The Haunting

by Lindsey Duga

  And that’s when Emily knew: The girl she’d been playing with this whole time … she was the ghost.

  Kat’s jaw dropped open and the house moaned louder. The moaning increased until it became almost deafening. Mrs. Thornton slumped over into the pillows, fainting from fright. Mr. Thornton barely noticed his poor wife as he shuffled away from the girl, shaking with shock and terror.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” Kat hissed, her voice somehow next to Emily’s ear even though she still stood on the opposite side of the bed. “How dare you try to take them away from me? How dare you try and make them FORGET ME?!”

  With those words, the windows exploded all around them. Glass shattered everywhere, flying across the room and embedding itself into the carpet and the walls. Emily screamed and crouched down, throwing her arms over her head, too scared to run, too scared even to move.

  Amid the chaotic scene, a bark came from behind her. Emily glanced over her shoulder and saw Archie squeezing his way through the half-closed door. He dashed to her side and faced Kat from across the bed, the hair on the dog’s shoulders raised and his sharp canine teeth bared in fierce protection.

  Kat glared at Emily, her black eyes narrowing into slits. Then the shadows that had been crawling down the walls slithered across the floor toward Kat, climbing over her feet and winding up her limbs like vines. Sludge coated the ghost girl, transforming her into a monstrous figure wrapped in a cocoon of living, evil shadows.

  The house moaned again, louder this time, and the very floor shook beneath them. Next to Emily, Archie started barking like crazy, and even though Emily was too scared to raise her head, she could feel the monstrous ghost moving toward her, looming over the bed and the Thorntons, dripping with shadows and hate and rage.

  The voice once again whispered in her ear as if she was right next to her. “You will never—ever—replace me.”

  As frightening as it all was, and as hopeless as it all seemed, Emily’s head jerked up at Kat’s words.

  She stared at the monsterlike shadows inching toward her, though Archie’s barking seemed to be keeping them at bay. Kat, wrapped in darkness, leaned over the bed, her jaw opened and the moaning growing ever louder.

  “Replace you …” Emily repeated in a whisper, the gears in her mind slowly turning.

  Emily stood, suddenly finding strength she didn’t know she had, with the prospect of an idea—a nagging suspicion that she had been blind to since she’d arrived at Blackthorn.

  Squeezing the key tightly in her hand, Emily spun on her heel and ran for the door, bursting out into the hallway while Archie ran by her side.

  At first, Emily wondered if she had escaped from Kat. She was running so fast down the hall that all she heard were the wind rustling in her ears and the heartbeat in her chest and the panting of her breath.

  But then the shadows came.

  They came from every direction. Sliding off the walls, emerging from the cracks, rounding the corners. They crawled toward her, moving fast and steady as if waiting for Emily to trip or run out of energy so they could grab her.

  But cold, hard fear and a wild determination carried Emily’s legs faster down the hall. The shadows kept chase, nipping and clawing at her ankles and the hem of her nightgown. One grabbed hold of the lace, and she could feel the chill set into her legs, but Archie snapped at it and the shadow whipped away. She cried out and ran on, Archie growling and snapping at the evil shadows as they raced down the hallways together.

  They passed another room. Its door suddenly burst open and out flew an entire side table. The table whizzed right in front of Emily’s nose, narrowly missing her, and smashed into the opposite wall. The table broke apart in a shattering blow of wood pieces as Emily lunged to cover Archie.

  But there was no time to stop and be thankful that the table had missed them. The shadows bit at Emily’s toes and brushed against her ankles. If she stayed in one place too long, she didn’t doubt that eventually she’d be swallowed by them, and she didn’t want to find out what lay within that darkness.

  With Archie at her side, Emily jumped past the broken table pieces and continued running down the hall. It seemed to go on forever! Was this another ghostly trick as well? Would she ever escape?

  Finally Emily came upon Mr. Thornton’s study, right by the staircase. She was just able to glance inside when she saw a dozen books flying toward her at an impossible speed.

