Prompt fill for
theshelbyparadox over on tumblr
April let out a sigh, watching the maple leaves fall outside the attic window. It was late October now, she thought. I had to be, with all the plastic gravestones decorating the yard and jack-o-lanterns haunting the porch steps. She’d never been good keeping the months straight, only the seasons, as she could see them from here. But now was different, now that he was here and with her, she began to noticing the passing of time again. She had a reason to look at the calendar, to remember things like birthday’s and christmas. Things she nearly forgotten.
Because what good where holidays when you were a ghost?
April sighed, again, tossing her long hair over her shoulder as she turned her back to the window. Forty years in this house and she still looked 16. The church bells chimed three, somewhere in the distance and she smiled. Isaac would be home soon, and today was Friday. At least she thought it was.
She lived for his weekends, when he’d sneak up here with his books and read to her for hours. They would listen to her old records, sometimes she’d teach him to dance. He was a shy and quite boy, but she liked him. He made her feel alive again, made her forget how lonely she’d been without really knowing it.
The year of her death was 1972, and after months of fruitless searching for her body, her parents marriage had fractured under the weight of lose. They had sold the house after the divorce, neither one able to bare the memory of her. She had tried to touch them, to tell them where to find her, but they couldn’t hear. No one ever listened to her anyway.
The years had passed in a dull whirl.Families move into the small house on Oak Draw, and often moved out just as quickly. She never hurt anyone, she didn’t even mean to scare them. But it was so boring her most of the time, all by herself. What was the harm in breaking a few dishes, or flickering the lights every once in a while.
Then the Bates moved in, and everything changed.
Her tricks didn’t seem to bother them, and strangest of all was their boy, Isacc, with his dark curly hair and his eyes like sapphires. He looked right at her when she was at her mischief. Not through her, at her. And once he’s even smiled. She’d taken to putting rats in his bed after that.
Then one night, some months ago, he’d come up to the attic around midnight and founding her sitting here by the window, like she always did. His dark eyes watched her for moment and then he spoke to her, and she jumped. No one had spoken to her in a long time.
“What are you doing?”
“You can see me?”
“Of course I can see you. We all can.”
“You’re whole family?”
“Yep, except Emma. She’s too little, but she learn when she gets older.
He took a step forward and offered her his hand, with that shy lopsided grin of his.
“I’m Isaac.”
She hesitated, staring at him.
“I know.”
Then tentatively, she took his hand. It as warm and solid and she didn’t float right through him. It made her blush.
“I’m April.”
She’d told him her story that night, or most of it at least. About how she’d planned to run away with a boy she liked, that she was hatching the plan the night she died. Her parents were out of town, an older cousin staying with her to make sure she didn’t have any wild parties. Scott. She’d never much liked Scott, the way he leered at her sometimes when her parents weren’t watching. She had been young and dumb, not understanding how dangerous he’d been until it was too late. He’d found out about her plan, trying to force himself on her, using their secret as leverage. She’d fought him, knocked his head against the wall and run like hell. But he was bigger and faster. He tried to grab her as she ran down the stairs. He missed and she fell, breaking her neck. At least it hand’t hurt.
And Isaac had listened, patiently, quietly. It would be a lie to say there weren’t days she wished for him to die, to be with her here forever. But there had come a day when she realized she couldn’t really want that, because for all Isaac’d quiet nature, it was the spark of life in him that brought her out of the grey. One day soon she’d tell him the rest of the story, take him to the place where her body was buried, incased in the foundations of the living room, the part of the house her parents had been adding on. Then she could be at peace and Isaac could live a real life and love a living girl. But for now, he was hers and she would enjoy it while it lasted.