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     Two in the morning is not the best time to wake up, but one of Irene Browermint’s sudden snorts from snoring woke up her husband Kevin. Not able to return to sleep, he wandered out to the kitchen for a drink of water, then, since he was wide awake, rummaged around in the freezer  and found a pack of pre-prepared chocolate chip cookie balls, the kind that all you had to do was place on the cookie sheet and bake right away. His thoughts lingered on them for a moment, then he unzipped the plastic bag and took out several to eat. He savored the light brown sugar, crystalline crunchies in their icy sleep as he swallowed each bite. He knew he would regret it. The caffeine in the chocolate chips would soon give him a migraine headache which would keep him up the rest of the night, so he grabbed a couple of acetaminophen tablets from the bottle on top of the fridge. Then devoured a few more of the cookie balls, free of any guilt and pain forthcoming. One bite led to another and soon he had eaten about eight of the frozen delights.
     Then, Kevin heard a voice.
     “My wife Gabrielle usually has a bag of sugar cookie balls deep in the freezer. I really have to dig to find where she hides them from me.”  
     He turned around and faced the form of another pajama-clad man who was fading in and out, like somebody with a fake webcast background to hide their real surroundings. Not unlike a grainy hologram at first glance.
     “I see we’re not that much alike. I couldn’t sleep either,” the man continued.
     “Who the hell are you?” Kevin whispered, trying to contain his fright.
     The other guy faded a bit then came into sharper focus. He was an older, bearded man with snowy white hair, a Santa Claus look-alike.
     “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m Artie, Artie Laersen. I live next door, in a parallel universe. Or a different time. Haven’t been able to figure out which yet. I’ve been hearing your music off and on for the last few years and I thought I’d try to find out where it was coming from. By the way, I found one of your martini glasses two years ago. Somehow it must have crossed over the divide between us two. Probably rolled over and under.”
     “You’re most likely a figment of my imagination, some by-product of indigestion—”
     “’—A blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese? A fragment of an underdone potato?’—that ring a bell?” Artie said and continued, “’more gravy than of grave’? I know the quote. It’s from Dickens, of course. But I assure you, I am no ghost of any Christmas, past, present, or future.”
     “Huh?” was all Kevin could say.
     Artie grinned. “I’m a writer. I know these things.”
     “Can you tell me how you got in my kitchen at 2:30 in the morning?”
     “Apparently we’re in syncopated wavelengths now. Your wife snore?”
     “What’s that got to do with it?”
     “My Gabrielle saws wood like a lumbermill. She woke me up. I couldn’t sleep so I came to the kitchen for some water, thought about the sugar cookie dough balls in the deep freeze, and had a few—they are delightful, aren’t they? Then I saw you and your bag of what looks like chocolate chip cookie dough? Am I right?”
     “On target. How did you know?”
     “We’re in synch now, from the bounce. Finally. I’ve been waiting for this day. Or night as it seems. Everyone says I’m having audio hallucinations, but I knew there had to be an explanation for them. And here we are.”
     “And here we are,” Kevin echoed.
     “Well. It’s nice to know I’m not crazy,” Artie continued, “I should add I like your taste in music. Nice light jazz, a little Dave Brubeck now and then can’t be all that bad. But those late-night parties. Must you? The sizzling broiled steaks makes my mouth water just thinking about them.”
     “You smell my steaks?”
     “Yep. Smell and sound cross over nicely. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to get a visual on you. Seems little things like martini glasses can come over, too. Here, let me see if I can find it. I’ve kept it in the kitchen cabinet.” Artie reached beyond the scope of vision Kevin had and came back with a long-stemmed martini glass.
     “Here, it’s yours again,” Artie tried handing it through the divide but it didn’t pass through. “Oh, well, it was worth a try. Don’t suppose we could shake hands either. Like looking through a foggy window. The clarity fades in and out,” Artie said as his image blurred a bit then came into focus again, with most of his forearm and elbow in the foreground and his face gnawed by the background as he leaned back.
     They had an uneasy pause. Then Artie piped up. “Ever read that Martian Chronicles story where the Earthman meets up with a Martian in the middle of an old highway and neither one knows if they are the past or the future?”
     Kevin shook his head. He’d heard of the book but never read it.
     Artie continued, “It’s like us. We’ll just have to go our separate ways again. Although sooner or later, we’ll bump into each other again. Bound to happen, somehow.  I’ll tell Gabrielle about this but she won’t believe me. Mind if I take a pic?”
     Artie had his phone out and snapped a shot, then thumbed through its gallery to look what he’d taken. “Hmm, not too bad. The background’s out of focus. She would to have loved seeing what you did with your kitchen. But you came in sharp.” Artie pushed his camera up to the edge of the void and Kevin could see the photograph. Sure, enough, there he was surrounded by a fluffy blurred backdrop.
     “Want to get one of me?” Artie asked. “Go get your camera. I’ll wait.” 
     Kevin shrugged then turned around to go to the master bathroom where his phone was charging. When he came back, Artie was gone. But there on the island was the martini glass. Somehow Artie had managed to push it through.
     Irene would never believe him and the martini glass would never be proof enough he hadn’t hallucinated the visions. He made sure the freezer drawer was shut so the insides wouldn’t defrost and went back to bed, vowing no more 2 a.m. feedings of the chocolate chip cookie balls for him. Who knows where the next bounce would lead? One night of haunting was enough to convince him to go cold turkey, or cold cookie as it was.