  With a gasp, Emily dropped to the floor, flattening herself just in time as the flock of books sped through the air and crashed into the wall in a flurry of pages. As Emily got up, she recognized the deep red cover of the book Alice in Wonderland by her foot. The pages were ripped and the cover was torn, as though claws had sliced through the fine old leather.

  Swallowing hard, Emily raced on, rounding the corner and up the staircase. Then the floor began to move under her feet. But it wasn’t the entire floor, just the rug. It rippled and propelled her forward. Skidding on her knees, she tried to stand back up, but the carpet tripped her once more. The shadows, as if seeing their window of opportunity, hastened their chase and went after her.

  Archie pounced on the rug, digging his paws into the fabric ferociously and biting at it with his sharp canines. Panting, Emily drew herself up and continued climbing the steps to the third floor.

  “I want you to GO AWAY!” a voice said from above.

  Scared to look up, but knowing she had to, Emily found Kat standing at the top of the staircase. She was Kat again. Not a dark, monsterlike creature covered in writhing shadows, but also not the Kat with whom Emily had played. This was the sickly Kat with snow-white skin, thin cheeks, and lank hair, as if she had been decomposing all this time.

  “I’m not trying to replace you!” Emily called back. “I just want a home.” Her voice broke—from either tears or terror, she wasn’t sure. “I want a family.”

  “Well,” Kat said, raising her hands, “you can’t have mine.”

  Something above Emily’s head snapped. It sounded like a chain breaking.

  The great crystal chandelier that Emily admired came rushing down at her like a sparkling star falling to Earth. For one terrible moment, she was too scared to budge. Then Archie tugged at her hem, muffled growling rumbling from his throat, and Emily’s feet began to move again. She ran up the stairs, breathless with fear and exertion as the chandelier collided with the steps, mere inches from where she was standing. Shards of crystal flew over the hall, the crash reverberating in her ears.

  But Kat was momentarily gone. So Emily rushed up the remaining steps, turning down the west wing.

  She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t give up. She had to end this.

  The teeth of the skeleton key bit into her palm, digging grooves into her skin. The house moaned once again, and the hallway seemed to stretch impossibly long before her. She gritted her teeth and tried to run faster, but the scent of mildew and decay overwhelmed her. With her free hand she covered her mouth and nose. The wood and the moldings rotted before her very eyes. The spaces where portraits once had been were no longer white, but charred, as if the paintings had been burned away.

  Another giggle came from next to her ear, and this time Emily did look. Kat was there, floating along beside her. She reached out a ghostly hand toward Emily, who ducked away, springing the last few steps to the pristine white door.

  With quivering hands, she stuffed the skeleton key into the lock, and it fit perfectly. Emily turned the key and, mustering up every last ounce of strength she had, thrust her weight into the door—just as Kat’s bitingly cold gray hand wrapped around her arm …

  The door swung open and the hand on Emily’s arm vanished. The moaning faded like an echo, and the freezing chill evaporated. The angry house seemed to settle like a rowdy child going down for its nap.

  Still trembling, Emily took a few tentative steps into the room and looked around.

  It was a bedroom.

  A girl’s bedroom.

  It had white furnitur
e with gold knobs on the dresser and vanity drawers. A mirror, similar to Mrs. Thornton’s but smaller, stood in the corner, reflecting Emily, who stood still in her nightgown. The bed was white lace with gauzy curtains on either side. A braided pink rug and a white rocking horse with a pink-and-yellow mane sat in the middle of the room.

  It was lovely. It was every girl’s—no, every princess’s—dream.

  Slowly, Emily took a few more steps in, then gasped.

  Kat suddenly appeared by the armoire. But she wasn’t the ghoulish figure who had terrorized Emily that night. No, she looked … normal. Bright, healthy, in the pretty dress she always wore with her shiny shoes and golden curls. She didn’t say anything, but instead looked sadly down at the armoire.

  Knowing there had to be something significant there, Emily stepped forward, Archie still at her side, her ever-vigilant protector.

