by Sarah Riad
‘Jack?’ Mum looked at him, displaying the deep lines on her forehead. ‘Is everything ok?’
It was like he had been hit with a jolt of electricity when he finally looked at Mum with a quick nod of his head. ‘I am fine,’ he said with far more aggression than any of us expected. ‘Finn, don’t give me this crap about how we had a life there. Your life at the old house consisted of nothing more than you locking yourself away in your room. You will be able to do that from here too.’
‘Jack…’ Mum said as I threw him a look before storming up the stairs. Each step sounded more unreliable than the last.
‘What a prick,’ I said under my breath feeling my chest growing tight from the anger smothering me. I walked into the first room on my right to find it was empty except for a rusted, metal bed frame in the corner of the room beside a shattered, tall mirror. The walls were a murky pea-green except for one wall which had peeling pink and blue wallpaper. Every corner staged an abandoned cobweb—not even the bugs wanted to live in this dump. As I walked further into the room, the floorboards protested my every step until I stopped before the large window. It was covered in a mixture of bird poo and rain smears, but looking through the gaps of dirt, I could see a forest behind the house. The nearest forest to the old house was at least an hour drive away, and even then, I had never gone anywhere near it. In fact, thinking about it, I hadn’t ever been to an actual forest. The old house was nothing like this. It was surrounded by houses full of neighbours—some we’d smile at politely as they left their house on their daily commutes, others we’d pretend we had never seen before despite being neighbours for years. But it was different here. The nearest house had been at least a ten-minute walk away. In fact, I had seen more cows than people on the way here.
‘Is this the room you’ve picked?’ my dad said after doing the awkward clearing of the throat trick. ‘I’ve got some white paint in the lorry that you can use to cover this up if you want.’ He kept close to the door as I turned to face him. ‘We could sand down the floorboards before we unpack your stuff, so it’ll be like your old bedroom.’ He tried to force a smile but it was far from genuine.
‘Dad, what do you want?’ I gave him a cold stare.
He sighed and held onto the door frame. ‘Look, this moving stuff is stressful for us all—’
‘Then why move full stop?’ I threw my arms around the room. ‘Look at this place, Dad—it doesn’t even look safe enough to live in. And how the hell did we get it anyway? Who just gives away a house?’
‘Finn, I know none of this makes sense to you right now, and I know you’re upset about leaving the old house, but this was the right decision for us as a family.’
I shook my head and walked over to the bedroom door where he took a few steps back. ‘You’re right,’ I said, taking hold of the door handle. ‘None of this makes any sense.’ I threw the door shut, watching for a moment as it startled the thick inches of dust.
The tightness in my jaw was beginning to give me a headache as I turned to the bed and kicked its leg. A loose screw gave way, hitting the floor with a tap before it rolled into one of the many gaps.
I sighed as I looked around the room once more, imagining my old room. The clean white walls and even cleaner floor. My bed that sat in the centre of the room that Mum always made when I was at school despite my protests. My TV had been on the opposite wall with my PlayStation ready for me to play. It was my space. It was somewhere I knew I could be left alone, but all that was gone. And for what? My dad’s dumb reasons. I hated this house as much as I hated him. I had little interest in going to university next year, but knowing it would mean I would be away from him for at least three years made it all the better.
I shrugged off my hoodie and looked around for the cleanest part of the room to put it before settling for the shattered mirror. For a moment, I frowned back at my distorted reflection before wondering who had broken it, which then led me to wonder who had lived here before. It was obvious someone had, though it was clear it had been some time since then.
‘Finn,’ Mum said before a light tap on the door startled me as I imagined an old, lonely man having died and left to rot.
‘Is everything ok?’ she said walking into the room with both hands full of cleaning products. My little sister, Maia followed behind her.
‘We thought you might need some of these.’ She smiled carefully as she placed down the several bottles and rags onto the floor.
‘And this,’ Maia said, as she handed me a roll of rubbish bags.
I reached down for the bags and gave her a smile. ‘Thanks, Maia.’ She had that sleepy look that she always had whenever she had just woken up. She brushed away her auburn hair in messy plaits from her face before shoving her hands into her pink hoodie. Her eyes kept flickering over to the mirror I had just been staring into.
