by Cat Knight
“There’s no signal!” She stuffed her phone back into her pocket. “God damnit! Okay, come on, there’s a house about half a mile away, we’ll walk there.”
“We’ll what now?”
“Do you have a better idea?” Lisa demanded. “There are two options: stay here at the house, or leave however we can. Now I don’t know about you, Claire, but I have no plans to stay here.”
“So, you’re just going to walk half a mile? It’s dark! And cold! And no one knows you’re coming!” Claire could sense her voice becoming high, even hysterical, and she couldn’t calm it down. “You don’t have any signal, no maps, how are you even going to find the house?”
“So, you’d rather take your chances here?”
Claire gulped. She looked up at the looming house, still and silent in the evening now. She looked at Lisa, whose eyes were wide and dark like a pair of black saucers. Maude meowed and clawed at Claire’s arm.
Lisa sighed.
“Okay. There’s a landline in the house. We’ll go in and I’ll try to make a call from there. But if I can’t get it to work, then we’re leaving, okay? I promise, the next house isn’t that far away, and the people who live there are really nice, and I really, really don’t want to spend the night here.” Her voice quivered a little.
“Okay,” Claire said in a tiny voice.
Lisa pulled her key from the ignition and reached out her arms for Maude, who leapt into them and clung to the front of her sweater. Claire gripped her bag so tightly that she could feel her fingers going numb.
“Do you even believe in ghosts, Claire?” Lisa whispered.
“I didn’t until now,” Claire whispered back.
They approached the house, each footstep a deafening crunch in the gravel, echoing around the yard like gunfire. Maude was silent, and her tail was full and bushy.
The door swung open. The hall light glowed bright and warm. Everything was quiet. Calm. Like it had been when they first arrived. Claire relaxed a little. They weren’t being swarmed by poltergeists. That was something.
“The phone is in the library,” Lisa said, still speaking in an undertone, as if by speaking too loudly they might awake something that they’d rather remained asleep. But the floorboards screamed under every step, even treading as lightly as they could, and it wasn’t long before they sacrificed silence for speed.
The phone was a clunky corded one, looked like it was from the 1980s, with a thick layer of dust caked between the boxy raised buttons.
Lisa’s hands shook as she raised the receiver to her ear and punched in the number with audible clunks every time she pressed a button.
The dial tone was so loud that Claire could hear it from across the room. She breathed easier.
If the phone was working, then they weren’t really in that much danger. What kind of danger had she thought they’d been in anyway? There was nothing to worry about. Even if there was a ghost, if it was just the kind of ghost that cleaned up spilled wine, then was that really anything to be afraid of? She forced herself to breathe deeply into her diaphragm, like her yoga teacher told her to do when she was in her full wheel pose and thought she was going to die.
Chapter Six
“Hello?” Lisa’s voice quivered and strained, but it was still pleasant. Lisa was always pleasant. Through the line, Claire could hear, “Paul and Paul’s Garage, how can I help you?”
“Hi,” Lisa said, her shoulders visibly softening with relief. “Hi, Paul, this is Lisa Jones, and I’m up at my family’s place. Our car’s broken down and we really need a ride down into town, like now. Do you think you could help us out?”
Through the crackly line, Claire heard Paul guffaw. “‘Course we can, Lizzy! No decent person would let someone stay up in that house all alone. We’ll have someone up in twenty minutes, alright? Keep out of trouble then.”
The line clicked off, and Lisa turned to Claire with happiness all over her face. “We’re going to be okay. Paul’s a good guy, he’ll get us down safely.”
“Of course.” Claire smiled too, and reached out to grab Lisa’s shoulder reassuringly.
From the kitchen, something cracked.
All the relief drained from Lisa’s expression. She gulped. “Let’s go wait outside.” She pushed past Claire and bolted for the door, and Claire was only half a step behind her when she felt herself stop dead in space, as if she had run into a wall. The wind was knocked out of her, she stumbled back, Lisa’s heel flicked around the corner, and Claire was left staring into the hall, into the empty space, in which a girl was standing and looking at her as boldly as day.
