Hey! Thanks for checking out Ghost Flower.

A quick note before you read: this story contains themes of physical and emotional abuse, as well as an incident that is heard but not seen. It's not graphic enough to warrant a mature tag, but if you aren't comfortable with this kind of content or find it triggering, please don't read further.

If you do read further, I hope you enjoy this short story!

Kara xx

***

Carlton House isn't scary. Not even with its arched windows looking out at the night like lifeless eyes or the lantern swaying in the wind, casting writhing shadows onto the doorstep.

I watch out of the window as a line of kids trails past the driveway like a many-legged creepy-crawly. Nobody comes to Carlton House asking for a treat because it's only a trick they'll get. After all, everyone knows this mansion has been haunted since before Halloween came to America.

Everyone except me, until Willow enlightened me on the drive here. It's the first spooky story I've heard since I moved here in the summer. I shiver at the thought of it.

A long squeak echoes through the house like a note played on an out-of-tune instrument. My heart gives a startled leap.

Carlton House doesn't scare me, not with its creaky floorboards, not even with the legend of the ghostly lovers that haunt it.

I must be more afraid than I realise because fear drips down my back in a frosty trail like a spectre trailing her finger along my spine.

The icy touch freezes me solid. My heart has never beaten so loudly before.

This is it. I'm going to die in Carlton House, doomed to wander its halls, forever a third wheel to its resident ghost couple.

I turn to my spectral assailant. Instead, I bump into something solid.

"Willow!" My fear morphs into annoyance. "Stop messing around!"

My friend ducks the dripping ice cube behind her back, but my eyes are quicker than she is.

Of course it wasn't a ghost tracing a cold fingernail over my back but Willow holding a melting ice cube over me.

She pokes my shoulder. "You're freaked out about this place. Admit it, Bellamy!"

I roll my eyes. "Setting out party food with a psycho on the spookiest night of the year will do that to a girl."

Willow chucks the ice cube at me. It misses, skidding over the counter and falling into the sink with a thud.

It's too loud, too like an inhuman footstep.

I shudder.

A sinister smile spreads over Willow's face. She looks like a real banshee with her shredded sheet dress and the dark circles shaded around her eyes.

"So, it wasn't the story about Lila and Pete I told you earlier that has you so jumpy?"

I turn back to the cupcakes I'm setting on a tray. "Of course not! They're not real."

The story haunts my mind thanks to Willow's eager narration. Since arriving at the mansion where it took place, I've thought of nothing else.

The only thing keeping my fear in check is Reha's suspicion that the tale of the ghost lovers is a ploy to bring more visitors to the house so that Estelle, the current owner, can make money from doing tours.

I believed Reha in the car, but her theory seems less likely now that I hear the windows rattling in their panes and the whispers floating through the hallways.

A scream cleaves the air. Reha sprints into the kitchen, her long black hair streaming out behind her. The green sequins on her long skirt shimmer like the scales they mimic. Fear turns her brown skin a shade paler.

Two hazy, humanoid forms appear in the doorway behind her. They link arms and vanish into the darkness, soft laughter drifting behind them.

The sound fades to silence.

I shake myself. Willow's stories are getting into my head. I can't have seen ghosts.

Not even in a house rumoured to be haunted. Not even on Halloween.

"You're going to think I'm crazy, but I saw ghosts!" Terror gleams in Reha's grey eyes.

Despite my dry mouth, I force myself to speak. "Maybe it was Cleo walking by."

"What's that, my spooky friend?" My best friend appears in the doorway, her skin dusted with pale powder as mine is.

Cleo and I dressed as ghosts for Halloween. We knew the stories about the spectres at Carlton House, but we didn't expect any of us would see them tonight.

"I'm telling you, I saw Lila and Pete." Reha trembles.

Willow leans back against the counter with dreamy eyes. "Did they tell you how they died?"

"Did they kill themselves just to be together?" Cleo clutches at her heart.

I know better than to humour this ghost talk Willow started. She can talk for hours, hours we don't have because there's a Halloween party to set up. I shoot her a look that goes unnoticed.

