Ghost

Chapter 11

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for"
- Bob Marley
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"Come on Lola! What are you doing?" The woman's voice calls.

I'm sat at the top of the stairs and she's stood at the bottom, looking up at me.

I pressed her to ask Niall more questions but she said that he got really upset... Then suddenly he was gone.

It scared her, even at her young age she knows that people shouldn't just disappear into thin air.

I calmed her down and spent the next few hours talking to her, playing games. Children have always adored me. I give them my full attention, humans are always to busy to take the time to make the most of the little miracles that children are. They're the most hilarious, irrational, curious creatures on the planet.

Suddenly her mother pulls her gently from behind.

"What are you staring at?" The woman looks right at me.

"The ma-" Lola starts then stops suddenly as I raise my finger to my lips, winking at her.

Her mother sighs impatiently.

"Put your coat on darling, it's past your bedtime already."

"I don't want to go." Lola pouts.

"Come on." Her mother pulls her to the door and I wave, trying to smile as I push down the lump of emotion in my chest.

Lola gives me one last look as the door closes behind her.

She's sad to go, but it's different for her. I don't know the next time someone will talk to me, make me feel alive again, even if just for a short while.

When she wakes up tomorrow morning she'll remember me. But after a full day of childish woes and little dramas, I'll have dulled in her memory by bedtime.

In years to come, as she comes to understand the world she lives in, she'll look back at the hazy memory of tonight and wonder. She might get drunk one night at a party and talk about how she met a ghost when she was a child, but she'll never fully convince herself it wasn't a dream or childish fantasy. As the years pass and her life becomes a series of loves and losses, the memory of me will cease to matter altogether. I'll become nothing but a hazy childlike dream. Forgotten entirely.

She'll never know that for a few brief hours she made lonely, lost soul happy... And although we'll probably never meet again, I'll treasure the memory of her forever.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Lola's been gone a few hours and I'm pacing in the spare bedroom.

Somehow... Impossibly... My best friend was here, right in this room, just hours ago. I know he was, Niall isn't exactly a name that a five year old would pluck out of thin air.

Maybe he's here right now.

For some reason the idea sends a chill up my spine.

I'm confused though. Has Niall been here since he died? But then why haven't any of the other children who've lived here seen him? Why can't I see him? Surely one ghost should be able to see another?

Maybe it's something to do with my powers increasing, maybe I've brought him back? But then, from what Harry's told me, once you've passed to the other side you don't come back.

Harry.

I'm so angry with him.

He must have known that Niall was here. There's no way that he didn't. It's just impossible. There was a time in the 1800s that I spent 32 years alone in this house before some humans moved in. Harry visited once for just an hour during the whole time.