The weather outside is disgusting and grey, but that isn’t really anything new for our town, especially during the fall seasons. At one time I would’ve griped about the cold and the wet, about the unfairness of its appearance in my life, a life that was already hell enough without Mother Earth casting over us one of her foul moods. But that was back when I had no home save for the shell of an empty library. I have a house now, me and my wife Amber. A small one, yeah, but it’s got running water, electricity, and heat. That’s all I really need, all I ever wanted as a kid, so I’m happy with it. Can’t complain much there.
As long as it keeps me in and the strange things out, I’m down.
⸻Ꝏ⸻
I’m hiding in the living room, crouched behind the hideous plaid sofa listening to the rain drum against the roof. I can hear faint, tiny footsteps padding my way, so I force myself to stoop down even further and crawl forward on my hands and knees. The footsteps draw closer and closer. They round the corner of the couch and—
“Raaargh!” I leap from the safety of my hiding spot and grab at the source of the footsteps. A little boy shrieks and falls into my arms in a fit of giggles, his flop of dark amber hair falling over his eyes as he squirms and twists around. Smiling, I release him and watch as he totters backwards, cheeks pale and pink. “Tired yet bud? We should take a break.”
“No!” he cries. “I can run again. Watch. Watch okay? I’m gonna run.”
I nod and he sets off again, making his way around the living room like a champion Olympic runner. A small, rather scrawny three-year-old Olympic runner who carries a princess doll, aptly named Rupert, tucked under his arm and likes to eat macaroni, but only on Tuesdays.
He isn’t mine. My kid, I mean. But in the weeks since my wife and I found him huddled in the back end of a grimy city alleyway, coloring away in a homemade picture book and waiting patiently for a mother that was never going to return, I’ve come to love him in a way. He’s an oddball little boy… but, I can’t exactly call myself normal either, so I don’t pass judgement. Aside from his name—which he reminds us daily is Alistair—we don’t know anything about him. His exact age, why he was in the alleyway alone, why nobody’s reported him missing yet. There’s been no ads or news stories of a missing toddler, and the cops in our town are too incompetent to entrust with a child. So we kept him. Even three weeks later it seems like the best choice, given the peculiar nature of the town and its residents.
“Alright, alright,” I say at last as Alistair zips past me for the fifth time. “Let’s take a break before you tire yourself out and break something. Get some water.” I scoop him off the ground, much to his amusement. His little chest heaves as he slowly gains his breath back. His skin is warm, almost feverish from his run, but he’s grinning like he’s just won something. It makes me smile. I carry him into the kitchen and let him sit on the marbled countertop while I fetch him a drink from the faucet. I watch as he takes the glass between his chubby kid hands and gulps it down, stopping to come up for a breath every few seconds.
My gaze wanders towards the window above the sink, to the rain that slides down the frosted pane and drips into the overflowing flower boxes below. It’s really not so bad, I think. Relaxing. Soothing. The kind of sound to which I can curl up with Amber and enjoy. I close my eyes and I just listen. Beside me the glass clinks down onto the counter top. Alistair drops to the floor with a tiny grunt and brushes past me, taking with him a cold breeze.
“Hi Miss Amber!” he squeals. “It’s me, see? It’s Alistair.”
Opening my eye just a crack, I watch as my wife comes bustling through the front door, her coppery red hair a flame against the gloomy backdrop. Her freckled face breaks into a grin as she throws her arms around Alistair, pulling him close. Again I smile. Something warm and fuzzy seems to spread throughout me when I see my people so cheerful and safe. It’s a strange feeling I’ve rarely experienced, but I like it.
Alistair is telling Amber about some cartoon he watched, waving his arms enthusiastically, making her laugh. Another chill breeze drifts past me and I stand from my position against the counter, turning around, looking for the source. Did I leave a window open somewhere? A door? I don’t see anything in the immediate area, so I shrug away the thought and wave to Amber, who’s noticed I’m in the kitchen still, spinning in circles. She shoots me an inquiring look.
“What’s up Hugie?” she asks. That’s what she calls me. Hugie. It’s only slightly more embarrassing than my real name, Hugo. “See something?”
