I Am the Ghost in Your House Read online

The Cathedral

  Last time we stayed in Pittsburgh, things got out of hand.

  I made something big disappear. Something so big that I shouldn’t have been able to affect it at all. It was worse than a rack at McDonald’s. Much worse.

  A whole wall.

  Not a garden wall, either. Not some minor divider. Not even the wall of a house.

  The wall of a building forty-two stories tall.

  I touched that broad stone expanse—well, slammed my hand against it, actually—and it melted away. Exposed all the rooms inside it like an overgrown ant farm sandwiched in glass.

  People noticed, all right. Terrified ants. Some of them screamed or ran. Many more took pictures or videos on their phones. It lasted only a couple of seconds. I pulled my hand away quickly. But there were hundreds of people in that building, hundreds more outside. The building itself was tall enough to be seen for blocks, miles. All over the city.

  The pictures and videos made their way onto social media. Local newspapers covered the event. A few national outlets even picked it up as a fluff piece. My mother was furious. My mother was scared. I showed her that people thought it was a trick. Something done with cameras, projections. They thought it was viral marketing or an episode of a yet-to-be-aired prank show.

  She didn’t care. She said we were never coming back to this city, no argument. She said I needed to be more careful. She asked me over and over: What the hell were you thinking?

  What was I thinking?

  When I’d touched that wall, I was angry, frustrated, hurt.

  It wasn’t really an accident. That’s something I never told my mother. I’d wanted it to happen, in a way. Wanted the whole building to disappear. The whole world, even. I hadn’t thought it would happen, of course, hadn’t even known it was possible. But I touched the wall anyway, with my bare hand, without thinking, without being careful.

  I did that because, despite my mother’s warnings, I had fallen in love.

  And the wall? It wasn’t even the worst thing I did.

  At the McDonald’s, I slipped quickly out of the kitchen, burger abandoned, envelope of fries clutched in my teeth, both pearl-buttoned gloves jammed back on my hands. I vaulted over the counter, scanned the line of customers for people with their phones out. Which was most of them, of course. I hoped that no one got a picture. It was so quick.

  “You saw that, right?” one of the cashiers was asking a businessman-looking guy at the front of the line. He shook his head.

  “I saw it,” said a lady behind him.

  I ran to the bathroom, pushed open the door. A woman who was checking her makeup spun around. She must have seen the door swinging on its own in the mirror.

  “Rebecca?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  I didn’t have time to worry about whether Rebecca was her friend or her long-dead sister. A faint shimmer was visible beneath the farthest stall.

  “Mom?” I whispered when I reached the stall, but quietly, because the woman was still at the mirrors.

  If I shifted my head back and forth, I could barely see through the crack between the stall partitions. My mother was kneeling on the dirty floor, hunched over, forehead resting on the rim of the toilet seat.

  The woman at the sink finally left. I knocked on the stall door. My mother groaned and pushed herself up to her feet, unlatched the door.

  “Here,” I said, holding out the fries. Normally, I was more careful about holding something in a gloved hand—floating objects freaked people out—but I knew we were alone.

  “No thanks,” my mother said.

  She took a step forward, wobbled, fell. As she was falling, she flickered out of sight again. I threw my hands out to where I thought she should be. The fries went flying, scattered across the tiles. My mother blinked back into view, leaning heavily against the wall.

  “Mom!” I shouted.

  “Keep your voice down,” she said. “Someone might hear.”

  “What the hell is happening to you?” I asked.

  “I’m not feeling well,” she said. “I really need to rest.”

  “Okay,” I said, “okay,” though it was anything but that.

  I couldn’t take her to a hospital. I couldn’t even ask anyone for help.

  She let me grab her hand again and lead her out of the restaurant. I walked fast, hoping she wouldn’t overhear any fuss from the counter. That was the last thing she needed, to know I’d fucked up again.

  The sun had fully risen by now, lights clicking on inside storefronts. We passed three bus stops until I found one with people already waiting at it. A bus wouldn’t stop for us, of course. I stood by the curb, gripping my mother’s wrist.

  The people waiting were restless. They shuffled about, checked their phones, craned their necks down the street, united in a brief community of shared misery. My mother and I waited, too, but apart.

  Not one of them. Not really.

  When the bus came, we darted on after the last person, just making it as the door hinged shut behind us. I steered my mother to the back. She settled in a window seat, gave me another weak smile before closing her eyes.

  I pulled the ginger ale from my pack, opened it, overturned it on the empty seat beside her, let the liquid fizz into the cushion. Insurance. No one, I hoped, would try to sit next to a mysterious wet spot. I remained standing, scanning the passengers.

  Usually my mother found us houses, but I would have to do it now.

  Her typical tactic was to pick someone who looked rich or interesting and follow them home.

  Nobody rich rode the bus, so the best I could hope for if I wanted a place quickly was someone who wasn’t headed to work. Unless someone worked at an actual mattress factory, they were of no use to me.

  There was a man I was considering. He wore a uniform—security guard, maybe, or janitor—beneath his jacket, and his head was slumped against the top of the seat. I had a hunch that he might have gotten off the night shift. I kept my eyes on him, ready to jump up and follow as soon as he moved to leave the bus.

