I take a deep breath, letting the musty air from the dark parlor burn my lungs. There’s nothing pleasant about this place. If I thought it had looked bad on the outside, it was even worse on the inside. A beat-up air conditioning unit clunks away in the window in front of me. I wipe my hands on my equally sweaty thighs as I stare at the chipping paint caked on the top windowpane. “Fuck this” and “Brad was here” are etched into the black, along with several crude images. I couldn’t agree more with Brad, whether he wrote the former or not.

A blinking, bug-filled fluorescent light pulls my focus away from the screeching window. It dangles on a metal chain. It looks new. The old one probably snapped and smacked the last client in the head. Let’s hope I’m not so lucky.

I squint through the palpitating blink at the dingy ceiling tiles tinted yellow from decades of cigarette smoke. Stars spot my vision, and, for a moment, I second guess everything. How did I end up here, sitting on this torn vinyl table that’s sure to leave a heat rash on my legs? Was I really going to go through with it?

And it’s the silence under that God-forsaken howling air conditioner that reminds me why I’m here, what I need to do.

I take another deep breath, making myself savor the damp smell. I have to remember the plan. I’ve watched this tattoo parlor for months. I’d calculated the perfect time to waltz in, memorized what I would say, practiced how I would carry myself. I’d gotten this far. I couldn’t back out now.

An ear-piercing scream tears through me. Figures they’d show up now. They always show up when I have something important to do, or I’m using the bathroom, or I’m trying to pass an algebra exam.

The ghost wants me to flinch, to fall to the floor and cradle my head and scream for my mommy. Twelve years ago, I probably would’ve. But not today. All I do now is roll my eyes and put up another wall, taking my time with each invisible brick so they can watch and scream and beg. If they’re not the scream I’m looking for, they don’t deserve my time of day.

Before I place the final brick, I listen, waiting.

Nothing.

The familiar feeling of disappointment tugs on my heart as I place the final brick in front of the door.

And then the shift and squash of someone large plopping down on a chair brings me back to the physical world.

I blink to find Jeffery “Bear” Johnson sitting in front of me—legs splayed, tatted arms nearly reaching the floor, scraggly beard grazing a broad leather-coated chest. Even though I’d seen this boulder of a man enter and exit the building a thousand times, sitting across from him was an entirely different story. His reputation preceded him. Everyone in Stagnant Hill knew who Bear was, and although I’d lived in this washed-up town my entire life, I’d only ever heard rumors. And staring at him now, I wouldn’t doubt a single one.

“Yer sure about this, Madison?” the gorilla asks. His voice is strangely mellow considering his rough features. “I could add er few lines to even—”

I don’t give him a chance to finish. “No. That’s what I want. Exactly that.”

He shakes his head. “Teens,” he grumbles as he spins around to the stained table. “Some freedom and money and nothin’ changes yer minds. But at least I get er decent buck out er it.”

I hold my tongue. I wasn’t like the other 18-year-olds in Stagnant Hill, and not because I’m some cliché book trope—I highly doubt any of those characters could see ghosts. I haven’t been like other girls or boys or people for twelve years. But this was going to change that. This was going to set things right.

A small smile tugs on my lips at the thought of her being happy again. I search for her voice, but all I’m left with are flashbacks.

I watch as I point up at the tree to the cat only I can see.

I watch as we scale the branch. Her arms held out in a T.

I watch as I reach out, her shoulder blades warm in my palms.

I watch as her brains splatter across the pavement.

I watch as the light leaves her eyes and freezes her face in a silent scream.

I hear the utter silence as her spirit slides under the door without a sound. 

Claire’s been quiet for twelve years. Every other ghost in Stagnant Hill haunts me. Every one except Claire. I’ve tried everything to bring her back—rituals, chants, dark magic—but nothing works. My twin sister refuses to haunt me, to forgive me, and this is my last hope to fix what I’ve done.

“Any meanin’ behind er tattoo?” Bear’s question startles me, and I let the guilt shake away with my thoughts.

Not a chance in hell I’d tell him the truth. “Would you be disappointed if I said no?”

A faint smile tugs on his lips. “Nah. But it’s like nothin’ I er seen before.” He shrugs. “Thought it’d be some family thing er somethin’.”

“You’ve known about my family for years,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “Have you ever seen something like that around them?”

“It’s not fer Claire, is it?”

My throat catches. “No. It’s not.”

Bear grunts, eyeing the piece of scrap paper with my etched design. He opens his mouth to speak again, but I don’t let him. “Just do it already. I’m not paying you for conversation.”

