The Haunting (Or: Ghost Is Literally A Ghost)

Night Five (IV)

Now that you looked at him, his eyes made you sad. In his living days, their colour probably hadn't been too far from the amber autumn leaves that you sometimes watched falling down the trees, but now they just looked dull and dreary, the milky hue making them devoid of any sparkle.

Just as you slightly let your guard down, he stretched out his arm and made a step forward. With another whimper, you almost jumped backwards, your back hitting the desk hard enough to shake the coffee mug.

It jerked back and forth behind you until it toppled over the edge, crashing onto the wooden floor. The coffee would leave stains if you didn't mop it up immediately, but there was a more pressing issue right in front of you.

A ghost namely, his gloved hand reaching for your face. Your shaking hands found the edge of the desk, your nails digging into the hard material until they hurt, and his face was so close that you felt your ragged breaths hitting the fabric of his mask.

From this close, you almost couldn't see the grey shimmer coating his body, and if it wasn't for his empty eyes boring into you from the hole of the balaclava, he would look almost human.

"What...?", you managed to press out, but that was it.

Simon's heart broke when he realised how scared you were upon seeing him. But he couldn't blame you, could he?

All that was left of him was scary, he wasn't meant to be in a world where beautiful things existed, or where people like you lived their happy little life. A disturbance, that's what he was, pulling innocent souls into the depths of hell with him.

He hated that he needed to ask you for your help, because you shouldn't have to worry about him, actually nobody should after what he had done. Maybe the place in hell that was reserved for him was justified, but just a glimpse of what it looked like had pushed him into a downward spiral of fear.

He remembered most of his life, although the past days and years were blurry, mushing together into a thick fog. But one thing he was sure of, nothing in his life had given him as much terror as the state he was in right now.

And he was also sure that, if he would apologise, he would be able to redeem his soul to avoid burning for eternity. Therefore, your help was crucial.

Finding his dog tag on your kitchen table had given him some kind of power surge, as if touching a piece of himself pulled a part of his soul back from the hellfire up to earth.

If you helped him find his mask, maybe he would regain his ability to speak...

Oh how desperately he wished to be able to tell you where it was, but he didn't remember where in this house he died, just that it had been gone when he 'woke up', a piece of his essence missing.

His hand finally came in contact with your cheek, yet he felt the same as usual.

Nothing.

But at least he was able to actually touch you this time, a kind of relief rooted in rationality spreading in his chest as his fingers didn't go right through your head.

Your nervous eyes flickered towards his hand, and you held your breath to avoid crying. You expected him to twist or squeeze your neck, maybe he just wanted company in the afterlife, but no such thing happened.

His touch felt too gentle for what he was, although his hand was ice cold even through the fabric of the gloves.

"..."

The frustration he felt because he couldn't speak was immeasurable.

Always enough emotional capacity for negativity but never for more, he thought angrily, and against any better judgement and although he never intended to hurt you, he suddenly started squeezing your cheeks.

For a split second, he relished in the ability to touch, but then he caught your expression, your wide open eyes and lips quivering in fear. He saw his own reflection in your glassy eyes and guilt washed over him.

As sudden as he had started, he let go and you jolted back, along the edge of the desk until your shoulder hit the wall. The little breaths you had been holding erupted from your lungs all at once, and you choked on them.

He stood further away now, looking at his own hands in disbelief, frustrated by the loss of control. Thanks to that he had hurt you, although that was the last thing he wanted to do.

"...", he wanted to apologise, but nothing came out.

Your hand massaged your face, not taking your eyes off of him. It was surprising, but this encounter hadn't made you more afraid, if anything you now slowly started to understand.

It wasn't his fault.

He was in a state he didn't understand himself, he had tried reaching out and the eeriness of this all was merely a side effect. The way his outburst upset him was evidence enough.

Finally, you found your voice and you dared to address him, from further away just in case.

"It's– It's okay", you stuttered, moving back to your initial spot along the edge of the desk.

"..."

Internally, he was almost screaming at you for being so careless. Nothing was okay, he hurt you, and he couldn't promise that it wouldn't happen again in a fit of rage, induced by overflowing negative emotions.

You watched how his expression changed. Brows turned in despair, his mouth opening in another futile attempt to speak. He looked down at his hands again, balling them into fists once they started shaking.

Your shoulders relaxed. No, you weren't scared of him anymore.

Right now, seeing him in a state that did not reflect his menacing appearance, you just pitied him.

You wondered what it felt like to be dead. And then you realised that he wasn't even just dead, his body was gone and his soul was trapped in a state that was neither this nor that, bound to this earth by an unexplainable force.

"You...", you started nervously, your tongue darting out to wet your lips, "you can't speak, right? You want to, but you can't?"

His head tilted to the side as if he was processing that you spoke to him, but then he nodded.

"...", it was a low creaking sound that he managed to produce, but there was no message carried behind it.

"I'm sorry", you whispered then, with no idea what your intention was. Showing him that you cared, maybe.

With a sudden flash of inspiration, you turned around to rummage around on your desk. The floorboards creaked behind you, and you whisked around, still enough fear in your body that you realised you shouldn't have turned your back on him.

The remnant shell of his inert heart tugged as he saw how scared you looked and he scolded himself for walking towards you when you weren't looking.

He hadn't interacted with a human being since his death almost two years ago, and it was showing. 529 days of absolutely destructive solitude.

You stared at him, a pen in one shaky hand, a piece of paper in the other. He stared back with his peculiar eyes, focusing on your face.

Yes. He had been right about you, you were the one who could help him. A brave, kind soul, a witty brain behind those pretty doe eyes.

Slowly, you made some space at the edge of the desk, putting the newfound form of communication down without taking your eyes off of him. He didn't either, and you didn't shy away when he was suddenly right next to you, at least two heads taller.

The proximity was almost crushing you mentally, the atmosphere around him made you feel like gravity had tripled below your feet, and yet your mind didn't tell you to run. Not that you could have managed anyways.

Meanwhile, he was staring at the pen like he had never seen one before. It felt feathery light in his hand, and it didn't slip through, meaning that it was actually his dog tag giving him new strength.

Was that what excitement felt like nowadays? He wondered what it had felt like when he was alive and breathing, how any physical reaction felt back then, actually.