There isn't anything she hates more than this. Existing in the only way that she can now, through the eerie ringing of piano keys faintly dwindling through the halls or the sickening sensation of the human body revolting in on itself as one violently vomits their evening meal. She hears the murmuring and the coveted sighs of all those that surround her, and at times she swears this is all life has ever given her. Sometimes it's hard to reminisce on things that feel fuzzy in the back of one's mind, like a picture that has been distorted and edited far too many times for any recognizable features to still remain. Yet, she isn't a picture and her life wasn't always like this. It couldn't have been. People do not just simply appear here out of the blue. There's a process and a story, and worst of all a murder. Or a death in some cases. Was it wrong that she still blamed him for hers? Perhaps it was, but words such as justice and virtue tend to lose a great deal of significance after a soul has made it passed the veil and into the underlying cavern of eternity. Or at the very least, a kind of forever that was less brimstone and Hell fire and more decaying corpses refusing to stay where they belonged. To be half-dead required quite a bit of arrogance, really. A soul's incessant stance on its own mortality, a firm boot (or heel) in the ground refusing to let go or loosen up no matter what came to tell it otherwise. A fervent desire to see the light of day once more, no matter the cost it called for or the endless amount of innocent lives it forsook. All of that merely collateral. This is what it meant to be a ghost.
"Luce?"
Tearing her gaze away from the broken clock which hung above, she lets her eyes meet the only other girl who really understood what this place was doing to her. Lucinda Blackwood was seventeen-years old and if there was a person she knew she could count on while here, it was fifteen-year old Violet Harmon. With her dirty blonde hair and sad girl eyes, Lucy never felt like she had to justify any of her fears or anxieties whenever she was around the other ghost girl, "Yeah? …Oh sorry," she had been caught staring off into space again. A normal habit for any waning spirit of the house, but that alone was the problem in question. Lucy had already found herself waning in far too many ways, she wasn't sure how much more she could take, "The clock just wouldn't stop ticking. Didn't you hear it? It was terribly annoying, Violet. I swear it was."
"Luce, that clock hasn't moved since you got here," here being the other side of course. Wrapping her mind around the concept had been quite a challenge at first, but soon enough Lucinda started to understand everything. There were two ways in which people arrived at the house, as themselves in whole or as they who they used to be in part. No longer a full-fledged individual, but bits and pieces of their former selves. "You don't have to lie to me. I know what you were doing creeps you out, it used to get to me too, but it's not worth fighting. Only makes it come on stronger and trust me, you don't want that. Then it'll just start happening all the time and it will make you feel like a total zombie. It's not worth the trouble." Violet had been nothing short of helpful in Lucinda's time of need. Showing her all the proverbial ropes and guiding her through what would otherwise have been an unbearably painful process, "Or the heartache."
Not saying a word in response, the brunette simply nodded in return. Her lapis blue eyes moved back to the clock which as Violet had already said, wasn't moving an inch passed five forty-eight or making any sounds either. What did it mean, to become a zombie when she was already so far from human? It didn't make any sense, but then again neither did this place. The numbers meant nothing to her, and yet she had the terrible habit of constantly coming back here whenever she'd start losing her sense of direction. Into the kitchen, next to the dining room table and with her azure irises practically glued on to the plain Jane homeware appliance. How much time she spent there or who passed her by while she stood there was a mystery. As far as she was concerned, the world stopped spinning the moment the clock began ticking away. That's what living here was like.