                                                                   *     *     *

     Artie Laersen sighed as the martini glass faded from his view. He had gently nudged it and it slid over to the other side. Then the window closed. Maybe that was all it took, just a little nudge. He’d try it next time, if there were a next time. In any event it would make a nice sequel to his first encounter with the so-called hallucinatory events of the past two years. He’d write about it, maybe do another podcast, but in the end, it would be just another ghost story. 

                                                                  💀💀💀


​John Shea is a technical writer with a B.S. in Communications from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an M.F.A. in Motion Picture and Television Production from the University of Southern California. He is extensively travelled and has been known to babble in French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Japanese. He dabbles in wordplay, palindromes, and is a part-time cruciverbalist and punster. He lives in the Dallas Fort Worth with his wife (a schoolteacher), two dogs of different age and disposition (exuberant and shyly playful), and a lawn that needs constant mowing, during which he contemplates plot lines and story ideas.

​

 "Observer Effect" first appeared in December, 2022, on Free Kids Books.

Click here to read the story on Free Kids Books.

Click here to listen to the story on the Kaidankai podcast.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.




​It had begun to snow again when Jenny alighted from the last bus. The
 village of Hampton was dark with all the Christmas lights switched off for
 the night. Should she take the long route home or risk the short cut over
 the fields? She was resigned to a cold walk whichever route she chose. No
 taxi would come out to Hampton in this type of weather. Her fellow
passengers had quickly disappeared into nearby houses. Anyway, her
 nearest neighbours were at least three miles away from her home, Fir Tree
 Cottage. Jenny decided the short route was preferable. Christmas shopping
 always exhausted her and she was longing to snuggle down in a cosy, warm
 bed. Heaving her rucksack onto her back, she set off briskly along Mill Lane.
.
The snow had begun to settle and had already coated the top of the bare
 hedges, like a layerof icing sugar. Jenny’s feet were numb, despite two pairs
of skiing socks. She pushed her gloved hands deeper into the pockets of her
 fleece lined leather coat. The local playground looked surreal with the
 swings covered in snow and the seesaw edged with dagger-like icicles. As
 she passed the field at the back of the village school, she could see the dark
shadows of horses, their backs to the driving snow, their heads lowered. 
 Somewhere an owl hooted and a lone fox barked from a distant wood.
Jenny reckoned she was half way home as she clambered over the stile into
 Warren Lane. She could feel the sharp -sided flints through the soles of her
 rubber boots, pressing painfully against her freezing feet.
Jenny paused a moment before crossing Beech Common. The moon
 emerged from behind banks of grim clouds. Walking was easier there. The
 dead grass cushioned her footsteps and the moon shone through bare
 branches onto the glistening snow. A few minutes walking
would bring her close to the dark water of Sheep Dip Pond.

Suddenly, she heard voices and laughter coming from the direction of the
 old pond.

Local legend told how the middle was very deep. There were stories of
 suicides, lovers’ tiffs, mysterious drownings. It was the last place you would
 expect to hear laughter on a snowy winter night!

Jenny couldn’t go back. The thought of returning to Hampton and walking
 along the main Road was impossible to contemplate. It was probably a
 group of drunken teenagers celebrating Christmas in this remote spot.
Jenny edged her way along the avenue of birches beside the water. A gap in
 the trees suddenly gave her a full view of the pond. Instinctively, she
 clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the scream which threatened to
 disturb the scene.

Six or seven figures were skating over the thin ice on the
 pond.  Three at least were children who were being supported by the adult
 figures. One pair came close to Jenny, who tried to hide behind a
clump of snowy brambles. The man was skating smoothly and expertly. The
 young girl, her hand tightly gripped in his, seemed less confident. He was
 dressed in dark breeches and a fustian tunic. His skates reminded Jenny of
 old Victorian skates she had seen in the local museum. The girl’s long, red
 velvet dress billowed out as she completed the circle. With one hand she
 clutched at her fur bonnet.

Jenny was almost in reach of the skaters. She was about to crouch down
 behind the brambles, when she had a view, for the first time, of their faces.
 The moon came out ffrom a bank of dark clouds. Jenny froze as she stared
 at the empty eye sockets, the pale skin drawn so tightly over the skull that
 the darker outline of the bones was visible. She stared into the girl’s blank
 face. There was no reaction, no emotion, only a whispered comment
and a spine-chilling, hollow laugh from the man. Jenny looked at their feet
 as they spun away. In places, the ice was so thin she could see the dark
 water beneath. At the edges of the pond it had begun to melt into a brown
 slush.

That's when she realised they were not skating.

