I blew out the match after lighting the white pillar candle. Lowering myself to the floor, I pulled Aunt Jessie’s journal into my lap to check I’d remembered everything. Jessie was an expert, so the ritual was as legitimate as anything so fallible as summonings could be. My furniture was pushed to the perimeters to make room for chalk sigils on the laminate floor and a chipped Halloween mug in the middle of it all. When I was a teenager, Jessie’s rituals seemed practised—balanced between mystical and professional. Without her, even small rituals felt like playing dress-up.
Trying to sound more confident than I felt, I read out the incantation. A shiver rolled up my spine, and I stuttered. The room turned humid and smothering. The air in the middle of the circle shimmered, like heat distortion. I squinted, trying to force the indistinct edges of the distortion into the shape of Aunt Jessie. It was large—roughly person-shaped, but wavering. A candle flicker caught the edge of the haze, and the optical illusion clicked into place for a single second: a woman stood in the centre of my living room.
‘Aunt Jessie?’ The candle flame caught the edge of her again, and she condensed into a hazy, transparent silhouette—colourless and featureless, nothing more than the vague shape of a person, but familiar, nevertheless. ‘Aunt Jessie?’ I asked again.
The shape leaned towards the Halloween mug—Jessie’s favourite—like she was inhaling the coffee’s steam.
‘That’s for you, if you want it.’
Her head raised to face me, and I got the impression she was smiling at me, even though I couldn’t see her face. The shape moved, shimmering, over to the small table and two chairs tucked in the corner, under the window. She gestured at the table with a hazy arm.
‘The table?’
She nodded, then faded into nothing, like she’d been a trick of the light the whole time.
‘What about the table?’ I muttered to the empty room.
I was on edge in the quiet flat as I returned the furniture to its usual configuration, stepping around the sigils. I braced myself when I moved the table, but the shape gave no indication of her presence beyond a lingering charge in the air. It struck me then: the lack of my usual visitor. Nothing moved or fell; no strange noises or cloying jasmine perfume wafting through the air. I sighed as I straightened the stack of books perched on the edge of my bookshelf. Despite everything, I kept the three books I’d bought years ago as a nineteenth birthday gift for Christine. I didn’t want to integrate them into my collection but hadn’t found the courage to donate them. So they sat to the side, stuck.
I brooded into my morning coffee. Jessie’s notes on the ritual were detailed, but vague about the results, leaving me unprepared for this silent silhouette. Maybe naively, I’d hoped to see my Aunt Jessie exactly as she’d been when I was a teenager. We would talk all night, and she’d give me advice about the haunting, or tell me I was being stupid. And as the sun came up, she’d fade away, leaving me contented and comforted. Instead, I had this hazy, wordless shape. Maybe I should have picked up an Ouija board. Would Scrabble work instead?
As I stared at the toast in my hand, a silhouette coalesced in the empty chair across from me. The chair being pushed in against the table didn’t seem to bother her.
‘Do you want coffee?’
She nodded, so I put down my toast and made another cup in Jessie’s mug. I touched the chipped rim—a battle wound from a sleep-deprived and clumsy Christine.
I finished my breakfast while the shape sat unmoving in the steam of her coffee. Looking at her directly hurt the space behind my eyeballs, so I stared at my plate. ‘Aunt Jessie?’
I thought she looked up at me, but it was hard to tell.
‘I don’t really know what to do.’
Silence.
‘I don’t know who else to ask about all this. Am I making the right choice? Do you think she’d follow me if I left? Or should I stay, and there’s a better option I haven’t thought of?’
The shape tipped her head to the side, considering. I couldn’t make out her expression. She touched my hand or tried to. She phased through my mug where my hand was wrapped around it. I’d always expected ghosts to feel cold, but she didn’t have a temperature at all. I couldn’t feel skin or weight, or even her individual fingers. Just staticky buzzing all the way into my bones.
‘Are you…’ I trailed off. ‘I mean. Are you doing okay?’ I cringed. ‘Sorry, I don’t know how this works.’
The sense of a smile returned. I thought she nodded, although her indeterminate silhouette made it hard to tell.
‘Good, good.’ I lapsed into silence, picking at my cuticle as I tried to figure out what to say. Eventually, I settled on, ‘I need to get ready for work.’
The shape of Aunt Jessie watched, unmoving until I left. The flat was empty when I returned, but she shimmered onto the sofa while I made dinner. I made her a cup of coffee in her mug without asking, which earned me another smile. I smiled back; Jessie always drank coffee at all hours of the day. Forgoing the table, I ate on the sofa next to her and turned on a sitcom to fill the silence.
I stared at the sigils on the floor. I must have messed up the ritual, and that was why she was so incorporeal. I retrieved Jessie’s journal and flipped it back open. Muttering to myself, I read back over the ritual and its incantation, trying to figure out what I’d missed. As the incantation’s last syllable left my lips, the atmosphere thickened, just like before. My heart thudded. I turned to the shape on the sofa next to me. She was solidifying, becoming less like an optical illusion and more like a person. I dropped the journal. I could see her hair, the impressions of a face, her clothes. The longer I looked, the more she resolved into a familiar figure.
