The Apparition Phase

by Will Maclean

She didn’t mean to cause a haunting. She was, however, well aware of how the haunting came to be. Some words that define that particular time: “malignant”, “lost”, or, in more paranoid times, “premeditated”.

If the Ghost Monk of Newby was a prank, it was not an amusing or enjoyable one. It was malevolent and unpleasant, a manifestation of someone’s darker thoughts and feelings, feelings that couldn’t be expressed any other way. And if that were the case – what, then, was our ghost?

‘You. I see you. I see the broken house, with all the broken people in it. I see it coming back for you. I see four halves and two quarters. I see it returning, and it will never let you go. It will always be with you. Twenty grins all grinning back at you, salt in the wound, and you break.’

Retrospectively, we give our lives shape, regardless of the chaos they seem to be at the time.

after a couple of seconds we were bathed only in the light of the three small candles. Now, instead of faces, six masks stared back at me, all made of a dull, unglazed porcelain the colour of flame.

‘Did it ever cross your mind that haunted houses aren’t haunted unless there are people in them?’

‘Not now! Think of all the work we’ve done here! Work of real value! We can’t stop now, not when we’ve reached the Apparition Phase. We have to go on!’