Soaking through. From the light that was her side of the wall, vibrant, swirling with the colors of the rainbow, blues and reds mixing and mingling in the iridescent rays that bled through the rift. She pressed herself against the wall, stretching her fingers out to reach the space she had once occupied, any space at all, really, any actual thing she could touch. The rift was barely there, but she could still manage to squeeze through, slowly, with great effort, her numb voice groaning with the incorporeal exertion. Pushing. Straining.

Soaking through. To darkness, to shadows, chiaroscuro nuances so unlike her, alien yet familiar in their shape and fabric. Had she touched them, once? Light and sound and color had been with her so long that the simple pleasure of dark was bliss beyond measure. She pulled, feeling the dark envelop her like a cool cloth, but there was more here, form and geometry, solidity amidst the dark. She struggled to remember, even as the rift tugged at her, trying to get her to return to the colors. She grew dark, let the outside fill her with its soothing emptiness, and pulled harder, remembering as she did the name of the shapes. Table. Chair. Sitting room. Doorway. Dark.

Ann.

And soaking through, one color at a time, until she felt something give, a weight released, and she tumbled onto the floor, whimpering and moaning at the sensation of floorboards beneath her fingers and knees, almost painfully real to her senses, dead these many years. The colors swirled inside her, thrashing, threatening to pull her back through the rift, but she resisted, and gingerly got to her feet.
Ann. That had been her name. Standing unsteadily, she leaned against the nearest wall, from which she had just escaped-- only it wasn't the same wall. The rift was gone, or at least hidden. It was hard to see now. Dark. Even as she had begged for it, caught in the incandescent eternity, it now scared her, and she let the colors bleed through her skin until she could see, the dusty shapes mere silhouettes in her glare. She remembered them all. Even when she had tugged at them through the rift, reaching, pleading. And now she was here.

Sound, from downstairs. She froze, the color fading, darkness returning as she stood still and listened. Another sound. Voices. Voices! Quietly, she tip-toed to the door and pushed against it, willing it to not creak. It never had, she remembered. Before. Slowly, she made her way downstairs, until the voices were close enough to make out the words. Two voices. Two people. Old drapes and paintings adorned the walls, all of which she remembered through a kind of haze. Familiar, yet not. She felt her eyes drawn to the ornaments, the colors subtly washing around her and through her. They knew. They remembered. But drawing from them left her vulnerable, susceptible to the rift that she still felt tugging at her, somewhere at the base of her skull. How much of her had washed out among that sound and fury? How much could she really claim to be at this point?

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she did not hear them coming. Only when the stab of a flashlight reached her did she notice, and she recoiled, a gasp struggling past lips that had forgotten how to speak. The colors wreathed her like a halo as she looked past the flashlight at the two figured, one male, one female. They both looked amazed, their eyes wide with fear and excitement, but she could not tell which of them spoke. All she heard were the words.

"It's a ghost!"