Phantom
Photo by me
Black & White
A power line near the road is buried beneath the snow. The sun that was just lurking behind the grey now sinks low over the mountains. It’s a new moon tonight. The shadows are lengthening.
The house looms above us on the hill. We will have to trek through thigh-high snow, smooth and even like fresh concrete, to reach the garage door. The garage door shines like ice, like steel, in the photograph.
The is the fairytale house in the woods. I know it well. In the photograph, it’s black and white. Framed by a blizzard of a vignette. Pine and aspen trees are on the left side. The front of the house faces a slope, leading down to an overlook of the valley. The mountains hem in on all sides. The view is impressive, but the bleakness of winter in the upper valley cannot be pictured. It must be experienced.
My partner and I trek up the hill, our legs shocking still feeling the cold even through our ski pants. Despite our best efforts, the insides of our boots are lined in snow.
We enter through the back of the house. The garage door creaks open. It’s no surprise it’s only marginally warmer in the empty den. Just concrete and grey walls. Two steps leading to the door.
The entry hallway is narrow. The floor is wood-paneled, coated in dust. We have to take our boots off in the garage so we don’t slip. We strip our socks off.
No wind stirs like it does outside, but there’s an empty chill to the house. To my knowledge, no living person has been inside for fifteen years. It was never sold. My family never visited — it was too painful for Nana. Yet this is where my childhood lies.
Everything after the entrance is almost as big as I remember: the kitchen is expansive; the dining room with the table that would be set for twelve; the main bedroom that connects to its own bathroom; the living room, with the stone chimney with the fireplace as big as a bathtub, and a vast empty space where two couches and three armchairs would have resided.
The guest rooms are upstairs, in the loft that overlooks the living room. They spiral upwards, the floor carpeted, the color and pattern of sand.
At the top of the loft, I can picture the magic I saw as a child. Christmas decorations up, maybe a tree in the corner of the living room, the fire blazing. Relatives in sweaters, drinking cider, or eggnog. Nana reading her Bible in the armchair closest to the fire. Never preaching to me, just whispering passages to herself.
I capture a photograph of how it is now: grey, lifeless. Disappointing.
The loft is exactly what I remember as a child.
The air is electric, glacial. There is a hallway, where two guest bedrooms face across from each other. The doors are ajar. Beckoning me to look inside.
The first room is darkness. Nothing left in the room but curtains. Nothing behind the curtains except the grey snow-capped mountains beyond. I close my eyes. The air doesn’t stir. I sigh. Nothing’s here but a memory.
When I was a kid, I was scared of the loft. The guest room doors would creak open. Sometimes there was a shadow. Never fully formed, but tall. Thin. There was a vague shape of the head, hair cut short. The shadow would sometimes lean against the railing of the loft, as if looking down over the living room. Sometimes it would be standing in front of the window. Occasionally, the shadow even descended the stairs. I would hear my grandpa whistling, but when I would look around in relief, I could never find him. It felt like a separate world, a shadow world, being in the loft.
I used to be so afraid. And the fear would only heighten the excitement when I’d venture up the stairs to the loft night after night, wanting to engage with the shadow. The shadow would usually pace around the loft, and then disappear, never paying me any mind. At times, I convinced myself the shadow was a figment of my imagination.
One night, the shadow exited from the second guest room. The shadow had no face, but I got the feeling that it saw me clearly. There was a sharp sigh. Then a deep groaning.
The shadow walked toward me. In a swirl of black, I was lifted from the ground. Black spots swarmed like flies around my vision. I was tossed onto the bed. That was when I noticed I was in the guest room. And I saw who else was there.
I open my eyes. Stare at the mountain view. Take a deep breath.
I exit the room that never held memories, and enter the room that has truly haunted me.
The dusk air rushes at me, lifting my hair. The curtain has been pulled back. The window has been unlatched, only cracked open halfway. Like my friend used to leave it.
Otherwise, there’s nothing in here but a mattress and a small nightstand.
Carefully, I peer under the bed. There’s no monster I can see.
I sit on the mattress, staring out the window. There’s just silence. Then feet shuffling.
My partner sits on the bed next to me.
Sound is muted outside. Snow begins to fall.
Eventually I close the window. I lock it.
My partner guides me down the stairs.