  On the armoire, covered in a thick layer of dust, was a gold locket. It was a bit tarnished with age, but Emily could tell it was expensive and priceless to its wearer. The locket spelled KAT. It was the exact same as the one that hung around Kat’s neck.

  Emily looked up at the ghost girl with wide eyes.

  “At least they didn’t give you my room,” Kat said sadly, her hands passing through the gold locket and the desk itself.

  “Kat … I …” Emily tried to find words through the fear. Now that Emily knew she was talking to a ghost, everything she thought to say sounded insignificant in the face of death. How could she talk to someone who had died? How could she talk to her and comfort her when the very worst had happened?

  Finally, Emily settled on the words she’d spoken in the hallway. Because they were the truth. “I never tried to replace you. I didn’t even know about you.”

  Kat’s bottom lip trembled, her fingers wiping away any tears from her eyes. “That’s just it, isn’t it? They don’t talk about me, Emily. It’s like I didn’t exist at all. It’s like they don’t care about me, and they never did.”

  For the first time, Emily felt pity for Kat, and not for being a ghost, but for being just like her. A girl who felt unwanted. A girl who felt like she’d lost her home, or never had it to begin with.

  “They locked my room and took down all my portraits,” Emily said, gesturing to the room. “All my dresses and dolls were put into the attic, and Miss Greer isn’t even allowed to say my name. They want to forget about me. It’s like I was never alive. It’s like I was never their daughter.” Her voice was a soft wail now, tormented and mournful, and Emily knew that this was what had started Kat on the path to becoming a vengeful ghost.

  She was sad, lonely, and so very, very hurt.

  Emily didn’t know what to say or how to comfort her. As the two girls stood there in silence, Emily noticed the light in the room slowly begin to change. From a room coated in shadows with glowing white furniture, it shifted into a room tinged with a soft orange-and-yellow glow as the sun slowly began to peek through the windows. In the light, Emily could just barely make out the blackberry bushes outside. The same blackberry bushes where she had met Kat.

  “You can see the blackberry bushes from up here,” Emily blurted, without thinking.

  Kat nodded. “Papa gave me this room so I could look out and tell when they were ripe for picking.”

  Kat loved blackberry picking, which is why it made the Thorntons so sad when Emily had come back with a whole pail of them.

  They weren’t trying to forget Kat because they didn’t love her. They were trying to forget her because they loved her so much that every memory of her was painful.

  Now that Emily thought back to her brief time at Blackthorn Manor, she could very clearly see the signs of Kat’s existence. Even if Kat wasn’t talked about in words, she was a constant presence in her parents’ hearts.

  “Kat, they do love you. They love you so much that it was painful to remember you, so they tried to get rid of everything that reminded them of you,” Emily said softly, her voice growing stronger with every word, certain that she was right.

  Mrs. Thornton had nearly started crying when she’d heard about Emily picking blackberries because Kat probably came home with them all the time. Miss Greer had told Emily not to play music because it was something that Kat had loved doing. Mr. Thornton had given Emily Alice in Wonderland because maybe Kat hadn’t gotten the chance to read it.

  Emily suspected they had picked her based solely on her appearance. Emily looked nothing like Kat. She was taller and had dark hair and dark eyes, while Kat was petite and blond with blue eyes. They were opposites in almost every way to make sure that when Mr. and Mrs. Thornton looked at Emily, they would not see Kat.

  “I think they didn’t want to cling to a past while facing a future without you in it.” Emily sighed, looking around at the furniture that was so carefully built and beautifully painted. Clearly it was for a child they adored. “They miss you, Kat. This is how they’ve tried to move on.”

  Kat just looked at Emily, her shoulders slumped and her face still a little sad, but Emily could see a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

  Then the ghost girl vanished, just as hurried footsteps echoed down the hall, and both Mr. and Mrs. Thornton appeared in the doorway.

  As the two looked around the room, their reactions were painful to watch. Tears started running down Mrs. Thornton’s face immediately, and she clutched her hands to her mouth and nose. Mr. Thornton slumped against the doorframe, his face falling into defeat, exhaustion, and sadness.