Willow bounces on her feet. "Were they murdered during a burglary?"

That does it.

"Would you listen to yourselves?" I look between my friends. "Lila died from yellow fever, then Pete's broken heart killed him."

Cleo sniffles. Reha's distant eyes seem to seek out the truth in the past. Willow blows a raspberry at me.

"Why must you believe the boring explanation?"

"Because it's the truth!" I glare at her. "You said that there's no record of Pete's death, but we know that a sickness killed Lila."

Willow shakes her head. "I don't trust records. Why would they be haunting this place if there wasn't something restless about their deaths?"

Before I can point out that records are carefully kept, and maybe Lila and Pete's souls would rest in peace if so many overactive imaginations stopped resurrecting them, Cleo looks down at her watch and curses.

"The guests will be here soon."

"Never fear. We'll have the party ready by the time Jasper arrives." Willow smirks.

"You'd better." Cleo touches her nose the way she does when she's nervous.  

She has been trying to get Jasper's attention for months. I can't let Willow's spooky speculations or a creepy old house ruin tonight for her.

"We've still got so much food to set out." I groan. "Not to mention the decorating."

Reha gazes around the kitchen, her eyeshadow glittering beneath the lights. "How can we decorate without any decorations?"

I frown. "Aren't they in the solarium?"

Reha shakes her head. "I was just there."

"Well, they're not here." Willow shrugs.

Cleo fishes her phone out of her gauzy dress's pocket. The garment is light, with a skirt fluttering about her knees and a bodice like white rose petals overlapping with grace. I thought the dress was too fairy-like for Halloween, but Cleo insisted on being a pretty ghost.

She scrolls down her screen, then stops. "Estelle texted to say the decorations were delivered here, but she moved them into the basement before her house tour."

"Basement?" Willow, Reha and I ask in unison.

I don't miss the curiosity in Willow's voice, nor the tense fear in Reha's. In mine, there is only exasperation.

Another hitch is the last thing we need tonight. Willow's car broke down twice on the way here. Now the decorations are in the deepest, darkest part of this supposedly haunted house.

"Yeah." Cleo's dark eyes dart between us. "One of you must get them."

Reha shudders. "You should do it, Cleo. You're the bravest."

Cleo sweeps her ghostly-grey sprayed box braids over her shoulder. "Someone needs to oversee the party preparations."

Willow raises her hand. "I'll get the decorations."

I know that gleam in her eyes.

Willow would spend the whole night ghost-hunting in the basement, and the decorations won't be set up before our guests arrive. There's no surer path to doom. After all, what's a Halloween party without decorations?

Not a party, that's what.

"I'll do it," I say despite the fear tightening like a knotted rope in the pit of my stomach.

Reha's forehead scrunches. "Be careful."

"Hurry!" Cleo taps her watch.

I stride to the kitchen door. "Be back in a jiffy."

There's a smirk in Willow's voice as she says, "Don't let the ghosts get you."

Turning in the doorway, I stick my tongue out at her. "Ghosts don't exist."

But fear does, and it can make us see things that aren't there.

My friends' voices disappear behind the wall that separates us, leaving the hallway silent.

It's like I'm alone in a haunted house on Halloween.

I push down the terror that rises in my throat.

There's no time for fear, especially when it's irrational. We have a party to throw. If we don't pull it off, we'll never live it down. In fact, we may as well move states.

I take a deep, calming breath as I move down the corridor, trying not to jump at every shadow that rises beside me. The lightbulbs on the walls are flame-shaped, but they shine with the steadiness of electricity.

I wish my nerves could be as steady.

Reha and I aren't the first to believe we saw the ghosts of the dead lovers Lila and Pete, the last people to own this house. Many reported being scared by them, then hearing them laughing together, the sound of their mirth filling the mansion's corridors as it had when they were alive.

It isn't a scary story, just a reminder of the immortality of love in a time where relationships feel fleeting, but it sends goosebumps rushing over my arms.

What if Lila and Pete are behind me now, watching me, waiting to pounce on me?

My legs seize up. I stop dead. I take a deep breath, and the panicked thud of my heart slows to normal.