Claire stared at the girl, mouth hanging open. She wasn’t pale, translucent, or any of the things that Claire had imagined a ghost would be. She stood solidly in the middle of the hall, hands at her side like a tin soldier, and stared at Claire.
It was like a bad dream, and Claire couldn’t scream. “Claire,” she rasped, but her voice came out as only the palest whisper. The girl tipped her head sideways, her brown ringlets shifting, and blinked her wearied eyes.
“Lisa?” Claire’s voice was a little louder, and she was just working up the strength to shout when the girl lifted a finger to her lips.
The scream died on Claire’s tongue. The girl shook her head, then leaned forward and put her hand on Claire’s cheek. Her fingers were ice cold.
“Claire…” The girl’s lips didn’t move, but Claire heard her voice like a whisper in her ear, like a secret. She whimpered.
“Claire…” The whisper was even closer. She could almost feel the breath on tickling her neck.
“Claire?” That was Lisa’s voice, tight with panic, and Claire heard footsteps hastening back down the hall towards her.
“Help…” the tiny voice breathed, and then the girl lowered her hand, and, before Claire’s very eyes, she turned thin, insubstantial, and then like a curl of smoke, she was gone.
“Claire!” Lisa broke around the corner, clutching onto the wall. “Come on! What’s keeping you?”
“I– I– I–” Claire stammered. She was shaking so hard that she was sure she could hear her own bones rattling. “There– there was– a girl–”
“What?” Lisa demanded. She grabbed Claire’s arms and shook her. “What do you mean there was a girl?”
“A– a girl– she was right here…” Claire gestured at the spot in front of her where the girl had turned to smoke and disappeared. “I don’t know– she just, she was there and then she was gone–”
“That isn’t funny, Claire!”
“I’m not joking!”
Lisa looked white and sick. “Where did she go, then?”
“She just…” Claire raised her hand helplessly, then dropped it to her side again. She sounded insane, even to herself. But what else could she say? She couldn’t lie to Lisa. “She disappeared.”
“She…” Lisa gulped. “Like… like a ghost?”
“Like a ghost.”
Lisa had begun to tremble. She straightened up, and turned around slowly, surveying the hall, as if she might see the girl floating at the ceiling or clinging to a wall.
“Ghosts aren’t real, Claire,” she whispered, and then she added. “Are they?”
Claire couldn’t answer. She had no answer.
“Let’s go.” Lisa took Claire’s arm, and, shakily, led her for the door. It was hard to tell who was shaking harder, who was leading and who was following.
Claire reached out for the door handle, but her hand froze in mid-air, inches from it.
A translucent girl shimmered and hovered, immobile, in front of the tarnished brass knob, then disappeared
“Lisa?” Claire whispered, and then, from behind, she heard another voice whisper, “Liza?”
The two women turned around slowly.
The girl stood in the foyer, now substantial and coloured as before, looking at them with wide eyes.
All three stood, frozen, for a moment. Claire could see Lisa’s throat quivering, struggling to scream
like Claire had tried to before, but there was no screaming. Claire looked back to the girl, who had reached out both her hands in front of her like a child wanting to be picked up.
“Claire… Liza…” The names were a breath on the air, like wind hissing through a crack in a window, cold and blurred.
Claire looked to her friend, then to the girl holding out her arms, and then, like she had been seized by an invisible hand, she jerked forward and her fingers intertwined with the girl’s.
Beside her, she felt Lisa jolt forward as well, arm outstretched, so that the girl had Lisa’s left hand in her right, and Claire’s right hand in her left.
“Claire… Liza…” This time, the words were a whisper in Claire’s ear again. “Help me…”
Chapter Seven
“Who are you?” Lisa flailed, trying to pull loose. “Get out of my house!”
The girl’s fingers unwrapped from around Claire’s wrist, but Claire found herself frozen in place, unable to pull away even though there was nothing holding her. The girl raised both her hands and placed them on Lisa’s cheeks. An intimate movement, like a mother communing with her daughter, and bizarre to see a child initiate it.
