Last night, I saw the ghost again. She was against the wall, hands clasped at her front, tailbone slightly tucked. A slight incline at the abdomen. Bent over. Not hunched. I saw the wound she was trying to hide. Her thin arms did nothing to shield my gaze from the gash.
Silver, thin as a wisp, she plotted silently in the corner and smiled a little when my eyes, bleary in the fuzzy witching-hour wakefulness, fell upon her. Above her, through the window, was the moon. The window was open, the gossamer curtain fluttering weakly in the night’s breeze. I had climbed out of that window many times, shuffled sadly, sobbing, down the drainpipe, and landed with a thump in the shrubbery below. Had she come in that way? Her eyes were open, two huge stars, sparkling. Shadows of the tall trees, which whispered menacingly from the outside, played against her glass skin. Under her celestial halo, my blessed Madonna seemed to smile, wide. The moon was in her mouth.
I pushed past her and went along to the bathroom, not caring if the creaks on the floorboard woke Julia. She had awoken me plenty.
I sat on the toilet and pissed, a hot stream tinkling loudly through the house. I didn’t bother to flush the toilet, nor wash my hands. Even wiping was agony. I was red raw, stinging. I was sure that, had I the light, I could’ve looked into the toilet bowl and seen blood. Let Julia see it. Let her see the fruits of her labour.
When I left the bathroom, I crept along the hallway and stood outside of my bedroom door, poised where I had been minutes before. The ghost was gone.
***
At school, I hung around for as long as I could once classes were over. I lingered in my English teacher’s classroom, helping her clear away the books. I wiped over the table with a cloth, reading the graffiti that had been added to the desk. I made sure that the blackboard was clean. My teacher, smiling, told me that I was a good, diligent student, but that I had to go now. I left the classroom and tried to feel like I was floating, like I was not present, not real. But my shoes were bricks and my blood pooled down to my ankles, heavy. I trudged along to the buses. They were still there, waiting. They were supposed to wait until all students were accounted for. But they didn’t usually wait for me. That was fine; really, it was the opposite of a problem. The walk home was forty-five minutes and, in the wrong weather conditions, treacherous. But it allowed me time – time outside in the fresh air, time to formulate a plan, time away from home. Away from her.
Today, I took the scenic route. I walked past the hideous, lichen-studded limestone statue outside the school, so old that I could not tell what it was supposed to be. I crossed the road, not checking for cars. On the other side of the street, the cobblestone path grew gritter. The mouth of the forest was open, gaping, beckoning me in. I entered. The sky above, already grey and thick with cloud cover, grew darker still as the trees shielded me from its view. Squinting, I saw the sun, dim and furious behind its rain-fat guard. The trees bent and whispered to me as the wind whistled through. Their ruffled leaves, whipped by the wind, sounded like a flock of birds all taking off at once.
I stopped once, only to sit on a fallen, damp log and tie my shoe. Without a watch, I had no way of knowing the time, and the sun – so used to betraying me when it brought the day – was hiding. But it was probably five pm. Seventeen hours after midnight. Perhaps fourteen since I had seen the ghost. About one until Julia came out to search. I brought my knees to my chest. They were still skinned from the last time I had been running, and had fallen. Gravel had pressed itself into my hands when I brought them out to break my fall. I thought that some of it had seeped into my skin, tiny seeds of dirt now part of my flesh. Whenever anyone touched me, I imagined them shooting out from my fingertips, burrowing into the eyes and the ears and perhaps even the throat of my assailant, choking them, having multiplied within my body, a gestation spurred on by nothing if not anguish and hatred.
When I got up to move again, a tiny spot of rain prickled on my bare arm. I stared at it, at the solid rain drop, almost pearlescent in the afternoon’s grey splendour. When another one fell, I decided to get moving. I knew this part of the forest well enough that I recognised there’d be nowhere to hide. I’d have to creep home, perhaps up through the window, hope that there was hot water for a bath. If only I could avoid Julia this night. I still ached from the one previous.
By the time the house was in my sight, the rain was falling in earnest. The sun had disappeared, changed its face. The moon was up, and full. The scent of petrichor was thick in my nostrils.
