Page 2 of Haunt

Stained glass windows reflect colour across the otherwise white painted and dark wood interior. Four long mahogany benches lining the hall. I step through the wide double doors, releasing my grip on the black, gothic-style iron handles, I let the doors bang shut behind me. The slam echoes around the space, all eyes snapping to my late entrance. I bow my head in silent apology, my dark hair falling around my face, curtaining my smirk from the room. When the burn of eyes feels like it averts, I lift my head just enough to watch my shuffling feet take me to my usual seat at the far table.

I step over the low bench. Tuck the skirt of my dress beneath my thighs and sit slowly. Clasping my hands together, letting my eyes slip closed, I sit through the rest of the prayer I interrupted. Not that I’m religious, well, perhaps I am, but I certainly do not worship the same God as the rest of this room.

MyGod, he had warm, creamy brown skin, light blue eyes, tight, brunette afro curls that stood straight up on his head. He would bring me daisies, brush my hair, whisper into my ear whilst he held me at night, kept me safe like a big brother. We were only together in the same children’s home for a year. And then he was gone, and I were alone again.

The orphan nobody wanted.

Well, nobodygoodwanted.

I wonder sometimes, having only ever been together under the cover of night, when he would sneak into my room. His heart beating solidly beneath my cheek as he cradled me to his chest. Protected me. If he was ever really there at all.

Perhaps he was a phantom, a haunting figment of my imagination.

Another lie.

This one being something I told myself.

Started to believe.

Even still, my elbows resting on the solid surface of the table, echoes of‘Amens’filling the huge hall, I pray.

To him.

For him.

Forus.

Head turning, as if of its own accord, my eyes blink open, and that’s when I see it. Breath burns my lungs as it catches in my throat and my tongue sticks to the roof of my suddenly dry mouth.

Billy Blackwell.

I could not erase those pale eyes from my memory if I scraped out the inside of my skull with a blunt hatchet. My mind conjures him, always. Obsessively so. But, when it does, he is always the teenager I fell in love with. The one I pined for. He was older than I. Tall, so, so tall, and skinny, as though his bones grew with the rest of him always trying to catch up. Serious eyes that felt too seeing, and a sly smirk that he only ever softened for me. Hands that drew blood and ears that kept secrets. Lips that never dared brush my own.

He is not…this.

Broad and wide and muscular, a dipped chin with a sinister glare.

I blink at him down the table, merely ten feet away on the opposite side of the wood and he is gone. Evaporating into thin air as though he never were. With nothing more than a flutter of my lashes, I have banished him from this holy place like I just performed a silent exorcism.

Frantically, heart hammering in my chest, I twist my head on my shoulders, press up, lean forward onto the palms of my hands, clammy and slick against the tabletop. The ends of my hair graze the plate of food set before me, but I do not care, I cannot shake this feeling that it is not just inside my head. Or perhaps it is, and I have finally gone mad.

I feel unwell.

It feels like a fresh loss.

Why am I thinking of the boy who left me?

Who promised his return.

He was supposed to save me from them.

But I am ruined.

Tainted.

By holy hands and unholier vows.

My fingers instantly cover my belly. Sickness and shame swirling and twirling through my gut as if I’m on the spinning teacup ride at the funfair. I cannot be here. In this hall. In this place. Filled with innocent children with thoughts of heaven and shiny dreams. I am not made for these white shimmery threads of hope.

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