“Hi,” I said. She didn’t say anything back. I tried waving, thinking she was too shy to talk. I knew kids like that. And sure enough, she raised a hand to me.
Not a real wave, but it was a start.
“My name’s George. It’s short for Georgia. What’s your name?”
The ghost girl remained silent, her white arm still raised to me.
“Maybe you can’t talk,” I said, hopping down from my bed. “Can you write it?”
I got my crayons out, even though the girl hadn’t said she could write.
“Here,” I said very casually. I arranged the paper and crayons in front of her. Her head might’ve tilted slightly, but otherwise, she didn’t move.
“I’ll show you.” I took a crayon – green, my favorite – and wrote ‘George’ in big, lower-case letters. “See? G-E-O-R-G-E. That’s me.”
I tried holding out a crayon to her. I chose khaki, since I never used it. I even tried dropping it into her ghostly hand. It just fell through.
That finally freaked me out a little bit. “Fine,” I told her and ran back to bed, pulling the covers over me and pretending the ghost wasn’t there.
It wasn’t easy. But eventually I fell asleep, and when I woke up, she was gone.
When I went to clean up my crayons, I saw a drawing. Next to my name, there was a picture of a house. It was like a dollhouse, with the front completely shaved away so you could see inside. There was a little kitchen, a living room, and upstairs, there was a tall figure and a little girl standing together.
It was all in khaki.
* * *
The ghost didn’t come back the next night, or even the one after that. But I left my crayons out for her, and lots of paper. In return, she left me drawings. They were all of the same house, with the front removed so you could see inside. One showed me eating breakfast in the kitchen. Another showed my mom and dad walking outside with briefcases, leaving for work, and me riding on a yellow school bus outside. She was in them, too. A colorless outline of a featureless person, sometimes hovering above me as I ate cereal, or watching us leave through a window. It should’ve been terrifying, seeing drawings of me going about my life as an invisible girl followed me. But it wasn’t. It made me feel…special. Like there was this big secret that was all mine.
I waited up for her every night, wanting to talk to the silent jellyfish ghost. I wanted to thank her for the pictures. And I wanted to ask her questions. Like, how she died and whether she had lived in this house or just died here and if she had died a long time ago or recently.
On the third night, my patience was rewarded. I’d fallen asleep during my vigil, but suddenly, I was just awake. Just like that first night.
And when I sat up, the ghost girl stood in the exact same spot. Completely still.
“You’re back!” I pronounced, grinning. I jumped out of bed and sat in front of her like we were having a slumber party. “Thanks for the drawings. I really liked them. Why did it take you so long to come back?”
That’s when I noticed them. Two pieces of paper on the floor. Crayons were everywhere.
“New drawings! Let me see…” I picked it up. Still smiling. Still not afraid. God, if only I’d been afraid.
There was our house. My parents were asleep in their bedroom, and I was asleep in mine. But there was a new room, just above mine. An attic? A crawlspace? I wasn’t sure. The ghost girl was there, but she wasn’t alone. She’d drawn someone with her. They wore a long black shroud, or maybe it was hair. It completely obscured their face. Whoever it was was enormous; their body took up the whole space, curling around it and the girl. Trapped, I immediately thought.
“Who’s this?” The ghost girl said nothing. But her hand jerked. Flip it over? I did. In big, black letters, it read:
MOURNING WOMAN.
At the time, I thought she’d just misspelled, ‘morning’. I didn’t know what ‘mourning’ was. I looked at the second page. There wasn’t a picture. It simply read:
DON’T EVER LOOK AT HER.
That’s when I finally felt it, the thing I should’ve felt from the very first time I set eyes on the ghost in my room: fear. Raw, unfiltered, and terrible. I looked up, but she was gone.
I screamed. I screamed until my parents came running into the room in a flurry of cries: what happened, what’s wrong, are you OK? I buried myself in my mother’s shoulder as they held me. I breathed them in, closed off the rest of the world the way scared children do, taking relief in my parents’ presence.
My dad saw the drawings. After that night, they took me to a child therapist because they were scared, too. The therapist was a woman with coily grey hair who asked me about my imaginary friend, who she referred to as ‘the girl’. I went to see her for a couple of months. We played with toys, drew pictures, and talked about ‘the girl’. And after some time passed, I no longer thought about her. I believed that she was a game that I’d made up. An imaginary friend. A secret.
And life moved on. Ten years of life, to be precise, and I’d very nearly forgotten about the ghost and the ‘morning’ woman.
It was the summer after high school graduation, and the summer before my first semester of college. It was one of those in-between times, when you’re neither one thing or the other. I was in a cocoon, no longer a caterpillar but not yet a butterfly.
I was excited. My life was expanding into something new. I had dreams of physics and mathematics. And the biggest dream of all: NASA. Space. Stars. I’d put myself on the right track. Good grades, good college, good outlook. Everything just seemed so good.
But I was enjoying this summertime freedom. Tests were done, applications were finished and accepted. Now came the waiting. I spent the hot summer days wandering through the town with my friends. Some were staying, most were going. We gathered at the places we’d been going to for years, the burger stands and the swimming pools and the strip mall, as if they would disappear when we did. At night, we slept at each other’s houses, where we talked about our plans for the future.