***
The house stood tall, with a pretentiousness that was far too strong for what it was. Two storeys of old red brick, alone at the peak of a steep hill that sent sharp knives of pain clawing up my calves when I climbed it. Under the rainy dark, only the vague shape of the house could be seen. The iron fence, the same height as me, was topped with spikes that might, in another story, have been topped by dismembered heads.
I unlatched the gate and entered, making sure to press my body close against the brick wall of the house. The roughness of the brick scraped against my legs, laddering my tights. As I approached the drain pipe, I heard the hard sloshing of water, rushing from the bottom of it. Evidently, it had come loose again. My hands shook, palms slick with rainwater, as I tried to grab the pipe. I jumped, my feet landing on the wall. Quivering, from fear and from exertion, I began to climb. I stared upwards, at the window where my ghost had been last night and would hopefully appear again. Above that, the sky. The rain drops appeared and fell onto my face, in my mouth, stinging my ears, sticking in my hair and clumping it down. It would probably dry crunchy and foul. I climbed higher, higher, into the void above. Hot water, I thought. Hot water, a bath. My heartbeat thrummed to a frenetic rhythm, a drum beat between my lungs, which ached with the air I desperately sucked in. Hot water. The house, and inside of it my ghost, keeping me warm and curled up in the safety of her ribcage.
By the time I reached the top, the water in my eyes had transmuted into tears. Reaching out a shaking hand, I found the latch of the window, which was closed but not locked. My fingers curled around it. Perhaps I could yet wrestle with this wicked alchemy and spin gold tonight.
I opened the window, but not all the way. My fingers grasped the gossamer curtain and the heat from inside the house and something else –
From here, a snarl.
A hand curled around my wrist, a tight grip, and my scream died in my throat.
‘What time is it?’
My limbs went limp; my fingers curled into blunt claws, desperately scrabbling for purchase against the slippery brick. My feet scrambled and lost contact.
‘I said, what fucking time is it?!’
‘I – It’s – please, I’m sorry, I –’
‘You know what time you’re supposed to be home.’ Julia’s nails dug into the thin, paper skin of my wrist. ‘You know what we’re supposed to be doing tonight.’
A sharp smear of pain, a hard slap, a mouth submerged. Laughter, lots of it, raucous and cruel. Paper money changing hands.
‘Please. Please. I’m sorry!’
‘And why are you climbing up the drainpipe? Why don’t you come in through the main door, hm?’
Coming in through the main door meant entering hell. It meant facing the Devil as she stared at you, smiling wide. It was a many-toothed mouth that said –
‘You’re an ungrateful little slut. I didn’t have to take you in. I ought to let you drop.’
The rain poured. From above, a lash of lightning. A whip of thunder. I could no longer speak. My mouth made the movements – a grimace, showing my teeth, lips flapping – but my throat was sandpaper, my oesophagus swollen and choked. I stared, through squinted eyes dripping with tears, at Julia. She was a watercolour smudge, but the cold glint in her green eyes was as visible as ever. It was all I saw, in every dream I had, in every cold, damp room I walked into.
‘Well,’ she said, voice so soft that I could scarcely hear it over the roar of the approaching storm. ‘In you get.’ And she pulled.
***
In the bathroom, the place where the wall met the ceiling was rimmed with black mould. I stared up at it, shivering, my towel pulled tight around me. The tears had dried on my face, reddening my cheeks. From behind me, I could hear the tap squeak pathetically as it attempted to fill the claw-foot tub.
‘You’re making us late. We have a schedule.’
‘I’m sorry, Julia.’
‘No, you’re not. You’re apologising because you’re trying to evade punishment.’ With a screech, I heard her turn the tap off. The last few dregs of water dripped into the tub. I heard her stand, grunting as she got to her feet. Those feet stepped in time with the beating of my heart as she approached. Her hands, cold and wet, met my shoulders. She tugged at the towel, which I had wrapped around myself like a cloak.
‘Hurry up.’
