Dying to Escape

Samantha was bored. Her mother had always said she needed too much attention. That she should be more reserved and act like a lady, just like her older sister Edith. Her mother and her sister Edith had been dead now for over a hundred and fifty years, and Samantha did not miss them one teensy tiny bit.

Even though she didn’t miss her family. She especially did not miss her sister Edith. Samantha had killed Edith on her nineteenth birthday. Samantha had been fourteen. She had thought about killing her perfect older sister since she was around eight or nine years old. Edith simply got too much attention, and Samantha was sick of it. Edith had beautiful curly red hair; Samantha’s was plain brown. Edith had clear beautiful skin; Samantha was always covered in dirt. Edith acted like a young lady and sat with her ankles crossed and her hands in her lap. Samantha liked to flash her pantaloons to the old ladies in church and watch them faint from the horror.

Samantha’s soul had gone uncollected after she was burned for suspected witchcraft. She knew that none of the councilmen in Charleston believed in witchcraft, but they needed her dead in order to hide all of their sins they had committed with her. Her father had been terrified of his rebellious younger daughter and didn’t put up much of a defense. Being a rich, naughty whore in the 1860s had been challenging; Samantha had watched the 1960s and 70s pass with admiration and envy.

Samantha had lived in this plantation house her entire life. She had seen the city of Charleston change from her bedroom window. It was now a romanticized antebellum neighborhood full of bed and breakfasts, and Samantha’s own house hosted numerous guests throughout the year.

She loved to mess with them.

When she first started haunting her home, all the guests ran away terrified and left terrible reviews online. But rather than force the small hotel to close, the owners were overwhelmed with ghost hunters and paranormal freaks. 

Samantha had a grand time making pathetic girls–and a decent number of grown men–cry and run away in fear. She had even gotten on top of a few striking gentlemen and showed them a lot more than her pantaloons.

But she could never feel them, their hands sailed right though her wispy form, and she really just wanted to get out of the house. 

She had to get out of the house.

Samantha had been dead for the last one hundred forty seven years, and she hadn’t been able to leave once. She didn’t know if all ghosts were chained to their one location or just her. There were a few other ghosts that roamed the house, but they were more like dust or cobwebs that needed wiping away. They never talked to her, they didn’t even seem like they were really still there. They were just stringy filaments of souls, stuck waiting until they were sucked up into whatever void ghosts went to.

Judging by their clothing and hairstyles, Samantha guessed they were forty or fifty years older than she was. She did not want to simply evaporate into nothingness. She liked being alive–even if she was technically dead–and she was willing to do anything to experience this new modern world that had been growing outside her window for the last hundred years.

But she had no idea how to get out.

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Beckie looked up at the antebellum mansion her mother had booked for them. It was painted a pleasing shade of peach with a warm-white trim, a wrap-around porch with a swing and blooming hydrangea bushes everywhere.

“I wonder if it was this pretty when there were slaves here toiling and dying for their masters,” Beckie said dryly. 

“Beckie! Hush, that was a long time ago. I’m sure everything is completely different.” Her mother’s cheeks matched the color of the house.

Beckie walked up the steps to the porch and sat on the swing, letting her pale blue linen pants float around her legs as she went back and forth. 

“I’ll wait here while you check us in.” Beckie needed some time away from her mother. She was not her mother’s favorite daughter. She was the youngest of four daughters, and at twenty-four her mother was getting worried. She wasn’t married, not even dating. She still lived at home and she worked part time at a coffee shop. Beckie was blissfully happy. She wanted nothing more than to sit at home with Netflix and chill. Why add more stress and complications to your life if you were perfectly happy living in simplicity? 

Beckie’s only stressor was her mother, Barb. Her father enjoyed her company; they would cook dinner together and she would help him in the yard during the summer. But her mother wanted her out, either married or working and supporting herself.  She knew it wasn’t for her ‘own good’ as her mother always said, it was so that her mom didn’t look like a failure to the neighbors. Seeing Beckie’s ‘failure to launch’ meant that Barb did something wrong. 

