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New houses were nothing new for JD. By age twelve, he’d developed a rating system for them on a wide variety of meaningless scales. It was something to pass the time the first couple of weeks he was there, until he found something else to occupy him.
Now, at nearly eighteen years old, his scales had become more extensive and more arbitrary. He liked looking for things that made the house unusual, creepy, dangerous, or-- if at all possible-- all three at once.
This house, on a pleasant (boring) little street in Sherwood, Ohio failed on most of his metrics. It was a simple tudor a-frame, probably built in the nineteen sixties at the height of that stylistic fad, but recently renovated based on the modern decor. JD passed all this with only vague interest. He’d lived in similar houses before.
It was a three bedroom, something unusual as JD’s father-- generally a cheap bastard-- never paid for anything they wouldn’t use.
For that reason, JD gave it a two on the space scale, and chose the bedroom at the back of the house, overlooking a large, well-tended yard.
“Too pleasant,” He muttered, looking over the view. The whole house was too pleasant. So was the town for that matter. Just another goddamn pleasant American town.
Fuck that.
JD started to unpack with more aggression than necessary, thinking bitterly about all the more interesting places they could have moved. As he tossed a beat-up coat into his closet, he noticed a pull cord hanging from the ceiling and his eyes followed it up to what looked like a trapdoor.
“That’s more like it,” He said with a smile, giving the cord an enthusiastic yank.
A set of narrow, ladder-like stairs clattered down, nearly taking him out. When they had completed their descent, JD didn’t hesitate to climb up them and into the musty attic above.
JD upped his “creepy” score from the dismal one it had been to a three, when he saw that the attic was still full of the former owner’s shit.
Tables stacked high with books and half-finished crafts, trunks with old clothing spilling out, and several cardboard boxes labeled “junk” covered nearly all of the floor, and he had to pick his way carefully around to take a look.
He could make a killing if any of this was valuable, and Bud would never have to find out. Smiling at the thought, JD imagined getting enough money to leave this town and his shitty life behind. He turned his attention to the nearest table, hoping to find something that looked expensive.
What his eyes fell on, however, was a dusty old book with a picture of girl in black sitting on a hill.
“ The Handbook for the Recently Deceased ,” JD read aloud, and a shiver went down his spine.
He turned the book over in his hands, intrigued despite the book’s obvious lack of any material worth.
“JASON!” His father’s voice echoed from downstairs, and JD started. Tucking the book rapidly into the waistband of his jeans, he dashed down the old ladder and shoved it back into place, barely getting the trapdoor closed before his father barged into the room.
“What, Dad?” JD said, putting on a typical amount of insolence to cover his slightly rattled nerves.
“What were you doing? Why didn’t you answer me?”
“I was unpacking.” He rolled his eyes. “Or are we not going to be in this shithole long enough for that?”
“Watch your fucking language,” Bud growled, and JD took an involuntary step back.
Satisfied with having scared him, Bud turned to leave the room, stopping when he saw one of JD’s half empty boxes on the floor. “Clean this shit up before you eat, or don’t bother trying to eat.” He left, and JD finally took a breath.
Though JD had honed his possessions to only the minimum that were necessary, unpacking everything in the couple hours it would take him to get hungry was a big task. Sighing and wishing he wasn’t such a coward, he set to work.
Hours later, JD was in bed, hungry. He’d finished unpacking his things and come downstairs seeking food, only to be told that his father had meant he should unpack the whole house.
He knew it was just an excuse, just another fucking power trip, but it still pissed him off to no end.
To distract himself from his anger and the gnawing emptiness of his stomach, JD grabbed the book he’d found earlier and began to read.
Live people ignore the strange and unusual…
It was odd way to start a book, but JD liked it. He didn’t think of himself as the type to ignore the strange or unusual. Maybe I’m a little dead inside, He thought with a bitter smile.
It was complicated, almost dizzying, to read, and at some point, mid-sentence, JD’s brain gave up and he fell asleep.
He woke sometime later to an odd sound coming from upstairs. For a moment, he considered ignoring it. It was probably racoons or bats, and he didn’t have the wherewithal to deal with that right now, but to his tired mind it sounded almost like voices.
