The *** House

I was sitting on the railing in front of the house a couple of days later. I didn't want to be seen, and I got my wish. I had to admit that this particular aspect of the afterlife was kind of nice. I could be invisible whenever I willed it to be so.

I was watching the police haul my body out of the bushes that lined the yard. A neighbour had been walking their dog sometime that morning, and the canine had sniffed out my decaying corpse. It had been a horrifying thing to witness, and Tate had tried to shield me from it. He had held me back as I had ran for the front door, and he had begged me to go up to the attic so that I would avoid the temptation outside. So I had vanished.

I gazed at the scene with a pang of sadness as my body was covered with a white sheet and crime scene photos were taken. I knew that I couldn't casually walk up and discuss the situation. No matter how much my body had decomposed, it was still me. And I couldn't imagine that explaining my ghostly status would be easy. Instead, I tucked my feet up on the wide railing beside me and watched as a stretcher was loaded into a nearby ambulance, and all traces of my humanity were lost from this place forever. I rested my head against the nearest post and closed my eyes. Soon my family would find out why I hadn't been home in a few days. My mother would cry, and my brother would vow revenge. But the person who did it would likely get away. Too much time had passed, and there was no real evidence connecting him to my death.

I hardly noticed when the vehicles all disappeared, and I didn't even look up when the door to the house opened and closed. I knew that nobody could see me now, even if they were dead too.

"I know you're out here," Tate said quietly. I watched as he paced across the porch. "The worst is over now. Really, it is." When I didn't respond, he stopped walking and leaned across the railing, inches from my leg. "Please don't hide from me. I know you're hurt right now."

I debated my options for a moment, then decided that upsetting Tate would do nothing but harm me in the end. I allowed myself to be seen, and for some reason he didn't seem surprised to find me so close to him. He didn't move. He stared out at the street where the police cruisers had been mere minutes before. The only indication that I had become tangible to him was the way that the very corner of his lips had flickered with the faintest hint of a smile. I cleared my throat.

"Everyone is going to know I'm dead."

He nodded his head in agreement. "Yeah, they will. But that won't change anything."

"What if they come here to see where I died? I feel like that's something my dad might do."

"If they do come here, you're going to wish that they hadn't. Nothing good comes from that."

"You get to see your brother every day. I'm jealous of that," I admitted.

"Don't be jealous. Beau can't hold up a conversation. Trust me when I say that having family around is nothing but a curse."

I stared off toward the bushes, which were now trampled and wilting. "You keep saying that, but I feel like it would be better if I could just tell them that I'm okay. If I could somehow let them know that I love them, and that I have someone to take care of me, maybe they wouldn't feel so bad. Maybe they wouldn't hurt."

The sunlight slanted between the posts and cast long, afternoon shadows across the porch. The air was already beginning to cool. I waited patiently for Tate to respond, but he didn't make a sound. I turned to see if I could guess what he was thinking, but I found that he had vanished altogether. Bewildered, I hopped down off of the railing and scanned the area. He was gone.

I let out a frustrated growl. "You got mad at me for hiding. How is this any different?"

"You there!"

I spun around in a flurry, stopping just as a woman climbed up the porch steps. Her light hair was swept up and pinned back, and her makeup was done so perfectly that I suspected she had just been to the salon. Her expression was disapproving. The tightness of her thin lips did nothing to mask her age. I would have put her in her late fifties, if I had to guess. Nevertheless, she held her head high and looked down on me.

"This is no place for a young girl to spend her time. Go on, shoo!" She waved her hands out in front of her as if sweeping me aside.

I found myself speechless and perplexed. The woman let herself into the house, and I followed a few paces behind. She didn't seem to notice that I was still there, even though I was making no attempt to disappear. This was my house now, and she had no right to tell me to leave. What was she doing here, anyway?

"Tate!" She called out. I felt my stomach clench. I wanted to know who she was, and what she wanted with Tate, but I still found that I couldn't form any kind of intelligent speech. "Tate, honey, come out now. I need to talk to you."

"Is that so?" Tate's voice emanated from behind me. When I turned to look at him, his jaw was set and his eyes were wild. Whoever this woman was, he wasn't happy to see her.

The woman noticed then that I stood between the two of them. "Who are you?" she snapped, agitated. "I thought I told you to go on home."

"She is home," Tate spoke for me. He looked as if he were daring the old woman to contradict him.

"What did you do?" she breathed. Her voice reeked of desparation, and her cheeks lost much of their colour as she looked at the boy behind me. "Tell me you didn't-"

"She got mugged," Tate answered roughly. "She was left to die. I'm surprised you didn't notice the ambulance taking away the body. This might be the first time that you actually kept your nose out of everyone else's business. I'm impressed. I didn't think you had it in you."

Hatred radiated from Tate so powerfully that it made me feel sick. I stepped back, feeling a little frightened of him for the first time. A shudder raced up my spine as he stepped towards her, his hands balled into fists. A million different thoughts ran through my mind. Maybe I could talk him down, or maybe I could just convince her to leave him alone. Somewhere inside, though, I knew that I could do nothing. Whatever was going on here had nothing to do with me, and I just wasn't brave enough to intervene.

"Thank God," she murmured. "I'm so happy to hear that. Look, Tate, I really need to speak with you. Can't you put the past aside for just a few moments? It's about Michael."

"What makes you think that he's something that we could ever have a conversation about?" Tate yelled. His voice was so loud and booming that it seemed to bounce off the walls and attack me from every angle. I stepped out of the way again, finding my back pressed against the wall at the foot of the stairs.

"Now calm down," she tried to reason with him, holding out her hands and letting him see her palms in a gesture of surrender. "I didn't come here to argue with you."

"You shouldn't have come at all! The only person here who ever wants to see you is Travis. Maybe you should be talking to him instead!"

I had been around long enough now to know who Travis was. He was a fairly young guy, and he was quite good looking. He was gentle and kind, and usually he just seemed sad to me.

I felt incredibly awkward watching this exchange. Tate clearly loathed this woman, but she seemed to be trying to keep the peace. I wondered what she had done to him. I wondered who Micheal was. I wondered... well, actually, I just wondered about everything that I was witnessing. There was no one around to explain, and Tate was likely going to avoid talking about this incident later on when I got him alone. Why had he been hiding from her when she was approaching the house? And if she was worth his hatred, why hadn't he warned me?

"You know that Travis has nothing to do with this. Now you listen to me, Tate. This little problem isn't going to go away just because you won't admit that it exists!" The woman seemed to throw her caution aside as she screeched at Tate. He, in turn, looked as though every ounce of his control was focused on not striking her.

A hand clamped over my mouth, and in a moment of utter terror I looked around to see who had grabbed me. A girl stood on the bottom step, leaning toward me with a look of urgency in her eyes. She was pretty, but in a natural way. I doubted if any makeup graced her smooth complexion, and her honey-coloured hair was poker-straight.

I felt an icy hand clamp down on my insides as I looked upon her. Unlike the old woman, I knew exactly who this was. She was the only ghost that I hadn't met in my time here, and she was the one who had caused Tate the most pain.

This girl could only be Violet Harmon.