Chapter One

Kala Medina wakes up in the middle of the night to find a ghost in her room and her sister in a desperate shape.

     Kala Medina was awake long before she heard a car roll up onto the gravel drive. She had awoken well before. There was a ghost in her room.

     The ghost stood staring at her from the corner of the room--right in front of her closet. They were wearing a black dress and a vacant smile. They didn’t have eyes--just two empty sockets and a faint light within them like a candle behind a heavy fog.

     The ghost stared at Kala. Kala stared back. She couldn’t move. She wasn’t sure if the ghost would let her. She had tried to move once, and the light in the ghost’s eye sockets got bigger. She kept trying to move, and it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger until it was almost an all-encompassing flame. In numb terror, Kala froze. She had barely gotten her comforter off. She breathed very carefully and stayed very still--still as she could until she began to shiver, unprotected from the wrath of her creaking ceiling fan. As soon as she was still, the light in the empty sockets began to slowly fade--slowly, slowly, slowly. Slowly but surely--until it was once more a candle in the distance, held back by a thick veil of fog.

     Not daring to find out what would happen if the fire grew again, Kala shivered rigidly atop her bed, neck bent at an awkward angle, listening to the creak of her fan and locking eyes with the ghost. She had no idea how much time passed that way. She couldn’t even remember blinking. She wasn’t sure if she kept breathing.

     Eyes locked with the ghost, she stayed stuck in time until the car rolled up on the driveway.

     As soon as the gravel crunched beneath the wheels, the ghost began to fade away--fade and fade and fade until it was lost in the darkness. Kala still barely dared to blink or breathe. She waited a moment for the ghost to come back. She gently twitched a finger to tempt the flaming sockets to burn bright, but no light came. She twitched a few more fingers. Her wrist. Her arm. Both arms. Her toes. Her feet. Her legs.

     No fire blazed.

     She jumped off the bed and sprinted out the door.

     She stumbled over the door sill and barely caught herself on the wall in the hallway steeped in darkness. She twisted her sore neck back to her room for any sign of the ghost. There was none. Heart hammering, she allowed a moment for her eyes to adjust. She saw faint outlines of family photos on the wall. She saw the lines along the hardwood floor. She saw several closed doors down the hall. Fingertips gliding across the wall to keep her tethered to reality, she walked as quickly as she could still do carefully down to her parents’ bedroom.

     The door was open. She peered inside. There was no movement, there was no lumps on the bed. Her hands began to tremble, her fingertips drumming involuntarily against the wall. Her eyes darted back to the door to her own room. There was still no ghost.

     Kala heard something downstairs--a cupboard door close. She allowed herself a quick moment of relief. Hands still trembling, she walked the rest of the way to the end of the hall and started down the steps.

     The light was on in the kitchen. Kala’s mom slumped over the kitchen table, head buried in her hands over a half-empty cup of water, her long black braid dancing just over the surface, millimeters away from making ripples. She looked up when the bottom stairs groaned underneath Kala’s feet.

     “What are you doing up?” her mom asked. “Go back to bed.”

     Kala opened her mouth to answer, but her voice got stuck. Her throat had never felt so dry before.

     A car door opened and closed outside. Kala’s mom glanced to the door and sighed. “Go to sleep,” she told Kala, still staring at the door. “You shouldn’t see your sister like this.”

     “L-Like what?” Kala croaked.

     “Go to bed.”

     “There was a ghost in my room.”

     “No, there wasn’t.”

     “It was wearing a dress. And it had these really horrible eyes--like, like…like fire, like--”

     “Kala,” her mother interrupted. “Go to bed.”

     There was a knock on the door. Kala’s mom sighed. She took a sip from her cup and went to the door.

     Kala’s mom opened the door. Two shadows stood there under flickering porch light. They said something quietly, and came in.

     Kala’s sister Halia came into the kitchen on uneven footsteps. Her dark hair was matted and hectic. Her jacket had been slashed. There was a gash on her cheek, dried blood running down to her neck. Her shirt was stained with blood and vomit. Her eyes were glazed, and her entire body was trembling. She walked as if her legs were being controlled by someone else. She stumbled her way into the kitchen, met her mother’s eyes, fell to her knees, and began to cry.

     The second shadow came in and out without Kala registering anything about them.

     Kala’s mom glanced back to the stairs. “Go to your room,” she demanded.

     Kala couldn’t take her eyes off her sister on the ground. “I--there--I--there’s a ghost--”

     “Jesus f*****g Christ, Kala, I’m not asking!”

     Kala didn’t respond. She stumbled back up the stairs backward, falling once and barely catching herself on the railing. She heard distant whispers from downstairs, but she couldn’t make out any of the words.

     The darkness swallowed Kala once more at the top of the stairs. She stared down the hallway, looking for any excuse to not have to go back to her room. Nothing presented itself. It was empty, it was quiet. Her ceiling fan creaked in the distance. Whispers echoed downstairs. She took a few moments to steady herself, and she crept back with light steps toward her room.

     She paused outside the door, closed her eyes for a moment, and breathed in deep. She crept toward the doorframe and glanced inside. There was no ghost--not right then.

     She walked in on unsure feet. She moved slowly, glancing for any signs of a growing fire at any part of the room. There was nothing.

     Kala reached her ceiling fan and pulled at the chain to turn on her light. Still, there was nothing there with her.

