Beyond (Niall Horan) (COMPLETED)

Chapter Four

I thought this plotline might be...interesting (x lets see how it turns out, shall we? (:

Later That Night

Mariana's POV

Everyone was upstairs, probably all of them sound asleep, safe in snug in their beds, nothing to worry about.

Me however?

I was completely alone downstairs, laying on the sofa in the living room, in total blackness.

A blanket was over me, thanks to Dad, ad the TV was on Disney Channel at a low volume as I squeezed my eyes shut and tried hard to sleep. I had school tomorrow, hell, I knew that I even had a test or two that I...hadn't studied for.

So I needed to sleep. And I wanted to get more than just a stupid half hour of sleep.

But sleep just wouldn't come.

As much as I tried to steer my mind away from the topic, my thoughts kept wandering back to the attic. To what I'd seem in the attic. To what I heard in the attic. I couldn't stop thinking about it, thinking about my experience up there. It happened so...early on. I thought maybe, if there were any ghosts, they would give us a couple days before making appearances, but...I guess I was wrong.

They, it, he, she, whatever it was, wanted to make itself known right away. Hell, I wasn't even in the house for ten minutes and they already decided to show itself to me.

Then again...I don't know what I had seen. It was just sort of like...a white mist. A white mist...except with a face. It definitely did have a face. But I didn't have time to look at the face since I'd bolted from the room just a mere two seconds after the thing...materialized. I was just assuming things, it could have been absolutely nothing.

But somehow...I knew that I wasn't assuming things. I wasn't assuming things, I wasn't hallucinating, I wasn't going crazy, or any of that. What I had seen up there was real. I could feel it.

Somehow, I knew that it was real.

And...

And...it spoke. The thing spoke and I could actually hear it...so if...if it actually had been a ghost of some sort that I saw up there, in that attic...it had to be intelligent right? I'd seen enough ghost shows (Ghost Adventures, A Haunting, The Haunted, Ghost Busters, etc.) to know that ghosts that were just kinda...there, just there to haunt never really spoke. They didn't have voices, they just sorta did their thing and moved stuff around. Spooked a few people even. But they didn't speak. They couldn't speak.

But this...this thing, this spirit wasn't like that. It had spoken. It had spoken directly to me! It knew I was up there and it...it tried talking to me. It actually tried talking to me.

But the thing that completely baffled me the most was that...

It didn't sound angry. No...when it spoke to me, it didn't sound angry at all. More like...it had sounded sad, begging even. Like it...it had sounded like it...was trying to ask for help. Or even...maybe it was even asking for a friend.

I knew this was no Casper The Friendly Ghost bullshit, but come on!

What had it said? I thought, trying to remember. It had said two things...

"Please!" I whispered, my voice sounding loud in the complete quiet of the dark room. One or two of the times it spoke, the spirit said, "Please," and then its voice sorta just...drifted off. Drifted off into nothingness, drifted off into the air after that one simple word.

And then...there was one other thing it had said, before it'd shown itself to me.

What was it? I pondered. This one was harder to remember for some odd reason, but...finally, eventually...it came to me, causing me to gasp.

"Don't be afraid," I mumbled to myself. Before I'd gotten that brief (very brief) glimpse of the spirit that was hiding up in the attic, it had whispered to me, "Don't be afraid."

Surely it wasn't an evil presence then, right? If it was evil, it would've tried everything in its power to scare me. But this spirit seemed to want the opposite of that. It didn't want for me to be afraid of it.

Even though I was, I thought with a slight pang of guilt. I had been afraid of it and I had run off.

The pang of guilt I felt with the thought surprised me. Why the hell was I feeling guilt about being afraid of a ghost? Everyone was afraid of ghosts, right?

Immediately after thinking that, I answered my own question.

Wrong.

My parents and brother weren't afraid. Or, if they were, it was hidden behind how skeptical they had been about the ghost haunting this place. They didn't believe in ghosts so they weren't afraid.

With that thought, another thought almost instantly hit me.

I wonder if nonbelievers could see this thing, this ghost, I pondered. Or if...the only reason I could see it was because...I actually believe in ghosts?

It was a question to consider.

Then again...all these questions were questions to consider.

With that thought, I decided something. Immediately, I kicked the blanket off of me and I jumped up from the couch. Dad had left a flashlight by the table in case I had to get up to get something. I grabbed it.

I knew exactly what I was going to do.

I was going to go upstairs, and to the attic.

I was going to see if I could see that ghost again, if it (he?) could reveal itself to me.

I needed to know more.

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