My grip was not tight enough. It fell from me, exposing me utterly. There was no point in trying to shield my modesty, not anymore, and so I turned, frightened and furious. Julia’s nails – I imagined that she kept them sharp, for this sole purpose – tore into me. She guided me to the bath and, once I was close enough, gave me a push. The water was icy and I howled, something that generated a chuckle from her.
‘What were you expecting?’ She picked up the bar of soap that rested on the side of the tub. ‘I’ll have to clean you. You take too long.’
‘No,’ I wailed. Tears pricked my eyes, tears that I thought I’d already spent. ‘Please, no.’
‘For Christ’s sake, stay still!’ She seized a chunk of my hair, dragged me closer. Waves, enough for a tsunami, sloshed from the tub as I struggled. She dipped the bar into the frigid water and began to rub it across my arm. ‘I promise you, you don’t want this to take any longer than it already will.’
It wasn’t the first time that Julia had bathed me, and it wouldn’t be the last. Occasionally, the job was given to one of the grubby-handed, foul-smelling strangers that Julia invited over. It didn’t matter how much I kicked and bit and scratched. The bathing was inevitable. So was the horror that it preceded.
‘Stop crying!’ Julia snapped. ‘You’re not a child.’
‘I’m –’
‘I know what you’re going to say. You’re old enough, alright?’
‘I hate you. I hate you!’ From somewhere within me, a shout. It echoed across the bathroom, bounced from the tiles. Oozed up from the floor. Julia stopped. Her right hand was still grasping my hair. The left still held the soap. I sat, shivering, silent. The cogs in her brain turned.
‘I’m sure you do,’ Julia said softly, quietly. ‘You all say that. But you’ll survive this. You girls always do.’
Survive? I no longer wanted to survive. At one point, I had wanted to live, not survive. But I wasn’t sure that was right, either.
Julia’s hand clenched my hair, tighter. My scalp burned and I hissed in pain.
‘Look, I’ll prove it. I’ll prove how well you survive.’
There was about a second, between the last syllable leaving her lips and the next movement, in which I had to think. Prove it? What was there to prove?
And then the world collapsed. It became water. It became the dancing of the flashes that appears before my closed eyes, images of the shiny tap and the soap in Julia’s hand burnt into my retinas. The world grew cold and became rage and shriek, and my lungs seized up and when I opened my eyes, they stung as the cold water enveloped them.
She is drowning me.
Julia’s screams echoed through the bathroom as she forced my head under the surface. I felt myself scrabble, desperate. My lungs cried out, my whole chest aching. Everything was cold, and it grew dark. The cool porcelain of the bottom of the bathtub pressed against my forehead, and I felt the world open up.
And then my head exploded with light, my throat opened, and there was air, oxygen, the sweet breath of life, pouring into my lungs.
‘See? See?! You won’t die. You wouldn’t dare. You have a survival instinct. You won’t defy the urges of your own flesh – you can’t.’
Perhaps the lack of oxygen to my brain had shuttered the part that made me meek and terrified. I reached out, shoving Julia away, wrenching myself free from her grasp. Scrabbling desperately, I leapt from the tub, slipping all over the tiled floor. Enraged, Julia roared, and seized me.
'Oh, you’re done, are you?’ Her face contorted into a mask of rage. ‘That’s okay. I like a clean girl.’ She seized me by the shoulder and forced me down. My head whacked hard against the tiles, and the room began to spin. She held fast against me, her knee forcing my thighs open. ‘You wait. You fucking wait. You’re going to regret this.’
‘No! Get off!’ I wrestled with her, my body bereft of any friction. There had to be a way. I couldn’t let her violate me any more than I already had been. I thought about the ghost. Survival, Julia said – but the ghost, was she simply the final vestige of the girl who had come before?
‘Stop! Don’t touch me!’ I closed my eyes as I fought against her, but now I was growing weak. What was the point? It wasn’t like I had any purity left to defend. After the first time, once everyone had left, Julia laughed at me as I quivered and wept and said, ‘You’ll never be a bride now.’ I would never leave, she meant. Perhaps she was right.
***
Wait, no. No.
