The Attention Seeker

        

She couldn’t remember how it all started, well, ended really, being a ghost was difficult unless you had made an end. She assumed that when she had been alive she had been young, she felt young, she didn’t feel grown up anyway.  The early years of her haunting the house were fun.  People would cower in corners when she made her presence felt.  She had quickly learned how to open tightly shut doors, she could make windows rattle and curtains billow.  She had perfected the art of making china jump off shelves.  Best of all she could lower the temperature in a room dramatically; even in the hottest summer she could have people diving for their woolly jumper drawer.  The house’s living residents would finally pack up and leave and the ghost would eagerly anticipate the next new arrivals.  This was the way it was for quite a few decades, until ‘word’ got around about her activities, and no one came to live in the house for yet more decades. Then one day the whole building seemed to be taken over by what she assumed to be workmen.  She had overheard them saying they were to ‘completely gut’ the house.  The kitchen had been her favourite room to haunt, so she knew what gutting entailed.  Her curiosity overcame her desire to haunt, so she just lay low to see what would unfold.

Over the next nine months new words entered her vocabulary, like refurbishment, laminated surfaces, white goods and counter tops.  The putting together of the old house’s interior had also brought with it a plethora of other words from the workmen, none of which she was sure were polite.  The workmen departed and a large van arrived, furniture and cardboard boxes were brought into the house by two men in overalls, accompanied by yet more impolite words.  

The men and their van had not long left the property when a very large and shiny automobile pulled up to the front door.  
‘Aha,’ the young ghost thought on seeing its occupants, ‘It’s play time again.’   
The new inhabitants of the old house consisted of a Mother and Father, their thirteen year old daughter and ten year old son.  The ghost knew better than to start her fun and games immediately, it was always more effective when the hauntees were settled, secure, and content in their new home, so with a sweet child smile she slipped into the fabric of the building and waited.

She hadn’t waited long, six months, before she resumed her post death play time.  She had billowed and rattled, left previously locked doors swinging on their hinges, smashed her way through half a dinner service, and dropped the temperature so low that the boy’s pet gerbils had gone into premature hibernation.  All to no avail.  Irritatingly the father had explained her activities away.  Either the workmen had not fitted the windows properly, the old house was ‘settling,’ the floor was uneven, and the one she could not understand, the air conditioning was on the blink.  Obviously this was a modern family with modern mind sets, what she decided she had to do was study them, find a weakness and play upon it.  The best way of upsetting grown-ups is to upset their children and that was where she made a start.

The boy, Malcolm, spent an extraordinary amount of time in his room.  The ghost discovered this was not due to punishment by his parents, but by his own choice.  He was almost always to be found engrossed in the same occupation.  He would sit in front of a desk tightly grasping and manipulating a device which seemed to be connected to yet another device.  This device put the ghost in mind of a book, albeit page less, in the way it lay open.  However, no book she had ever seen contained moving figures on one lighted screen-like side and a typeface on the other.   Fascinated, she had hovered at his shoulder and watched.  Two things became apparent, one, by some means involving the hand held device, Malcolm was in command of the moving figures on the screen, and two, there was absolutely no way he could be distracted from his occupation.  Once again she had gone through her full repertoire, the rattling and billowing was totally ignored, as was his door flying open.  She had caused an ornament of a dinosaur, obviously much prized from the position it held on the book shelf, to come tumbling down, where it promptly bounced a few times on the deep piled carpet and was left, again ignored.  She did have some reaction to the lowering of the temperature, but instead of casting nervous glances around the room, he just said a bad word and grabbed his thick eiderdown off the bed and wrapped it round him before blissfully continuing his god-like control of the ‘book’ screen’s entities.  So she turned her attention to the girl.

The daughter of the house was called Susan.  Susan spent her time either being lectured about her sulky behavior by her parents, or in the bathroom, (the ghost assumed she was at the normal activities one performed in a bathroom, only Susan seemed to take an inordinate amount of time doing so, the ghost never slipped through the walls to investigate, even members of the spirit world knew where to draw the line.)  Like her brother the majority of her spare time was spent in her bedroom.  Susan also owned a page less book, but it seemed to have an altogether different use.  Susan’s book, as far as the ghost could work out, was used as a typewriting machine.  The screen took the place of typing paper, the words hammered out on the type face appearing on the lighted screen.  Worryingly, words also appeared on the screen even when Susan didn’t type, which she read, then either giggled mischievously over, or swore loudly at before recommencing her own typing.  Always nearby or held closely to the side of her head, was a small flat device which Susan spent hours talking to.  This, more than any other, had persuaded the ghost that haunting Susan was a non-starter; the girl was obviously mentally impaired, and just a little scary.

The ghost had heard the family talking about Halloween.  She assumed that this was their pet name for All Hallows Eve, a day of church going and religious observance.  From what the ghost could tell the family was indeed going to ‘observe’ All Hallows Eve, this could well be the opportunity she was waiting for.  Past experience had taught her that there was nothing more guaranteed to put an entire family on edge than a visit to church.  She drifted upstairs to Malcolm’s room to see what he would look like in smart Sunday Best.  He was, as usual, seated in front of his screen.  Giving a quick icy blast of a sigh, the ghost ran an eye over the boy’s back, well; he was certainly dressed in formal black.  

