Here you can read the opening 8750 words of Not Technically Ghosts. What's below is currently a 1st draft of the as yet unpublished book, so expect changes eventually once edits are through!
CONTENT WARNING: CURSING
Overeager fireworks pepper the New-Year’s-Eve sky as I cycle through the graveyard, hoping any ghosts are out partying. Is looking for a Victorian ruin in a graveyard at almost-midnight a bit morbid? Absolutely. Plus, I’m a sixteen-year-old with my hood up, so I get menace-to-society points too! But this is still better than a sad evening stuck at home with Dad, watching TV as some aging popstar from the 2000’s sings in the new year.
I think the post online said I’m supposed to go right at the angel statue, then keep going past the tall mossy Victorian headstones… or was it left when I get to the big willow tree and the war memorial? The gravel path crunches as I brake to a stop. Finding Clarance Hall is a lot harder in the dark.
Ping, a message buzzes my phone. Mum. I can’t remember which country she’s in this month, but at least she’s trying, despite the time difference. I swipe up my screen.
Mum:
Looking forward to the new year - hope
you are too hun. See you in April
xo
Five minutes to midnight. OK fine. If I can’t find Clarance Hall in five minutes, I’ll head home and face whatever crooning lizard-person is trying to make a comeback. With a big huff of cold air, I cycle past a row of picture graves – those sort where there’s a grainy photo of someone’s nana beaming beside her death-date – then another row, then – there it is.
Clarance Hall.
“OK Linas,” I admit, flicking on my chest-cam, “that looks pretty sick.”
Leaning back, I make sure to capture the whole view of the ruined hall, where floodlights planted in the tall surrounding grass illuminate the ancient walls. I’d heard some surveyors were checking it out a while back for a project or something and had left their stuff behind. The largest, central part of the abandoned building is a huge space that might have once been a ballroom or assembly hall. A tiny, enclosed corridor hugs the right side, whilst the left wall has been torn away, the larger building Clarence Hall once joined having fallen down long before, leaving this piece behind, like a sad architectural orphan.
Linas had only wanted some shots of the outside for our Media Studies project, but there’s something special about this place, I realise, as I lay my bike down on the gravel. I hardly notice I’ve moved closer, until the wetness of the long overgrown grass tickles my palms. I’m here now; might as well see the inside. No one else should be around, but I dodge around the floodlights just to be sure as I enter through the missing wall.
Turning on my phone’s torch, the tiny beam of light feels pathetic after the floodlights’ glare. The feeble glow reveals exposed foundations underfoot, most of the ancient wooden floors having been ripped up, with what remains having turned to discoloured rot. Unpleasantly out of place red girders dot the hall, stretching to the ceiling, likely added to ‘save’ the ruin years back. They might be ugly, but I’m pretty sure they’re the only thing keeping the ceiling up. The right side of the hall is mostly whole, two sets of double doors at either end of the wall obviously leaded to that little linking corridor.
OK, that’s definitely all the footage I need…
… Is what I’m thinking as I go for the corridor’s nearest doors. They’re heavy and slick with the cold, but still, they ease open.
As expected, I find a corridor that runs the length of the hall’s right side, where another set of doors at the other end leads back out. It’s warmer here, the windows that look out across the wild grounds still miraculously hold their glass. The walls seem stronger, stripped back to plaster, but where the rest of the hall has rotted, this place feels only… forgotten. Even the old wooden floor, while not gleaming or polished, is at least intact. Halfway down the corridor, my torchlight catches a mirror leaning against the wall, its glass murky with age, the elegant flowery design around its edges dulled and grimy. A patch of wall above the mirror is slightly less discoloured, a shadow of where it must’ve once hung.
My footsteps echo in the silence as I continue down the corridor, not even sure what I’m doing. Those doors at the other end would only take me back in a circle, into the main hall. Yet that weird pull is still here. It feels like – I stop when I realise – a person. It’s the same as whenever I go home, even if I don’t see Dad straight away, I know if he’s in the house. Something about it just feels ‘inhabited’.
This corridor feels the same way. And that is not what I want to be feeling, in the dark, in the middle of the night! Frozen, all I can hear is the distant, occasional fireworks and my own hammering heart.
I take a step, catch movement in the corner of my eye, whip around, see a person-shaped something – and I yelp!
But it’s just my blurred reflection in the fallen mirror.
Even through the mirror’s murk, a turf of ginger hair is visible poking out the front of my hastily-yanked-up red hoodie. I pull a strained smile at myself, then frown. How is it my features are blurred but my braces and buckteeth still stand out?!
“Linas, edit that out… obviously,” I say for the recording, before turning off the chest-cam.
There weren’t technically any signs saying to keep out. OK, we had a whole assembly in school about how we shouldn’t hang around historical wrecks that could fall down at any minute. But I’m not stupid. Not stupid about this anyway. Better to keep me out of the video and claim we’d just ‘found it online’.
I wander the length of the corridor, passing each aged peeling windowsill, but not touching them, suddenly feeling like an astronaut who could bring a deadly earth-disease to some vulnerable untouched world. That weird feeling that drew me here has settled down. Maybe I was imagining it? I check my phone again.
The shadows dance away from rainbow blooms as the black sky beyond Clarence Hall explodes with dozens of fireworks, announcing the new year.