That can’t be the end. That cannot be the end of my life – raped and then beaten to death in a bathroom. How can it be?
I couldn’t say how it happened. A final, end-of-life burst of strength, perhaps? Something that tore through me at the very last and gave me the push of adrenaline I needed. Either way –
There was a flash of something silver.
A scream. My own, yes, but another. One deeper, more raucous. One that made my soul tremble, slowed my bones.
And then the weight that had been pinning me lifted. The lead that had deadened my muscles disappeared. I brought my hands to my face, scrubbed at it, sobbing. I didn’t want to look. I sat like that, naked and crying, for an interval of time, in which I recognised two things. The smell of death – sweet rot, coppery tang – and the cessation of a life, the final flutter of a soul. Not my own.
Eventually, I opened one eye. Julia was dead.
She had to be. Her neck was bent at an unnatural angle, and the top of her head, where her soul had escaped, was shattered. Bone fragments littered the floor. Red sinew, that which had made up her cruel brain, was splashed across the wall. No, not splashed – slathered. Like somebody had taken great care to paint the facts of her death across the canvas of her home, for all to see.
I sat, heart pounding, staring at the scene. I thought about the angle she was at. I could have pushed her, in an excited delirium, against the wall with enough force for her to end up like that. Perhaps she had slipped on the water, and hit her head. But her neck –
I suddenly thought of the ghost. Or no, not thought – the idea forced itself into my head, a violation of the highest order, the idea pushed into me – and I realised that she had done this. She must have. The ghost of one of Julia’s former charges, a vengeful monsteress, formed into such by months or years of abuse.
‘Don’t leave me alone,’ I said, voice cracking, echoing in the bathroom. ‘Come back. Please. Don’t leave me alone…’
But the dead girl, deaf to the pleas of the living, made no acknowledgement.
***
Eventually I left the bathroom, and shut the door. The smell was too much. The shock of claret against the white tiles, even more so. The moon shone in through the window. But the ghost, who had once been positioned there, was gone.
I got dried and dressed, pulling a blanket across my shoulders for warmth. The wooden stairs creaked as I crept down them. The landline phone glowered at me from its position on the wall. I picked it up, let my finger dance lightly against the keypad. I needed to call the police. They’d never believe it was a ghost, but if I told them that it was an accident – and if I also told them the truth, about everything that had happened to me – perhaps they’d look on me with kindness. Maybe they’d give me a place of my own to stay? It would only be a couple of years until I was an adult.
Or maybe they’d put me with someone else, someone worse than Julia.
No, I decided, and quietly placed the phone back into its cradle. It wasn’t worth it. Not at all.
In the kitchen, I looked in the fridge. It was almost bare, but for a few condiments, a bottle of lumpy milk, a cooked chicken half-eaten and coated in white mould. Food. What would I do for food? Perhaps some of the chicken was still edible, as yet untouched by the tiny colony that had made the surface its home. I fished in the cutlery drawer for a blade of some sort, and found a long carving knife. The plate holding the chicken was cold. I set it down, held my breath, and began to carve. I imagined pulling out long entrails, pictured pulsating brains. I closed my eyes. Behind them, Julia’s head exploded as it hit the white cabinet –
The shrill sound of the doorbell made me jump. I almost dropped the knife. The police, I thought wildly; they know. Somebody has heard the commotion, and called them. Never mind that the house was too secluded for that. I gripped the knife and crept out of the kitchen, into the dark hallway. The glass panel in the door was illuminated by the light on the porch, which flickered. It granted me only snatches of the person – the people – at the door. I heard the laughter, heard some voices I recognised. These were people I had seen before. They knew me. Had known me. Of course – Julia’s party. These weekly parties which she held. The whole purpose of my staying out late, for the bath. I knew well what this was.
The knife’s handle dug into my palm.
I thought about my ghost, and about the other girls who had not made it out. I had to survive now. For them. It was time to give the guests some entertainment – a different sort to the one they’d had before.
I reached out for the door handle, and smiled wide. I felt the moon in my mouth, and I crushed it to a pulp between my teeth.
END