There’s something undeniably ethereal about the nighttime highlands. Some say it’s the unmatched landscape; others argue it’s the immaculate view of the stars; still others believe that the ancient ghost of a dweller haunts the land and tricks the unwary wanderer into delirium.

I choose not to believe the third view. Not because I doubt the ghost, but because I so desperately want to believe that Disker was real.

⁂

Forty minutes. That’s how long it’d been since either of us made a sound.

I understand that Leo has a rough life. It’s not unusual of him to fall into these dejected trances and disregard any and all attempts at communication. It’s often difficult—sometimes impossible—to pinpoint exactly why he would enter them, and at some point in our relationship I gave up trying to fight it.

Outside of these trances, however, he’s a really sweet guy. Charming, romantic, empathic, funny—just a person who’s genuinely enjoyable to be around. That’s why whenever he fell silent, I felt so broken. It felt like I was responsible for his behaviour. I tended to keep my mouth shut when it happened, in fear that my voice would make matters worse.

But here, seeing the countless little sparkles ornating the colourful night sky kindled a feeling of romance in me. Leo, too, seemed to have noticed them, as his expression eased and his eyes shone a soft silver. There was something about the way he gazed at the stars that looked so hopeful, so optimistic, so awestruck. This was the Leo that I fell in love with all those years ago.

I felt the need to say something, either to alleviate the tension or to better preserve the moment. Maybe I could even guide him out of his cold silence and have a pleasant heart-to-heart with him. That would be wonderful.

“Lovely view, isn’t it?” I whispered.

The car came to a sudden halt as Leo’s face stiffened. An uncanny stillness filled the air.

“Get out.” His voice was flat and quiet.

“What?”

“Get out of the car.”

“Why?”

“Please, Emily. Just get out of the car.”

I tried to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t budge. That striking awed brightness left his face, and all that was left was gloom. A cold, rigid shadow of the man I loved.

I opened the door and climbed out of the vehicle, the cold breeze washing over me. Leo avoided my gaze as he closed the door.

“I’ll come back tomorrow.”

By the time I processed those words, the warmth that emanated from the car had already escaped. I gave chase but it was too fast and I was too tired, and soon the distant darkness swallowed the rear lights.

I peered into that darkness for some time, wondering if Leo had been serious. No, surely, he just needed a minute or two alone. He wouldn’t desert me like that. That’s just not something Leo would do.

I sat myself on the roadside and waited. Waited for the returning engine’s hum or the emerging headlights’ dazzle. Waited for Leo to come back.

It took me so long to accept that he was gone.

But why?

In all my years of knowing Leo, he had never done anything remotely close to this. All I did was comment on the view of the stars, and he in turn just up and left me! Why had he done that?

I reached into my pocket—no phone. It must’ve still been in the car. So now I had no food, no water, and no method of communication. Fantastic.

I stood up and began ambling down the road, hoping to hitch a ride from some sympathetic driver. I recalled the legend of the highlands ghost and how it was said to keep the victims in its domain. I know, classically vague details—the trademark of tales that were probably made up on the spot—but as I spent more and more time on the gloomy road, the air of uncertainty gradually overtook my good sense. Only minutes passed before I found myself racing along the roadside, desperate to flee the ghost’s omnipresent clutches, as the wind whispered by me like a cackling demon. Hills all around, no escape, trapped forever in the endless valley. Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, I’m trapped! I’M TRAPPED!

And the wind suddenly stopped.

I slowly opened my eyes. Grey pavement filled my vision. I winced as I got back on my feet and looked around.

I was somewhere else now. The distant landscape hadn’t changed too much, but my surroundings were different. There were trees lining the road where Leo dropped me off, but there were no trees here; just a wide, plain, green meadow, bisected by the road.

It was very quiet.

Not too quiet, but enough for me to notice it and be vaguely discomforted by it. It was also cold. Not too cold, but barely.

And I stood here for some time, and I contemplated this place. It was… scary, and big, and lonely. It was so symmetrical and uniform that I found it humorous how I, an innately imperfect being, had wound up in it. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be here. Maybe this place was meant for someone else.

So why was I here?

