The Last Dance Pergola

Written by Farah Fakhirah

"It's not always going to be a pergola, you know?"

Claudine sat next to me, her fluffy skirt covering most of the mattress we slept in together. Claudine and I were sisters, but we were as different as heaven and earth. Claudine was white, with red hair that she had dyed herself. She liked wearing vintage clothes — no, not retro, vintage, which meant petticoat, heavy fluffy skirts, high heels and neatly curled hair.

Me? For me, as long as the clothes didn't smell, didn't wear out, and I hadn't worn them more than three times, I didn't care. A shirt was just something that stuck to me, and in the end, anyway, it would be washed. Why should I care about the beauty of my clothes if I was going to take them off?

But we were not here to debate the beauty of clothes. Claudine and I had argued about it often enough, which usually ended up with her hiding my entire collection of jeans (ripped jeans are fashion, Claudine), or me swapping her hair rolls for rolls of camera film (for people who refuse to dress up vintage, you’re so out of date, Mayra). In essence, we were quite fun siblings.

A few weeks ago, our father was gone.

Our father, who was our life support. He had taught me to shoot with an analog camera and swapped the film for Claudine's hair rollers. He was also the one who'd helped Claudine hide all of my jeans collection and laughed when I found a satin skirt instead. Who'd kissed my mother on the cheek every time he came home from work, and brewed his tea because he knew how tired my mother was after a day of taking care of the house. He had always been hugging, kissing, laughing, joking, teasing.

He had been working on his frangipani bonsai when his heart had stopped beating. That day, there had been tears and regrets. That day went by so fast, it didn't even leave a trace. On his grave, we put his beloved frangipani, hoping that the little bonsai would be a reminder of how much we love him. In the midst of all this, when the funeral ended, our mother approached us and said, “How lucky your father is. He died surrounded by people who loved him. I don’t think I’ll ever get that. "

Then she turned away from us and entered her room without saying another word. It’s been a week, and all we heard from her were sobs.

I was determined to fix that.

***

I heard word of mouth about the existence of the Last Dance Pergola.

The Pergola was like a stopover, they said. A place where the living could reunite with the dead and settle their affairs. This pergola was overgrown with plants whose function were to protect us, mortals, from the spirits groping at the edges of the pergola. In the middle of that pergola, our loved ones would come. The music would play, giving us a chance to dance with them, one last time. People would let go of homesickness, say sorry, cry, or even take advice from their dead loved one. People used this pergola for all kinds of things, but never for revenge because only a pure and sincere intention could get us there. 

And, as Claudine says, it was not always a pergola. Sometimes it took shape  as a room with a comfortable sofa. Sometimes it was a library with the smell of old books. People called it the Last Dance Pergola because the first person to find it had lost the girl he loved at a dance, the girl had a heart attack after being tired of dancing all night. The boy who had lost her burst out of the dance hall and cried in the pergola. Some people said that he danced tearfully in the light of the silver moon on the fifteenth day of the third month, and this odd combination opened up a secret world.

A pergola.

Around it grew shade plants, mint and marjoram, willow and hazel trees, and wisteria flowers. The girl stood amid all that beauty, stretched out her arms, asking the man in front of her to dance one last time. Blinded by longing and love, the man agreed, and they danced the whole night. When it was morning, the girl asked if the man would go along with her. The man agreed, and the next day, someone found him stabbed with the finality of death by a willow branch, with a smile on his face.

Now, my job was to make sure that Mother didn't get stabbed to death by a willow branch.

Since we had lost Dad...

...how could we afford to lose Mother?

***

What we needed to open the portal was not much: the last thing Dad had touched, the thing that bound Mom and Dad (I used to think it was their wedding rings, it turned out they hadn't exchanged rings but a pendant with a piece of their hair braided in it), and the light of the silver moon on the fifteenth day of the third month. No spell, no painting on the ground, nothing magical. We just needed moonlight and memories.

The evening of the fifteenth arrived. The three of us sat alone in the garden behind the house. Claudine and I were holding hands, while Mother sat across from us, her eyes still vacant. When we had expressed this idea to Mother yesterday, Mother just stared at us with tears in her eyes, handing us their locket. We were waiting. Slowly, the silvery moonlight appeared. It reflected off the pendant I was holding, and I watched it nervously. I felt like a child in a fantasy novel, waiting for the magic to manifest before them, waiting for the magic world to emerge from behind the wardrobe. The night was cold, and I felt silly doing all this.

Then, something started to happen. The air started to change. I could taste its scent — a very old magic scent. It felt like when you stepped into the forest, especially that part of the forest, which you know you couldn't enter. In front of us, a frangipani tree appeared, its pink flowers scattering hither and thither. There were angry roars inside the wind, which suddenly stopped. Plants of mint and marjoram appeared on the ground, willows and hazel trees grew miraculously in the backyard, then in the center, a pergola stood, with our Father at its center.

Mother seemed to wake up from her long daydream, and ran towards Father, hugging him while sobbing. Claudine and I held back our longing. We miss Father too, after all, we were his daughters. However, we would like to give Mother the first dance in the last series of dances, because she who always sobbed.

They danced, circled in a series of several songs. However, Father insisted that Claudine and I participate. I shook my head, first Claudine, and then me. I want each of us to have a moment of separation from Father separately. Before long, Father called me too, invited me to his final dance. I walked towards the pergola; the mint scent tickled my nose.

My father was in the middle of this beautiful pergola, stretching out his arms, beckoning me to dance. My throat was clogged. I took his hand. He put his hand on my back, and we danced. He still smelled the same. The smile on his lips was still the same, even his voice was still the same. I could have believed he was my father if I had ignored the fact of how cold his body felt. I held him tight as if I hoped my warmth would warm him.

"Mayra, I miss you. Father is lonely here, can you accompany me?” he questioned me, gripping my hips tightly.

“Mayra can't, Father. For you have left, and Mayra must stay alive for Claudine and Mother,” I answered, still sad that he was gone.

"Ah, but Claudine and Mother have agreed."

At that moment, I gasped. I realized that his hand was gripping me way too tightly, and his embrace was starting to feel suffocating. I saw that behind his fatherly smile, there was a hint of madness. The insight of what this place was—the folklore that it was—came back to me. This being was not my father; he was the Echo. And Echoes needed us, Figures, to accompany them on the other side. They were the beings that people had warned in the story—the one that took the faces of our beloved ones, only to kill us at the end. The pergola had a system to protect us from them—the mint and marjoram and the willows. But even the pergola could only do so much.

I squirmed, trying to escape the Echoes. He gripped me tightly as if realizing that I was the only person who knew what his true form was. I looked down, tried to avoid his grip, and grabbed a handful of mint near me. He pulled away, and I managed to break free.

But not Mom and Claudine. Longing and love had blinded them. Their two figures danced with the Echo.

They had decided to join my Father, or the Echo that he had become.

I screamed.

***

TWO PEOPLE FOUND DEAD IN BACKYARD

Police are investigating the cause of death of Claudine Collins (25) and Stephanie Collins (45) who were found dead in their backyard last night. The eyewitness who found the two bodies was Mayra Collins, 24, who called the police in a hysterical state at midnight. As this news is released, Mayra is still in shock and is mentally unfit to be questioned by the police. She cannot identify the perpetrator, let alone how her mother and siblings  died so horribly. From the start, she has said only three words: "The Last Dance Pergola."