She was about to waft her way to Susan’s room when Malcolm spoke,
“Are you a ghost?”  
The initial surprise of hearing Malcolm say a complete sentence was quickly pushed away by the realization that he was speaking to her, she melted into the wall to take stock of the situation.  It wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for, but it was nice to be finally noticed.  A thought occurred to her which made her feel indignant, slipping back into the room she materialized in her hazy ‘could be a trick of the light, but you are not really sure are you?’ way.  
“What do you mean, ‘Am I a ghost,’ she demanded, “Of course I’m a ghost, what did you think I was?”  
“Dodgy air conditioning, at least that’s what Dad says,” replied Malcolm.  
The boy hadn’t even bothered to turn around to talk to her, which further added to her crossness,
“Well, for you, and your Father’s information, I am indeed a ghost.”  She said, making the ceiling light flicker.  
Still not turning around Malcolm offered up a single syllable in reply,
“Oh,” and resumed his gadget manipulation. 

There was no way the ghost could effectively materialize in front of Malcolm; the light screen would have diminished her already translucent outline, so she settled for standing directly behind him.  
“If I do not scare you just a little a bit, then are you not even curious about me?  Do you not feel compelled to research who I once was?  Hold a seance, that sort of thing.”  She asked the back of his head,
“No,” Malcolm simply replied.  
“WHY?” she blasted back at him, causing a momentary parting in his hair.  
“Because,” he quietly answered, still facing the screen and moving the characters around, “You really are not much of a ghost, are you?  I have never heard you give a ‘whooooo,’ or a ‘boo’, all you do is spy on people, and you're what Mum would call an 'attention seeker,' and not a very good one at that,  I mean to say, can you even take your head off?”  
“CAN I WHAT?  NO!  Why would I want to take my head off?”  
The ghost could hear the tearful hysteria in her voice, this was not how things were supposed to go, and of course she sought attention, for crying out loud, that's what ghosts were supposed to do.  
“OK,” Malcolm went on, “Can you pop your eye out with green gunge and maggots sliding out of the socket………..Sort    -     of    -    like    -    this!”
And with that, Malcolm finally turned around.
  
Ghosts do not have physical bodies, so they cannot feel acid bile rising to their throats, but they do have a full set of feelings that lead to reactions.  Malcolm’s face was pale and sickly green, with the eye protruding from the socket on a sinuous, shiny stalk which caused the eye to give a little bounce at his every movement.   From the socket, and dribbling down his cheek, was indeed a dark green slime, encrusted with small maggots.  The ghost took the sight in and promptly exploded in a soft cloud of spectral atoms.  Mentally shaken, and full of terror, she re-materialized in Susan’s room.

Susan was definitely not dressed for church.  Wearing what for all the world looked like ripped up net curtains; she was sitting on the bed with her back to the ghost holding her flat device at arm’s length.  There was a small blink of light and the girl scrutinized the device carefully.  The ghost wondered if Susan was going to hurl it across the room and break down in screaming sobs as she had often done before, but no, this time she gave a satisfied grunt and turned round, swung herself off the bed and stood up, coming face to face with the ghost.  Unlike her brother, Susan gave no indication that she was aware of the ghost's presence.  The ghost on the other hand was fully aware of hers.  Susan had always put the ghost ill at ease, but now, now Susan caused a resurgence of the fear the ghost had felt earlier.  Susan’s face was a deathly white which accentuated the blackness of her eye make-up.  Criss-crossing her face were crudely sewn-up wounds, red and angry looking, with just a faint hint of darkening putrefaction.

When she had gathered her molecules together for the second time that evening, the ghost found herself in the cellar.   She could not understand what was going on, whom, or what were these people?  There was something terrifying about the way they went from the normal to looking like, like THAT, the thought had her ectoplasm quivering like jelly.   Unlike the house’s former inhabitants she could not escape, not for her was the luxury of grabbing her coat to run screaming out of the front door.  She was firmly bound to the house, not a chance, this side of the last trumpet, of leaving.  Sadly she had to concede, the weird family upstairs was beyond her scope, she was well and truly out of her league.  Looking round her surroundings she came to the conclusion that the cellar was a good place to be, if she couldn’t leave the house then she would stay in the cellar.  The family rarely came down here, if they did it was for a very short and hurried time, it was cold and damp and covered in cob webs.  Cob webs meant spiders; at least she wouldn’t be alone down here.  Integrating herself into an old mangle she smiled and decided that it was quite homely in the cellar, first she would rest and then she would see if spiders could be frightened.

“I feel sick,” said Malcolm the next morning sat at the breakfast table.  
“You’re going to school,” said his mother, slamming his breakfast bowl down in front of him, then crossing the room she placed one hand on the banister and yelled up the stairs,
“Susan, I’ll give you five minutes to get your lazy butt out of that bed before I come up and get you out myself.”  
With the morning family conversation complete, each member returned to their own thoughts.  The mother was pleased that her children had made a good impression with their Halloween costumes at the party, that would show that stuck up Mrs Halberry to look down her nose at them, mind you it would have made a better impression in front of the local gentry if Malcolm hadn’t made such a pig of himself, a whole cake and half a trifle, no wonder the greedy little sod felt sick!  

Malcolm wondered if he would ever see the ghost again, he hoped he hadn’t scared it too much, at least not on their first meeting; there could be ages of fun to be had there.  

Susan, finally dragging herself to the bathroom, explored her reflection in the mirror for spots.  

The father wondered how much it would cost to convert the cellar into a games room, he would probably get a pretty penny for scrap from some the junk stored down there………

And thus the living got on with life, ignorant of the remains that lay beneath the cellar floor, and the remains of those remains that slept in the fabric of the mangle.