“The place is fucking haunted. I knew it was too good to be true.”
It was the first time in a year and a half that he could confidently say he looked and felt just as tired as his sister. He shouldn’t have bought the stupid house. He should have questioned the price, shouldn’t have been taken in by the woodshop in the basement and the French windows.
“Maybe it’s not quite haunted,” his sister suggested hopefully. “Maybe it’s just cursed. You could get a witch in. I’m sure I could find you one, trans kids love growing up witchy.”
“No it’s definitely haunted,” he grunted, rubbing his face with his hands. “There’s some thing that wails in the attic whenever I go near it and whenever it rains there’s this awful scratching at the downstairs windows and four sets of footprints appearing on the carpet.”
His sister opened and shut her mouth, her optimism flagging.
“There’s hardly a whole mug left in the house, the keys to the attic just went missing, and then there’s the screaming every night and the sobbing every morning and my damn books being dragged around and stacked in front of my desk.
His sister took in a singing breath. “Sounds like kids.”
He lifted his head out of his hands, staring at her. “What?”
She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be that mom. I’m listening, I swear. It sounds horrible, I’m sorry.”
“No, what did you just say?” he pressed.
She gave him a tired, wry smile. “I don’t know about the attic and the windows, but, screams of terror in the night, crying in the early morning, things breaking and getting lost and being set out for you to find… Sounds like just like kids.”
He was still staring, almost frozen, at the lines of fatigue and determination etched into his sister’s face.
“You… You’d be able to tell a child’s cry apart from any other wouldn’t you?”
She snorted. “From five miles away with my ears plugged. ‘Only the birthing parent gets superhuman hearing’ my ass.”
“If I find someone to help Millie with the kids for an evening, will you come to my house to…listen to ghosts?”
It was now her turn to stare. “You think you’re haunted by children? By child ghosts??”
“I mean…” His mind passed frantically through every sensation of crowded panic he had ever felt in that blasted house. But it was his house now. His responsibility. What if there were kids in there? “Maybe!”
There was a single beat of silent, parental horror.
“Let me call Mill to sort something out.”
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