Bentley Little - The House

She went to bed early, tired.

And she dreamed of the girl.

Norton Carole's ghost would not go away.

Norton had never believed in ghosts, had always considered those who did to be naive, gullible, and superstitious, the type of people who could be easily separated from their money, but he had had to change his tune.

Carole's ghost would not go away. He remembered, years ago, taking a group of graduating students on a senior class trip to California. They'd gone to Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Sea World, and in San Diego they'd visited the Whaley House, the first two-story brick home in California. The house was supposed to be haunted, and there was corroboration by generations' worth of witnesses who had claimed to see and hear ghosts, but he'd felt nothing. Some of the girls § had gotten scared, one boy had refused to go upstairs, and all of the students later said they'd felt the "vibes" of the place, but he had put it all down to the power of suggestion and had dismissed it. There were no such things as ghosts, he told them.

But there were.

He knew that now.

Carole's ghost had shown up the day after her burial.

The funeral had been held at the Presbyterian church adjoining the cemetery, and every pew had been filled.

There'd been their friends and her friends and his friends, as well as assorted acquaintances, neighbors, and coworkers, and the whole thing had been nearly overwhelming.

He was not a social man by nature--Carole had taken charge of that aspect of the marriage--and this was the time when he felt least like being sociable, felt most like being alone, but he was thrust into the role of host, having to meet and greet, accepting condolences and offers of support, repeating endlessly that he was all right, he was okay, he was coping.

It had rained during the burial service, but a canopy had been set up over the gravesite and while the mourners were forced to stand a little closer together than was comfortable, they had remained dry despite the downpour.

Afterward, people followed him to his house, repeated their condolences, gave him casseroles and Jell-O and flowers and cards. It had been after eight before the last person finally left, and he'd gone directly to sleep after that, not only because he was exhausted, but because he didn't want to be alone, didn't want to have time to think.

In the morning, Carole's ghost was in the bathroom.

He thought at first that he was hallucinating. She was naked and standing in front of the sink, apparently looking at herself in the mirror. She had the appearance of a stereotypical apparition: her form was visible but transparent, a pale see-through representation of solid matter.

He walked into the bathroom --and she disappeared.

Despite himself, he felt slightly chilled. His lack of belief in anything beyond the physical, material world was strong, but even if its origin was in his own mind, seeing Carole's form after her death was a little unnerving.

He looked around the bathroom, checked behind the shower curtain, and, satisfied that there was no one there, walked over to the toilet to take a leak.

His mind was probably playing tricks on him, he decided.

He was so used to seeing Carole that his brain had filled in the blanks, putting her where he expected her to be.

But she'd never stood in front of the sink naked. Not in all the years they'd been married.

It was the stress, he told himself, the shock. It was making him see things that weren't there.

She was waiting for him ten minutes later in the kitchen.

Still naked.

This time, he definitely had chills. The nudity, for some reason, lent credence to the idea that the figure was Carole's ghost. That was one of the problems he'd always had with spirits. People who saw them always claimed they were clothed. Sometimes they were even supposed to be wearing hats. But that made no logical sense. Did the clothes die with the person? Were these the ghosts of their clothes that had accompanied them to the great beyond? Did ghosts somehow conjure up the appearance of clothing so as to not embarrass their earthly counterparts? It had always made more sense to him to assume that if there were such things as ghosts, they would be merely an unformed energy source with no definite shape. The idea that a human soul retained the physical appearance of the body housing it had seemed to him to be a ludicrously illogical idea.

But Carole's ghost looked just like her.

The ghost, again, was standing before the sink, this time the kitchen sink. It was facing him across the length of the room, and it smiled as he entered. He was still clinging to the thought that this was a trick of his mind, but there seemed to be a measurable decrease in temperature as he walked into the kitchen, and he did not think he was imagining that. From behind him came the familiar purr-meow of Hermie begging for his morning Friskies, and the cat jogged between his legs toward the plastic dish next to the stove.

Halfway across the linoleum, Hermie stopped. He stared at the ghost, arched his back, hissed and ran away.

Norton backed up slowly.

Hermie saw her too!

It was not a figment of his imagination, not stress or a hallucination. It was an honest-to-God apparition. He believed that now, and it scared the hell out of him.

Outside the window, a bird flew by. He could see it through Carole's head, her insubstantial form obscuring not even the slightest detail of the scene outdoors. In books, it was only evil spirits that were frightening. People claimed to be comforted by the ghosts of relatives and loved ones, as though they felt they were being watched over by a guardian angel.

Norton felt no such thing.

True, he and Carole were probably not as close and loving as they should have been, but even intense hatred would not have accounted for the feeling he got from the figure across the room. It was like nothing he had ever experienced; the emotional knowledge that he was in the presence of something profoundly unnatural, a wrongness so concentrated and powerful that it permeated the room and everything in it, creating within him a sense of complete engulfing dread. The naked, smiling ghost looked like the shade of a human being, a weakened reflection of the person it had been in life, but its aura seemed to be that of something much deeper, much more inexplicable.

It was still Carole, though.

He knew that. He could feel it.

And that was what scared him.

The figure, still smiling, reached out to him . . . and faded away into nothingness.

He'd taken a week off from work, using his two days of bereavement leave as well as three "personal necessity"

days, but he was not sure that had been such a good idea. He felt restless during the day, the suddenly empty house seemed way too large, and he thought that he should have continued working in order to keep himself busy and keep his mind off Carole.

And her ghost.

She did not appear again until the following night. He was in bed, trying to sleep, trying not to focus on the unusual sounds he'd been hearing in the house, on Car ole's death or her apparent afterlife, on anything that he'd seen or felt, when, for some reason, he was compelled to open his eyes.

And there she was.

Still naked, the ghost stood on the mattress on Car ole's side of the bed, looking down at him. There was no indentation on the mattress, no indication that any weight was being put on the bed despite the fact that the ghost feet were clearly standing flat on the sheet. This close, the detail was amazing. He could make out on the see-through skin the heart-shaped birthmark just below Carole's right breast. Between the thatch of pellucid pubic hair was the faint suggestion of pale pink lips.

He sat up, but she didn't disappear this time.