‘I wanted to apologise for earlier,’ Mum said as I turned back to face her. She sighed. ‘It’s just that you’re not making this any easier with your constant protests.’
I shifted my eyes over to Maia who was smiling at something in the corner, just above the mirror.
‘Maia, what are you smiling at?’ Mum said matching my curious look as Maia dropped her smile.
‘Nothing,’ she said quickly, placing her hand into Mum’s and gently tugging. ‘Can we go to my room now?’
Mum nodded before giving me a weak smile, one that said, ‘Please, Finn, stop having an opinion on the decisions I make about your life.’
She and Maia left the room as I sat on the edge of the bed frame only for it to give way and collapse under me. I hit the floor with a thud.
‘Stupid house.’
3
Ab
I couldn’t believe it. Was it really possible that the little kid had seen me? She had smiled, the boy and his mum confirmed it. She smiled at me. No one had ever seen me before, well, not since I was alive. I had felt a small rush of energy too. It wasn’t much but more than enough to keep me going for a book or two. The most interesting thing was, I hadn’t sensed fear. That’s how I thought it worked. I’d scare someone and feel their fear charge through me like a battery, but the kid was definitely not scared. She smiled with a toothy grin, albeit missing one of her front teeth, but it was a smile and at me.
‘Can you see me?’ I had whispered to her before her mum had interrupted us with a look of concern.
It had been so long since I had shared eye contact with someone that I felt it impossible to look away, but she didn’t give me a choice. Her smile had gone, and she was holding onto her mum’s hand, wanting to leave. I was so angry at her mum for interrupting that I could have thrown something at her, but now wasn’t the time for any of that. That would come later.
It had been a while since I had been around so many people that I had become completely distracted by the fact that this family had moved into my house. They were touching my things and painting over the walls that I had become so accustomed to as though I didn’t exist. Ok, so physically I didn’t exist but still, this was my house. They had no right to be here. The house had been abandoned since…well, since that day…my last day...and the owners hadn’t been back since. Why did they want to sell it now? And why did this family want it? I was full of questions that no one was able to answer.
I needed a plan. I needed to get them out, and now that I had a possible source of energy from Maia, things could be a little easier. The problem was, I was useless in the daylight, especially with them all banging around making noise for themselves, but tonight I was going to terrify them. I just had to make sure I didn’t use up any of the strength I had gotten from the kid—no matter how tempted I was to throw away the hideous butterfly figurines Cait, their mum, had placed on the freshly painted fireplace. I also needed to figure out if Maia had really seen me.
It had been several hours since they had come in and taken over the place, and in fairness, the house already looked much bigger and cleaner. Fortunately, they hadn’t yet made their way past th
e second floor so my library was safe for now. The plan for that evening had been to scare them each individually until they were spooked enough to leave, and to do that I needed to make sure I knew their weak spots. I didn’t have time to waste. I spent those passing hours watching each of them, running little tests to see how they reacted. Cait was by far the jumpiest. A single tap on a piece of wood, and she would spend a few minutes examining the room like a detective looking for evidence. Finn was cautious, he’d react to noises with a flicker of an eye before dismissing it, and Theo was far too busy catching glimpses of himself in anything shiny to notice anything other than himself.
I’d start tonight with Cait who would pass on her fear to her husband, Jack, and then I would move on to Finn and Theo. With four people’s fear, surely, I would be powerful enough and if I couldn’t scare them, then frankly they deserved the house.
As the sun settled with the disturbed dust around the house, Cait and Maia were in the kitchen cooking something that I had wished I could smell. From the steam rising from the cooking pots and the occasional taste test Cait would take from the wooden spoon, I could tell it must have smelled amazing. It made me think of Gran’s pies. My gran’s pies were the best. It didn’t matter what was inside them—sweet or savoury—you could bet they would be amazing.
Jack’s car had just arrived in front of the house after leaving a few hours before when Maia yelled in a pitch so high it would have shattered my human eardrums.
‘Mitzi!’
Not another person, please. I silently wished, I was already up against five of them.