Walking away from the freshly awakened girl, Violet starts to make her way towards the staircase and the sound of her footsteps are there one minute and gone the next. Lucinda wonders if she was really ever there or if she simply imagined her, and then she remembers Violet told her not to think like that. Letting yourself go batshit over the small details just makes you go crazy faster. You're giving this place exactly what it wants. Deciding to take the other girl's advice, Lucinda turns on heel and exits the kitchen without saying a word. This entire house is just the literal personification of the expression: twiddling your thumbs, but she knows distraction is everything. Especially when there are so many things she doesn't want to see, and so many people lurking just around the corner. Heading towards the back entrance, she makes a bee-line into the yard where she is surrounded by fresh air and sunlight. Here, she takes comfort in not only the cloudless, sunny L.A skyline but also the much more minute consolations as well. Such as the tweeting of birds from the neighborhood yards or the soft breeze of the wind blowing right through her, and of course the garden. What had started out as a minor horticultural project from the woman next door, soon became a flourishing oasis of over a dozen rose bushes that began on her property and ended on this one. Why exactly she felt the need to grow flowers on land which wasn't hers to plant on or even next to an abandoned house of all places, Lucinda didn't really know but she figured it didn't matter much either. The roses were a nice touch and whenever the screaming or the ticking or the gentle pangs of wallowing from inside the house became too much, she knew she could come here and bask in the simple things. When she arrived here the first time (as her whole self) she felt instantly drawn to the gazebo. Had only seen a few throughout her lifetime, always on her TV screen and never in person, but now she had the entire gazebo to herself. Or at least that's what she had thought. Back then…
"Pretty isn't it?" Had it been anyone else, she might have felt a bit more startled, but Lucinda recognized the voice immediately. Looking back with a polite smile spread across her face, she was glad to see Moira. Rarely did her and the elderly woman ever cross paths, but she knew that was for a reason. The multifaceted maid heavily preferred the shadows to the light, never wanting to come across any of the other suffering souls or accidentally be seen by any potential new owners. After all, she had to seem the most alive out of everyone else here.
"It is," Lucinda responded as she kneeled down in front of one of the bushes to better see them. The roses would never be in full bloom, as she had discovered a few weeks ago, they'd either die quickly or forever stay in this half dormant state of plant-like adolescence. Something about being on the same property as the house made them prone to either wilting or freezing, and Lucinda wasn't sure which fate was worse. Still, as long as the older woman next door still deemed them fit to plant there, the demure seventeen-year old had no reason to complain. They were a beautiful addition to a very ugly house, "Do you think they mind never growing up?"
"The roses?" Moira questioned, her voice as elegant as fine china while simultaneously being as creaky as the wooden floorboards inside. "Or the little ghost children who run about?"
"Both…" She'd only ever paid attention to Margaret and Angie Harvey in passing. Their burnt bodies and singed facial features making them an evident eyesore at first glance, but that all passed once she found that she rather liked the sound of their laughter as they jumped all through the gloomy house. "Mainly the roses, but I guess the little girls too."
"I think," the red-head hadn't taken a step off the primary grounds of the house, but Lucinda could somehow feel Moira's hand comfortingly place itself on to her shoulder as she stood right behind her. In actuality, Moira was simply staring at the young girl from the comfort of the door side view, not being one for sunny days or cloudless skies. Not when her body was buried right out back, only a few feet away from where the girl stood, "the roses, like the children, don't mind at all. You see, you cannot long for something you do not know you are meant to have. What you see as stunted and underdeveloped, the roses and the little girls see as natural and forever. No child nor flower really ever expects to live passed what it's body will allow it to do." Though her thoughts were already so cluttered, and few things made any kind of coherent sense, Lucinda understood what Moira was saying perfectly. In fact, she would even go as far as saying that the older maid's words were starting to resonate within her, "Now, the little girls are condemned here but why Constance chooses to grow all these rose bushes when she already has so many in her own backyard is a different question altogether. Honestly, you would think after all the children she has in this house, she would know better than to just plant something here and never check up on it. In fewer words, the mortality rate of this house simply isn't what it used to be."
Suddenly, another female voice immediately disrupted the tranquility Lucinda had been craving only moments prior, "Moira, don't you have a mantle that needs dusting or an adulterous husband that needs screwing?"
"Speak of the devil's grandmother." And just like that, Moira disappeared back into the shadows, leaving both Lucinda and the unknown voice all alone.