House of Shadows - Chap. 1

Okay, so this is something I started a while ago. It's different for me, because I wanted the writing to be raw. Rough. Purposefully ignorant. I'm hoping to convey the MC as a complex mixture of childish unknowing and a sort of wise adult, if that makes sense. So let me know if I pull it off, and just tear it apart. Enjoy.

Chapter One

I’d been hidden in the house for twelve years when I saw him. No other boy I’d ever seen from my peepholes had ever caught my attention the way he did; I couldn’t explain why it was him that did.

He didn’t know I existed, of course, when he came to live with my father, my stepmother, and my sister. He had no idea what kind of ghosts lived in the walls of my house, no comprehension of the whispered tales that still survived and trembled in the air. He couldn’t hear them the way I could. Then again, neither did anyone else. I was alone in my world of tension and despair.

Father needed someone to work with him on the wood. All the land he’d owned had been taken because of the lack of payment, and so Father decided to cut down our own trees for the lumber he sold each year. I was sad to see my beloved trees go, but there was only so much I could do to act against Father. Only so much fear and wariness I could instill within him.

The boy that I grew to love simply by watching worked hard. He was beautiful as well. I looked down at him from the attic window sometimes, admiring the way his skin was darkened by the sun, the way his muscles were defined and delicate at the same time.

He was frightened, though. I heard him tell Father that as soon as they loaded the last of the boards, he was going to the city. He gave no reason for the eagerness to leave, but I knew. He sensed something. Maybe me. But this house was enough to scare away any normal person, and I didn’t blame him for wanting to escape.

My sister, who was usually gone all the time during the day and after school, suddenly was around. A lot. She stood by the boy when he was working on the machine by the shed, smiling up at him and waving her hands as she talked in a way I recognized. She was showing him her sweet side, her appealing side. The side she showed me whenever she wanted something.

One day I asked her why she talked to him so much. She sat at the piano, fiddling—she hated to practice, but the boy was coming in soon, so she would show him what she could do.

My voice did not startle her as it used to; she’d gotten used to it coming from nowhere. She smiled, looking around.

“Why do I talk to him so much, Katherine? Isn’t it obvious?”

It was, but I didn’t want to admit it. Didn’t want to acknowledge what was staring me right in the face.

“He’s leaving soon,” I whispered from my hiding place.

She only smoothed her hair back. “Maybe. Maybe not. What would you know?”

I knew more than she thought I did. I saw much from all my time in the walls, under the stairs, up in the attic. Father had tried to find me once. My stepmother had ordered him to, saying that my nonsense had gone on long enough. With her standing over him, he’d actually torn up a few of the walls in the house. But one night when he was sleeping, I held a knife to his throat and whispered in his ear.

He fixed the walls the next morning and never said my name out loud again. When my stepmother screeched in his ear, he only brushed off her words like a raindrop sliding off of a leaf. And he left my sister alone, just as I’d instructed him to. Because deep down he was what I thought every person was: a coward. Even me; why else would I pass the years turning my face from the rest of the world? I believe that Father let me do it because he was ashamed of me. I reminded him of what he’d lost and what he’d done. I was a living ghost to him with the ability to make him remember.

Time passed. The boy became used to the creaking house and my sister’s flirtations. I hadn’t known how serious they were until I saw them kissing in his room one night.

I wasn’t angry. I loved my sister too much for that. But I buried myself even deeper into the life I’d created for myself, if possible. Eventually I stopped paying attention to what Father was doing, what Elisa was doing. It didn’t matter anymore.

Or so I thought.

It was on a Tuesday that my sister’s boyfriend talked to me. I don’t know why I was watching him again; it only pained me. But that day Elisa had had some friends over, and seeing all of them laugh and joke he struck something in me I’d tried to shove away.

He was pulling on a clean shirt, getting ready for church, when he cocked his head suddenly and turned.

“Hello?” he called out.

I hadn’t made a sound, so I wasn’t initially alarmed. Many people believed ghosts roamed the halls of my house and got spooked. I continued to watch the young man, wishing I had the courage to speak.

He listened for a moment more, then shrugged and dismissed whatever it had been he was disturbed about. The man turned away and finished buttoning. He went to the dresser and grabbed a tie draped over the chair in front of it, and struggled with it.

He laughed a little. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this, do you?” he said.

My brow furrowed a little. Perhaps working in the sun had affected him, or he was really that scared.

The boy tossed aside the tie with a mutter that I couldn’t catch, and went to the door. His hand was on the knob, and he was just about to pull the door open and leave me alone to silence when he stopped again. He turned and surveyed his room with a perplexed frown.

“I know you’re here,” he said to the air. No, to me. “I hear you sometimes. Above us, or coming into the room when you think it’s too loud to hear you.”

I was alive. With hope, with desperation, with doubt, with hesitance, with confusion. Did he think it was an actually person he was talking to, or just some ghost? There was no way Elisa had told him about me—she never had spoken of me to anyone. My existence embarrassed her. I was her and Father’s appalling secret.

The boy looked around one last time, and sighed. “Listen to me,” he scoffed. “Talking to no one. You need help, Knight.”

And he left. But that moment changed me, made me think. Maybe he wouldn’t find me so disgusting, like I knew Elisa did. Maybe he wouldn’t despise me, like Father. Maybe he wouldn’t find my approach so shocking… Maybe we could be friends. The idea was so startling that my heart may have ceased to beat for a moment.