The Ever After

Chapter Six: The Hauntings

IT LOOKED LIKE LIFE AT WHITE MOSS MANOR would never be normal again.

It was not so much that the house seemed to be flooding with ghosts as much as it seemed that ghosts had been in the house the whole time, and May simply hadn't seen them. This impression was created because, from that day forward, whenever she saw a ghost, it appeared to be right at home.

The night after the ghost in the bathtub, May came face-to-face with a woman dangling by a rope from the rafters of the back stairway, her neck tilted at a horrible angle. May threw both hands over her mouth and sprinted down the stairs, hiding under the high bed in Bertha Brettwaller's old guest room. When she investigated an hour later, the woman was gone.

In the kitchen for a late-night snack that night (she hadn't eaten all day), May found six men in football uniforms, sitting at the table, moving their mouths but making no sound. May's mom sat in the one seat not occupied by a ghost, working on her laptop. Only Somber Kitty looked at the men from time to time as he lapped at his water dish.

The next evening Mrs. Bird found May, hiding behind the couch in the dusty, rarely used second parlor, where she'd just seen a pair of small glowing children with missing hands, playing hide-and-seek. When Mrs. Bird questioned her, May said she'd been catching dust bunnies.

Strangely the creature with the round, lopsided head was the only one who appeared more than once. While the others never showed up a second night in a row, he returned night after night, appearing in the strangest of places at the most unexpected times. May opened her closet to get her pajamas, and there he was, dangling from a clothes hanger, a wicked smile plastered across his face. May walked down to the study to grab a book, and he was lying on the chaise lounge, one hand lazily draped behind his head while he looked out the window at the fireflies that had come out to light up the backyard like dancing stars. She sat at her desk, and she would find him in her doorway, watching her, and she'd crawl under her bed until he went away.

For five nights in a row May stayed up each night, most of the night, with her eyes on her bedroom door for ghostly intruders. And every morning, just before dawn, she watched through her bedroom window as the ghosts trickled down the front walkway and into the woods in what seemed to be the direction of the lake. It was only when the last ghost disappeared into the trees that she ever fell asleep.

Dark circles formed under May's and her mother's eyes. Though May tried her best to hide the situation, it would have been hard for anyone not to notice her spitting and throwing salt wherever she went. She'd started wearing every piece of silver she could find. She'd tied a four-piece set of silverware around her waist like a skirt and pinned the onyx brooch from her shelf onto her shirt.

She collected all the food she could fit in her arms, filled her favorite canteen with water, and built a tepee in the most protected corner of her room. It was filled with her small collection of silver dollars, and dried periwinkle from one of her mother's wreaths. She posted a NO TRESPASSING sign on the entrance. It became her nightly hiding place, where she curled against the back wall and watched for ghosts.

But life at the manor had changed in another way, too. A host of papers, catalogs, and brochures had begun pouring in from Saint Agatha's, landing on the kitchen table in a heap as they tumbled out of Mrs. Bird's arms. While May stayed as far away from them as possible, Mrs. Bird pored over them in earnest, clutching her tea mug in one hand and turning the pages with the other.