It was New Year’s Eve and finally he had to say it. “There’s a ghost in this house.” He saw the cords in her neck rise and she gripped her mug of green tea tighter but she didn’t look round at him, wouldn’t acknowledge it. He wanted to say more but felt stifled by her silence, exiled by her stoic refusal to accept the presence that filled their home and had done every night since. The air was dry with central heating left on all day, but it was still spiked with a chill whatever they set on the thermostat and when they moved or spoke they stirred the air and the pall fell on them like snowflakes which slip through layers of scarves and jumpers to hit the back of your neck. They sat on the same sofa, separated by the same terror. Everything they shared kept them apart.
Last year had been so different, the house had been filled with the relaxed chatter and laughter of friends. He remembers kissing her as bells chimed midnight, her chestnut hair shining in the twinkling fairy lights. She tasted of champagne, filled his senses with the vanilla of her perfume and the happiness they’d believed was cemented into the bricks of their home. They’d flung the front door wide and led their friends into the street to greet the new year, whooping at the stars and holding hands to watch the distant fireworks and look back at their open front door and the light and warmth they’d built into their home.
This year, no one came, no one invited them over and they barred their front door against the festivities. He’d bought a Christmas Tree, had thought the aroma of fresh pine would bring some life back into the house but instead the needles dropped unscented and the lights which last year had crowned her radiance this year looked like a cheap mockery of Christmas joy. The ghost ate all their small gestures towards future contentment, hissing like damp logs in a fireplace, shooting white hot sparks in their eyes until they stopped looking for it.
“I said –“ he tried again.
“I know what you said,” she replied, but still wouldn’t turn to look at him. She’d been gripping her mug for the last half an hour and her tea must be cold but she wouldn’t let it go.
“I think you’re being stupid, I mean, it’s not as if –“
Fury overtook him, and he stood.
“As if what? Don’t pretend you don’t feel it too. You won’t talk about it, you refuse to move and all this, all this... death seeps into our walls and into our bones.” Slamming his whiskey glass on the table – unlike her, he wasn’t afraid of the oblivion alcohol could provide, he sometimes thought it was his only insulation against the horror – he stalked across the hallway and up the stairs to stand by the closed, locked door. From his pocket he pulled out the key he’d been carrying for three months, nearly three months to the day since he’d locked it. Tonight he returned the key to the lock.
“Simon no, it’s...”
He noticed then how much the ghost had taken from her. At first she hadn’t spoken at all, and even after he locked the door she could only ever manage scraps of a sentence, so often she trailed off as it took her breath away and only now he noticed. Alone in the same haunting.
It started with the smallest things. As they sat together in the evening, lights dimmed and the house seemed darker, filled with shadows and shapes. From the first night it seemed that way, the change so small he had thought it was just his darkened imagination picking up the noises of the house. It was an alarm clock ringing in an empty room or a discarded sweet wrapper unfurling on a table, eerie but not a cause for concern, or even comment.
He can’t remember when he locked the room, or what had prompted him to do it. The face, open mouthed and grinning as a shadow from behind a lamp shade, or caught in the reflection on the tv.