 Their feet were floating over the ice. There was no sound of the skates, no
 reassuring swish as they cut into the surface. Their feet were a few inches
 above the fast -melting ice. Over the far side of the pond a man in
 breeches, a white shirt and black waistcoat was twirling
 and dancing with a woman in a long white dress and bright green cloak
 which swirled around her. The full moon was reflected on the surface and
 they seemed to chase the reflection as it danced across the ice.

Jenny tried to creep away, along the path by the bushes. She couldn’t move.
 Her feet were frozen to the spot. A force pulled her towards the edge of the
 water. It seemed a power, a strong, unseen arm, drawing her slowly,
 irresistibly. She could feel the water under her boots, hear the hollow,
 empty laughter.

She almost surrendered. It would be easier to slip in, to embrace
the water, silver and magical in the moonlight. She was drifting asleep,
the water now over her knees.

Then, suddenly the power vanished, she felt the aching cold of the water.
 Instinctively, she waded back to the muddy footpath.  She stared at the
 pond where lumps of ice floated freely.  The moon shone on the water, now
 devoid of dancers.
 
Jenny pushed open the iron gate of Fir Cottage. Her thoughts were in a
 turmoil. Had there really been skaters on Sheep Dip Pond? The ice was too
 thin to have borne the weight of a young child, let alone a tall man. The
 terrible, empty sockets seemed to stare back at her as she entered the dark
 hall.  She switched on the lamp and electric fire in the front room.
Somehow it was colder inside, despite the bright Christmas decorations, the
 shining baubles on the Christmas tree and the cards on the oak
 mantlepiece.

She flopped down into the old leather armchair by the fire. In a moment she
 had drifted into a troubled sleep.
 
It must have been at least an hour later that Jenny suddenly awoke. She
could hear footsteps, at first on the stairs, then in the bedroom above. She
sat listening. The noise had stopped. She had often heard such noises in the
old cottage as the house seemed to stretch and turn in its five hundred
year- long sleep.

Jenny now felt wide awake. The room was still cold as she stood with a cup
 of coffee, looking at the volumes in an old Victorian bookcase near the
 window. At last, she discovered the shabby, leather-bound book she’d been
 searching for. She had found it the previous summer at a church Jumble Sale
 while emptying a cardboard box full of knick-knacks. Jenny returned to
the armchair with her coffee and the book with its gilt-edged pages. She
 turned a torn page with a list of contents. Her heart missed a beat, the
 room felt colder as she read, ‘Eight Villagers Fall Through Thin Ice at Sheep
 Dip Pond’.

Pulling a shawl tightly round her shoulders, Jenny began to read.
‘In 1867 the winter in the village of Hampton had been unusually mild. There
 were reports of gardeners still picking roses in early November. However,
 the weather changed shortly before Christmas. Heavy snow fell in the
 district. There were reports of farms being cut off and sheep being dug out
 of snow drifts. Sheep Dip Pond was said to be frozen over. Village
boys were seen sliding and skating on it. 

One night before Christmas, a group from Long Meadow Farm were seen
 skating, though the previous day the mercury had risen. Tragedy struck
 when a child, near the centre of the pond began sinking as the ice cracked.
 Two men skated out to rescue her and themselves were sucked down into
 the dark water. The rest of the adults formed a chain reaching across
 to the centre of the pond but the combined weight was too much for the
 melting ice. With a crack like a cannon firing, a huge gap opened up across
 the pond and the would be rescuers disappeared into its jagged, icy mouth.

 Two young boys died attempting to reach their drowning father. One man
 dragged himself to the shallow water. He only lived long enough
to tell the tale before dying of pneumonia the next week in Walford Hospital.

The pond is believed to be extremely deep. The body of Marian Forster, aged
 nine, has never been recovered.’

Jenny put the book down. She thought about the ghostly skaters she had
 seen that evening. Why would they return to a scene of such loss and
 sorrow? What about the child, Marian Foster, had she returned or were the
 spectral skaters still looking for her? In the silence Jenny heard the
 footsteps again. This time they seemed to be walking across her bedroom.
She walked slowly upstairs and pushed the door open. As light flooded the
 room, Jenny breathed freely again, the room was empty. She walked to the
 window to draw the heavy curtains. The moonlit scene was bright as day. In
 the garden the snow glittered like hundreds of tiny diamond chips.

Jenny suddenly shivered. She felt a cold draught of air. She knew someone
 was standing behind her. She turned quickly only to be petrified, frozen to
 the spot.Surrounded by a haze of light a girl stood in front of Jenny. The
 skin on the arms was wrinkled and sloughed. A grey wax covered the face;
 the teeth were a strange, pinkish shade. Mud and strands of water weed
 clung to her long, blonde hair. Cuts and lacerations were scratched across
 her hands and arms. A wet fur bonnet hung from skeletal fingers
while a sodden, red velvet dress clung to her waist. 

This was the skater Jenny had seen a few hours earlier. The eyeless sockets
 stared, without pain, without anger, without feeling. The figure beckoned
 to Jenny with white, bony fingers and turned towards the stairs. Jenny felt
 again the power, the energy she had felt at the pond’s edge. She followed
 the girl down the stairs, into the moonlit garden, along the footpath,
​towards Sheep Dip Pond.


