A Tale of Two Ghosts

by Sarah Riad

  ‘Hi,’ she replied.

  ‘Did you hear?’ I asked. ‘I tidied your brother’s bedroom to say sorry for what I did.’ I looked at Finn’s closed door. He was scared, I could feel it. I needed it after and using up most of my energy on his room.

  She looked at me curiously, but I knew she still wasn’t happy with me.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done it in the first place.’ She folded her arms like a mother would when telling off her child.

  ‘I know, and I’ve said I’m sorry. I would tell him myself, but he can’t hear me.’ I shrugged.

  Maia turned her back to me as she climbed onto her bed and turned the TV on. ‘Do you wanna watch Frozen with me?’ she asked moving over on her bed to leave room for me.

  I nodded with a wide grin. ‘I’d love to watch Frozen with you,’ I said climbing onto her bed and watching the TV light up with icy colours. ‘What’s Frozen though?’

  Maia giggled out loud before telling me the entire plot to the movie we were about to watch.

  A couple of hours later, and I left Maia’s room humming along to the soundtrack, heading straight to Finn’s bedroom. He was in the same position he always was at this time of night—face glowing from the light of his laptop.

  ‘What are we looking at today then?’ I asked as I leaned beside him to look at the screen.

  ‘Ten ways to know if you’re being haunted…’

  I looked straight at him engrossed in the words.

  ‘You think I exist!’

  I turned back to the screen to read the checklist. On the screen, Finn only ticked ‘moving of objects’ and ‘interaction with pets and children’.

  ‘Two out of ten. Either you’re a crap ghost or you don’t exist at all, you don’t even interfere with the electricity,’ Finn muttered as though he was trying to talk himself calm.

  ‘Crap ghost?’ I looked at him furiously. ‘And what are you, some sort of expert on all things ghost related? I can only be a real ghost if I turn your lights off?’

  He tapped away on the black letters of the laptop before bringing up what was called a forum that was discussing the ways to find out if there is a ghost in your house. All of them suggested a Ouija board.

  I shook my head. ‘Have you never watched a horror movie? Bad things happen when you get a Ouija board. Even I know that.’

  Finn ignored me, of course, and began searching for one.

  ‘Wait. You can buy things on this?’ I asked, watching as he put a board in his ‘basket’ and checked out. ‘Can you buy books on this? Oh, and I’d love one of those tablet things your sister has. She tells me a Frozen 2 is coming out, and I’ve got to see it.’

  Once he had purchased the board, he went back to the checklist on how to spot a ghost.

  ‘Do you really want to know if I’m here?’ I asked before pausing. I reached out and hit the off switch on his laptop, causing the room to go dark.

  Finn froze, tensing up as he scanned the dark room before reaching down beside him and plugging something into the laptop.

  ‘Stupid thing, you’ve got 40% battery,’ he whispered, returning to his search.

  I reached out once again and turned the laptop off.

  This time he didn’t move so quickly. He just sat and looked around the dark room as his chest raised a bit quicker.

  I got up and went to leave the room, but first I reached for his bedroom light and switched it on.

  ‘Crap ghost. We’ll see about that,’ I said, leaving him wide-eyed and rooted to the spot.

  It couldn’t have been a more perfect day for me to spend tormenting Finn. With it being the weekend, and him not having any other plans other than playing games on his TV, I had all day to mess with him. I started as soon as he woke up.

  As he ran the bath with hot water, I pulled the plug out and switched on the cold water. When he stuck his head in the fridge for the milk, I filled his cup with salt. Every time he turned on his laptop, I turned it off.

  ‘How many boxes do I tick now, huh?’ I said with arms crossed, as he gave up trying to play his games on the TV. I didn’t let him past the loading screen.

  In a huff, he got to his feet, stormed out of his room, and went outside to the back garden.

  I walked into Maia’s room wanting to watch out of her window to see where Finn was going. I wished I could follow.

  Just as I began to daydream about what the cold air felt like to breathe in, Maia walked in and asked why I was in her room.