It's Halloween. Enduring Willow for all these hours has sent my imagination into overdrive.

I didn't see ghosts. Neither did Reha. Ghosts aren't real. 

My feet silent against the carpet, I reach the back of the house. Here, my only company is the shadows and the moonlight falling through the high window.

The chain pulled across the bannisters at the foot of the staircase to my left reminds me that upstairs is off-limits outside of tour hours. To my right is the basement door. I pull my phone out of my pocket and switch my flashlight on.

The torch casts a circle of brightness onto the dark door. My hand trembles as I rest it on the handle. Anything could be waiting down in the basement, and nobody would hear me scream when it got me.

I give myself a mental slap. I promised to get the party decorations. No ghost stories are going to stop me, because that's all Lila and Pete are: a story.

Ghosts don't exist. If they did, our town would be crawling with these shadows of the history it had witnessed.

My breath catches in my throat as a feminine laugh floats through the air. It's ethereal, almost breathy.

Like the ghost of a laugh.

I push the thought from my mind.

The basement door opens with a creak like old bones. For a woman who makes a small fortune off house tours of "an authentic Victorian Italianate gem of architecture", Estelle doesn't do a great job maintaining it.

A damp scent weighs down the air. Maybe it's the Halloween mood coming over me, but the smell reminds me of wet earth covering a grave.

To my relief, round white lights illuminate a path across the ceiling. Oddly modern for this house, they tether me to my world and time, one where nineteenth-century ghosts can't exist. Still, I keep my phone flashlight on for the little security it gives me.

Taking a deep breath, I start down the stairs. Each step creaks beneath me, taking my nerves closer to the edge, sending my heart into a frenzy even worse than when I say a speech in class.

All my mental preparation couldn't ease my anxiety, not then and not now. There is nothing to do but endure it.

Relief loosens the knot in my stomach when I reach a large black bag lying at the bottom of the stairs.

Peeking inside, I see the decorations Cleo ordered: black and silver balloons, stretchy white spiderwebs, enormous furry spiders and bats with shiny black eyes. There are even cardboard tombstones with inscriptions like "ghouls just wanna have fun" and "boo-yah!". As corny as they are, I can't help but smile.

Then the lights go out one by one, like lives being snuffed out.

My breath leaves my body in a startled gasp. Only my phone flashlight keeps me from screaming. 

A cool breeze brushes past me with the floating grace of a ghost.

That's weird. I see the moon dominating a night made for zombies to rise from their graves and werewolves to show their true selves through the basement window, but it's latched closed.

I shiver.

The draught must have slipped through a gap I can't see. There's also a logical explanation for the lights going out.

This is an old house. Whatever the reason for its eccentricities, it isn't ghosts.

I turn to the stairs when a coldness passes through me. It stills, resting within me.

I close my eyes to steel my nerves. My fear will undo me before any ghouls can.

When I open my eyes, I'm someone else, and the coldness is all around me.

I stare down at my legs. I'm wearing pants when I remember wearing a dress. My body is translucent, almost ghostly. I run a finger over my arm, and none of the paleness comes away with it.

This isn't makeup or a costume. It can only be reality.

I study the hands resting against my sides. Willow jokes that I have man hands, which I disagree with, but these are seriously man hands from the patches of hair on the fingers and the sturdy knuckles.

These ghost stories must be driving me crazy. Either that or I fell in the basement when it went dark and hit my head so hard I'm hallucinating.

A familiar panic heaves my stomach. Maybe I'd have emptied my guts on the floor if I wasn't a ghost.

That's what I must be. The coldness that passed through me must've made me someone else. Even worse, it took me somewhere else.

I look up at a room orange with the stain of sunset seeping through the two wide windows. Carlton House's solarium is fuzzy as if I'm in a memory. Maybe I am.

Terror scratches at my composure, but I swipe its claws away. I must stay calm if I want to figure out how to return to myself and my time.

A woman sits in the armchair between the windows, holding a little boy on her lap. As soon as my eyes fall on her, my mind stops being my own.