                                                                    💀💀💀


Sarah Das Gupta is a retired teacher from near Cambridge, UK.who also taught in India and Tanzania. She started writing a year ago after spending time in hospital, following an accident. Her work has been published in a number of magazines from 12 different countries, including US, UK, Australia, Canada, India, Germany, Croatia, Romania  among others.

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai Podcast.


On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, eight years after my death, I was summoned. It was a ritual I was painfully familiar with: candles flickering in the dark, wax dripping pitifully down their thick lengths, and blood. Thick, viscous blood that gleamed in the dark, illustrating the symbol of death—a pentagram scrawled with runes too ancient for anyone really, even ghosts, to decipher. I was drawn by the scent of blood: metallic and alluring and oddly powerful; did you know that blood, no matter how dark it was, glowed? I never knew that either, not before I died. I never knew anything could look so golden, millions of fireflies dancing in the swaying candlelight.
 
And so, I followed. I followed the call of pure music from the other side, warmth suffusing every atom of my existence. I was everything; I was nothing. It had been too long since I was this close to the living world. Where are you, I asked the wind? Where are you calling from? The initial plunge was always dizzying—but as the vertigo dissipated, I blinked, hovering above a darkened room with three figures huddled in a circle, whispering.
 
Him. If I had fingers, they would be tightened to the point of pain. And if I had a mouth, I imagined it as a cold, black abyss, poison leaking through my lips and the sound of hatred filling the cavernous space.
 
But I had neither. I had no hands to wrap around his greasy throat. I had no legs to kick the shit out of his balls and render him childless—not that it would matter much. He had a kid, I realized belatedly. A cooing thing of three trembling in its mother’s lap. It would be easy—too easy—to take it away from him.
 
Regardless, I had no form to strangle him, no ability to do what he did to me eight years ago. The child’s eyes flitted upwards, pupils widening imperceptibly. I stilled; they could see me sometimes—the kids. Sometimes, they could even speak to me. I never knew why; it was always the kids who saw me before I announced my presence. I stored this kernel of information at the back of my mind—if I even had a mind.
 
He tapped his fingers on the blood-stained paper impatiently. I glided closer, disgust rolling in every inch of me.
 
(He was pushing me down, down, down, parting my hair, sweat sliding off his face.)
 
Tap, tap, tap. More blood slid off his fingers: oily and glistening like obsidians and stalagmites.
 
(His breath smelled like peperoni. Spicy. It was spicy and foul and smelled of meat. I wondered if his teeth had sank into the last girl as hard, if he’d pulled a piece of her apart with his fang-like teeth and savored every bite of it.)
 
“It’s coming, honey,” he whispered to his wife. “I can feel it.”
 
(I wondered if I was tasting her as he shoved his slimy tongue down my throat, in and out. In and out.)
 
His wife rested her head on his shoulders, blissfully oblivious to the crimes he had committed. Maybe she knows. Maybe she was one of us. Maybe she loves him anyway.
 
It—he called me an it. I wanted more than anything to claw his face apart, watch him bleed, let him watch himself bleed.
 
The candle flickered. Once. Twice.
 
(My ripped skirt flapped in the wind. Once. Twice.)
 
They were not moving.
 
(I was not moving.)
 
They can—they chose not to.
 
(I can’t—I didn’t want to.)
 
I’m here, I announced, hatred spilling off me in waves. What is your question?
 
                                                                        *
 
Before
 
There were ghosts everywhere; I could feel them squeezing through the gaps in the concrete, infusing the century-old slabs of marble with a different kind of energy. I could always feel them if they ever came near me—I was different that way. No one believed me when I told them that though. No one ever wanted to. To them, I was just a girl: nerdy and weird and overly obsessed with the afterlife; to them, I was a nobody spouting nonsense with the hopes that I could become somebody if I were special enough. Not that I blamed them—I was, after all, a medical student grinding to graduate, just like everyone else was. Necromancy and spirits were but a myth to the logical students milling the university hallways. Everyone cared more about harvesting bloodless organs from cadavers than respecting the people they once were; they were too burned out and cranky to ever give a fuck about what happens after a patient flatlines. Death was death—it was the monotonous beep of a monitor and the flat plane of an asystole. You call it, dislodge the tubes from the patient, and move on to where a mount-load of paperwork stood waiting. There was no time to mourn nor to let your imagination wander to a place where silvers of consciousness gathered along with their years of love, anger, and frustration, too far away to avenge their past lives and too close to forget what happened.
 
Nobody cared. Nobody but me.
 
Sometimes, I think I resented them for it. Other times, I pity them. The spirit world was always closest to the world of the living in the seventh month of the Lunar calendar. It was when the spirits were strong enough to communicate stories of their past, stories no one cared enough to remember. It was the time they reached out, yearning, seeking for someone—anyone at all—to honor their memories. I was always the only one who accepted their outstretched hands, and in return, they offered me counsel. They were my guides: my spirits. They were the only friends I had as I struggled to be an eccentric, gay, Chinese female student in a male-dominated field.
 