Three pings on my phone announce the other messages I expected. From Dad:
Dad:
Happy new year! Keep your chin up, try
to make it a good one. Going to bed now,
don’t stay out too late
Then Linas in our ‘The Couple™… and Ryan’ group-chat:
Linas:
Happy new year bud :) Still time to get
round mine if done with C Hall
And finally Kara in the same chat:
Kara:
HNY Ry!!!! <3
PS pls come save me from Linas he
keeps threatening to put on John Wick.
… AGAIN.
Linas:
Exposure therapy til you develop
taste *shrug emoji*
I smirk as I flick through Linas’ socials and find a flurry of pictures showing him, tanned and blond and Kara, dark-skinned and round-faced snuggled on the sofa. A fresh picture pops up, showing the two sharing a tender kiss in Linas’ garden, backlit by the fireworks. It’s been two months since Linas finally made a move with Kara, officially changing us from a trio of friends to, well – ‘The Couple™… and Ryan’.
I’d cheered at the time. Watching them awkwardly crush on each other for the better part of two years was torture. Except now their cuteness is like a whole bar of chocolate; nice too much of it leaves me a little sick.
Honestly, I’m mostly just jealous. Maybe the new year could give me a chance to find a boyfriend? Oh sure. Fat chance of that whilst Henry Cain is busy being our school’s star ‘queer kid’ – leaving no room for someone like me. Henry is everything people expect with the label: beautiful, witty, artistic, and so very brave.
Then there’s me. Ginger, bucktoothed, and wearing my brother’s hand-me-down hoody. My comedy is limited to finger guns and zingers I come up with five minutes after a conversation. I can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t act. When I tried to continue Art as an extra subject last year, Miss Derry literally said ‘No’ and sent me to Woodwork instead. As for brave? How about the week I came out and then asked Henry on a date, in front of all his friends.
And he’d laughed in my face. “Oh my god, as if you think I’d ever go out with you!”
I shake off the memory and flick the chest-cam back on as I stand. Might as well get some footage heading back out. I’ll swing by Linas’ and say ‘Hi’, maybe get some of that amazing Lithuanian cabbage/meat thing his parents always make. This could still be an OK night.
At the windowsill beside the fallen mirror. I give the firework-streaked sky one last look and say, “Happy new year.”
Something scrapes off to my left and I flinch around. But there’s nothing there, only the empty corridor. The way the firework flashes light up the space, there’s no way I’d miss if someone else was in here. It must’ve been a rat or something. Cautiously, I move to the next windowsill along. Sure enough, there’s a long, deep scratch in the surface of the sill. Could a rat have done this? Or was it here the whole time and I’d missed it? No, I’d passed all the windows before, I’d have spotted it. Crouching level, I try to get a closer look, running my finger over the mark.
I have no idea what I’m looking for, so I straighten up, turn to leave – and walk into a boy with neatly combed black hair, an upturned nose, and a long nightshirt. He’s appeared out of nowhere, looking like an extra from a Charles Dickens story.
The moment holds for a heartbeat – then we both scream at once!
The ghost falls backwards, and I run for my life, the horrible cry ringing in my ears as I sprint out of the corridor and as far from Clarence Hall as my feet will take me.
***************************************************************************
Sprawled on my back, propped up on my elbows, I can only observe, petrified, as the hooded phantasm wails its way out of the corridor, passing right through the solid doors! The spectral scream vanishes the moment the phantasm is gone.
It was quite bad enough mere moments before, hearing those ghostly words, “Happy New Year”. I had leapt in fright, scraping my candle-dish across the windowsill, leaving a most unsightly mark. But then seeing the apparition too! No wonder men lose their minds!
With all the courage I possess, I crawl across the varnished passageway. At the far end, I reach for the door handle with trembling fingers and at a gentle push, the way opens to the silent library beyond. No trace of the phantasm.
“Master Croak?”
“GOOD HEAVENS!” I cry, twisting to find old Miss Henshum standing over me, a shawl clutched around her shoulders.
“Is everything alright Master Croak?” the librarian asks. “I was fetching some night-time reading and came running when I heard your cry.”
Shakily getting to my feet, I brush down the front of my nightrobe. Thinking quickly, I say, “I was attending to the very same task, when I mistook a shifting shadow for an intruder. Gravest apologies, I must have startled you so. I should hope you would kindly keep this most unseemly meeting between us?”
“But of course, Master Croak,” Miss Henshum says, smiling fondly. “But you’re sure everything is quite alright?”
“Perfectly sure,” I respond, forcing the tremble from my voice. After collecting the book and candle-dish I’d dropped, I make a hasty departure. “Quite alright, indeed.”
I have simply taken complete leave of my senses.
***************************************************************************
This is fine. Perfectly OK. 100% all good, I decide, gently pressing the front door shut. It was just the creepy atmosphere at Clarance Hall. Yep. I got myself all worked up and… saw a fucking ghost!
Upon reflection, things are definitely not alright.
I whip around, expecting to see demons and screaming faces in my hallway. But there’s nothing, just bare walls and shadows. Shadows – that could be hiding more ghosts! Stifling a gasp, I head upstairs as quickly and quietly as I can. The normality of Dad’s deep snores echoing out of my parents’ room settle my jangling nerves just a little. But then I spot the door to my brother’s old room, now Mum’s office wide open! Was it like that when I left?! The carpet muffles my steps as I make a panicked leap past the open door, hoping I don’t see anything, before finally reaching the safety of my bedroom.