As the door opened, in came a golden coloured dog full of fur and possibly the same size as a Shetland pony with its tongue flopping from left to right. It ran into the open arms of Maia, jumped up to lick her face until it looked in my direction and completely froze for a few seconds.
‘Oh great, a dog. Just what I need.’ I rolled my eyes remembering the pre-ghost me that had loved animals. In fact, for a year after finishing school, I had walked my neighbour’s dog every Saturday for a little pocket money. That had all changed, though, and now they hated me.
My first experience was a few years after I had been dead. Two men had discovered the house during a nighttime dog walk, and instead of scaring them for energy, I became excited by the dog. As I ran towards it, the dog had growled and frantically barked at me in the same way Mitzi was currently doing. I realised then that dogs were able to see me but not in the lovely, ‘oh she’s a hooman’ kind of way and more in the ‘kill, attack, kill’ kind of way.
This was far from ideal. I didn’t need a dog barking at me all the time.
‘What the hell has got into Mitzi?’ Cait said speeding into the hallway with a tea cloth in her hands.
‘Perhaps she’s disoriented by the move,’ Jack said as he followed Mitzi’s gaze right through me.
‘Maybe. Let’s get her kennel up and let her adjust outside while we have dinner,’ Cait said, then walked back into the kitchen as Jack gently tugged onto Mitzi’s collar.
For a moment, Maia and I were left alone in the hallway. I knew I had to take my shot and see if she could really see me.
‘Hey, kid?’ I whispered, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she skipped off to join her mum back in the kitchen.
Had I imagined her smiling at me?
I walked into the living room which seemed like a completely different room compared to what it had once been before. One thing that I was beginning to notice was that this family hated any colour. The walls had been stripped of its green floral wallpaper and had been painted over in white. The sofa was large and grey, and the rug under their glass coffee table was also grey. Above the white fireplace was a huge black picture. They had even managed to make my piano seem blacker. Apart from the colourful glass figurines Cait had displayed on the fireplace, you’d think you had become colour blind walking into the room.
As I stood beside the fireplace, staring at one butterfly figurines, I wondered if Maia really had seen me until I remembered the new energy I had felt. I needed to know if it was real, and there was only one way to find out. I raised my hand in front of me and quickly, swiped at one of the butterflies, watching as it made contact with the colourful glass before tumbling to the floor. In seconds, it was completely shattered into tiny pieces as Jack walked into the room, staring down at the glass beside me.
‘Jack, can you get the boys, I am just dishing up,’ Cait shouted from the kitchen as he bent down, carefully picking up each piece of glass.
‘Just a second,’ he called back before throwing his collection into one of the full black bags in the corner of the room. He stood staring at the fireplace for a moment with a frown before looking around the room. There was something off with him, I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
‘Sweetie, you’ve put too many plates out,’ Cait said to Maia as I left Jack staring at the fireplace. ‘There are only five of us.’
I watched as Maia shook her head. ‘No, there are six.’
‘Ok, how about we count everyone together?’ Cait smiled, bending down in front of her to hold out a finger for each person she named. ‘There’s you, me, Daddy, Theo, and Finn.’ She finished with her hand stretched out before Maia, who pulled at her mum’s other hand and pushed one finger up.
‘You forgot the girl,’ she said, so casually that I almost didn’t realise she was talking about me.
‘You can see me,’ I said slightly boosted by the fear Cait had suddenly felt. She looked around the room before looking back at Maia with concerned eyes.
‘What girl, sweetie?’
‘I don’t know her name, but I think she lives here,’ Maia replied as she played with her fork.
‘Oh, she does? Where is she now?’ Cait asked, trying her hardest to keep smiling.
Maia looked up and pointed right at me. ‘She’s there.’
I couldn’t help but laugh as Cait’s jaw almost dropped to the floor. She couldn’t see me, of course—strangely, it was just the kid that could—but it had made my job tonight much easier now that Cait was already spooked.
‘Right, well, why don’t you go wash up for dinner?’ Cait said before walking off into the kitchen, and Maia bounced off upstairs.
The kid was growing on me.
I was about to follow her upstairs when Jack walked into the room and placed a kiss on Cait’s cheek.
