Ghost Stories to Tell No One by Sirena He
My house is haunted. It’s haunted by me.
There are no cathedral ceilings, hallways lit by candlelight, or stained glass windows that stream in unholy shadows. It’s an ordinary house, small even. Beige brick lined, neat green lawn, and a thick oak tree shading the front yard. Our family has been here for fifteen years. My family has been here for generations. That family isn’t here anymore. I was born in the palm of someone’s hand. I grew up inside of a balled up fist. That fist was used to raze every foundation it came across. It beat every wall into dust.
The house survived through a brutal storm, a catastrophic natural disaster, a hurricane that devastated the entire city. Biblical floods submerged the streets, clogged the sewers with tree limbs and dead vermin. A dark ring stained a circle around the outside of the house, where the thick rancid flood waters sat for days, then weeks. There was rot inside the walls. The rot had been there before the flood. There was a blood red X spray painted on the front door with 9/6 scrawled above it, the date the emergency rescue team came to search the house. They examined every room, but they didn’t see me.
The dark waters that filled the streets used to give me nightmares. Lying awake in strange starchy sheets of the motels we’d evacuated to, I’d dream about the bodies of the recently deceased floating out of their above ground graves, flushed out by the storm, taken by the current and looming beneath the muddy waters, left behind when the flood recessed. Flesh rotting off the bone, unrecognizable to their loved ones, lying anonymous on someone’s front lawn.
My mother and father rebuilt the house, knocked out big chunks of the walls to put in floor to ceiling windows in the front facade. “To let in light,” my mother said.
There are jars of things on the nightstand in my bedroom. I don’t remember what I filled them with. There might have been teeth, drops of blood, tears gathered in a small glass jar. There are bay leaves or sprigs of dried something floating in them. Potions that were made in moments of deep desperation. Wishes and enchantments were chanted in pleading despair. The whispers of which are still lingering in between the doorways of every room. I practiced magic that I knew little about. Molding energy that was ancient, that came from thousands of miles away, brought over by Haitians and West African slaves kidnapped and sold to what used to be the French colonies. They brought their deities and ancestors with them, hidden deep within the parts of them that the white colonizers couldn’t find. They cultivated their beliefs, their power, until it became something undeniable, terrifying, rectifying. I had nothing to believe in. No God. No father. No mother. No higher power to salvage my soul. The sky was black when I looked to heaven.
The house is beautiful in the dark. But only when you look at it from the backyard. Where a hundred year old oak tree shoots up, and its long dangling limbs blot out the sky. Spanish moss trails down from every branch, swinging and whispering in the wind. Spiders weave webs between the leaves, catching raindrops and mosquitoes.
A shoe out of place at the doorway. A spoon unwashed in the sink. A light left on in the bathroom. That was enough to earn a hard red bruise on the cheek. A kick in the head. A foot on the chest. I screamed. I hollered. I yelped. I squealed. Like a pig poked in the soft underbelly with a hot brand. I made as much noise as my body would allow. But there never was anyone to hear. Silence always fell over me, like a warm blanket to crawl in at night.
The bathroom window is open. The only room in the house that gets fresh air. The heady smell of jasmine and magnolia floats in from a fall breeze. I loved those scents when I was alive, but now I have nothing to do with the living.
When I was alive I walked around the house in a stupor, not caring if I banged my shoulders into the door frames, or if I threw up on my bedroom floor, breath soaked in Everclear, pale green bile sticking to the cracks between the floorboards. I hoped I’d suffocate on it in my sleep. But I never did.
I brought strange men into the house. But I could never keep them there. They sensed the rot in the heavy stale air in every room. A boyfriend I made in my teenage years snuck in with me after school let out early one day, and we kissed sloppy on the living room couch until my father, keys clanking in the front door, broke us apart.
I send the boy into my room, whispering there is a sliding door there that leads to the backyard, and he runs and hides under my bed when my father enters. He comes home roaring with his mighty voice bouncing off the walls of that bare bones house. He is already in a rage, immediately noticing my skittishness. He yanks me by my shoulders off the couch and presses me against the wall, drilling his rage blown pupils into mine, boring into me. Why are you acting so strange he bellows into my face. What are you hiding? Just got off school early and watching TV, I say. I heard you scampering around like a little rat before I opened the front door. What were you doing? Just watching TV. Don’t lie to me. I know when you lie. I hate liars.
My eyes dart behind his head to where the boy’s dirty Converse lay, all crumpled up from his haste to take them off and climb on top of me. I was just watching TV. I’m sorry. I know I’m not supposed to. Damn right. You should know better. But you never do what you say. You’re a dirty liar. You’re a useless bitch. You’re a no good sneaky bitch that I waste all my hard earned money on.
He grows tired, and I grow limp and slink down the wall. I wait until I can hear his footsteps go into the kitchen and the faucet turns on to fill a glass of water, and I creep over to the Converse and grasp them tight to my chest and slide into my room. I find the boy still lying motionless under my bed, eyes wide. Although he didn’t understand the language we were speaking in, he’d heard everything through those thin cruel walls. I thrust his shoes into his shaking hands and pull back the sliding glass door and push him out. Daddy never did find out.
That boy told everyone at school what he’d seen and what he’d heard. No boy ever wanted anything to do with me again. It was for the best, because I could never leave the house even if some boy did love me and wanted to take me away. The house belonged to him. And I belonged to him just like everything else in that house.
Sirena He is a freelance actress, professional alcoholic, and lifestyle editor at Esquire magazine, where she covers cocktails, hot spots, and anything horror film related. When she’s not reporting on the best bars in the country or interviewing her favorite artists, she can be found looking for the filthiest martini in NYC and sitting in a repertory theater watching slasher films. Her bylines can be found at Esquire, The Midtown Gazette, and her substack, Doom and Delight. She’s working on a collection of short stories and a monologue for her next audition.