I flick on the lights, the glow bouncing off familiar acid green walls (shut up, it’s surprisingly good at helping me get up in the morning). Here, I might finally be safe. No shadows. No ghosts. My bed is against the wall under the window, curtains already drawn against the night – and whatever’s out there. I rip the chest-cam from my front and drag my cowskin-print quilt past my desk to the guinea pig zone on the other side of the room. Laying down beside the wood and wire mesh border, Clive and Owen greet me with a pair of cute little squeaks. I scoop both my tan-coloured boys from their pen, and they settle with me on the quilt.
Gently stroking Owen, I whisper, “Mum’s so into crystals and all that, if ghosts were real, she’d tell me, right?”
“Weeeeeek,” Owen squeaks.
“Thanks, that’s a big help.”
Clive nuzzles my other hand. “Mrp, mrp, mrp, mrp?”
“You’re right. It was probably a hallucination… which means I have brain cancer or mould-spores and I’ll be dead in the morning.” I rub my hands over my face. “I’m just scared OK? So… cartoons?” I nod at both guinea pigs for approval. “Cool.”
Whilst I’d appreciate Clive and Owen’s snuggles for the night, I don’t want to wake up with their tiny poops on my quilt. So I put them both back in their pen, with a fresh serving of pellets, then set up my phone with the dumbest, brightest cartoons I can find. It’s basically the reverse of horror, so I’m hoping it’ll chill me out.
Still laying alongside the guinea pig pen, I let the silliness and colours of the cartoons wash over me, wash out the memory of the ghost. When I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, I switch off the light. The sight of the ghost’s screaming face is shoved to the back of my mind. I can’t let it go altogether, like a nightmare I can’t wait to forget. There’s a part of me that’s clinging to the image. Not out of fear. Something else.
Something I can think about in the morning.
I let myself finally drift, focusing on my breathing. With my heart-rate somewhere near normal, my sleepy imagination strips away the blind terror from the screaming ghost, letting me see it as almost funny. Or something else? Eyes closed; I feel a smile sneak up my cheek.
Wouldn’t it be crazy if the ghost was… pretty?
***************************************************************************
There – is – no – phantasm! Of this I am certain, I determine, as I creep back to the Caldwell House dormitory in the school’s east wing. I am a man of logic and reason and science. Whatever I may have seen or heard was merely an illusion conjured up by the foreboding night and a restless mind. Yet it had appeared so firm of form, so strong of voice. How can this be so? I will seek the answer.
Past the snores and snoozes emanating from the other boys’ doors, candlelight flickers from beneath my own. I slip within to find my roommate, Peter Osmuld, hunched over the writing desk, quill scratching away at his papers, spectacles slipping ever so slowly down his nose. The candle’s flame sends his shadow reaching up the wall. Within our sparce quarters, his bed and mine are set against opposite walls, with the writing desk and window between them. A small stack of books borrowed from the library lies at the foot of my bed, whilst handwritten pages are pinned to Osmuld’s wall.
“Apologies if I woke you when I rose earlier,” I whisper, “it was not my intention.”
“Not you,” is Osmuld’s short reply. Quite expected if he is in one of writing fits.
My tongue squirms. I know my own mind. There can be no such thing as phantasms, yet I find myself desperate to ask if Osmuld knew any tales of school hauntings. But it matters not, for I would get little response from him until his writerly inspiration passed. To that end, I retire to bed at the other side of the room, where the persistent scratching of Osmuld’s quill helps to ease my racing mind and eventually find something resembling sleep.
Morning breaks and I rise to meet it. Osmuld’s candle has long since burnt out and the boy himself is face down amongst his piles of ink-spattered pages, spectacles beside his head. I dress swiftly then give him a gentle shove.
“Come along, or you’ll miss breakfast.”
Osmuld lurches up with a start, retrieving his spectacles and hastily examining his work from the night before. He squints at the words as if seeing them for first time, then gives a joyous “Ah!” and reaches for his quill anew.
“Osmuld, breakfast,” I call from the door.
“In time, in time,” he returns distractedly.
Better I leave him too it, I decide as I head into the corridor, weary of too many times guiding my roommate through the halls, Osmuld himself too entranced in his own words to walk a straight line. He usually finds the dining hall eventually.
Being a little over a month shy of seventeen years and this my penultimate year at St Clarence’s, I am granted the authority to shoulder past a great many of the younger boys, needing to politely stand aside for only a select few older than myself. Though there remain fewer peers to pass by this day, the greater number of them having quit the school for Christmas, now passed. January is here and tomorrow the bustle of schoolwork would surely return.
Once at the dining hall, I retrieve a bowl of porridge from the cook and take a seat amongst all the polite clicks of spoons on bowls. My gaze drifts east, as if I might peer through the walls themselves, to the library passage where I’d spied –
“Good morrow, Croak,” Thompson greets me pleasantly as he sits opposite. Blond-haired and powerfully built, the rogue’s smile is never far from Lewis Thompson’s lips.
“Thompson,” I reply, then as a second boy joins us, “Grassley.”
Granting me a chivalrous nod in return, rakish Edmund Grassley is a hatstand made human. He has but one topic of conversation and I generally think I ought to get it out of the way as early as I can.
“I might wonder if Cecelia –?”
“Cecelia has written again!” Grassley says with nasal excitement, leaning eagerly over his porridge. “The wedding preparations still go well and the weather is most pleasant.”
Thompson shares a good-natured gaze with me then says, “As rapturously fascinating as when you told me at first light, Grassley.” He looks past my head. “Ah, Osmuld. Good of you to join us.”
The final of our group sits down with the fluttering of two-dozen pages. Seated, he carries on writing without acknowledgment.
