The Haunting (Or: Ghost Is Literally A Ghost)

Night Two

The rest of the dark morning until the sun came up you spent motionlessly in the kitchen chair, and during the day you managed to clear most of the downstairs area.

Spiders and insects safely carried outside, cobwebs removed and thick layers of dust scraped off the surfaces. You even managed to set up a little working area to start writing your next novel, which would hopefully be your breakthrough.

The bedroom and the upstairs in general would be tomorrow's problem, so you found yourself in the sleeping bag again, eyes squeezed shut tight so that the branches outside wouldn't upset your brain in the darkness like last night.

If she would have opened her eyes and turned her head slightly to the right, she would have seen two milky eyes staring at her from the gap of a black balaclava with a skull print on the bottom half, dark circles on pale skin below.

The man observed her closely, and as soon as her breaths evened, showing him that she was asleep, he slowly stepped towards her bed. Like last night, he leaned above her sleeping frame, watching how her breath came out misty due to the coldness surrounding him.

What a beauty, and kind as well. He had watched her gently scooping up the spiders and bugs to take them to the garden instead of crushing them. Unfortunately he hadn't been able to follow her, forever bound to the walls of this fucking house.

Forever, until someone would help him.

And this someone would be her, if she wanted to or not.

She was everything he once was, a soul in a breathing body, dreams and goals, a purpose, a someone.

And he was not.

He was just dead.

Existing as a cold shell of his former self, everything that made him Simon Riley taken away from him because of one fleeting moment of carelessness. It shouldn't have happened, but it did.

526 days he had spent in this house, his essence slowly deteriorating away with every passing hour, the further he inched away from life. He grew more agitated each day, the thread keeping him from dropping to hell unravelling right before his dull eyes.

One chance to redeem his soul, but he couldn't do it alone.

He carefully reached out, at least he wanted to, but he had lost all sense of his physical abilities over time. His hand moved too fast, and although he couldn't actually touch her, she stirred in her sleep.

Your arm felt ice cold all of a sudden, ripping you out of your light sleep. You jolted awake and immediately reached out to switch on the bedside lamp, grabbing your phone to... what? Protect yourself with it? Call the police?

3:33 am

You furrowed your brows. Like last night, what a weird coincidence.

Mildly disturbed, you lay back onto the mattress, tucking your arms into the sleeping bag. It helped with the coldness, and you pressed them close to your body for comfort.

Deciding that you couldn't let the nightly terrors keep you from a good, long sleep, you closed your eyes. You even counted sheep this time, out loud to drown out the faint creaking sounds that were everywhere in the house, and it worked.

Ten minutes later, you were back to sleep, intense eyes watching you from the side of your bed.