  ‘I was just watching Finn. He went out into the shed,’ I replied.

  ‘Are you being mean to Finn again?’

  ‘No,’ I lied quickly.

  She didn’t believe me, of course, but she didn’t say anything more.

  ‘Maia, does Finn have friends?’

  She stood beside me, watching Finn open the door to the rotting shed.

  ‘He used to be friends with Bradley, but he’s gone now,’ she replied.

  ‘Oh, from the pictures,’ I said remembering the dimpled smile.

  ‘What pictures?’ Maia asked me with curious eyes.

  I shook my head not wanting Maia telling me off for going through her brother’s things. ‘Never mind, so where did he go?’

  She shrugged her tiny shoulders. ‘Nowhere. They’re just not friends anymore.’

  ‘Is that why he is so…Finn like?’

  Maia held her gaze on the shed that Finn was now inside. ‘Theo told my mum that when Bradley stopped being his friend, Finn started getting bullied at school for being lonely.’

  I stayed silent, taking my gaze to the trees swaying in sync as the wind passed through them. Golden leaves whispered that autumn wasn’t too far away.

  Maia walked away from the window as I looked back at the shed. Finn and I had more in common than I had originally thought.

  14

  Finn

  Something wasn’t right with about this house in more ways than one, and I was fast running out of good reasons for the recent things that had kept happening. It was hard to forget the haunted checklist I had found on the internet a few nights before. With nowhere else to go, I wandered out into the back garden. If I had thought the front garden had been a mess then the back garden had made it look spotless. Weeds were as tall as my waist taking over a concrete path that was buried beneath more weeds and grass. I climbed through, occasionally panicking when something brushed against my arm until I reached the shed at the far end of the garden. It had to be bigger than my own bedroom.

  It looked worn out, just like the rest of the house, but someone had clearly tried to keep it together with random pieces of wood hammered to cover the rotting parts. Unable to find a lock or even a handle, I slid my fingers into a thin gap, and pulled at the makeshift door to reveal the inside.

  Despite being in the middle of the afternoon, the shed was masked in darkness. I grabbed my phone out of my pocket to shine the torch into the shed. It was filled with junk.

  Ducking underneath the matted cobwebs, I looked around at a broken bits of old furniture stacked against and above each other in a tangled mess. On the right-hand side was a worktop with rusted garden tools and a dented watering can, and on the left side was a wall full of rope and wood tools. Whoever had been the previous owners, they had certainly liked to build stuff. Unsuccessfully, from the look of the furniture in the room.

  I walked around the mess, examining each tool closely, wondering what its former purpose was, until I noticed what looked like words carved into the back of the shed. I climbed over the bits of furniture, pushing aside bits of wood and rope before I reached the back. Brushing away the webs and dust, I shone the phone’s light towards the two words deeply engraved. My mouth dropped once I could clearly see them.

  One said ‘Bennett’, and the other was my surname.

  I hurried out of the shed knocking the bits of wood to the floor creating a cloud of dirt to form as I swatted away at the cobwebs getting caught in my hair.

  ‘Mum, how did Dad inherit this h
ouse?’ I stormed into the living room brushing off the bits of broken weeds that had clung on to my jeans.

  ‘Not this again, Finn,’ Mum sighed but kept her eyes on the TV.

  ‘Who left him the house?’ I asked again looking down at the photo on my phone.

  ‘Finn, let’s not spoil a perfectly good Saturday afternoon, please.’ She inched forward on the sofa before rubbing her temples like she always did before claiming I was giving her a headache.

  I ignored her and moved to an armchair in the corner of the room. ‘I’m just curious. It’s not like Dad has a ton of friends so it’s weird that, all the sudden, he is left a house in a place he has never been to by a friend that not even you have heard of.’

  ‘Who said I haven’t heard of them?’ She paused the TV with a loud huff and turned to face me with the TV control still in her hands.

  ‘Fine, who are they, and why haven’t we met them before?’ I edged forward on the chair, resting my elbows on my bouncing knees.