     She heard footfalls on the stairs, heard the voice of her mother. She shut the door. She went back to her bed and forced herself to lie down, but she left the light on.

     The shower turned on a few minutes later. The rest of the night became a blur of running water, quiet footfalls, and hushed voices in the hall. Kala blocked all that out. Her eyes stayed focus on the corner in front of her closet. She didn’t sleep. She waited for the ghost to come back.

 

     Dark golden spears of light shot through the tiny crevasses of Kala’s blinds to announce the arrival of morning several hours later. Kala remained still and vigilant on the bed, watching the corner of the room. Her mom and sister had long since gone to sleep--or at least stopped making noise--leaving no noise in the house except for the perpetual creaking of her ceiling fan.

     It wasn’t until the gold spears lightened in their intensity of hue that Kala finally found the will to move from her spot on the bed. Her clock read 5:13. She got up and flipped over the hourglass she kept on her bedside table. She pulled out an outfit for the day. She made sure she had all her books in her backpack. She made sure she got her G19, ammo, whippet cartridges, and a couple balloons carefully stowed in a makeup bag in her backpack. She got her actual makeup out. She went through the French conjugations she was supposed to memorize in her head. All the while, her eyes darted constantly back to the corner.

     She sat down in front of her dresser mirror and tried to start getting ready, but the image of the corner in the mirror was haunting. She kept glancing back until she couldn’t focus on what she was doing anymore. Her hands began to tremble again. Every time she closed her eyes even to blink, she saw the fire in those empty eye sockets. She couldn’t concentrate. Her heart raced. Her stomach churned. Feeling on the verge of vomiting, she gathered her makeup and made for the bathroom.

     Kala felt better as soon as she was out in the hallway--like taking the first breath after coming up for air. She took a few moments to gather herself. The light streaming from her room breathed some light into the still-dim hall, but she still made her way to the bathroom quickly, careful of every shadow.

     There, she felt more at peace. She made several furtive glances in the mirror, but she managed to finish her makeup without any further issues.

     Kala glanced into the shower and saw brown and maroon stains on the light tile floor. She felt suddenly sick to her stomach and thought back to how Halia had looked when she walked into the house. Her heart was caught in her throat, and she began to hyperventilate. She didn’t see Halia after that. Her heart hammered in her chest, her breaths came in ragged and uneven. What happened to Halia? What if something even worse happened to her while Kala had been asleep? What if she was severely injured? What if she were--

     No. Kala stopped the thought in its tracks. She squinted her eyes as hard as she could and hugged herself tightly. She tried to regain control of her breathing. She almost had it until she couldn’t take it anymore--and sprinted out of the bathroom.

     Kala sprinted down the hallway, her heart thundering, her eyes tearful, her hands trembling, her whole demeanor a mess. She sprinted and sprinted until she arrived at Halia’s room at the end of the hall, and she threw the door open.

     Halia was lying naked upon her bed, over top of the covers, sleeping soundlessly. Kala couldn’t even see any injuries from where she was standing. She found that she had been holding her breath, and she suddenly let it out, collapsing to the floor in a sudden realization that there was no oxygen in her lungs. She sat there breathing painfully at her sister’s door for a couple minutes before her mom came to her.

     Her mom was dressed in rugged pajamas, her hair was an absolute mess. She was rubbing her eyes and blinking rapidly. She saw Kala at the door sill of Halia’s room and sighed heavily. “Jesus Christ,” she said, “go back to bed.”

     Kala jumped back into the hall as her mom stepped forward and shut the door, but Kala herself didn’t move. She leaned up against the wall and pinched her eyes shut tightly and breathed heavily. Her mother rolled her eyes. “Go back to bed,” she said again, and walked back toward her room.

     Kala didn’t heed her mother’s command. She stayed rooted to that spot against the wall, eyes shut tightly, for several minutes before she dared open them again.

     When she did, she saw another ghost.

     This one wasn’t a full person; this one was nothing more than a mouth--a mouth wider than she was, with full lips and a crooked smile.

     Kala thought about screaming, but the words of her mother silenced the noise in her throat. She was paralyzed, unable to move or fight back against the ghastly mouth and anything it might do to her.

     The mouth smiled wider, and opened. A thick pink tongue rolled out of it and licked at its full lips. Kala tried to back up--tried to retreat further into the wall--but there was no escape. She couldn’t summon the courage to leave her current refuge, and she couldn’t summon the will to fight back.

     The ghost charged at her. The tongue was practically glowing with anticipation. Kala didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have the confidence to scream. Her mom would never believe her.

     The tongue poised itself to lick Kala from the ground up. She did the only thing she could do in that position: she closed her eyes and waited for it to end.

     She kept her eyes clamped shut for another few minutes, but she felt nothing. Nothing tried to attack her, nothing licked her.

     Kala opened her eyes cautiously, and she saw nothing but a few family portraits hanging on the walls.

     She whipped her head around wildly.

     There was nothing there.

     The ghost was gone, and she was unharmed.

     Heart pounding in anticipation, eyes poised to look for any more supernatural beings, Kala shakily arose from her spot against the wall. She found that her entire body was trembling, and her legs nearly let her fall back down to the ground.

     Kala Medina blinked rapidly a few more times and cautiously continued getting ready for school.