The Girl and the Ghost

by Hanna Alkaf

  Dedication

  For the kids who are afraid—whether it’s of bullies or ghosts or grumpy moms, first days or bad days or everything in-between days.

  You have more courage than you know.

  (And for Malik and Maryam,

  because every book I ever write is for you.)

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  One: Ghost

  Two: Ghost

  Three: Girl

  Four: Girl

  Five: Ghost

  Six: Ghost

  Seven: Girl

  Eight: Ghost

  Nine: Ghost

  Ten: Girl

  Eleven: Ghost

  Twelve: Ghost

  Thirteen: Girl

  Fourteen: Girl

  Fifteen: Ghost

  Sixteen: Girl

  Seventeen: Ghost

  Eighteen: Girl

  Nineteen: Girl

  Twenty: Girl

  Twenty-One: Ghost

  Twenty-Two: Girl

  Twenty-Three: Girl

  Twenty-Four: Ghost

  Twenty-Five: Girl

  Twenty-Six: Girl

  Twenty-Seven: Ghost

  Twenty-Eight: Girl

  Twenty-Nine: Ghost

  Thirty: Girl

  Thirty-One: Girl

  Thirty-Two: Ghost

  Thirty-Three: Girl

  Thirty-Four: Girl

  Thirty-Five: Girl

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  THE GHOST KNEW his master was about to die, and he wasn’t exactly unhappy about it.

  He knew that sounded bad. You’d think, after all those years together, that even he might have felt a twinge of sadness about the whole situation. But it’s hard to feel sorry for someone when: a) you’re a ghost, and everyone knows ghosts don’t have hearts, and b) that someone made her living out of forcing you to make other people miserable.

  He stared at her now as she lay on the narrow bed, gray and gaunt in the light of the full moon, her breath rasping and shallow. Watching her teeter slowly toward the end was a bit like watching a grape slowly become a raisin: the years had sucked the life and vitality out of her until she was nothing but a wrinkled shell of her former self.

  “Well,” she wheezed, squinting at him.

  Well, he said.

  “One more for the road, eh?” she said, nodding to the full moon out the window. And she grimaced as she offered him the ring finger of her right hand, as she had done so many times before.

  The ghost nodded. It seemed frivolous, but after all, he still needed to eat, whether or not his master lay dying. As he bent his head over the wrinkled hand, his sharp little teeth pricking the skin worn and calloused from time and use, the witch let out a sharp breath. Her blood used to be rich and strong and so thick with her magic that the ghost could get himself drunk on it, if he wasn’t careful. Now all he tasted was the stale tang of age, the sour notes that came with impending death, and a bitter aftertaste he couldn’t quite place. Regret, perhaps.

  It was the regret that was hardest to swallow.

  The ghost drank nothing more than he had to, finishing quickly and sealing the tiny pinpricks of his teeth on her skin with spit. It is done, he told her, the words familiar as a favorite song, the ritual as comforting as a warm blanket. And I am bound to you, until the end.

  The witch patted his horned head gently. Her touch surprised him—she had never been particularly affectionate. “Well,” she said, her voice nothing more than a sigh. “The end is now.”

  And she turned her head to the window, where the sun was just rising over the cusp of the world, and died.

  One

  Ghost

  FOR A WHILE after the witch drew her final breath the ghost sat very still, wondering what to do next. Theoretically, he knew what was supposed to happen: he was a pelesit after all, and a pelesit must have a master. And since he was bound by blood, his new master had to be of the same blood as the old.

  It was finding this new blood that was going to be tricky. The witch had not been much for family. Or friends. Or, if he was being completely honest, people in general. There was a daughter, he knew, a little girl with lopsided pigtails and an equally lopsided grin. He had seen pictures of her, pictures the witch kept hidden in a drawer among bits of broken candles, coupons for supermarket deals long expired, a small mountain of coins: things she no longer had use for, or that weighed her down; things she had forgotten or wanted to forget. There were letters too, slanted words written in deep blue ink, the paper old enough that yellow age stains had started to blossom at the edges:

  I know you don’t approve, but he loves me and I love him, and we want to be together.

  We have our own home now, wouldn’t you like to come and visit us?

  Please write to me, Mama. I miss you. Don’t you want to see your grandchild?

  The last one was newer, a rectangle of plain white tucked into a crinkly brown envelope bearing the witch’s name. It said: Do not contact us again.

  No, the old witch wasn’t much for family; instead she roamed from village to village, sending the ghost out to cause all sorts of chaos in each one. And in the beginning, he’d loved it. There was a sort of dark pleasure in going about a village in his other form—that of a tiny, unassuming grasshopper—bringing bad luck wherever he went; in souring the milk while it was still in the cows; in emptying the fish traps without leaving a single hole in the weave of the net, so that the fishermen scratched their heads in confusion; in rotting whole fields of crops only on the inside, so that the harvester’s hopes lifted at the sight of perfect-looking fruit only for it all to explode in maggots and gloriously bad smells at the lightest touch. The ghost would look on his work with pride, like an artist admiring his own masterpiece, and chuckle to himself when the villagers came looking for the wise and learned witch, who nodded sagely, took the money they offered her to rid them of their curses, never letting them suspect she was the cause of all their troubles in the first place. Magically, everything would go back to normal, and before long the witch would disappear again, on the road to somewhere new—always before anyone figured out that the true curse had been her presence all along.