I shake my head. “Nah, nah. It’s just a bit drafty in here for some reason. How was work?” I begin to make my way over to her. As I do, a strong gust of frozen air shoots past me, heading, presumably, towards the patio doors behind me. I falter in my step and shudder.
Off to my left, the wall that stretches from the end of the stairs and into the kitchen, suddenly drops all its pictures. They hit the floor one by one. Crack, crack, crack. The sound of breaking glass seems to echo in my ears. Alistair lets loose an ear-grating screech. He darts away from Amber, climbing the stairs on hands and knees like a tiny, desperate mountain climber. I start forward, shaken from my startled state.
“Alistair, wait—“ I start. But he’s already gone. Amber rushes forward, dropping to her knees by the fallen picture frames. I drag my gaze away from the steps and join her on the ground, taking a frame in my hands. Hairline fractures decorated the surface of the glass, obscuring the actual picture beneath. Amber makes a noise of disappointment.
“I just bought these frames!” She huffs and begins collecting the rest from the floor, muttering under her breath. I look down at the picture I hold in my hands, frowning.
“Did you feel that big gust of wind?” I ask, handing over the frame. “There must be a window open somewhere.” I say it, but I don’t exactly believe myself.
Amber shakes her head. She’s taken the picture frames and set them on the kitchen counter, where they sit precariously on the edge. “I didn’t feel anything.” She looks at me suddenly. “Hey, you know something?”
“Hmm?”
“A superstition my Da told me about. A picture of someone falling and breaking is a sign that the person is going to die soon.”
“Huh,” I say. “Never heard that one before.”
Amber shrugs at me. “He always told dumb stories like that. Anyways, it was just the breeze like you said. Plus, several pictures fell down.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Probably nothing.”
⸻Ꝏ⸻
It takes us until the following day to finally lure Alistair out of his room, and only then it’s with the promise of his usual Tuesday macaroni and cheese. I don’t know what frightened him so bad. The falling of the pictures? I’ll be the first to admit that it was strange, but… still. I guess from a little kid’s perspective the situation was a lot more terrifying.
Alistair comes creeping down the stairs around lunchtime, Rupert the princess doll tucked safely under his arm. Amber’s hung the pictures back up along the wall since yesterday, and he checks to make sure they were all properly in their place before darting past into the kitchen. He bumps right into me and almost goes stumbling into the table.
“Whoa there.” I reach out to steady him. He hangs off my arm like a tree branch, tilting his head back so he can see me. I ruffle his hair.
“Is the macaroni ready yet?” he asks in a small voice. I catch him glancing back towards the wall of pictures, as if they were all going to come crashing to the ground again. I can’t blame him. I’ve been on edge all day, waiting for something else spooky to occur. So far, nothing.
I brush brown hair out of my eyes. “Not yet. Why don’t you go play for a bit, ‘kay?”
Displaying his best pouty face, Alistair slinks away from me and disappears back up the stairs. I shake my head, turning back towards the stove where the pot of noodles boils away. I take up stirring them again, staring blankly out the window. I’m not seeing anything, letting the world outside blur together in a giant color pallet of greys and drab autumn colors. I can hear the whispering of the deadened leaves outside, shushing together in the branches.
“Hugo.”
“Huh?” I spin around, the wooden spoon still in my hand. I expect to see Amber or someone behind me, but there’s no one. Confused, I turn my head side to side, thinking maybe they were just out of my line of sight. “Amber?” I call out.
Her voice comes up from the basement, of which the door is wide open. “Yeah Hugie?”
“Uh, did you… call me?”
“No, why?”
“Nothing,” I say quickly, turning back to the stove. “Forget it.” Shaking my head, I stick the wooden spoon back into the pot of noodles and continue stirring. Maybe I need more sleep, I think. I really hadn’t slept well the night before. Not after the thing with the pictures.
I’m just about to zone out again when I hear my name once more, a faint whisper within my inner ear. I whirl around with a yell, lashing out with my spoon. And I hit nothing. The spoon falls from my hand, clatters against the ground.
“What the hell?” I mumble. I do a 360, but still I see nobody.
“Hugo. Hugo Jones.”
“What! Who’s there? Stop saying my name, I—I can’t—“
“See me.” The voice is soft, female. Pleading. “See me, hear me.”
