"Will you play?"
Violet rolls her eyes at Larry's daughter Margaret, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her. Both she and her sister are among the shyer ghosts in the house; though Violet has been almost a year now, she's seen them only a handful of times.
Margaret's timid face, burned away and smouldering still over one eye, in the corners of her mouth, is radiant with childish excitement. Angela stands just behind her, holding her sister's hand. They want to play hide and seek.
"The others have all said yes." Angela pipes up. She gives off the odour of smoke. It makes Violet's eyes water.
"Have they now?"
The two girls nod, happily.
Who is Violet to deny them the childhood they never got the chance to enjoy?
"Sure, I guess."
"You're seeking!" Margaret says, tapping Violet fleetingly on the arm before running off up the basement stairs, her sister in tow.
Violet turns towards the wall and closes her eyes. She counts to five hundred, and wonders how hard it's going to be to find a bunch of ghosts.
She finds Travis first, in a hallway cupboard. Rookie hiding place, but Travis is hardly the brains of the operation – of any operation. He grins goofily when she finds him, shrugging his shoulders.
"Guess I suck at this game, huh?"
"Nah," Violet lies. "I'm just kinda psychic."
"Really!" Travis' eyes bug out in awe "…whoaaa. No wonder you found me so quick!" he pauses, looking at Violet seriously "…can you tell what I'm thinkin' right now?"
"You…really want a sandwich." Violet pronounces.
Travis looks conflicted for a moment, his brow furrowing. Then his expression smooths over and he grins. "You know, I kinda am hungry now that you mention it!"
He disappears into the kitchen, leaving Violet to continue her search.
Moira she finds hidden in a pile of clean laundry in the linen closet. She's in her younger form – one Violet is able to see, now that she's a ghost. Moira bursts out from the pile, breathing heavily, as if she's had to hold her breath.
"Do ghosts even breathe?" Violet asks, her eyebrow raised.
"No," Moira admits, removing a towel from her head and dropping it to the floor. "But I thought it was more dramatic this way."
"Didn't figure you'd be that into hide and seek." Violet comments.
Moira shrugs her slender shoulders.
"There's little else to do around here now that I no longer have to make you snacks and iron your father's shirts. Besides, I thought I'd humour the little girls. They're the sweetest things, don't you think?"
Troy and Bryan are found next – or not so much found as overheard. Violet passes the door to her old room and hears them talking, the muffled sounds of the boy's voices, then a silence, then a muffled reply, the tone higher, girlish.
When she cracks the door open, she sees that Margaret and Angie have quite forgotten the game. The burning girls are sitting side by side on the floor of her old room, a set of cards laid out in front of them. Troy and Bryan, uncharacteristically well behaved, sit on the other side of the cards.
"It's your turn!" Margaret giggles.
Troy picks up his cards, examining them with a freckled scowl.
"Do you…have the five of clubs?"
"GO FISH!" Margaret replies. The girls giggle again when Troy swears.
"You're cute when you're mad." Margaret tells him, reaching over to pinch him on the arm.
Violet closes the door, leaning against it for a moment. It's strange to watch the ghost kids play cards in the room where Tate died – the room where she lost her virginity to him – the room where she killed herself. Strange to think that not that long ago it had been her playing cards on the floor. She'd thought, then, that they would be together forever; literally. How wrong she'd been.
Now that the girls have lost interest in hide and seek, it seems almost pointless to keep looking for the others – she realises, belatedly, that she doesn't even know how many people she is looking for. But as Moira pointed out, there isn't much else to do. If she doesn't keep playing, she'll only return to the basement to dwell on the past, to think about Tate, to miss him, then hate herself for missing him.
With a heavy sigh, Violet keeps seeking.
An hour later, Violet has found nobody else. She returns to the basement for one final search. There is one hiding place that she knows is a good one, but she's been avoiding it – for obvious reasons.
She clambers into the crawl space, negotiating the narrow brick passageway on her hands and knees. She remembers the first time she did this, months before – remembers how frightened she had been. Now she feels nothing; not fright, not disgust. Just a lingering unhappiness – a sense of loss.
She slips down the narrow ledge into the space where her body rests.
Tate looks up at her, his eyes wide – surprised.
"….Tate…." it feels like a lifetime since she's seem him. He looks just the same, his hair tousled, slightly curly, his shoulders slumped, body almost disappearing inside his baggy sweater.
"…hey Violet." He doesn't seem to know what to say either. He looks awkward, guilty almost.
"You're playing hide and seek?"
"What?" he frowns at her, his mouth quirking into an uncertain smile, as if not certain whether she is joking or not. It would be a cruel joke, if she was, given she told him to go away. "No…I'm…." he looks down at the tangle of bones, the dust fabric on the floor. Bits of blackened skin and muscle still cling to what was once Violet's body, but the fleshy, human parts of her were eaten away long ago. She's barely even a corpse anymore.
"You're what?"
"I like to be down here. With you. It makes me feel less lonely, I guess." Tate sounds so sad that for a moment Violet almost forgets why she told him to go away in the first place. She bites her bottom lip, kneeling down next to him.
"I'm sorry, Vi." Tate doesn't seem to want to look at her. He stares, instead, at the yellowed bones of her body. "I know there's nothing I can do…nothing I can say. But I never meant for things to turn out how they did. You have to believe that. I'm just fucked up. I'm so fucking messed up…" he lets his head fall to his knees, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Violet reaches out to touch his arm. It has been so long since she's seen him cry – she thought perhaps with time she would be hardened to it, that it wouldn't make her feel like crying herself. But right now she wants to weep herself; for her dead body, for her dead family, for the demise of her first and only relationship. She thinks of Troy and Bryan, Margaret and Angie. Will they grow up (as much as they can, trapped as they are in eternal childhood)? Will they fall in love?
He looks up when she touches him. His face is streaked with tears. He looks as he did the first time he told her he loved her; innocent, earnest. A little bit scared.
"I'm glad I found you." She tells him, quietly, not even sure herself in what way she means it.
But it's enough for Tate. He rests his head on her shoulder, and she reaches out a hand to smooth his hair.
It's enough for now.