As in, I could use one! Just kidding… I mean, I could use one, certainly. But I tend to write these quickly and other than reading them aloud to Akilah (where I do manage to catch a lot), I don’t have a lot of time for editing. I’ll go back and edit all of these soon. I may have a project for these after this year’s 31 Ghosts wraps up. But more on that later!
Sophia had just cleared the dinner plates and came back in from the kitchen with an ornate tart with plum slices carefully layered in concentric circles inside a crumbly crust. “Hope you left room for dessert,” she said as she set the plate on the table.
“Oh, Sophia,” Jacqueline said, “That looks exquisite!”
“Thank you!” Sophia beamed. “Plum tart with lemon shortbread crust.”
“Honey,” Andrew said, “That does loom amazing. Can I get anyone anything else to drink? Coffee? Oh, you know, I have a lovely Navarro Gewürztraminer that would go great with this…” he stood up and crossed to the wine fridge next to the kitchen.
Lacy shared a look with Jacqueline and said “That sounds amazing. Jacqueline just introduced me to Gewürztraminers recently.”
“Well, she liked the Riesling we served at our wedding,” Jacqueline explained, squeezing Lacy’s hand. “I figured she should try some other Alsatian wines.”
“That was such a wonderful wedding,” Sophia said setting down a small stack of dessert plates.
“Thank you!” Lacy said. “We’re so glad you both could make it—”
Her sentence was cut off as Andrew opened the door of the wine fridge and a bottle violently shot out at bullet-speed, missing Sophia’s head by inches and smashing loudly against the opposite wall.
Sophia stood statue still, eyes squeezed shut, her face a mask of fear and resignation.
“Oh my God, Sophia,” Andrew ran to his wife. “Are you okay, honey?”
Jacqueline had instinctively thrown her arm around Lacy. “What was that?”
Before Andrew could say anything, a deep laugh echoed through the house and all the cabinet drawers in the kitchen started opening and slamming shut repeatedly.
Lacy burrowed into Jaqueline’s arm and Andrew put his arm around Sophia who melted into him.
Then, as suddenly as everything started, everything silenced. The laughing abruptly stopped. The cabinets ceased flapping open and closed, some hanging open.
Still holding his wife, Andrew broke the heavy silence. “I am so sorry,” he started.
“What in the hell was that?” Jacqueline asked, eyes wide.
Andrew helped his wife sit down, pulled his chair closer to hers and started, “So, uh… we have a bit of a ghost problem…”
“I’m sorry, what?” Jacqueline asked incredulously.
“Ghosts,” Sophia said. “Or a ghost,” she waved a hand, “I don’t know,” she said, tears of frustration in her eyes. “We have a haunted house.”
“Ghosts aren’t real!” Lacy said, straightening up from Jacqueline.
“Uh, honey,” Jaqueline cocked an eyebrow, “I think we just witnessed some pretty incontrovertible proof to the contrary.”
“It’s been getting worse,” Andrew said seriously. “When we first moved in two years ago there were some little things – items would disappear and reappear in weird places… then it became footsteps at night. The wine bottle,” he gestured to the pool of shattered glass and wine at the base of the wall, “That’s new.”
“It makes sense, though,” Sophia said. “After the… messages…”
“Messages?” Lacy asked.
“About a week ago?” Andrew looked at his wife who nodded “Sophia was getting out of the shower and there was this… message written on the condensation in the mirror.”
Sophia pulled out her phone and flicked a few screens and handed it to Lacy. Jacqueline looked over her should at the screen with a picture of a fogged-up mirror. written on the mirror THE words “WERE WATCHING YOU” in large letters were clearly visible.
“’Were watching you?’” Jacqueline said. “Like, what, they were watching you but aren’t now?”
“No,” Andrew said, “We think the ghost or ghosts forgot an apostrophe, like ‘we are watching you.”
“Oh,” Lacy said, nodding.
“There’s more… scroll,” Sophia said making a swiping gesture.
Lacy scrolled to the next image and Jacqueline gasped in horror.
“You’re not alone?” Lacy asked surprised at the outsized reaction.
“That’s not what it says. They used the wrong ‘your’!”
Andrew guffawed. “I should have known that’s what my editor would notice!”
“You,” Jacqueline leveled a finger at Andrew, “Have never given me anything with this level of horror before.”