Lisa had begun to cry, tears streaming silently down her cheeks.
“Hello Liza,” the girl whispered. Her lips seemed not quite synchronized with the sound of her voice but she smiled at her. A smile that communicated gratitude.
“I’m not Liza, I’m Lisa. Who are you?” Lisa repeated, this time in a voice thick with tears.
“You know who I am. And you know who you are too.”
Lisa stammered out, her eyes glistening with terror, yet fixed on the girl She gulped.
“You are right, I am Liza, named for my aunt. B-but I didn’t want it. I’m sorry, but I didn’t. I’m called LISA” Lisa sobbed and trembled.
Claire wanted to reach out to her to pull her away, but her legs wouldn’t move and her arms stayed locked in place at her sides. Her head was as frozen as her body and she could not help but stare as Eliza gently ran her hands over Lisa’s cheeks, like a blind person feeling the contours of something unfamiliar.
“Help me, Liza,” Eliza whispered.
There was a clap of thunder and Claire felt herself suddenly released from her frozen pose, and she sprawled on the ground, scraping palms and elbows on the floorboards. A sudden howling gale sprung up outside, although Claire could have sworn that mere seconds ago, the house was silent as a tomb. Claire pushed herself up onto her knees and saw that Lisa had fallen beside her too. Eliza was still standing though, and spinning around, wildly, tossing her head back and forth as if she was looking for a wasp somewhere around herself.
“I’m doing it.” Her voice a high, strained keen. “I’m doing it.”
There was a crack from above and a flash of lightning. The lights flickered.
Eliza held out her hands to Lisa. “Help me, help me!” she whispered frantically. Lisa grabbed at her hand, but her fingers passed right through.
“How?” Lisa sobbed.
“My fiddle!” Eliza lunged with her hand and this time caught Lisa’s. “I need my fiddle.”
Thunder crashed deafeningly. The house shook on its foundations, and as the thunder trailed off, a high, protracted scream took its place, something in between a human crying and two pieces of rough metal dragging against each other.
“Go, hurry, in the library!” Eliza was flickering, like there was a light on her that was being turned rapidly on and off. Her face was screwed up with concentration. “It’s in the library, Liza, hurry!”
There was another clap of thunder and the lights went out, throwing the girls into pitch darkness. There was a second of terrible howling silence before the lights came back on, and when they did, the house was silent, and Eliza was gone.
Lisa pulled herself to her feet, wheezing, and Claire struggled up as well, clinging to the end table for support. “Lisa–”
“Shh.” Lisa held up a hand. She cast her streaming eyes around. Everything was silent. The gale outside had died as quickly as it had come.
“Do you hear that?” Lisa whispered.
“What?”
“Shh!”
Claire fell silent and listened. She felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Overhead, soft, and light, she could hear scratching. Maybe footsteps.
Lisa and Claire stared at the staircase, waiting with breath held. Claire’s hand inched towards the lamp on the end table, which might make a suitable club.
The sound was coming closer.
Maude appeared at the top of the stairs. She was so bushy that she looked like a completely round ball of fur, and she crept down the stairs tentatively before curling around Lisa’s ankles. Both Lisa and Claire relaxed, and Claire felt her throat choke up with tears of relief.
“It’s okay,” Lisa whispered, though whether to Maude, Claire, or herself, Claire wasn’t sure. She looked around again, and then faced the library with determination. “Come on. She said she needs her fiddle.”
“Lisa…” Claire whimpered, but Lisa was already off, stumbling in the direction of the library with her arms out in front of her like a zombie. Claire could do nothing except follow behind, wincing at every sound.
When Claire caught up to Lisa in the library, Lisa was standing in the doorway, surveying the room. Her whole body was tense.
“Where is it?” Claire whispered.
“I don’t know…” A note of panic crept into Lisa’s voice. “I guess I just – thought it would be easy to find, like I simply overlooked it all these years…”
The wind was starting to howl outside again.
