Time: 10:30 am

Day: October 28th

Weather: sunny

Location: Westerville, Ohio - The Alastor's new house

Objective: Unpack the U-Haul

Carrying two heavy boxes full of his mother's clothes, Marshall Alastor walked up the steps of his new home in Westerville, Ohio; his family had just moved up from Indiana for his dad's work and it has been a long drive and a lot of unpacking still left to do. Marshall walked through the propped open garage door and set the boxes by the stairs. His mother was in her bedroom, opening and rearranging some boxes with various clothing items and putting them up in the closet, while Marshall's father was close behind carrying kitchen items.

"Right behind ya'"

Marshall's father, Adam, was a tall and stocky man, standing about 6'2" and usually wore tight-fitting polos and cargo pants. This is what he wore most days since he works as a financial advisor at the bank. He has dark skin, speckled with freckles, and sports a full beard and a bald head, which he covers with a baseball cap.

"Sorry, dad. Where should I move these boxes? The foyer is getting kinda crowded." Said Marshall.

Marshall is a Senior in High School who is set to transfer to Westerville North High School on Monday. He usually wears a sweatshirt from a major University, paired with baggy jeans or joggers. Today he is wearing joggers. His hair is often styled naturally with a pick and is taken in at the sides for a clean look.

"Uhh, just bring them up to your mom's room."

Marshall hoisted up the boxes again and wobbled up the stairs; the boxes seemed heavier the second time. He rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and plopped them down at the entrance of his parent's room."

"Mom, here's your clothes."

"Hmm? Oh, those aren't clothes, those are uhh... umm..." Said Marshall's mom, as she poked her head out of her closet to look at the two boxes.

"I have no idea what those are, but I'm pretty sure they aren't my clothes." "Let me look."

She teetered out of the closet, avoiding the looming stacks of movers' boxes and bins that now populated the entirety of the room. She made her way into the hallway and opened the box on top of the stack to reveal spices and kitchen cupboard items.

"Kitchen," She said in a monotonous tone.

She moved the box onto the floor and opened the second one. Inside, there were books and random notebooks that the family had accumulated across the years.

"This can go in the basement; put it in the utility room." She said while replacing the tape on the boxes. Marshall sighed and picked up the first box and tossed it in the kitchen around the corner. He went back and picked up the box of books and started down the stairs; he walked through the foyer to the living room on the way to the stairs that led to the basement.

"When you're done with that box, come and help me unload your bed from the U-Haul" Adam shouted from the garage.

"K!" Marshall shouted back. On the way to the basement, Marshall's younger brother and sister, Kevin and Tina, run past in a whirlwind of tag.

"Stop running so fast! That's no fair!" Shouts Tina, chasing after her brother.

"Well then run faster! It's not my fault you have little legs!" Kevin shouts back.

"Y'all better stop goofing around in there! Or Imma make you pull weeds!" Marshall's mom shouts from upstairs. "Go help your dad carry some boxes! Just cuz y'all are small doesn't mean you can't pull your weight!"

Marshall hurries down the basement stairs to avoid his mother's wrath; he turns on the light in the dimly lit cellar and walks past the laundry room to the boiler room that has been designated as a storage closet. The uncarpeted floors felt cold under Marshall's feet and the air started to chill his nose. The basement looked like it was just torn up to make way for a new renovation, something that would probably take place in the distant future with the way that money has been. The boiler room hid behind a wooden door that creaked horribly when opened, and the only light was a single bulb that hung in the middle of the room. When Marshall turned on the light, cobwebs and uncovered metal beams were illuminated by the yellow glow of the bulb, and dust lifted from an abandoned Turkish rug in the middle of the room. The light was bright enough to fill the boiler room with light, but still cast some shadows that made you look twice. This made Marshall uneasy as he looked for a place to set the box that he was assigned to rehome; he looked towards the wall next to the furnace and there were built-in wooden shelves built by the previous tenant that looked big enough to place about 15 movers boxes. Marshall hoisted the heavy box over his head, careful not to injure himself, and placed it on the top shelf. Once on the top shelf, he shoved the box to the very back of the shelf so that it hit the wall with a thud; this brought up more dust from the pink insulation that covered the back half of the boiler room and made Marshall cover his face to avoid a coughing fit.

"This is NOT good for my asthma," he said while plugging his nose.

As Marshall turned and was ready to leave the boiler room, he heard a long swishing noise followed by a soft thud, as if something had slid behind the wall. This startled him and if he wasn't already antsy about the basement, he sure is now. A couple of seconds went by as he stared at the back wall and then walked back over to the shelf.

"Well it's not moving anymore, so it's probably not a rat or something." he thought out loud.

Marshall pulled out his phone and turned on the flash so he could get a better look.

"This is so freaky right now," he said out loud this time.