This causes him to chuckle and shake his head. Guess not many 18-year-olds are willing to talk back to him. Add that to the “Ways Madison Isn’t Like Other Girls” list. 

I close my eyes as he begins to transfer the design to the inside of my forearm. A shrill of cries and shouts billow out as I open the door to the souls. Please, just answer me.

Nothing.

“How’s that?”

I open my eyes and glance down at my arm to see a blue crisscrossing of sharp angles. I’ve memorized every line of this rune—designed it myself after months and months of research and deep dives into the dark web. It’s the rune that’ll bring my sister back. “Perfect.”

Bear grunts again, obviously taking my need for no conversation seriously.

I slam the door to the spirit realm and ignore the distant shouts for help as I innocently ask, “You’re going to use my ink, right?” I reach into my back pocket and pull out a vial of a murky, dark substance. The edges glow a deep brown under the flickering yellow light.

He stares at the vial, utterly unreadable. “Madison, I—”

I toss a stack of bills onto the table. There’s nothing Bear wouldn’t do for a buck.

He flips through the wad with his thumb, the edges fanning out before him. A pleased smile stretches across his lips as he tucks the stack into his pocket. “It’s er pleasure doin’ business with er,” he says with a wink.

With no questions asked, Bear takes the vial. It’s a good thing I’m not planning on using my college savings, I think to myself. The thick, practically clumpy, liquid drips from the vial slowly, and I can feel Bear’s annoyance. I was lucky to snap off enough of Claire’s fingers and set her coffin back in the ground without getting thrown into jail. But I wasn’t about to buy a heavy-duty blender to whip up my concoction of bone, food coloring, and ancient herbs.

I lean back on the table as the final drop leaves the vial, close my eyes, and open the door once again. It’s now or never. 

I call out to her, racing past unfamiliar faces and mists of smoke. They cry and cry and cry. They beg me for help, but I’m not searching for them. I’ve never cared about them.

I feel the first prick drive into my skin, but I keep diving. The buzz of the gun is a distant whir. 

Each thrum of the needle sends me further and further until I’m the farthest I’ve ever been.

I suddenly stop, the phantom wind easing at my sides. It’s quiet. Too quiet. There’s nothing but gray. This is it. I’ve reached the gate, the final door to the spirit realm.

I sink to my knees, chanting the ancient words I’ve memorized into the chill expanse. Is this where Claire’s been trapped? In an endless pit of nothingness?

My body buzzes, and I can’t remember if that’s the feeling of the tattoo gun or something new.

The gray around me blurs. But it could’ve been that way before.

Forbidden words mumble out of my lips, but I can’t hear them.

Mady.

I’m saying my name.

Mady.

I’m singing.

Mady.

I’m taunting.

But I haven’t called myself that in years. Twelve, to be exact.

The gray thickens to a sludgy black until it’s covering my hands, filling my lungs, and coating my eyes. The gate is taking me too soon. I thought I’d have more time. I want to hear her voice. I want to see her. I want to say it should’ve been me all along. But the only thing here is my reflection. 

Except she has a dimple in her left cheek. 

Relief washes over me as the image fades. My sister is free, and so am I. I sink down and down until I fade away, becoming nothing more than a whisper in the dark.

---

Aly Rusciano is a Creative Writer based outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She graduated from The University of Tennessee at Martin in 2021 with a BA in English, focusing in Creative Writing. Aly’s publications can be found on her blog: https://alyrusciano.wordpress.com

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“You’re having a laugh, mate! How was I supposed to know my bank account was about to go into default? I was in Thailand! Absolute con artists, you lot are, slapping on charges whenever you fancy it!”

“I understand your frustration, sir. Did you notify the bank of your change of address so that they could redirect your letters?”

“What do you mean, “change of address”? I didn’t move to Thailand, ya numpty, I was only there for six months! I had loads of letters when I got home!”

Working in a call-centre is hell.

“…so you can go back to the bank and tell ’em I’m not paying a penny! It’s not right, sticking on all these charges when I wasn’t even in the country! And you know what? If you won’t help me, I’ll go to the ombudsman! I’m not being funny, but I’m gonna stand up for my rights and I…”

The digital clock in the bottom-right corner of Oscar’s computer screen ticked over from 19:29 to 19:30. His shift was finally over, only not really.

Not only is working in a call-centre boring, it’s also bad for your health. The rotating shifts obliterate any chance at a work-life balance, and for what? Most shift-based jobs are designed that way because the work is so important that it can’t ever stop – nurses, firemen, suicide hotliners – but that’s not the case with call-centres. The only reason they open so early and close so late is because British culture is built upon complaining, and there always needs to be a faceless drone clocked in to eat shit.

