Chapter one
Darien
Darien
Sunny Ridge was notorious for being anything but sunny. It was also were I lived my whole life, and my whole death. I was born in Sunny Ridge Hospital on November 2nd 1992, I went to school at Sunny Ridge public school, and Sunny Ridge high school and even attended my own funeral at Sunny Ridge funeral home. It was safe to say that Sunny Ridge was my home, and probably would be for eternity.
Most people would assume that eternity is a long time to stay in one place, but when your dead like me it's really not hard at all. You don't live for tomorrow, your live for today this exact moment. If you did live for tomorrow, it's be to hard to handle- so you learn to live for today. And truthfully speaking this exact moment was a complete bore.
Beside me, Kellen Doe who is also a ghost, whistles at one of the alive girls walking past us, towards the high school.
"What I'd do to be able to tap that." Kellen laughs as the girl walks away, her heels clicking on the sidewalk. If only she knew two teenage ghosts were watching her, one of them even wanting her.
"You could you know." I told him as I looked up at the opaque sky. "Ghost's can show themselves."
"Easy for you to say mate." Kellen jumped off the brick wall were we were perched, and knocked off a students hat. I watched the student scramble after it, he probably thought the wind had blew it off.
Sometimes they could be so daft, blaming nature for the unnatural things that happened around them. A slight breeze could only do so much.
The boy walked away after his hat was back on his head. There wasn't even a slight worry that maybe it wasn't the wind that blew his hat away. Kellen turned back towards me looking slightly bored.
Being a ghost wasn't a very fun job, the glorious fun rubs off after a while. When you first wake up as a ghost everything’s new. The world you once new becomes clearer, you see more. Doors that were once shut to you become open. Colors are more brighter, heat is more warmer, you're more stronger.
There are a lot of ghosts in the world who allow the living to see them. When a ghost chooses to show himself, the wound they died from is shown as well. So if someone got shot in the head, or their neck was slit, it wouldn't be wise to show themselves.
"Do you want to go to rosemary's?" Kellen asked, hands in his pockets.
Rosemary was one of Kellen's victims who he loved to scared. She was a older Latino lady, extremely religious and always alone. She lived in a small cottage and was the kind of old lady who baked cookies, and tended her flower garden. I even found myself drawn to her because she reminded me of my own grandma, but I never told Kellen that.
"Ah, you know what man. Those new folk are moving into my house today." I said. "I'm kinda curious."
Kellen nodded. "Well you know where to find me man."
Of course, I always new were to find Kellen. He was ether here at the high school, staring at girls, or at Rosemary's or his home. Which was condemned, lucky guy.
As I walked home the weather started to shift. Grey clouds tumbled down from the sky framing the world around me in a sunless glow. It had become one of those cold November afternoons that stung my limbs with coldness. Memories flooded my mind of when I was alive and playing football dunning high school. My fingers would be frozen and everything I would throw or catch the ball they’d sting in pain. Now being a ghost I could just barley feel the stinging pain of coldness as it fought past my already freezing aura. Now I was so used to the cold that it didn’t bother me much at all. I wanted to be warm again, but it took so much for me to even feel a flicker of heat. Ghosts always had a freezing aura, it wrapped around us like we lived in a ice cube. That’s why when people usually say they experienced a ghost, they always experience cold.
I couldn’t get mad at the fact that I became a ghost. You only become a ghost two ways, dying in vein, or choosing the ghostly fate knowing all to well that you’ll be a ghost for eternity. Even if the world blows up I’d still be here. I’d be there to witness it all.
But I did this to myself one hundred percent aware that I would be damning myself to being a ghost for eternity.
My home was in the center of town just around the corner from Sunny Ridge High school. It was the house I grew up in, were I played with my brothers and one sister. I would sit in that house every night and have dinner with my family. Like it or not I was tied to this house. After I had died I watched my grief stricken family pack up and leave. In the three years that I was dead only two family’s lived in my house. A newly wed couple who moved shortly after they even moved in. And a family of three. The family of three I liked. The dad, David was never around and Sheryl, the mom reminded me a lot of my mother. There young son Jenkins saw me from time to time, I had become him imaginary friend. Two months ago they divorced because David was having an affair. They left a week ago, I was really sad to see them go.
As I walk up to the house I see a moving truck and a woman probably in her early forties leaning up against it. The woman was on a cell phone and a small cardboard box rested on her hip. I don’t know if it was the weather that made her look so depressed or if it was the person on the other end of the phone who she was screaming at.
“Don’t sorry me Matt! I just traveled across the country in a large truck, Having anxiety attacks the whole blood way up here. You Know Olivia had to drive? And then you have the nerve to tell me that your quitting! After all I did for you!” The woman ruffled her hair and continued her rant. “So now I have to tell Cam Peterson to hire me a new assistant after I whined and complained to him that I wanted you! Ugh, hold on.”
The woman put her phone against her shoulder and shifted the box. “Olivia! I have to swing by the office. Will you be okay ordering pizza tonight?”
I started to wonder who she was talking to, there was no one here except the woman and I. I walked over and leaned against the maple tree that took up most of my backyard when the girl named Olivia jumped from the back of the moving truck, stunning me.