  Mum tied her hair up as she got up from the sofa and headed towards the kitchen. ‘Finn, we got a huge house that we didn’t have to pay for, some would say that’s incredibly fortunate.’

  She was avoiding my question.

  ‘Yeah, except don’t you think it’s weird? Come on, Dad has two friends, both of which are alive and back at home. Why would they randomly give Dad a house?’

  ‘Well, maybe it wasn’t a friend. Maybe it was an old relative,’ she said, checking on the washing in the middle of a fast spin.

  ‘Who?’ I said, getting louder and no doubt redder in the face. ‘Gramps and Nan died over ten years ago, and they only had Dad. And don’t say an old uncle or aunt because Gramps was an only child, and Grandma’s brother died during the war.’

  Mum stopped and faced me with her hands on her hips. ‘Ok, so what’s your theory? We are squatting here? Or maybe your dad broke in, and we’re stealing the actual house?’ Her eyebrows raised high before she rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  ‘No, I’m saying he is lying, and that he has had this house for longer he admits.’

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why would your dad lie about something like that?’

  ‘I don’t know but look,’ I walked over to her, not getting too close but enough to show her the picture on my phone, ‘I’ve got proof.’

  ‘Where did you find that?’ she said scanning the picture of the names.

  I locked my phone and quickly placed it back in my pocket before taking a few steps back. ‘In the shed.’

  Mum frowned as she stared back at me.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that at the very same house Dad mysteriously inherits, our surname is carved into the shed? And who is Bennett?’ I said.

  Mum pursed her lips together before she sighed. ‘Finn, I don’t know what you want me to say. As I said, we have this huge home in a lovely little town, some would say we’re very lucky.’

  I watched as she turned her back to me and opened the fridge, pulling out a selection of vegetables and setting them out onto a chopping board. Unfazed by my picture, she sliced the vegetables in half before looking back over to me. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Finn,’ she said with a weak smile.

  ‘Play this down as much as you like, Mum, but you and I both know things don’t add up.’

  I made it halfway up the stairs before I heard her mutter, ‘This kid will be the death of me.’

  15

  Ab

  Finn didn’t speak to anyone for the rest of the day. He hid away in his room and stayed silent through dinner, just as he always did. I couldn’t tell if the others were ignoring him or just terrified of starting him off on a rant again.

  Meanwhile, I spent the evening watching another film with Maia, but I was distracted by what could have been in the picture Finn had shown his mum. I had tried to race over to see but he shut it off so quickly that I missed it. I had spent the next few minutes after their chat digging through the little paperwork Cait had put to one side in her bedroom, trying to find their surname.

  ‘Davies?’ I thought, trying to scan my memories. I had never met anyone with that surname which didn’t make sense since it had been carved into the shed with my surname. I was Bennett. AB. Aubree Bennett. I could remember a handful of times that I went into the shed, but I definitely didn’t go in there with some called Davies.

  Once the film had ended and Maia had fallen asleep, I loitered outside of her bedroom, undecided on what to do next. For over thirty years I always knew what I would be doing every evening: nothing. Now I had so much choice and yet, I still stood in the hallway doing nothing.

  ‘Jack, we need to have a chat,’ Cait said in her bedroom before I walked into the room.

  I hadn’t been in there since they had moved in. It felt weird—like I was going into my gran’s room.

  ‘Cait, do we need to do this tonight? I’m exhausted,’ Jack said climbing into the bed, sliding beside Cait as she rubbed lotion on her arms.

  ‘Yes, we have to do this tonight,’ she said facing him. Jack sighed as he sat up.

  ‘Who gave us this place, Jack? And think about your answer before you tell me a cock and bull story.’

  ‘What’s brought this on?’ Jack screwed up his face as his grip of the duvet tightened.

  ‘Answer my question.’

  ‘I told you. I inherited it.’ His jaw was tight.

  ‘Jack, in our entire twenty years together, I’ve never once questioned a decision you’ve made for this family…well at least I haven’t to your face, but I’m struggling to play along with this one.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re on about, Cait, now why don’t you bring yourself right here and tell me about your day,’ he said, opening his arms for her to lay back in.

