Ghost Story

agoodflyting:

I’m not entirely sure if this is going anywhere, but here’s a small, spooky, halloween ghost story with Ben, Hux, Techie, and Matt.

---

“Ben- Ben, wake up. Wake up, wake up-”

“Oh my god, fuck off,” Ben groans, his voice full of gravel. He turns over, pulling the comforter up over his mess of unruly dark hair.

“Get up, get up please- please-” his little brother whispers urgently, throwing glances back over his shoulder like he’s afraid of being overheard.

“Go back to bed, Matt. It’s like midnight.”

“Ben, please just get up, please.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“There’s somebody in my room.”

The click of the light switch is audible in the still quiet of the house. Light from the overhead bulb glares off of the bare off-white walls and piles of cardboard boxes stacked up in corners. The floor is old hardwood, worn soft by generations of feet. More boxes are stacked on top of the dresser, the words ‘Matty’s Stuff’ and ‘Matty’s Clothes’ written on them neatly in sharpie. One of the boxes on the dresser has been opened and tipped over, spilling a river of half-folded t-shirts and pajamas out across the floor.

In one corner there’s a twin bed, unmade. The wash-worn Spiderman sheets are rumpled and half torn off the mattress. Across the room, beside the dresser, a pillows lies crumpled against the floorboard, like it had been thrown
Aside from that, the room is empty.

“See? There’s nobody here.”

Even dressed in just a wrinkled t-shirt and boxers, Ben still fills most of the doorway, all long legs and sleep-rumpled hair. He had been tall with big shoulders since he was fourteen. Mom said he got it from their granddad.
Matt hoped so. At their old house, he’d measured himself against the doorframe in the bathroom every week.

“He’s in the closet,” Matt whispers, half hidden behind the solid figure of his brother. “I threw the pillow at him and he ran in the closet.”

Ben half-groans, half-sighs again, but he allows himself to be steered by little-kid hands digging into the small of his back. His bare feet slap against the cold hardwood floor. “Matt, if this is a joke I swear to god I’m going to murder you and bury you in the backyard…”

“It’s not a joke, he’s really in there.” There’s a shrill edge of panic in the nine-year-old’s voice. He sounds close to tears. “I woke up and he was going through my stuff. You’ve got to make him leave.”

“Alright, alright, alright…” Ben rolls his eyes.

The closet door folds back like an accordion, admitting dingy shadows into the dark space beyond. Ben fumbles for the string overhead and tugs it. He can feel his little brother’s sweaty hands fisting in the fabric of his t-shirt. The closet light comes on with a click.

On the floor of the wide, narrow closet there’s another pile of boxes, labeled in the same efficient handwriting as the ones in the bedroom. Above, a trio of sad wire hangers rock slowly back and forth on the bar.

Ben sticks his head in the closet, looking left and right, then up. There’s a hatch to the attic recessed into the ceiling and an old spiderweb in the corner. That’s it.

“See? There’s nothing here, Matty. Go back to bed.”

“Don’t call me Matty, that’s a baby name. And he was right there, I saw him- he had long hair and he was going through my stuff-”

“Matt-”

Matt takes a heaving breath, his hands fisting, the way he does when he’s working himself up into a tantrum and needs to be redirected. That was what his therapist called it. “No, he was! He must have gone up into the attic, or-”

“Or maybe you had a bad dream.” Ben interrupts, voice hard. “It’s just the moving, okay? It’s always freaky the first night in a new house. You know that. Now go back to bed before mom wakes up.”

“It wasn’t a bad dream and it’s not the house-”

Matt’s skinny shoulders heave as he sucks in an angry breath, pushing back the ever-ready threat of tears.

Ben ignores him,  plucking the discarded pillow off the floor and tossing it onto the bed. “Come on, get in bed.” When Matt doesn’t move, he repeats, “Come on. I’ll leave the door open and if closet guy comes back just- I don’t know, scream or something and I’ll come kick his ass with my katana.”

“Your katana isn’t even sharp,” Matt says, in a small voice, but he climbs under the blankets anyway. Ben pulls them up over him.

“It is too. Remember when I cut that apple right in half in the backyard? At the house in Roslindale?”

“Leave it on!” Matt yelps as Ben goes to pull the string for the closet light. With the blankets pulled up to his chin all that’s visible is a mop of dirty blond curls and a pair of overlarge glasses that made him look like an owl. Mom had said he needed a pair he could grow into.

“Alright, fine, don’t freak out. Hey don’t sleep in your glasses-” Ben adds. “You’re gonna break them again.”

Matt clings to the blankets tighter like he’s afraid they’re going to be taken from him too. “But I want to be able to see. If he comes back.”

Ben gives up. “Alright, whatever. When mom yells at you I get to say I told you so.”

“…’night, Ben,” Matt says in a small voice as his brother pads to the door.

“Goodnight, Matt.” Ben says without turning around.

When the bedroom light is switched off and his brother’s footsteps have receded down the hall, Matt lies awake in his bed. Outside, crickets are chirping quietly. The closet light casts a triangle of shadow on the bedroom floor.

He keeps his eyes fixed on the closet.

There had been someone there. Matt was going to be ready when he came back. After a minute he shuffles back up the bed, grabbing a pillow from behind his head and clutching it to his chest like a weapon.

He waits.

Outside, a car rumbles quietly down the street in front of the house.  

Matt hates moving. Ben was wrong about the boy in the closet, but he was right about the first night in a new house being freaky. This was the fourth time they had moved since Matt was a baby, and he had never been happy in a new house on the first night.