“Osmuld,” I sigh, “you’ve not gotten any porridge. If you don’t hurry Chef will clear it all away.”
“Hmm? Oh no matter.” Osmuld waves his quill. “There’ll be time enough for eating at lunch.”
“Cecelia insists I must eat every meal,” Grassley puts in, “for it shall make me into a strong and desirable husband.”
“No doubt,” Thompson says, idly stirring his porridge. With a smirk he glances between us all. “Are you all such cads you won’t ask what night-time adventures I’ve had?”
A blush rises up my face and my breakfast suddenly becomes infinitely interesting to look at. I manage to say, “We’re gentlemen enough that we don’t need to hear which village girl you’ve… ‘entranced’ this week.”
“Come now Croak,” Thomason says, the grin still in his words. “There’s no need to play priest with me. Only say the word and I’m sure we’ll find you a Cecelia all your own.”
“Cecelia rightly despises village girls,” Grassley offers.
No such girl exists for me, a ‘Cecelia’ or otherwise.
Taking in my ill-ease, Thompson flicks a glob of porridge across the table, narrowly missing Osmuld’s pages. “Becalm yourself Croak, it was only a jest. You keep to your studies, find your Discovery, then you’ll have your pick of the girls.”
“Though still,” I say, taking my chance, “to speak of the night, I heard… one of the younger boys crying a most queer tale. He swears that in the library passage – he spied a hooded phantasm!”
Osmuld sets aside his quill, reading back his words. “Foolishness.”
“Cecelia has no mind for mysticism.”
“The school grounds are older than I can say,” Thompson says with a shrug. “My aunt Charlotte swears by séances, claims a spectre foretold her daughter’s death, to hear her tell it.”
Such does nothing to ease my mind or offer clarity. “Osmuld has the right of it, foolishness to the core,” I decide.
“The library’s your domain anyway, Croak.” Thompson takes a mouthful of porridge. “Do you still steal your way there for a book or two on sleepless nights? If anyone’s to get to the bottom of this phantasm lark, it’s you.”
Again I gaze in the library passage’s direction. I’d had a horrible feeling they’d say as much.
***************************************************************************
Weak winter sunlight glints off Linas’ computer monitor, where the video loops over the moment I saw the ghost in Clarance Hall. Except… on the video there’s nothing there. Perching on the end of Linas’ bed beside Kara, I cross my arms. “It’s definitely a ghost.”
“It’s definitely dust,” Linas says from his computer desk. His voice carries only a lilt of his native Lithuanian accent, just the occasional heaviness on his T’s.
His family moved to England when he was ten and I’ve known him since we were twelve. A growth-spurt a few years ago meant Linas was the tallest, gangliest boy in our Year. Hunched over his too-small desk, he looks like a blond, tanned spider, dressed in baggy shorts and a long t-shirt.
Posters of Pepton FC players past and present cover his bedroom walls, whilst a framed shirt signed by Bryn Molcox – the team’s best ever manager – takes pride of place over Linas’ desk, itself littered over with a small heap of crisp packets. A couple of trophies he’s earned with our school football team are jumbled along a shelf opposite.
“You seriously think I’m making it up?” I say, getting to my feet. “Kara?”
She frowns, bright purple lipstick and matching eyeshadow popping against her dark skin. The writing on her Corpse-Face band-tee is cracked and flaked off with age, the lists of tour-dates and venues scarcely visible. “Sorry, I just don’t see it.”
I jab a finger at the screen. “Have either of you even been looking at it?”
“Yes,” Linas groans, running his hands over his eyes, “like, a million times. Each time, a tiny bit of dust comes down from the ceiling, you scream, then you run out.”
“Ok so… you can’t see it on the video, but there was definitely, 100% a ghost there.” I snap my fingers and give Linas a small, triumphant shove. “They don’t always show up on video.”
“That’s vampires… in mirrors,” Kara says.
Deflating, I realise there really is no proof. “Am I just completely mental?”
“Yes,” Linas says without hesitation.
“Thanks.”
Part of me wishes I was. This morning I’d worked up the courage to check the video a dozen times myself for some sign of the ghost. Even though I’d managed to sleep, seeing the looping video, I couldn’t shake the sight of that ghost screaming in my face. But the weird thing this was, the ghost had seemed… scared? Was that right for ghosts?
I must be looking uneasy, because Linas tilts his head, sensing something is off, then smiles. “Listen, you say you saw it, then you saw it. If you can get some decent footage or at least something people could squint at, it might get some decent views if we put it online?”
“I could launch one of those urban-explorer channels, to pad it out?” I suggest.
“Maybe don’t go that far. This stuff you shot might get us a decent final mark for Media Studies thanks to –” Linas strikes a pose “– my amazing editing skills. But unless you want to film a multi-story car park and an old bridge, there’s not much to ‘urban-explore’ in Pepton.”
“There’s the old water-tower?” Kara says, going to stand by Linas’ bedroom window, craning her neck, trying to see the structure through the surrounding houses.
At his desk, Linas hugs her waist, his long skinny arms meeting around her fuller figure. “See, I’d never have thought of that. Kara, you’re…” he pauses, searching for the best compliment, “a genius!”
She smiles and prods his nose. “And you’re trying too hard.”
“And I might be sick,” I add, pulling a chuckle from the three of us.
There’s footsteps on the landing, then Linas’ mum pokes her head into the room and says something sharp to him in Lithuanian, her eyes darting at his crisp packets and a pile of clothes at the foot of his bed.