I stop in front of the glass porch doors. The porch view was always beautiful during summer days. But there was something about the stargazing at night, especially in the winters. Perhaps if my partner and I sweep the two feet of snow pressing against the glass doors, we can see that again.
I continue to take photographs. Each image holds the shells of faded memories. The porch was where I made snowmen with my grandparents. Snap! The armchair by the fireplace was where my nana read the Bible. Snap!
My breath catches.
There’s a shadowy figure sitting next to the fireplace.
A vague, stooped shape. Black spots swarming. The head forms. This shadow has long hair.
The shadow’s hand grips the stones of the fireplace, the other arm curved in, as if the shadow was clutching its chest. It lets out a gasp, a low moaning as if in pain.
I take a picture. The light flashes. Snap!
The figure became translucent, the outlines of eyes shining white. Then lines of grey smoke echoing.
Then just the grey of the stones in the wall.
I turn to my partner. “Did you just see that?”
Midnight Silence
The fireplace was alive, flames crackling. All the lights in the living room and the upstairs loft were turned on. Lucinda was sitting in a rocking chair, playing dolls with her young granddaughter. The young girl was energetic, but afraid of the dark. She had tried to put the girl in one of the guest rooms upstairs to play — the girl often left a trail of blankets and toys in the living room, while having one of her kid shows on the TV all the time.
But the girl had been frightened of being upstairs. Even when the lights were on. There was a cold draft that lingered upstairs. Lucinda couldn’t deny that she didn’t like the upstairs either. She rarely went up to the loft herself.
The girl was hyper-sensitive — the moment Lucinda had walked her up to the loft and set up her toys, the girl was fidgeting with her hands. She began sucking her thumb, a habit Lucinda was supposed to encourage her to break. But when she would take her thumb out of her mouth, the girl would begin crying. Her large eyes would stare over Lucinda’s shoulder, into the darkened hallway, where the draft was coming from.
There had been a rush of wind. Lucinda looked over her shoulder. The guest room was open. Her hair stood on end. Don’t panic.
She slowly walked to the door frame. The curtain was rippling softly. Pushing the curtain aside, the window was hanging wide open.
Lucinda slammed the window closed, ran out of the guest room, scooped up her granddaughter, and ran down the loft.
Thirty minutes later, her granddaughter was settled down, playing with her toy ponies as if nothing had happened. Lucinda watched her granddaughter carefully, but would steal glances up to the loft. Sometimes she heard what sounded like footsteps, but she couldn’t risk leaving her granddaughter alone. Was there an intruder in the house? Or something else?
Lucinda was a believer, and with being a believer came the belief in spirits, in demons. There had been plenty of nights she heard movements coming from upstairs that her husband didn’t. There had been a handful of times she had searched the loft herself, only to laugh at herself when there was complete stillness. She had come to accept she probably was just hearing the old house moving.
If what was upstairs was a demon, she at least knew there was something she could do about that. She could pray.
Lucinda flicked through the Bible that was on the living room table. She started reading the prayers from her favorite sections, whispering them to herself. Her granddaughter was whispering too, dialogue between the two horse toys.
Lucinda was sinking into her armchair, the fire, the light, her granddaughter, all great sources of comfort to her. The air was warm again. The demon was gone.
Stomps and bangs coming from the loft. Something running, or maybe falling, down the stairs. Lucinda jerked awake. The fire had died, though all the lights were still on. Her granddaughter wasn’t in the living room, her toys abandoned on the floor.
Lucinda stood and swiftly looked around. There was a shadow at the bottom of the stairs, in no particular shape. A greyness. It was coalescing into a form, perhaps a human form. And then as soon as it was there, it was gone. And her granddaughter was at the bottom of the steps in the shadow’s place.
“Stay away from the stairs!” Lucinda yelled as she ran to pick up her granddaughter.
The girl’s face was wet and red, as if she had been crying. Her hands were wet and cold.
There was a trail of something, water, all the way down the steps. A small pile of snow was on the bottom step.
Lucinda had no choice: she had to investigate.
Carefully, she climbed up the stairs, gripping the banister as she clutched her granddaughter close in one hand.
The carpet in the loft was soaked. Most of the snow had melted, only glittering traces scattered across the floor. The guest room was still wide open. The curtains were moving as if someone was wrestling behind them.
