100 points
Pls answer it
describe about your own ghost in 16 lines
Answers
At first the ghost was no more than a chill in the air, a shimmer of mist, diffuse. Through it the furniture and the wallpaper that peeled with the rising damp became slightly out of focus, like a poorly taken photograph. It wasn't until Max closed the door behind him that it congealed into a form, a small child with brilliant white eyes, a silver skin and the smile of a predator. His clothes were odd.
The ghost would whimper like a lost child, clutching at a rag doll, it's eyes brimming with silver tears that shone brightly in the moonlight. It would appear to lone travellers on the long road that traversed the marsh. If they came she would reward them with a giggle and beckon them closer, distracting them, entertaining them, right up until they sank into the bog. Then she would soundlessly clap her hands and laugh like she had never seen such a funny thing, If they would not follow she would block their way and take on the form she had at her death. This new apparition was burnt, no hair, no eyebrows, features melted and raw. When she spoke it was the same scream as the day she had been burnt for witchcraft. Then without warning the hem of the travellers travelling cloak would flicker into silver flame, yet it combusted the material with the same intense heat as any fire. There was no chance of stamping it out, it spread as fast as if they were doused in paraffin.
This is a story I have never told in print for fear that I would sound mad. It is the version of events as I remember them, so that the tale told by another member of my family might differ slightly in order or timing. But it is a true story, none the less. It happened, despite our collective reluctance to admit it, and my reluctance now both to tell it and to own it as mine. And before you ask, no, I don’t believe in ghosts. Only, as I say, this happened.
I was 16 when, one June, my family moved to a lofty Victorian villa in the Midlands: ivy-strewn, hidden behind trees, high-ceilinged and replete with corridors. This sudden gift of space was not before time. When people asked how many siblings I had, I tended to chirp “we are too menny” à la Jude the Obscure, or “we are legion” à la biblical possession. Ours, in fact, was the perfect situation for a horror story: three girls of 16, 15 and nine, a boy of 11 and one of barely four.
To be sure, our new house had a degree of notoriety. Local gossip held that it boasted three “presences”: a woman who stalked the ground floor, an elderly doctor forever racing up its stairs searching for a dying grandson and, in its upper reaches, the victim of an argument that had spilled over into murder. There was even what appeared to be the requisite bloodstain that could not be removed, since covered with carpet.
The more credulous would not step inside it. We were not so naive. And yet, there was something unsettling about our new home, a personality, a sense that we were installing ourselves in a place already occupied. It never felt quite empty. Doors would shut of their own volition, footsteps would sound. It felt as if we were being watched, assessed.
Very soon, this phoney-war period became the subject of nostalgia. For, when the house kicked off, it kicked off in epic style. Every night at 4am, someone – something – would tear up its stairs, rattling, then forcing open, the doors in its wake (all of which required proper turning and thrusting), until it reached my mother’s room, entering in a furious, door-slamming blast. Once – comically, but in ghastly, unequivocal fashion – it even seemed to relieve its excess energy with a few strokes on her rowing machine.