Chapter Text
Ginny
"There's just a small matter of-"
"I know, I know. It has history. Someone died here. I don't mind that. As long as you haven't left their body somewhere, I don't mind."
"Other tenants have found-"
Gi turned to give the woman a tight smile. She was ringing her paperwork in her hands, a nervous frown on her face.
"If there are any problems I promise that I'll call the agency," Gi said, hoping that her smile was reassuring.
"You're sure you want to live here?"
"I'm sure." She gave the nervous woman a more genuine smile. Every place had history, she knew that much. It was a shame that someone had died there, of course it was, but she had to move away from campus and it was the cheapest place of it's size on the market.
"Well, I'll leave the paperwork with you. If you just get it all signed and sent back to us. You can move in today."
"Thank you."
Gi took the keys, signed the papers and watched with mild surprise as the woman almost ran to the door. She looked around as she heard the car pull away. It was a little flat, hardly big enough for one but that was exactly what she wanted. The kitchen was a good size, and so what if the bedroom was also the living room. She wasn't planning on having company. A little sliding door lead into a storage space and beyond it a teeny shower room. It would be easy to decorate, easy to heat, and it was hers.
All that was left was to collect her things. She had already packed, hopeful that the home that had stood empty for just over a year would be ready to move into. The last challenge would be getting in and out without seeing any of her housemates. If she was lucky there wouldn't be too many questions.
"Ginny, Ginny hey!" She winced.
"Hey, James." He was one of the nicest in the shared space, but so very loud. It seemed that even when he was an inch away from her he was bellowing. He would make it a long way in music with that voice, and he was friendly, but there were seven others. One good egg wasn't enough.
"What are you up to?" He was beaming at her, like a puppy with a new toy.
"Right now?"
"Literally now. I worked out the harmony, Ginny. I did it. It's a minor sixth. Works like a dream. Listen!" He held up his guitar, hands quivering.
"James, I would love to, but I gotta book. Assignments you know?"
"Oh, yeah sure. Want a hand?"
"I'm good."
"Okay. Well, see you around."
She smiled and slipped down the corridor. A suitcase, her easel, and a rucksack were all she had. She could give her key back tomorrow.
Yukiko
Yukiko peered around the door. The new girl had gone. Maybe she wouldn't come back? Sighing, she drifted through the little flat, staring at the paperwork on the counter. The new girl had signed it, that was a first in months. Everyone had been so put off, because of her.
"Ginny," she whispered the name a few times. "What kind of girl are you, Ginny?"
She'd left a small satchel behind. Yukiko flipped it open and stared at the contents. A laptop, some notebooks, and a book. She pulled it out a little to read the spine. "Love your watercolours." She shrugged.
There was nothing to do but wait and see what the girl was like. She could be nice, some had been until they realised that she was there. That was when they stopped being nice. She could deal with that though, and there was nothing they could do to her. She was already dead.
The door opened and closed. Someone was coming up the stairs. Yukiko swept into the kitchen and made an attempt of ducking behind the small breakfast counter, chiding herself as she remembered that so far none of the residents had successfully seen her. There was no need to hide.
Yukiko watched the strange new girl unpack. The clothes were sparse, but there was an endless stream of rugs and blankets, pieces of fabric that she draped here and there until the carpets that Yukiko had spent weeks choosing were entirely covered in bright hues and eye watering shapes. She frowned. This girl had no furniture, nothing that she could sit on or sleep in, but she seemed pleased. What kind of person would be pleased to live in a flat that was haunted?
In the space of an hour everything was covered in colour. The girl, Ginny, had rolled out a mat and thrown a blanket over it. A pillow roughly tossed at one end and a knitted thing that could have been a bear or a dog seemed to be sufficient to designate it a bed. Yukiko drifted closer, certain by then that the girl couldn't see her.
"Hello?"
Nothing. So she couldn't hear her either, that was new. Yukiko waved her hands in front of Ginny's face but she didn't even flinch.
"Well, you're going to be wonderful company aren't you."
Deciding that there was nothing better to do, Yukiko settled as best she could onto the makeshift bed and looked over Ginny's shoulder. The easel was up, a sketchpad sitting against it, and she was sketching something that looked almost familiar to Yukiko. A stroke here, a line there, and something was taking shape. She smiled as she saw it, a winding valley of trees, a little path somewhere in the distance. An artist might be nice.