I glance all around the room. There’s nobody, so I don’t understand where the voice is coming from. And then I see it, a glint of blueish white color out of the corner of my eye. A flitting shape, small and barely there—but there enough that I catch the outline of a woman. She floats off to my left, slightly above my head. I can’t look directly at her, but I don’t think I want to. My breath catches in my chest. A ghost.
“What do you want from me?” I breathe.
“See me,” she says again.
“Yeah, I…. I’m seeing you. Definitely.”
The ghost woman releases a long sigh and begins to flicker out of existence. I whip my head to the side to face her directly, but of course then I can’t see her at all. “Wait, you can’t just go. What did you mean—“
I’m cut off by the presence of a chill passing through me. I stagger backwards, clutching the countertop for support. My insides feel like they’ve just iced over. My head is suddenly filled with a cacophony of shrieks and howls, cackles and cries, so loud that I feel my ears have ruptured and are bleeding. With a scream I drop to my knees, slapping my hands over my ears. But the noises just get louder, and louder, and louder, until I’m screaming just to be able to hear my own voice again. I’m just about to slam my head into the floor when it all just… stops.
Everything’s silent all of a sudden. My breath leaves me in whoosh, and I collapse against the floor. I can feel the cold smoothness of the tiles beneath my cheek, but my vision is black around the edges and slowly fading. There’s footsteps approaching me, and I think it’s Amber, but I can’t bring myself to roll over and see.
So I don’t.
⸻Ꝏ⸻
I wake up in bed with Amber leaning over me, her red hair falling across her shoulders. Her face lights up when she sees that my eyes are open. “Oh, Hugie! Thank God, I thought I was going to have to take you to the hospital.”
Groaning, I take her offered hand and sit up. I’m shivering, but it’s not like it was before with the feeling of arctic ice flowing through my veins. This is just a normal cold. Amber drapes a blanket around my shoulders, patting my cheek. Glancing at the bedside clock I see that I’ve only been out for about ten minutes, which is a huge relief.
“What even happened?” Amber asks, the mattress sinking slightly to my left as she takes a seat on its edge. Her usually energetic voice is soft now. “I heard you screaming, and you were all curled up on the floor when I got up from the basement.”
I shake my head, bewildered just to be hearing it. “I know. But… ok, look, this is gonna sound weird, Amber.”
She shrugs, a twitch of her thin shoulders. “I accept the weirdness, you know that. Sort of have to in this town.”
Well, she’s not wrong. I tug the blanket closer around myself. The cold is slowly receding and I’m feeling more like myself and less like the guy who just got ghost-touched by a dead lady. “Yeah. So… I’m pretty sure I saw a ghost in the kitchen. A woman. She sounded distraught, but she wouldn’t actually tell me what was wrong.”
“In typical ghost fashion.”
I snort. “Right. Anyways, she disappeared and went through me, I think? I heard all this stuff. It sounded like… Well, it sounded like hell. It was so loud. I just wanted it to stop.”
“A ghost?” Amber frowns. “I didn’t think the house was haunted. I mean, it was cheap but not cheap enough for there to be ghosts crashing with us.”
I toss aside my blanket covering and swing my legs over the side of the bed. “Maybe it’s more like a visiting and less like a haunting. You know, like maybe the ghost isn’t trying to scare us. It’s just passing through.”
Her face scrunched up, she pats my knee. “My idea of ‘passing through’ doesn’t include this ghost woman going right through you, and, uhm, bringing the soundtrack of Hell with her. Maybe she needs a dictionary definition.”
I crack a smile, standing up. Judging from the loud pattering against the roof, it’s begun raining again. “If she comes back I’ll let you handle that bit.”
Amber flutters her lashes mockingly. “Wow, thanks. If you feel better now, I think I’ll go finish making lunch. The noodles are probably all soggy and gross by now.”
I wave my hand dismissively and watch as she disappears into the hallway. After a few moments of gathering my wits about me once more, I do likewise, stretching as I go.
Immediately I’m struck by a wall of frigid cold not unlike what I felt in the kitchen. I scan the hallway, expecting to see the ghost lady floating somewhere just out of my line of sight. Nothing. Just blue walls and family portraits. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s somehow concealed herself when I hear the chanting. It’s faint, a tiny voice. A child’s voice.