But one night, I was just at home. Reading a book, listening to music, and generally enjoying my own company.
I don’t know why it all happened that night. I can’t tell you why there had been such a gap between the first time and the last time. I don’t know.
All I know is that as I was reading, I became aware of something strange. A sound, barely audible. I turned down the music, straining to hear it.
Crying. Someone was crying. My first thought was that it was mom or dad. But they weren’t at home, I remembered. They’d gone to the movies. I’d declined to go for no real reason other than wanting to be alone.
I shivered. The air was suddenly cold. I told myself I was just scared, because I was. The hairs on my neck and arms stood up – I had always thought that was just something people said, but it was true. My hackles were up like a nervous cat.
The crying was coming from my closet.
The voice of common sense commanded me to just leave. Just go downstairs, go outside, go to Sam’s house or Lydia’s or Jackie’s. Call mom and dad. Call the cops. Do anything but stay in this room.
I didn’t listen. I pushed fear and common sense aside. I tiptoed to the closet, took a deep breath, and threw open the doors to find:
Nothing. Not nothing. Shoes and shirts and dresses, but nothing else.
So why was the crying louder?
In that moment, it all came back. The girl, the drawings, and his warning. Like the memory had been asleep and was suddenly just awake.
“Hello?” I called, pushing my clothes this was and that, searching for the pale girl. But I couldn’t find her. “I hear you but I can’t see you!”
I felt a desperation to find the source of the crying that I didn’t really understand. I thought that I could help, I guess. So I listened. Very carefully, I listened.
The cr
ying was coming from somewhere above me. I pulled down my clothes, a shelf piled with shoes and forgotten articles of clothing, anything else between me and the crying.
In the corner of the ceiling of my closet, there was a depression. It was an access panel, hidden behind the shelves and clothes in my closet. I stood up and pushed at it, grunting with effort. I strained against the wood. Just when I thought maybe it was sealed, painted over too many times or nailed shut, it creaked one last time before giving way. Using my phone as a flashlight, I looked up, but could only see dusty rafters. I had to stand on top of a box of winter sweaters to reach the opening, but after a few tries, I pulled myself inside the crawlspace.
The sobbing was very loud now. “Hello?” I called, scanning the secret room with my phone.
There were piles of things. Most of them were crumbling from age, and it was impossible to tell what they might have once been. That dusty piece of fabric could have once been a coat or a tapestry or a tablecloth. Now it was mostly dust. There were cobwebs everywhere. I pushed myself passed them and all the junk, searching for the ghost.
The crawlspace was bigger than I’d thought it could be. How could this be in my house without anyone knowing? I remembered the drawings of the girl following me and my parents around, always floating above us. Did this space extend throughout the entire house? The space was low, forcing me to crawl through on my hands and knees. The crying seemed to come from everywhere, and I couldn’t see anyone. I kept calling out, hoping to draw her out.
As I crawled and searched and called, my light caught the corner of something big. There was an old trunk ahead of me. It was covered in dust and cobwebs, but seemed to have survived the years. With a slow, careful hand, I opened it.
Inside, I found old clothes, more well-preserved than everything else up here. They were a woman’s clothes, old velvet dresses and tiny hats. Victorian? Rummaging, I found a bundle of letters. The owner had tied them together with a soft, silk ribbon. I tried to read some of them, but they were too faded. There was a leatherbound book toward the bottom. It was a photo album. All the pictures were sepia-toned and faded. They were those kinds of old photographs where no one smiled. There was a picture of a family at the very beginning. A man with a handlebar mustache, a woman with dark hair, and a baby. Most of the pictures were of the man and the woman, or of other random people. Only a few at the end showed the three of them. Then the album abruptly ended, only filling half of the pages. The last picture was of the man and woman, who I assumed were husband and wife, and their baby. But something wasn’t right. The man and woman were both wearing all black. The woman’s face was hidden behind a lace veil. And the baby… the baby’s eyes were glassy, its expression was unnatural…
It was dead, I realized. The baby was dead.
And the crying…it was so loud now. When had it gotten so much louder?
The woman in the veil…the woman in mourning…
I dropped the album. I wanted to leave. I no longer cared about the crying ghost. I just didn’t want to see her, remembering the warning of the mourning woman.
I turned back the way I came, but stopped. And I don’t just mean I physically stopped. Everything stopped. I didn’t breathe, didn’t move, didn’t blink; I think even my heart faltered in fear. Up ahead, framed by the light pouring in from my bedroom, where absolutely no one had been before, was someone.
They were crouched on the floor, facing away from me. They rocked back and forth rhythmically. It wasn’t the ghost. Instead of the jellyfish glow I remembered, this creature glowed with darkness. It’s almost impossible to explain… the form was so dark, so much blacker than the shadows of the crawlspace, that its own darkness glowed in contrast to it. It was blacker than the deepest trenches of the ocean, blacker than the starkest stretch of space.
I didn’t want to go near it. I didn’t care if that was the only way out, I wasn’t going near that thing.