Lucinda set the girl down — the child immediately started sobbing. Her tiny feet were barefoot. Lucinda would have to tend to her later. She ventured into the room, the floor was wooden in here, which made her slip and she had to catch herself on the bed corner, and bravely opened the curtains.
There was nothing there, only a vague echoing noise, like the sound of someone crying out, and a rush of winter air.
Lucinda closed the window again, and was able to lock it this time. Not that that would do much to keep spirits away. She would have to dry the floor too. Her husband would have to deal with the carpet when he came home.
She carried her granddaughter throughout the house as she grabbed towels from downstairs, marched back up the loft, and dried the guest room floor. She had the girl carry one of her toys with her, so she would have something to distract herself with. The girl got used to the chilly air in the guest room when Lucinda wrapped her in a blanket.
A trail of blankets lined the upstairs. Lucinda’s granddaughter pretended it was a red carpet, and made her toy horse take every step with her.
Then Lucinda relit the fire. Her husband would’ve found the whole night silly. He had never believed in spirits. He had never seen them.
It was getting close to midnight. Sometimes her husband’s work ran late. She had often went to bed before he got home, leaving the TV on loud enough to drown out the sounds of the house moving. It had never concerned her until that night, going to bed alone. Living alone.
Lucinda kept her granddaughter on her lap, bouncing her knee to make her granddaughter go, “giddy up, horsie, yee!” Just like she’d seen her husband do a million times.
After a while, her granddaughter fell asleep. The house was very quiet, except for the occasional flames cracking. There was no movement in the upstairs loft.
There was no movement in the entry hallway, or the kitchen. No one on the porch. No sound of a car pulling up in the garage.
Just emptiness. The only warmth being her granddaughter as a blanket across her lap.
Her granddaughter opened her wide eyes and gazed at her as Lucinda let out a low, stifled cry. Tears welled in her eyes and pooled down her cheeks. Her granddaughter sat up and wiped them away with her tiny fingers, now warm as they were under the blanket.
“What’s wrong, Nana?”
“Oh, nothing, dear, nothing. Don’t you worry about me.” Lucinda smiled, even though she didn’t mean it. “No, don’t you worry about me. I’m just on my own. I’ve done it before. I can do it again.”
Her granddaughter said nothing. Then she looked around the house, as if seeing it for the first time.
“Why has Grandpa been gone for so long?”
The tears splashed onto Lucinda’s lap. “Grandpa’s not coming back home for a long time.”
“He told me he was coming back to build a snowman with me.” Her granddaughter began to hyperventilate — she got upset easily, a trait that Lucinda recognized from when she was young. “He promised he would be back soon.”
“Yes, well, sometimes people can’t keep their promises,” Lucinda said gently. She brushed her granddaughter’s hair from her face. “We have to let them off the hook when they can’t keep them anymore. Grandpa…will be busy for a long time. But I can make a snowman with you.”
Her granddaughter gasped, looked up at her hopefully. “You can?”
Lucinda smiled at her. “Yes, I can.”
Her granddaughter hopped out of her lap. “Yes, thank you so much! I love you, Nana!”
And Lucinda didn’t bring herself to deny the child anything after that point.
They built a tiny snowman on the porch, roughly the same size of the toddler. In the cold night air, there was an eerie quality that left a bitter taste in Lucinda’s mouth. And it wasn’t the eeriness of a spirit lurking in the loft.
It was the sinking feeling of being alone, being the only one responsible.
It was the reality sinking in that her husband was never coming back. The phantom in the house was her imagining — nothing more. Why else would the dark matter have materialized into the tall shape of her husband?
Her sighs steamed like clouds around her head. Her granddaughter seemed happy. She was shivering in the cold air. Perhaps that was Lucinda’s queue to take them inside.
But then a shadow fell over the porch. Tall, lean, masculine.
Lucinda froze in her place. She was just imagining things.
She closed her eyes.
Her granddaughter tugged on her hands with her mittens. “Nana, who’s that in the kitchen?”
Lucinda began to cry. “This can’t be happening.”
“Nana, what’s wrong?”
The child gasped.
Lucinda opened her eyes and looked up.
Try as she might, there was no sign of life in the house. No movement. No shadows. Everything was bright.
Eerie and empty.
“Where did Grandpa go?” the child asked.
