The Haunting

Weird things have been happening. It starts with the masks. Those hideously frightening masks my husband has collected over the years from his travels. They sit displayed across four wooden shelves in the TV room, staring down at visitors with expressions ranging from mildly annoyed to actively murderous. They are unsettling at the best of times. Now they’re moving. At first it’s subtle. A mask is slightly crooked. One has shifted an inch to the left. Another has toppled forward and landed face-first on the shelf. Annoying, yes, but still explainable. Then things escalate. One morning I walk into the room and stop dead. The large African mask that always sits proudly on the top shelf is now perched on the middle shelf. Just sitting there, looking smug about it. I know masks aren’t capable of smugness. This one, however, has somehow mastered it. Naturally, I put everything back exactly where it belongs. I have mild OCD; I like order, I like symmetry, and I like things where they bloody well ought to be. Five minutes later I return carrying a cup of tea. Bam. Everything’s jumbled again. The African mask is back on the middle shelf. A tribal mask has somehow swapped places with a wooden carving. One of them appears to be looking directly at me. Not in a spiritual sense. In a judgmental sense. The kind of look you get from a cashier when your card declines and a queue has already formed behind you. “This isn’t funny,” I tell them. The masks remain silent. Which somehow feels even ruder. And it’s not just the masks. Other things begin disappearing too. My favourite lipstick vanishes. Gone. My perfume disappears shortly afterwards. Also gone. Who knew ghosts liked to smell so good? Days pass. The house becomes a minefield of tiny impossibilities. Things move. Things vanish. Things reappear somewhere completely different. I start sleeping with one eye open; every creak makes me jump, every shadow makes my pulse spike, and whenever a floorboard groans upstairs, I nearly launch myself through the ceiling. I am exhausted. Paranoid. One badly timed sneeze away from a nervous breakdown. So we do the only sensible thing possible. We call in the vicar. The vicar arrives late. Very late. His collar is crumpled. His hair resembles a hedge after a storm, and drifting around him is the unmistakable aroma of whisky. Not a hint of whisky either. An amount of whisky that suggests he may have travelled via several pubs. No judgement. We all have hobbies. “This is mainly where it happens,” I explain, pointing at the shelves. The masks stare down at us innocently. The little bastards. The vicar studies them for a moment, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Most peculiar.” Of course everything behaves while he’s here. Nothing moves. Nothing falls. Nothing switches places. The masks simply sit there staring at me with the quiet confidence of criminals who know there isn’t enough evidence for a conviction. The vicar narrows his eyes. “I do feel a bad presence in here.” “Oh good,” I say. “So it’s not just me.” “Something wants you out.” No shit, Sherlock. I lean forward hopefully. “Is there anything you can do?” “You could fetch me a whisky.” “A whisky?” “On the rocks.” “Sorry. I was actually asking in relation to the haunting.” “Oh.” He thinks for a moment. “Tell you what. Fetch me a whisky and I’ll think on it.” We don’t have any sodding whisky. “Have you got any holy water?” I ask desperately. “Wine would be fine.” “For the haunting?” “No, no. I’m just parched, love.” His hands are shaking. Quite badly. At this point I’m no longer certain whether he’s battling a demonic presence or alcohol withdrawal. Probably the latter. To cut a long story short, the vicar drinks every drop of alcohol in the house. All three bottles of wine. Then he staggers from room to room splashing what he believes is holy water everywhere. The walls. The sofas. The curtains. The rugs. The cat. Turns out it isn’t holy water. It’s Chardonnay. By the time he’s finished, the entire house smells less haunted and more aggressively middle-class. The vicar mutters something incoherent, blesses a lampshade, and leaves. Just leaves. No explanation. No invoice. No salvation. Not even a brochure. Gone. We decide enough is enough. If the ghost wants the house, it can bloody well have it. Fortunately dream logic comes to the rescue. At the bottom of our garden sits a fully furnished static caravan that definitely wasn’t there before but somehow always has been. Perfect. Within hours the four of us have moved in. The cats too. It’s cramped. The boys immediately begin complaining about the Wi-Fi. Apparently supernatural terror is manageable. Slow internet is not. Still, we settle. Sort of. Then night comes. And with it… the tapping. Tap. Tap. Tap. A faint sound from beneath the trailer. At first it’s easy to ignore. Then it gets louder. And closer. Tap. Tap. Tap. Every night. Every bloody night. I lie awake staring at the ceiling while my imagination constructs increasingly horrifying possibilities: A demon. A spirit. A possessed badger. By week two I’m convinced whatever haunted the house has followed us. Everywhere I go I feel watched. In town I’ll catch movement in the corner of my eye. A shadow, a figure, something just behind me. I spin around. Nothing. Footsteps echo behind me. I turn. Nobody. Perhaps I’m finally losing it. Honestly, it would explain quite a lot. One afternoon