  ‘No, Jack, don’t you do that. Don’t you try to distract me. I want to know what’s going on.’

  He sighed.

  ‘Finn found your surname carved into the shed.’ Cait crossed her arms.

  ‘Why am I not surprised Finn is involved in this? If it’s not Maia and her imaginary friend, it’s that boy and his bad attitude.’

  ‘Don’t blame him for finding something in his home. Anyway, I knew something was up when I went into town the other day, and everyone seemed to know you already and were glad to see you bringing up your family here. So, are you going to tell me the truth, Jack, or are we going to keep playing this stupid game?’

  Jack rubbed his face. ‘Fine,’ he said, and I just wanted him to hurry up and spill it. ‘I did inherit the house, but it was about ten years ago.’

  ‘Jack…’ Cait whispered with sadness in her eyes.

  Ten years? I knew I hadn’t ever seen Jack before, there was no way he could have owned the house. Who had given it to him? Why wasn’t Cait asking these questions?

  ‘They were going to demolish it, leaving me with just land. The council were already planning on offering me money to build flats.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just accept it and take their offer? It’s money we could do with.’

  Jack’s eyes fell to the ground. ‘I couldn’t. This house…’

  ‘AB?’ Maia called quietly from her bedroom.

  ‘It used to belong to… ‘ Jack said before Maia called for me again, this time crying.

  I sighed and left Jack and Cait with all the potential answers to find Maia in her room, crying.

  She was huddled into a ball with her knees in her chest.

  ‘What’s the matter, Maia?’ I sat beside her before Finn walked in with a concerned look on his face.

  ‘Maia, are you ok?’ he said heading for the same spot I was in as I jumped out of the way.

  ‘I had a bad dream,’ she whimpered as she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  ‘What was it about?’ Finn asked brushing her hair out of her face with his fingers.

  Maia shifted her eyes over to me as she said, ‘I dreamt AB was g
one, and I couldn’t find her.’

  I watched Finn’s face for his reaction, but he simply nodded and began tucking Maia in as she laid back down.

  ‘Well, I’m sure AB wouldn’t leave you. And if she does then it’ll be ok because I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.’ He smiled.

  ‘Do you believe AB is real?’ Maia looked up with excited eyes.

  ‘If you do, then I do. Now, go to sleep otherwise Mum will hear us.’

  Maia nodded and turned over to her side as Finn walked out of the room.

  ‘Maia?’ I whispered from beside her. ‘I promise, I’ll never leave you…I can’t.’

  I smiled weakly as a pang of guilt rooted me to the ground. I couldn’t leave yet, but I was hoping that would change. Eventually, I was going to leave this house, but I couldn’t tell Maia that. Instead, I watched as she wiped her damp face with ends of her sleeves, and I continued to give her a false smile.

  ‘You should get some sleep, kid. No more nightmares, ok?’

  She gave me a few sniffles before nodding. ‘Ok. Goodnight, AB.’

  I left the room and headed for Jack and Cait’s, hoping they were still talking. Instead the lights were off, and they were both in bed.

  I sighed, wondering what Jack had revealed and what it could have meant for me. I couldn’t shrug the feeling that I knew him somehow, but I just couldn’t place him.

  As I left their bedroom, I could hear whispering coming from Finn’s room.

  ‘Ok, let’s try this out,’ Finn said. As I peeked my head through the door, I found the room glowing an amber haze from a single flickering candle on the floor. Finn sat crossed legged in front of it before unfolding a Ouija board and laying it in front of him.

  I snorted, walked in, and sat opposite him. There was no way I was going to miss this.

  Finn took a deep breath as he placed the planchette in the centre of the board. He wasn’t as scared as I would have expected, but he was nervous. Carefully placing his hands on the planchette, he cleared his throat. ‘If there is anyone here, please move the…’ He paused and looked down at the planchette under his fingers. ‘Move this wooden thing.’