The sound came from the opposing wall that held the shelf; it was covered with plywood, as opposed to naked insulation. Marshall looked in all of the shelf spaces and then knelt to look at the floor-level space. There, in the back by the wall, was a yellow manilla folder that fell from an unknown altitude. Marshall hesitated to grab it, but reached out his hand and gingerly picked it up. It was heavier than he expected. He stood back up and inspected it under the light of his phone. The white light illuminated the rough and dented edges of the folder as well as the browning string that held the flap down; the folder looked dirty as if it was put away for ages and Marshall was the first hand to hold it since its original placement behind the wall. It seemed as if the impact of the box hitting the insulation was enough to dislodge the parcel from its resting place.

Again, Marshall hesitated in opening the folder and debated putting it back on the shelf and forgetting about it. He had already been downstairs for quite some time and his dad was most likely waiting for him at the U-Haul.

"Ah, this will only take a second," he said while undoing the string. He opened the package and pulled out a thin, dark blue book with gold trim and gold engraving on the cover and back. The folder must have been pretty good at conserving the book because it had no evidence of dust or entropy. It was as if it came off the press yesterday. The letters, in gold, on the front of the book read:

1973

Westerville High School

"Probably a yearbook or something," Marshall said to himself.

The text was surrounded by gold engraving, arranged in a fractal-like mosaic that stopped at a thick gold border that surrounded the margins of the cover. The spine was also decorated in the same gold fractal pattern, while the back was blank, save for a small signature in the bottom right corner.

"BP" Marshall read aloud. He wondered if it was the initials of the person who owned the book. He flipped the book back over and slowly pried the cover open. The spine crackled and whined as if awoken from a deep sleep. A strange tingle went down Marshall's spine and legs as if an imaginary breeze blew down his shirt. He shook off the shiver and opened the first page of the yearbook. It seemed like an ordinary collection of pictures and memorabilia from that year of school, with sepia-colored portraits of students of various faces and hairstyles. Most people wore their hair down or wore it wild, as was common for the era. Flipping through the pages, Marshall noticed some faces were circled and had some illegible cursive writing next to them. Marshall squinted trying to read it, but at that moment the book and his phone slipped out of his hands and clattered to the floor.

"Shit!" Marshall swore.

He quickly bent down to pick up the book and his phone, when he remembered he had been in the basement for far too long and remembered that he was due upstairs quite a while ago. He quickly shoved the yearbook back in the folder and threw it back up on the top shelf and turned off his phone. He ran out of the boiler room while hitting the lights and ran up the stairs. He turned the corner at the top of the stairs and ran through the living room and out to the garage. There, his dad was standing and looked like he was ready to hoist the bed out of the trailer. It wasn't Marshall's bed, but Kevin's.

"Maybe he already got mine. Damn it, now I feel bad." Marshall thought.

"Hey dad, sorry I didn't come up sooner. Did you already move my bed upstairs?" Marshall asked, but got no response from Adam.

"Did he hear me?" he thought to himself.

"Hey dad, did you already move my bed?"

Still no response.

"Kevin! Come help me with your bed! You know I have a bad back!" Adam shouted into the house.

"Coming, dad!" Kevin yelled, turning the corner and running up the ramp past Marshall.

"Dad, I'm standing right here! Don't you want me to help you? I'm way stronger than Kevin." Marshall spoke again. He started to feel uneasy. Why was no one listening to him? This made him frustrated so he just went on the other side of Kevin to help hoist the headboard in the middle. When he knelt to pick it up, his hand just fazed right through, smacking him in the face, making him fall back into a pile of boxes.

"Woah! Why did those boxes just fall like that?" Kevin questioned, turning to his dad.

"I don't know, maybe if we had stacked them better - like your mom does, maybe they wouldn't fall constantly," Adam responded. "Didn't you see the first time these boxes fell? It almost crushed your poor mom!" he added. "C'mon, we gotta get this trailer unloaded so I can drive it back to Indiana. I don't want them to charge me extra days."

Adam and Kevin hoisted up the headboard of the bed and walked off into the house, while Marshall was still processing why he had just seen his hand go through solid wood.

"W-wha... What the hell just happened?" He said, panting. He carefully stood up to not upset any more unsteady boxes.

"Are they purposely ignoring me? What kind of joke do they think I am? Maybe they're mad that I took so long downstairs." He said.

Marshall dashed down the ramp and into the house through the garage to see his dad and Kevin balancing the headboard up the stairs.

"Guys, are you ignoring me on purpose? Was it because I took too long downstairs?" He asked. "Look I'm sorry I took my time, but I'm here now to help." There was no response from either person, just grunting as Adam and Kevin pushed the twin bed headboard up to the top of the stairs and turned the corner.

"Dad, c'mon. I'm serious now!" Marshall said in between chuckles. He walked up the stairs behind his dad and reached out to tap his shoulder.

"Ok, guys. I said I'm sorry, you can speak now-" As he touched his father's arm, Marshall's fingertips went past the shirt and again, fazed right through him, until Marshall's whole arm was now inside his dad's torso.

