The Art of Perfecting Ghost Skills

For years, the house had had a secret room, and Justine was the only one who knew it existed anymore. It was maddening, to say the least. A century (had it been more?) yet no one had discovered it. Or her.

Justine’s father added the room in the 1920s, a few years before the big crash when everything went south. Her mother, Claire, was a nervous type and the room was meant to be a haven, a quiet sanctuary that would allow Claire to set her jumpy tendencies aside, as if they were a hat she could take on and off.

They had all loved the room, the door to which was hidden behind a fake shelf in the library that her father, Edward, had built. It was warm and cozy, unlike the parlor which was blanketed by windows and made Claire nervous.

The secret room was a place where they could just be. It was the family den of the future. The adult side held leather chairs, the seams lined in chrome dots that Justine and her brother Henry liked to run their fingers along. There was a table between that held an ornate brass lamp and the brandy and glasses.

The children’s side had a seafoam fainting couch and a shelf of books and puzzles. The floor was pine boards, a smooth honey color. In the evenings, when most men would take to their study with cigars, that was when Edward and his family took to the secret room.

Oh, the memories! The before memories, anyhow.

Justine had never figured out exactly why the men had come. Or why their father had given up his family’s hiding spot. Although, she had known something was amiss. She’d overheard snippets of conversation between her parents. Her father’s certain voice contained wobbles while her mother wrung her hands together constantly. It was about money, debts…something boring. Justine wasn’t overly worried.

Until the men came. With his flashing eyes, Edward relayed some subliminal message to Claire. When her father left with the men, seemingly of his own free will, Claire took Justine and Henry into the secret room, pulling them by their hands like toddlers, instead of nearly grown adults.

After Claire shut and bolted the door, she explained in whispery tones that the men were bad. Edward hadn’t left willingly, but rather by invisible force. If he didn’t do what they wanted…Claire choked over the words.

And then…despite the lack of windows, despite the room being hidden in the dead space at the center of the house, they all heard it. Gunshots, two in a row. Claire dropped to her knees, melting, giving up before it was even over. Henry angrily jerked his mother up like a rag doll, insisting that she keep her wits about her. Justine was frozen.

In the end, it didn’t matter. The gunshots had been a ruse, a ploy. When things grew quiet and they slowly slid the bolt open, the men surged in. With them was her father, beaten and bloody. Justine would never understand—he must have known they were all going to die, hadn’t he? Why would he lead death directly to his family? Before they could scream, the men shot Claire, Justine and Henry, forcing Edward to bear witness. Justine recalled silence, empty white noise created by gunshots, the three of them dropping like flies and the silent NO that took shape upon Edward’s lips.

Being dead sucked.

Being dead and stuck in the secret room? Sucked worse.

Henry and her mother seemed to float away. She watched them morph into formless wisps, a presence, like soft silk and summer rain and the haze of dawn. She desperately wanted to join them, but she couldn’t turn away from the gore. From their bodies on the floor, large puddles of blood forming under their heads. So dark! She couldn’t turn away from Edward. His anguish was heartbreaking. She had to let him know she was still there.

Soon, it was apparent that Justine had lingered too long. Now she was stuck in the room with only her grief-stricken, alcohol-drenched father for company. For years, she watched him come into this room to cry. To down brandy as if he were trying to poison himself, to write apologies on papers he crumpled up angrily. To lay out his cowardice like an endangered animal he’d never meant to kill.

“I’m so sorry,” he would weep, repeatedly. A grown man, heaving sobs like a child! And Justine came to understand that her father had made a choice. He’d chosen their fates, and he’d chosen wrong.

You shouldn’t have given us up! Justine screamed. You should have let them kill you like a man! They never would have found us!

Sometimes, she thought her father heard her. Justine would bellow right in his face—it was his fault she was stuck forever. Occasionally he would jerk still, cocking his head as if he heard her. But it made no difference either way. Nothing changed.

Eventually, she figured out how to use her rage to move things, and she took great pleasure in concentrating her efforts flinging books across the room towards her father. By the time she mastered this skill, Edward was elderly. He rambled on about his departed family, but there was no one to listen. Only Justine.

Eventually, Edward died. She didn’t how. But one day, the chair in the secret room was empty and that was that. The brandy glass, with a tiny amount on the bottom, solidified, and dust materialized on everything. It was always dark. Justine had spent decades haunting Edward, her anger oozing out like poison tipped darts, and then he was no more. She didn’t know where he was, but she was still stuck in this room.

Her ghost skills had improved though. She had learned how to listen, how to hear words from afar. That was how she knew when a family had moved into the house. Parents who constantly bickered. Three silly, insipid daughters. She learned everything there was to know about them in the decade they lived there, just out of reach. All by listening.

By the time the family left, their inevitable divorce being the catalyst, Justine had sharpened her ghost skills to include sight. Sort of. 