Coming from the room where Alistair’s been sleeping since he got here.
Turning on heel, I jog down the hall two rooms. The door to the spare room, already covered in numerous stickers at toddler height, is slightly ajar. Pressing close, I can hear Alistair inside, talking in an odd singsong voice.
“I’m in your walls, I’m in your walls. See me, see me. I’m in your walls, I’m in your walls. Help me, help me.” He repeats it, over and over again, the same two lines. I’ve gone still at the words.
See me, help me, the ghost woman had said. I shudder and push my hand against the door, letting it creak open on aged hinges.
“Alistair, what’re you doing bud—Oh, my god.” I halt mid-step, gaping.
He’s standing in front of the wall opposite of the doorway, a red crayon poised between his fingers. And the wall…
The lower half of the wall is covered by an insanely detailed depiction of a woman, lying dead and bloodied. Her short hair is swept back from her heart shaped face, her mouth twisted in an expression of immense pain and horror. Alistair is at the far end of the crayon sketch, drawing in the woman’s feet. Drawing, actually drawing it before my eyes. And he’s still singing.
“I’m in your walls, I’m in your walls. Help me, help me, help me…”
I’ve seen Alistair’s scribbles before, many times. Every one of them resembled a potato with arms and legs—so not at all like the picture that covers the wall before me. No three-year-old should be able to do something so detailed and… gory. In fact, the style of the picture itself reminds me more of the ones from the homemade coloring book Alistair clutched when we first found him sitting in the alleyway, the one he’d told us was a birthday gift from his mother.
I step forward, my hand outstretched. “Alistair, come here. Stop coloring.”
Almost hesitantly, he lowers his arm from the wall and turns around, the crayon dropping from his hand. His expression is blank, but he tilts his head at me, giving me a cursory once over like he’s never seen me up close before. And I think, maybe he hasn’t. If it’s not really him in there right now.
“You see me,” he says slowly. It’s not a question, it’s a statement. “You see me.”
My gaze flicks towards the horrible drawing again. “I do. But I still don’t—“
Before I can even begin to ask questions of my own, Alistair staggers, pitches forward with a soft sigh. At the same time, I lunge forward and catch him under the arms. The cold breeze brushes past me as it exits the room, going off to who knows where. But at the moment I don’t care much. I hoist Alistair up into my arms, holding him close, trying to will away the cold that seeps from his skin.
I take one look at the woman’s picture on the wall—tormented and bloodied even in crayon—and back out of the room, kicking shut the door with my foot.
This is getting to be too much.
⸻Ꝏ⸻
Like I had been, Alistair is only out for a few minutes. He wakes confused and grouchy, so we send him off to bed early after allowing him to eat his usual (and now delayed) Tuesday macaroni and cheese. We let him sleep on the couch with the TV on, because I’m not about to step foot back in his room. Not with that drawing still gracing its presence on the wall.
The last remaining hours of the day pass freely and without incident, and soon I turn in for the night. Sooner than my usual time on account that I don’t want to have a run in with anymore spooky things. Amber apparently had the same idea because she’s already asleep beside me, a lump under the blankets. I jerk the curtains shut before climbing into bed. And lock the window. You know, just in case.
Not surprisingly, I’m only asleep for about three hours when I feel the breeze. I jolt upright, searching immediately for the ghost woman. “What the hey, can’t you just leave me alone for one night?! Oh—“
The curtains are billowing inwards on a phantom wind—quite literally, I think. Because the window is shut and latched all tight, and, well, because ghosts. I shove away the blankets and slide out of bed, snatching at the curtains as they blow around in my face. Peering through the glass I see a faint glow at the edge of the yard, where our small bit of property meets the tree line of the woods. The bluish light appears to seep from the ground, blending and curling with the rolling ground fog. I’m about to turn away when I spot movement right below the bedroom window. I press my face to the glass.