‘You’re sick, you know that? Seriously twisted,’ I said to the ghost who was not my Aunt Jessie.
‘Well, hello to you too,’ Christine sniped.
‘No, fuck off. You don’t get to be upset I’m not happy to see you after you’ve spent the past two days pretending to be my dead aunt. Not to even mention everything else.’
‘You’re not happy to see me?’ Christine pouted.
‘No, obviously not. I called for my Aunt Jessie, and you turn up, then pretend to be her.’
‘I wasn’t pretending to be anyone. I never said I was your aunt.’
‘You never said you weren’t.’ My voice was hoarse and tired.
Christine waved away my protest. ‘You’re overreacting.’
‘Get out.’ I stood up and walked into my bedroom, leaving the sitcom playing in the living room. I closed the door behind me. It didn’t drown out the laugh track.
Christine appeared on my bed, lounging. She stretched her legs out in front of her, crossing them at the ankle. Her feet were bare; I wondered why.
‘I said get out.’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘I’m being ridiculous?’
‘You never let me see you,’ Christine whined.
‘Because you’re stalking me from the afterlife.’
‘I’m not stalking you! I’m visiting my girlfriend.’
‘I’m not your girlfriend, and I don’t want to see you.’
‘You’re so mean. I’m just trying to do something nice for you. Why can’t you let anyone do nice things for you?’
I crossed my arms. ‘Christine, this isn’t nice. This really crossed a line—another line. I don’t want to see you. Go away.’
‘You’re such a bitch.’ Christine’s face twisted, nasty. Her eyes flashed with something dark—reminding me, for the first time since she materialised, that ghosts weren’t just holograms of dead people.
This was why I wanted Aunt Jessie’s advice. Christine wouldn’t leave me alone—drawing hearts on my foggy mirror when I showered; dropping The Lovers into my lap every time I read tarot; spelling her name in letter beads from my craft box. But she’d never manifested corporeally. I guess it was stupid to try and summon a ghost for advice on a persistent haunting, and accidentally do it twice.
Christine fidgeted, uncrossing and recrossing her ankles.
‘I told you to get out.’
‘God, you really are the biggest bitch.’ The dark flash in her eyes returned. ‘You’re mine, Laura. I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll follow you anywhere you go.’
I shivered, neck prickling. Christine held my eye, her face twisted into a snarl. Where her lip curled, more teeth showed than a human mouth would. Her teeth seemed longer, brighter—maybe even sharper. Her eyes glowed with wild rage beyond anything I’d ever seen in a human expression. I stood unmoving, rooted to the spot by the instincts of a prey animal: if I didn’t move, she couldn’t see me; if I kept my eye on her, she wouldn’t pounce. The scent of jasmine twisted around me.
‘Listen to me, sweetheart,’ Christine said, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward, resting her elbows on her thighs. ‘You were mine from the moment you told me your name. There is nowhere you can go that I can’t follow. And at the end of your time, when you shuffle off your mortal coil, I’ll be there waiting to welcome you. You’re mine, and you will be forever.’
I couldn’t move.
Christine stood up in one fluid motion, looming over me. It wasn’t just intimidation—she was larger than before. I had to tip my head back to look at her. The edges of her body wavered with her old heat-haze—buzzing, electric. Christine didn’t grab me. She didn’t need to. Her presence pushed at my body, pinning me in place. The room pulsed with humidity and electricity, a brewing thunderstorm. My scalp tingled.
‘You need me, Laura. You’re useless on your own.’
I couldn’t speak. I struggled to draw the heavy air into my lungs. The jasmine aroma intensified, suffocating.
‘You gave yourself to me. You can deny it all you like, but you’re mine. Let me take care of you,’ Christine crooned.
I shuddered, trying to shake my head but unable to move. The electricity rose to an audible, high-pitched droning I could feel in my teeth. My head was floating off my neck. I couldn’t tell if I was even breathing anymore.
The haze around her body brightened, expanding into a blinding aura. She blazed, heatless, burning my eyes. The aura intensified more and more, building until, like a lightbulb, she burnt out and was gone. Invisible, Christine’s voice punched the air like a subwoofer, heavy with a layer of bass beneath her usual soprano. ‘Remember Laura, you belong to me. I’ll be with you wherever you go.’ The humidity dissipated.
I panted, chest heaving in the sudden void of my room. In the silence, a heavy thud echoed from the living room, where the sitcom still played. Legs shaking, I investigated. Next to the bookshelf, Christine’s books lay splayed and limp on the floor. I knelt to collect them. As I picked up the last one, a small piece of paper fluttered out of the front cover—a note I’d forgotten I’d written for Christine until that moment. Holding it in shaking hands, I skimmed the message. At the bottom of the paper, a large heart drawn in thick red ink circled the sign-off. My stomach twisted; I hadn’t drawn that heart all those years ago. My words to Christine scrawled in cheap ballpoint pen, stared at me from the centre of the unfamiliar shape: Forever Yours!