Spectral Sins

Chapter 01

—yielding to the stranglehold—

She woke up, gasping silently as the upper half of her body heaved up from the pillows, while she carefully enclosed her neck with a single hand, soothing the traces of her haunting nightmare; her other arm supported her seemingly weightless body on her unusually airy mattress, as the winter sun-warm and bright-shone splendidly.

Wiping the nightmare from her mind, the hand on her neck slid up into her thick ebony hair, combing through the heavy tresses forming an alluring dark halo around her wheatish skin, while her eyes as dark as a moonless sky of midnight gazed at the noon sun freckled by the chirping birds flying carefree.

The bare soles of her feet felt neither the fur of the rug nor the cold marble floor as she got off the bed, strolling noiselessly out into the corridor, and heading down to the family room; but as soon as she entered through the open door, she stopped, shocked to find the furnished room shrouded entirely in darkness.

Her gaze fell on her father slouched in his domineering plush armchair, and sobbing behind his hand to muffle his cries-whispering her name over and over like a mantra.

"Papa." She knelt afront him, "I am here; why are you crying?" resting her palm on his hand, and like since she woke up, her sensation or rather lack of it made utterly no sense, as instead of the texture and warmth of his skin, all she felt was air and … emptiness. "Papa?"

She pressed her palm over his hand, hoping to feel the reassuring warmth emanate from his skin to hers or from hers to his, but as she did, her hand passed through his, as if he was a hallucination or a bodiless spirit.

"Papa!" She stared at him, waiting for him to acknowledge his only daughter, but neither did he glance at her, nor did he reply; he simply continued weeping almost as if he could neither see nor hear her.

As she gazed to the other side, she found a tiny body burrowed and curled in quilts—uncertainly, she went to her bonded brother-not of blood-but a son from her stepmother's prior marriage, and called to him, "Ahan." but the boy of four remained restlessly asleep.

She caressed his head full of curled hair-as dark as her own, but the curls of his hair did not move at her touch, and neither did they tickle her palm reassuringly; she attempted to adjust his quilt but like with her father, her hand just went through—

She looked at her hand and flexed her fingers, finding nothing out of the ordinary, yet failing to comprehend whatever was happening to her; initially she had been fearful for her father, but perhaps it was her hand that passed through-she shuddered, for if it was, there must be something wrong with her, but what?

The lack of sensations and her hand passing through all perplexed her; she lifted her hand in the air, observing it astutely—and after finding nothing odd with it, a wave of calm washed over her; before suddenly freezing into icicles lancing her with terror as she accidentally looked at the vintage mirror adorning the opposite wall of the room.

The ornate mirror reflected her distraught father, and the chaise on which her brother slept, the furniture and all the brilliant pieces on show, although none of them were glittering owing to the drawn drapes, but the mirror reflected all in its view to a parallel life—except for her.

She gasped and stumbled backwards into a wrought iron table supporting a glass vase, usually overwhelmingly filled with a variety of flowers while sending sparkles all around the room, but today it was stark and bare while the glass stood dull and dreary.

She whirled around, expecting the empty vase to tumble off the table and shatter with the impact of her bumping into it, but it stayed glued to the spot.

She looked down at her feet and shockingly noticed where she stood—exactly in the centre of the table as if she was incorporeal, while the vase seemed to be erected within the upper half of her body, as it dawned on her just how beatless and unmoving her chest felt, for it seemed to be and was devoid of the beats of her heart…

—Cold clammy palms pressed down and tighter around her neck, with claw-like nails digging into her flesh, drawing bloody dews, and imprinting the shape of their horrific deed in the tissue of her neck in blooming blue hues of asphyxiation—

Unseen, unheard, and unfelt, by everyone, even her father, and the little Ahan who made it worth the effort to adjust to her new life with stepmother; unseen, unheard, unfelt, and undead—a bhoot! was what she had been violently and cruelly made.

*Bhoot — Ghost*

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