Kelly Plus Ghost

Kelly stood in front of the ancient Victorian, her mouth twisted into a frown. She studied the dust-caked windows, surrounded by warped boards and covered with flaking white paint. At least, she *thought* it was white. Dirt had grubbed up the paint to the point where it could have been gray, and she wouldn't have known the difference.

Earlier in the day, the town garbage company had rolled in with two large, greasy black dumpsters and unceremoniously parked them on the dried crabgrass lawn. They almost looked like they were guarding the stairs.

"This was grandmother's house," she explained to her boyfriend, Clark. He was halfway out of his worn red Neon, hanging onto the door. He had dark hair set against light eyes, eyes that seemed brighter than usual thanks to the contrast with the brilliant green shirt he was wearing.

"You told me. She passed away here and no one found her for days because of the mess." Clark looked up at the darkened overhead windows, then down at Kelly again. "Do you think it smells like dead person in there?" he asked in a whisper.

"That's my grandmother you're talking about!" Kelly snapped back, running her fingers through her brownish-red hair in thoughtful frustration. She felt bad about snapping, as she knew Clark hadn't meant to upset her. The situation was just so... not funny. The doctor said grandmother had died from a stroke, dead before she even hit the ground. Kelly could only pray that were the case, and that her grandmother hadn't starved to death, smothered in her own things and forgotten by her family.

"I'm sorry I snapped. To tell you the truth, I'm glad you're here. Grandmother was always a little weird, especially during the last years. She always seemed to be talking to invisible people. It was enough to almost make me believe in ghosts."

"Lots of older people talk to missing loved ones. My grandma does it too," Clark said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. He'd been a football player until a torn ACL had waylaid his career. Now, he was studying to become an accountant.

"That's the funny thing. When I was younger I'd ask her if she was talking to grandpa, and she'd always say no," Kelly sighed in response. She flicked a floating seed off of her ribbed orange shirt. She wished she'd thought ahead and worn something old. "When I got older, I learned to just stop asking. It was too creepy."

Kelly took out the worn silver key and opened the front door. She'd expected it to creak open like something straight out of a horror movie, but to her surprised it was mostly silent. It only swung a few feet, however, before impacting a pile of cardboard boxes as tall as herself. She managed to wriggle in far enough to turn on the lights, Clark squirming in behind her. Thank God the electric bill was paid for the month!

"Oh, wow," Clark gasped.

"Grandma had hoarding disorder. It got really bad when mom moved to Florida and stopped visiting to check up on her," Kelly said with a sweep of her manicured hand.

"When will your mom be back from Florida to help you?" Clark asked, looking over the piles.

That was another sore spot. Her mom hadn't even flown back for the funeral. This time, however, Kelly restrained herself from snapping at Clark. "As soon as she can take the time off from work. With this economy, she doesn't want to risk taking unexpected days off..."

"Are you sure you want to take on this by yourself? After my big exam next week I'll be free to help," Clark offered.

"That's okay," Kelly smiled weakly. She really didn't WANT to be alone, but she didn't really have a choice. "The electricity is still working, and I've brought enough food to last me until you come back." It wasn't the ideal situation, but the young couple shared only one car between them, and mass transit didn't go out far enough to be of any use. The housing crisis had been the two in the one-two punch that had knocked this neighborhood out of commission, leaving it only sparsely populated at best. All around them, empty house windows looked down like accusing eyes.

"Just don't get crushed under any boxes while I'm gone!" Clark called as he returned to his car.

Kelly waved as Clark's car disappeared down the road, turn signal blinking left. Messily tying her reddish hair back, she set the mop bucket down on the floor with a loud metallic clang. She paused, looking around the house. Every place her pretty green eyes looked, there were boxes. Dusty old boxes filled with things grandmother had hauled home from every auction and rummage sale she'd managed to drag herself too before her failing vision forced her to give up her car. Dusty old boxes filled with the broken pieces of other families' lives.

The truth was, she wanted to find her grandmother's jewelry alone. Clark was too nice, too honest of a guy. If they found it together, he'd tell her mother they knew where it was, and Kelly's mother would snatch up the family heirlooms and skip away to a Florida pawn shop, using her treasured memories to buy beer for whatever pot-bellied man happened to be laying her currently. Kelly wasn't about to let that happen.