There was a house in the distance. It was a simple house, with dark, wooden walls and a gray rooftop. If the house were in any other place, its existence would be of utmost normality, and people would likely live their entire lives passing by it every morning without ever noticing it. But here, the vast emptiness of the vicinity gave the house some sort of significance, and for some reason it felt… important.

I don’t know why, though. I mean, things aren’t more important just because they’re alone, right?

I made my way to the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. I was about to knock again when the peephole suddenly slid open, revealing a curious-looking eyeball. I say eyeball and not eye because, well, it looked less like an eye and more like a ball. It was a white sphere with a small black spot on it, and nothing more than that. There was no face around it, and no second eyeball to accompany it. It spun for a few seconds, the pupil jumping around, until it locked on me. And it froze. For a very long time.

Needless to say, I was frightened. Though appearing harmless, the way the eye just stared at me was unnerving, not to mention the fact that it wasn’t in a socket and I could see its sides. I took a tentative step backwards, and the eye turned a little to keep its gaze on me.

“Um…” I said. “Hi there.”

The eye didn’t stir. Its indifference somehow made me feel even lonelier.

“I… I was wondering if… Would you mind if… um… uh…”

God, I was stupid. Why did I have to be so awkward around strangers?

But the eyeball didn’t react at all. It just continued to stare.

“Could I use the telephone?”

It still didn’t move. It didn’t blink, either.

“I’m really sorry to bother you at this hour, but my boyfriend dropped me off here and I don’t… I need to call him.”

No reaction.

“I just need to make one phone call. Please, sir.”

Nothing.

“Please.”

The eye stared at me for another five seconds, before the peephole slid shut and the door creaked open. There was only blackness inside. I took one last scan of the area and inched into the dark.

Now it was too quiet. Not a single sound came, except for the faint and eerie creaks of the floorboards. I felt something soft brush my shoes and I froze on the spot, and even after gathering it was probably just a rug, I didn’t make another step.

A small orange light flickered into life on the other side of the room, illuminating the walls around it, as well as… his silhouette. Though I couldn’t make it out before it slid back into the darkness, I knew that whatever it belonged to wasn’t human.

What did I get myself into?

I turned around and ran out the door, plunging back into the starlight. I hurried onto the road, stumbling and cursing under my breath. Where the hell was I? Why was I here? Why was there a monster in that house⁈

“Help!” I shouted, staggering on the pavement. “Help! Somebody help me!”

Though my pleas echoed about, they went unanswered.

“Is there anybody out there⁈ Anyone?”

Nobody came.

“Please?”

No one.

I settled on the ground with a sigh and waited, once again. I don’t know what I waited for this time; I was already well aware that the road wouldn’t budge. Perhaps I just needed a moment to suppress the image of the shadowy monster.

Or maybe it wasn’t a monster. Maybe it was something else that I mistook in the darkness.

I peeked at the house again. A benign light poured from the window, inviting me away from the cold air. I stood up and returned to the house, stepping tentatively through the unclosed door. The foyer was now lit with numerous white candles on a brass shelf, and each candle’s flame danced humbly upon it. There was a staircase leading upwards on the other side of the room, a small upright piano beneath it, and of course, the rug that I mentioned earlier.

But there was one feature in the room that particularly caught my attention, and that was the clock on the wall. It didn’t look quite right: it had no dial, and the hands seemed to indicate that the time was around 2:30. And yet, the soft clicks of the gears had a rather homely effect, like the chirping of songbirds in the morning. Perhaps the clock had no purpose other than to tick about all day. Or maybe it had no purpose at all, and the ticking was just a byproduct of its purposeless existence. I still don’t know the answer.

The crackling of fire came from the other room. I walked inside and found the silhouette’s owner sat upon a blue carpet, his eyeball fixed on the fireplace in front of him. He looked serener here, still before the gleaming grate, ruminating, perhaps, on some philosophical notion. I stepped a bit closer to him, but he didn’t move.

“Hey.”

The pupil turned towards me, while the rest of his body remained motionless.

I thought about what to say next. No remark sounded very fitting to make to this curious being. But I knew that if he were a person, I would ask him… “What’s your name?”

So that’s what I asked him.

