The Ghost Sequences

by A. C. Wise

  Holly dropped her voice, leaning forward. I found myself leaning forward, too, and Gen’s shoulder brushed mine.

  “When they got inside, they found Martin St. Jean crouched in the corner, covered in dirt and blood. He snarled, and when one of the men spoke to him, Martin St. Jean tried to bite him and tear out his throat.

  “Another man tackled him, and they dragged him outside. That’s when the men who were still inside found Martin’s wife. She’d been tied to the bed, and pieces of her had been carved away. In the fireplace, they found bones. Some were too small to belong to anything but a baby, and they all looked like they’d been gnawed on.”

  Beside me, Gen flinched. Holly grinned.

  “Martin claimed a wolf got into the house. He said he killed it and survived on its remains, even though he was too late to save his wife and child. No one believed him. They locked him up and he howled night and day, never stopping except to say how hungry and cold he was. In the end, they couldn’t take it anymore, and they strung him up from a tree without waiting for a trial.”

  Holly paused again, making a point of meeting each of our eyes before delivering her last line in a dramatic whisper.

  “And that’s how the Starving Man was born.”

  *

  I caught my first ghost in the high school parking lot after we’d been playing for a week. The six of us rode our bikes over together, then split up. I went to the far side of the lot near the trees, Gen sticking close as my shadow.

  There was nothing, nothing, nothing, then suddenly a girl crouched on the asphalt right in front of me. When I looked away from my screen, I couldn’t see her, but through my phone she looked as real as Gen. She wore a bathing suit. Water ran from her skin, pooling beneath her and soaking into the ground. I didn’t remember animations from Adam’s phone, but then he’d only showed us the still pictures. I wasn’t prepared for how real she looked, the dripping water, or the way her lips seemed tinted blue.

  “She’s talking,” Gen said.

  I’d almost forgotten he was there. The girl’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear anything.

  “It’s okay.” I didn’t look away from my phone.

  I centered the girl and clicked the app’s camera button. The girl’s blue-tinged lips and the multi-color stripes of her bathing suit resolved into a black and white picture like the ones Adam showed us. I breathed out.

  “I got one!” I raised my voice.

  “Where’d you find her?” Holly was the first to reach me, everyone crowding around.

  I pointed. Holly lifted her phone, but her screen only showed only asphalt and painted lines.

  “Spawn must have timed-out.” Adam shrugged. Holly looked annoyed.

  “She was talking,” Gen said.

  A small line dented the skin in-between his eyebrows, his math problem look again.

  “If you download the EVP add-on, you can play that back. Sometimes you can make out words,” Adam said. “Here. Listen.”

  He tapped a button and held out his phone out. A garbled sound emerged.

  “What’s that?” Heather’s eyes widened.

  “Ghost voices.” Adam played it again.

  “It’s just noise.” Holly’s mouth crimped, and Adam’s shoulders slumped.

  “I’m going to keep looking.” Holly followed the border to some trees to the left, Heather trailing after her.

  “Why was she dressed like that?” Gen asked.

  Adam was still close enough to hear and answered.

  “There used to be a swimming pool here. Maybe she drowned.”

  “Seriously?” I couldn’t tell if Adam was messing with us, but he didn’t have that look.

  “I took swimming lessons here when I was really little. They filled it in right before Luke was born. I’m sure hundreds of kids drowned here.”

  Gen made a small noise, and I leaned down to whisper in his ear. “It’s okay, we don’t have to play anymore today.”

  I straightened, pitching my voice louder so Holly and Heather would hear, too. “We have to go home now. Our aunt is coming over for dinner.”

  I put my hand on Gen’s shoulder, squeezing so he wouldn’t give away my lie. I was proud of myself, not for the lie, but for keeping at least part of my promise to Gen.

  Later that night, I downloaded the EVP add-on, and pulled up the picture of the ghost girl in the bathing suit. Green lines scrolled across the screen, jittering up and down with the volume. I didn’t have the add-on installed when the ghost girl’s lips moved, so there was no way I could have captured real sound.