She had to move sideways up the stairs to the second floor, as the boxes were too close together to allow her to go any other way. A few times she stopped, fear slipping through her chest, as the stairs moaned beneath her as if threatening to give way and dump her into the dusty basement. Each time, though, she stood as still as a lawn ornament and drew a few deep breaths until the groaning went away. Only the thought of the jewelery kept her moving upward.

As she reached the landing, she spotted something silver glinting on the ground, reflecting light from the nearest window. As she bent over to retrieve it, a sudden blast of cold air blew across her back, causing the hem of her shirt to flip up over her shoulders, exposing her back and revealing her pretty pink bra with the strawberry-shaped clasp.

Kelly stood up quickly, pulling her shirt back down over her belly. She was a thin girl, but that came from genetics and not a strict gym regiment. She was trim, but soft. For that reason, when she made awkward love to Clark, she insisted they do it in the dark.

To Kelly's great relief, the second floor wasn't as nearly packed with stuff as the first. True, a baby grand piano sat upright on its keys in the hallway just off the stairs, along with four worn couches, but at least there was enough space that she didn't have to squeeze sideways. The unfortunate side of this, she noticed, was that most of the bulbs on the second floor seemed burned out or broken, and the sun was only an hour from setting. She'd be alone in the dark if she slept upstairs, or sleeping on piles of dirty boxes if she slept downstairs. She wasn't sure which option she liked better.

She couldn't remember which room had been her grandmother's. She tried the first door on the left. As she opened it, something gray burst out and streaked across her foot. Kelly screamed, practically leaping as high as the overhead lights. On the ground, an old gray cat looked at her indignantly, and then disappeared off by crawling through a cat-sized hole in the junk. Oh, great, Kelly thought. She wondered how many other feral cats were up here, waiting to leap at her, pooping in her grandmother's things?

The room she had just opened was so stuffed with boxes, only a cat could have gotten inside. She knew her grandmother had still been using her bedroom at the time of her death, so that couldn't have been it. The next room was the same, the same, the same... until finally Kelly opened a room with no boxes, the sweet smell of old lady perfume rolling out and assaulting her nose when she entered.

"Phew!" she cried, waving away the scent as best she could. This was it, complete with pink walls. The mass produced pressed wood bed in the center of the room was definitively out of place among the antique heavy oak furniture in the rest of the room, but it made Kelly happy to see it. It had been a gift from her family, before everything had gone wrong. She was glad her grandmother had been getting use out of it.

But, now was no time for sentimentality. Kelly began hunting. She pulled open every drawer. She searched through every sock. She even flipped the mattress, having heard somewhere that old people liked to hide money in their beds. Nothing there, not even some old coins.

Kelly groaned in loud frustration. The light from outside was disappearing rapidly, and the one working bulb in the room wasn't going to be enough for her to search by. She'd even pulled up and torn open the couch cushions- she'd blame that on the feral cats if her mom asked.

When the last light disappeared from the sky, leaving only a small circle of light for Kelly, she resigned herself for the night. She'd pulled all the paintings and photos down from the wall, accidentally cutting herself in the process. No hidden safes in the wall. Her knowledge of old movies was really failing her this time. Exhausted, she collapsed onto her grandmother's bed, still fully dressed in her now dust-covered clothing, falling into a fitful sleep.

She woke up with a start, hearing something scratching in the walls. Oh no, she thought. Rats! As if the cats weren't enough, now she had to deal with rats, too? Didn't the presence of the cats mean there shouldn't be any rats?

Kelly rolled, reached and turned on the light, glaring around the room with an expression that could have killed any rat dead in its steps. Nothing was there, however. In fact, she noticed, the scratching had stopped the second she'd turned on the lights.

She turned off the lights. She felt strangely warm, even though a breeze was clearly coming through the window. She threw off the heavier of the blankets, rolling onto her side so that her back faced the window. The moon seemed particularly bright that night. Maybe that was making it hard for her to sleep.