Ginny
"Hi Da." She smiled, of course he was checking in. Of course he wouldn't just sent a text.
"How's my best girl?"
"I'm your only girl Da." Ginny rolled her eyes.
"Still stands. You can't just text me about getting a new place and then tell me nothing about it Ginny!"
"It's just outside of town. Only small but it's in a nice quiet area and the bus stops just outside. It's cheaper than halls too, so I should have money for travel without too many problems."
"And you're sure you'll be alright, living on your own?"
"More than alright. This is what I need. I can't deal with those people, Da. All they want to do is drink and party. They make so much noise day and night. If I had stayed there much longer there would have been a paintbrush murderer on the loose, and I don't want you to have to deal with that."
Her dad chuckled, the way he always did when he thought that she was being dramatic. He hadn't met them though, she reasoned, so he couldn't possibly know how frustrating they had been.
"Well, if you're sure."
"I'm sure."
"Remember to eat."
"Da, I'll be fine."
"I'm going shopping later, want me to send anything up?"
"I'm okay for now. Thanks though."
There was a pause, and for a moment Gi wondered if her dad had hung up somehow. When he spoke again his voice was softer, concerned.
"You know I'm here, if you need anything. It's not too far to come and get you."
"I know. Thanks Dad."
"Anything for my girl. Talk to you soon."
She clicked off the phone and smiled, blessed that he saw the best when her mother would likely see the worst. Socialising was important, but she would rather choose who she did it with.
With a sigh she looked back at the sketch. Where had she been? It was a valley that she had drawn a hundred times, and would likely draw a hundred more. There would be trees here and there, a few bubbles of water as the stream wound.
A thump behind her sent the pencil in her hand flying.
Gi span around, staring at her satchel. It had flopped over. When had she put it there? She shook her head. Things fell over all the time, what was she worrying about. Haunted, it was laughable. She believed a lot of unusual things, folk tales and stories, but ghosts were a step too far.
She looked around again at the mostly empty room. She hadn't even brought a kettle. At least there was the little storage area, with a kind of wardrobe built in. That made life far easier. All she needed were some pans, a plate, and a chair. She didn't even mind sleeping on the floor.
"I'll shop tomorrow," she muttered to herself. "Maybe somewhere will deliver."
Yukiko
Yukiko watched her new flatmate as she spread paint onto the paper of the sketchbook. Lines that were completely random until the last minute when suddenly they became a frozen moment in time.
She felt guilty for pushing over the satchel, but Ginny hadn't been as shocked as she should have been, just muttering that she didn't believe in ghosts. Until she had become one, Yukiko hadn't believed in them either.
Ginny unpacked a few small snacks out of the bag and was loading them into the fridge. There was chocolate among the snacks that stayed out to surround the heap of paint and paper. Yukiko leaned in and took a long sniff. What she wouldn't give to be able to eat chocolate again.
Night came and went, and while Ginny slept Yukiko peered at her things. There were more books than she had expected. Novels, stories about almost everything. Yukiko leafed through them, she had never made time for books. Then there were the paintings. She sat and flicked through sketchbooks that were full of places that looked almost real. They were all beautiful.
When she ran out of sketchbooks, she turned back to the novels. There were pencil markings in the margins of most of them, folded pages and highlighted passages. Ginny either loved or hated her books, and Yukiko couldn't decide which.
"What kind of person are you, Ginny?" She asked the sleeping figure. "Are you the kind who will run? The kind who will stay? Or the kind who will try to push me out?"
There was only one way to see if she was the kind of person who could stay, and that was to make it difficult. Really difficult.
It was cruel, she knew that, but it was exciting as well. The same excitement that she had felt standing at the top of a cliff ready to abseil down. There was something about pushing another person to their limits that was almost as good as pushing yourself. She swore, as she had with all the others, that they would come to no harm. Then the fun began.
Through the night, while Ginny slept, Yukiko set to work moving things around. The paints that Ginny had left scattered all over the floor she moved into a pile, the easel with it. She took the clothes that had been stacked in the open living space and hung them in the wardrobes. It wasn't the traditional method of haunting, but it would make a statement. Besides, it was painful to see her flat in such a mess.
She cleaned and tidied until the sun was coming up, not feeling the need for sleep that she had done when she had lived. It felt good to clean. She even began to rearrange the rugs that were over the floor so that the colours were more regular, a gentle change in gradient from one end of the room to the next. For a while it felt like she was home again.