‘Everything ok? Dinner smells great,’ he said. She barely noticed him.
‘Look at the table,’ she finally said, and he did.
‘Are we expecting someone?’ he said turning to the dining room, putting his back to me.
‘Well according to Maia we are. She seems to think we have a girl living with us.’
‘Oh.’ He had taken too long to respond. ‘She’s a child with a big imagination. I am surprised she hasn’t had an imaginary friend before this,’ he said sounding more relaxed as he grabbed a beer from the new fridge.
‘Hmm…I don’t know Jack, that’s very unlike her. What if there’s something here? It was abandoned for such a long time after all.’
‘Cait,’ Jack said a little louder than expected. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous. You sound as mature as Maia.’
Cait stood frozen for a moment before she opened her mouth. ‘Boys,’ she said as both Theo and Finn arrived in the kitchen with wary eyes. ‘Good timing, I am just about to dish up dinner.’ She kept her usual smile plastered on her face before she slid past Jack with a dish of some sort of stew. Pausing for a moment, she tiptoed to his ear and whispered loud enough for only him and I to hear. ‘Don’t you dare ever speak to me like that again.’
I couldn’t help myself but smile at Jack’s scorned face.
‘Why are there six plates?’ Theo asked with cheeks stuffed with bread.
‘Maia has an imaginary friend,’ Jack answered before Cait could.
‘She’s not imaginary. She’s right there,’ Maia said before all eyes were on me but only seeing another freshly painted wh
ite wall.
‘Maia, enough of this. There’s no one there. Now eat your dinner or no iPad tonight,’ Jack said sternly, and they all finished their meals in silence.
4
Finn
Dad had finished eating first, and once he had left the table to dump his plate in the sink, we all began to relax. Ever since I could remember, Dad had never been the paternal type. Being a dad just never seemed to suit him, despite his best efforts. It was easier for all of us if he was just called into action when a ‘bad cop’ was needed. His rough voice could scare you from a distance once he started to yell. Being a dad was easiest for him when he had something that he could relate to you with. Theo had football, and Dad loved football. They could talk for hours about it, and Dad would always attend Theo’s matches. Maia had it easiest. She was the ‘apple of his eye’ as Mum would say. There had been a time when I had gotten on well enough with him, and he had cheered me on at my races, but all that was over the minute I gave it up. Now we had nothing in common. There was nothing he could talk to me about anymore, no matter how many times we both tried.
I didn’t talk to him or any of the others again that evening, though that wasn’t unusual. Unless forced otherwise, I spent every evening after dinner in my bedroom. It was bad enough having to pretend like we all enjoyed each other’s company around the dinner table every day, let alone spend an entire evening together. Any longer than an hour and the cracks of our family would begin to show. I wasn’t stupid though, I knew I was the biggest crack. If I wasn’t being yelled at by my dad then I was arguing with Theo while Mum constantly sighed in the background trying to remain ‘Switzerland’. It was easiest if I stayed away. They’d usually sit in front of the TV after dinner, talking about their day or whatever was on TV while I played a game on my PlayStation or listened to music. Sometimes, I would stand at the top of the stairs wanting to go down and join them, but I could never take the steps forward. Instead, I would just listen to them laughing and joking— they never wondered where I was or if I wanted to join them. I knew how much easier it would have been for them if I had been more like Theo. Everything he did just seemed to be ‘right’. He never had to try and make friends in school, they just naturally gravitated towards him. He never played sports religiously as a child and yet, the minute he began football, he was incredible at it. It didn’t help that he also had seemed to grow into his body and become a person someone either fancied or wanted to look like. I, on the other hand, had just grown tall. The rest of me hadn’t quite filled out and so I just hung awkwardly beneath the bagginess of my clothes. People didn’t want to be my friend, even with Theo as my brother. They just avoided me and over time, I had become the weird loner kid that no one wanted to be associated with. A new town to live in should be a good thing, with a new school and new people, but none of that matters when you are still you. I was never going to be a ‘Theo,’ I was always going to be a ‘Finn’, and there just didn’t seem to be any room for me in this family.