4 - Do Ghosts Have Feelings?

Pain welcomes me back from the dark. An insistent, unpleasant pounding on the back of my head. Memories and thoughts swirl uselessly in a fog of delusion.

It's so fucking cold.

Slowly, I come back to myself.

Ears ringing, ice seeping into the nape of my neck, I force my eyes open. It takes a few attempts, but eventually I manage it.

Sluggish thoughts slide to clarity. Shadows and silence greet me.

There's a face looming above me, vague brows pinched with concern.

Absently, I wonder why my mum is back so early. The room is dark, still, and the dim lamp on my nightstand barely penetrates the smothering shadows. Then, more absently, I wonder why my mum looks nothing like my mum and rather strikingly like a boy.

Then it hits me.

This is not my mum.

Terror sets in; clenching like a fist of ice around my throat. I can't breathe. Can't think. Can't move.

All I can do is stare up at the boy.

The impression of a boy, I should say. Something's not right— as though there's a few frames missing, and I can't quite make out features.

And then, just when I think I've finally lost it, he speaks.

"Hello. I'm sorry about your head."

A noise — something caught between a yelp and a pitiful whimper — rushes from me. My mind stutters and trips over itself in an effort to make sense out of this chaos. Horror seizes my muscles and sends my nerves firing, and I scramble away even as my ears ring and my head pounds and dizziness sharpens to nausea.

"What— who— the fuck—?!" I screech, wedging myself between the bed and the nightstand.

My flighty scramble has, apparently, startled the boy, whose form flickers and darts like a candle's flame as he backs up, hands raised, until he reaches my dresser. He sinks to his knees slowly, as though to keep from scaring me any further.

The distance between us is a mere five feet and frankly a pathetic attempt at escape on both our parts, but we stare at one another as though the space between us stretches on and on and on, and we're safe as long as we keep it that way.

The boy looks miserable and forlorn, gazing at me with wide, stricken eyes. I can't quite look at him properly, as though my brain is desperately trying to ignore his presence. I get a vague impression of dark, tousled hair, a smudgy complexion, and muted blue eyes. He appears young — late teens, I think — and his form is slight. He sits hugging his knees, and I think he looks strikingly like a child spooked of the dark.

And that, alone, resonates with me. Keeps me from bolting downstairs and out the house and straight to a psychiatric hospital.

The boy looks incorporeal under the lamp's dim, bleak glare. I wonder if I've lost my glasses in the chaos, but when I check, they sit stubbornly on the bridge of my nose; mundane proof that my eyes aren't making anything up.

Pain spikes in the back of my head. With a wince, I check for blood, thinking vaguely of the nightstand corner I knocked myself out with. The sheets are still tangled around my legs and are the culprit of my awful escape attempt.

Perhaps I've knocked something essential loose, and now I'm seeing things.

Right at the base of my skull, right where the pounding is most lethal, my hair is cool, almost icy, but there's no blood.

"I thought... I'm cold, so that would help," the boy says, holding up a hand meekly, his voice vague and distant. They are echoes — mere memories — of words, and honestly I'm struggling to hear him properly. "Sorry."

He's used his hand as an ice pack, I realise, which explains why I'm shivering, and why it feels as though the cold has melted through to my bones.

And then he frowns, brows tugging together. Like a coil coming undone, his tense posture eases a little. "Can you hear me?"

I swallow against a lump in the back of my throat — exclamations of pure panic trying to choke me — and nod.

He sags against the dresser, as though the exchange has taken all his energy, and a small, flickering smile crosses his vague lips. "Finally," he breathes. It sounds like a sigh, a whistle of wind, a mere figment of my imagination.

Dizziness prickles the edges of my vision, and I can't quite tell if the pounding in my head is from the impact or if it's my heartbeat thudding through my skull.

Psychotic breakdown. Hallucination. Very, very bad dream. Concussion. Not real, not real, not real.

"What the fuck are you—?" I manage, my voice trembling. Clarity is a distant blot on the horizon.

"Dead," the boy says with a little, insubstantial shrug. And, when I press myself even further into the corner I'm wedged in, my breath shuddering past my lips, his eyes go wide and he raises his hands. "Please, don't be scared. Please. I didn't mean to scare you, or hurt you—" He pulls a face, smudgy and considering— "I mean, really, you hurt yourself. With the screaming and the scrambling and whatnot. So that's on you."

He cuts a dark, condemning look to the nightstand, as though it has called him something unpleasant.

"What's going on?" I breathe, rubbing at my eyes behind my glasses.

When I risk a peek, the blurred boy is still sat before my dresser. His form flickers, a little like static, but his attention is locked on me.

It's unnerving, to say the least. And I think I've fallen out of reality and landed somewhere alien.

He's fallen quiet, but now, as I stare at him, he seems to gain confidence once more. That, or some sort of fear sends the words tumbling out of him. He can't get them out quick enough, like he's on a time limit.

Of us both, I think I'm more entitled to fear than he is.

"I mean, I couldn't be sure you saw me in the window— and I didn't want to just follow you around like a creep. But you're in my room, and it's kind of hard to avoid a guy when he's sleeping in your bed, you know? And then you sneezed and I blessed you and you looked traumatised, so I thought— hold on, this can't be a coincidence. And tonight you just looked so sad, I had to check. I had to know."

