It used to be a child. Its lips mime words, but no throat remains. I would hide, but it is already sitting on my bed, one fragmented leg folded under what was once a nightgown.

The fan ticks overhead, stirring humid spores across sagging furniture. Outside, the night clops and laughs—hooves on cobbles, carriage wheels, tourists staggering home. Charleston’s charm drips from moss verandahs. But in here, the walls are close, and I cannot move.

The child’s stare is too wide, its eyes are puckered and glisten from an un-seen light. Drawn lips form syllables. It calls to me in silent panic. I wonder if the cries are in English, or Portuguese, or a tongue smothered before anyone thought to write.

I want to be awake. I smell my unshowered body and feel the fever-soaked sheets. The glass of water by the bed is still there. I cannot reach it.

The nightgown is torn but neat. Age-yellowed muslin, hand stitches. There was love there once. The child’s visible limb ends at the knee; a bone protrudes like an exposed knuckle, the flesh boiled away. Inches away but separate, a tiny foot, shriveled and askew.

Only then do I see the rusty shackle, cut into ankle bone, its flakes merging with corrupted skin. The child grips it as though it were a handle to carry the lost part of their body. The lips work. I feel the echo of the anchor. To a seabed. To the mattress. To this earth.

“You should not be here,” I whisper. But perhaps I am the one intruding.

The lips move again, word after word I cannot hear. I feel its breath now, short and rapid, its last gasp, forever repeating.

Something compels me to reach and draw the child into my arms. I feel nothing in my hand, yet the gesture draws it near. Its head rests on my chest. I smell salt water and mould, yet underneath the rot, a trace of vanilla. I close my eyes. I feel only the weight of the air. I hold the shape of absence. It might not be there, and yet I hear the breaths. They are slowing, slowing. Fingers trail across my chest and clutch at my skin.

I hear the faintest mewl of relief, but I cannot tell if it is mine or the child’s. 

This air once clung to that child—in fields, in kitchens, in the hold of a ship.

My breath slows. The sound of horses fades, the tick of the fan remains. 

And the fingers tighten.