A Tale of Two Ghosts

by Sarah Riad

  I woke up a few hours later, quickly wiping away the dribble from my chin as I heard Maia in her room playing, which meant my parents were back. I was relieved that neither of them had come barging into the room, yelling at me because the house was a mess, or something was broken. I had AB to thank for that. I sat up, carefully not wanting to bring back the headache I had felt hours before as the smell of sausages caused my stomach to growl.

  My eyes scanned the room for the smell when I spotted a sandwich wrapped in a brown paper bag. I grabbed it and took a massive bite like a lion that hadn’t eaten for days. What a day it had been, and I hadn’t even left my bed. Theo had invited me out and brought me back breakfast, which seemed a miracle in itself, not to mention the fact that my dad knew AB existed and whatever else AB was hiding. I needed to speak to her and with Maia back home, AB wouldn’t be able to escape for too much longer.

  29

  Ab

  I was standing in the corner of the living room, watching Jack asleep on the sofa.

  It seemed crazy now that I hadn’t recognised him straight away. He was Jack Montgomery. Of course, I knew who he was, and he definitely knew who I was.

  ‘AB?’ Maia whispered, appearing beside me. ‘Why are you staring at my dad?’

  I took a few steps back. I hadn’t realised anyone else was in the room. ‘Oh, I just thought there was a spider on his face,’ I lied, and she believed me as she inspected his face carefully.

  ‘Finn is looking for you,’ she said nonchalantly, still keeping her eyes on her sleeping dad and the possible spider.

  ‘Maia, would you please do me a favour today? Could you please not tell him where I am. Just for today,’ I said almost begging. I wasn’t ready to tell Finn. I wasn’t ready for all his questions.

  ‘Why?’ Maia looked at me with furrowed brows. ‘Have you been mean to him again?’

  ‘No. I promise.’

  ‘Then, why do you want me to lie?’ She pushed with crossed arms. She was so much like Cait when she was trying to tell someone off. My grandma would have called her ‘a little madam’.

  I sighed. ‘Please, will you just do me this favour, and I will watch all the movies and play all the games you could ever want.’

  She scrunched up her face for a moment before jumping up and shouting yes, startling Jack.

  ‘Now?’ she whispered once Jack had stopped moving.

  ‘Not right now, but later. Ok?’

  Maia sighed before throwing me an unimpressed look as she walked away.

  My attention went back to Jack.

  Every single moment of my death was a memory I would never forget—the pain, the fear…all of it. But remembering who Jack was made it all so real. It unearthed every little bit of grief that I had put to bed years ago. I felt broken once again and not for the first time, I wished I wasn’t stuck in this stupid house.

  It was past midnight when I finally left the library again. The house was silent, just as it usually was on a Sunday evening—even Finn was asleep which was probably a good thing since I wasn’t yet ready to talk to him. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to him, I did, I just knew all he would want to talk about was what I was hiding, and I wasn’t ready to discuss that.

  I looked at his sleeping face for a few moments, noticing his dark lashes resting on the tops of his cheeks before being distracted by his phone lit up underneath his pillow.

  India: Hey, are you awake?

  I read silently, feeling my stomach squeeze in knots. I wondered if he liked her. I mean, he probably did since she was pretty and always made the effort to speak to him, but he never spoke about her, at least not to me.

  I sighed, watching his phone screen fade in darkness until it went off completely before picking up his laptop and returning to the library with Mitzi by my side.

  I opened the laptop to find it on Instagram, which was where everyone posted the staged photos they took of themselves having ‘fun’—just like the party the day before. As I scrolled through, remembering the buttons Finn pressed to move it all around, I fell on a photo of India and Finn. It was taken at the party, except this one wasn’t staged. Finn looked happy. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was in a grin as though he was in the middle of laughing with one arm around India’s shoulder and the other holding onto an empty beer bottle.

  My eyes refused to look away from Finn’s arm around India, the way it sat behind her neck, touching her bare skin. For a moment, I closed my eyes, trying to imagine what it would feel like, trying to remember what being touched felt like. I shook my head and sighed when my mind went blank. I had no idea what it felt like. It had been way too long.

  I pushed the little arrow to the top of the screen and began to find the letters on the keyboard before hitting the big ‘enter’ button.

  There it was, in bold writing, link after link, old news articles all about my death. It was weird how it all lived in this tiny machine full of information. It was weird that all this time, I thought I had ceased to exist when really people just needed to type my name into a white box and there my story was…at least the story of my death.

  I erased my name from the box and instead began to type another. When I died, I was left with a million questions. Was my grandma ok? How did my friends react to the news? Where the hell was heaven? There was one question that stuck with me, even until this day.

  What happened to Alex?

  We were together the night I died but when I woke up, he was nowhere to be seen. It was just me and this house.

  I typed in his name into the computer along with the town name before the same links that I had seen under my name previously appeared again.

  Weird.

  I clicked on one, skimming through, not wanting to relive it all again when I found his name followed by my own.

  ‘The funerals of both Aubree and Alex are scheduled to take place on Monday,’ I read out loud. ‘Alex died too?’ My heart felt like it was being split in the centre as I reread the sentence half a dozen times.