“We’re all checked in! We have a jack-and-jill room, how precious! Here’s your key, we are on the second floor down the hall on the right.” Barb handed Beckie an old skeleton key.

“How secure are these kinds of locks? Couldn’t anyone pick one of these old things?” Beckie rolled the key around her hand and little bits of rust came off in her hand. 

“It adds charm and authenticity dear.” Barb set her luggage outside her door and used her own key to open the room next door to Beckie. “How about we unpack a bit and relax and meet back up in an hour for dinner?”

“Sure,” sighed Beckie, grateful for a little time away from her mom. Her mom had booked this trip to Charleston as a way to bond with her daughter; they had been fighting more than usual lately and even though Barb wanted Beckie to move out and magically become successful, she couldn’t stand an ounce of discomfort in her family life either. It was very stressful to be Barb, really.

Beckie rolled her luggage into the room. Everything was very fluffy, lacey, and pink. It was pretty much god-awful, but she knew her mom was loving it. Beckie skipped unpacking and plopped herself on the bed. She scrolled her phone for a few minutes but couldn’t find anything interesting; being such a homebody meant very few friends and not a whole lot of things to check up on. She tossed her phone aside and closed her eyes. A tiny nap before a one-on-one dinner with her mother sounded like the only good thing to come out of this long weekend.

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Samantha knew something was different the second the girl walked into the house. Ghosts have different senses than humans do; Samantha didn’t really remember what being a human felt like. But as soon as the girl with the dark curly hair walked into the house, there was a new charge of electricity. She could tell the girl and her mother didn’t get along. She found it interesting that in modern times families and couples worked so hard at liking each other. She had told her sister and her mother that she hated them when she was five, and they had basically told her the same thing. She preferred it that way–she didn’t have to pretend to care or be interested in their lives. 

Samantha watched the girl sleep. She could barely remember what it felt like to have someone breathe on your skin; she could almost feel the moisture in the girl’s breath. Everything about being a ghost was dry. She had never been to the desert–never been out of Charleston–but she felt like the Sahara Desert that she had seen in books and on TV. Just a dry, wasteland of nothingness, stretching as far as anyone could see. She felt like she was dying of thirst in this vast desert of nothing, only she couldn’t die and she couldn’t drink. The sound of running faucets made her want to scream.

She had always wanted more. She knew she didn’t fit with the idea of womanhood during the 1820s, but she really felt like she could fit in today, whatever the year was. Women worked and drove cars and skipped marriage and children all together. She felt like she would soon shrivel up and lie in a closet the rest of her ghost days if she remained in this house much longer. She needed out; her survival depended on it.

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Beckie woke up with the strange feeling that someone was watching her. She opened her eyes and looked around the room. She was alone. But she didn’t feel alone. There was a heat, a dry, crackling heat, emanating from the chair in the corner of her room. She stared at the chair and couldn’t see anything. She took her shoe and threw it at the chair. It landed on the lavender cushion and rolled to the floor.

“I know this place is haunted,” Beckie said out loud, partly to break the electric silence in the room. “If there’s a ghost in here, show yourself. I’m not afraid of ghosts.” She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. She was definitely a little scared; there was something seriously off in her room.

Slowly a girl appeared sitting on the lavender chair. She was a teenager, probably sixteen or seventeen, and she was both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Beckie didn’t know what to do or what to say. She wanted to run from the room screaming but  she was mesmerized by the girl.

“Who are you?” Beckie asked.

Samantha had never successfully spoken to a guest before. She had tried, but there was never any sound connected to her words.

“My name is Samantha. This is my house you’re staying in.” Samantha tried to convey a look of authoritarian ownership, but in reality she was blown away; she had just heard her own voice for the first time in over a hundred and forty years. 

Beckie tried to slow her breathing. She hadn’t given much thought to if she believed in ghosts or not, but she could swear she just heard one speak.