  “Katharine,” he whispered softly.

  Judging from their past reactions and all their attempts at shutting out their dead daughter from their lives, Emily knew she would be pushing them by asking about her. But it was the only way to convince Kat, once and for all, that she was still loved by her parents.

  Swallowing hard, Emily took a few steps forward. “Is that the name of the girl who lived here? Your daughter?”

  Mrs. Thornton sniffled while her husband stared at Emily, grief coating his features.

  “Katharine Anne,” Mrs. Thornton finally choked out amidst the tears. “Her name was Katharine Anne.”

  Katharine Anne Thornton. KAT. The initials on her locket.

  “Yes.” Mr. Thornton sighed heavily. “She died two years ago. We thought it was just a cold. But the coughing got worse and worse. She couldn’t go outside anymore, and she was bedridden with an awful fever. We called for a doctor as soon as she started showing symptoms of consumption, but—”

  “She wasted away so quickly,” Mrs. Thornton struggled to say, her breaths labored with tears. “There was nothing we could do. Before we knew it, she was …”

  Of course, Mrs. Thornton didn’t have to finish. Emily knew all too well what had happened. She’d witnessed it happening to girls at the orphanage.

  “We tried to move on, but the memory of her was too painful. Every day, we expected to see her come racing around the corner. So we tried to remove everything that reminded us of her,” Mr. Thornton explained.

  “But that’s not moving on,” Emily protested. “That’s pretending the past never existed—that she never existed. And I think that”—Emily paused, looking around the room—“that it would hurt her feelings to know you don’t want to remember her.”

  Mr. Thornton’s eyes widened. “Emily—”

  “She’s right, Robert,” Mrs. Thornton said, shaking her head, her tears at last beginning to slow. “It breaks my heart to think that Katharine might not know how much we love her, or that we’ve tried to forget her. We need to stop pretending she was never here. Truthfully, her memory has haunted me. I feel like I see her everywhere.”

  Emily pursed her lips, not wanting to tell her that she actually had—that Katharine had, in fact, remained here as a ghost. On some level, Mrs. Thornton probably already knew that. Especially after last night’s events.

  Crossing to the armoire, Mrs. Thornton picked up the locket and wiped away the dust. “We should be celebrating the short time we had with her, not trying t
o forget it. Because it was precious.” Then she threaded the locket through the chain that had once held the skeleton key and looped it around her neck.

  Somehow, the room seemed to grow lighter with her words and her small gesture. Maybe it was simply the effect of the morning sun rising and spreading its beams into Katharine’s room. But Emily suspected that it was more than that, because it was as if the entire house finally vanquished a heavy shadow that had loomed over it for so long.

  One year later …

  Balancing a stack of books in her arms, Emily carefully made her way down the grand staircase. She could barely see the next steps over the tower of leather-bound novels, but she felt her way down them confidently. After going up and down them for an entire year, she knew which ones creaked and which were just a little bit higher than all the rest.

  “Archie! Get back here!”

  A blur of fur raced past Emily, making her books falter and teeter dangerously. Just as she was able to steady them, another figure came bounding down the steps and bumped her shoulder, spilling the books all across the stairs.

  The maid spun around and gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks in almost comical embarrassment. “Miss Emily! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you!”

  Emily couldn’t help but laugh at the flustered new maid, Maggie. Her apron was twisted and her cap lopsided, while her cheeks were flushed. Maggie pointed down at Archie, who, at the bottom of the stairs, clutched a sponge in between his jaws and wagged his tail enthusiastically. “That rascal stole my sponge—it’s the third one this week!”

  Still giggling, Emily patted Maggie on the shoulder. “It’s all right, Maggie, he just wants to play.”

  “Be that as it may, I still have a lot of work to do,” Maggie harrumphed, folding her arms and tapping her foot.

  Emily bent down and started to retrieve the books her father had lent her to read. “You’ve done so much work already, maybe you should take a day off.”