I’m walking home when I hear it again. Footsteps. Distinct. Following me. My pulse quickens. My breathing deepens. The footsteps speed up. So do I. Then suddenly I think— Fuck it. What am I actually afraid of? This thing has already haunted us out of our own home. We’re sleeping in a bloody trailer for Christ’s sake. What’s it going to do now? I whirl around. And there she stands. Kylie. Frozen like a deer caught in headlights. “Have you been following me?” I snap. “Don’t flatter yourself.” She looks different. Not dramatically. Just enough. I study her face. The face I knew for years. The face I could probably draw from memory. Something’s changed. Then I see it. The nose. The bloody nose. She’s had a nose job. Classic ski-slope. Adorable, admittedly, but rather overshadowing the fact she’d apparently been stalking me. “Your nose,” I gasp. She smiles. A strange little smile. Almost secretive. Almost haunting. “I suppose some ghosts reinvent themselves,” she says. Then I notice her lips. The colour. The exact colour. My colour. My favourite lipstick. The missing lipstick. The penny drops so hard I practically hear it hit the pavement between us. “It’s you.” “What?” “You’ve been haunting us.” She laughs. “You’ve been breaking into my house, moving the masks, stealing my things and fucking with my head.” She doesn’t deny it. The lipstick says it all. Instead she smiles that same eerie little smile; the smile of someone caught red-handed who still somehow feels like they’re winning. Then she checks her reflection in a shop window. “Sorry,” she says. “Need to powder my nose.” “The new one?” “The expensive one.” And with that she walks away. Just walks away. Charming. Now, most people would probably process this bizarre revelation privately. I am not most people. I sell the story. Within weeks it’s everywhere. Newspapers. Magazines. Podcasts. Radio interviews. People become obsessed. The Haunted Masks. The Lipstick Ghost. The Woman Who Terrorised Her Friend Through Interior Design. There is talk of books. A documentary. A three-part Netflix series. Naturally, everyone suddenly becomes an expert on my life. Things get completely out of hand. Then comes the invitation. Oprah. Actual Oprah. Apparently she wants my side of the story. “Oh shit,” I say. I could decline. But that feels rude. So naturally I drag my family halfway across the world for what promises to be the experience of a lifetime. The studio is chaos. Celebrities, models, producers, security guards, and what appears to be an army of mini supermodels being trained by Tyra Banks. I am immediately overwhelmed. The caravan suddenly feels spacious. Before I know it, I’m backstage, then onstage, then sitting beneath the lights. The audience hangs on every word as I recount the masks, the haunting, the vicar’s alcoholic exorcism, the lipstick, the nose job—every ridiculous detail. And somehow they’re captivated. Oprah leans forward. “So how did you feel when you discovered it was your friend all along?” I open my mouth and pause. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought about it much. I saw an opportunity. I told a story. I ran with it. But now, beneath the heat of the lights, something shifts. Something uncomfortable. Something honest. Oprah asks the big one. “Do you hate her?” The audience falls silent. Hate. Such a heavy word. Such an ugly word. I think about Kylie: the laughter, the adventures, the years, the inside jokes, the memories, the friendship that once felt permanent. And suddenly something clicks. The masks. The lipstick. The paranoia. The feeling of being followed. The haunting. Because the truth is, long after Kylie left my life, she never really left my life at all. Not as a ghost. As a memory. A presence. A missing piece. Someone no longer in my life, yet somehow still lingering in every corner of it; haunting every object, every place, every memory, every quiet moment when my mind wanders backwards. I swallow. Look out at the audience. And finally tell the truth. “I don’t hate her.” The room is silent. “I just miss my friend.” A collective gasp ripples through the audience. Oprah’s face changes instantly; the expression of someone who has just accidentally stumbled into a far better story. For a moment nobody speaks. Then, somewhere in the crowd, a woman starts crying. Then another. Then another. Within seconds, the entire audience dissolves into tears. Oprah is crying. Tyra Banks is crying. One of the camera operators is crying. Even I’m crying. And through blurry eyes I glance toward the wings of the stage. Just for a second. There’s someone standing there. Watching. Kylie. No cameras near her. No security trying to move her along. No reaction from anyone else. Just Kylie. She gives me a small smile. The old smile. The familiar one. Then she turns and disappears into the darkness. Later, after the show, I ask where she went. Nobody knows who I’m talking about. The producers insist there was nobody there. No Kylie. Which is ridiculous. Because I know what I saw. At least… I think I do. And that’s the thing about hauntings. Sometimes they aren’t about houses. Sometimes they aren’t about ghosts. Sometimes they’re simply the people we loved, the lives we lost, and the versions of ourselves we left behind. And sometimes, years later, when you finally stop running from them— you discover they were never trying to scare you at all. They were just trying to be remembered.