But I received only a silent gaze as an answer. I wondered if he understood the question.

“Um… I think I’ll just call you… Disker. Yeah.”

I don’t know why I chose that particular name, but I think it sounded fitting at the time.

Disker’s pupil returned to consider the fire. I joined him and noticed a metal grille just above the flames, holding a small porcelain mug with long, green leaves suspended in water. He was making tea, no less.

I spotted a small wooden table in the corner of the room, upon which a landline telephone and an answer machine were placed. I picked up the handset and dialled Leo’s number, fiddling with the cord while the earpiece hummed. The call eventually went to voicemail.

“Hey, Leo. I’m using a landline phone to call you, since you took away mine. I just wanted to call you and say that I’m doing alright, relatively speaking. But I doubt you actually care about that, right? You’re too busy dealing with your personal demons or whatever to drive me home safely. Must be real tough to—”

Disker was staring at me intently. I realised that I had raised my voice, and that I probably scared him.

“I… I’m sorry, Leo. Forget I said that. Just… come back, please. I miss you.”

With that, I ended the call.

My coat suddenly slid off my back. I turned to pick it up, only to find Disker dragging it across the floor. He hung it on a hook by the doorway, then returned to the fireplace. I wondered why he did that.

I sat on the velvet settee that fronted the grate and watched the flames dance. Already I felt quite cosy in this odd place, in spite of the presence of whatever Disker was. In fact, there was something about him that might have contributed to that sense of comfort, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was, or why it did.

A minute or two passed before Disker moved closer to the fire, retrieved the mug from the grille, and placed it on the coffee table before me.

“Oh,” I said. “Thank you.”

It appeared that he hadn’t too much experience with brewing, as the water was still colourless, but I appreciated the effort. As I sipped from the mug, Disker returned to the candle-lit foyer and began playing a jazzy melody on the piano. It was rather endearing.

And as I sat there, watching the fire, tasting the flavourless tea and listening to Disker’s song… an old memory came to me. And in it, Leo and I were in a pub in west Glasgow, and he was playing on a piano, quite similar to Disker’s, and one of his mates played the harmonica with him. It was an old song, something from the ’70s, but I remember that after I ordered a beer that night, the portly bartender pointed at him and asked,

“Is that your boyfriend?”

I looked up and nodded.

“You’re a lucky girl.”

“I know. I get that a lot.” I ran my finger round the rim of the glass. “But sometimes I wonder if… if there’s someone who’s better for me.”

The bartender looked at him again, then leaned closer to me. “You wanna know the truth? There is. There’s always someone, somewhere in the world, who’s better for you, and there always will be. But that doesn’t matter. If you spend the rest of your life searching for ‘the one,’ you’ll end up like me. And I’d hate for that to happen.”

“So you reckon I should settle for him?”

He chortled. “Well, ‘settle’ ain’t a pretty word, but… if you’re happy with him, and he’s happy with you, why spoil that?”

Disker hit a wrong note, bringing me back to my senses. He tried to backtrack and continue the song, but he seemed to have lost his place. After a few more attempts, he gave up and scuttered back into the sitting room, took my mug (which I only then realised was empty) and placed it upside-down on the grille. Droll.

“Thank you, Disker. That was nice of you.”

Part of me believes that Disker couldn’t comprehend anything I told him, yet the other, more logical part of me knows that I can’t know for sure. It’s possible that he did understand me but simply couldn’t respond or be bothered to. In a way, I think the same sometimes went for Leo.

I felt a light tug at my trouser leg. Disker was tweaking it, or at least trying to, and quite soon I understood that he was asking me to follow him. He showed me back into the foyer, up the stairwell and into a dim compartment on the second floor, with only a couple of candles throwing light on the pair of peculiarly contrasting objects in the room. The first one was a thin indigo mattress, covered with a cyan blanket and illuminated by a single candle that stood beside it. The second one, boasting its feeble lustre on the other side of the room, was a large wooden bathtub, halfway run with hot water. Across its rim lay several pink flowers, each adorned with numerous slender filaments. He was quite the romantic host, it appeared, but also a somewhat awkward designer. I mean, a bed and a bathtub in the same room? That’s ridiculous!