“You’re the ‘Samantha’ in the guestbook, the daughter that was burned at the stake for witchcraft?”

Samantha smiled. “The one and only.”

Beckie looked at the ghost sitting across from her. She was tiny, no more than five feet tall. Her legs gently swung a few inches off the ground, and she had on a huge fluffy old fashioned dress with all the various underlayers. She had ballet slippers on her feet and her hair was piled on top of her head with soft curls falling into her face. Her eyes told a completely different story than her girly clothes and angelic hair. She had the eyes of a devil, someone that was up to no good. 

Just then there was a light knock at the bathroom door; Beckie had forgotten her mother was right next to her.

“Beckie?” Barb peeked her head around the edge of the door. “My dear! It is hot in your room, you should open a window. Maybe we’ll mention it to the front desk when we go down to dinner.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the room mom, there’s a gho–” Beckie looked at the lavender chair. Samantha was gone. “Ghost.” She finished.

“Oh yes, this place has all sorts of haunted reviews, I thought you might like that sort of thing! Well, I’m going to get my shoes on and go wander the lobby for a minute, you want to meet me down there in five minutes? Dinner is at a fancy Italian place and I don’t want to lose our reservation.” Barb smiled and closed the bathroom door. A few seconds later Beckie heard her mom lock the door to her room and walk down the hallway to the stairs.

“Your name is Beckie?? Is it short for Rebecca?” Samantha was not a fan of nicknames, both in her time period and this one. 

“Yes, I started to go by Beckie in high school, Rebecca was too formal.” Beckie wanted out of the room, there was no way she was going to be sleeping in here tonight. “Look, as I’m sure you heard, I have to go meet my mom downstairs for dinner.” Beckie went to grab her shoes and her purse. The room was unbearably hot; it had to have been a hundred degrees and sweat was dripping down her back.

“Oh dinner, yes, Italian food sounds lovely. Food in general sounds lovely, paired with a glass of wine and a nice pitcher of cool ice water.” Samantha stood up and adjusted her dress. She moved a curl from her eyes and then locked them on Beckie. “You’re not going to dinner tonight. I am.”

The room filled with heat and electricity and an intense light so bright Beckie was forced to close her eyes. Then as quickly as it started, the room was calm, and cool, and dark. She opened her eyes and felt herself lying on the floor. She held her hand in front of her face and could only make out the smallest whisper of an outline. Beckie jumped to her feet and looked in the mirror. There was no reflection. She turned to the door and screamed. No sound came out her mouth. She tried to yell for her mom–she opened her mouth wide, her eyes full of terror–but nothing. Not a peep.

“Oh–that will take you a few decades or so to master, the whole speaking thing.” Samantha smiled at her. Her smile was as evil as her eyes were. Except now her smile and her eyes were Beckie’s. She had taken over Beckie’s body.

There was an inpatient knock at the door; her mother was done waiting. “Beckie! We have to go, we’ll lose the reservation, or god-forbid, we’ll get the table next to the bathrooms.” Barb pushed the door open, but Samantha put her hand on the door to prevent Barb from coming in the room. “Oh! Well it feels much better in here, did you open a window?” Barb peeked her head in past Samantha’s (or really, Beckie’s) arm.

“No Mother, I think we just got a breath of fresh air in here. You know how much I needed it.” Samantha smiled Beckie’s smile at her mother. “Oh and Mother? I think we’re going to have a fantastic weekend. I’m ready to make some changes in my life, starting with my name. ‘Beckie’ is for high schoolers. As a grown woman I would now like to be called Rebecca, it’s really such a beautiful name.” She smiled coyly at Barb.

“Well yes dear, I named you Rebecca so of course I think it’s beautiful.” Barb chuckled. “You do seem a bit refreshed, I am so looking forward to this weekend.”

“Oh Mother, you have no idea how much I’m looking forward to this weekend, and to every weekend and month and year to follow.” Samantha had a huge cheshire cat grin on her face as she walked out of the door.