***

Lila's green dress turns her into a sprig of spring in the day's dying light. A dark curl falls over the back of her neck while the rest of her hair is pinned up, betraying the playful side she can't quite hide even though she obeys her husband's commands to "look dignified".

Her eyes glimmer with fancy as her voice carries me and her son away on an adventure.

"The mermaids swam across the ocean, searching for the sea goddess who could return the life to the reef." Lila's sweeping gesture emphasises the watery expanse she speaks of. "When they reached her cave, do you know what they found?"

Joseph watches her with big, dark eyes. He shakes his head.

"A sea witch with hundreds of tentacles!" Lila rains tickles on Joseph's little body.

With a squeal, he falls back against Lila. Her laughter entwines with his in unmistakable joy.

The light in her eyes seems to erase the days-old bruise on her cheekbone, but it's always in the background even when it's almost invisible; a ghost haunting her, as I am.

Their laughter brings a smile to my face. This house would be lifeless without these moments.

But they always end too soon.

Footsteps sound in the hallway. Lila and Joseph's laughter dies. Even I go still. The alcohol weighs down Peter's feet, turning them slow and heavy.

He doesn't sound like a husband or a father but a creature spewed from the darkness growing outside.

Joseph presses his face into Lila's shoulder with a soft whimper. The pitiful sound twists my spectral heart.

"Don't be afraid, Joe. I'm here." Lila kisses Joseph's head, a tremor in her voice.

She has been married long enough to learn how to pretend she isn't afraid of her husband but not long enough to make it a reality. 

Joseph grabs a handful of Lila's dress. She cradles him against her like he's an infant and not a child of three, following his fearful gaze to the doorway.

Like a shadow of the night coming to life, Peter appears.

His face is red from too much drink. His dark blond hair falls haphazardly over his forehead. There's never a single strand out of place when he leaves for work in the morning, but when he comes home late from the tavern, he couldn't care less. It shows.

He's different by day and by night; first a man, then a monster.

He leans against the doorframe casually, but he isn't fooling anyone. "Peter" is a common name, but I've never been so ashamed to share it. 

Peter curls his lip when his eyes fall on his family. "Is dinner ready?"

"Yes. We were waiting for you." Lila's brightness is that of dull fabric dyed colours that don't exist, too vibrant to be real. 

Peter doesn't notice, of course. He simply nods, a satisfied twist to his lips.

He doesn't realise Lila's efforts to please him has made her someone she isn't. Or perhaps he does, and that was his intention.

Why else would he yell at her without reason? Why would he kiss her in the morning and beat her in the night if he didn't wish to break her spirit?

Not for the first time, I yearn to help Lila. Unfortunately, I'm nothing but a ghost forever tethered to the house where I met my end, forever cursed to witness all the hurt and pain and hatred it would know, forever powerless to change it.

Lila sets Joseph on the floor with quivering arms. Her smile is frozen on her mouth, almost grotesque in its forcedness.

She tries to prise her son's small hand from her skirt. He whines, his fingers tightening around the fabric like crab pincers.

Joseph shares the fear Lila hides.

He never says a word, only listens and observes. Sometimes I pass his room at night and glance in to see him staring at the wall that separates his bedroom from his parents', flinching when his father yells, burying his face in his pillow when his mother screams.

Still, no words escaped his lips. Only shiny tears fled his terrified eyes.

Those dark hours taught him that silence is the only way to elude his father's vicious fury. 

Lila stands. Joseph trails behind her, still holding her skirt, shrinking away from his father's disdainful gaze.

Peter's mouth hardens. "I heard Maura Oliver was here this afternoon." His voice is the edge of a knife, a flash of silver in the night.

I know that tone. I know the anger that sweeps through me like a raging storm.

The last time I was in the room when Peter started an argument, I accidentally shattered a mirror on the wall. Lila and Joseph were so scared that I vowed never to do it again.

I would always watch over them, but now, I'd better do it at a distance.

The walls are of no substance around me, or perhaps it is I who is of no substance as I retreat into them.

I emerge in the hallway outside the solarium as Lila says, "Yes, she is replacing our curtains. They've seen too many summers."

