By Katrina Jax
The peeling front door gaped like a yawning mouth. The large windows stared like hollow eyes.
Lyle’s lungs heaved from running, his bare feet creaking on the front porch of 13 Onyx Lane. Weeds growing through the slats brushed against his ankles. He burst through the door and shot up the cobwebby stairs, thrilling at his successful theft of a small box of matches.
Anyone else might have taken careful steps, scanning the paper-draped furniture and eerie moonbeams with wide eyes. But Lyle was more afraid of police officers than a haunted home.
Especially when his only friend was the one who haunted it.
Lyle crashed into the upstairs parlor.
Curtiss sat with his back to the far wall, his head leaning against the wallpaper. Overalls identical to Lyle’s hung off his skinny frame, and a ukulele as translucent as his skin rested in his arms.
Curtiss’s ghostly fingers strummed the ukulele, filling the parlor with a dreamy nocturne that sent a chill down Lyle’s spine. Accustomed to the feeling, Lyle ignored it and pulled the box of matches from his pocket.
“I got us some matches, Curt.” Finally, they could light the huge parlor fireplace, which had lain cold and unused since the former owner of the manor had died without an heir. Without friends.
Curtiss merely showed his teeth in a crooked smile and let his fingers play their simple but meticulous tune.
Lyle strode toward the hearth, and Curtiss spoke at last. “Do not light the fire,” he whispered.
“Why?” Lyle blinked at Curtiss in the dim moonlight and shoved the box of matches back in his pocket. “Why are you actin’ strange?”
Curtiss chuckled. “You are a mortal, Lyle. I am of the undead. You may value warmth and fire, but I, unfortunately, cannot.”
He began to sing under his breath in a language Lyle had never heard before.
“What’s that?” Lyle sat cross-legged near his friend. The memory of seeing Curtiss for the first time, in this very parlor a month ago, flitted through his mind. Curtiss had been happier then, dancing from couch to sofa to floor, tearing up a lively mortal tune.
“A lullaby in the language of the undead,” Curtiss replied, stopping momentarily before continuing the song. His shoulders slumped into his skeletal frame.
“How’d you learn? It’s real nice.”
It was creepy, but Lyle had settled long ago into the rhythm of Curtiss’s occasionally unsettling behavior. He may have been a boy like Lyle, but Lyle couldn’t wrestle him, shake his hand, or even drag him out of the house on thieving escapades.
“It was part of the knowledge imparted to me after I died.” Curtiss grinned at Lyle. “But now I grow weaker. I must eat, or my soul will crumble into nothingness.”
“Nothingness?” Lyle tilted his head and brought his knees up to his chest. His bare feet tingled in the biting winter air. “Ghosts gotta eat?”
Curtiss grinned. “Every now and then. You are a young soul, but you will have to do.”
Lyle’s eyes widened. “Huh?”
“I knew this time was coming, so I welcomed your coincidental exploration of my dwelling and assumed a form you would find… relatable.” Curtiss’s fingers never faltered on his ukulele, the haunting melody stretching on and on.
The unnatural tingling spread up Lyle’s legs and crawled through his stomach. He scrambled to his feet. “What’s going on? What are you doin’ to me, Curt?”
Curtiss licked his gray lips. “Preparing your soul for consumption.”
The ghost stood, meeting Lyle’s height exactly. He set his ukulele on the floor and opened his mouth as if to say more, but no words came out. His mouth continued to expand, wider and wider, until his jaws unhinged and morphed into fog. The rest of his lanky figure followed suit, melting into a swirling, gray vortex.
Lyle’s legs buckled. His hands groped behind him for the paper-draped sofa.
Curtiss floated toward him, a slender cloud with a nightmare for a face, his yawning mouth as silent as a grave. Dark smudges acted as eyes and cheeks, a bruise-like imitation.
Lyle screamed, but no one would be able to hear him except for the other ghosts haunting the rest of the abandoned homes on Onyx Lane. He screamed for a mother he couldn’t remember, and for loyal friends he never had.
Curtiss closed the gap between them.
He swallowed Lyle’s face first, cutting off his cries for help.
***
No noise. No light. No furniture and no fireplace.
Lyle floated in a gray sea of emptiness.
He struggled to breathe, skin stretching taut. His internal organs roiled and palpitated inside him. The blood simmered in his veins.
He felt the box of matches pressed against his aching leg and gasped as an idea rushed through his mind.
His icy fingers, so stiff it seemed they would crack at any moment, struggled to remove the matches, but at last Lyle held them in his deformed, sizzling hand. Using the last bit of energy and substance at his disposal, he removed a match from the box and struck it.
The void closed in faster than a blink, squeezing him like a clenched fist. The distant echo of an undead scream brushed past his ears.
Lyle hit solid floor. The charred match plinked beside him. He rose onto his elbows, body aching but no longer tingling, and gazed around the upstairs parlor of 13 Onyx Lane. It struck him that even matches couldn’t rid this place of its gloominess.
Perhaps it was time for Lyle to make some living friends.
Curtiss was gone, but his ukulele rested on the floorboards as a blurry remnant. Lyle stood on shaky legs, struck another match, and dropped it onto the intangible instrument.
With the last strum of an eerie chord, the ukulele poofed into mist.
Rate this story:
(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 3)
You need to be a registered member to rate this.
Loading...ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tell us your thoughts!