  Even though I knew it was just a trick to make the game feel more real, I couldn’t help the tightness in my chest as I listened. The noise on Adam’s phone sounded like someone talking with marbles in their mouth, or a recording slowed way down so you couldn’t make sense of the words. The sound on my phone was nothing like that at all.

  It reminded me of how when we visited our grandparents, Gen and I would sink to the bottom of their pool and take turns saying words and trying to guess what the other was saying. Gen was always better at it than me. The sound on my phone was like that, a wet sound. I listened five times in a row, and after the fifth, I crept down the hall. Gen’s door was open a crack; he lay on top of the covers with his back to me, the lights off.

  “Hey. I downloaded the EVP mode. Will you help me figure out what the girl is saying?”

  His shoulders might have twitched, but it might also have been a trick of the shadows as a car passed by outside. I waited, listening to his breathing, but I couldn’t tell if he was really asleep or faking.

  “Gen?” I tried one more time. No answer.

  Before I could decide whether to barge into his room anyway, the screen lit up on Gen’s phone. Wavy green lines scrolling, just the way they had on mine, the wet sound, but louder so I could almost make out a word.

  I stepped back. Gen hunched his shoulders. I couldn’t hear his breathing at all now, but I couldn’t make myself move. Was he holding his breath, waiting for me to go away? Trying to pretend I hadn’t seen anything at all, I retreated to my own room, closing the door behind me.

  *

  I woke to the sound of Gen’s screams. Disoriented, my legs tangled in my covers and I hit the floor with a crash trying to get up. I made it into the hall at the same time as my parents.

  Gen stood at the top of the stairs, his heels hanging over the top step like he was about to do a back flip off a diving board. His eyes were blank, his mouth a perfect circle of darkness. He looked like one of the ghost pictures on Adam’s phone.

  No one moved. Up until he turned five, Gen had suffered night terrors. The sleep specialist my parents took him to said to let Gen wake up on his own, no matter how bad it seemed. I never understood that, and my mom looked doubtful now, too.

  “Gen, honey?” She took a cautious step, one hand out like she was trying to catch a nervous dog. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

  Her fingers sketched the air near his arm, but she didn’t touch him.

  “Gen?”

  He turned toward her, his mouth widening impossibly, and let out another shriek. He leaned back, like he was trying to get away from her, and his arms pin-wheeled as gravity snatched him. My mother threw her arms around him, yanking him back. They hit the floor together, Gen’s limbs flailing in panic and hitting my mother in the nose.

  “Get his inhaler.” My father spoke without turning around.

  I found it in his bedside drawer. My father still didn’t look at me as I handed it over, concentrating on Gen. When Gen’s eyes finally focused, he reached toward my mother’s face.

  “Mommy, you’re bleeding.”

  “It’s okay. Just a nosebleed.” She smiled, her eyes bright with more relief than pain, but it still made Gen cry.

  He buried his face against her shoulder, exhaustion and fear coming out in a rush. She held him, rubbing his back and reminding him to breathe. My dad stayed nearby, watching them. There was nothing else I could d
o, and everyone seemed to have forgotten about me.

  I crept back to my room and opened Ghost Hunt!, thinking of the green wavy lines scrolling across Gen’s screen. I hadn’t seen him download the EVP app, or take a picture of a ghost. As far as I knew, he hadn’t caught any at all. I pulled up the ghost girl again. Nothing had changed. Some part of me expected to see Gen’s picture instead, his mouth open like a circle of darkness, bruised eyes staring at me from the screen.

  *

  The next morning, I looked up the swimming pool before I went down to breakfast. Adam hadn’t lied, but he’d exaggerated. Hundreds of kids hadn’t drowned, just one. Her name was Jenny Holbrook, and she lived right behind the pool so she could get there by cutting through her backyard. I read through the stories about her, piecing together a narrative. Gruesome as it was, I had a vague idea in my head that the next time we all gathered in the clubhouse, that would be the ghost story I would tell.