Alistair is out there. (I know it’s him because no other little boy would be wearing a pink princess sleep shirt). He’s toddling his way across the lawn as unhurriedly as one can be, mesmerized by the glowing light. With a sharp intake of breath, I’m out of the bedroom in a flash, shooting down the steps. I wrench open the patio door, getting a flash of my reflection in the glass just before—bedhead, a thin face, shadows under the eyes. Ignoring the blast of cold air that rushes in I step outside.
“Alistair, get back here!” I demand. I run out into the grass where he’s standing, staring at the curling ground fog. “Kiddo, it’s freezing out here, seriously. Back inside please.” I try to shoo him in the right direction, but he’s glued to the ground now, staring. My gaze follows his, and I find myself ogling, too.
The ghost woman is rising from the ground, seeming to form from the fog itself. I can see her clearly now, as if the moonlight gives her the strength to be lurking about properly. I recognize her as the lady from the wall drawing. Heart shaped face, dark hair shorn short, face bloodied and battered. Alistair tries to take a step forward, but I tug him away. He squirms and writhes in my grip, protesting loudly.
“Mama!” he cries. My heart sinks at his words, but still I don’t let him get close. Instead I gather him up in my arms and back away from the ghost of his mother. Aside from floating, she hasn’t actually moved at all, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’ll ever do anything when she suddenly lets out an ear splitting howl and flies forward.
I scream myself and hold Alistair tight, but she shoots past us at the last minute, like she’s been shoved from the side. I whirl around and watch in horror as she begins crawling across the weed ridden grass, leaving in her wake drops of blood. The loud pop of gunfire sounds right next to my ear, as if the person is standing right at my side. Alistair screams and buries his face against my shoulder. The woman lets out a wail. Red blossoms across her shirt, like some twisted flower of death opening for the spring. I hear more gunshots, distant now, sounds of the past pushing through the barrier of time. The ghost woman’s body—or more accurately, the memory of her body—hits the ground. A low moan escapes her mouth. Or maybe it’s mine.
Whispered words fly all around me, faint, fierce and sharp. The woman raises her arms protectively over her head, somehow still clinging to life. I see her lips moving frantically. Almost like she’s pleading. Her voice hits me a few seconds later.
“My son, my son. My precious baby, I can’t leave him. Please…”
I don’t know exactly what prompts me to, but I speak up over the howling wind. It’s kicked up all around us now, like a mini cyclone.
“I have him,” I say, loudly. “I have your son. He’s right here. You saw him before.”
The woman screams, and I don’t know if it’s part of the memory anymore. She rises up above me, her hair whipping all around her bruised face. The wind picks up, driving me backwards, my feet sliding uselessly across the wet grass.
“I can’t leave him! Dead dead dead. Dead and gone and my boy is all alone. I left him there. I left him in that alleyway.” She wails, clawing at her face. “Protect my son!”
“I am, I will!” I raise my hand, trying in vain to block the wind from my eyes. Alistair’s tiny hands are balled into my shirt, his face turned away from everything. I can’t tell if he’s gone silent or if the wind is just too noisy to hear through at this point. I raise my voice. “I have your kid right here. I have Alistair and I’m going to take care of him now.”
The ghost woman’s cries cease suddenly, and she turns her head down to me, so I repeat myself, slowly. “I’m going to protect your boy, I promise. Ok? I hear you, loud and clear. I hear you.”
And just like that, a switch is flipped somewhere in the universe. The wind dies away instantly, taking with it the thick ground fog. Alistair’s mother drops her arms against her sides and begins to float back down towards the ground. I watch her, my body tense from bracing against the onslaught of wind, watch her sink into the ground with a soft sigh, as if that one sound expels all her worries at once. Everything that tied her to this world.
The ground seems to swallow her up, her form melting away into the dirt like wax. The bluish glow fades before my eyes, and suddenly it’s just me, standing cold and alone in my rain soaked backyard, an orphaned little boy crying into my shoulder. Sucking in a lungful of dense night air, I press my hand against the back of his head.
“It’s okay buddy,” I say, because it is. “It’s all over now. No more scary stuff.”
With a hiccup, he wipes his nose on my shirt and nods slightly. I turn away and head for the patio door, eager to get back inside to where it’s warm. As I’m about the shut the door a gentle wind brushes through the treetops, and I swear I hear the leaves whispering.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I say into the sky.
Spindleshanks Stories 