All in Ghost Story
You don’t recognise the car. It’s cool inside, cold even - the air conditioner’s blowing so hard you can feel it against your skin, but you can’t hear it. Everything is silent, in fact. If it wasn’t for the scenery moving past the window, you’d think the car was stopped, the engine dead. Perhaps it’s an electric car?
Ihyll drove like he had nothing to lose. Corners were challenges that he went at roaring, tearing down the asphalt in a furious squeal of rubber and smoke. There was something of that even when he was standing still, or leaned up against the wall watching newcomers prep their engines, checking nitrous and ignitions, topping up tanks.
There was only the road, stretching on towards the horizon, carving its way through the knee-high brush. Grass heavy with seed nodded dozy heads towards the sky, where the sun hid behind clouds and leant the world a queer blue-grey hue. There were footprints in the dust. Shallow indents that marked the slow passing of feet, heavy with dirt and the detritus of a life lived with blood and ended with the same.
It’s impossible to ignore a car screaming fire and shrapnel as it smashes through your bedroom wall at three in the morning. Of course, my parents say it was my scream that woke them, or the thud as my body hit the floor, but I know they’re lying.
Everyone knew the Vickers house. No-one went near it, because if it wasn’t haunted to start with it surely had to be now. No non-haunted house looked like the old Vickers house.
Spring wind carried the scent of apples through the windows, so strong it seemed that they were close enough to bite. Firm, crisp flesh and fresh juices just a bite away, red and golden skin breaking beneath teeth to spill sweetness over lips and down chins.
The old oilskin had been cold and greasy to the touch when he’d put it on, but now as the wind dug icy claws into his skin and sought the cracks in his clothes, he was thankful for it. The old castle loomed above him, dark even against the blackened sky, and before him lay the path.
It was always the same. Dingy orange light filtering through the windows, bent and twisted by the warped glass panes, the haze of cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Last strains of some old song fizzling out on the jukebox.
I listen to their breath and sometimes, very faintly, in the middle of the night, if I lie flat on the grass and listen hard with my whole body, I can feel them shifting as they dream of the world beyond their earthen cradle.
This house holds memories, twined in the dusty sunbeams floating through sparkling windows and in the creak of its settling bones. Where to start, in this time-bound building filled with the recollections of those who have walked its halls?