Peter's voice tightens like a balled-up fist. "Maura makes the most expensive curtains in town!"

"Peter, can we talk about this later?" Lila's voice trembles, but her forced brightness stays steady. "You're scaring Joe."

And you're drunk goes unsaid.

It's better that way. Peter only responds to such accusations with his hands, never with words.

"How could you bring her here without asking me?" Peter's words charge through Lila's like a frenzied bull. "I'm the one who has to pay for this!"

"I—"

"You're good for nothing but wasting my money, both you and your son," snaps Peter.

His words strike me like a fist to the face. My skin smarts for Lila.

She sniffles, drawing a shaky breath. Tears only make Peter angrier, but that knowledge isn't always enough to contain them.

I want to go to Lila and Joseph. I want to hold her, but I can't.

My hands would just pass through her as they did whenever I tried to touch her.

Her cheerfulness dissolves. Her voice softens, shrinking into itself the way it always does when Peter is angry.

Appeasing him is the only way forward that won't end in blood and tears.

"You're right. I'm sorry." Lila's voice quivers. "I should've asked you first. I didn't think—"

"Of course you didn't think. You never think!"

I wait for the sickening slap of Peter's hand against Lila's skin, but there's only her cry, then a thud, then another, dull and heavy. I wait for her sobbing, his yelling, her pleading, but all I hear is Peter's ragged breathing.

Something is wrong.

I don't have a gut anymore, but an uneasy sense rests where it used to be.

"No... Lila, say something."

Only a dead silence answers Peter.

Why isn't Lila speaking?

A tightness grows in my chest. I can't bear to think of her hurt or worse...

"Oh, God, I didn't mean to..." Peter's words slur as they escape him, ink smudging on a wet page.

With that, he stumbles into the hallway, pulls on his coat, and vanishes into the evening.

Cold terror courses through my dead veins. Ignoring it, I walk through the wall. What if Lila needs me? I must be strong.

Joseph sits on the solarium floor, still with a fistful of green fabric, staring at his mother. Lila lies beside him, her dark eyes gazing unseeingly at the ceiling. Not a breath escapes her lovely pink lips.

My throat constricts. A weightlessness passes over me, as if my reality has fractured, the pieces scattered.

She can't be gone, this woman who enchanted me with her liveliness whenever she talked to herself in the garden.

Then Lila sits up, a pale, translucent shadow. Joseph doesn't see her, just like he doesn't see me.

Lila looks down at her fleshly hands lying limp against her corporeal body. She gazes at her face, at what used to be her. She blinks, disorientated in a way brought on only by death.

Lila's eyes fall on me, widening as they see me for the first time.

I stare back at her, uncertain of what to say.

I always imagined how I'd greet Lila if I spoke to her. Perhaps I'd start with a simple "hello" or mention the bright blooms in the garden this season.

But I never imagined we'd meet under these circumstances.

"I've sensed you before." Lila stands, brushing the strands of her ghostly hair away from her eyes. "I enjoyed our garden conversations."

It's my eyes' turn to widen. Was she speaking to me all those times I thought she was talking to herself?

"How did you know I was there?" My voice is scratchy with disuse. I haven't talked to anyone in decades.

"I didn't know for certain." A faint smile comes over Lila's lips. "All I know is you made me feel less alone."

My ghostly heart feels full to know I made her life better in some way. I have been invisible for years, yet not unnoticed.

Lila tilts her head. "Why am I only seeing you now?"

A lump forms in my throat. "Because you're like me now."

The reality of it shudders through me.

Lila is dead.

I have imagined having Lila for myself, but I would've never wished such a fate on her.

I should've done something. I should've pushed over the chairs and broken the windows to scare Peter away from her.

Lila shakes her head. "Peter didn't mean to push me."

"He's still a murderer."

She must've fallen and hit her head after he shoved her. He killed her, deliberately or not.

Lila's eyes mist over with ghostly tears. "I shouldn't have ordered the curtains."

I glide towards her. "What Peter did was his fault, not yours."

Lila turns away from me. A tear slips over her cheek. It's paler than that of the living. Everything is faded in this existence we're doomed to, but the pain is as vivid as ever.

