‘Ghost Story’ by SL Leong

I was ten years old when a ghost tore a rent in my spine and sifted into my body. Not a physical rent — not through the skin, not through the bones, but through a different dimension.

I only knew of abstract ideas like dimensions because my brother Jasper was obsessed with science fiction-y things. A drawing on a piece of paper was two-dimensional. Humans lived in the third dimension. Time was the fourth dimension. This ghost was something else altogether.

“Chloe.” A warm hand shook my shoulder. “Chloe, wake up.”

I peeled my face from my pink, crocheted bedspread. My book, a story about a leprechaun and a unicorn, lay open next to me. I’d fallen asleep. But it hadn’t been a dream; I could feel the ghost. It was like a presence keeping me company — from the inside. 

“Don’t be afraid,” Jasper whispered.

I gazed into Jasper’s midnight-blue eyes, his face framed with dark curls, his colouring the exact match of mine. Should I tell him? But then the ghost caressed me, letting me know her presence wasn’t evil. It felt good and kind, like Julie Andrews in Mom’s favourite movie, The Sound of Music.

“Come with me,” Jasper said. “There’s something I want to show you.” 

We crept down the hall through a fog of tension. They always fought quietly. Dad’s hushed accusations hurled through clenched teeth. Mom’s silence; she was an expert at taking a beating.

It always tied me up inside. 

The fighting and the beatings didn’t happen often, but the tension grew daily, like a red balloon inflating until, without warning, it burst, leaving curled red pieces lying everywhere.

The back porch’s floorboards creaked under our weight. A ramshackle garage took up half the backyard, leaning to one side as though propped on an elbow. The grey wood with its peeling white paint gleamed in the rising moonlight.

Except for a broom, the garage was empty. Jasper swept the concrete until drifts of dirt clung to the walls and climbed the corners. He put his hands to the floor, pushed off with his feet, and distracted me with handstands performed to perfection. 

“Come on, Chloe. You try.”

The concrete was cold beneath my splayed fingers. I kicked up hard, and Jasper caught my ankles. Blood rushed to my head. I was doing a handstand!

A few months after our garage gymnastics, Mom was in a car crash and admitted to Lions Gate Hospital. Each day, beneath falling autumn leaves, I walked up to visit her.

I held her hand, wanting to tell her about the ghost, wishing I’d told her before, but she was unconscious. In critical condition, they said. Mom’s dark hair, longer than Jasper’s, curled around her milk-white face — a face that each day I burned deeper into memory. The hollow inside me grew; the ghost swirled within.