Disker pulled at my trousers again, but this time he was pulling them downward. I panicked and flinched back. “Disker! What are you…?”

Suddenly I realised he was genderless.

Up to that point, the decision to designate Disker “he” within my internal monologue had been unconscious. There was nothing about him, to the best of my recollection, that implied he was either male or female, and to some extent, “it” may have been a more fitting pronoun for him. All of a sudden, I likened the fear of standing nude before him to the fear of standing nude before a curious cat.

But even with that mindset, as I disrobed and lay in the steaming water, I still felt quite uneasy in his presence. Sure, he was just staring at me vacantly—he probably had no idea what he was looking at—yet, it felt too… intimate. I didn’t know why I felt this way.

He disappeared beneath the stairs and returned a minute later, now holding a small canister filled with some sort of viscous golden liquid. It sloshed about the container, nearly slopping, till Disker laid it beside the tub. He then dipped in the liquid and began working it into my hair, delicately coating each individual strand before moving to the next. He did this for some time, and though I found this behaviour very strange, I didn’t stop him. From what I could tell, he seemed to be enjoying himself, and I’d already developed too much of a liking for him to spoil that.

With each tendril of hot steam licking my face, my eyes fell a little more. It’d been a long day, and had Leo driven me home, he and I’d surely be snuggling right now, tucked deep beneath layers of thick bedding. I heaved a vague sigh and sank lower into the water, wondering if he, too, longed for that touch. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he was already in some pub, flirting with another girl…

Oh, Lord. What if he was?

“Disker?”

I don’t know why I called him. I think I needed someone to talk to, and he was the closest thing in the room to a person. Luckily, he seemed to understand it to some extent, as he suddenly stopped coating my hair and moved to my side, his pupil inspecting me curiously. I once again had to ask myself if he could comprehend my words.

“Do you think that… uh…”

Even if he could comprehend them, I doubted he had any thorough idea of love, so I decided to ask him about a conundrum that, at the time, I must’ve deemed more universal:

“Does anything matter?”

Unsurprisingly, Disker had no reply. Following a prolonged silence, he dabbled in the liquid again and began spreading it on my skin. I might’ve reacted more to it had his lack of an answer not disturbed me, because, though I was quite sure now that he couldn’t understand the question, a new quandary troubled my mind: if I could translate that question into some otherworldly language that he could understand… would that be enough? Would he grasp the concept of mattering, the nature of significance, the deep-rooted and inexplicable want of man to be important? Would I even be able to explain it to him?

As I mulled over this enigma, however, the balmy air in the room steered my thoughts with a more optimistic outlook. When I found that I couldn’t explain the concept of significance to Disker, I realised how human it was. Disker didn’t give objects or ideas meaning—he probably didn’t attribute any more significance to the sun than he did to a pebble. But I did. I held the power to determine what mattered and what didn’t.

That made me feel a little better.

I came back to my senses, immediately intrigued by how greasy the liquid that covered me was; it looked and felt a lot like oil, and when I sniffed it, I found that it had a minty fragrance, very similar to that of the pink flowers that sat on the edge of the bath. I wonder if they were related.

Another thing that intrigued me was how hot Disker’s touch was. Not too hot, but enough for me to notice it and be vaguely comforted by it.

Once he finished greasing my feet, he returned downstairs with the emptied container and emerged dragging a silky white bathrobe across the floor. I stepped out and wrapped myself in it, still thoroughly coated in oil, and watched him smother each candle’s flame till the bathtub disappeared in the darkness. The only light left in the room was the one beside the mattress, that now looked more inviting than ever. I hurried towards it and nestled under the thin blanket.

“Thanks for having me here, Disker. You’re really thoughtful.”

Again, I knew he didn’t understand me, but for some reason it felt important to keep talking.

“Goodnight.”