Being polite, I’d learned as far as ‘My name’s Ryan, nice to meet you’… plus all the swears, obviously. Kara becoming practically conversational in Lithuanian last year had been a big hint something couple-y was going to happen between her and Linas.
Mrs. Novikovienė spots me and switches to English, “Hello dear, is your father well?”
“Good, thanks.”
With a smile for me and Kara and a firm glare at Linas, she leaves.
“I need to tidy up,” Linas translates, before hamming up his accent in a terrible impersonation of his mum, “‘or that pretty girl will leave, and it’ll just be you and the nice boy being sad together forever.’”
“She didn’t say that,” Kara reassures me, then frowns. “Not all of it anyway.”
“Hey, don’t let me third-wheel all over you two,” I say, putting up my hands in surrender. “I need to go anyway.”
As I stand, Linas asks, “So you gonna go back to the Hall?”
I haven’t really thought about it, but now that he’s mentioned it…
If I can just prove to myself that the ghost doesn’t exist, that I was just seeing things – maybe that’d be one less thing to rattle anxiously around my head? I’m all for discovering aliens or the Loch Ness Monster are real, but the mysterious world of the unknown is a lot less appealing when it screams in your face.
I look back at Linas and Kara from the doorway. “Yeah, think I might go back tonight. Either I’ll get literally the best ghost video ever – or an update on the dust.”
***************************************************************************
I curse January 1st for being a day of rest. As the greater part of my peers would be returning to the school at various hours until tomorrow, my companions and I were forced to occupy ourselves. Had I at least been able to attend my lessons, they might’ve swayed my thoughts away from the Phantasm’s face. But alas, no.
I made a valiant stab at having a study session for the four of us – so that I would not miss out on my learning. Yet this scarcely lasted to noon, Thompson tiring of the peace almost at once and luring Grassley to abandon the venture in short order. Grassley left with a muttered, “Cecelia would find it grossly wasteful to spend all the day indoors.”
Osmuld, for his part, used the time to continue his manic fiction, his hand seldom pausing. Yet even he tired in the end, declaring that he must away to walk the school grounds in search of fresh inspiration.
Thus I find my day empty and the thought of the Phantasm remains.
I observe my friends once more at supper, Thompson and Grassley having visited the village, the former bemoaning the activities available to us schoolboys in the daylight hours. I held my tongue from enquiring further.
By night, I take to the library, my sanctuary.
Where other boys might favour one lesson over another or even complain at the work forced upon them by some professors, I take no preference. Whether classical languages or the latest mathematical advances, I read of all things. It has never been a matter of it being fun – it simply has to be done. How else will I ever hope to find my Discovery?
I consider our librarian Miss Henshum as a guardian, in prior years offering shelter within the library when more oafish boys might set upon me. This year I was granted my own key, to come and go as I please. Were it any more than a pittance wage, I might gladly take up the librarian role when my studies are complete.
My way is guided by a single candle’s flame as I fetch a fresh book, seeking a brand-new subject, to banish all thoughts of the Phantasm. Gazing around the library’s darkened alcoves and the unseen heights of the shelves cloaked in darkness, I remain, against all odds, at peace. I had expected this refuge to be tainted by the potential presence of the Phantasm, yet for the moment, all is as it had always been. Quietness and stillness.
The Passageway, I realise, glancing that way. Upon the library’s eastern wall, two sets of double doors link a corridor spanning one end of the library to the other. That was where I spied the spectre the previous night. Supposing it did exist – or my sanity was intact – then that must be its haunt.
“It was merely a trick of the candlelight,” I tell the empty library, before recalling the ghostly scream, “… and a fallacy of the ear.”
If all my studies have taught me anything, it is that such imaginings as ghosts and fairies and the like have no place existing in the scientific world.
…But what if they do?
Could this be the Discovery I have so desperately sought all these years? Perhaps these fantastical things have been dismissed thus far because, by the poorest probabilities, they were only observed by uneducated morons and lunatics? If I were given the chance, I would study this being with the most rigorous scientific methods.
Taking to my feet, I approach the Passageway’s nearer doors…
***************************************************************************
Somehow, the cold is even worse than last night as I shiver-ride my way through the graveyard. I pull my hood up with one hand, to keep the chill off my ears. Without the pop of the fireworks or New-Year’s buzz, the night is intensely dark and silent, the crunching of gravel under my bike tyres now the loudest thing on the planet. I’m expecting the graveyard-police – I’m imagining black uniforms and top-hats, obviously – to leap out from between the headstones and arrest me for disturbing the peace.
But there’s no one else around as I go right at the angel statue, past the tall Victorian tombstones, left at the war memorial, and around the second row of picture-graves. Clarance Hall emerges, framed between the winter-stripped trees. I check my phone. 12:57 AM. I nearly hadn’t come, feeling the night grow colder and colder as I’d waited for Dad to go to bed. Being out around midnight on New-Year’s-Eve? Dad hadn’t liked it, but accepted I was sixteen and it was once a year. Being caught out thislate on a regular night? I wouldn’t be allowed outdoors for a month.
But I had to know the truth about the ghost, or I’d never sleep again.
Abandoning my bike, the chest-cam’s recording light pulses gently in the darkness as I head for the Hall. A quick dash through the long grass, a dodge around the floodlights, and I’m inside. Under the semi-protection of the outer ruin, the cold eases off, like the building was some one-armed mother bear attempting to shield me from the elements. My phone-torch strikes a path across the broken hall, leading me to the doors of the corridor. That same corridor where I’d first seen the ghost.
