#window 2

Window #2 (x1) Screen window

Being a ghost is hard.

You never get hungry. Just as well since you can't really ever eat. You never get cold because, well it is your job to make others cold with your eerie presence. You don't shower because you don't smell, you don't jump out at pigeons and make them scarper in frightened surprise because they can't see you. There are a lot of things about being human to miss when you are a ghost. And Casper found it the worst at Christmas time.

And yes, that's his real name. Casper. Casper the ghost. Clichéd right?

'Didn't your parents ever think about that?' Basil had asked once years ago, as they played with conkers, smacking and thwacking the seeds with menace. Casper had frowned as his conker took a pounding and wondered if Basil had coated his in his sister's clear nail varnish again.

'Think about what?' Nine year old Casper checked, tightening his string, readying to deliver the final blow.

'That one day you'll die and be a ghost. And you're gonna be the dumbest named ghost ever.'

'Hardly ever. Tutankhamen the Ghost is pretty dumb, too.' Basil had smirked at that and they'd carried on their game.

Five years later and Casper was now dead. Dead at the hands of his odd-ball parents who'd allowed him to go away with these two. Dead at the will of the road sign that, it came to light later, much later, far-too-late later, had pointed them in the wrong direction to the wrong road, to the wrong house. Dead at the bidding of someone that Casper didn't now like to think about..

'Move yourself Basildon, or I'll bite your ear off,' Jerry warned, straining his eyes to see outside. Casper looked across at the window-doors with their forty two panes of glass and sighed. Jerry and Basil were at it again.

'If you'd just let me move you to the side we could share the view.' Basil pointed out, an edge in his tone as Jerry glared at him.

'If you'd bugger off I'd be a lot happier,' Jerry said. The two went on with arguing over the view.

Casper kicked a feather the owl who had flown into the room yesterday had left, and looked at the wall before him. Its dark purple wallpaper was torn, revealing discoloured edges and old old wall plastering that was cracked and chipped. Feeling exasperated with those two, he did what he often did: pressed his forehead up against what he imagined was a cool surface, and knocked his head against it a few times. It didn't hurt. It didn't actually feel of anything. He didn't even make the plasterwork crumble from its earlier indentations...

'If you don't move, I will toss you out of the window!' Jerry warned. Basil laughed.

'The window that we can't open?'

'I'll open it, I'll find a way.' Basil gave Jerry a look, staring down at him.

'Right. Is that before or after I give you your head back?' and with that Basil lifted Jerry's head out of the mouth of the old Victorian vase and jumped back from Jerry's remaining body, its arms flailing.

'Give me back!' Jerry shouted. Basil was so busy laughing at his friend's dissevered body that he almost jumped at the voice commanding him from under his arm.

'Uh... Don't really want to.' Basil grinned down at the freckle faced ghost. 'It's fun to be ahead of you for once - haha! Haha! Did you get that, Casp? I made a joke!'

Casper lifted his head from the wall, resisting the urge to slam it forwards for the twenty third time and just looked at his friends.

'Shouldn't you be watching the window?'

Jerry looked up at Basil who shrugged down at him. Jerry cried out.

'Don't do that! It feels funny!'

'Want to sit on my shoulder?' Basil offered in truce. Jerry gave a bottom lip shrug and was lifted onto Basil's shoulder. Casper almost laughed for the first time since he'd found himself dead. They looked like a circus freak act. The two headed man...

Boy. They were all boys. They'd now only ever be boys.

'I never realised how short you are,' Jerry commented, staring out at the snowy garden beyond the stone balcony.

'Don't make me let go of you.'

'Okay, okay. Where'd they go?'

'There. Beneath the yew tree.'

Casper looked at his two friends again, Jerry's body now limp on the floor. Basil shifted on his one remaining foot.

'Your wound is gross,' Jerry complained. Basil tilted his half severed neck and grinned at Jerry, their noses almost touching.

'You know,' he teased, looking straight into Jerry's eyes. 'Before I died, I'd never kissed a girl.'

'Ew-yuck! Well don't expect it from me, put me down, you idiot, put me down!' Basil chuckled, putting Jerry's bloody stump of a head back down in the vase.

'Casp, come over here. We'll wager on whether they escape or if they're dumb enough to come in here.' Casper looked down at his hands.

'Nah.' He replied quietly, sitting down on the floorboards by the open and empty fire.

'Sure? If you don't bet now, I won't let you bet later.'

'I'm good.' Casper answered. Basil shrugged in a suit-yourself gesture and turned Jerry's head to face outside so they could watch. Jerry's gravelly voice decided, 'They'll come in,' Basil shook his head as best he could. 'They won't.'

