The house wraps me in the forever quiet of death. My shadows. My eternity.
The walls breathe with remnants of my life. The house simmers with memories of fear, of sadness. And pain. Always pain. My hurt should have ended in the fire, but it has only grown.
As has his rage, forever roaming the halls.
A merry laugh rings through the house, pulling me from my dark corner. Shoes clack across the floor above me. The energy of the living creeps through the rooms, climbs the walls.
“Oh, Zack, it’s gorgeous! I love it,” a woman says, her voice muffled by the curtain separating our two worlds.
“I knew you would,” a man answers, his voice booming with pride.
I crawl up through the floor, weaving through cracks, seeping into and out of left-over living emotions. People. They’ve come before, but never stayed.
Because of the memories that remain. Because of the darkness.
The empty room creaks with every step of their corporeal feet. I hover in a cobweb-draped corner. Watching. Lurking.
Green eyes blazing, the woman runs her fingers along the stair railing, gazing at the house with a grin. “How can we afford it? It looks new.”
The veil, separating the living and the dead, ripples with constant motion, blurring the couple. An aura of emotions and thoughts surround them with color like a crazy, constantly shifting rainbow, twisting through their minds and hearts. Their eyes remain clear, bright with the now.
“It’s been vacant for years, so the bank lowered the price,” the man answers. “Part of it has been rebuilt. There was a fire… I don’t know, like twenty years ago.”
Like memories of the crackling flames that ended my short fourteen years of life, anger flares through what remains of my tattered self.
The couple clasp their hands together and the golden glow of love, the bright white of joy intensify — colors I detest, colors of weakness. Like her, always loving, never strong enough to make the pain stop. I stretch my fingers like claws along the wall. Scraping.
“Did you hear that?” The woman glances around, stepping away from the man. Blue and purple tinge the pure white and gold light surrounding her. Fear. Uncertainty.
Hunched, I creep across the ceiling.
“What?” The man flings a curtain wide. Brightness flows across the floor like a river.
The woman wanders towards the wall. “Scratching or something.”
“Probably just mice.”
“Mice,” she whispers, sliding her hands along her shoulders.
Shivering spots of fear intensify around her. Her heart rate increases, sending pulses of purple and orange through her blurred form. I glance at the stairs. Fear will bring him.
“You okay, Lizzie?” the man’s voice drifts through the veil.
Backing away, she stares at the wall. “Yeah. Just felt weird, cold. Must have been a draft.”
He bounds to her, eyes glowing with joy, and catches her in an embrace. “Who cares? It’s our house.”
The shades of weakness fade from the halo of light around her, returning to white and gold. The woman must not know about love.
Love is weak.
A chilling sensation tumbles down the stairs, and I shrink into the shadows, staring up. He lurks up there in darkness, waiting to devour me, to punish.