  But if he was honest with himself, as the years passed, he found it all very tiresome. There was a steady stream of customers at the witch’s door, and if they weren’t asking for a way to undo her handiwork, they were asking for the same petty meanness, the same tiny bad magics as all the others: a curse on this business, a pox on that house, an impossible-to-remove wart on that one’s nose.

  Humans, the ghost thought, were just so . . . unimaginative. He was hoping this new master, wherever they might be, would mean a change of pace. New management, as it were.

  He pictured the little girl with the pigtails and the wide grin and he stretched out his thoughts, spreading them as wide as he could, listening for the familiar song of the blood calling to him, feeling for its comforting warmth coursing through fresh new veins, pumping through a strong new heart. . . .

  He found her in a wooden house on the edge of green, green paddy fields, a house that rattled and shook when the monsoon winds blew.

  She was a woman now, tall and tired and pale. Her pigtails had been replaced by a severe bun and her grin had long since vanished, but there was no mistaking that she had the blood. And yet—the ghost sniffed, puzzled—that familiar, calling song was faint and weak, sometimes fading out altogether. And even when her eyes were open, there were shutters behind them that remained very definitely closed. It was as
if the light inside her had burned out, and nobody had bothered to replace the bulb.

  For a long moment, the ghost paused, wavering uncertainly between staying and going. On the one hand, the witch had been adamant: a pelesit must have a master to control his appetite for destruction, his craving for chaos. Already, he could feel the tug of the darkness, hear the little voice inside him whispering thoughts of ruin and rampage. At the same time, he wasn’t even sure this woman’s blood would be strong enough to bind him and keep the darkness at bay.

  The ghost was still trying to make up his mind when he heard it. The laughter.

  This is how he learned that there was also a child.

  And the way her blood sang—it was as if she lit up from the inside and made the whole world brighter as she toddled through it, babbling and giggling on chubby bare feet caked with dirt. The witch’s song had been rough and raucous, and it swept you up the way a pirate shanty does, or the musical howls of drunkards stumbling home. But the child’s song wrapped the ghost in a tender weave of comfort and belonging and glorious wonder, sweet and innocent and intoxicating. And as he watched her, he felt strange new sensations welling up from deep within the cavernous recesses of his chest, a mix of pride and an overwhelming sense that this was a child bound for greatness. What a heady honor to be bound up in it. He hadn’t supposed he was capable of such thoughts; the witch had certainly never inspired anything more than prickling annoyance. Was this the change he sought? He needed?

  “Suraya,” he heard the woman call as he watched. “Suraya. Come inside now. The sun is setting; it will be Maghrib soon.” And the little girl scampered unsteadily back to the unsmiling woman and disappeared into the house.

  Suraya, the ghost whispered to himself carefully, letting the sound of it play on his tongue like the notes of a favorite song. Su-ra-ya. He savored each syllable, marveling at the delicate sounds, at their rhythm and their weight. So this, then, was to be his new master. Not old enough to bind him on her own, nor command him with the words she couldn’t quite speak. But he could wait.

  When quiet finally descended on the old wooden house, and the night was deep and dark as ink, the ghost wafted into the child’s room and stared at her as she slept, hands pillowed under her cheek, her breathing steady and peaceful. There it was again—the sense that he was in the presence of greatness, that he was teetering on the precipice of something bigger than both of them. Carefully, almost reverently, he picked up the girl’s plump hand and nipped at her tiny little finger—just a little nip—and drank exactly three drops of the bright red blood that dripped from the cut, sealing it quickly when he was done. Her song was strong and wild, and it almost deafened him as her blood wound through his body, weaving their destinies together line by line, chain by chain. This was more than enough to get by, more than enough to bind them together, until the next full moon hung in the sky.

  It is done, he whispered. And I am bound to you, until the end.

  She shivered slightly under his gaze—she had no blanket—so he curled himself around her for warmth and smiled when she sighed happily in her sleep.

  And at that moment, the ghost felt a twinge just where his heart ought to have been, if he had one.

  Which he didn’t, of course.

  Two

  Ghost

  BY THE TIME Suraya was five years old, she should have broken various bones in her body at least twelve different times, been poisoned twice, and possibly have actually died on seven separate occasions.

  Yet she grew like a weed and was just about as welcome as one everywhere she went. It wasn’t that the villagers didn’t like her; it was just that trouble seemed to cling to her like a shadow or a bad smell. And yet, they muttered to themselves, shaking their heads as she ran helter-skelter past them, she seemed to lead a sort of charmed life: she picked not-quite-ripe fruit from the orchards and never complained of tummy aches; she ran across roads without a single thought for the cars or bicycles that might be zooming past; she climbed trees far too tall for her and fell from them often, yet always seemed to land on her feet; and once, she poked at an ant mound and giggled as angry red fire ants swarmed all over her body, tickling her with their feet and never leaving a single mark. In this way, she went through her days without a care in the world, secure in the knowledge that she would somehow always be safe.