I was instantly taken back, she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She had the biggest most brightest green eyes I had ever seen. I felt giddy all of a sudden. Was she living in my house?
“Pizza’s fine” She told the woman who I was assuming her mother.
I bounded off the tree, no longer wanting to watch the woman on the phone because my attention was being shifted to the pretty girl named Olivia. Olivia was pulling out a box from the back of the truck and as I approached I looked more closely at her features. She wasn’t perfect, but that made her even more beautiful. Her features were soft, her skin clear and slightly tanned but with blushed cheeks. Her lips were soft pink but her eyes were so… haunting.
I stepped back once the box was under her arm and followed her to my house, well her house, our house. They must have been here a while, I thought as I walked in the front door. The living room was already set with white plush sofas and pretty settings.
I followed Olivia into my old bedroom, which was now hers. I still slept there, usually on the floor. The room was filled with boxes and a large queen sized bed. A large pile of earthy green sheets lay at the foot of the bed and I was glad that they weren’t pink.
I sat next to the sheets and just hoped she didn’t walk to close or worse, sits on me. I doubt she’d be able to feel the icy coldness that radiated off me because the bedroom window was open and let in the icy November breeze in. How could she stand it? If I didn’t have this deathly aura that froze down to the bone I’d be toasty warm.
Olivia was running around her bedroom, hanging curtains there, laying out her oak colored rug here. I watched her and noted how graceful she moved, like a dancer always on her toes. She folded all her clothes and placed them neatly in her dark wood chest, personally I would have just stuck them in.
If I was alive.
I could hear Olivia’s mom yelling some more from the kitchen downstairs. She sounded like a force that shouldn’t be reckoned with. A woman with authority.
Olivia didn’t pay much attention to the fury that was going on between her mother and whoever the poor person was she was talking to. Instead she was now delicately unwrapping a collection of silver photo frames.
I stood up and walked over to were she was kneeling. I winced when I stepped on the floor board, making it creak beside her. She didn’t notice, thank god but instead she was looking at one of her photo’s. Her eyes glistened like stars as she gazed down at the photo’s. They were all of this one man, a older man who looked exactly like her. The same eyes, the same soft features, I knew it was her father. The pictures of her father ranged from different time periods, one was her father with a baby, who I assume it was Olivia, and the second was her father, her mother and her on a boat with a big fish in her fathers hand. Then was another picture, it made my stomach turn and my dead heart swell with sadness, it was Olivia, probably just a little younger then she is now sitting in a room decked out in white. She was sitting on a white hospital bed with a older man dressed in a white hospital gown. I stressed my eyes to see the old man clearer then I regretted it. The old man was her father, but he looked so sickly and deathly it made him look years older then the other pictures. His head was bald and his skin looked grey and stretched across bone. His eyes were black from heavy bags and were glassy, see through. He looked like a man who was ready for the coffin.
Olivia traced her fingers over the silver picture frame. “I miss you Daddy.” She whispered, and made me jump.
I must of leaned to much because she suddenly shivered and wrapped her sweater tighter over her tiny arms. I stood up fast trying to get a bit of distance between us but it was to late, she looked terrified.
She must know about ghosts.
I swore to myself and backed out her bedroom door. Thankfully people can’t hear ghosts, unless we speak to them and show ourselves.
When I was just out in the hall I watched Olivia put her head down and stare at the picture. Her shoulder’s hunched down and she looked like she was dreading something.
Then it got cold, middle of the night in February cold. So cold it gave me the chills.
Olivia shuttered, her breath now foggy in the dry coldness. I felt my nostrils freeze sticking together and all I could do was watch in horror.
The figure appeared out of nowhere and right away I knew it was a ghost, a powerful old ghost and I wondered if Olivia saw him the way I could see him right now. He was draped in black like the reaper himself. I waited for her to scream or pass out in fear but she just sat there, shuttering and staring down at her pictures.
The ghost turned to me, it’s face hidden but I could tell it was watching me in the doorway. I started to tremble and for the first time since I died, I was fearful.
I didn’t move, didn’t tear my gaze away from the reaper ghost. This was my house and I wasn’t going to let him have it.
“Please” I heard Olivia whisper, like a prayer. “Just leave me alone.”
The figure approached her, I could see it’s faint aura swallowing her in and she began to sob. The ghost turned to me once again and I could feel it’s power, it’s obsession for Olivia and it was letting me know that she was his. He didn’t tell me, but I knew.
Then I felt like I was chocking, like there were hands around my windpipe pressing my Adam’s apple. If I needed air I’d be freaking out.
But I was already dead.
The ghost wrapped it’s aura around Olivia like sea mist on a harbor. It was possessive and I was threating it. I back out of the room and into the hallway and watched Olivia slink to the ground, curling into a little ball.
Then the door slammed shut, the frame shuttered from the hurricane force that penetrated it and I heard the door lock from the inside.
I was helpless to her.
I was dead to her.
I was nothing.
I sunk down to the floor and waited for what seem to be hours. Then I heard the sobbing stop and the door flew open, leaving me to see what was left of the beautiful girl.
Rite on.
