Ectoplasm and Dust

Living with a ghost is easy; it’s the breathing you have to worry about.

Painting by Author (Me!)

---

The apparition bleeding through my ceiling wasn’t trying to chase me out of the bedroom. She was frantically gesturing toward the floor. The look on her face was begging me to run.

That was all strange, because I’ve never seen her do that particular trick before.

I’ve known Eleanor a long time now, since almost the moment I moved into this place. She might have been shy at first, but really, when you have grown up around the paranormal, you get a feel for when there’s something in the houses you enter.

She was no exception.

At first, her appearances were nothing more than random floating bits and bobs of her in the halls, or a glimpse from the side of my eyes as she would pass between walls. It wasn’t too long, though, before she showed herself entirely, wandering here, doing whatever she felt she needed to do in her unlife to keep busy.

She’d never been a troublemaker, though. You understand? Not once had she tried to do a jump scare or make weird booga-booga faces, as some poltergeists might. Oh, I mean, sure, most are harmless anyway, but one’s gotta do what one can to keep entertained, especially when that one is a ghost.

So, sleepy as I might have been, seeing Eleanor so frantic, and even weeping blood from the spackles on the ceiling was enough to make me sit up.

“What’s up?” My voice carried around the room.

Her eyes bugged, and she kept gesturing with one hand toward the floor, while the other moved up to her lips.

She looked downright worried about something, but for the life of me, I had no clue.

The room got colder, a sure sign she was blowing off energy. Most of the time, if she really wanted to get my attention, she’d just rattle a few pipes around or something. I’ve never had cause to think she was anything but a calm, even charming part of the house.

“Shh. It’s okay, Eleanor.” I tried soothing her, sitting up a little more as I spoke. “What’s wrong?”

As I shook my head, trying to toss away some of the sleepiness of the hangover I’d woken in the middle of, Eleanor again put her hand to her mouth and pointed at the floor.

I stopped moving and squinted my eyes at her. That’s when I noticed she actually looked... scared.

Can ghosts feel fear? Do they still have those emotions? As many as I’d encountered over my lifetime, I can’t remember a single time I could say one has been afraid, though sometimes they might still carry something of that from when they died.

But Eleanor in the there-and-then sure looked terrified, with her eyes wide and her movements trying to get my attention.

The house was dead silent. Pardon my pub, but it’s the best description. Nothing moved other than myself and Eleanor, who now seemed to clutch at herself, her arms covering her chest as she drifted down from the ceiling toward my bed.

Thud. Scrape. Thud. Scrape.

Wait. What the hell was that?

My own eyes widened as I stared at her, and she nodded, gesturing down again.

Thud. Scrape. Then silence again.

A moment later, a soft, muffled cough filtered up through the floor.

Oh, God.

Adrenaline surged and my first instinct was to jump up and rush out of the house, but I quelled the urge, though a gasp escaped my lips.

Someone was here, and they were down in the basement.

Thud. Scrape.

Who the hell was it? What the hell were they doing? How did they even get in?

My mind flashed back over the last hour before I passed out. I’d been out with some friends and we’d probably had a little more to drink than I really wanted. I don’t do it often; you know? I’m a lightweight at best. But it’d been a while since I’d been able to go out with the girls, and I wanted to let loose a little.

By the time I got home and passed out, I was still pretty flamed.

Had I locked the door? I could swear I had, but anything was possible when you’ve had a few too many.

I’m always so damned careful, though. One doesn’t live in the city alone—well, mostly alone, ghosts aside—and not take precautions.

It becomes instinct. Right? Drunk or not, I’d have hit that deadbolt just out of habit alone.

No, I was sure I’d locked the doors before stumbling into bed and closing my eyes.

Still, as the moments passed with Eleanor and me listening, I was more sure than ever that someone was in the house. In the basement. Only feet away from me, with nothing but the floorboards between us.

Eleanor floated away a little as I sidled to the edge of the bed, creeping as slowly and softly as I could manage so a stray spring or creak wouldn’t reverberate. My feet came down first, followed by the rest of me, and I heard nothing from myself.

I tried to keep my breathing steady, to remind myself I wasn’t alone, not really, because, ghost or not, Eleanor was there. Does that sound strange? To be comforted by a ghost?

Well, it was true. Just having her there steadied my movements and my breath, though my heart pounded like it was about to escape and run to the nearest neighbor.

I didn’t lift my feet to step. I inched my way across the room, slow and sure, my socks lending silence to the shuffling as I reached the doorway of the bedroom.

The baseball bat, too, kept silent as I picked it up from the corner.