I turned around to crawl as quickly as I could in the other direction, the crying so close, it was earsplitting.
I stopped. Impossible was all I could think.
The creature was still ahead of me. Somehow. It was closer.
Don’t look at the mourning woman. I closed my eyes, blocking her out, afraid I’d already damned myself. But I hadn’t seen her face. Not yet.
With my eyes shut, I crawled backwards toward where I remembered the entrance being. My world became the dusty wood beneath me and the shrill cries echoing all around me. The crying made my teeth ache, made my head split. But I just kept moving, fighting past the fear and past the crying. Just get out, I told myself. Get out, get out, get out!
The floor was gone. The entrance, I thought as my body fell forward. At the last minute I remembered to cover my head. I clattered to my closet floor amidst the shoes and clothes I’d thrown there to get up to the crawlspace. I immediately hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken.
The crying had stopped. Tentatively, I opened my eyes, and saw only my closet ceiling.
Relief. Sweet relief ran through me like a shot of morphine. I’d gotten away. I was safe. With a sigh, I sat up and turned –
Blackness. Impossible blackness sat at the foot of my bed, cradling something in its arms. A bundle that I immediately knew swaddled whatever remained of that baby in the pictures. And swimming in the blackness was a veil. And behind the veil were eyes. Horrible eyes. Lifeless and glassy but somehow staring right at me.
With a cry, the woman rushed to me, scooped me up, and carried me away. I felt the world drop away and there was only her. I struggled against her, feeling no body or even clothes or bones. My hands fought against her formless, chilling darkness. I screamed, but she swallowed up the sounds. And I felt it. Her loneliness. Her sadness. It washed over me like a wave and dragged me down like a rip tide. I cried for her, for me, I cried for her to let me go, to think of my mother, but she only held me tighter.
I heard my parents below us. I screamed, but the sound disappeared on my lips. I heard them calling for me, searching for me. George! George! My mother and father’s voices echoed beneath me. I heard sirens and footsteps and tears that seemed to go on forever. I’m right here! But no one heard me. And soon, even their sounds were swallowed up by the blackness, and I was alone with the woman.
I felt myself slipping away. My body seemed to melt in that endless cold. Had it been a day? A week? Eternity? It was impossible to say. I shrank in her arms, forgetting myself and remembering only briefly that I hated her and was terrified of her. My body melted away and fell to a pile in the dust. I saw my rotting flesh and, later, my bones. What was left of me was small and scared and glowed with something I felt the woman desperately wanted. Something other than grief. She held me tightly, and time and the house below stopped existing in a way that made sense. Now there’s only the woman, and the parts of me she won’t let go. Sometimes, the good times, I don’t remember who I was or that I’d had a life before this one. Those times, there’s only the darkness, the cold, and her, and there was never anything else. Other times, I remember everything. Me, my mom and dad, my friends, my dreams, my life, and I wish I could die all over again.
She loosens her grip. Now, or then, a decade or a century ago or right now. I float away, barely able to control myself. I see my room, my old room, my Jupiter nightlight, my stars, and me.
I try to tell you. I try to warn you. But I know you didn’t listen. You looked. Goddamn you, you looked.
The Fifth Gable
Kay Chronister
The first woman to live in the four-gabled house fermented her unborn children in the wine cellar. When they came to term, she broke them open on the floorboards. Her heartiest son weighed half an ounce at birth. His face, curved to the shape of the Mason jar womb where he developed, stayed pink for an hour before he died in a puddle of formaldehyde and afterbirth.
The second woman to live in the four-gabled house pulled her chi
ldren from the ground like stubborn roots. They came out of the soil smelling of pollen, with faces like tulips. They were healthy until she cut their stems, and then they withered. They returned reedy and gray-faced to the earth.
The third woman in the four-gabled house said she had no children.
The fourth woman in the four-gabled house built her children from the parts of old radios and tractors. Their cries sounded like the spinning of propellers. Some of them could blink and one could even smile, but breast milk fried their motors. In their mother’s arms, they dissolved into heaps of crackling wires.
* * *
The women had been married before, to ordinary men, but no one wanted to mention that in light of what happened to the children.
The women in the four-gabled house no longer got many visitors.
* * *
All through the month of September, the women in the four-gabled house watched as a sober, clean-faced young creature walked down their street, past their house, to the end of the cul-de-sac, then turned and walked back.
The stranger would not walk in a neighborhood as unfashionable as their neighborhood if she did not want something with the four-gabled house and the women who lived there, they were sure of it.
“We should call someone,” said the woman who made her bed in the second gable of the four-gabled house. “Get a neighborhood watch together.”
“Nonsense. She’s probably selling magazine subscriptions,” said the woman who made her bed in the fourth gable of the four-gabled house. “Or collecting bits of metal for the war effort, or trying to interest us in a quilting bee so the orphans can have blankets. Or she’s from some society that has asked her to come by our house, but the problem is that she’s just too scared to do it.”
“Are we still frightening?” said the woman who made her bed in the second gable of the four-gabled house. “I thought we’d gotten past that a few decades ago.”
Supernatural Horror Short Stories Page 7