"Well," she said, surveying when she had moved all but the sleeping girl. "That should do it."
It was cleaner than it had been even when she lived there. The many books had been alphabetised. The sketchbooks stacked in order of those that were full to those that were not. She took a few deep breaths, gripped the curtains, and flung them open letting the morning light soar into the room.
Rather than ducking behind the counter as she had become accustomed to doing Yukiko stood – or at least floated, unable to keep her feet on the ground – in the very centre of the room and watched as Ginny woke.
Ginny
The light hurt. It was the kind of light that stung your eyes and bored into your skull. Ginny blinked a few times, staring at the open curtains. Had she left them open? She reached out for her glasses and found them far closer than they should have been. Why weren't they on the easel?
She blinked, trying to rub away the sleep that still clouded her eyes.
"The shit?" she muttered, looking around. Everything had moved. Everything.
Ginny shook her head, trying to remember that she was a reasonable and logical person. Perhaps she had been more organised than she remembered. It was possible that she had put her paints away, tidied up, rearranged everything without realising that she was doing it. She wasn't a messy person all the time. Besides, the alternative was that the estate agent had been right, and she was not ready to believe in ghosts.
"I am not going insane," she said to herself a few times, hoping that if she carried on she would start to believe it. It wasn't possible that there was any truth to the stories. Perhaps she had sleep walked...and sleep tidied.
"There," she muttered to herself. "Logical, reasonable, rational." She huffed, trying to calm the slight trembling in her hands. "Who ever heard of a ghost who tidied anyway."
It was a day without classes so Ginny opted to stay in her pyjamas. There was no need to get dressed if she wasn't going to see anyone after all. She wandered over to her pile of books, plucking the book off the top of the pile. She had been half way through-
"Oh."
She looked at the pile. The book she was reading had been on the top of the pile but it was sitting somewhere near the bottom.
"Alphabetised. Well okay."
She pulled out the book and went back towards the bed. It had made itself.
"No," Gi said, louder than she had intended. "No, it did not make itself. Beds do not make themselves Ginny. You just straightened it out when you stood up. It's not like it takes any time to make a bed." She said the words firmly, but her heart was thumping. Was someone in the flat with her? Watching her?
"Impossible."
With a stomp she crossed the few feet to the kitchen, intending to make a cup of tea. Tea, her father had always told her, makes everything look better. She stared blankly at the empty surfaces for a few seconds, remembering that she hadn't even brought a kettle. Tears welled up in her eyes. It was supposed to have been a good move, it was the perfect place. But she couldn't even have tea and flat's didn't just tidy themselves.
Shaking her head she straightened.
"Come on now, Gi. Pull yourself together. All you have to do is put some jeans and a hoodie on and nip to the shop. Get a kettle, come back, and it will be fine. There's no reason to get worked up about this. You're just stressed." If she had been paying attention she would have balked at how much she sounded like her mother.
She stared at the place where her clothes had been, and choked down the surprise. Nothing was where she had left it, nothing. She was almost shocked to find that she had woken up in the same space that she had fallen asleep in. A quick search revealed her clothing, hung up in order of garment in the large wardrobe with her shoes stacked underneath. Without looking at what she was grabbing Gi pulled on some trousers, a jumper, her most comfortable daps and made for the door.
With a final glance around the flat that was full of her things but didn't look like it was hers she grabbed her phone and a bag, dialing her dads number before she was half way down the stairs. He would have an answer. He always did.
Yukiko
Yukiko stood still in the middle of the room. It wasn't exactly the reaction that she had expected. Ginny had seemed more concerned about not being able to make a drink than at the fact that someone had clearly moved all of her things around. Was she really going to try and rationalise it? It made some sense, she supposed, ignoring what was definitely there rather than having to adjust your beliefs to the possibility of something new. She had done the same thing once.
She was going to have to try harder.
It was quiet in the flat without Ginny and though she had always hated the silence there was something different about it. She had, in the short day that Ginny had been there, become accustomed to hearing her steady breathing. To the way that she hummed when she worked. Without her, the flat felt as dead as Yukiko. She had never felt that before.
When Ginny returned with the newly purchased kettle Yukiko made a show of gliding around in front of her, waving her arms around.
