Transgender and Non-binary Queer Ghost Stories

Ghost Gallery-2

She was right. She barely made a sound as she walked around the room.

“So what were we hearing downstairs?” Xan asked.

Casually, she said, “I already told you: it was the ghosts. They’re really noisy up here.”

“But that makes no sense. How can we hear their footfalls on a reinforced floor? How can we hear them moving furniture when there’s no furniture in the room?”

“Because,” she said simply. “They’re living in their time, not ours. They’re interacting with the world as it was, not the world as it is.”

“When?” Xan asked. “Who are they? When are they?”

Gracie walked quietly to the window and pressed her forehead against the glass. The moonlight caused her skin to glow a spectral bluish tone. Her hair looked much darker than it had downstairs.

Forlornly, she said, “Most people think the noisy ghosts are the ones who first owned this house They had it built in the 1800s as a summer retreat.”

“And they loved it so much they never left?” Xan asked.

Staring out the window, Gracie said, “Who knows? This building has passed through so many hands across the decades. After the first owners died, it became a convent for a while.”

“Like with nuns?” Xan asked.

The look she gave him told him that was a stupid question. “Then after the First World War, it served as a recovery hospital for soldiers with lung problems—you know, because of the mustard gas and all that.”

Xan nodded along. He probably should have paid more attention in history class.

“And during World War Two, it was a school and a residence. Like, you know how London was being bombed by the Nazis? A bunch of kids from England were sent over to spend the war years here. That way they’d be safe. No bombs.”

“Wow,” Xan said. “I never knew that was a thing.”

“It was,” Gracie replied with a nod. “See, this building went through a lot of incarnations before it was an art gallery. The ghosts could be anyone: homesick kids, a nun with a secret... there’s no way of knowing who’s haunting the place.”

“I bet it’s the nuns,” Xan replied, and as soon as those words left his mouth, a bang sounded from across the building. “What was that?”

Gracie didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “This is why nobody works at night. This is what you have to contend with.”

“Noises?” Xan confirmed.

“Noises if you’re lucky.”

What was that supposed to mean?

“Come on,” Xan said, pointing in the direction of the bang. “We should go check it out.”

Gracie sighed. “If you insist.” She trailed far behind him as he crossed the hallway. She only caught up when he’d reached the second major gallery space on the upstairs level. This one did have seating and cases for smaller displays. It also housed some of the larger sculptures, but they didn’t seem to have been moved. Anyway, the sounds they’d heard downstairs were directly over their heads, not all the way on the opposite side of the building.

Xan and Gracie wandered the entire floor together and didn’t find a single thing out of place. After that, they wandered the first floor. Nothing else to do but wait for the artist to arrive.

They hung out in the staff room for a while. The lights in the rest of the gallery were on timers, so the staff room was the only place where they could get a reasonable amount of light. Xan used the gallery’s wifi to watch Fullmetal on his phone, and Gracie watched over his shoulder, but she’d never seen it before and she kept asking questions, which was mega-annoying.

He’d just about put the ghosts out of his mind when a huge sound echoed throughout the building. Xan put his phone away and leapt to his feet, waiting to see if he’d hear it again. When he didn’t, he tried to replay the noise in his mind to figure out what it might have been and where it might have come from, but he just wasn’t sure.

“What was that?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know,” Gracie replied. “It sounded like... like... I don’t know.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Upstairs, I think. Most of the time when people hear noises, they come from upstairs. From that same salon we were in before.”

Decisively, Xan marched toward the staff room door. “Come on,” he told Gracie. “Let’s check it out.”

He wasn’t ready for the darkness outside. Sure the hallways were lit with those emergency lights, but he’d forgotten how dim they were, especially compared to the full light of the staff room.

As he stood in the threshold between light and dark, he could feel Gracie standing just behind him, her chest almost touching his back. “Well?” she asked. “What are you waiting for?”

He couldn’t answer that question. He honestly didn’t know.

“Mister Big Stuff,” she said, shoving him forward. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t feel like Mister Big anything once he’d set foot in the darkened hallway. The staff room door snapped closed behind them, shutting them out of the light. It was spooky in the gallery at night. He’d forgotten that pretty quickly.

How easy it is to escape into stories. They make the real world disappear.

Gracie’s fingertips met Xan’s back, and she pushed him toward the staircase little by little. “You’re the one who said we should check it out, so let’s check it out. Or did you change your mind?”

“No,” he said gruffly, trying to re-establish his macho cred in front of this pixie chick. “I’m just listening for that sound, in case it happens again.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “Good idea.”

Gracie shut her yap after that. They both did.

The gallery turned eerily quiet as they crept up the stairs. Their shoes barely squeaked as they ascended, but someone’s did. Well, not squeaked. That’s the wrong word. Somebody’s shoes echoed. Those same hard soles they’d heard earlier in the evening. And Gracie was right. The noise was coming from that front salon, the white room.