The spirits of the medical school were angry; I knew they were. Almost all of them donated their bodies to science with the hopes that they could change the world, but all they got was hour after hour of prodding from rich white kids who were too privileged to get their hands dirty.

“Look at me deglove this penis,” one of them would cackle, waggling the floppy organ like a thief showing off their trophies. “Reckon I should chop it into pieces when I’m done?” People winced, shying away from the ringleader even as their eyes lit up with admiration.

“It says here this lady had syphilis when she died,” they would say when we studied the reproductive system in Human Anatomy. “Who knew ‘Lung Cancer Grandma’ had time to fuck? Must be all that morphine they gave her.” Another round of laughter roused the room.
 
Lung Cancer Grandma, as it turned out later, confided in me angrily that she had been molested by her husband while she was in bed, tossing and turning from pain. The spirits sometimes did that—they hovered around as we sank our knives into their bodies, hissing insults and hiding in the library afterwards, battered by humiliation.

Stupid fucking bastards, they liked to say while rattling the bookcases. “Stupid fucking bastards,” I echoed, head bent over my textbook when I was alone in the library. I wished I had said something in class; I was never quite brave enough to protest. I was already a target by trying like fuck to stay invisible—I didn’t need a billboard on my forehead inviting bullies to make me their next meal. 

Breathe, I told myself. Just breathe.
 
2
There was a boy at the library today—a boy who was not one of the spirits. He thumbed through yellowed volumes silently, occasionally scrunching his forehead in thought. I wondered what he was looking for; if anything, I probably knew this place better than the librarians themselves. I shuffled closer, my back pressed against the bookshelves.

Don’t go, the spirits whispered. Danger. They always said that about every white guy who passed: danger. Most of the time, I agreed, but this time, I ignored their warnings and plowed steadily forward.
 
“Hi,” he said without looking up as I sat down on the chair opposite his. 
 
“What are you looking for?” I responded. My question made him curious him enough to raise his head. Momentarily, I was staring into deep vortexes of swirling, ocean blue, so blue that it was unreal. He blinked.
 
“I was, uhh, just doing some research,” he said slowly. “Achondroplasia.”
 
“Ah,” I shrugged, puffing out a breath that lifted my bangs. “You’re in the wrong section.”
 
“I’m—what?” My blunt observation seemed to stun him. Typical. Guys like him never thought they could make a mistake until all evidence suggested otherwise. They were confident, in their elements, on their predestined paths to change the world. People like them don’t make mistakes.
 
“You. Are. In. The. Wrong. Library. Section,” I repeated loud enough that my words reverberated off the hollow wooden panels lining the walls. Where I got the courage to speak back was unbeknownst to me; somehow, it was easier standing up for myself when the person I was standing up to was a puppy-faced boy with eyes darker than a storm-tossed sea. He scrutinized my face once again, as if I could be joking with my hands on my hips and my lips a firm, straight line.
 
“Oh,” he finally exhaled. “Oh, that’s probably why.” As he walked away muttering to himself about God knows what, I let my hands drop in exasperation.
 
“Thank you for the help, Darcy?” I said to myself irritably. “You’re welcome,” I feigned a deeper voice, stalking back into the depths of the shelves where there were no assholes and where I could truly be alone in my own world without coming across as “abnormal”. For the first time of the day, my shoulders relaxed, and I let my spirits whisper in my ear as I memorized for the thirty seventh time the complete anatomy of the human brain.
 
3
The lecture halls were not haunted. Instead, they were painfully bare, gleaming white tiles paving the length of the new wing. I hugged my books to my chest, dodging what seemed like the thirteenth nasty glances--as if I did not fight tooth and nail to be here-- before colliding into a solid mass barreling towards me from the opposite direction.
 
“Oh, for fucks sake—” I snapped before slamming my mouth shut. There was that guy from the library again. Only, this time, he seemed harried and unusually flustered. I raised my eyebrows.
 
“Oh—um—I just—Darcy, right?” he stumbled over his words and I peered at him in surprise. Out of the thousands of male students whom I’ve spoken to, he was the first one—the only one, in fact—who stammered while he spoke, as if he were addressing a peer instead of an ant crushed under his shoe.
 
“That’s my name,” I replied drily. “Nice of you to know.” I have—in fact—never let my mouth run that freely before; in this place, I had to remain small. Insignificant. I had to follow the rules and let them walk all over me because I wanted a fucking medical degree, which I couldn’t get if I were murdered before I graduated.

But this unnamed stranger… he made me reckless. He made me say whatever shit came to mind without filtering. With him, I was almost… friendly. As friendly as one can get in my shoes. I turned my attention back to him. “You were saying?”
 
He ran a tired hand through the strands in his hair. “I just wanted to thank you for the day before, you know? In the library? And I was wondering if you would like to grab some coffee together; it’ll be my treat. As, you know, as thanks.”
 
I pursed my lips. More than half of the student body was well aware of my identity as a lesbian. Maybe he was the other half. Tentatively, I asked, “Are you asking me out?”
 
His face flushed scarlet. “No—um—yes. Maybe.”
 
