Haunting

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Shannon woke the next morning to a loud bang outside her door. She shot up, jostling the still sleeping Fiona. Picking up her phone from the floor she checked the time, it was six am.

Shannon struggled to get out of her bed and scowled when she realised she was still wearing her school uniform from yesterday. She had slept for about twelve hours, having a heart to heart with your mom shaped person can take a lot out of a girl.

She poked her head out of the door to tell which ever sibling it was making so much noise this early in the morning to shove it, but what she saw wasn’t a relative. Nope, it was a half-naked Pervy-Thad.

“What the hell kind of builder gets to work this early? “Shannon whined at him. “All the stereotypes say that you’re supposed to be late, or better yet, not show up at all.”

“Well, all the stereotypes about girls like you,” Thaddeus said, grinning at her, “state that you should be fawning over the lowly construction worker to piss off daddy.”

“Actually,” Shannon countered. “The stereotypes about girls like me say that I should be butch, have short hair and have a fondness for men’s clothing, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah that’s what I thought. Now shut the fuck up.” Shannon told the confused boy. “And by the way, I love my father.”

She walked back into her room to see Fi sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Who were you swearing at now?” she asked sleepily.

“The gross construction worker boy.” Shannon moaned, stripping out of her school shirt.

“Oh,” Fiona said with a frown. She held up a hand so Shannon could help pull her pregnant self up, off the bed. “I thought he was kind of cute.”

“Well he’s not hitting on you is he?” Shannon told her, before stepping out of her skirt and walking through the gaping hole in her bedroom wall into her bathroom.

She changed into a big flowy skirt and her beat up denim jacket before settling down on her floor to go through more of the research on the house. When she opened the folder she felt a cold breeze through her room, scattering her damp curls. She thought she saw a flicker of silver.

“Are you there ghost girl?” she whispered softly. Shannon felt the sensation of an ice cube running across her cheek. She took that as a yes.

She flipped through more of the papers until she stumbled across some photocopies of birth and marriage certificates.

The Marriage certificate was between Howard Clemmings and a woman called Caroline Mitchell. She assumed it was for the younger Clemmings, but when she noticed the date, she realised that it was much too old to belong to belong to Junior, who was only supposed to have died a few years ago.

The date on the marriage said, May 9, 1914.

Shannon frowned and picked up the copies of the wedding announcements. The announcement said that it was Mary-Anne Oswald who married Howard Clemmings on May 9, 1914.

Shannon picked up the birth certificate. It said that Caroline Mitchell, the woman from the marraige certificate, was also the mother of Howard Clemmings Junior.

“There’s something going on here ghost girl,” Shannon whispered. “I’m gonna find out what happened to you, promise.”

She stilled when she felt the briefest fluttering of cold against her lips. Then she smiled.

“Are you a lesbian ghost?” she asked curiously. And then she thought a terrible thought. “Please tell me you’re a lesbian ghost and I wasn’t just felt up by some seedy old guy.”