All too often, Oscar had left the call-centre at nine o’clock at night only to drag himself, bleary-eyed, back into the grey building at eight o’clock the following morning, wondering if he should have perhaps just slept at his desk.

The digital clock on his computer screen now read 19:45 and Oscar’s customer was beginning to run out of steam. Oscar began to gather his belongings whilst reeling off a dull paragraph about the collections process that he could probably now recite in his sleep.

Minutes later, Oscar had raced down five flights of stairs (the lift was tiny and packed full of other tired drones) and was striding out of The Maltings business park. It was Friday evening, he had a whole sixteen hours until he needed to be back at work, and he was going to spend as many of those hours as possible away from his silent, empty flat. He and the lads were going to get absolutely wankered.

The Lion and Key pub in Old Town was alive with the excitement of the weekend. Drunk patrons were crammed into every inch of space in the small pub, most of them getting rowdy in a benign sort of way. Ordinarily it would be quite difficult to find one’s friends in such a dense crowd, but Oscar moved through the revellers with purpose. His friends would be sat at the same corner table they’d been at for the past decade.

“Alright, boys?” Oscar took a swig from the lukewarm pint of beer that had been left in his vacant space at the table. The beer had been there so long that a wet ring was soaked into the cardboard coaster beneath it and the glass was sweating water droplets.

“Oh, now he decides to show up!” Mankey grinned. “I was just about to neck ya pint, mate.”

“Cheers, boys. I’ll get the next round in,” Oscar said. His friends laughed and waved their empty glasses in his face, to which he grinned and downed his beer in a few seconds flat. As he jostled his way through the Friday evening crowd to the bar, a memory whispered into his mind – Izzy’s face of concern, telling him that he needed to slow down his drinking.

“It’s getting bad, Ozzy…”

Nope. Not thinking about that tonight.

As the night wore on, talk turned to the weeks they’d each had. Josh regaled the group with dodgy stories of how he and the other solicitors on Parliament Street had been hazing their new apprentices. Luke, who was exhausted, described the tiring week he’d had at Hull Royal Infirmary’s A&E department, where they’d had to deal with a slew of hypochondriacs. Even Mankey had a few interesting anecdotes from his life as a secondary school teacher.

If there had been a moment in which Oscar could take his turn to talk about his job, he’d intentionally let it pass by, unspoken. When he had started working at the call-centre four years ago, he had delighted in telling his friends funny stories about weird callers and the insane things that they would complain about. But now that he was nearing the end of his twenties, he no longer enjoyed telling these stories. Far from being funny, the stories were markers of an adult stuck in a juvenile job. Everybody he had started with had long since left the company, moved onto brighter prospects.

All week long, he had been looking forward to being in the pub with his mates, but now that he was there, he felt stale and awkward.

#

It was almost one o’clock in the morning by the time Oscar fell through his front door after struggling to slot his key into the lock. He found himself face down in the grey carpet of his hallway, his ears ringing with pub noise and his eyes blurring with alcohol. He suddenly became aware that his bladder was about to burst, and so he used all his concentration to flop onto his back and relieve the pressure.

Don’t piss on the floor again!

Thankfully, this turned out to be one of the nights where he managed to make it to the bathroom without defiling the carpet along the way.

As he was relieving himself, he became dimly aware of an irritating noise; the soft, rhythmic sound of water dropping against ceramic. The shower head was dripping. That was strange, because whilst it was an ancient shower head that always dripped for about an hour after use, it hadn’t been used since Oscar’s rushed shower that morning. There was nobody else in the house – Izzy was long gone.

He flushed the toilet and staggered to the sink, where he found that the mirror was fogged up.

Oscar staggered to bed, too drunk to pay any notice to the sense of unease buried deep within him.

#

Over the next few days, the atmosphere in Oscar’s flat grew increasingly strange as the sensation of unseen, unwanted companionship persisted. On Sunday evening, he walked into the kitchen to find that one of his mugs (the one with the cartoon pig) was sitting next to the sink – he knew that he hadn’t put it there, and there certainly hadn’t been anybody else in his flat that could’ve done it. Stranger still, there were tea dregs in the mug. Oscar didn’t even drink tea – the dusty box of PG Tips had been bought out of obligation for guests.

