Boy in the Window

Boy in the Window

Written by: Amelia Masterson

I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not. I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me. “You did not hear a ghost in the attic, Gen.” Gennie, my older sister by three years, stood half bent looking into a mirror applying what seemed like the tenth thin layer of lip gloss. She turned and faced me, her lips wet like two red slugs one on top of the other. “I’m telling you I heard it,” she said. “What did you hear?” I asked accusingly like a detective questioning his suspect. 

She turned back to the bathroom mirror to wipe around her “slugs. “I heard a creaking sound. Not like someone walking around, but like someone rocking in a rocking chair.” 

I ignored the chills racing up my spine. “It’s an old house, like a hundred years old. How do you know it wasn’t an animal?” I asked. She snapped shut her lip gloss and tossed it into a little zippered bag. “I dunno what I heard, but it freaked me out, and it didn’t sound right.” She turned abruptly and headed downstairs. What was it with big sisters? Why did they always have to flip your world upside down? Here I was minding my own business when Gennie had to go and tell me she thought she heard a ghost in our attic. Virginia was full of ghosts. Much of New England and parts of the South were famous for their wartime haunts. The civil war had caused loss and devastation, heartache and tragedy. All my friends had a ghost story to tell, and I loved hearing them but that didn’t mean I wanted a ghost in my house. 

I went to bed after dinner that night with a little more caution. Thank goodness my bedroom wasn’t next to the attic door. I looked down the long, dark hallway. The night before it seemed like a dreamy, nighttime path where Alice from Wonderland would traverse while talking to the floating Cheshire cat. Tonight, it looked like a deranged black alley leading to the depths of hell. I quickly opened the door to my room and slammed it shut.

Like many nights from my childhood, the moon rose full that night casting soft light and creating long shadows. I woke up. I felt weird. I looked around my room trying to locate familiar objects to try and make me feel not so weird. As I scanned my room I turned my body toward the window that was behind me. I immediately jumped. Outside my window hanging upside down was a little boy. He smiled at me. I turned around and pulled the covers over my bed. “It's not real, Amelia. It’s not real. It’ll go away. It’ll go away. Go away. Go away.” I said to myself. 

After a few minutes, I felt like I needed to confirm that this was just a dream, just a horrible figment of my dumb sister’s imagination that somehow hijacked my imagination. “Dumb older sister, “ I thought.

After a few half-hearted prayers, I decided to turn back around and check if “it” was still there. I turned, and the little boy was still there, still smiling. This time I stared back. He had straight hair, and I could tell that if he righted himself his hair would be long, covering his ears. He wore a white tee shirt, at least that’s what I thought he was wearing because I didn’t stay staring for long. I turned back around and pulled the covers over my head. I started yelling inside my head, “This has to be a dream! Wake up, Amelia, Wake up!” I was terrified. I knew to escape this fear I was going to have to do what every kid in their right mind would do. I was going to have to yell for my mom. I wasn’t too proud of it, but I was nine years old after all. I could handle a lot of things without my mom, but this situation was dire and out of my hands. Boy, was Gennie gonna hear about this in the morning. I gave myself a countdown. One, Two, three. “Mom!”

I woke up the next morning in my Mom and Dad’s room in my “spot.” My spot was on the floor on this little carpet next to my mom’s side of the bed. The carpet was white with big pink flowers on it, and it had large, thick threads the size of my fingertips. I lay staring at those friendly threads as I moved them around with my pointer finger. My mom was still dozing, but my dad had gone to work. I tentatively looked up at my mom’s window to see the familiar birch tree swaying in the breeze. The window was cracked and I could hear the birds. Everything in that moment seemed perfect. It all seemed so safe. I was safe. 

I decided not to tell my sister about my “visitor.” I was half afraid she would come up with some story about a poor little boy who had lost his family during the Civil War and was forced to wander the Blue Ridge Mountains looking for them until he lost hope and died alone, cold, and starving somewhere on our land. 

Sometime between Dad getting home and before dinner, I caught my sister and my dad staring at something in my Dad’s hands. I heard my sister say, “Who do you think it was?” My Dad said, “Probably some kids. I’ll have to post a sign or something.” Gen asked, “Do you think they came up to the house?” Dad squinted down toward the creek, “Nah, I think they probably stayed closer toward the road.” I ran up to them, “What’s wrong?” I asked, “What’s in your hands?” “He opened his palms to reveal five cigarette butts. “It’s nothing, honey, just some kids smoking down by the creek. Ya’ll want to help me post a No Trespassing Sign?”

 “Sure!” Gen sang. Gen ran to get into my Dad’s big old, green Ford. I heard myself say, “That’s okay,” and I felt myself being pulled toward the creek. I walked to its edge and started to step from rock to rock to rock. I liked watching the water pour over the mossy rocks and trying to catch my reflection in the rushing blur. I thought about how last night there had been some kids on the property. I asked myself, “Could one of them have been my ghost?” It was hard to imagine a teenager scaling my big plantation house and hanging upside down from the roof to look inside my window. After all, if they wanted to look inside, why not just stand like a normal person and peer into one of the downstairs windows? My ghost didn’t look like a teenager. He looked like a little boy.

I kept my eyes on the creek ignoring all the strange feelings swirling in my heart. I didn’t want to think about unruly teenagers trespassing, and I definitely didn’t want to think about a little boy, smiling at me upside down from outside my window. “Amelia! Come help me snap these green beans,” my mom yelled. 

Like a lot of things from childhood, my memories about my ghost faded along with my concerns for what might have lived in my attic. My ghost boy never came back and neither did the teenagers. Life sped along until there was another speed bump for me to consider. For example, it took me two summers to swim out to the sandbar with my Dad and my sister when we went to the beach on vacation. And it was a long time before I understood why my sister wore so much lip gloss.