She had almost dozed off again when she felt something slowly racking through her hair, pulling leisurely downward. Bugs! She leaped upright, nearly knocking the lamp on the ground in her haste to turn it on. She only remembered to take a deep, gasping breath once she'd managed to turn the light on.

Strange, no bugs scurried away from the sudden intrusion into the darkness. She didn't know whether that was a comforting thought or not. She'd felt something in her hair... if it wasn't a bug, what was it?

"Well," she said out loud as she turned out the light and settled in on her back, resting her head on her folded hands. "It was probably just my imagin..."

She was unable to get the sentence out before she felt something grab at her arms, hauling them upward until they slammed into the headboard. She cried out in pain, trying to sit upright, but it felt like her wrists were glued to the bed. She made a second strangled cry when she realized this, twisting in vain against the gripping force. Still, her hands remained stuck.

After a few moments of feverish twisting, she stopped, holding very still. She could hear her own breathing... and someone, something else. There was her shallow, rapid breaths released as her heard pounded in her chest. Then there was a softer but far more coarse set of breaths, heavy, like the breathing of a smoker. Light was still streaming in through the window; she saw no one.

"I don't know who you are, but I own this house!" she called defiantly. "It belonged to my grandmother, and now it belongs to me." When she got no answer, other than the sound of the breaths moving away from her head and towards the opposite side of the room, she called out in a slightly more cautious tone. "Look, I'm not going to call the police on you, okay? If you're staying here because you don't have anywhere else to go, I don't want to get you in trouble."

Finally, a soft voice. "You own this house?" it asked, sounding slightly bemused.

"Yes. Yes, I do now," she answered hopefully. She'd gotten through to them.

"Then you must take the punishment!" the voice coughed in a gleeful manner. The sheets flew off her body and hit the opposite wall, even though the one who had grabbed them remained invisible. She could see the wall, why couldn't she see the attacker? She thrashed back and forth, only able to make a sideways rocking motion due to her immobilized wrists.

She felt a slight movement across her chest and realized the fabric of the shirt was moving. The sides were pulling in opposite directions of their own accord! She could see it stretching and straining where brown buttons held it together. Pop! One button flew off, then another, causing it to gap open at her belly. Then, with a great tug, the rest of the buttons shredded off, flying in different directions. Some of them hit the ground upright, and she could hear them rolling away across the floor.

She saw her breasts, clad only in her bra, rising and falling in the moonlight. "I don't know who you are, but you're not going to get away with this!" she cried with more bravado than she felt. "I own this house, you're a thief and a trespasser! Run away before my boyfriend arrives with the police!"

"It's because you own this house that I am here," the voice whispered. She felt hotness on her ear, like the person were breathing right next to her face. "It's because of what you did to us. We're so glad to have a sweet young thing here now... none of us wanted the old lady."

"Us? Us who?" she asked. She felt a hard tug on her pants, invisible hands tearing eagerly at her jeans. "Stop! Stop! My boyfriend is picking me up tonight. He'll be here any minute now! He's a football star. Won't you be sorry when he catches you?!" she demanded.

A cold finger pushed aside the fabric of her pink panties, and she felt a sensation like ice trailing over her outer lips. She arched her back, trying to pull away, a strangled sob coming from inside her as ice rolled over the roundness of her clit.

She felt the sensation of weight on her chest. She felt a hand distinctly, all four long fingers and a thumb. She even felt a distinctly colder band where the hand wore a ring on its finger. But no one was there in the moonlight... no one that could be seen!

The hand began to move downward, one finger catching on the middle of her bra. The hand pulled downward, dragging her bra. "St... stop..." she tried to command, but her voice had become week. The invisible hand tugged downward, pulling her bra with it. Her nipples poked upward, cold. Her breasts were shoved upward by the force of the band of fabric beneath them.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she asked, still not believing what was happening. The coldness against her chest stopped for only a moment, before a painful pinching sensation seized her nipples, one after another. The cold sensation ran in circles around in each nipple, pausing momentarily to seize them, to squeeze them. A sensation akin to being pinched by ice cubes spread through her with each tug.