In the back of his mind, he thought it felt like meeting new friends. He’d had to do that a lot too, he was an expert. At first you were sort of quiet and awkward around each other until you figured out what they liked and what you could talk about. You stood around with your hands in your pockets trying out different things to say. I have a bike, do you? Do you like Spider-man? What’s your favorite tv show? Eventually something clicked and you found something to be friends over, but until then you were strangers and it was weird.

New houses were kind of like that too. It took time for them to warm up to you. This one clearly didn’t like him yet.

That thought reminds him that it was almost Monday. He groans, letting his head thunk against the headboard.

Monday meant he was going to have to start a new school with a new teacher and make new friends. Again. His heart sinks at the thought of standing in another unfamiliar lunchroom and trying to find someone, anyone, who will let him sit with them.

This was so stupid. Why did they have to move again?

Matt is half-asleep, his eyes heavy and his glasses leaving a red pressure mark across the side of his face, when he hears a quiet voice whisper.

“Sorry I scared you.”

~

“What’s that?” Matt’s mom asks as he is wolfing down a bowl of cereal before the school bus comes. Sitting beside his bowl is a little figure made out of copper wire, twisted into the shape of a person.

Usually Ben helps him get ready for school in the morning, because even when his mom is not at work she has files to read and emails to answer and things to do. She works for the government, so it’s really important. But Ben had to leave early today because he had detention.

“My friend left it for me,” Matt says in between crunchy bites of cereal.

“It’s cute.” Leia picks up the little wire figure with two fingers, turning it over before sitting it back down.

“He made me another one too-” Matt pauses to lean over in his chair and dig around in his backpack. Papers rustle before he sticks his head back above the table and sets another little wire figure beside the first one.

“Is that a dog?”

His mom’s phone dings. She glances at it, frowning. Then she sighs and barely restrains rolling her eyes, thumbing open an email app. “Does he really think…” she mutters to herself.

“It’s a cat,” Matt says. “He said they had a cat when he lived here. He’d probably make you one too, if you wanted.”

Without looking up from her phone, his mom says, “That would be very sweet, thank you Matty. Now go get your lunchbox while I tell this idiot how to do his job”

Matt sinks down in his chair, clutching his backpack against his chest. “I hate when you call me Matty.”

Two month after they move in, Matt’s teacher calls his mother in for a meeting after school. Matt sits out in the hall while they talk, scuffing his feet against the pea green linoleum and listening to the patter of voices inside the classroom. All the other kids have gone home, and the school feels empty. Abandoned.

The clock at the end of the hall says 3:46.

Matt runs his fingers over the little wire figure in his hand. The one that looked like a person waving hello. He had a lot of them now, all lined up on his dresser, but this one was his favorite.

At the end of the hall, the janitor pushes a floor buffer.

The classroom door opens and Matt jumps, stuffing the wire figure in his pocket.

“Thank you, Mrs. Carney,” his mother is saying, in her polite, ‘talking to strangers’ voice.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Organa,” his teacher gives him a little wave, “Bye Matt, see you tomorrow.”

“ ‘bye,” he mumbles without looking up from the floor.

Leia steers him out to the car, a hand on his shoulder the whole way. It isn’t until he’s buckled up in the backseat and they’re pulling out of the school parking lot that either of them speaks.

“Is it because I yelled at Jake Evers at lunch?” Matt’s voice is small.

One of the reasons they had to move out of their old house was because his mom got a transfer at her job.  The other reason, Ben said, was because Matt had gotten into so much trouble at school that he was about to be expelled. Matt had promised his mom that he’d do better this time, and he’d been trying, he really had-

Leia sighs without taking her eyes off the road. “Not… just because of that.”

“I didn’t mean to throw the juice box at him. I just got mad.”

“Why were you mad?”

“Because he’s a stupid jerk.”

To his surprise, his mother huffs a little laugh. “Well, I can’t say I don’t know where you get it from.”

“Bad tempers run in our family,” Matt mutters.

She frowns. “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s something dad said.”

Dad had been talking about Ben when he said it, but Matt knew it applied to him too.

They drive in silence for a while, passing the place where Ben took him sometimes to get ice cream after school, when he wasn’t too busy. Matt suddenly regrets bringing up dad. His mom always got that look on her face when they talked about dad- the one like she was pursing her lips hard to hold in all the angry comments.

“What about your story?”

Matt’s brows furrow behind his glasses. He looks up from picking at a seam in the armrest. “What story?”

“The one you wrote yesterday in class.” Leia says, gently at first, but as she continues the words start to come out in an angry rush. “About the boy with no eyes, whose mother kills him and hides his body in the attic? Matty, where would you even come up with something like that?”

She sounds upset and it makes him want to hunch down in his seat. “I didn’t…. I- Nowhere. It’s just a story. Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad, Matty, I’m…” she sighs, “Just promise me you won’t write any more stories like that.”

“I promise. It’s just a story I heard, I’m sorry. I promise.” His shoulders creep up to his ears.

He stares out the car window as they pull onto their street. A couple of girls he knows from school are out riding bikes. They wouldn’t let him ride with them, even if he wanted to play with girls. Which he doesn’t.

On the corner, a tall guy with orange hair is taping a flyer to the stop sign. Matt catches a flash of a picture of a boy in a yellow sweater and the word ‘MISSING’ before they turn into their driveway.

After dinner he goes straight up to his room and shuts the door.