  We drove through downtown and into Oakland, the university neighborhood. Out the window, I glimpsed the towering Cathedral of Learning. All forty-two stories of it.

  At the next stop, a few college students got on. Definitely a bad choice to follow. On their way to class, probably.

  I glanced out the window, saw a girl in a black jacket leaning against the bus shelter, her back turned, smoking a cigarette. Something lurched in my chest, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I had pulled my mother to her feet. The bus was just starting to pull away when I shoved the back doors open. The bus driver slammed on the brakes. I jumped down to the pavement, my mother right behind me.

  The girl in the black jacket turned around, and I saw my mistake.

  For a moment, I’d been sure I knew her. Been sure she was someone else. Someone I’d known from two years ago.

  Someone I’d thought about almost every day since.

  The Heart

  It felt like what I think being flayed must feel like. Being peeled. Having all your skin taken off, fast, and then having it grow back and get scraped away again. Slow this time. And then again. And again.

  That’s what it felt like to be in love.

  “What’s going on?” my mother asked. “Why did we get off the bus?”

  I didn’t know what to tell her. What the hell could I say?

  I’d been wrong. Of course. I was an idiot. This wasn’t Tess at all. This was a different girl. She was just dressed in a similar style. That enormous black jacket. Those big fuck-off boots, scuffed at the heels and toes.

  This girl wore an orange knit cap pulled low, with stringy bleached-blond hair sticking out, the ends dyed a faded chlorine blue (Tess’s hair was brown). Below the hat I could make out smudged black eyeshadow, lipstick in a shade of pink Tess would undoubtedly have despised. The girl wore thick foundation in a brownish taupe, darker than Tess’s skin color.

  The sun slipped out from behind a cloud and sparked off something beneath the girl’s oversized jacket. Glitter, or maybe sequins. Her bony legs were bare, cold-looking. She certainly didn’t seem like she was headed to class or to work, even as a barista or a record store attendant. She looked like she was dressed for nighttime, for going out, which might mean she hadn’t made it home last night, was only heading back now. We’d passed by the big dorms already, so she probably didn’t live in one of those.

  “Let’s follow her,” I whispered to my mother, my voice camouflaged by the sound of passing traffic. “She’s going home, I think.”

  “Okay.” My mother sounded like she didn’t care. She sank down on the bench seat of the bus shelter. I hoped no one would try to sit on her. Careful as we are, it has happened to both of us. It’s an awful feeling, to be suddenly sat on.

  That’s one of those things normal people don’t have to worry about.

  I stiffened as a large group of students approached, talking and laughing. We were saved by the arrival of another bus. To my relief, the black-jacketed girl stubbed out her cigarette on the side of the bus shelter and boarded. I tugged my mother’s sleeve, and we hurried after, took a seat right behind the girl.

  As we rode, my mother’s head slumped against her chest. When I reached out to shake her awake, she flickered again. One moment there, transparent but perfectly visible to me, the next second gone. A breath. Two. And she was back.

  The bus shuddered to a stop. The girl stood.

  “Come on.” I helped my mother up and pulled her after the girl out the back door.

  We trailed her down a street lined with apartme
nt buildings and warehouses, her orange knit cap bobbing along in front of us like a buoy. Her jacket was studded with pins and patches. A rainbow. A knife. A fist.

  I didn’t turn around to look at my mother, didn’t want to see if she was disappearing or not, didn’t want to think about what it meant.

  A few blocks from the bus stop, we passed a three-story brick house with an ornately carved gable. The house was replicated almost exactly in a mural on the wall behind it. In the mural, the house was hit by a slant of sunlight, with white curtains billowing out the windows. A bride stood on the front steps, holding up her trailing gown.

  The real house looked empty, with plywood in place of curtains. The sky was gray. I squeezed my mother’s hand, almost as tight as she used to squeeze mine when I was little.

  The girl we were following turned down a side street and approached a brick row house with a battered green plastic awning over the front door. My mother and I scuttled up behind her.

  As the girl opened the door, a dark furry shape shot past her feet. It skidded to a stop half a foot away from my mother and me, tail puffed, back arched into a startled curve.

  A black cat, its yellow eyes staring straight at me.

  “Get back in here,” said the girl, reaching for the cat.

  I pulled my mother forward. We slipped into the front hallway. The girl followed a moment later, cat cradled in one arm. It hissed at us and jumped away.

  It couldn’t see us, either, but it could smell us. Sense us, maybe, in some mysterious animal way. We usually avoided houses with pets for this reason. Dogs would bark at us incessantly. Birds would squawk. Cats weren’t quite as bad, since, as a species, they already had a reputation for staring intently at apparently empty space.

  Maybe your cat has done this.

  Maybe it was staring at me.

  We stood in a dim entranceway facing a narrow staircase. To the left was a living room crowded with mismatched furniture. Wooden chairs around a small painted table. A mustard-colored couch. Books stacked on the floor to precarious heights.

  “Neely?” came a voice from some other room at the back of the house. “Is that you?”