I couldn’t help it then. A bubble of laughter burst out of me involuntarily. Him? Asking me out? Me of all people? I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed until I realized that he was still staring at me, expecting an answer. “Well,” I started. “I like you—perhaps more than the other guys here considering how they treat me, but anyway, I like you, whatever your name is. I really do.”
 
“But?”
 
“But you’re not a she,” I snorted. “I’m sorry but I don’t and will never like you romantically.”
 
If his brows could get higher, I was sure they would. For a full minute, he stood there, staring at me, slack-jawed, as if doing so would make me change my mind. I crossed my arms, internally wondering if he was homophobic or he was merely shocked by my rejection. And then, it was his turn to laugh.
 
“What the fuck?” I mumbled under my breath, turning to go. This was a waste of time. A hand shot out to pull me back, so roughly that I crashed into his chest. God, he smelled of pepperoni and cigarettes and I felt like puking. 
 
“It’s Edmund,” he said before I had a chance to speak.
 
“Okay, Edmund?” I said slowly. “Can you let me go now?”
 
“I’ll make you change your mind,” he whispered in my ear the way a lover would do. “You just wait and see.”
 
“No, you won’t,” I shoved him hard against the wall. “Fuck off.”
 
“You just wait and see,” he repeated, his wink sending nausea rolling in my gut even as I walked across the courtyard as fast as I could if only to put as much distance between us as possible.
 
4
At night, his words made their way into my dream. “You just wait and see,” a faceless spirit screamed in my ear. Wait and see. Wait.
 
I jolted from my bed, sweat dripping off my brows. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this awake before. Not even with caffeine.
 
5
While people might shy away from loneliness, I embraced it. It was part of me—a living thing beating in sync with my heart. I didn’t mind being alone; I wasn’t afraid of being alone.
 
So why do I feel like I cannot catch my breath when I curled on my bed in my dorm room alone? Why does my heart pound frightfully when I catch a glimpse of a shadow dancing across the ceiling?
 
Why am I suddenly afraid of his voice and that hardened glint in his eyes when he looked at me from across the cafeteria that day?
 
6
I had my death all planned out: nothing fancy—a simple mask connected to a tank of helium. I would graduate, become a surgeon, retire, and die in my own time, my own way. It was straightforward. It was grounding. I’d imagined it a thousand times—sweet gas flowing through my body as I greeted death in the blissful darkness…
 
Sometimes, it was so tempting I honestly considered scrapping the entire plan and just…
 
Do it.
 
You know?
 
7
He kissed me. In the hallway. He grabbed me and spun me and kissed me: not gently, not lovingly—it was messy, and it was the most disgusting thing I have ever experienced. I squirmed against the press of his cold lips, gagging as his tongue explored my mouth almost hungrily. I struggled, and kicked, and screamed, but all I got in return was a faceful of thick, grimy saliva.
 
8
“I’ll report you,” I told him, hiding the tremble in my voice and the shadows under my eyes.
 
“No, you won’t,” he said indulgently, the way a parent would address a petulant child. “Oh no, you wouldn’t, sweet Darcy.”
 
“I will,” I snarled, nails digging into my palms.

“Who would believe you if you did?” he taunted. “Who would believe poor, poor Darcy Liu?”

9 
He was right. No one believed me. They never did, not even after my death.
 
I was but another inconvenience they had to check off their list.
 
That night, I stood at the edge of the dorm’s roof and wondered if it would be better if I had just died.
 
10
He came back the day after, and the day after. Every time, he stripped me of my clothes, covered my mouth with his hairy hands and whispered poison into my ears. It hurt—it hurt like hell, but I remained silent. I was always silent, letting him do whatever he wanted to do with my body as I tried—and failed—to reach a place where nothing hurt anymore.
 
“Good night, my sweet Darcy,” he would whisper before sneaking off into the night.
 
I never responded. I couldn’t. He called me his sweet Darcy; I was not sweet. I was a monster, claws full of inky fire. I was a beast, vengeance rotting my organs from the inside out. I was a coward, a villain, a demon, a savage and I wanted to kill him. I wanted to stab, stab, stab, and stab him in the gut but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything other than let him stroke my hair and wish that the ever-watching spirits would do something—anything at all—to help me, just like I once helped them.
 
11
Entry eleven: this would probably be the last. Eleven: it was a beautiful number. An odd number. I loved the number eleven, perhaps more than I loved the number one. Tonight, he came back again smelling of blood. I wondered if he was doing this to someone else; I was sure he was. They had done a damn good job of bruising his eye.
 
They had fought back.
 
I wondered how long they would keep doing that until they realized how pointless it all was. I wondered how long it would take them to give up.
 
It took me eleven days. He raped me for eleven days, and I ended myself on the eleventh night after he had left my dorm room, sated and full of carnivorous delight.
 
*
 
After
They said my body was found in the sea; it was ridiculous—I pushed myself off the roof of my university, but no one knew that. No one would ever know that, because he found my body before everyone else and dumped it into the place whose colors bled in his eyes. I shivered, the thought of his hands all over me, stained slick with my blood. I wondered if he had the chance to rape me one last time. I wondered if he knew beforehand how easy it would be to break someone. I wondered if he kept doing what he did to me to other girls.
 