  It was harder work than the ghost had ever done in his life, watching and worrying over a young master-to-be who never seemed to think about her own safety and never, ever stopped moving. At least three times now, he’d been sorely tempted to cast a binding spell that would keep her arms and legs stuck to her body so that they could both just sit still and catch their breath. But she never stayed in one place long enough for him to even attempt it.

  Take today, for instance. He’d already stopped a stray dog from biting her as she’d tried to ruffle its fur, pulled her back from falling into a storm drain, and swatted wasps away from her face as she craned her neck to get a closer look at their nest, all the while clinging precariously to a swaying tree branch.

  Once or twice, he caught those dark eyes looking his way and paused, waiting breathlessly to see if she realized he was there—and if she did, if she realized what he was—but she never did. Once or twice more, he’d felt an overpowering urge to show himself to her, if only to tell her to STOP EATING THINGS SHE FOUND LYING ON THE GROUND—but he never did.

  The one time they had interacted, it was because she’d spotted him in his grasshopper form in the grass and tried to catch him, giggling gleefully as he leaped his mightiest leaps, heart pounding, trying to escape her sweaty palms and none-too-gentle grip (Suraya loved bugs and animals, but she sometimes loved them too hard). He’d thankfully escaped without having to defend himself in some terrifying way, but the close call had been jarring.

  One afternoon when Suraya for once wasn’t running the ghost ragged chasing her, he sat by her side at the old stone table that stood beneath the frangipani tree in the front garden. Sweat plastered Suraya’s hair to her face and neck as she concentrated on a piece of paper before her, her chubby fingers wrapped around a purple crayon, white flowers scattered all around her. The ghost rubbed his spindly grasshopper arms together and wondered idly what she could be drawing that required so much concentration, her tongue poking out of one side of her mouth the way it did whenever she was entirely focused on something. Every few minutes, a blob of snot would creep down from one nostril—she’d caught a cold from splashing through the paddy fields, narrowly avoiding several vicious snakes lurking within the water—and she’d sniff ferociously, sending it shooting back into her nose again.

  “Suraya.”

  The call came from the house, and the ghost watched as her little body immediately tensed, as she always did when she heard THAT voice.

  The woman appeared at the door. Little had changed about her in the years since the ghost had first seen her, and she was still a mystery to him. The most he knew was that she was a teacher, which explained her stiff bearing, the chalk dust that clung to her clothing like white shadows, the sharp, acrid smell of the Tiger Balm ointment that she applied liberally to her aching shoulders and back after a long day in the classroom. Every so often, he would put out some feelers and probe her mind, trying to figure her out. But all he found was hints of loneliness and a lot of locked doors.

  There were times when keeping them locked seemed difficult for her, though, times when she looked at Suraya with a softness in her eyes, when her hand reached out to caress the girl’s hair. Those times the ghost looked at the woman and thought: There you are.

  Those times didn’t come by often, but they happened enough to make the ghost wonder about the woman and the witch and their story, about those letters and the way her handwriting looped and swirled to form that one final terse sentence (Do not contact us again). These moments were enough, in fact, to make him feel the merest twinge of sympathy for her. He wasn’t sure he liked feeling it; ghosts weren’t meant to be sympathe
tic, of all things.

  “Come inside now, Suraya,” the woman continued to call, as tall and pale as ever. “It’s time for lunch.”

  “Coming!” The girl snatched her drawing off the table and ran, almost tripping in her eagerness to reach the door. “Look, Mama!” she said proudly, brandishing the crumpled paper. “I made this for you!”

  The ghost craned his neck, but couldn’t quite manage to see the drawing.

  “Very nice,” the woman said, and it was as if she was a tube that every last bit of toothpaste had been squeezed out of, leaving her dry and flat. “Now come inside and eat.” She paused to glance down at Suraya’s feet, which were, as usual, bare. “Mind you wash your feet first, they’re filthy.” And she turned and walked away, the paper fluttering to the ground in her wake.

  Suraya’s shoulders sagged, and in their downturned slopes the ghost saw all the sadness and disappointment that weighed so heavily on her young body, and the place where his heart would have been if he had one ached for her.

  There had been so many times over the years where he had longed to show himself to her, yet he had always held himself back. The child was still so young, after all. But he yearned to be seen and to be commanded, to be sent out into the world to do her bidding. And if he were honest with himself, he yearned to protect Suraya and her fragile human heart from the cruel, harsh fingers of a world seemingly intent on crushing it to powder.

  (This, he told himself, was perfectly natural. A pelesit must have a master, and that master must be protected. Nothing wrong with that.)

  “Hurry up, Suraya.” The voice held a note of impatience this time.

  “Coming!”

  As the ghost followed her into the cool recesses of the house, he paused to take in the childish drawing of two purple figures, one tall and one small, holding hands under a bright yellow sun. The tall one had a neat round bun. The small one had a big smile. And in those technicolor scribbles, he saw nothing but loneliness.

  It is time, he thought to himself. It is time she knows who I am.