SHADOWS OF KAYLA

HAUNTED HOUR

Festus.

There was pounding sensation at the back of my head on hearing her say the word ‘ghost’ and my heart throbbed several beats per second, causing me to shift uncomfortably in my seat. She couldn't have meant that she was an actual ghost, could she?

I chortled uneasily.

“Ghost, as in figuratively?”

I imagined her rolling her sparkly brown eyes at me, even as her stares were piercing like a sword's. Kayla sighed and frustratedly and shook her head.

“A real ghost. I'm dead.”

A freezing chill rose up my spine and my heart started to thump faster. The hairs on my skin rose and pulled out goosebumps. My chest went empty and my sight was blurry for a second. Who knew the air around me could grow so eerie on her revealing that she was a ghost? I had hands down been transported into a horror movie, a genre I hated so much.

I was cold with shock, pulling myself to my feet and retreating more inches from where she sat. Kayla was looking straight at me like she was seeing shadows from my soul.

“You're joking, eh?” My voice had started to betray me, sinking deeper into my throat.

My mind raced back to when I first saw her at the park.

Was she a ghost then? Had she been surprised that I could see her all long. Probably why she was always acting strange.

I came to think, she was always in a school uniform. Gina also said she saw me acting weird outside the shop. It was because she really didn't see anyone next to me. And the people staring, I had been talking to myself?

My jaws pulled open in a gape of stupefaction.

Kayla stood to her feet and raised her hands in front of her.

“Please, don't be scared. I'm not like ghosts in movies. I'm just a normal ghost…I can't harm anyone,” she tried to explain.

Normal ghost?

I struggled to bring myself back to acting the way I was when I had not found out who she was.

“You're really a ghost…?”

Kayla nodded, swiping her hands through the sofa like there was nothing there.

“See?”

A rush of wind from the north pole enveloped me again.

“How are you sitting?” I inquired pointing at her while not understanding how a ghost could balance herself on the couch like that.

“Don't understand it myself,” she shrugged.

“And I'm the only one seeing you?”

She nodded. I understood then, why she insisted I was the only one who could help. I cursed silently under my breath at my fate. Why did I have to be the one whose eyes a ghost was visible to?

Was I really getting punished for leaving home?

“My family is in…like in danger right now, and there're are some bad people stalking my dad, whom he is probably aware of already. But I just need to let him know they're near. That's all you'll have to do for me and we'll never see eachother again, I promise,” she pleaded.

I collapsed weakly back into the sofa, staring so hard at the floor, that it would have cracked open. My brain was finding it hard to process even. I had been talking with a ghost? I had even started to grow fond of a ghost!

“I get this message to your dad, and you disappear from my life alright?” I quizzed, obviously doing a bad job hiding how hysterical I was feeling inside me.

“Yes.”

“No haunting…”

“Haun…haunting? Why would I…”

“Just f*****g answer me.”

“Yes, yeah…yeah. No—haunting.”

My warm breath fanned my upper lips as my chest heaved quickly up and down. Without taking my eyes off of the ghost, I pulled my bag from my side and searched for a pen and notepad as fast as I could.

I pulled open a new page from the note and placed it on my thighs as I arched my legs to cradle it as comfortably as a table would. Clicking on the pen, I said,

“Get talking.”

***

Kayla.

Josh's cold eyes transformed quickly into a fear-stricken one as the word I had intended I wouldn't be using to bargain flew out of my lips. He was horrified my the sight of me, which made ache. It was better when he didn't know. Seeing how the like of me was sitting in his living room made him curl up in uneasiness, so well to make me hate myself. That was what Kayla had been reduced to, an ethereal being that'd make the skin of others to crawl in fear.

It was the last thing I ever wanted to be.

Beyond whatever dislike he must have started to harbour towards me, I bore with it. It would all be over after he got the message to dad.

“No haunting,” I heard his still quavery voice say. My chest churned at the word. Kayla and the word ‘haunt’ now seemed to go together. Of course no one would see me as a harmless ghost who wanted to disappear from earth so badly.

“Haun…haunting? Why would I…”

“Just f*****g answer me!” He yelled, making me jump a little.

“Yes, yeah…yeah. No—haunting,” I assured.

I wouldn't even stoop that low if I had the strength to, maybe. However, from the day I realized I could touch things in my own special way, I figured the skill would have come in handy had the driver who was responsible for my death been alive.

He was dead, and for some reason I hoped his ghost was also not roaming around like I was. I would kill him the second time if he was.

Josh ran his shaky hands over the zipper of his backpack, pulling out a notepad and pen. He raised his knees to accommodate the book in his thighs, before he blurted,

“Get talking.”

I cleared my throat gracelessly and began in an unprepared solemnity that shocked my vocal chords even. It was like when those old grannies would sit in their rocking chairs, telling a young child what to write as words in a letter.

“Hello dad…”

Josh brought the tip of the pen to the book before raising his face to mine. His countenance had returned clammy. He dropped his face back to the page of the note and wrote down what I said.

“No sorry, not hello dad," I corrected realising how absurd it would be if he read that his dead daughter was giving him a letter.

“Sorry,” I muttered to Josh, who said nothing but draw a horizontal stroke over the words in ink.

“Dear Mr Joe,” I started again.