I wondered a lot of things, but I never got to know the answers to most of them. Because unlike you, I am dead. I was dead before I tumbled off the side of the roof. He killed me. He killed me and he drowned me because I wasn’t who he wanted me to be.
 
I never wanted to die; I had a plan. I was good at following my plan. I was good at what I did, and I was going to graduate. He took all of that away from me. He was why I never got to become a surgeon. He was why I stopped believing in humanity. He was what I thought about as I hurtled towards the ground, a solid weight devoid of anything else. Not who--what. It.
 
And guess what? Dying sucks. It was not at all peaceful or painless.
 
Dying. Fucking. Sucks.
 
The afterlife. Fucking. Sucks.
 
And being a spirit? That was what sucked most.
 
*
 
But back to the room where he summoned me, surrounded by the people he loved the most. Did he love his family? Perhaps he did; perhaps he was merely pretending. Either way, he did not deserve to even have a chance to pretend, and I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to drag him down with me so much that it punched a hole right through me. Yet, instead of doing all that, I did the same thing I did eight years ago—I answered his call and I let him do whatever the fuck he wanted to do with me because I was a fucking spirit who was fucking helpless and no amount of fucks was ever going to change that.
 
*
 
After I was dismissed, I ventured out into the darkened passages of his house. The stairs creaked noisily as a gale howled outside—the perfect weather for the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival—and I breathed in the stale air of his residence. Foul. This place was foul and unkempt and revolting: just like him. I let the distant beat of the kotai drum my anger into submission, all the while keeping a sharp eye out for my prey. People tend to forget that summoning the spirits had a price—there was always a price above the blood offered by the summoner. Sometimes, it came in the form of karma; other times, it was bloodshed: a sacrificed cow, burned golden papers, incense… But I wasn’t interested in any of those. No, I had something else in mind. A sacrifice. Bloodshed. I smiled as clumsy footsteps echoed closer and closer until she appeared in front of me, her front teeth missing from God knows what.
 
“Hello,” I bent down slowly. I wondered what she saw me as: a distinct shape? A hazy outline? Did I look like me while I was alive? Did she sense the sharp tang of rage radiating off me?
 
“My name is Elsie,” she said slowly, gums opening and closing in vain to form words I could barely understand.
 
“Elsie? That’s your name?” I tilted my head. “What do you see, Elsie?”
 
“I—” She scrunched her nose, waving and gesturing in a series of motions too complicated for me to understand and I sighed in frustration.
 
“Never mind,” I said, shaking my head. “Elsie, sweetie, do you wanna play?”
 
The poor, innocent child clapped her hands as her face lit up with joy. “Yes!”
 
“Well—” I leaned into her ear and spoke confidingly. “Follow me.” The traipse down the narrow corridors was slow; I suppressed the urge to snap at her to hurry, but a voice within me chanted persistently as we neared the front door. Revenge, it sang. Revenge, revenge, revenge, revenge…
 
“Mommy! Daddy!” the girl called out. “I wanna show you something!” My lips curled upwards in satisfaction. Good girl. Dimly, I heard her parents shift upstairs.
 
“Now go,” I coaxed the little girl forward. “Wait for them to come right out here and jump.”
 
“Down the bridge?” she asked hesitantly, peering at the rolling waves thundering below.
 
“Don’t worry,” I smiled. “It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. I’ll jump after you do, alright? And then we can both come up again and surprise your parents.”
 
“Okay,” she bobbed her head once. “Okay. What’s your name?” she asked.
 
“My name?” It had been so long. Eight years. Two thousand, nine hundred, and twenty days of not knowing who I am. “My name is Darcy,” I said slowly, the syllables foreign on my tongue. “Darcy Liu.”
 
“Nice to meet you, Darcy,” she chuckled, climbing closer to the railings. Her parents were sprinting now, mouths twisted in agony and horror. I urged her forward.
 
“Jump, Elsie!” I shouted. “Jump, before your parents catch you and bring you back to bed. You don’t want that, do you?”
 
“But Darcy—”
 
“Jump!” I surged forward, shoving my weight against her back. I weighed nothing—I knew that, but she didn’t. Propelled by fear and adrenaline, the girl hurtled down the bridge, her scream barely making its way into the cold night air before fading into the horizons.
 
From the edge of my vision, two figures skidded to a halt. There were tears. Maybe someone screamed. I didn’t know; I was being pulled down, down, and down into the familiar abyss of my home, just like poor Elsie was pulled down, down, and down by the currents.
 
She sank faster than I’d expected.
 
Part of me wondered if I too was swallowed as quickly by the raging, unforgiving sea when he pushed me down eight years ago.


                                                                        💀💀💀


You Lin is a writer whose pieces explore darker themes consistent with the fragments of her identity. Her work has been published by Archer Magazine, The Bitchin' Kitsch, A Coup of Owls, and The Minison Project's Pop-Up Pride Issue, among others. Locally, you can find her work at Malaysian Indie Fiction, Queer Southeast Asia: A Literary Journal of Transgressive Art, and NutMag Volume 7: Inheritance. When she's not writing self-deprecating poetry and fiction, you can find her questioning the purpose of her existence, overworking as usual, and losing faith in humanity.