  Jenny used to sleepwalk when she was little. She hadn’t done it in years, but one night when she was almost twelve, she got up, put on her swimsuit, and went outside. She cut through the yard and somehow got inside the fence around the pool even though the gate should have been locked. A lifeguard found her floating in the deep end the next day. Jenny had climbed the high dive board, jumped, and hit her head on the way down. She might not have even woken up before she drowned.

  Another story published a few months after Jenny died said how she’d been planning to try out for the diving team. She’d been practicing for days. In the follow up report, the coroner revealed Ambien had been found in her system during the autopsy. Jenny must have been so nervous that she wouldn’t sleep before the tryouts, she’d taken a pill.

  The scent of my dad making banana pancakes wafted up from the kitchen, Gen’s favorite, but it made me feel sick. I abandoned the idea of telling the story in the clubhouse, imagining the hungry expression on Holly’s face if I did. Jenny Holbrook had been a real girl, and she’d died in Dieu-le-Sauveur. Why would the makers of the Ghost Hunt!, who had probably never even heard of our town, have put her in the game?

  *

  “I have a story,” Adam said.

  He slid a glance sideways at Holly. She put her phone down, and Adam struggled with a smile. I wondered if he’d been reading up on ghosts and the history of Dieu-le-Sauveur.

  “In the 1960s, there was a girl in Dieu-le-Sauveur named Candace Warren. She disappeared and no one knows what really happened to her. Candace lived in the House at the End of the Street.”

  Adam grinned, waiting for the startled look of recognition. Of course we all knew the House at the End of the Street. There’s a cul-de-sac at the end of our street, and a set of wooden steps leading up to street running parallel. At the end of that street is the House. There’s an empty lot beside it, and a park with a big willow tree, but nothing else around.

  “There used to be another house there a long time ago, and that’s the house where Martin St. Jean lived.” Adam’s grin widened, and Holly smacked his arm.

  “Shut up. That isn’t true.”

  “It is.”

  Holly crossed her arms; she was supposed to be the expert on ghosts. Despite her frown, it was clear she was still interested. After a moment, she relented.

  “Okay, keep going.”

  Adam took a breath and continued.

  “Candace spent most of her time with her babysitter, Abby. Her parents fought a lot and sometimes Candace would have bruises on her arms. She never talked about it with Abby, but Abby knew what the bruises meant. Because of that, Abby and Candace spent a lot of time away from the house, and one of their favorite places was the park across the street. They would have picnics under the willow tree, and Abby would tell stories.”

  It had taken him a few moments to recover from Holly’s interruption, but he’d fallen back into a rhythm. In fact, it was the same rhythm she used, like he’d been studying the way she told her stories. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Gen looked uncomfortable, like he was trying hard not to squirm. I’d taken him away from the parking lot, and after his night terror, I thought for sure he’d want to stay home, but he’d crossed through the hedge right after me. I’d briefly considered turning back, but a nagging voice in the back of my head spoke up—why should I have to give up my summer and my friends just because he was scared and too stubborn to stay home?

  Gen met my eyes, and I looked away, concentrating on Adam’s story.

  “One day while they were having one of their picnics, Abby showed Candace a secret. There was a certain spot under the willow where if you squinted just right, it looked like winter on the other side of the branches even in the middle of summer.

  “Candace asked how it worked, but Abby said she couldn’t tell her. The magic wouldn’t work if it was explained. Instead, she told Candace to close her eyes until her lashes and the willow branches made a crosshatch pattern. When everything was hazy and glittery, Abby took off her shoe and threw it. They saw it pass through the branches, but they never heard it hit the ground. They made a full circle around the tree, but Abby’s shoe was gone. When Candace asked where it went, Abby would only say one word: winter.

  “That night, Candace disappeared.”

  “That’s not a ghost story.” Annoyance edged Holly’s tone. This time, Luke was the one to answer her.

