The Ghost's Diary 👻 ✓

36. Ghost and Glow

Dylan Nathaniel
Knightley

"Knock knock, who's there?"

It's funny, really. Funny how specific words, specific sentences can trigger you, diminish you, create you. Words have the power to awaken safely kept secrets from the depths of our minds. Words can have themselves taunting you with mysteries that you never could have thought of.

These specific words are the reason why I find two parallel lines of cold sweat running down my forehead during a misty night.

Heaving my chest up and down, I gulp as I look at the alarm clock sitting on my side table.

It is only three O' clock in the morning, exactly an hour since I went to sleep.

It's happening again.

I look over at the ghost sitting on the bedside table that looks at me with hollow eyes. The bottle- my ghost- that has done nothing for me.

It's no use trying to get some sleep now. I have never been able to sleep after waking up like this.

Creating several ruffles in the bed, I put my warm feet on the wooden floor.

The floor is smooth but not slippery enough for a person to fall.

I have lived in this damned room for exactly twenty-five years now. I know it like the name of a lover.

Hah, lover. Now, that's weird for me.

Moonlight is streaming from the uncurtained window onto my study table. The light is in patches, moving silently with each shift of a misty cloud. A pristine white journal glows with an unusual light.

If I have doubts about the bottle, I don't have any about this journal. It has always been a safe haven for me, a way for me to solve the riddles crouched in my surroundings.

What the...?

The tip of a petal shows from its corner. The daffodil shouldn't be showing even a tip, it should be within the journal entirely.

Now that I notice it, the journal is placed absolutely straight. I always leave it diagonally.

Someone's touched it.

I quickly start flipping through the pages to find anything that isn't right. No one should have ever touched this journal. No one at all.

"Who's there?" you ask.

Somebody's been here.

Who could have been here? The housekeepers don't touch my stuff and neither does Ms Bragge. Could it be Lindsey...

No, Lindsey isn't a snooper. She wouldn't read my journal without my permission. I know her.

On the other hand, I couldn't even recognise the person she has become now. I only knew that little girl who used to steal my shoelaces to make flower crowns.

A sudden buzz from the study table catches me off guard.

The screen of my touch phone is illuminated by an incoming call.