"Wh-a.. What the hell?" Marshall said, exasperated.

"Ugh! My back is killing me today! Anna! Did you grab some Icy-Hot in your purse or something? Imma need you to rub it on my back later." Adam shouted to his wife.

"Yea, I grabbed some. It should be in one of the boxes with our medicine. It might still be in the U-Haul." Anna shouted back from the other room.

Marshall quickly pulled his arm out of his dad and stared at it while looking back and forth between it and his dad's back. He was in a state of shock, as he had just watched his entire arm go through his dad. He didn't feel it go through, but his dad sure did.

"Dad, I'm freaking out. What's going on?" Marshall said in a shaky voice.

"Dad?" He said. There was no response, and Adam and Kevin had already walked into Kevin's room and put down the headboard.

"Dаd? Dad! Dad! Can you hear me?!" He shouted. Kevin walked out of the room and turned to go down the stairs.

"Kevin!" Marshall yelled again. "Please tell me this is some kind of joke!" He pleaded. "You can hear me right? You saw my hand go through dad!" Marshall felt a lump in his throat and tears started to well up in his eyes. He turned and ran into his parent's room to see that his mom was still hanging up clothes in the closet.

"Mom. The strangest thing is happening. Dad and Kevin aren't talking to me, a-and I just saw my hand go through dad's back!" Marshall said with his mother's back towards him.

"Please tell me you're not in on this joke. I said I'm sorry for taking too long to come back upstairs!" He continued, with no response from Anna.

"Mom!" He shouted while walking up to his mom and grabbing her by the arm. Just as he clasped his fingers around her bicep, it again didn't connect and just went through her into Anna's rib.

"Whew! We need to turn up the heat in this house, it's getting chilly already!" Anna said to herself.

"No. No, no, no, no no no no no " Marshall repeated. "Why can't I touch you?"

"Mom! Please answer me! I know you can hear me!" Tears started running down Marshall's face and unto his sweatshirt. He couldn't believe that this is all happening.

"Maybe this is a dream! Yea! I'm still in the car, asleep, and we haven't even gotten to the new house yet!" Marshall exclaimed. He remembered a trick he saw online to count your fingers or look at a clock; if it was warped or the time was funky, then it's probably a dream. Marshall looked down at his fingers and counted them out.

"One, two, three, four, five." They were all there and nothing was weird about them.

He counted them again, this time on his other hand.

"One, two, three, four, five!"

Still the same.

He pulled out his phone and looked at the time, then looked at his watch and compared the two. They were both identical and the times lined up. It was 2:37 in the afternoon.

"What the hell is going on then!" Marshall shouted.

"If I'm not asleep, then something spooky is going on. They'll notice I'm not here soon and start to wonder where I am!"

Just then, Kevin came into the room with two boxes.

"Mom here's your clothes," Kevin said while dropping the boxes on the ground.

"Hmm? Oh, those aren't clothes, those are uhh... umm..." Said Anna, as she poked her head out of her closet to look at the two boxes.

"I have no idea what those are, but I'm pretty sure they aren't my clothes." "Let me look."

Anna walked out of the closet to get to the boxes to get a better look at them. Marshall stood back and felt a weird sense of deja-vu. She opened the box on top to reveal the exact same spices that Marshall had put in the kitchen no more than 20 minutes ago.

"Kitchen," She said in a monotonous tone.

She moved the box onto the floor and opened the second one. Inside, there were the books that Marshall had chucked on the top shelf in the boiler room.

"This can go in the basement; put it in the utility room." She said while replacing the tape on the boxes.

"Mkay," Kevin said, picking up the boxes and walking out of the room.

Marshall just stood back, trying to understand what was going on while wiping the tears from his face and neck. He had just seen his younger brother bring the same boxes that he had put away minutes ago and heard his mother give the same responses to Kevin as she did to him.

Marshall followed Kevin out of the room and down the stairs. Kevin didn't go through the living room, but through the hallway on the opposite side that went by a giant antique mirror that was left by the previous tenants. Just as the two of them walked by it, Marshall saw Kevin in the mirror, but when he walked past, it was as if he was looking at the wall. Marshall stopped dead in his tracks and felt his blood run cold. He stood in front of the mirror, waving his arms, trying to see if this was, in fact, a mirror. He thought it was just a huge frame so he put out his finger to touch it, but he didn't faze through again like he did with his parents. But when he lifted his finger, there wasn't a smudge left behind that would usually be left by a dirty fingerprint.

Marshall started to piece together the pieces of the puzzle together in his head.

Phazing through people.

No one can hear him.

No reflection in the mirror.

Just then, Tina runs past, shouting Kevin's name. Marshall saw her run behind her in the mirror, but he couldn't see himself.

This confirmed his suspicions.

"Am I..."

"Did I die?"

Authors Note:

Thank you for reading the Pilot chapter of 17 Ghosts.

Please comment and tell me what you think about the chapter and your opinions on it.

Bye-bye. :)