The hall was mired in mostly darkness, though there was a small beacon from the kitchen in the distance. I liked to keep that tiny light above the stove on for when I wanted to do some midnight refrigerator raiding. It, and the subtle blue-green aura Eleanor always had, was enough for me to see by as I sidled slowly down the chasm toward the basement door.

She remained beside me as we went, and she seemed maybe as anxious as I. I wished she could talk, to give me some reassurance that everything was alright and that we were maybe just hearing things, but she’d never spoken a word in all the time I’d known her.

Still, it sure would have been nice for her t be able to slip down there in the basement, look around, and come tell me what the hell was going on.

But, no. Just keep creeping. Just keep moving.

I reached the doorway, which was open, of course. That alone would be enough to tell me someone was in the house. I always kept that thing closed.

I tried to peek my head down through the doorway, and I am sure, if you were to have seen it, you’d probably have laughed at the weird way my neck tried to crane without exposing my body. If only we were like that superhero with the rubber body, right? We could just wrap our way around the house in mostly safety.

No such luck for me, though. All I had was a bat and a ghost who looked like she was about to pass out from anxiety.

Me too, Eleanor. Me too.

The only thing I could really see down through the door was a small bit of amber light flowing through the room, echoing off the walls and just barely touching the bottom of the stairs. That light was not one of my own.

Thud. Scrape.

Much louder this time, and I heard puffs of air accompanying it as whoever was down there made effort.

Another thud, and this time I moved a little down the first few stairs, clutching the bat tightly in my sweaty grip. Thankfully, though this house isn’t the newest, the stairs had never been ones to creak, and they didn’t this time, as well.

Thud. Scrape.

So much louder now that I was closer to the source. This time, I saw some shadows move along the back wall.

I stepped down a few more stairs, and now, in the dim light, I could see him.

I couldn’t tell exactly how tall he was. He hunched, dressed in black, his arms moving rapidly as he banged the wall again with something.

His arm lifted and came down again, and this time, with the thud, I saw what had to be a crowbar.

I really can’t explain why I did what I did next. Maybe it was still something of the drunk left over, or perhaps the adrenaline was pumping a little too hard.

I don’t know. Either way, I moved fast, with a shout pulsing from my lips at this guy pounding against my wall.

He whirled, and I could see now he was an older man, his features almost slack and bathed in sweat.

He jerked as he saw me, my bat raising upward. But he didn’t step back.

No, instead this man immediately started to charge forward at me, his own crowbar coming up.

I think it was only in that very moment I realized just what trouble I was in. Sure, I had a bat, sure I had the “home advantage,” but this guy, old or not, was a lot bigger than I, and I had done nothing like this before.

He, on the other hand, probably had.

I braced, trying to watch for wherever his blow was going to lead as best I could in the dim light of the little lamp he’d left sitting on the floor.

Maybe if I could dodge it, I could get him with the bat as he swung away...

Before the impact could come, a massive crack echoed through the small space, instantly deafening me. A flash, and from behind me Eleanor rushed at the man.

I... I don’t think I can really fully explain what she did in those next moments. She was fast. So fast she gleamed like a shimmering strobe as she crashed into his body with the force of a gale.

He was pinioned in place, the form and shape of her warping and molding as she swirled.

No sound came from her lips. No screams of madness or shouts of battle erupted from her, but the crackles and hisses of whatever power she was unleashing upon him cascaded.

Her face, though? That was covered in rage, and she was funneling every bit of it into him.

Soft chuffs came from his own throat as she pelted into him, as pure kinetic force drove him backward.

One last “Elean...” escaped his lungs, and she drove into him harder.

First a step, then two, until finally one massive crash slammed into the center of his chest, and he was rocked off his feet, flying into the wall behind him.

He crumpled to the ground, legs splayed out and arms tilted at odd angles as the crowbar hit the ground with a final, ringing clang.

Eleanor floated above him, her body ebbing up and down for a few moments before her face released the anger and she mimicked a move like she was spitting on him.

A moment later, she faded away entirely.

I still gripped the bat hard as I approached him, but I could tell even before getting to him that whatever Eleanor had done, it had been enough to end him.

There was no movement, no lifting of his chest, and nothing behind his still-open eyes but absolute terror.

Just to be sure, the crack of my bat across his face resounded through the whole of the basement, echoing back to me from the walls.

It only took the cops ten minutes to get to my house after the call, and they shuffled me outside to a car while they examined the situation.

I told them the guy had broken in and was in the basement, and I’d gotten the drop on him while he was doing something down there. That seemed enough to satisfy the one cop I’d spoken to, but I still agreed, when he asked, to come with him to the station to talk more there.

It was an entire week’s worth of interviews, examinations, and investigations, but I kept my story the same every time. I omitted the ghostly side of things, of course.