She could hear the realtor showing the rooms, and when she concentrated, she could see the woman’s face: a ruddy complexion unsuccessfully covered with powder, bright red lipstick in the wrong shade. It wasn’t long before the house was sold to the Smiths and their simple-minded adult son, Mac.

Oh, how Justine fell in love with Mac! Her existence was a walking wound by then, ireful at everything. She wanted to be with her family, but if she couldn’t be, she wanted out of this room! But something about Mac’s purity lit a match to a candle inside her soul that she’d forgotten had even existed.

Mac found the door to the secret room in no time.

Justine was gleeful! Mac spent most of his time in the library that the Smiths had redecorated. Now, it was more like a den—like the secret room had been, once upon a time. The only remaining hint that it was first a library was the fake bookshelf wall, and Mac loved that wall.

When alone, Mac would lean up against it, and Justine would position herself on the other side. Cheek to cheek they would sit, sometimes for hours. Mac had no hurries and Justine had forever lying ahead of her, a dismal red carpet.

In the stillness and the peace of those years, she realized she could hear Mac’s thoughts. At first, she thought he was actually talking to himself, but soon realized it was his inner monologue. So sweet and pure and lovely…and utterly devoid of any concept that this fake wall of books might be a secret door. Mac’s soul knew she was there…but his mind did not.

When Mac eventually died, the now-elderly Smiths took their sorrow and sold the house quickly. All of Justine’s rage returned in full force, as if the years of leaning on the wall that straddled two worlds had never happened. Justine had died in here, a gruesome death. She’d haunted her father throughout his melancholy existence. She’d honed her ghost skills…she could now see, hear, and read minds beyond the secret room. She could throw a book through the air! Why couldn’t she figure out how to get out? And all those people on the other side…why couldn’t they figure out how to get in? It was mind-boggling.

When the Stanleys moved into the house, Justine was ready. She fancied herself getting along with them. The parents were pleasant and drank too much, always hosting dinner parties and passing out on couches. The younger kids were wild, running amok like hellions. But the one that interested Justine was the oldest daughter, Ruby.

Ruby. She was special. Justine could see it in her dark eyes, in her face that held secrets and skyrocketing intelligence. Ruby, who wrote horror stories at the age of thirteen that Justine felt were better than the classics. Ruby, with her long, dark hair and the quiet way. Justine was sure she sensed her.

Day in and out, wherever Ruby was, Justine tried to level with her. She would respond to Ruby’s thoughts with her own, and sometimes Ruby answered back. This was surely the pinnacle of ghost talents! For the first time in a century, Justine felt she had a reciprocal friendship. Mac was one thing. But Ruby, contemplating the rainy, gloomy weather, would prompt Justine to think yes, but it would make a good romantic backdrop to a story. And then Ruby would say aloud to herself, “That’s a good idea! I’m going to write a story about a romance that begins on a gloomy, rainy day”. And Justine would guide her, fascinated at this newfound ability. Ruby wrote a lot of dark stuff in her thirteenth year. A lot of 1920s mafia murder style stories. A lot of young, beautiful heroines and a lot of cowardly men.

Justine was going to get Ruby to open the door. Goddammit. It was about time.

And yet, Justine felt herself softening. Her outrage at being sentenced to this room eternally was eclipsed by her waning loneliness. More than anything, she'd longed for a friend. She wanted Ruby to see her—really see her—and she wanted real conversations. When she listened to the Stanleys’ raucous dinnertime banter, she realized she wanted that too—a family. She wanted what she had had before the stock market crash, before money troubles had changed her father. She wanted Claire’s soft, tiny hands on her face. She wanted her brother.

Justine even wanted her father, sometimes. She was a little sorry she’d haunted him. She wanted the jolly man with the neatly sculpted mustache who’d once carried her high on his shoulders. But if she couldn’t have him, at least she could have Ruby.

When the day finally came, Justine was beside herself. All week, Ruby had been reading a teen thriller about a house with a secret room. And the door to the secret room was, lo and behold, a library shelf. Ruby had gasped out loud when she read that part, her brain flashing to the room that was no longer a library, but still held a shelf with fake books glued to it. Ruby was no dummy.

Justine waited, the hours agonizingly long, the minutes passing slower than eternity did. Ruby had school. Then the walk home and a snack. Finally, when Mrs. Stanley instructed the kids to beat it so she could make dinner in peace, Ruby came.

Justine could feel her, see her, hear her thoughts. Ruby was at the door! She was going to figure it out! Justine positioned herself in her father’s chair, in the corner, facing the door. She was practically humming with excitement as Ruby began to investigate the wall. Pushing and touching, wiggling the fake books, and finally, finally...

The door creaked open, its hinges gasping.

