the vanity. Then I trace two short, menacing words onto the glass with my fingertip.
       To my dismay, she reacts to my disturbances not with terror or trepidation, but with delight.
       "Darling, I think your house is haunted!" she exclaims. She claps her hands in wonder like a child discovering fireflies for the first time. You shake your head and give her an indulgent smile.
       She leaves for a brief spell, but returns with a satchel full of supplies: A planchette and a pad of paper. Tapered black candles. A clutch of purple crystals in a bone-white bowl.
       "Give me a sign that you're here," she orders, and I pound on the table so hard the planchette falls to the floor.
       "She's insistent, whoever she is," she remarks, giggling into her hand.
       "I'm not surprised," you reply.
       My desperation mounts as the weeks go by. At night, I watch as you whisper in her ear, your voice soft as fox fur--all smooth syllables and rounded edges. You run your hands tenderly through her hair, and revulsion floods my mouth, so bitter and vile I choke on it.
       I tear her dresses from the armoire and fling them around the room like ribbons in a parade. I hurl her jewelry box against the wall, breaking the clasp. I find a jar of pearlescent cream that smells like lilacs, and with it, I trace my two words over and over on the mirror of the vanity.
       She gathers up the dresses, buys a new jewelry box, and wipes off the cream with a rag. She clears the bedroom of anything sharp, anything that might smash or splinter under my hands. And she scolds me as she would a child, planting her hands sternly on her hips.
       "You won't get rid of me so easily," she declares. "I'm here to stay."
       I want to howl in frustration, but every time I open my mouth, it stays a silent cavern. And so I hover beside her bed, watching her breathe. Night after night, I return, resting my hand on her chest so she senses I'm there. Sometimes she startles awake. Her pupils go black with fear, and I know she sees me. There's no nervous giggling in these moments, no reproachful chiding.
       "Go away," she whimpers. "Please, just leave us alone."
       But I won't give up. Not now. For your words are growing roughened. Your sentences are becoming clipped, punctuated by impatient sighs. The bottles on the back porch multiply, as they always do when the nights lengthen and the days grow colder. She's bewildered by your barbed insults. She flees to the alcove above the library to escape your heavy footsteps. I recognize the pattern, even if she doesn't. I want to tell her it's not her fault, that the tenderness you showed her before was a farce, a phantom. But I still can't find my voice.
       It finally happens one night in midwinter. I've just finished tracing my two words on the vanity mirror, using her crimson rouge as my palette, when the yelling begins. She runs into the bedroom with you on her heels. In the space of a breath, she's on the floor, your meaty hands locked around her throat. The sight sends a snarl of memories scattering loose. For a moment, I'm lost in the frantic pulse of her panic, the sour stench of her fear. Her desperation reflects back at me, so fierce, so familiar, it sucks the air from my lungs.
       I pry at your arms, but your grip is a steel trap I can't spring. I cast around for something I can use as a weapon, but there's nothing, nothing. She writhes beneath you, gasping, helpless as a butterfly pinned to a cork wall. She flings her gaze to the vanity mirror, where my two words glower back at us--repeating red stains starkly etched onto silver. Right before she goes limp, her eyes widen, and I catch the instant she realizes the truth: That my machinations were not the jealous antics of a spurned woman. That the turmoil I inflicted was not a haunting at all, but a warning:
       GET OUT
       GET OUT
       GET OUT
       She's here with me now. A mirror of myself when I first arrived. Confused, broken, raw, enraged. It's a rage I know well by now--one that I turn on myself in the days following her death. I wonder at my own foolishness, at my grave miscalculation, why all this time I made her my target, when it so clearly should have been you.
       Was this the lesson I learned at your hands? To cast blame inward, like slinging a net around my own shoulders? To demand change from myself, from others, but never the person who merited it most?
       I will not make the same mistake again.
       She is growing steadily more solid with each passing day. Together, we trace the twin rings of bruises around our necks as we watch you sleep. Together, we flex our fingers before your face as you sit unsuspecting in your armchair. Together, we can do more than I ever could alone.
       There is strength in our silence. There is certainty in our shared glances. There are two of us here now.
       There will not be a third.