  “Oh, hi, sorry!” the girl shouted as she walked into the living room. “I didn’t think anyone would be home. Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

  My mother let go of my hand and headed up the stairs. They creaked terribly, but hopefully anyone listening would blame it on the cat.

  “Bathtub tried to escape, but I caught her,” I heard the girl—Neely?—say below us as I followed my mother. “I think she knows it’s almost Halloween. Acting all spooky and shit.”

  At the top of the stairs, there was another dark hallway, this one carpeted in a musty burgundy brown, and four doors, all shut except one. This wasn’t an ideal situation, by any stretch of the imagination. It was a small house. Would there be any empty rooms, any quiet corners?

  I peered through the open door—just a bathroom. My mother pushed past me, leaned over the sink, dry-heaved. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

  I pushed the shower curtain to one side, intending to sit on the edge of the tub, but stopped short. Lining the bottom of the bathtub was a thick layer of overlapping newspapers, and arranged on top were three skulls.

  They looked like animal skulls. Not human, at least. They were almost definitely real. There was a distinct scent of bleach.

  Behind me, my mother retched, vomited. I yanked the shower curtain shut.

  “How long?” I asked my mother.

  She ran the tap, rinsed out the sink and her mouth.

  “How long what?” she asked without turning.

  “How long has this been happening?”

  “I started feeling sick this morning. Somewhere in Ohio.” She moved over to the toilet, sat on the closed lid. I say “sat,” but it was more like “sank.” Collapsed. She was acting so calm, so blasé. It was for my benefit, I was sure, but it only made me mad.

  “No,” I said, moving over to lean against the sink myself, facing her. “I mean the other thing. The disappearing.”

  My mother squeezed her eyes shut, pinched the bridge of her nose. “A while,” she said.

  “Jesus.”

  “But it was only once or twice a week,” she said. “Not like this. And I didn’t know—I wasn’t sure—”

  “Why the hell didn’t you say anything?” My voice was getting too high, too loud. This was so stupid. If moving around so much was making her sick, we could have stopped.

  “I didn’t want you to worry.”

  There was a creak from somewhere in the house, and we both froze. Waited. I could make out muffled voices from downstairs. No footsteps.

  “What happens to you?” I whispered. “When you disappear?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does it feel like?”

  “Everything just goes dark, okay? I’m sorry.” She shot me a pained look. “I really need to lie down.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “right, okay,” though it still wasn’t.

  I slipped out into the hallway. There were no sounds from behind the closed doors, but that didn’t guarantee that the rooms were empty. This house had a cat. I could use that.

  I knelt in front of the nearest door and scratched insistently with my fingernails at roughly feline height. Scratched again, harder this time. When no one came to the door or shouted at Bathtub to knock it off, I figured I’d risk it. I turned the doorknob very slowly.

  Light streamed into the room through sheer yellow curtains, dust motes swirling as thick as a swarm of summer gnats. A futon rested on the narrow wooden floorboards, the sheets rumpled into a grand rose-petal swirl. I took one step forward before something in the far corner caught my eye and my stomach dropped. I jumped back into the hallway.

  A tall thin woman had been standing against the wall. Staring at me.

  She was naked.

  On her tiptoes.

  Also, she had no arms.

  I peered back in and relaxed. The woman was, as I should have realized immediately, a mannequin, propped against the wall. Feeling like an idiot, I took a step closer. The flat joint of the mannequin’s arm socket had a perfectly round hole in it. Above the hole, in black Sharpie, someone had written what I presumed was her name: cindy.

  I ushered my mother into the room, eased the door shut behind us. She crawled onto the futon immediately, shoes and backpack and all. She clutched at the blanket, curled up, seemed to sink into herself. She hadn’t taken off her gloves, so the blanket stayed solid, but the pillow where her cheek rested had gone transparent. Hopefully no one would come in and notice. Hopefully no one would come in at all.

  I watched her, convinced she would flicker, or vanish entirely into the knot of sheets. She didn’t, though. If anything, her outline grew more distinct. She looked as solid as a glass statue. Clear, but not like empty air. Clear like water, bending the light that passed through her.

  For the first time in nearly an hour, it seemed, my pulse slowed. I breathed easy. Maybe my mother was fine. Maybe she was right: she just needed to rest.

  I circled the room, running my gloved fingers lightly across the desk by the window. A long-lensed digital camera sat beside a laptop. To amuse myself, I picked the camera up and snapped a photo of my mother curled atop the futon. When I checked the viewscreen, the picture showed me what visible people would see. Just the futon. No Mom.

  I deleted the picture, clicked through the others stored on the memory card. There were several shots of the little black cat sniffing curiously at the skulls I’d seen earlier. Then some street shots. A picture of the mural I noticed on our walk here. I’d clicked through to the first picture with a person in it—a Black girl with auburn hair and a faded maroon hoodie standing, unsmiling, in front of a brick wall—when I heard the unmistakable sound of feet pounding up the stairs. I scrambled to return the camera to how I’d found it, nearly dropping it in my hurry.

  A moment later, the doorknob turned and the door swung open and I swore, much too loudly.

  Tacoma, WA