Where Ashes Lay

Content warning: Ghosts, death.

My foot hovers at the edge of the back door step to the former home of the Greeves household. Charred black and grey smears wrap around walls, with the insipid stench of extinguished hope. Mixed with the scrapes of a fireman’s withdrawn hose on the threshold. The silence is deafening, like a squashed scream you can feel as an itch in the back of your mind. A mostly forgotten horror in a newspaper report. 

Tiny footprints across the edges of the ashen floorboard crumble with my small boot marks as the scent of dead things lingers and grows stronger in my nose. Like the chill of a morgue, minus the throat-grabbing wheeze that bleach causes my weak lungs. It reminds me of the day when we went to see mum. My distaste for bleach always makes me vomit, as it brings back the day when her kind heart gave out. Saying goodbye to mum, my heart stays with her. I am destined to be numb throughout my life.

Pinching my nose, my mouth flops open, and kicking the wall with my boot, counting my steps along the hallway toward the first downstairs room. My foot scrapes across the threshold of the music room. A large black shape blocks out the sun in front of me. Jutting its peeled-back lacquered edge near my face. Leaning against its hard surface on tip-toes, I reach up. My fingers trace the ridges of candle wax, which is flash-fried to the spot on the tarnished black piano, where the keys depress but are devoid of sound. Releasing my nose, the bitter whiff of something already burned sours my stomach. A dark oval mark is part of the piano seat cushion. 

I return to the hallway, where the dirty glass backdoor hinders the early morning sunlight, as if life is forbidden here because something else fills up the space. 

Pressing my hand against the wall to bend and hold my twisting stomach, a screech of something against the floor upstairs has me pull away. Clutching my mouth until I reach the stairs, a rush of heat passes me, and heat dots scatter across the back of my neck, like the-something here is reminding me of what has passed. 

Up I go, with my need to explore pushing me on. At the top of the stairs, that strong bitter scent of turpentine wins. Pieces of carrot escape through my mouth, in between my fingers and splash across the bedroom landing. Bending from the sharp bite inside my stomach I spew the bile and what little I have into the holes in the worn carpet. Three out of six bedroom doors are closed. A click and whirr of a tiny toy motor nearby, and a voice has me stagger up and step nearer. Pushing open an ajar door, tassel remnants of a rug gather around a doll’s chair. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how we wonder what you are.”

“I’m ...er..friendly,” I stutter. The air is thinnest here and my coughing increases until I struggle to breathe. My knees fold underneath me, and fingers connect with the crumbled ash. It burns my palms, and pulling back, I instinctively blow the sting. 

“Come and play with us. We have toys and soft beds. Sleep when you get tired. We will watch you.”

“I like toys..show me,” I reply. A scratched toy car rushes towards me, hitting my sore hand. “Ouch, you play a little rough for me.” My painful palm rises against my chest, and I shuffle away from the little toy.

Crawling back to the top of the stairs, my hand feels my fast, unsteady heart. I need air fast as gulping in whatever is up here makes my head spin.

From below, my big sister shouts, “June, are you up there? It’s not safe. Get down here this instant!”

I manage a mumble, “Okay, they play a bit too rough for me, big sis,” as my bottom bounces down each step. Near the bottom of the staircase, my shirt-tail is hanging out and a large hand grabs my shoulder, pinching into my tired flesh.

 “June, you know they will have you to play...permanently, if you stay upstairs in the nursery too long.”

“I know. I forgot, big sis. Sorry. I like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Mum used to sing it to me. Perhaps she can be their mummy?”

“No, she is ours only.” My big sister Sue pulls me by the scruff of my neck along the hallway, as the piano plays and a child calls out. “We are lonely and need you to play with us.”

Dragging me along the corridor, my sister yells back, “Not today!” Pushing her heel against the door ridge, she slams its paint-peeling edge that leads back through the joined gardens to our house. My coughing increases because of the sudden gush of cold air. Clutching my lungs and dropping, like a struggling fly, onto the smoky earth near their house, my head drops. With each long gasp of air, I splutter moisture from my mouth. Vomit and wheezing don’t mix at all. Tugging her skirt hem, “Big sis, when will we go back?”

Twisting on her low heels to glare down at me, “Go back there?” Big sis asks.

I nod while I cough. Big sis rubs my back. “Next year or never, as they almost got you this time, damn Greeves bunch.”

“What happened to that family?” I ask, rubbing away stray blobs of moisture gathering at the edges of my eyes. My big sister reaches inside her dungaree pocket and produces a hanky. Thrusting it in my ash-stained hand. I wipe off pieces of carrot that are all over the front of my shirt, and the putrid yellow stench of stomach bile that drips hanging off my chin.

“Ask dad, he knew Mr Greeves the painter, who lived there. But don’t expect much while he pines away, gripping mum’s urn.”

In the window of the Greeve’s house, a small head waits.

“Sorry, maybe next time, we can play by the piano as your playroom hurts my lungs,” I whisper. The small head fades as the sun brightens into the glow of lunchtime. 

“I’m hungry.”

My big sis ruffles my long blonde curls. “You’re always hungry.”

“Don’t suppose the Greeves are?”

“No, June, not anymore.”