"Come on, try to see me. You can be the first one." But Ginny carried on, taking off her shoes and throwing her jacket into the corner of the room. That brought a moment an old temper back to Yukiko. She moved as close as she could to Ginny's face and shouted. "I'm literally right here woman!"
Ginny reached through Yukiko towards the counter, shuddering and drawing her arm away when her hand touched passed through the ghostly chest.
"Cold," she muttered.
"Yes, cold!" Yukiko shouted at her. "Of course it's cold! And what does cold mean when things have been moving around on their own. I know that you're clever and I know that you read books about this kind of thing. They might be love stories but they still have the signs."
Ginny moved around the spot where Yukiko was standing, seemingly working on the basis of not stepping in the cold bit, and carried on making her tea. Yukiko sighed. Nobody had ever seen her. Nobody had ever wanted to, she supposed. But then, she hadn't wanted them to look at her either, to see the death that shrouded her. She drifted back from the kitchen, watching as Ginny made tea and took it back to the place that she called a bed. There was an Ikea catalogue on the floor. If she was buying furniture then she was probably going to stay.
"Well, if you're going to move things into my house I at least want a say in the matter." Yukiko huffed. She drifted towards the catalogue, tuning pages to look at what was within them. It was all the same things that had been there when she had moved in.
Ginny hadn't noticed the moving pages. She was fixated on something on her canvas. Some spec that Yukiko couldn't even see. Yukiko watched, stunned, as without taking her eyes from the painting she reached for her brush. She didn't flinch when it was nudged into her hands. She watched as, still staring straight ahead, Ginny opened and mixed paints to begin working on whatever flaw she had seen. Yukiko forgot about the cataloguetoo, content instead to watch as the painting that she had considered beautiful transform into a place so real that she felt she could fall into it.
When the evening drew in and Ginny tucked herself away for the night, paint streaked in her hair, Yukiko drifted again around the flat. Shouting hadn't worked, moving things hadn't worked. Being generally in the way hadn't worked. There was something about the girl though, the way that she looked at her work. Yukiko didn't know what it was, but if there was anyone who might be able to see her...
It wasn't worth getting her hopes up too much. But it was something to think about.
She lay on the floor, or rather a little above the floor - it was difficult to really lay down when you couldn't feel surfaces beneath you properly - and tried to work out what to do. She liked Ginny, a lot more than some of the previous tenants. She was quiet, creative and she didn't seem to be one those people who would call in priests or burn smelly incense at all hours. In fact, she didn't seem to have been phased by the potential haunting at all.
Yukiko closed her eyes. One of the many mysteries that plagued her about being dead that she could close her eyes still and see nothing. When she did it was almost as though she was alive again. With her eyes closed, listening to the light snore from Ginny somewhere next to her it was almost as through she was a living breathing girl. The lids snapped open. That was no way to think. Nostalgia had never got her anywhere.
Still, it was nice to lay there a while.
When she heard Ginny moving around she turned. A restless sleeper. Didn't that mean something? She was sure her mother had told her stories, but she couldn't remember. She drifted over and pulled the covers back up to cover Ginny's shoulders. A very small tattoo crested her neck and Yukiko peered at it a while, unable to make out what it was. She had wanted tattoos but she had wanted to be airline cabin crew more, and that meant clean skin. The ink that ordained Ginny's back was dark, but not black. Maybe some kind of bird?
Ginny shivered, making Yukiko draw back. Cold. Ginny didn't like the cold. Yukiko sighed. She was always cold. Cold and alone.
A small pad of paper and a pencil sat on the floor by the bed. Yukiko stared at it for a moment, weighing up the idea. It could be too much. But then, just maybe?
She took up the pencil, struggling the hold the weight of it for any length of time, dropping it more than once, and wrote in a hand that she hadn't seen for - well she didn't know how long for - a short message.
Hello Ginny. My name is Yukiko. I live here. Almost. Sorry I looked at your things. I think the rugs look better this way. Your paintings are nice.
She looked at the note, tore it from the book and threw it to one side. That would definitely scare her.
Hi. My name is Yukiko. I used to live here. I still do a bit. Sorry if I scared you. I was interested in you.
No. That was still too forward.
Do you believe in ghosts? Yukiko.
She snorted. It sounded like the start of a horror film.
Exorcisms don't work. Trust me I've tried. And anyway I like you so I won't do anything awful to your things.