That’s where they headed.

Following the footfalls.

Not knowing what they would find when they arrived.

But the salon was every bit as empty as it had been earlier. Moonlight bounced off the white walls. Paintings absorbed the glow of the street. Nothing had changed.

Or had it?

Gracie gasped, clutching Xan’s arm with one hand while she pointed across the room with the other. “Look! The window! It’s open!”

She was right. The lower portion of the front window was up. But maybe it had been like that before and he just hadn’t noticed. He tried to think back, picturing Gracie leaning her head against the window. No, it had definitely been closed. He was sure of it.

Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. He said, “Maybe it’s been open this whole time.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Gracie said, still clutching his arm. “This is a climate-controlled salon. Those windows have been sealed shut for years. There’s no way... there’s just no way... oh, I gotta pee!”

Releasing her hold on his arm, Gracie fled the room, stomping down the staircase and disappearing onto the first level. Wow, was that girl ever scared. Not that Xan wasn’t. This gallery was creepy as hell. No wonder the other employees refused to work at night. No wonder Dolina wouldn’t bring her baby here.

Xan crossed the room, wondering if the open window was some kind of optical illusion, but when he got close enough, he could feel the cool night air wafting in through the opening.

Gracie said these windows were sealed shut years ago, so maybe the seal had been broken somehow. The salon had six windows in total: three larger ones at the top and three smaller ones beneath them. It was the small one in the middle that was open. To see if the seals had broken, Xan tried to lift the one next to it. No go. Even with all his strength, he couldn’t get that one up. He tried the window on the other side, but same story. It wouldn’t budge.

After breaking a sweat trying to get those windows open, Xan leaned against the window frame, fanning himself with both hands. He could hear the gentle squeak of Gracie’s shoes approaching the salon, but when she arrived at the entrance, she didn’t stop there. He watched her overshoot the room, go past it without so much as glancing inside. Weird. Where was she headed? There was nothing in that direction but the emergency exit. And why was she walking in that strange fluid way? Almost seemed like she wasn’t lifting her feet, just floating past.

“Gracie?” Xan called out. “I’m in here. Where are you going?”

When she didn’t answer, Xan hopped across the salon and poked his head into the hallway.

There was no one around.

No sign of Gracie.

That was impossible. Where could she have gone? He’d just seen her walk by, and there was nowhere to go in that direction. Just the emergency exit, and if she’d gone out that door, it would have triggered an alarm.

Where was she?

He stepped into the hall. “Gracie?”

Slam!

Xan whipped around just in time to see the open window bang closed. His first instinct was to rush to it, try to open it again, but as soon as he set foot in the salon he felt as though his entire body were enmeshed in floor-to-ceiling spider webs. He was caught in a sticky sort of darkness he’d never experienced in all his life.

“Gracie?” he asked, but his voice felt muted. He could barely hear himself speak.

And then he saw it. The scene that must have been playing out in this comfortably appointed bedroom every night for more than a century.

A big man.

A little woman.

Their voices were muted too, but he could tell by their clothing they lived in the 1800s. He couldn’t see their faces clearly. It was like someone had smeared the lens with Vaseline. He could just make out the gist of them.

But he knew exactly what was going on.

The man was yelling.

The woman was cowering.

He raised his bottle.

She covered her head.

It was too late. He brought that bottle down on her like a bolt of lightning. Struck her with it. She crumpled to the ground, her billowy blue gown surrounding her body like a lake. The big man kicked her, but she didn’t move. She lay motionless as he circled her contemptuously.

“No!” Xan cried, fighting off the sticky spider web feeling. He had to get to this woman. “No, don’t die!”

It was like swimming standing up. Swimming through wet cement. He fought so hard to get to her. She was so close, and yet it felt as though it took hours to get to her. When he arrived at her side, he fell to his knees and grabbed hold of her heavy head, placing its dead weight on his thighs.

“Don’t die,” he said. “Stay with me. Don’t die.”

The blood seeping from her wound adhered her dark brown locks to her pale bluish skin. Xan swept the clumps of hair out of the way to get a clear look at the tiny woman’s face. When he caught sight of it, his heart nearly exploded.

“Gracie!” he said. “It’s you!”

“Yeah,” said a voice at his back. “Who else would it be?”

Xan swivelled around to see Gracie standing in the doorway. Not Gracie in a blue gown. Not Gracie with a head wound. Not Gracie gushing with blood. Just Gracie in her black top and trousers with her neat chestnut hair in a classic cut.

When Xan looked into his lap, there was no one lying there. No 19th century Gracie in her death state. No abusive husband looming over her. No bed, no wallpaper, no furnishings. Just those same white walls adorned with modern art.