  “Shut up. He’s not done yet.”

  Holly opened her mouth, but Luke and I both shot her a look, and she closed it.

  “This is the part with the ghost,” Adam said. He glanced at Holly as if for approval. She didn’t say anything, and he went on.

  “A couple years after Candace disappeared, another family moved into the House at the End of the Street. Everyone had forgotten about Candace by then, and even Abby had moved away. The new family didn’t have any kids, but people would sometimes see a little girl standing at the upstairs window. Then one day, a whole pile of drawings appeared around the oak tree in the House’s yard.

  “They were a kid’s drawings, in bright crayon, hundreds of them. They showed a stick figure family—a mother, father, and little girl. The parents always had red smiles, but the girl’s face was blank, with no mouth or eyes at all. There were also pictures of a tree that looked like it had been drawn over something else, and a house with its windows scribbled out.

  “No one could figure out where the drawings came from. They thought it was a prank until they noticed something weird. Every picture had a figure in black ink somewhere on the page. Sometimes it was so small you could barely see, and sometimes it would fill the entire page, like it hadn’t been there before and suddenly spread. It was a tall, thin man, so thin he looked like he was starving. He had no eyes or nose, but he always had a mouth, full of sharp teeth, and it was always open.”

  Adam sat back; he wore a satisfied look, but he looked at Holly while trying to pretend not to.

  “Was it the Starving Man?” Heather asked. “In the pictures?”

  “Yup.” Adam nodded.

  “How do you know it’s true?” Holly asked.

  “How do you know your stories are true?” Luke countered.

  A low-level argument broke out. I ignored it, turning toward Gen. I felt guilty for looking away before, pretending I couldn’t see he was upset. I caught my breath. Tears rolled down Gen’s cheeks, his shoulders hitching. I grabbed his pack, which he had taken off, and dug out his inhaler, but he shook his head.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I whispered.

  Luke and Holly were still arguing. Gen took my hand and squeezed it so hard I felt my bones shift, but I didn’t pull away. I let him hold onto it as we crossed through the hedge and back home.

  *

  Gen forgave me. When I asked, he said he’d never been mad, but he also didn’t want to talk about it. I tried to make it up to him by staying away from Ghost Hunt!, and from Adam and Luke’s house for a whole week. Everything went back to normal for a bit, and Gen didn’t have any more night terrors. I start
ed playing Ghost Hunt! again on my own without mentioning it. If Gen knew, he didn’t say anything.

  Three weeks after Adam told the story about Candace Warren, Gen and I were on the swings in the park near the school. I’d just finished baseball practice, and we were waiting for our parents to pick us up to go to our grandparents’ for the weekend.

  “Push me?” Gen asked.

  I dragged my feet to stop my own swing.

  “Think I could push you all the way around?” I asked as I pulled his swing back.

  “Don’t!” He squealed as I let go, kicking his feet, but laughing. It was an old game between us. I pushed as hard as I could.

  “Higher!”

  I pushed again and as the swing came back toward me, Gen’s phone pinged. It was the Auto Detect sound Ghost Hunt! made. Gen yelped, jumping. The swing’s chains jangled as he hit the sand.

  “Hey! You okay?” I caught the swing before it cuffed him.

  His phone had fallen when he did. Green lines scrolled across the screen. I froze. The sound coming from Gen’s phone was cold wind and the rattle of chains.

  Gen whimpered. I inspected his hands. No scrapes. I brushed dirt off his palms.

  “You’re okay.”

  The sound from Gen’s phone changed. The chains rattled more violently, and underneath came a noise like someone struggling to breathe.

  I reached for the phone, and Gen yelled, “Don’t!”

  I rocked back, startled. I pulled out my own phone. Gen shook his head.

  I ignored him, and opened Ghost Hunt!, panning across the park. In the empty swing at the far end of the set, a girl sat with her hands wrapped around the chains. Her lips moved, breath trickling out in a cloud despite the summer day.