I closed my eyes, and he promptly put out the candlelight, plunging the room into darkness. I was so tired at this point, I was sure I’d doze off in seconds, but…

I’d say around thirty minutes passed by before I gave up. I honestly don’t know why I couldn’t sleep, but it appears that something was bugging me. When I opened my eyes again, Disker wasn’t there. While it’s nice to have some privacy, it was worryingly uncharacteristic of him not to stay around. Moreover, I think his absence kind of bothered me. Remember, this all happened in a plain house in the middle of an infinite meadow. When I arrived here, all by myself, this place made little sense, and my presence in it made even less sense. But when Disker appeared, made me a brew and played me a song… something clicked. And I felt okay here. It’s as if he was the living link between the warmth of humanity and the indifference of the universe.

I stood and tiptoed down the stairwell, returning to the dim foyer. Only a handful of candlelights still remained on the shelf—Disker seemed to have put most of them out. He was nowhere in sight, not in the foyer nor the sitting room, where the last dying flames smouldered in the fireplace. A dreary draft funnelled out of the chimney, flashing the lonely embers.

I strolled back into the foyer and walked through the exit, and the soft cobalt starlight enveloped me. The sensation of cold grass dampening my feet brought another memory, this time much older. When I was around eight years old, I had a habit of waking up early in the morning, sneaking downstairs and feeling the dew on the ground as I watched the sun climb into view. Every time, I’d stay there for maybe half an hour, ambling about the lawn, before I’d tiptoe back to my bedroom. This habit was nearly broken one time, after a dreich and rainy fortnight swept over Stirling. Despite the incessant thudding of heavy raindrops on the roof, I persisted with my pointless tradition, growing less optimistic with each sunless dawn. One morning, as I felt for the alarm clock, I realised that the rain had stopped. I ran down the stairs and flung open the door, and, freezing amidst the wet foliage, gazed at the golden glare of the brilliant sunrise.

The sensation I felt now, here in this gloomy meadow, was barely a ghost of that memory. I never did return to Stirling, not for so much as a nostalgic homecoming, and to be honest, I never really wanted to. I much preferred the more modern atmosphere of Glasgow. But only now did I realise how long it’d been since the last time I thought about that place.

To my right, just peeking out the overhang’s shadow, perched Disker’s figure. He peered into the night sky, his pupil jumping around, as if anxious to take in every fraction of the explosion of colours while it lasted. I wondered if he, too, was thinking about his old home. Maybe he came from some distant planet and somehow ended up here. Maybe he liked it better here.

I drew a bit closer to him, careful not to disturb his stargazing session, and sunk into the grass just centimetres away. He realised my presence a moment later and abandoned the sky to observe me instead. We simply looked at each other for a minute or so, which was surprisingly easy to do, before I noticed something odd about his eye. It was covered in a coarse grey layer of what appeared to be dust. It seemed that, for all the care he put into his guests, he never bothered much to look after himself. I don’t know if the concept had even occurred to him. Very tentatively, I moved my finger closer to his eyeball, expecting him to flinch, until it touched the smooth but stiff surface of his cornea. Beneath the dust I then brushed off, the true, snowy sheen revealed itself, and when I finished wiping the entire eye, his crystalline pupil shimmered in the soft moonlight. He revisited the sky for a moment, now gliding his view around much more peacefully, before he returned to face me. And then, after a second, he crept closer and hugged my leg. I think this was his way of saying, “Thank you.”

⁂

“Good morning.”

I blinked. An orange beam of sunshine poured out the cracks in the opposing wall, and fell directly on Disker, who stood next to the mattress with his timelessly curious gaze. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, searching for the source of that morning greeting. I could’ve sworn I’d heard somebody whisper those words nearby, but there was clearly no one there.

Disker offered me a mug, once again filled with hot colourless water and green leaves. It seemed that was the only thing he knew how to make. I accepted the drink and thanked him, and he promptly scuttled downstairs. As I shuffled out of the bathrobe and put on yesterday’s clothes, he began playing on the piano again, this time playing the same piece as before but slightly slower. The repetition didn’t bother me, though it became clear that he had only so many comforts to offer. It was around this point that I started wondering if I was a nuisance to him.

I descended the staircase and found him sitting on the stool before the piano, gliding to and fro the keyboard. All the candlelights had been extinguished, replaced by the warm sunlight that filled the house. I went to the sitting room and found a message on the answering machine. It was from Leo.

“Hi, Emily. I, uh… I’m sorry I didn’t call you back sooner.”

