The Word Game

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. The outside walls were still light gray, topped with dark grey roofs on both floors and the dormer. The porch still had white railings and columns, and the front door was still dark brown.

The only differences visible from outside were the white curtains that covered the view from the right upstairs window and the garden. That curtain used to be light blue, and the garden has clearly not been as loved as it was when Emma lived there as a kid.

Emma put her hand inside her purse and took out the keys to the house. It felt strange being back there, standing in the sidewalk in front of the house where she grew up. She felt a mixture of happiness and sadness, and definitely a lot of nostalgia. This was the place where she was raised, it was the place where she became her.

After taking one last deep breath, Emma started walking towards the dark brown front door and opened it. The feeling of nostalgia grew as she stepped inside and looked around at the walls and the stairs.

The furniture and decorations were very different from what they were when she lived there, but the emotions were connected to the house and not what was inside of it, and Emma could feel it.

She kept walking further inside and went up the stairs, turning to her right when she got to the first floor. After taking a few more steps, she opened the door that led to her old bedroom. The color palette of the room was light pinks and purples now, not blue and green like it used to be, but the bunk beds were still there in the same spot.

Emma walked to the bed and lay down on the bottom bunk, curling herself into a ball and closing her eyes. In that spot, with her eyes closed, she could almost imagine that she was still a happy kid before all the bad things started to happen.

A loud banging noise startled Emma and she opened her eyes. She looked around the room, although she was sure that the noise she heard had come from downstairs. Nothing in the room had changed while she had her eyes closed.

Emma got up from the bed and left the bedroom, heading downstairs. Nothing seemed to be different down there either, but she was sure she heard a loud noise. Maybe, she thought, I left the front door open and it closed because of the wind. That sounds like something I would do.

She opened the front door again and headed back to her car. She opened the trunk and got some of her bags out. She was not going to carry everything to the house at that moment because she was too tired from the drive, so she would take only the essentials: one suitcase with clothes and toiletries, and a grocery bag.

Emma entered the house, and made sure to close and lock the front door this time. Then, she headed to the kitchen to leave the bag of groceries.

After placing the bag on the counter and leaving her suitcase at the kitchen entrance, Emma noticed something on the fridge that made her smile. On the fridge door there were a bunch of colorful magnetic letters, just like the ones she used to have when she was a kid.

She walked over there and stared at the letters, looking for four of them to write a word. With a green ‘H’, a red ‘O’, a yellow ‘M’ and a blue ‘E’, Emma wrote ‘HOME’. She smiled again looking at the words and remembering the game she used to play with those magnetic letters. At night someone would write a word and, on the next morning, someone else would write another word that started with the letter that the previous word ended in. A new word every night, and another new word every morning. It was always something she looked forward to, whether she was going to be the one to change the word or if her word was going to be the one to be changed.

After putting her clothes away and eating dinner, Emma sat down on the couch and called her parents. They took a while to answer, which she was expecting, since they didn’t want her to go back to the house. Especially not for the reason why she decided to go.

But, eventually, they picked up the phone. “Hello, sweetie.” Her mother’s voice came from the phone.

“Hey, mom.” Emma tried to sound happy, but hearing the sadness in her mother’s voice didn’t really help. “I’m already home.” She knew that calling that house ‘home’ would probably upset her mother, but it truly felt like home to her. Even after all those years.

“Are you sure you’re going to be alright there all by yourself?”

“Of course. Where’s dad?”

“Oh, he’s busy right now.” Emma could tell that her mother was lying.

“He doesn’t want to talk to me, does he?” Emma asked.

“No, sweetie, it’s not like that. He wants to talk to you, he just…”

“He just doesn’t want to talk about me being here.” Emma said, expecting an answer, but her mother didn’t reply. “Look, I’m happy to be here. It feels… right.”

“What if something happens to you there?”

“But that’s the whole reason why I’m here, mom. I want something to happen.”

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know. I know you don’t believe it and, honestly, I’m not sure I do either… But I want to be sure. I want to see for myself if it is true or not.”