I drum my fingers on the door handle, daring myself to go in. “Ghosts-aren’t-real, ghosts-aren’t-real, ghosts-aren’t-real, ghosts-aren’t-real….” I mutter.
In a rush I yank the handle down, pull the door open, and burst into the corridor with a yelp, like I might to catch the ghost by surprise.
But there’s nothing there, only the empty corridor.
***************************************************************************
Leading with my candle, I inch my head between the doors, eyes clamped shut. With a shuddering breath I squint one eye open, sweeping my gaze right. Nothing but shadows.
“Of course,” I say aloud, scanning the remaining space, “there is no such thing as a —” My sights fall on the hooded figure, who stares open-mouthed, from the other end of the Passageway. “— PHANTASM!”
I leap away, but just as quickly thump the floor, cursing my own cowardice. Think of my Discovery! With renewed vigour I surge back into the Passageway, waving my candle like a fiery brand, ready to face the being.
“Phantasm!” I hiss into the darkness, “reveal yourself!”
Yet no matter how many times I march up and down the Passageway, calling into the shadows, the Phantasm fails to reappear.
***************************************************************************
I drag my bike alongside me, knowing my trembling feet would miss the peddles if I actually tried to ride it right now. Even with the extra weight, the bike hardly feels there at all as I hurry home through the night. I hardly feel like I’m still here when 49 Penkettle Way finally appears in the glow of the streetlights.
The sight of the ghost holding its weird ghostly candle in that weird ghost corridor is a burning screenshot in my mind. That was twice now. I’m not mad.
The ghost is real.
Breathless from the realisation, I toss my bike behind the bushes in the front garden, but when I reach the narrow, terraced house’s front door, I gather enough sense to tease my key around the lock a fraction at a time.
But I jump back as footsteps sound in the hallway and the door gets pulled roughly open by my older brother.
Benji balances a bowl of cereal in the crook of his elbow, a spoon lodged in his mouth. His hair is shaved down to ginger fuzz, whilst a silver piercing — installed courtesy of a YouTube video and ten cans of cheap cider — hangs precariously from his eyebrow. At 21, he’s a lot taller than me, but thinner than I remember, a battered jacket and torn jeans hanging off of his frame.
He really shouldn’t be here, but I can’t help but smile that he is.
Benji considers me through half-lidded eyes, then gestures me inside with a motion of his head. I step over a small pile of letters and junk-mail. A pink leaflet announces an upcoming car-park development.
We head down the unfurnished hall, into the relative seclusion of our tiny kitchen, where I smirk and whisper, “So were you really that much of a prick that literally all of Bristol kicked you out?” Which is of course sibling-code for: I really missed you and I’m glad you’re home.
Benji answers with his middle finger. Missed you too.
I sit at the table, whilst Benji leans on the worktop. “Surprised Dad let you back in after…”
“He don’t know yet,” Benji says with a shrug. “Hasn’t changed the locks though, so that’s basically saying I’m not properly kicked out.”
Whether or not I wake up to a shouting match tomorrow would answer that.
Benji chews on the same mouthful of cereal for longer than necessary, obviously realising neither of us planned on bumping into each other tonight. He glances back into the hallway. “See Dad’s still not got the right wallpaper?”
“You’ve been gone two months; it’s been like that for two years. What did you think was going to change around here?”
Two months ago… there was a backpack Benji ‘got from a friend’ which he needed to return to another ‘friend’. He’d asked me to take it for him. After the mountain of minor offences he’d racked up, if he got so much a parking fine, he’d get prison-time. So I said “Yes” without a second thought – right as Dad had caught us talking. Dad and Benji argued for hours, Mum joining over the phone. Then Benji was gone, Mum setting him up for a fresh start/exile in Bristol – until tonight.
“So,” I say, “how long do you think you’ll –?”
Benji scoffs at his cereal. “I’m not goin’ back to Bristol. Ain’t paid rent since I got there anyway. Why the fuck am I gonna do that when I can just spend it on what I want?” He looks at me like the thought of ‘paying rent’ is the most stupid thing he’s ever heard of. “Reckon I’ll be alright. Dad ain’t gonna’ make me homeless, is he?”
The kitchen is suddenly colder than the wintery weather rattling the windowpane. Benji is definitelyback. An uncaring, selfish smirk on the surface, but I can see the way his sets his teeth, the stony eyes that won’t look at me. There’s a numb certainty about him, like the end of a film has been spoiled for him and he’s stuck watching it anyway. The same as when he stopped going to school. The same as the first time he got arrested.
But I can’t do this right now and I want to make the most of him while I can. I lean back in my chair, trying to diffuse the tension and my brain throws out the first thing it can find. “Do you believe in ghosts?”
Benji blinks, startled out of wherever his mind had gone. His gaze trails upwards in thought. “Nah, reckon it’s bollocks.”
“I think I saw one, just now, before I came home.”
With a laugh, Benji says, “You can just say you’re out meeting other lads.”
“I’m serious!”
“Fuck off. You still do school don’t you? Go to bed.”
That’s what I get for talking about ghosts. Benji might have a point about getting some sleep, I decide, yawning. So I sneak up to my room and give Clive and Owen a fresh serving of pellets. Both guinea pigs squeak thankfully as I hit my bed, fully clothed – the chest-cam digging into my ribs. Finally remembering it, I rip it off and grab my laptop to check the footage. But just like the other night – there’s nothing to see.