  I had no idea. I thought that, somehow, he had managed to survive and was happy somewhere, but I had been so wrong.

  ‘Where was he then? Why isn’t he with me?’ I whispered to the laptop wishing it would give the answers.

  Was this a punishment? Was I being punished by being made to stay here while everyone else was living it up in heaven? How was this fair?

  Why the hell was I stuck here?

  I began typing again, this time with force. ‘Why do ghosts get stuck in houses.’ I searched and was given a list of links that sent me to films and TV programmes about ghosts until my eyes fell on one that asked me a question: ‘Why is that ghost living with you?’

  I clicked onto it and was greeted by a page of blue and white. I scrolled past the explanations of what a ghost was and why they existed, finding the question I was looking for.

  ‘Why do ghosts get stuck? Ghosts are usually stuck because they either don’t know they are dead or have unfinished business.’ I rolled my eyes as it continued giving examples from various ghost-related movies. Surely most people that died had unfinished business, that was a given. Alex had unfinished business, some would say even more than I had, but where was he? Why wasn’t he stuck in this house with me?

  I sighed frustratedly before going back a page and scrolling through more links.

  ‘Psychics and Mediums Near You—Connecting You to the Other Side,’ I read out loud before clicking onto it.

  A middle-aged woman with brown curly hair showed up on the screen beside her name ‘Lea Vonte’.

  ‘I am a naturally gifted medium who has been connecting with the other side to help others for over thirty years. I have helped hundreds of people with issues and situations to enable them to move on with their lives and find peace within themselves.’

  I needed a medium. Specifically, I needed Lea Vonte.

  I hurried downstairs with the laptop in my hand before walking into Finn’s room and waking him up.

  ‘
What?’ He moaned as he rubbed his sleepy eyes.

  ‘Look, I know you have a bunch of questions for me and I promise, I will tell you everything, but I need you to do me a huge favour. Please?’ I said in a hurry.

  ‘AB, you can’t keep doing this. You can’t just disappear and then reappear when you need something from me. It’s not fair.’ He sat up, pulling his blanket to cover his chest.

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry. I really need your help, though, and you’re all I have. So, please, can you help me?’

  ‘Fine. What do you need?’ he said as I shoved the open laptop onto his legs.

  ‘I need you to call this woman and arrange for her to come here.’ I watched as he eyed up the screen with squinted eyes.

  ‘AB, these people are fakes. She can help you about as much as I can, in fact, I could probably help you more.’ He rolled his eyes.

  ‘Finn, up until you met me, you didn’t believe that ghosts even existed so what’s to say these people aren’t real?’

  He stayed silent, looking at the screen.

  ‘I don’t know why but Finn, I feel like she can help me. Please, can you call her?’ I asked. ‘Please?’

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. ‘Fine but if she turns out to be fake, don’t blame me.’

  ‘I won’t. I promise,’ I said excitedly as I handed him his phone.

  ‘You want me to call her now?’ He frowned.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘AB, it’s 2 a.m. She’ll be asleep, just like I was about five minutes ago.’ Finn moaned once more before closing the laptop and pushing the phone under his pillow.

  ‘Oh, right, yeah. Sorry. Tomorrow then,’ I said, as he mumbled and pulled the covers back over his body.

  ‘Goodnight, Finn.’ I smiled at him, watching as his heavy eyes closed and his breathing slowed down. I looked at the little scattering of light brown freckles on his shoulders, never having seen them before.

  ‘Stop staring at me, AB,’ he said muffled into the pillow.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I said, wondering if he really did know when I was looking or if it was just a lucky guess. ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘Sure you weren’t,’ he said as I sat in the chair quietly and continued to watch him sleep.

  30

  Finn

  ‘Hey, Finn,’ India said appearing from behind me as I scrambled to close my internet page, but it was too late.

  ‘Psychics,’ she said before sitting next to me and laying her books out on the table, just like she always did. It had become a little routine we had whenever we had a free period which was usually on a Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For an hour or two, we’d sit at the same table in the library, reading and exchanging awkward smiles before we’d say goodbye again. It was weird but a good kind of weird.

  ‘Yeah, it’s for some homework I have,’ I lied, and she could see right through me as she nodded suspiciously.

  ‘You’re a bit weird, Finn.’ She smiled. ‘But I like it.’ She pushed her dark hair off her shoulders. I watched for a moment as she pulled open a book about understanding people’s minds, trying to find her page before sitting back on the chair and began to read.

  I tried to do the same, but I needed to know why she messaged me the night before. I should have just texted her back, but I was way too nervous and knew it was late enough to just pretend as though I had been asleep.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t reply back to you last night. I was asleep,’ I said, trying to stay calm. After rehearsing it forty times in my head, it still came out like I was in a race.

  ‘Oh, it’s no bother.’ She shrugged nonchalantly before returning her eyes back to the book.

  ‘Was everything ok?’ I asked.

  She looked up at me and smiled as she placed the book on her lap, keeping one finger in between the pages. ‘Your brother dumped me last night.’

  ‘Oh,’ I replied. It wasn’t new information that Theo didn’t last with any of his girlfriends for more than a few weeks, but India was different.

