Drabble 84 – Wight

Sometimes objects in my house rattle. I haven’t yet found a reason to explain this, but every few days a picture frame will shake a bit, or a plant will wobble while I’m working. This might have scared me in the past, but right now I just accept it as a quirk of my house. Objects shake. Floors creak. The blackberry bushes climb the fence. It’s our normal.

The concept of ghosts still scares me, don’t get me wrong. I don’t play with Ouija boards or dare spirits to show themselves, in part because, by daylight hours, I’m a skeptic. But every time an object shakes or I read a horror story at night, I wonder, and wondering is enough to convince me that I don’t need to know everything, actually.

So I’ll let my plants and picture frames keep wobbling. It’s like a little hello from beyond the veil, a reminder that the world is interesting and wide and mysterious.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

WIGHT

(n.) From Old english wiht for “thing, creature”

Originally, a living being. In literary use, undead creatures, wraiths, et cetera.

Theodore greets his mother as he always does. “School was boring,” he says, and there’s a thin chuckle from the next room. Her pale gray eyes swim up out of the air, blinking against the light.

“We had pizza for lunch,” he says, springing to the fridge to dig for leftovers. “Anna ate three pieces and threw up.”

His mother’s ghostly hand taps him on the shoulder and points to a plate covered in tinfoil. He peers beneath; sugar cookies iced with lemon, his favorite.

“Tell me more,” she says, voice like wind, her form growing stronger with every story.