It was better than I thought it’d be to hear his voice again.

“And, well, goes without saying that I’m sorry for what I did yesterday. I… really, really am. You don’t need to forgive me.”

I sipped from the tea.

“I don’t know what I was thinking when I dropped you off there, but I really regret it.” I heard him swallow. “I’m on my way back to where I left you. If you moved elsewhere, er, call me back, please. I’ll be there in about an hour. And, uh…”

His voice trembled slightly. I leaned closer to the tape.

“I know you’re really angry at me for this whole ordeal, and rightfully so, but…”

He paused for a second. When his voice came back, it was cracking.

“…please don’t let me do this again. Please. We’ve been together for so long and only now did I remember what it’s like without you. It’s awful.”

I stared at the leaves in the mug. My throat was getting rather sore, but the hot water didn’t help very much.

“I don’t know if you’ll still love me when I’m back. I don’t know if you should. But… well, I had some time to think last night, and I realised that if I lost you, I…” He went quiet for some time, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ll be there soon. Love you.”

The recording ended.

I raised the water to my lips, but I was too absentminded, and the mug slipped from my fingers. It fell and crashed on the floor, shattering into a hundred bits of china and leaving a stain on the blue carpet. I flinched back and let out a dry whimper. Disker abruptly stopped playing and hurried into the sitting room, freezing at the sight of the broken shards. His pupil moved back and forth between me and the remains of the mug, and a horrible pang of guilt suffocated me.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I… Here, I’ll clean it up.” I crouched down and began sweeping the porcelain with my hands. “I’m really, really sorry, Disker. I didn’t mean to.”

I looked up and saw him watching me, perhaps glaring at me.

“I… I’m really… I’m…”

I stopped and broke down on the floor. I don’t know why, but the shattering of the mug had a terribly strong impact on me. It was just a simple mug, but now it was more than that. It was something that could never be brought back. I ruined it.

Disker swept the rest of the shards, disposed of them somewhere, then returned to the carpet and sat in front of me. I raised my head and stared at him, and through my misty eyes I struggled to interpret his expression, but I imagined he was none too pleased with me.

I rose to my feet and staggered towards the door, grabbing my coat along the way. Disker followed close behind, as if hustling me out, not interested in my presence anymore. I was no longer welcome here. I wasn’t meant to be here. Suddenly, an overwhelming sense of loneliness struck me, as my vision quivered and the outlines of the room grew fuzzier. Disker sat still on the carpet in the foyer, his gaze no longer fixed on me; now he simply stared at some corner of the room that perhaps he deemed worthier of his attention.

As I stepped through the doorway and entered the cool breeze, and saw the soft blush of dawn spread out across the horizon, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life Disker led when no one was with him. Did he simply stare into the distance and wait for some troubled dweller to lose their way and stumble upon his house? Did he ever grow bored of those lonesome nights? Did he ever feel sad about them? Does he even think about them?

“Wait, Disker—”

But when I looked back, the house was gone. In its place stood a beautiful tall, white tree, adorned with evergreen leaves and blooming pink flowers.

“Emily?”

I turned around and saw Leo waiting on the road, looking rather weary. The sight of him made my heart skip a beat. I hurried into the car and gave him a tight hug, and though he seemed quite surprised, he soon hugged me back.

“God, I was so worried…” he whispered. “I’m sorry I did this, Emily. I’m really sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.” I let go of him and smiled. “I can’t stay mad at you forever. It’s pointless.”

He restarted the car and began driving. “I don’t know. I feel like I really wronged you this time. Maybe you shouldn’t forgive me.”

I went silent for a moment, watching the trees zip past us. “Maybe I shouldn’t. But it’s much easier to just move on. There’s more to life than chasing virtue.”

“I guess so. Where’d you sleep?”

“There was a house somewhere in that area. The owner let me stay there overnight.”

“How was he?”

“Friendly, if a little eccentric. Kind of like you.”

He chuckled. “That’s generous.”

“But, uh, he wasn’t really a… a human.”

“What? What was he?”

“Well, er… I… I don’t remember actually. He was sort of like a human but not completely.”

“Maybe you saw the highlands ghost.”

I laughed.