Home > A Tale of Two Ghosts

A Tale of Two Ghosts
Author: Sarah Riad

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Ab

 

 

In your world I am dead. But in mine, I couldn’t be more alive.

Well, as alive as I could be.

 

 

Every day is the same for me as I wait for the sun to reach its tallest point and release its amber glow through the arched windows of a room belonging to an old library. I remember a story told to me years before that the room was once an attic but converted into the library by the owner for his wife. She had been expecting his child after many years of trying when they finally gave up to later find out she was pregnant. She gifted him with a son, and he gifted her with the library of her dreams. Now the room had been my favourite. Not only for the story but it was also the lightest room and in a house of darkness, a little light never hurt. It was also because of that room that I found my love of reading. Most of my days had been spent reading the books I had used my fading strength to pull off the shelves and as the dust belonging to the room basked alongside me in the orange haze, I would blow with all my might to turn the pages of the stories I had read a thousand times. But like always, the sun soon begins to settle, and I am robbed of any chance to read. Every corner of the house begins to absorb the darkness, growing rapidly around me despite my silent protests.

I don’t fear the darkness. In fact, on the right days, we reunite like old friends but on other days, I am simply irritated by it. As the perfect orange and pink sky begins to darken at its edges so too does the light in the room. With my books redundant for the night, I begin my wander of the house, wishing time away, desperate for the moment when the start of sunrise begins.

I do the same thing every night. I look into each of the bedrooms, never knowing what it is I am looking for but hoping one day it appears. Perhaps maybe an explanation for all of this, perhaps maybe even a way out. Once the bedrooms are checked, I make my way downstairs and peer out of the cloudy pane of glass beside the front door. I close my eyes and pray to anyone that’ll listen for someone to show up and let me have my fun. By this point, even though I haven’t had access to the time for decades, I know it’s only been a mere few minutes rather than the hours it feels. With very little strength left, there’s not much left for me to do. I sing my favourite songs, but it’s been so long since I last heard them that I have now mostly made up new words to them. Cyndi Lauper would hate me after hearing my version of ‘Time After Time’. When I am not singing, I visit the others that live in the house—Simon the Spider and his wife Sheila. There are a few rats in the house too, but we don’t like each other’s company, so we stay well away. I wish most nights that the days would last as long as the nights, but they rarely do unless of course, I gain a visitor or two. That’s when darkness and I reunite, working together to put on the most spectacular of performances for our guests.

At the moment when I hear the cautious footsteps walk across the beaten pathway, leading to the house, a feeling of electricity rushes through me. Already, I can feel the weakness in me slip away, and it’s replaced with a strength I have sorely missed. The sound of their shaky whispers causes me to become giddy as I rush to my feet and wait by the front door, peering out of the glass panes.

‘Come on,’ I urge.

As I look on through the glass, I watch my new visitors look up at the building with wide darting eyes as they approach the door. It always seems to be a group of teenagers from the nearby town that come to visit. Always because of a dare and only sometimes because of intrigue though either suits me fine as I begin to grow excited. I can hear their beating hearts race erratically. I can feel the beads of sweat form at the back their necks and I can taste the drops of bile as it rises from their stomachs. For most, this is as far as they’ll get. They’ll get to the door and chicken out before even reaching for the door handle as their friends mock from the safety of their parked cars. Though I’ll have not gained nearly enough strength if they run away, I will have gained enough to at least pull another book off the shelf, keeping me occupied for another few months or until the next visitor arrives. Yet, as often as it rains in a desert, a visitor will take hold of the door handle and twist it open.

Years before, my inexperience and hunger for strength would always get the better of me. I would scare as soon as the door would open but now, I know better. I wait, first sipping on the fear people create in their own minds and once their heart rate lowers, I cause a noise, and this is where the darkness comes in handy. Without her, I’m just an expected noise from an old, abandoned house but with her, I become the possibility of so much more. I follow them as they go deeper into the house, already bathing in my new strength. With their concentration and torch lights focused on what’s ahead of them, I toy with what’s behind them. A fallen piece of debris or a creak from upstairs causes their hearts to pound urgently and their chests to rise rapidly. I can sense their want to run as their eyes scan the darkness. It’s at that moment that their imagination gets the better of them. Was that an old floorboard or was that someone walking behind them? You see, I exist in their minds long before I exist in the room.

I had been doing it for so long that I had learned when they are about to give up and run but just before they do, darkness and I perform our finale. Our finishing touch. I lace my finger against the smooth keys of a piano and begin to slowly play the only song I could play which happened to be Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. As the sound of the out of tune notes mix with the screams of my departing guests, I wave them off, glad they never outstay their welcome. I always spend the following days after consumed by the temptation to do everything I can with all the new strength I have but as much as darkness is a friend, she is also a lesson in patience and soon reminds me that without my strength, I become a prisoner to her once again.

 

 

I had no visitors last night. In fact, I haven’t had any for what feels like months. My strength is now nothing but a memory and I have spent the last few weeks re-reading the same pages of an open book. Now, even when sunrise begins to appear, I remain rooted to the spot. There’s no point in me rushing when I’ll only have three hundred of the same words I read yesterday and the day before to read. Instead, I sit and continue to play a lead role in my self wallow party. I begin to imagine the outside as I could hear the gentle wind whistling through the cracks of the window. I picked at old memories of the sun, remembering how the warmth felt against my bare arms as I walked through town to this very house. The garden was always so vibrant with brightly coloured flowers amongst a bed of emerald grass. I could actually hear the crunching of the gravel beneath my feet as I approached the huge white door of the house, excited to see the face behind it when a car door slammed shut.

I scrambled to my feet. My imagination was good but not good enough to make real sounds. Someone was here. Someone was at the house.

I raced downstairs as I heard the sound of the gravel once again. As I reached the windowpane allowing a slither of dawn into the hallway, I saw them. There, staring towards me on the other side of the front door, stood five people. One man, one woman, two boys, and a little girl.

‘Well, this is it, I guess. Don’t you think it has some great potential?’ The man who spoke was carrying a box with black letters spelling ‘Kitchen’. His face looked like the result of a challenging life with frown lines across his forehead and deep wrinkles branching out from his eyes. Despite this, you could see from his dark hair with only the odd strand of silver, and his tall, muscular frame that he was not as old as he first appeared.

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