“Lisa, let’s get out, Paul’s going to be here soon, we can just leave–”
“NO!” Lisa shouted. Claire fell back, shaken. Lisa seemed gripped by an unfamiliar passion, and she dashed around the library.
With unrelenting energy, she pulled furniture away from the walls, lifted paintings and flung them to the ground. “It’s got to be here somewhere!”
“Lisa, what are you doing?”
“She said her fiddle’s here! We need to find it!” Lisa started pulling books from the bookshelves, throwing them to the ground, as if pulling the right one out would trigger some invisible lock and send them spinning into a secret room like they were in a black-and-white monster movie.
“Lisa!” Claire leapt out and grabbed Lisa by both her forearms, restraining them behind her back. “Lisa, calm down!”
Lisa heaved and strained momentarily, then went limp. Claire squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her head. “Okay, Lisa, okay, so her fiddle’s here. We don’t have to tear the room apart. Think – did your grandfather ever say anything about it? Can you remember?”
“No…” Lisa slowly freed herself and turned around. Her brows were furrowed and her eyes glazed over. “He didn’t talk about Eliza much, except– except, like I said, when he sat on the couch and told me to listen…” She raised a hand, pointing limply at the couch behind her.
Chapter Eight
“Lisa?” Claire’s voice was hushed.
A withered old man sat or rather hovered above the couch. Pale and translucent, he didn’t appear to see them looked past them at something else. His face was sunken with its skin stretched tight but it was his horrific expression that etched in her mind more than anything
“Yes…” Lisa turned and her mouth opened in a bloodcurdling scream before her hands flew to her head and she covered her eyes.
Clair ran to her and they stood shivering and crying for a moment. When Claire finally looked the vision on the couch had disappeared. It’s gone now Lisa” Lisa was pale and had trouble getting the words out.
“It was grandfather.” She stopped talking for a moment and gut-wrenching sobs made her body shake. “He looked terrible. Like he was in hell or something.” Claire went to her, trying to comfort her.
“Maybe he was showing us where the fiddle was. Perhaps he needs us to find the fiddle. For some reason…...bot
h he and Eliza….
“If that was really him he’s in terrible trouble Claire. We HAVE to find it.” Lisa turned her head, clamped her hand over her mouth and heaved dry vomit heaves.”
“We’ll find it Lisa. We’ll fix it OK?” Clair moved slowly to the couch and put her hand on it. The fabric felt worn, soft, slightly lumpy with use. Looking back over at Lisa she said “And what did he say when he sat here?”
“He’d always say ‘Lisa, do you hear…’” Lisa trailed off, and she met Claire’s eyes. Excitement dawned on her face, and she continued, “That’s Eliza playing her fiddle.”
“Come on let’s find it.” Claire started patting, pushing, squeezing the couch for any sign of a lump or hard shape, while Lisa dove in at the other end, working her hands over the velvet pattern. Claire could hear the blood rushing in her own ears.
“There’s nothing–” Lisa began, but then cut herself off. “Wait!”
She grabbed the couch with both hands and heaved it. It scraped across the floor, leaving white marks on the hardwood, but Lisa didn’t seem to care. She fell down on her knees, and started rapping with her knuckles against the floorboards.
Tap tap tap CLUNK.
“Here!”
Claire bent down to try to pry up the floorboard but Lisa was a step ahead of her.
She grabbed the marble bust from the end table, lifted it above her head, and threw it on the ground with a resounding CRASH.
The floorboard splintered, and a glint of brass shone underneath. Claire reached gingerly between the broken floorboards, and felt a smooth, leather surface. She wrapped her hand around it, and pulled the fiddle case free from the cavity.
Lisa relaxed visibly. “It’s here!” she whispered, and then, raising her voice as if to call out to Eliza, “It’s here!”
With timidity, Lisa lifted the lid of the case.
The fiddle lay inside, shiny, dark, a tiny bit dusty, scratched and chipped at the bottom. Claire couldn’t resist reaching out and touching it.