The whole reason why Emma had gone back to that house was because she had heard from previous owners that it was haunted. The people who bought the house from her parents and the people they sold the house to both said that there was a ghost in there. So, when she found out that the house was up for sale, she knew that she had to buy it. The house had not been haunted when she lived there, so she wanted to see who was haunting it now. If anyone, or anything, really was haunting it.

“We just want to make sure you’re alright, Emma.” Her mother told her.

“I know that. I’m okay. I’ll keep you posted if anything happens.”

“Don’t. Unless you’re in danger, in which case you should simply leave that place immediately, I don’t really want to know.”

“Mom…”

“Emma, please. I don’t want to know.”

On the following day, Emma woke up and went straight outside to get more of her stuff from the car. There were still a couple suitcases that needed to be carried inside so she could make the place feel even more like home.

She went back upstairs and entered her bedroom. She had thought about sleeping in the master bedroom, since she was going to be alone in the house and there was no reason for her to sleep in the children’s bedroom, but she decided not to. The master bedroom was her parents’ and it didn’t feel right to sleep there. This was her room, it had always been.

Inside one of the suitcases, there were a few stuffed animals that used to belong in this bedroom. Emma took them out and placed them on the floor in front of her. The two teddy bears – one wearing a green dress with white polka dots, and another wearing a light blue suit – were placed on top of the desk on the opposite wall from the bed. The bunny with a light pink bow on its head, which used to be one of the few pink-containing objects in this room when she was a kid but now fit right in, was sat down on Emma’s bed. Finally, the last two animals – a giraffe and a lion, neither of them wearing any clothes – were placed on the top bunk.

Emma stood up, looked around at the new decorations and smiled. “Perfect.” She said.

Feeling like she could no longer keep functioning on an empty stomach, Emma went downstairs into the kitchen.

At the very moment in which she could look into the kitchen and see the fridge, Emma stopped on her tracks and gasped. The word written with the magnetic letter was no longer ‘HOME’. It was ‘EMMA’.

“Oh, my God.” Emma muttered. “Oh, my God!” She exclaimed and started walking again.

She got to the fridge and touched the letters. The ‘E’ was the blue one she used on the previous day. Whoever – or whatever – wrote her name was following the rules of the game and knew her name. Maybe it had heard her mother say it on the previous night. Maybe it didn’t mean anything.

Emma looked around, even though she knew that whatever was in the house wasn’t going to be standing there waiting to be seen by her. The kitchen was exactly like she had left it, except for the word written on the fridge. She knew what word she wanted to write next but, according to the rules of the game, the word could only be changed at night. And she wasn’t about to change the rules.

All the groceries that didn’t require refrigeration were still scattered around the kitchen counter because Emma was too tired to put them away, so she looked for a mug and made some coffee.

While the coffee was getting ready, she toasted some bread and laddered it with strawberry jam. Afterwards, instead of putting the jam jar in the fridge, she left it on the counter with a teaspoon inside.

With her coffee mug and her toast in her hands, Emma went back upstairs to her bedroom. She wanted to turn her computer on and get some work done.

Emma put her breakfast on the desk and started working. She had dozens of emails she needed to respond, asking for her photography services. However, she was living in another state now and she didn’t want to leave any time soon. She just had to finish editing the photos she was already working on, and then look for new photography jobs in the area.

After a long time editing photos, Emma’s stomach started to growl again. Sometimes Emma got so focused on what she was doing that she forgot about everything else in the world.

She put her computer to sleep and got up. Before leaving the room, she glanced at her bed and noticed that something was gone. Not from her bed itself, but from the top bunk. Both the giraffe and the lion were gone. Maybe they had already been gone when she entered with her breakfast, because she was sure that she hadn’t looked there.

Her name being written on the fridge and the stuffed animals disappearing gave her hope. Maybe she should be scared, but she felt hopeful.

She left her bedroom and, instead of going downstairs to eat like she was planning on, Emma walked down the hallway until she found the trapdoor in the ceiling. She opened it and pulled down the stairs that led to the attic.

As soon as her head went inside the attic, Emma could smell the dust typical of a place that hadn’t been opened in ages. Without fully getting inside, she looked around the small cramped space.