They all laughed, breaking the tension for a moment.
“There’s more,” Sophia said.
Lacy swiped to the next picture: “YOU CANT ESCAPE US SOPHIA”.
“Oh my God,” Lacy and Jacqueline said in unison. Then Lacy exclaimed, “It knows your name?” while Jacqueline exclaimed “It can’t give us a single apostrophe? Clearly this thing is indeed in hell. Punctuation hell…” she shook her head.
Lacy swiped. “”NICE PRIEST YOU HAD HEAR HE HAD NO AFFECT ON US WERE NOT GOING ANYWHERE”.
“They’re getting longer!” Lacy gasped.
Jacqueline shook her head in disbelief. “No periods? Look, being dead is no excuse here. And they used ‘affect’ instead of ‘effect’? This… monster!”
“Okay, to be fair,” Andrew said, “I screw that up too….” Sophia and Lacy both nodded in agreement.
“Oh come on, people! ‘Effect’ is a noun! ‘Affect’ indicates influence,” she gesticulated wildly.
After a moment Andrew shook his head, “Yeah, I still don’t get it…”
Jacqueline started to protest but Lacy let out a squeak.
“This one is from today?” she asked.
Sophie nodded seriously, “After work I threw together the tart and took a quick shower. I stepped out to find… that.”
Jacqueline looked at the picture of the fogged mirror with the words “THEIR IS NO WHERE TO HIDE WELL FIND YOU AND TAKE YOU’RE SOLE”. Her face twisted in fury at the grammatical nightmare. Then her eyes widened.
“Jacqueline?” Andrew asked at her apparent surprise.
Jacqueline took the phone from Lacy and scrolled back. “This one,” she showed the phone to Sophia. The picture with the message “NICE PRIEST YOU HAD HEAR HE HAD NO AFFECT ON US” showed. “You had a priest out here?”
“Yes, a few days ago. He blessed the house…. Sprinkled holy water… prayed. You can see it didn’t have any effect,” she emphasized the “e”.
Jacqueline smiled, then nodded thoughtfully. “Honey,” she said to Lacy, “I need your lipstick.”
Lacy involuntarily pursed her ruby-colored lips before reaching for her purse and fumbling around. She came out with a silver tube. “You know that’s not your color…”
“No, I have an idea…” she stood up and walked out of the room into the bedroom and closed the bathroom door.
Lacy, Andrew, and Sophia traded puzzled looks as they heard the sound of water coming on in the bathroom. Long moments passed.
“So… maybe some tart?” Lacy broke the silence.
“Oh, sure,” Sophia said and started to cut into the plum tart.
The lights went out. A deep, male, guttural howl rang out seemingly emanating from everywhere in the house at once vibrating the foundation. The sound of the cupboards flapping again echoed while the dessert plates spun off the table in different directions in the dark, lending the smashing of plates to the cacophony.
Then it stopped.
The lights flickered and came on steady. Andrew looked around and saw that magazines and papers had also flown around in the darkness and the whole place looked genuinely ransacked.
“Jacqueline!” Lacy sprung from her chair and darted towards the bathroom. Andrew and Sophia were close behind when the bathroom door opened, and Jacqueline stepped out casually putting the cap back on the lipstick. A self-satisfied grin split her face. “Oh, Jackie!” Lacy wrapped her in tight embrace.
“What… what happened?” Andrew asked exasperated.
“Take a look…” she said, gesturing over her shoulder at the door where steam still flowed out.
The three moved into the humid room and stared at the mirror. On the mirror was the previous message: “THEIR IS NO WEAR TO HIDE WELL FIND YOU AND TAKE YOU’RE SOLE”. But red lipstick crossed out “THEIR” and above it wrote “There”. Two horizontal parentheses indicated “NO” and “WEAR” should be one word, while “WEAR” was crossed out with “WHERE” written above it. A red circled period split “HIDE” and “WELL” while an apostrophe inside a carrot hovered between the “E” and “L” of “WELL”. “YOU’RE” and “SOLE” were crossed out with “YOUR” and “SOUL” written above it.
“Oh my God,” Andrew stared slack-jawed. “You… you did it…”
“Did what?” Lacy asked.
“Only an editor,” Sophie said, “knows how to kill a writer’s soul.”
Jacqueline crossed her arms across her chest in satisfaction.
