I wanted that house to be haunted more than I had ever wanted anything. All things considered, it looked hauntable. Old wood with buckling knees, a scraggly yet determined lawn, windows that wept their curtains and a general air of a place that had been empty for far longer than the month my mother had been dead.

The steps wailed their protests as I walked to the front door, another checked box on the “definitely haunted” checklist. I knocked, despite the fact it was my childhood home. People in the horror movies were always knocking, creaking doors open and yelling into ominous silence that tastes like dust. 

So that’s exactly what I did.

It looked how I remembered it, just older, more or less. The mantle piece still held my father’s ashes, old family photos and my mother’s treasured painting of the Madonna and Child I stared, waiting for it to blink. 

It didn’t. 

I actually hated that painting, now that I thought about it. Madonna held her baby like she loved it, but her face looked so sad. The gold leaf looked like it mocked her. Maybe I should’ve chipped it off with my nails. Maybe that would make her leap from the frame and haunt me. 

There was a painting like this one in the church, not exactly like it, but close. More gold leaf, same vaguely tragic look. I stared at it ages three to eighteen, thinking about that weird look on her face. My mother told me she was the face of divine femininity. When I went to engineering school, I stopped going to church. I don’t think I ever really believed in God. 

I did believe in aliens though. I picked up one of the photos, a picture of me in an aerospace museum from when I was seven. My mother believed in God but not aliens. 

I wasn’t sure if she believed in ghosts. I had never asked. 

The jury was still out on ghosts, for me. 

The fact that none of the photos’ eyes were bleeding was discouraging. 

I briefly considered the urn containing my father’s ashes. That was a newer addition to the display, but it was too predictable, a bit on the nose. 

I figured if my mother’s ghost was going to haunt anything, she’d haunt the kitchen. She had liked to bake, but hated to cook and seemed to swing between liking to eat and not liking to eat almost at random. I stood by the window over the kitchen sink, staring out and waiting for a face to pop out. 

The marigolds in the window box had died, but beyond that, nothing. 

I ran my fingers along the handles of the blades in the knife block, inviting disaster. 

Nothing came. 

I opened the fridge, expecting a decapitated head. Or at the least, a severed finger. 

I saw an expired probiotic yogurt. Talk about unfinished business. It didn’t smell like death or graveyard dirt. Just curdled dairy-product. 

Sighing, I went to throw it in the trash can before realizing there was no trash bag left in the can. I suppose the dead must have already shed their mortal possessions, perhaps they had no need for a trash can.

I took the yogurt all the way to the dumpster at the end of the street. Across the way, a little girl and a little boy were playing in their front yard. Their grass fared better than mine, but only barely. The soil here wasn’t healthy. Maybe it was the sight of a tragic, untimely death. More likely there just wasn’t enough nitrogen in the soil. Nonetheless, I expected the kids to turn around and reveal oily black eyes. They didn’t. The boy’s eyes were green, the girl’s were blue. 

I re-entered the house from the back door. There was no sense in doing the dramatic front door scene twice. If the ghost hadn’t been there to start, it wouldn’t be there now. 

I hadn’t checked the bathroom yet. Maybe there’d be a knife-wielding demon in the shower, or an ominous message smeared on the mirror. Either way, I had just been carrying expired yogurt; I needed to wash my hands. 

The bathroom was just a bathroom and contained bathroom things. The towel embroidered with flowers, the white soap that could only be described as clean, the bottle of perfume. 

My mother had worn that perfume everyday of her life. I sprayed it on my skin and inhaled deeply. This, this was the moment for her to appear behind me in the mirror, to smile and tuck my hair behind my ear with the gentleness of a late summer breeze. 

 But she didn’t. 

I was still standing alone, with just a bottle of perfume. 

I left the bathroom, setting the perfume bottle at the edge of the sink. I was just going to leave; this was stupid; I preffered sci-fi anyways. 

Then behind me I heard a glass bottle shatter. I jerked my head around-- 

“Mom?” I whispered, like a prayer. 
​

​Ghost Story Sans ghost

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