When she was a kid, the attic was a happy place. It had toys and board games, and she spent countless hours in there. Now, it was dark, dusty and empty. It was completely bare, except for two objects on the floor. She couldn’t see very well because there were curtains covering the only small window and the lightbulb didn’t work, but she was pretty sure she knew what the objects were.

Emma got up and crawled to the lonely objects. Right there in the dusty attic were the giraffe and the lion that had vanished from her bedroom. She picked them up and looked around, once more being aware that she wasn’t going to see anything.

She thought about taking the stuffed animals back to the bedroom, but maybe this really was where they were supposed to be. After all, this used to be a happy place, and what could make a kid happier than stuffed animals?

After crawling out of the attic and closing the trapdoor, Emma finally went down to the kitchen. She looked at the strawberry jam jar she had left on the counter and saw that the amount of jam inside had definitely decreased. Moreover, the spoon was no longer inside the jar. It was on the counter next to it, licked clean. Emma smiled.

At night, right before Emma was ready to go to bed, she went to the kitchen. She stood in front of the fridge, looking for the letters she needed. She needed to write a word that started with ‘A’ and ended with ‘T’, because there was a specific word that she wanted the ghost – or whatever it was – to write. If that word was on the fridge when she woke up, she would know who she was living with.

After finding the right letters, Emma wrote ‘ADAPT’.

She went to bed and struggled to fall asleep. She couldn’t stop thinking about what it would mean if she found the word she wanted written on the fridge. She had no idea how she would react if it was there, but she knew that she would be devastated if it wasn’t.

Emma woke up.

Her night had not been peaceful. She had woken up several times, feeling like she was hearing noises all around the house. She even had gotten up from the bed and gone downstairs to check the kitchen, but ‘ADAPT’ was still written on the fridge. She had also peaked into the attic, but the stuffed animals seemed to be exactly where she had left them. Eventually, she had given up on trying to find the source of the noises and had remained in bed.

But now, she could no longer stand it. It was already morning, and that meant that a new word should be written on the fridge by now.

Emma ran downstairs and stopped before she could look inside the kitchen. She closed her eyes and walked the last two steps needed to see the fridge. This is it, she thought and took a deep breath.

She opened her eyes, and there was a new word on the fridge: ‘TOBY’. Emma couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Toby.” She whispered to herself. “Toby!” She called out loud. “Toby, can you hear me? Toby?”

She started running frantically around the house, entering every room and calling out for Toby. He was there, she had no doubt now. She just needed to find him.

Emma stood on the hallway that led to her bedroom because she didn’t know where else to go.

“Toby?” She called once again. “It’s me, it’s Emma. I just want to see you. I miss you, Toby. I really do.”

“Is it really you?” A child’s voice came from inside the bedroom, and Emma would have recognized that voice anywhere at any time.

“It’s really me.” She walked into the bedroom and, finally, she saw him.

Toby was sitting on the top bunk – his bed – with his giraffe and lion. He looked exactly the same. He looked… real. And he looked healthy.

“You look different.” He told Emma. “You’re a grown up.”

“Yeah. It has been a while.”

“How long?”

“Twenty-four years.”

He got down from the bed and ran to Emma. He hugged her and, to her surprise, she could feel him. “I’ve been so lonely this whole time. No one has ever wanted to play with me. Until you showed up and you remember the word game, and you brought my toys back.”

She pulled away slightly to look him in the eyes. “I just wanted you to feel happy.” She smiled. “Do you… Do you still feel sick?”

“No.” Toby shook his head. “I feel okay. There’s no more pain.”

“I’m glad.” She smiled, trying as hard as she could to keep her tears from falling.

Toby had been only five years old when he got sick with leukemia, and only six when he died. He had died at home, because everyone thought it would make him feel better to, at least, be comfortable in his last days, since there was no way to save his life. Emma had been twelve at the time, and when she lost her brother, she lost a part of herself.

Emma and her parents had moved away after Toby passed, and they had never looked back. But, after hearing that the house was haunted, Emma had to see if her little brother was still around. And he was.

Toby wasn’t alive anymore, but he was there. And he was happy now. He wasn’t in pain anymore, and now he had his toys and his sister to play with. Toby was happy and Emma was reunited with her little brother, and that was all that mattered.