"Come on Yukiko, how hard is it to introduce yourself?"
After several more scrawled, discarded messages she came to something that looked about right.
Yukiko, 19. Died 12/07/2017. I'm stuck in the flat. Sorry I moved things around. I just wanted to know who I was living with. Thank you for not trying to exorcise me.
It wasn't perfect, but it was the best that she could come up with and the effort was making her hand hurt more than she liked. The light was staring to drift in through the curtains so it would have to do. She gathered up the rest of the notes and dropped them into the bin, then sat and waited for Ginny to wake up.
Ginny
Ginny dreamed about tearing paper. She walked through a maze of falling pages, each one tinged with frost that froze the ground around her as she stumbled onward. When she woke she was shivering but pulling the covers around herself tighter did no good.
Trying to shake the dream away she sat up, pulling her old dressing gown around her shoulders to ward off the strange cold. She was going to have to order a bed, there was no avoiding it. She didn't have the money, but there was no way she was prepared to wake up cold every day.
She stretched, rubbed her tired eyes, and saw the little piece of paper laying on next to the cold half cup of tea that she had abandoned the night before. The writing on it was definitely not her own. She looked at it, read the short lines a few times and frowned. The room seemed to grow colder. Without taking her eyes off the intruding note, she picked up the phone and dialed an old friend.
"Eddie? Hey it's Gi."
"Gi? It's like, 7am. What are you calling me for?" She felt suddenly guilty. She hadn't even thought to check the time.
"Sorry Eddie, I know it's early but I have a question. It's a bit of an odd one, and well you're always the best person when it comes to odd things."
"Okay, alright, I'm up. What's going on?" His voice was thick with sleep, but it didn't stop her as she babbled out her dilemma.
"You know that I moved out of halls on Monday, into this flat?"
"Yeah, you literally haven't stopped texting me about how perfect it is. Do you need a hand moving stuff?"
"No, no I got that sorted. But, you remember I said that the estate agent had been funny about the whole thing, and that someone died here and that she had said that it was haunted."
She could hear that her voice was getting a little shrill and tried to calm the nerves that she had been fighting for the past few days.
"What are you trying to tell me Gi?"
"I think that they might have been right."
Eddie laughed down the phone so loudly that she had to hold it away from her ear.
"It's not funny Eddie. Things have been moving around on their own and this morning there's this note and I definitely did not write it to myself."
"Gi, are you sure that you're not just stressed? I know that halls were pretty horrible for you. Maybe you just need a week off."
"Eddie. I'm not mad and I'm not stressed."
Gi heard him shuffling around on the end of the line, and she smiled as she imagined him stumbling about not quite awake. He had never been a morning person.
"You could have been sleepwalking. You always did when we were kids?" She considered the suggestion, but there was no way that she could have done it all while asleep. Besides, she had never been inclined to tidy.
"It's not that, Eddie. There's something not right here. What do I do?"
"I dunno Gi. If you think that there's something going on, you either have to live with it or leave."
She shuffled in her covers, still cold.
"Those are my only options?"
"Pretty much."
Gi sighed. Eddie was her go to, he always had been. If he didn't have a solution she didn't know what she could do.
"Can you come over? I know it's a long drive..."
"For you, Gi, 'course I can. Give me a minute to get dressed and I'll see you in-"
"About an hour, I think."
"About an hour it is then."
"Thanks Eddie."
"Don't mention it."
She heard the phone click to nothing, and sat for a moment holding it to her ear. She had been able to ignore the cold spots. She had rationalised things moving around somehow, but the note. That was something else. Something she hadn't been prepared to think about.
"Yukiko." It was an unusual name.
Gi pulled her wild hair into two small bunches, and dragged her laptop into bed with her. There would be news reports, if someone really had died in the flat she would be able to find out more about it and them. If the name matched then Eddie would have to believe her. Then it was just a case of making her believe her. She had believed in a lot over the years, but never in ghosts.
She tapped the name and the post code into Google and waited as the searches sprung up. The first result was a headline from the local paper.
GIRL FOUND DEAD IN LOCAL HOME. POLICE SUSPECT FOUL PLAY.
A brief skim of the article told little more than the headline. A second article was much the same. On the third there was a picture of a woman with long black hair, dark eyes and a wide smile holding a plaque. She looked older than Gi, though they very close in age and there was a confident gleam in her eyes. Gi stared at the picture for a while, she could have been anyone. They were at the same university, or they would have been. If the girl had been alive would they have met?