On Tuesday morning, before his late shift at the call-centre, he drew back the curtains in the living room and was hit with the acrid stench of old cigarette smoke. Confused, he rubbed the curtains between his thumb and forefinger and found that they were grimy with smoke, as though somebody had been smoking indoors for decades. Oscar only smoked when he was out with the lads and certainly never indoors.

About an hour later he stepped outside to drop a full bin liner into the communal waste bin, only to be accosted by Maeve Doherty, the elderly lady who lived below Oscar in the lower half of the maisonette. She was furious and accused him of having his music too loud the night before.

“I don’t want to be listening to that racket, all guitars and high-pitched nonsense!” she had yelled from her doorstep, before slamming her front door shut.

Her complaint struck Oscar as strange, because not only did he not tend to listen to the sort of music she was describing, but he had been working so late the night before that he had simply come home, eaten a Pot Noodle and fallen asleep before being woken by his alarm early the next morning for work.

She’s old. Must be losing it.

#

It didn’t take long for Oscar to see the man for the first time. It was a gloomy night with an unusually heavy amount of rainfall. Oscar had crashed into the flat, soaked and frozen to the bone, shaking the rain off his broken umbrella and tracking mud into the hallway carpet. He had ripped off his sodden jacket and kicked off his waterlogged trainers only to find that his socks were also soaked through. He’d peeled them off, intending to put them in for a wash.

He trudged into his sitting room and found an older gentleman sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette and watching what looked like a World War Two documentary on the television. A beagle was curled up at his feet, asleep, and the pig mug was balanced on the arm of the sofa.

Oscar stood in the doorway, frozen in fear and confusion, and dripping rain onto the carpet.

Suddenly, the man noticed Oscar. He leapt from the sofa, knocking the half-full mug to the floor, tea splattering everywhere, including onto the beagle. The dog awoke with a start and began yapping and darting about the room in an attempt to understand why her master was yelling, why she was covered in lukewarm tea and who the stranger in the doorway was.

“Who the flaming heck are you?” the man shouted.

“What? I’m… this is… I live here!” Oscar spluttered. “Who the hell are you, pal?”

For a moment, the two men stood opposite one another utter confusion, both too flabbergasted to know what to do. The man looked like he was a few decades older than Oscar. His face was weathered with a lifetime of hard work, and what was left of his hair was wispy and grey. His outdated clothes were slightly oversized, old, like he had lost some weight and not updated his wardrobe. There was something about him – perhaps his stance, or his pattern of speech, or even just the way he looked – that gave Oscar the anxious feeling that he was from a different time.

The dog was now crouching behind her master and growling at Oscar.

“I dunno who you think you are, ya jumped up little idiot, but I’ve lived in this bloody house for longer than you’ve been alive!” The old man began to stride towards Oscar, pulling back an arm as if to strike a blow. Incensed at the man’s audacity, Oscar threw his sodden socks to the floor and raised his fists to his face, ready for a fight. The man threw a fist, only just before the moment of impact he abruptly vanished into a puff of grey smoke, taking his noisy dog with him. The cigarette that he’d been holding between his fingers dropped onto the carpet. Oscar stayed where he was with his fists raised and his eyes squeezed shut. Eventually, he dropped his fists and opened his eyes.

He was alone again.

Did that really just happen?

The cigarette was burning a hole through the carpet. Oscar instinctively tried to stamp it out but yelped in pain – he was barefoot. He quickly picked up the cigarette and stubbed it out on the coffee table (Izzy definitely would’ve moaned about that, the wood would never look the same again). He glanced at the television, which was still playing The History Channel. Oscar hadn’t even known he got that channel.

Yeah, that really just happened.

#

Over the next few weeks, the old man kept popping up at odd and inconvenient times. Sometimes several days would pass without him making an appearance, but then he’d appear again, watching television or staring out the sitting room window at the street below. As soon as he noticed Oscar watching him, he would always start shouting at him, which always set his dog off too.

One time, the old man particularly full of rage. He was yelling at Oscar to “get the flaming ’eck outtuv my ’ouse!”, when he worked himself into such a heightened state of ire that he stomped into the spare bedroom, where he slammed the door behind him like a teenager having a tantrum. When Oscar wrenched the door to the spare room open, he found the room was empty, but that familiar cigarette stench hung in the air.

Oscar decided that he needed to get to the bottom of the issue. What was the alternative? Become reluctant flatmates with an angry ghost bloke in his sixties?

He had the following Wednesday off work, so he made time that afternoon to sit down with his laptop and research the history of his flat. It was surprisingly difficult to find much information in this age of technology, but after almost an hour of varying his search terms and falling down a rabbit hole of old Hull news stories, he found the obituary.