Justine willed every fiber of whatever was left of her being to take some physical form. She remembered how her hair was dark like Ruby’s, how it flowed and bounced. She didn’t like Ruby’s trademark jeans and tiny little t-shirts with her stomach exposed, so Justine envisioned herself in the long, white eyelet dress she’d once loved. She felt beautiful.

Ruby was slowly taking in the room. She held up her phone and flashed a startling light into the blackness. Ruby squinted as she turned in a slow semi-circle, her awe and wonder pulsing and vibrating. Justine tried to see the secret room as Ruby must, a time-preserved relic of the past.

Justine couldn’t contain herself. She was so close. She stood, and reached out a hand, hoping Ruby would take it. Ruby didn’t seem to see her, so Justine decided it was time to make herself heard. Her father had heard her best when she shrieked, and so she took a deep breath.

“Rubbyyyyy!” she wailed, as loud as she could. Ruby swung in her direction, nearly blinding Justine with that phone light, and promptly began to scream right back. Not in excitement, as Justine was. In terror. Pure terror! Well, damn. This wasn’t going well.

In minutes, Ruby’s family burst into the room. Mrs. Stanley spun around in awe just as Ruby had, ignoring her daughter’s horror-stricken face.

“How did you find this? Oh, my goodness, a hidden room! How neat!” Mrs. Stanley was missing the vibe.

“No Mom, I saw a woman! She was right there!” Ruby was pointing to Justine, but she didn’t seem to see her anymore. Mrs. Stanley was completely oblivious.

“You saw a ghost?” Mrs. Stanley sounded as if she were soothing a child woken from a nightmare. “I’m sure it was your imagination.”

“No, it wasn’t!” Ruby was adamant. “Right over there,” she said, her voice shaky as she pointed at Justine, nearly poking her chest. “A woman, with wild black hair and a crazy, scary face! She was reaching out for me!” Ruby began to tremble. “And Mom? Half her face was missing, like it was blown off!” Ruby began to cry and dove into her mother’s embrace, and they left Justine alone, the door finally open after so very many years.

Justine sank to the floor. It had all gone terribly wrong. Her head was blown off? Well, how was she supposed to know that? It wasn’t like there was a mirror in the secret room. Forlornly, she leaned into her father’s chair and curled up, feeling sorry for herself. All this time, all this work to get the room open, to become Ruby’s friend. And for what?

She’d been right all along. Being dead? Sucked.

Later, when all sorts of important-sounding people arrived, Justine saw the things that she’d missed in the years when she’d been furiously launching books at her father’s head. Under big lights on yellow tripods, connected to long extension cords, everything became garish. The room…it was nothing like she remembered.

The middle of the floor, the beautiful pine boards that her father had lovingly varnished, had three large, dark stains. One each for her, Claire, Henry. Next to her father’s chair was the glass with coagulated brandy remnants, the mold long gone, only gray dust remaining. Surrounding the chair were wads of yellowed paper—Edward’s scribbled ramblings. All the items she’d worked so hard to throw made the room look like a child had had a tantrum. Nothing was bright or cozy anymore. It looked exactly as Ruby later described it: a horror show.

Ruby described the room a lot, working details of it and the history of the family’s mass murder into every one of the best-selling thrillers she went on to write. They were stories of massacre, families perishing together at the hands of robbers. There was brutality and coldness and a toxicity that made Justine wonder how she could ever have thought Ruby was a kindred spirit. She had totally missed the mark when she inserted Justine’s family into her neatly formulated page-turners.

Mostly, Justine hated the ghoulish spirit that Ruby seemed to fit into each tale. The angry, grotesque woman with the knotty black hair, the blood-stained white dress, the missing half of her head. It was downright rude.

She hadn’t left the room either. What was the point? But she wasn’t done working on her ghost skills. Ruby owned the house now, after her parents moved to Florida for a life of retirement and cocktails. She liked to write in the room, clicking away at a laptop with haughtiness, ignoring that Justine was directly responsible for launching her horror-niche empire.

But Justine had a plan. She’d been quiet for years. She hadn’t stopped honing her ghost skills, the only thing left to master was perfecting them all at once. Justine knew that Ruby had long since convinced herself that the visual of Justine was only her imagination. As if years—years!—of Justine’s hard work was just something Ruby had dreamt up on her own.

She was almost ready. Sooner or later, she was going to unleash everything at once. She was going to make herself visible, make sure the gunshot side of her head was right in Ruby’s face. She was going to fling that stupid laptop across the room, shatter it. She was going to shriek as long and as loud as she could.

Ruby wanted to use her? Well then.

Ruby had no idea what was coming. No idea at all. Justine had perfected the art of haunting; her ghost skills were top tier.

Just wait, Ruby, she thought, malice in her head. I’m really going to give you something to write about. Justine was faint with anticipation.

Being dead was about to stop sucking.