So with no other option I try to get some sleep. Benji’s return was a temporary distraction from the ghost. But the second I close my eyes – there it is. Plus Benji’s made me realise I have a brand new problem. It doesn’t matter if I know the ghost is real. The question is, how the Hell do I make anyone believe me?
***************************************************************************
Despite my most earnest challenges to the Phantasm for what must have been the better part of an hour, the fiend proved too cowardly and to reappear and I was forced to return to my bed. Entering my room, I am greeted by more darkness. Osmuld is already asleep, moonlight silhouetting his form, facing the wall, cocooned in blanks. What’s more, a slew of discarded papers decorate the floor. I recognise this scene with a wary heart.
Come morning, I detect Osmuld’s waking by the minute fidget of one leg as I pass his bed, but otherwise he makes no shift, nor answers me when I greet him brightly.
“Osmuld,” I attempt again, adopting a less joyous tone. “Are you well?”
“For all the time you have known me, you must know perfectly well I am not.” His words are jagged as he remains obstinately towards the wall.
“Come now,” I encourage him, by the gentlest degree, “lessons resume today. Such things to be learnt, might you not regain your inspiration for stories there? Surely rotting here serves only to rot your inspiration in turn.”
Conceding the point, Osmuld finally rises and in short order follows me to breakfast. Boys eager, nervous, wary, furious, and tired swarm the halls, the school now returned to its truer self. When we take our seats with Thompson and Grassley, Osmuld glares at his porridge so fiercely; it is as if those very oats robbed his inspiration.
Thompson casts an understanding glance at Osmuld, and I answer his suspicions with a nod. To myself, Thompson says, “Croak, did I hear your steps past my door last night? Have you any occult tales from the library for us?”
My scientific mind flares at his words. Surely they shall cry madness if I divulge the events of last night. However real the Phantasm may seem, I must have more data. “Whilst I did visit the library once more, I have concluded, beyond all doubt, there is no Phantasm.”
“Such disappointment so early in the day,” Thompson says with an exaggerated sigh.
Osmuld mutters something, the low words swallowed in the hubbub of dining hall.
“Do speak up Osmuld,” Grassley prompts. “Cecelia says a strong husband can be determined by the strength of his voice.”
Thompson raps Grassley on the back of his head and we all lean closer to Osmuld’s grimacing face to better hear him.
“I said t’would be better the Phantasm, had been real, that its omen might deliver me from the misery of my waking life.”
“Keep faith, friend, this dourness will pass as it always does,” I say encouragingly, placing a gentle hand on his stony should, Osmuld’s whole form having turned bitterly rigid. “And what’s all this talk of omens?”
Grassley recoils from the word. “Cecelia has no patience for omens.”
“Should I spy some spectre of the beyond,” Osmuld says blandly, “I would surely take it as an omen of the severest nature. ‘Tis a being of death, so death is all it would deliver.”
I remove my hand, the horrifying notion setting my chest aquiver. “I have never heard as such…”
“I’ll vouch to the theory,” Thompson says, wagging his spoon at us. “You hear many a loon talk of ghostly encounters, but never a learned man. Why, you ask? For I say the spectres and ghouls take either the senses or indeed the life of any who might pose a threat to their arcane going’s-on.”
I leap up so quickly the table jumps, and my porridge bowl rattles in my hands. “Excuse me, I must being going.”
“Truly, Croak,” Thompson says offhandedly, “it’s a good job the Phantasm is a fiction. Were it real, I should indeed fear for your very soul.” He knows not the effect of his words, however playful they might have been.
As I hurriedly return my half-eaten porridge to the chef, my mind reels. How had I not considered the danger? I have so far treated the Phantasm as a curiosity, yet my own reading and research shows mythologies the world over who fear such apparitions. I strike a northern route from the dining hall, making for the school chapel.
I ease my way through the heavy chapel doors and am met with the grumpy rays of sunrise, transformed into many-coloured streamers by the stained-glass-windows. The pews are empty and for the moment, I am alone, amongst the light’s performance. I too ‘perform’ here, echoing sacred words others treat so dearly.
A footstep sounds and I jolt in its direction. It remains distant, beyond the doors at my back. Yet morning prayers were imminent and my need of the gravest urgency. Between the painted windows hang crucifixes. I approach one near the back of the chapel, gambling Father Gareth might notice this one least of all. As I reach to take it from the wall, my hand falters. My intention is of course to return this when the threat of the Phantasm has passed. Might I, who would mimic prayers and defy their doctrines, gain any modicum of protection by carrying a holy relic? Or might it damn me all the more?
More footsteps, far closer now. I snatch the crucifix from the wall, concealing it in my uniform. I have banished all thoughts of studying the Phantasm from my mind.
Now, it is a simple matter of survival.
***************************************************************************
Against all odds I don’t wake to the sounds of Dad and Benji shouting the house down. The silence is somehow even weirder. In early light of morning, my phone pings with a message from Linas in the group-chat.
How was ghost-hunting??
My thumbs hesitate over the keys. It’d be the same as when I tried to tell Benji. Without proof, I’d sound completely mad.
Ryan:
welllllllll
bust *crying face*
Kara:
*disappointed emoji*
Linas:
Doesn’t matter
Got science for 3rd today
If theres a practical then ill do it
You can think of new video ideas
so can make use of the channel
Pretty sad to use it for one bit of course
work then leabe it!