"What about my son?" Lila's hand passes through Joseph when she tries to rest it on his head. Her face crumples. A sob breaks free of her lips, choked with anguish. "What will Joe do without me?"

I rest an uncertain hand on Lila's shoulder, choosing my words carefully. "The living will go on without us. We are the ones who suffer, in sight but out of reach of those we love."

Lila sniffs before looking at me. "You left your family behind too. I'm sorry."

"There's no need to be," I say with a nonchalance I don't feel. "My daughter was too young to remember me, and my wife had me killed."

I start as Lila slips her hand into mine. My world freezes as it did at the moment of my death.

I have never known another touch in my spectral existence, let alone one so warm, yet there is no escaping the coldness of my past.

The day of my death is a day of my life I will never forget.

I died picking a flower for my wife in the garden. When she ran into the arms of the man who shot me in the back of my head, I understood what happened. I could see the flaws in Lila's marriage, but I was blind to the fissures in my own.

The cursed flower made itself part of my ghostly form, a remnant of my bloody past. The same blood binds me and Lila now.

The white rose rests in my pocket. I offer it to Lila.

It's a pathetic consolation for the life she has lost. Still, she takes it. It feels right, like this flower was always meant for this woman who was murdered in my house decades after I was.

Lila smiles at me; the first smile of our forever. It brightens my world of dust and shadows.

***

With a blink, I'm Bellamy again. The basement lights flicker back to life, illuminating the way upstairs.

Tears I didn't notice forming blur my eyes, ghost tears for a ghost love story. I tilt my head forward so that they don't run over my makeup.

Poor Lila and Joe. She lost her life that day, and he lost his mother.

Lila was strong to endure what she did. She didn't deserve to be murdered then dishonoured in death.

I'm an idiot for believing she died from yellow fever. Willow was right. Records could be wrong after all.

Lila's husband seemed like a wealthy man. Maybe he bribed someone to record her murder as a yellow fever death so that he could escape punishment for his crime.

He had gotten confused with the ghost man Pete in the retellings of the story. I would set the record straight. Pete was nothing like Lila's husband, and he shouldn't be remembered as him.

A woman's light, tinkling laughter and a man's deep, rumbling mirth echoes across the basement. It doesn't make me tremble, only smile.

There is such thing as a love story after death, one more romantic than Cleo can dream, spookier than Willow could imagine, happier than Reha would believe.

The moon floats in the night sky outside, full and bright. It's exactly as I remember, which tells me nothing about how long I've been in the basement.

I strain my ears, but I hear nothing. If the party had started, I'd be able to hear the music. The silence can only mean I'm not late.

Blinking away my last tears, I hold my phone flashlight steady, taking the stairs two at a time and hauling the bag of decorations after me.

The guests could be here any minute. There isn't a moment to waste.

The darkness in the hallway is calm, the shadows embracing. Even though I know Lila and Pete are behind me from the coldness curling around my ankles, I'm not afraid anymore.

I burst into the kitchen. My friends turn to me.

Behind them, the cookies and cupcakes are arranged on their trays exactly as Cleo wanted. At least they got something done while I was in the basement.

Willow grins. "We were wondering if you'd gotten lost."

"I kind of was." I was lost in the past, in a story.

"Am I glad you found your way back!" Cleo kneels beside me as I empty the black bag of decorations on the floor.

Reha's voice quivers. "What took you so long?"

I smile up at her. "I discovered the true tale of Lila and Pete."

Willow's eyes light up. "Ooh, do tell."

I toss them each a pack of decorations. "Only if you help me put these up."

"Deal." Cleo tears open the packet of balloons. "Our guests will be here soon! We must hurry."

We dash into the hallway. I lead the way to the solarium.

"Well, Bellamy?" Willow calls out. "You know I don't like waiting."

The woman I heard die and the man I was in the past step into the corridor in front of us. With a flourish, Pete gives Lila his ghost flower. She slips it into her hair, then pulls him in for a kiss.

They turn their smiles on me, and this time, I don't dismiss them as figments of my imagination.

***