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Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.





​I sit cross-legged in the middle of my bedspread and give the man in the chair a blank look.

“Daniel, do you know why I’m here?” he asks again, a hint of frustration in his tone this time.

“Don’t answer, you don’t have to answer,” says my friend Shane.

I know that the man won’t stop asking the same simple question until I do answer him
though, so I take a deep breath and sigh.

“You’re here because of my mum and dad,” I say.

“That’s right,” the man says, his face shows me evidence that he is relieved I am finally
talking. “Do you remember what happened to them?”

“They made me upset, they made me cry,” I reply.

“And are you upset now?” the man asks.

“Tell him, no,” Shane suggests.

“No,” I say, without hesitation. “No, I’m not upset.”

The man sighs, another sign of obvious relief. That means that he believes my lie. Hopefully, he will believe the truth too, because both come out of my mouth just as easily.

“And can you tell me about these symbols?” the man asks, he points to the signs that go up my wall and across the top like a cross beam, and then down the other side.
These symbols are a mixture of devilish heads, mangled corpses, women and men hurting each other, dragons devouring other dragons, and littered among them at seemingly random intervals is my smiling face. These are the images that my friend Shane has placed in my mind with his whispers and giggling, and faintly muttered promises. It is the doorway that sits between my bed and the mattress that lays on the floor of my room, blood-stained and smelling of piss. That’s where Shane sleeps.

“I drew them,” I say. “First of all, I drew them in sharpie pen, permanent marker.”

“Why?” asks the man. “What made you draw them, where did they come from?”

“Nobody made me draw them,” I say with a laugh. “I draw them because they are a gift from my friend.”

“These don’t look like permanent marker, they look like they have been burned into the
wall,” says the man.

“I drew them with the marker pen first,” I explain. “But then mum made dad paint over
them.”

“Did that make you angry?” asks the man. “Is that how your parents upset you?”

“Say no,” says Shane.

I can respond easily, with a simple shake of my head.

“No, I remember that my room smelled of paint fumes, I was not overly pleased about that,” I say.

The paint fumes made it difficult to sleep at night, but by then Shane was already through the doorway we had made and no longer just a voice in my mind.

“You were not overly pleased, but you were not upset?” the man asks, slowly, clarifying.

“That’s right,” I say.

“So you could still see the pictures, even through all of the layers of paint?” the man asks next, slightly changing tack.

“I’m no superhero,” I say with a laugh. “I don’t have x-ray vision or anything like that.”

“What do you have then?” asks the man. “Help me to understand.”

I can detect the plea in his voice, but he is just like all of the others sent from the special hospital. He will never understand, so I tell him what he wants to hear.

“I have my friend. My friend shows me what to draw and where and when,” I say.

“He’s going to ask about me now,” says Shane with a frown. “You’ve told him too much and now I am going to have to make him behave.”

I considered talking to Shane and asking him to reconsider. I have come to like watching my friend play though, sometimes he even lets me join in. So I just smile, look across my room at where they have set up the camera, and I wait.

“Your friend? What friend is this?” the man asks.

He tries to sound like he wants to be my friend, but a true friend wouldn’t ask me questions. A true friend would just believe.

“I’m not allowed to talk about my friend,” I say as I continue to stare straight into the camera lens. “They don’t like it.”

“Is that what made you angry?” asks the man with all the questions. “Did your parents ask about your friend?”

“Lie,” says Shane. “Tell the man you are getting angry now.”

I turn away from the camera then and look directly into the eyes of the man. I can see beyond his dark glasses, I can see his eyes grow wide. This makes me smile.

“My friend is getting angry,” I say, not truly a lie, but not truly a truth either.

“We will wrap up today, then,” says the man.

He turns off the camera and then walks out of my bedroom and into the hall. I can hear him talking on the phone, talking about me, and talking about my mysterious friend.

“Let’s give him something to talk about,” laughs Shane.

Now it’s my turn to worry. “What do you suggest we do?” I ask.

“Trust me,” says Shane as he gives me a mischievous grin.

The camera turns on again while I sit still on my bed. Shane slices an ice-cold finger along my pale cheek. Blood, my blood, oozes from the shallow wound and then ends up splotched upon the wall of my bedroom. Shane writes LEAVE US AL--

before the crimson paint goes dry. Before he can dip his finger in again, my bedroom door opens.

“What the hell?” says the man, looking at me and then at the wall.

I just shrug and smile.

When we move out of my home, I make sure to pack Shane’s things along with mine. I bring my marker, just in case. Shane whispers promises of other friends he’d like me to meet. I smile at the thought.

​With friends like Shane, who cares about enemies?


                                                                        💀💀💀


Tim lives with his family in Southern Australia in a little town called Murray Bridge. He is pretty sure that the Library where he works is haunted, although it is quite new so he is still trying to figure out why. Tim is starting to discover the joy of telling horror and ghost stories, exploring the darkness that he did not know was there.