*Leave
Ryan:
ye sounds good :)
My ghost sighting still feels way too recent. Not in the ‘still shaking from fear’ way, but more ‘that was less than six hours ago and I’m mad about it’. So, I roll over for a few more minutes’ sleep.
…Which turns into me snoozing my alarm five times in a row. The fifth time I smack at my phone, it finally jolts enough sense into me that I get out of bed. Clive and Owen both get a single pet on the head, then with barely time for a two-minute shower, I bounce off of the bathroom walls I’m in that much of a hurry.
As I enter the kitchen, Benji and Dad are both of their feet, glaring at each other from over the small table. I always see parts of me and Benji when I look at Dad. There’s Benji’s hard eyes, but framed behind thick glasses. I get my chin from Dad, except his is coated in red stubble, matching his thinning hair. His broad frame is packed into a flannel shirt. With his thick arms, Dad was usually good at hugs, often having to give two peoples’ worth, considering how often Mum works overseas.
I glance awkwardly between Dad and Benji, then with a 2/10 score for acting, I say, “Wow, Benji?! When did you get here?”
“Ryan,” Dad says in a quiet, firm voice, his eyes never leaving Benji, “I know you were out late last night. We’ll talk about it later.”
I mouth ‘snitch’ at Benji and he breaks his staring match with Dad to give me a middle finger. But Dad’s eyes are bulging so hard neither of us says anything more.
I’m not sure if Benji and Dad have reached some happy arrangement or are just in a ‘cease-fire’ until I get out of the way. In either case I gulp down a few spoons of milky, sugary cereal, then bolt from the house.
For the first day back to school after Christmas break, I have to drag myself through a morning of Maths (urghhh) and English (double urghh) made only slightly better because I can sit with Kara in both. Thankfully, Chemistry for third period meant we were allowed to do some experiments – which really meant Linas handled the mixing of various chemicals while I ticked the boxes Linas indicated on the worksheet.
It’s not that I don’t care about schoolwork. I’m sure I’d been good at it at some point. It used to be, all I had to do was listen to whatever the teacher said, then I got good answers whenever there were tests. The trouble had come these past couple of years, when lessons got harder – when I had to study.
That was the killer. All of a sudden, teachers expected me to learn this stuff from books or online at home. They wanted me to remember reams and reams of information from weeks ago. All that was separate even to normal homework! It was crazy.
“5 on the pH scale,” Linas says, bringing me to attention.
“Oh, right.” I mark the worksheet.
Linas prepares a new beaker. “So, had any ideas for the channel?”
“Nah, nothing yet,” I say glumly.
We’re free to talk – seeing as most all the other tables are chatting too, only vaguely following the intended practical. Miss Schoma is occupied rubbing her temples as she patiently explains the difference between alkaline and alcohol to a blank-faced Terry Jules, on the other side of the room.
I can’t help but notice Henry Cain, a few tables over, sitting amongst a pack of giggling girls. His perfectly quaffed mousy hair is streaked through with purple. With a little pointy nose and a toothy smile, there’s always been something fox-like about him. Something sly.
I quickly look away, but he catches me in the corner of his eye. With a nasty grin, he blows me a kiss, making my cheeks flare as Henry’s girls laugh so loudly Miss Schoma has to go and tell them off.
I get picked on more for ‘daring’ to ask out Henry, than I do for being gay. Welcome to the modern world, I guess?
The school had jumped at the chance to have a whole assembly on inclusivity when Henry came out as bi last year. What should have been the most awkward thing ever, only cemented his popularity. All the girls wanted to ‘collect’ him and all the boys were so eager to show how completely-OK-and-not-at-all-bothered-by-him they were (if only to impress the girls).
However much of a beautiful, witty, artistic, brave cliché Henry was… all of that had been what made me like him. Literally the day after he came out, he’d come to school wearing eyeliner. What the fuck was I supposed to do when faced with that? Resist?!
I hate that, in a way, I still owe him so much. He literally inspired me. I’d come out to Linas and Kara a month after his assembly, then my family a week later. Mostly everyone was like “Ok… cool?” and that was perfect. Obviously there’s still a few pricks. Kevin Hunt had sung ‘Bender, bender, Ryan’s a bender’ whenever he passed me in the corridors, until a teacher overheard and he got excluded from school. Linas’ football mates are a bit mixed. There’s this weird undercurrent with them sometimes when we cross paths, like some of them wantto give me a hard time, but don’t. I never got that.
“Gutted about the ghost though,” Linas says, making me jump.
“The… what?” I say, distracted.
“The ghost. If you’d caught at least something on camera it could’ve been good content for next Halloween.”
“If the ghost had been real,” I ask, “do you reckon it would’ve been a bad one?”
“What do you mean?” Linas pours the contents of our science beaker down the acid-sink.
“What’re the odds it was a horror film jump-scare ghost that needs defeating,” I wiggle my fingers and bare my teeth, “or a friendly CGI kids film ghost who needs help?”
“Oh, like they have unfinished business and stuff?” Linas says. “Someone’s taken their head? Or whoever secretly killed them then married their grieving wife?”
“Yeah that sort of thing.”
Linas frowns. “Pretty fifty-fifty going off the films. Plus sometimes it starts out like a nice sort of ghost, but then there’s a twist in the third act and it changes.”
“Good point,” I say thoughtfully.
Squinting at me over a fresh beaker of acid, Linas says, “Buuuut there wasn’t really anything going on at Clarence Hall. So it doesn’t matter, right?”
“Yeah, exactly,” I say, mentally plotting the fastest route there.
***************************************************************************