What are you? Dead.

Poor lad.

"I'm sorry," he rushes on, tugging at his hair. Something about his voice wavers. "It's just— it's been so long since..." Fervently, he shakes his head and says, "I'm Sam, by the way."

Desperately, I try to rationalise. "Did... did you break in?" Though why a burglar would choose this place to make his fortune, I'm not sure. And, I think helplessly, the whole point of breaking and entering is to not be seen by the residents.

The boy snorts weakly. "Actually, I'm trying to break out."

I narrow my eyes, trying to discern whether he's a hallucination or if I'm still passed out and lost in a weird dream conjured by an unwelcome bump to the head. Would I know if this was a dream?

But the boy — Sam — takes my assessment as disbelief. "I'm a ghost. I think."

This is officially one revelation too many, and it's the confirmation I need that my mind is playing tricks. Of course you'd choose a ghost to traumatise me, brain. Thanks a lot.

With a weak, breathless laugh, I untangle myself from the sheets and rise unsteadily, grasping the headboard for support. Pain pulses down the back of my neck and behind my temples, an unwelcome resident in a mind cracking with disbelief. All I want is to find a quiet place to lie down away from hallucinations.

"Uh... Theo?" Sam — why 'Sam', brain? — asks hesitantly, rising and watching as I grab my phone from the mess of sheets and stumble to my door. He looks a little dejected. I figure that if supposed ghosts have feelings, I've just hurt his. "Look, I know it's a shock, but I really think you should sit down. You might have a concussion. Please, just hear me out. Please." His voice takes on an echoing quality, as though he's calling from the bottom of a deep well.

Concussion. That makes sense.

Fervently, I ignore him and leave my room. His voice trails after me, an insistent fog cloaking my thoughts. The house is dark, all shadowy and eerie and doing nothing to help calm me down. But, thankfully, I forgot to close the curtains out in the hallway and the moon casts a washed-out, weak glow across the floorboards. Lighting my way, just about.

I've never had a concussion before, and it's one hell of a trip. Honestly, it's a miracle I make it down the stairs without tripping. Though, to be fair, I'm clinging onto the banister for dear life and Sam goes deathly silent.

Somehow, I stumble my way to the kitchen, not daring to let my eyes or my thoughts wander. Not daring to give the shadows at the corners of my vision faces, or names, or voices.

I search through the cupboards for painkillers with shaking, unsteady hands. Once I find some, given that holding a glass right now seems like a great idea to get even more hurt, I turn on the tap, cup my hand in the icy flow, and use it to chase the tablets down. Then, for good measure, I take off my glasses and splash some water over my face.

It's refreshing, in the startling way a strike to the face is refreshing. Like a mind reset.

The thought of going back to my room is about as welcoming as a knife to my throat. I don't know what my mind conjured up to startle me so much I knocked myself out and started seeing a boy, but I know it's not real. It can't be. It's just a concussion.

With an air of desperation that has me stumbling through my contacts, I eventually manage to call my mum. As the dial tone rings through, beeping in melody to my racing heartbeat, I don my glasses and make my way back out into the hallway.

Sam sits on the landing, gripping the banister poles and looking as though he's trapped behind bars from this angle. He's nothing more or less than a smudge, a vague, echo-like impression of a boy.

He does not say anything. He just stares. I think. I can't quite see his eyes in the dark, which is a little unnerving.

I stare back until the automated voice at the other end of the call startles me into motion. I retreat into the lounge and collapse onto the sofa, rubbing my temples.

A damn shame. A right tragedy. Right in his prime—

Fuck off, Cliff, what are you doing in my—

I'm a ghost. I think.

Echoes swirl around my head and, this time, I can't ignore them. I can't distract myself with a book, or by talking to my mum.

So, I do what any terrified person would do. I grab my phone, and I start to research. Deaths in Eden's Gate.

The first few links to pop up are advertisements to funeral directors and online obituaries for the local area. The first proper article I find details the unfortunate anniversary of an accident that happened back in the nineties. With a sudden, prickling, icy sensation scuttling down the back of my neck, I tap the link and begin to read.

Today marks three decades since the tragic loss of Eden's Gate's own Samuel Thorpe. A bright boy of eighteen, who tragically lost his life after an accident whilst exploring an abandoned house on his first day of summer break. The story is an unfortunate reminder to all children today to take care and to stay safe. Solus Estate is a house that is well known in Eden's Gate, first as an old, creepy house for youths to hang out, and more recently, as a site of tragedy. The place now belongs to one Ms. Langley, a lady from out of town looking to renovate—

"Holy shit," I breathe, letting the phone drop onto my lap and tugging my hands through my hair. I fervently check for shadows that don't belong.

The first question I have is a simple one. Why didn't anyone tell me someone died here? Not my gran, or my mum, or even Oliver the cheerful attorney? The second one, more dreadful, is this:

How the fuck does my hallucination have the same name as a boy who died here?

Thoroughly horrified, I curl up on the sofa, shut my eyes, and beg that I either fall asleep or pass out and wake up tomorrow to find out this is all just a bad dream.

The name, the revelations, the questions all swirl in my mind; embers caught in a gale. Burning themselves on the back of my eyelids. They chase me into the dark like the hounds of hell.