Casper prayed they wouldn't.

It was near to Christmas. Casper had kept a log of the days since they'd all died viciously, painfully, fearfully. Three years, six months, two weeks and six days. He'd been the last to die, he thinks...

He missed his family. He missed his dad's goofy Santa jokes, the way he'd spin round mummy, proclaiming that she'd kissed Santa Claus last year so this year he'd kiss Mrs Claus. Casper's mother would giggle stupidly, turning down the radio, proceeding to protest weakly as she was swung around in his arms.

He missed the smell of roast turkey and the crackle of a slightly burnt potato skin between his back teeth. He missed sledging, the freedom of free-falling. He missed scooting along the waxy pew at church, making room for that scary old woman who stank of peppermints, had eyes like a cat and insisted on naming him after her long dead husband, Teddy. He missed snowflakes on his cheeks and willing his bladder to wake him up before his little brother Peter got all the good sweets from under the tree.

Mostly he missed cherub-faced Peter. Who followed him everywhere and turned his Bambi eyes to his older brother whenever he needed reassuring. He missed how annoying he was. He missed seeing him. Peter would be seven now...

'They're coming closer!' Jerry broke into Casper's thoughts, voice excited. 'They're coming into the house!'

'There's still time for them to turn back.' Basil answered hopefully. Casper hoped so too.

'I don't think they will.' Jerry volunteered, straining his eyes to watch. 'They're heading to the veranda.'

The boys waited in silence. They didn't breathe. No need for that. They didn't speak. They just ... Basil and Casper both jumped a little as a great angry sounding bang came echoing to them from the old front doors downstairs. Casper flicked a look to Basil. His friend swallowed quietly.

'They'll come in.' Jerry said needlessly. 'God, they'll come in.' Even he had hoped they wouldn't.

Silence. Casper watched without fear or repulsion as a rat sniffed in the corner of the fireplace. Its nose twitched, its red eyes glittered. He vaguely recalled how sharp rats teeth were when digging into your supple young flesh...

BANG BANG BANG

'Bas.' Jerry's voice was low. The other boy stayed still. His instinct was to hide behind the heavy dark curtains fringing the windows as the snow continued to fall outside.

'How many?' Casper asked, his eyes watching carefully for Him.

'Two.' Basil answered. 'Boy and girl.'

'Fuck.' Casper hissed.

'He's not in here.' Jerry guessed. 'We'd have -'

BANG BANG

'They're as good as dead.'

'Shush, Basil. They may get away...' The room almost seemed to vibrate at Casper's words. The front doors, those majestic and heavy barriers to the outside world, hiding the evil within, were being 'forced' open.

'Basil, help me.' Jerry said, his body raising up from the floor. Basil lifted Jerry's head and handed it to his body. The head nestled between the crook of Jerry's elbow and his side. The side that wasn't missing a vital organ or two, that wasn't a gaping hole.

'Casp? Want a hand?' Casper ignored the unthinking words of his friend as he tried to push himself up. Basil hopped over and put his arms beneath Casper's armpits, lifting him up. Casper's severed hands remained on the floor.

'I want out,' Jerry suddenly informed the room. 'I don't want to see this again, I want out.'

'We don't have a way out,' Basil answered matter-of-factly. 'And neither do they.'

'Let's not stay around for this one.' Casper agreed with Jerry. His eyes trailed up to the rope hanging from the ceiling, the chair beside the fire. They flicked to Basil pleadingly.

'We can't escape it.' Basil stated, bending to retrieve Casper's hands, struggling to balance on one foot. 'Don't be such scaredy ghosts.'

'Who you gonna call?' Jerry muttered under his breath. After a moment he added 'Wish they would call them. Wish they would bust us. I'm tired of this -'

A scream, male, female, didn't matter, it was a scream, it was a sign that He was getting His fix again, that He would spend the rest of this day, this night, as long as he could, easing His own depraved lust...

'Let's sit in the fireplace together. And put our backs to the room. We'll sing Christmas carols to distract ourselves from the -' Another scream, filled with pain and fear this time, spoke the final words.

'Good idea, Basil.'

The boys moved to the fireplace and sat down, shoulder to shoulder, filling the space.

Casper fixed his eyes on the white marble of the back of the gaping mouth of the fireplace and slowly shut his eyes. His hands lay in his lap. Jerry's head rested in his. Basil had his legs crossed but only one foot remained. Staring at the hole where his heart had once been, Casper finished closing his eyes and began to sing to drown out the terrified screams. Basil and Jerry accompanied him, each boy's voice raspy and was urging to get the job done, to create a peace, to drown out the noise -