  She was smart and didn’t do that weird thing that some girls did when they drew on their chin to make their lips look bigger. Couldn’t Theo see how different India was? Or maybe he did and that’s why he dumped her.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I awkwardly smiled, not really sure what people did when someone had been dumped.

  She shrugged again and smiled but it didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘It happens. I just wanted to make sure that we could still stay friends.’

  We were friends? I had to stop myself from saying it out loud. I know we had spent all our free periods together, but we barely spoke. When we did, it was usually about school. Did that make us friends?

  ‘So? Can we still be friends?’ She stared at me, waiting for me to reply.

  ‘Oh, yeah, of course.’ I nodded far too keenly.

  ‘Cool,’ she said and looked back down at her book.

  ‘Yeah, cool,’ my stomach churned but it wasn’t the sick feeling I had become so used to. It was like my stomach had become home to a hundred butterflies. I forced my gaze back to the laptop and spent the next twenty minutes staring at a blank screen.

  I stared at Lea Vonte’s number saved into my phone while walking back from school. I was supposed to have called her by now but every time I went to, I imagined the conversation ending with Lea thinking I was insane.

  ‘Hi, Lea, yeah my ghost friend would like you to come to visit her.’

  I took a deep breath once I had gotten into the middle of the nearby forest before I hit call. My stomach was twisted in knots and I already felt sick.

  ‘Hello?’ she answered in a cheery voice. ‘Is anybody there?’ She allowed a few seconds of silence. ‘Perhaps try again as the line seems to be faulty.’

  She hung up.

  I sighed and dialled her number once again except when she said hello this time, I replied.

  ‘Look, this is going to sound mental but I have a girl that is stuck in my house but she’s a ghost, and would like to know if you could help her,’ I said quickly, practically spitting out the words. I felt even more stupid after it was said out loud.

  ‘Ah, Finn, I’ve been expecting your call,’ she said, sending shivers through my spine.

  ‘How do you know my name?’ I whispered wanting to throw the phone into the nearby lake.

  ‘Well, I am psychic,’ she said. ‘And your friend AB already emailed me.’

  I let out an exhale, feeling my heart rate slow down. Of course, AB emailed her despite asking me several times to call her.

  ‘And for what it’s worth, I’ve had far crazier calls. Anyway, I’ve made plans with your friend to visit tomorrow morning, so I’ll see you both then.’

  We said goodbye just as I approached my house and headed straight for my bedroom.

  ‘AB!’ I whispered sternly.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said from beside me, causing me to jump as I threw my bag onto the bed.

  ‘Why did you bug me all morning to call up that woman and then email her yourself? Why couldn’t you have just done that in the first place?’ I moaned.

  ‘I thought maybe you wouldn’t call her, and I just had to speak to her,’ she replied, and I could tell she was excited.

  Maybe too excited, given this woman could be as psychic as I was.

  ‘So, how are you going to get her into the house while my mum is here?’ I asked, knowing full well that my mum wouldn’t just let this strange woman walk into the house to have a chat with a ghost.

  ‘Already sorted it. I called a hairdresser and booked her a hair appointment using your dad’s credit card, then paid them extra to say she had won one of those competition things she is always signing up to. She is thrilled and gets a lovely new haircut, and I get the house for a few hours.’

  ‘And when my dad checks his credit card and flies off the roof at my mum?’ I asked, already imagining the arguments.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t think about that,’ AB said, a little deflated.

  ‘It’s fine, if he reali
ses, we’ll come up with something.’

  ‘Ok. So, I wanted to ask you something,’ she said as I sat in my chair after switching my game on, waiting for her to continue.

  ‘Do you think you could pretend to be sick tomorrow so you can stay with me when the psychic is here?’

  I thought about it for a second. Tuesday’s weren’t exactly a busy day at school, and I was usually finished by lunchtime anyway. Plus, I was curious. I wanted to know if this Lea was legit and why AB was so desperate to see her.

  ‘Ok. I guess it’s a good idea that someone is here in case she decides to rob us blind.’ I teased, half focused on my game and found myself 1-0 down already before the screen went black.

  ‘What? What happened?’ I stood up on my feet looking around the TV as the controller was taken out of my hand and floated in the air.

  ‘Sick people don’t play games. They go to bed early, they whinge to their mums about feeling sick—this stuff requires planning,’ AB said stuffing my controller into a drawer.

  ‘AB, I am faking being sick to get out of school for the day, not trying to win the Oscar for best male performance.’ I laughed.

  ‘What do you think your mum is going to think when she walks upstairs hearing you cheer every time you score a goal on that stupid thing and then magically appear sick tomorrow morning?’ she asked, but didn’t allow me to answer. ‘She is going to think you’re faking it.’

  ‘So, what do you expect me to do for the next few hours?’

  ‘Get into bed and go to sleep. Trust me, those eye bags will thank you for it anyway,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘AB, it’s 7.30, not even Maia goes to bed this early.’

  ‘All I am hearing right now is a lot of healthy chit-chat and not a lot of sickly sleeping.’

  I rolled my eyes and sighed. ‘Well, can I at least get undressed in privacy please?’