In loving memory of Fred Welton, who sadly passed away at home on 9^th January 1963, aged 68, at the side of his beloved dog, Clover. Loving husband of Maggie Welton, he is now reunited with her once more.

The sad little paragraph was accompanied by a grainy, black and white photo of the angry ghost man, before he became a ghost. He still looked rather angry.

Oscar closed his laptop and stared at the wall for a long time.

He’s not been reunited with her though, has he?

#

The following evening, Oscar slumped face down onto the sofa after a long day of customers screaming at him (his ears were still ringing, which was sadly not unusual). On evenings like this one, he used to text Izzy during the bus ride home and by the time he got in, she’d be waiting for him with a heated up ready meal and a cold bottle of San Miguel, and she would sit opposite him at the table and listen intently whilst he unloaded his troubles.

He wondered what she was doing at that moment.

“Din’t I tell you ta sling yer hook, kid?”

Oscar groaned and yelled into the sofa cushion, “For god’s sake! Not today, Fred!”

He whipped up into a seated position and saw Fred staring back at him blankly.

“You know my name.”

“Yeah. I Googled you.”

“You did what to me, kid?”

“Oh, I, uh… I looked you up.”

“Hmmm.”

This revelation seemed to have completely disarmed Fred, who had sunk into the armchair by the window and seemed to be contemplating something. Oscar stared at his feet and felt extremely awkward. The air in the room had shifted.

“You go so many years without hearing it,” Fred said, suddenly. “Your name, I mean. You go that long without hearing your own bloody name, and then one day, out of nowhere…”

Alarmingly, he appeared to be tearing up. Oscar froze in horror. Was he supposed to comfort his poltergeist now?

Luckily, Fred straightened up, took a deep breath, and pushed the emotion back down. Slowly, he took in the room. It was as if he was only now noticing how different it looked – realising that Oscar’s belongings had replaced his own. When he next addressed Oscar, his voice was less combative.

“How long’ve you lived here, pal?”

“Couple of years. I moved in with my girlfriend. She doesn’t live here anymore.”

Fred nodded gravely. “I know that feeling.”

“Yeah, I read about that online. Uh, when I was researching you. I’m really sorry.”

Fred smiled into his lap. “She was… my light.”

“I wish I knew that feeling,” Oscar muttered. He was still staring at his feet, and so he didn’t notice the intensity with which Fred was studying him, taking in his waxen complexion, his greasy hair, his trembling hands. He didn’t notice that for a brief moment, Fred’s face broke with the realisation of what he was seeing. 

Empty beer cans were everywhere – on the coffee table, strewn across the floor, there was even one on the end of mantlepiece like an ornament. Full beer cans were in the fridge in place of food.

A shiver ran though Fred’s entire, dead body as he realised what he had stumbled upon.

He and Maggie had always longed for children. He imagined that this was the feeling of which parents spoke, that intense feeling of being innately protective of another person. He hadn’t meant to haunt this poor young man. But perhaps in doing so, their souls had become linked somehow?

Subconsciously, Fred gently passed his thumbs over the thick, raised scars on his wrists.

He rose out of the armchair and marched into the kitchen. Oscar sensed this but didn’t bother to look up. All the energy in his body had been gradually sapped over the past few weeks. He could feel tears welling in his eyes, but he didn’t want Fred to see him cry. Fred was from the 1960s, he’d probably deck him and tell him to stop being a stupid poofter.

“’ere y’are.”

Oscar looked up, blinking away tears that Fred pretended not to see. He smiled weakly and took the cup of tea that he was being offered.

“So, tell me, pal. What do you do for a living?” Fred asked, easing himself back into the armchair and setting the steaming pig mug onto the armrest.

“Nothing interesting. I work in a call-centre.”

“A what, now?”

Oscar laughed despite himself. “Oh Fred, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

#

It was a strange sort of relationship. As the years passed, Oscar came to view Fred as an older friend, not a father, simply a strange companion of whom he had become very fond. Fred remained protective of Oscar and fancied himself a guardian angel from beyond the grave (he wasn’t religious, just in need of a sense of purpose). Deep down, they both knew they were living in a sort of purgatory, a comfortable stage of life (or death?) that would not last forever.

---

J.L. Corbett is the editor of Idle Ink, an online publisher of all things curious. Her stories have been published in The Daily Drunk, The Cabinet of Heed, STORGY Magazine and others. She owns more books than she can ever possibly read and doesn’t get out much. To read more of her work, visit www.jlcorbett.org. Twitter: @JL_Corbett

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