She surfed until Eddie arrived, finding out less than she would have liked to until finally she found a closing article.
EXCHANGE STUDENT MURDERER CAUGHT BY POLICE. EXPERTS PREDICT LIFE IN PRISON.
Murdered. She gulped, closed the laptop, and went to make tea. Tea made everything better.
Yukiko
It had been a mistake. Of course it had, there was no way that she would just casually accept a letter of introduction from the ghost that. Stupid. She should have done it another way. Now Ginny was googling her.
Yukiko paced around the small kitchen in the way that she always had when she was trying to work out a puzzle. Ginny had called someone, Eddie. Perhaps he would be able to see her. Someone would have to be able to see her eventually.
A slow fear crept into the back of her mind.
What if he was coming to try and get rid of her? What if he was the first to manage? She didn't think she could cope with another exorcism. The paper was still lying on the floor where she had left it, the pencil laying nearby. Anything was worth a try.
I didn't mean to scare you. Sorry.
She watched Ginny's face spread from confusion to horror.
"Now I know I saw that. So, you're there. You're really there. But you can't be there. Ghosts don't exist. They can't. You can't. You don't."
She was panicking, but Yukiko didn't know what she could say that would help.
I don't know how.
It was as close to a shrug as she could manage with just a pencil, but it fell from her grasp before she could do anything else. They had never been so heavy before.
"I've gone mad," Ginny whispered to herself. "Completely mad."
Yukiko stared at the pencil. She could write another note. Telling Ginny that no she wasn't mad, that she really did exist and really was writing messages but there was little use. It seemed her housemate wasn't prepared to accept it, and she had seen that reaction enough times to know that forcing the matter wouldn't help.
A loud knocking at the door, almost exactly an hour later, signaled the arrival of Eddie. He had brought a bag of things with him, things that Yukiko had almost been expecting to see. Candles, sage, salt, incense. The whole kit. Not that it would do them any good. Not even a priest had managed to 'contact' her. Though that wasn't hard, all they had to do was pay attention.
Ginny greeted the scruffy boy with a tight hug. She was muttering something into his shoulder but Yukiko couldn't make it out, and she didn't want to have to drift closer to hear.
"It's alright, Gi. I know you don't want to believe it, and nor do I, but if there's anything here to find we'll find it okay?"
Ginny nodded, still holding onto the notes. Yukiko wondered if she even realised that she was holding them.
"Come on, pop the kettle on and I'll sort this out."
"You could just try talking to me," Yukiko sighed. They didn't hear her.
She watched as the boy marked a rough circle with table salt. It would take days to get it all up out of the rugs. Inside it he placed five candles in a smaller, rougher circle, with a chunk of burning sage on a saucer in the middle. It was one of the nicer set ups she'd seen. He must have done some research. Outside the window the little street was still. The apple trees waved in a light breeze. A car rolled by. Yukiko wondered how many people would expect that there was something so daft as a seance about to happen in the middle of their quiet neighbourhood.
"I think this is ready," Eddie said to Ginny, disturbing Yukiko's musings. "Come and sit down."
"Do you really think this will work?" Ginny's voice waivered.
"No, I don't, because I don't believe in the afterlife and I don't believe in ghosts and I think that while something strange is going on her there's a very rational explanation. However, as you are worried I will do everything I can to ease your mind."
Yukiko laughed. How silly of someone who didn't believe in ghosts to be trying to talk to one. Still, she would have done the same she supposed. Not through fear, as they seemed to be, but curiosity. When she had been alive she had relished the idea of meeting someone who had died years before, a person from the past who had been doomed to wander. It had all seemed exciting. The personal reality had been disappointing at best.
"So what do we do now?" Ginny was whispering as Eddie pulled the curtains closed and moved to light the candles.
Still with a smile on her face Yukiko drifted into the centre of the circle. She knew the routine and that was where she was meant to be.
"We ask if there is anyone here I suppose."
"That's not very scientific Eddie."
"Well nor is any of this." He sounded frustrated.
Yukiko picked up the sage, holding in in front of his eyes for a moment before it dropped from her hands.
"Do," he gulped, "do we take that as a yes?"
"I told you there was something going on here."
Yukiko looked around for the pad of paper. She didn't have time for their nonsense. It had seemed fun to start with but was getting old very quickly.