Vermin in the attic he could ignore, but voices in the attic warranted investigation.
This time he was prepared for the ladder’s rapid descent and caught it so he could lower it slowly and quietly to the ground, then he began an achingly slow and silent climb to the attic.
He didn’t want to expect nothing-- that would only set him up to be scared of whatever it was-- but he didn’t know what to brace himself for.
Whatever horror his brain conjured turned out to be in vain, because there was nothing frightening in the attic at all, at least not in the traditional sense.
Instead, a girl sat on one of the tables writing furiously in a diary.
JD considered getting her attention, but her distraction allowed him some time to adjust to the reality that there was a girl in his attic.
In a fit of fury, she tossed the diary across the room, and it landed right next to where his head was.
Seeing her wide, startled eyes, JD said, “Sorry to barge in like this, dreadful etiquette, I know.”
Getting over her fright relatively easily, the girl smiled and laughed a little. “Uh, that’s okay.”
“I’m JD, I um… live here.” He held out his hand.
The girl took his hand cautiously. “I’m Veronica. I died here.”
That froze him up for a second. “You… what?”
“I died here,” She repeated.
“You’re a ghost.” Words from the book rushed back to him.
She nodded. “You aren’t, but you can see me? The living usually can’t.”
“They usually don’t,” He corrected, “Because they ignore the strange and unusual. But I am strange and unusual.”
“I see that.” She tilted her head and smiled up at him in a way that was charming and a little startling for JD, who rarely spoke to other people, much less attractive people his own age.
“I just moved in. I think I read your book.” He wished he could have thought of something clever to say, but she was still smiling, and her eyes sparkled.
“My book?”
“The Handbook for the Recently Deceased. You’re recently deceased, right?”
She nodded and played with the hem of her skirt. “You read the whole book?”
“A lot of it didn’t make sense,” He admitted. “But I read parts of it.”
Veronica sighed. “It doesn’t make much sense to me either, that’s why I stopped trying to read it.”
JD shrugged. “Rules are stupid anyway.”
Her lips curled up, brightening her face again, and JD was momentarily stunned.
“You don’t… look dead,” He said, reaching out to touch a strand of her hair.
She examined him, her smile still playing around her lips. “You barely look alive.”
That made him laugh, and the smile grew.
Before the silence could get awkward, JD said, “You seemed upset when you were writing earlier, is everything okay?”
Her expression darkened. “Being dead is a real drag. I went to the Netherworld today to ask some questions, and they told me I’m trapped in this stupid house for the next two hundred years. Can you believe that? I thought if I died I’d go to hell and get to party with Satan, but I’m stuck here in this fucking house.”
“I knew life sucked,” JD said, “But I was hoping death wouldn’t suck too.”
“It does.” Veronica looked up at him with the same disgruntled expression. “Don’t ever kill yourself; it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
For some reason, the dark sentiment made him laugh, and he realized that as strange as it was, he liked this ghost girl, and he didn’t hate the idea of sharing a house with her.
It even made him think of some interesting possibilities.
“Say, Veronica, do ghosts have powers?” An idea was forming in his mind that he rather liked.
“Powers?”
“Like in Poltergeist,” He explained. “Can you haunt shit and scare people?”
She chewed her lip, thinking. “I haven’t tried, but I think so.”
JD dashed down the ladder and returned with the book, which he handed to her. “Maybe this will give us some ideas.”
“Why do you want me to haunt your house?”
“Because I’m sick of being scared.” He gave her a quick description of his father, trying not to make himself sound pathetic in the process.
When he was done, Veronica put her hand over his and smiled. “I think he could use a good haunting.”
Together, they poured over the book, and Veronica started to practice. She never quite managed to scare JD-- he was too busy laughing at her-- but the effect was always striking when she found a new and unusual way to fuck with her face or contort her body into weird, puppet-like figures.
When the sun rose, JD felt better than he had in a long time. To his shock this house had turned out to be the best of all of them, in every category he’d ever come up with. Knowing that his father would be waking up soon didn’t even dampen his mood.
“Are we ready?” He asked her.
Veronica looked up from the book, sunrise light glittering off her pale skin. “If I can’t go to hell yet, we might as well raise some.”