Whimsical Reflections

Haunted

Bill had been a ghost for eleven years when he first met Madeline. The house he had been haunting, the same house he had lived in when he had died of a heart attack at the age of forty-seven, was being torn down. Someone had bought the property and wanted to rebuild. Bill couldn't blame them. The house was getting old, and there was mold. Bill knew this because when he passed through the walls he could taste it.

When Bill found out his old haunting grounds would be no more, he had no choice but to find temporary lodgings until the new house was built. So, he went to a house across the street. Its pale blue coloring and white shutters appealed to him.

The transition wasn't easy. Bill hadn't left the house since he had died there. What if there was a mighty wind that swept him up and away? Or what if it was the house that had him tethered to the earth, and when he stepped outside, he would just float up into the sky and all the way into the atmosphere until even his ghostly form could take it no more and just poof, vanished, and he would cease to exist?

These thoughts plagued him as he hovered in the doorway for days. But somewhere inside him, there was still some courage left, and he plucked it up and took his first step.

He did not float away. Rather, it was quite like being in his home. He just glided on over to the house across the way, and that was that.

In this house lived Madeline. The previous tenants of Bill's house had been familiar to him. He knew who they were and he knew what to expect. With Madeline, on the other hand, it was not like that. This alarmed Bill at first. He went straight to the attic and did not come down for many weeks. But then one day, when he was looking out the window and thinking about his death, he heard a sound. He knew he had heard it before, since he had come to the house, but he had always ignored it. This time, though, it caught his attention. He took the long way down to the kitchen, going through each doorway and the stairwell. He felt he didn't know the house well enough yet to just pass through its walls so casually.

In the kitchen, Madeline was washing the dishes and whistling. She had a very pretty whistle, loud and clear. Bill couldn't think of anyone else he knew, or had known, that whistled while they washed dishes. His wife certainly hadn't. He could only remember her complaining, about having to wash the dishes at first, and then moving on to other topics.

Bill stared at Madeline curiously for some time, watched her breeze through the plates and then struggle with the pots and pans. She was fairly young, younger than Bill had expected, maybe in her early thirties. She had deep brown hair that kept falling forward as she worked, and she would flip her head just so to get the strands back out of the way. She was attractive, but not really Bill's usual type. His wife was blonde and petite.

When Madeline was finished, Bill went back to what he was beginning to think of as his attic. But from that day on, he would venture down more and more, to watch Madeline go about her daily chores and routine. He watched her do yoga every Sunday. Sometimes he even did the moves with her. He wondered if he had done such things when he was alive, perhaps he wouldn't have died of a heart attack so young. He wondered why his wife had never done yoga. Maybe then she wouldn't have gained all that weight.

He watched Madeline when she would pour herself a glass of wine and watch The Bachelor. He watched her vacuum the house. Once, when he was feeling particularly brave, he went into her room and watched her put her make up on in front of the mirror that rested on a set of drawers across her bed.

After a few months, Bill found himself by Madeline's side whenever she was home. He left her alone when she got dressed, or went to the bathroom. He may have been a ghost, but that didn't mean he wasn't still a gentleman. But he would stay with her at any other time, following her like a shadow. For the first time, he found himself enjoying death.