In The Window

When Saige was younger, he remembered living next to a family of three.

A girl named Kotohina, his age, lived with her two aunts. She was beautiful, with her long raven-colored ringlets and skin untouched by the sun. Her cheeks always had a natural rosy tint. Her aunts always dressed her in frilly dresses, making her appear like a porcelain doll.

Asking her about it, she squeezed a teddy bear close to her chest.

"I don't mind."

"Aren't you uncomfortable?"

She shook her head, looking down at the ground.

"It makes my aunts happy. So if they're happy, I am too."

Saige never brought it up again and was thankful for a playmate around his age, even though she couldn't get dirty without being scolded by her aunts about ruining her clothes.

After a while, he saw Kotohina less and less. Saige even asked her aunts directly if she could play. They only shook their heads, turned him away, and said their niece was too busy or sick. It was also a shame that Saige never got to see her in school since they had been home-schooling Kotohina from a young age.

As time passed, he began to forget about her and made new friends.

Those friends that Saige made began whispering about rumors.

"Did you know the house next to yours is haunted?"

He furrowed his brow at Cora and replied, "What do you mean?"

"Oh! I heard about that rumor; supposedly late at night, you can see a girl move from window to window, and she is always standing and looking out."

Noah added, motioning out my window toward the old colonial next door.

Saige squinted and walked over to his window, and looked out. There was something oddly familiar about that house, but he couldn't remember.

"You okay, Saige?" Cora asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Saige nodded. "Uh yeah, I just feel like I'm forgetting something."

"It'll come back to you," Noah assured him.

Saige knew they were right but couldn't push this nagging feeling away.

He had to have known someone who lived there.

Didn't he?

That night, Saige decided to stay up late to catch this so-called notorious girl in the window. Grabbing his father's binoculars from the storage closet, Saige sat nearby and waited. Around midnight, he saw a light turn on in one of the windows and saw two people dressed in all black with veils covering their faces come into view.

The lantern flickered, barely illuminating the girl's features, so it was hard to tell what she looked like. He watched them move the girl from window to window for four hours. Once it was three am, the light went out, and they took the girl away.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Saige would sneak inside the old colonial and finally end this gnawing feeling in the back of his mind. He wouldn't tell Cora or Noah since he didn't want them to know, and he would patiently wait for his father to fall asleep before leaving the house and crossing the yard.

With his backpack on his shoulders, Saige found an unlocked window. Lifting it open, he crawled inside, pulled the small flashlight from his pocket, and shone it around. Almost every piece of furniture was covered in white sheets or a thick layer of dust.

Was this house abandoned?

Then, who had been moving the girl around?

As he walked down one of the many hallways, the old wooden floor creaked under Saige's feet. It was just the beginning of midnight, so the two figures in black should be moving soon. From his observation, they always started from the top and went to the bottom.

Saige would wait for the footsteps to stop before heading up the stairs.

Soft, hesitant creaks followed each step overhead, the wood flexing sending a shiver down his spine. There were whispers of two people seemingly arguing back and forth. He strained his ears to listen.

The first voice begged.

"We should stop this, sister. It's been six years already."

The second one hissed in response.

"This is our punishment for what we've done to Kotohina!"

There was a sob.

"Can't you see what we've done to her?"

There was a loud slap and a yell.

"Look at her! See what we've done!"

The sobbing became louder, and footsteps ran across the floor above.

Soon after, a door closed. The sister left behind also began crying. Her footsteps slowly walked in the same direction, dragging across the floor, and abruptly stopped.

Saige took this opportunity to head up the stairs, avoiding alerting the two women. Once at the top of the stairs, he saw her—the rumored girl in the window. Approaching slowly to get a closer look, some of her features came into view under the added light of his flashlight.

Skin untouched by the sun looked smooth. Her raven-colored ringlets draped around her like a curtain. She wore a frilly dark green dress, making her features stand out even more. Walking around to look at her face, Saige wished he hadn't.

Oh gods, her face...

He remembered who this was. There was no doubt this was Kotohina.

A piece of her cheek looked recently patched using glue, and the dark lines still faintly showed. Her face frozen with a scared expression, and she was staring out the window she had been placed in front of. 

She was not a doll.

The faint scent of mothballs and rotting meat clung to her. What had her aunts done? Had Kotohina tried to leave, and her aunts killed her, turning into this taxidermied shelf of who she used to be.

Even in the end, she had been trapped here, her right to grow up taken away. Saige should have asked his parents to check on Kotohina.

He should have been more persistent.

Gripping the flashlight, he stepped back toward the stairs to go back down. Saige slipped back out of the window. When he snuck back inside his house, he called 911. Awoken by sirens, his parents gathered with him outside on the porch.

"What's going on?" his father asked, looking at the old colonial.

"I should have asked you guys to check on Kotohina more," Saige replied.

"Who?" his mother questioned, confused.

"The girl with ringlets and the frilly dresses," he answered his mother.

Both of his parents looked at him and then at each other. The police greeted them and inquired about who called as the ambulance carried three stretchers in the distance.

"My apologies, folks, for the wake-up call." He turned to face Saige. "You must be the one who gave us a call."

Saige nodded. "What did you find? He questioned, motioning to the ambulance. The expression on the officer's face was grim. "It seems like those people who used to live here have been dead for quite some time."

"How long exactly?" his father questioned.

"Probably about six years or more." the officer affirmed.

"Was there a young girl in there?" his mother asked almost in a whisper.

A grim expression was on the officer's face, and he nodded.

Later, Saige and his family learned that there was a girl named Kotohina, and she had lived with her two aunts. The young girl had been pushed down the stairs by one of them. When the other found out, she went into hysterics and taxidermied the body of her niece. Was this was her way of grieving instead of calling 911?

Together, both of the aunts would move Kotohina's body from window to window in a form of mourning. In the end, both of them hung themselves in the same room. The investigators explained that when the aunts were found, they were holding hands and could not separate them.

Saige's parents apologized for not believing him.

"Don't worry about it," he told them. After all, I think Kotohina was already gone by the time I met her, and who I was talking to was her ghost."

Saige felt she had reached out to him so he would find her. A part of him hated that he had forgotten about her for so long. He hoped now, at least, Kotohina and her aunts could be at rest.

One afternoon, as Saige had Noah and Cora over to work on a school project, he turned his attention to the window. He looked towards the old colonial, with police tape still closing the entrance. Just as he was going to look away, a light in one of the windows turned on, and there sitting in the window was Kotohina, her aunts on each side of her.

They lifted their black veil, revealing decaying faces as their niece let out a silent scream. The light flickered and went out, causing Saige to stand up suddenly and point out the window, mumbling.

"What is it?" Noah asked, trying to see what his friend was pointing at.

"I think he's just in shock." Cora frowned, helping Saige sit down.

"Didn't you see it?" Saige replied.

Noah and Cora looked at each other, and they shook their heads.

They were still there, and they probably always will be...

The three of them are waiting for anyone to look at the windows.