The Mad House

The boy saw strangers everywhere.

He'd wake up in the morning and they'd be there, walking in his house, talking and parading around as if they owned the place. 

The boy was shy, and ran and hid whenever he saw a stranger, not coming out until he was sure they were gone, wishing for his mother. Other times, when he was feeling particularly brave, he would make as much noise as possible, scream and cry and bang pots together and make doors slam, just to make sure that the strangers would leave. And eventually, they did.

But then others would take their place. The boy didn't understand it. I'm here. He wanted to shout. This is my house. Not yours! But he was too afraid. They wouldn't leave. He tried to ignore them, to stay out of the house as much as possible. The strangers didn't even realize when he was there, or when he had gone. 

The strangers varied in appearance. Old, grizzled men, young mothers with babies wrapped up in cloth. They laughed, talked, and glowered at passerby like it was their job to do so. They seemed so friendly, but they had invaded his house. They ignored him. The boy tried not to be afraid. 

They were just people. He reassured himself. Weren't they?

The boy yearned for his mother. He was still waiting for her. She said she'd be right back. He told himself. She'll be back and know exactly what to do with the strangers in our house. The boy kept waiting for his mother. Always, always waiting. 

Slowly, he began to realize that there was something... not quite right about these strangers. 

At first, the boy heard a faint buzzing in his ears whenever he walked past them. A vigorous cleaning with his fingers would not help. He remembered his mother used to blame it on dehydration, and that's what he would tell himself. He learned to ignore the sound, and didn't think twice about it.

After that, he noticed that whenever he wasn't looking directly at them, the people would seem to disappear. If he tried to glance at one from the corner of his eye, it was like they weren't even there. They would reappear only when he looked directly at them. He blamed his eyes, or tricks of light. He kept his gaze trained on the ground. 

Then, he began to feel . . . different when he was around them. He could feel the flatness of their bodies, could sense it the way sharks sense blood in the water. They seemed vaguely human, but cold and distant, like a breeze that you see rustle the leaves of the tree, but you can't feel on your skin. 

He yearned to reach out his fingers and touch one, just to see what would happen, but he was too afraid. Afraid that if he reached out and touched them, they would be real. Afraid that if he touched them, they wouldn't be real. The boy wanted his mother.

He had to get out of the house. He would go mad if he was trapped there, hiding from the strangers who didn't seem to be in his world. He had to figure out what was happening, so he could put an end to it.

He started walking to the nearby library, staring at the pavement beneath his feet, which was dappled with the warm sunshine of the afternoon. He heard footsteps approach him, but did not dare look up, fixing his eyes to the floor. Suddenly he stumbled, tripping over a crack, or loose pebble, and he pitched forward, directly into the man who was walking towards him. 

As the boy realizes that he just passed through the man, the man growls, "Watch it, kid." and stalked off. The boy laid on the ground, panting, in shock at what he just witnessed. He brought his shaking hand to his chest, where the man had passed through. The boy starts shivering, the warm afternoon suddenly turning freezing. 

He glanced around to see if anyone had just witnessed the events that had just taken place, but the street was quiet. The boy picked himself up, still shivering, and ran to the library. 

The entrance was guarded by two stone lions that glare at the boy as he bolts up the steps. The boy imagined his mother taking him to the library for story time. He wished she were here, to protect him from the lions and the strangers. He took a breath and bursts through the doors.

Once inside, the boy skirted past the bespectacled librarian and heads to the Paranormal section. The library is cool and dark, and the boy squinted to try and make out the dusty titles. One book's title read: Ghosts, So Close To Our Dimension, and the boy grabbed it off of the shelf and began to read it. 

Ghosts, the book read, are shadows of human souls trapped in a dimension close to our own. They rarely know that they are ghosts, or that they have died at all. Few people can actually see ghosts, but those who can rarely tell others, believing themseves to be crazy. Spirits usually cannot move things in this dimension, although powerful apparitions have been known to make objects levitate and throw objects around. We cannot touch ghosts, as they are closer to projections on our plane of existence. Ghosts are typically found in homes and residential areas. Ghosts are found throughout the world. 

After the boy was finished, he ran outside, breathing deeply. He began to run to his house, only to stop and double back. They were ghosts. The strangers were ghosts, and they were in his house. He couldn't go back. 

He began to stumble around, passages from the book swimming behind his eyelids. He ran into people, but they just shimmered like a mirage as he passed through them. The boy could barely breathe. 

He cried, "Help me! Someone help! Please!" He didn't care if he was labeled crazy. He wanted someone to hold him and tell him that everything was going to be alright. He wanted his mother.

Suddenly, a man came hurrying up to him. "Yes?" The man asked, looking the boy over. "I can help you. I can help you find the light." The man glanced nervously at people passing by. Several looked over and gave him strange looks. Let them stare. The boy thought to himself. They're Ghosts. They can't do anything.

"What?" The boy asked, not understanding. "They... Ghosts..." The boy panted, hyperventilating. "Can you see them?"

The man nodded somberly, looking at the others around him.

"I can." He said. "They're humans. They're what you used to be. They're alive."