She felt three cold fingers slide into the top of her panties, brushing down along her smooth skin and downwards through her pubic hair. Before she could respond with even so much as a gasp a massive force yanked upward, temporarily lifting her butt off the bed before she fell back down onto the sheets. Her torn underwear fell limply on the floor, several feet away from her. She trembled, her entire body on view on the moonlight, from her tender nipples like tents pitched on softly rounded hills to the bumpy surface of her curly hairs lying over her exposed slit.

A weight crawled on top of her, pressing down over her naval. The center of her bra was pulled upward, then snapped back down, stinging as it slapped against her bare skin. She could no longer find the words to beg it to stop, as her previous cries had fallen on deaf ears. She could feel the weight of the thing on top of her, but even though the moonlight was bright enough for her to make out individual curly pubic hairs, she could not see it.

Without warning the coldness shoved inward, piercing her most sensitive inner places. Her silence broken she screamed, bucking against it, but her desperate thrashing did nothing to discourage it or even throw off its rhythm. The bed shook beneath them, vibrating, moving with the thrusts of the invisible thing. Kelly was bounced up and down, breasts bobbing with along with the motion.

It was so hot and so cold, shoving itself in and out of her. Coldness spread over her chest and belly as a weight with no visible form pushed down against her. It pinched her nipples hard, harder than it had before, almost with a brutal force. She cried out again, but her screams only echoed in the emptiness of the house.

A tingly sensation like oncoming frostbite spread upward from her toes to her hips, and her muscles responded as though they sensed pleasure when her brain felt pain, contracting and curling around the thrusting thing. It was pressing against her pelvic bone with each pass, sending shocks up from hips into her belly. She felt the body of the thing pounding against her thighs, and it sounded for all the world like skin slapping together. The thing leaned forward. For a second, Kelly caught a glimpse of a skeletal face, but this so terrified her that her screams froze inside her.

As quickly as it had entered her, it withdrew. Her breath came out in ragged gulps, exhaustion spreading through her body. She tested her arms and found them free to move. She scooted slightly forward, noticing with disgust that she'd slid over a distinctly wet spot on the sheets. Outside, the first rays of light from the rising sun were beginning to peer over the horizon. She blinked, thoughts clouded in haze. Hadn't the moon been high in the sky just a moment ago...?

Her senses seemed to come flooding back to her all at once. She lunged forward, grabbing the bedside lamp, turning it on. The room was empty, as expected. The only two living occupants were herself, and the large gray cat from earlier. The cat slept on the foot of her bed, curled up in a ball, purring happily. It was oblivious to her presence, and her distress.

She slowly turned herself sideways, letting her bare feet hit the short, cheap rug. The sheets fell away from her as she sat, completely naked, burning face rested in her cool hands. Her clothes sat, intact, folded into neat piles on a nearby chair. Strangely, she couldn't actually remember stripping down before bed... or had she? Her clothes had so much dust on them from her cleaning en devours that they almost appeared to have changed colors. She wouldn't have wanted to sleep covered in dust.

She wrapped herself up tightly in the blankets, her cheeks blushing deep red. What was with that dream? She wasn't the kind of person to revel in violent fantasies. This place must be having an effect on her. Her desire to get in, get what she wanted, and get out surged within her.

She quickly had to put aside her thoughts for more practical matters. Her clean clothes were all downstairs. She didn't want to put on dirty clothes just to go downstairs and change into clean clothes... but that left only one alternative. Her blush became stronger, deeper, when she thought of herself dashing down the stairs wrapped only in blankets- or worse, naked! to grab her suitcase. But... it did sound thrilling, didn't it? She was alone in this big, rambling house, with no one around for miles. When else was she going to get a chance to run through a near-mansion as naked as the day she was born?

The second she dropped the sheets around her ankles, though, and saw the first rays of sunlight moving across her bare skin she changed her mind. Making a toga out of the sheets, she sheepishly rushed downstairs for her belongings.

Across town, Clark sat at his desk, studying for his exam. One of his friends wandered over. "Hey, where's Kelly?" he asked, surprised to see Clark without his other half.