Yes, I'm here. I've been here the whole time. Why can't you see me?
"Gi, I think this goes over our heads."
"Yukiko?"
Yukiko smiled.
Yes?
Ginny
Ginny sat rooted to the ground. There, floating between her and Eddie was a pencil that was writing messages. Answers to questions. It dropped to he floor a lot, and the handwriting was difficult to read, but there was no doubt that someone was writing. Even if she couldn't see or hear them. She had tried, of course, she had looked this way and that way and squinted until Eddie started laughing. There was nothing there to see.
"I still can't see you."
Do you believe that I'm here?
"I don't see how I could believe anything else." Ginny sighed. "Do we have to be in this seance circle thing to be able to talk to you?"
No. I can see and hear you all of the time.
"Well then." She stood up, flung the curtains open and blew out the candles, opening the windows to clear the smoke from the sage before it set the fire alarm off. "Sorry, Eddie. I know you went to a lot of trouble."
"It's okay. I never thought it would actually work."
"Me either."
"Now we just have to figure out how to see someone who isn't there."
Google?
Ginny laughed. Of course the ghost would suggest Google. It's not like she had died a hundred years ago. It had been a little over a year.
She spent the next two hours, with Eddie and one side and the notebook that represented Yukiko on the other, looking at the bizarre suggestions that the internet spat out when she typed in 'how to see a ghost.' Most of it she deemed utter nonsense.
"Look at this one," she shouted across the room to Eddie who was making his fifth cup of tea. "It says that I should hold a moonstone to my third eye and chant something that I definitely can't pronounce, which might be a kind of Latin, while standing in the approximate location of the ghost on the anniversary of the day that they died on the stroke of midnight."
"That's a complex set of instructions." He nodded, paying more attention to the tea.
Do you think it would work?
It was going to take a while to get used to seeing the paper float up in front of her, then drop to the ground before floating up again.
"No. Plus we would have to wait a little while. Yukiko why not just leave the paper on the floor, it seems you can't hold it for long?"
"Maybe you just have to say her full name three times into a mirror at midnight?"
"I think that only works for murderous dead women called Mary," Ginny giggled.
Yukiko Shirokuto.
Ginny read the name a few times over. The articles hadn't given her full name.
"It's worth a try I suppose." She said, still trying to work out the pronunciation. "Does that mean that Yukiko will have to stand in the mirror. Or maybe behind it?"
"Have you tried just looking in a mirror with her?"
"Why would I have tried that, Eddie, I only started believing that she was here today."
Eddie wandered away from the kitchen and came back with the bathroom mirror in his hands.
"Has to be worth a look doesn't it?"
Ginny took the mirror and held it so that she was looking straight in it. The notebook floated over her shoulder, but all she could see was the book. No person holding on to it. She turned it towards the window, the light glinting off the frame, but there was still nothing but the notebook.
"Seems not," she sighed.
"I think you might just have to live with a ghost that you can't see."
They sat in silence for a moment, before Eddie brightened.
"Maybe you can put something on her, like a scarf, so that you know where she is."
"She's not a doll for me to dress Eddie!" I huffed, annoyed at how funny he seemed to find the whole situation. It wasn't a bad idea though. "Would you want to wear a scarf, Yukiko?"
It would be tiring. Touching things, holding things hurts sometimes. But I could try.
Ginny rummaged around in her small suitcase and pulled out a bright orange scarf with elephants all over it. It was garish and she loved it. If it worked she could always pick up a different scarf for Yukiko to wear. She didn't really want to give up the orange one, but it was silk so it would be light, and it was all she had to hand.
She held it out, shivering as cold enveloped her hand for a moment. The scarf lifted then draped around the air in a fashion that, if she squinted, she could almost believe was on a person.
"Well then", Eddie said, smiling. "It looks like we have our solution."
"A solution, and a ghost."
"At least she's friendly. Not likely to smash things up and write on blood on the walls, right Yukiko?"
Definitely not.
"I'm going to head off Gi, I'm sure you have a lot to talk about with your new house mate, and honestly as much as I love seeing you, I had other things planned for the day."
"No of course, thank you for coming over Eddie. I really appreciate the help."
"Anything for you."
Gi gave him a shove. Still grinning.
"So," she said once Eddie had been safely seen out of the door. "I guess we both have a roommate."