When it was all said and done, they agreed it was a classic case of self-defense from someone breaking into your house and trying to cause you harm. The crowbar was probably good enough for that.

I didn’t even make a joke about it being ghost-defense instead of self-defense, but the temptation was there.

I still didn’t know exactly why the guy was there, and the police were just as stumped. One of them, though, an older cop who’d come into the case at one point, said he thought the guy had been a suspect for something at one time.

But that had apparently been a long enough time ago that nothing was really known anymore about it.

For a while, I thought Eleanor was gone. She’d not made any appearances at all for weeks, and I’d yet to hear a single pipe creaking or chain rattling. That’s a joke, by the way. Ghosts don’t actually do that, despite what rumors may say.

It was almost two months, in fact, before she appeared again. I could tell she was still tired, maybe, because she didn’t really seem to have as much life as she did before. But she was there, and that made me feel happy for the first time in a while.

It’s weird to say how much I’d grown accustomed to my little ectoplasmic roommate. But stranger things have happened, I am sure.

A week after she came back, she appeared to me again, and this time, I could tell she wanted me to follow her.

I clicked off the TV and stood, asking what was up, but she just motioned again.

I was really nervous as she led me down the hall toward the basement door again. PTSD, maybe. I don’t know. I really didn’t want to go back down there yet, but she was insistent.

She kept motioning me to come as I crept down the stairs again, and though I knew there wasn’t any need to be afraid, I still couldn’t help but feel it, at least a little.

She hovered at the spot on the wall the guy had been banging at, pointing to it over and over again.

I bent down, staring at the deep cuts in the plaster from where he’d been bashing at it with the crowbar, but I couldn’t really see what she was trying to point out. I knew the damage was there. Did she want me to call a contractor or something?

This had been her house for many decades. Maybe she just didn’t like the hole.

She bent down with me, though, and reached her hand toward the damage, curling her fingers into it and pulling back. Then she did it again.

“You want me to dig or something?”

She nodded, and I shrugged, not having a clue what she was on about.

Still, I did as she seemed to suggest, pulling bits of the plaster away with my fingers.

It was slow going, but she kept nodding as I broke pieces off and let them fall to the floor.

As more crumbled off, I could tell something was actually behind it.

That motivated me to dig in more earnest.

When the hole finally widened fully, I could see a small box, dust-covered and worn.

Eleanor grinned as I pulled it out and sat it down before me.

There was no lock, and it opened easily, the grime falling away from it as I lifted the lid.

The first layer was stacks of cash, all one hundred-dollar bills. My heart leaped at seeing it and I grinned just as much, I think, as Eleanor as I pulled out wads of it.

Underneath that layer, though, was a small book filled with photographs, and Eleanor kept reaching down and touching it.

So many photos of a pretty woman and a man with her, each labeled “Eleanor and James” in cursive script.

Yep. My instincts had been right when I started calling her Eleanor. There was no doubt she in the pictures and she hovering softly beside me were one and the same.

I’ve been able to piece together their story a little, thanks to that little picture book. See, James and Eleanor were obviously married, definitely lived in this very home, and were most assuredly quite well-to-do. The rolls of cash were a testament to that alone, but the way they decorated the house in their pictures made me even more sure.

Eleanor had good taste, I admit.

One part of the puzzle I’ve never really been able to put together, though, is the younger guy in a couple of the pictures toward the end of the book. The face had changed with age, but I am positive he’s the same old man I’d encountered in the basement.

Was he a partner of James? A relative? Some hanger-on?

I don’t really know. I think, though, he knew where the money was hidden and, even more, there’s something darker to it all.

In the end, I think he’s the one who killed Eleanor.

And I think she could finally get her revenge when he came back to find the money again.

I think that’s why she could unleash such a force against him that night.

Our relationship has changed since then. She’s no longer actually shy at all around me. She’s become, in many ways, my silent confidante.

She seems to really enjoy when we watch movies together on that brand new TV I was able to get with a little of the money she’d gifted me. She even acts as if she’s eating some popcorn when I leave a bowl of it beside her.

She also seems a lot more peaceful now than she did before. I’m grateful for that. We all deserve a little rest and happiness, even if we have to find it after life.

The one thing I worry about, though, even if I have never mentioned it to my ghostly roomie, is that the man dying here might lead to him being able to come here, too.

I don’t know exactly how this stuff works.

I just know ghosts are real and that this one in particular really loves extra butter on her popcorn.

---

THANK YOU FOR READING!

➡️ If you’d like to support what I do with a one-time donation, I do have a Ko-Fi available. Every single dollar is life-changing to someone like me.

➡️ For AUTHOR READINGS, Special Episodes and Articles, EVERYTHING in the free tier, and my undying affections and embarrassing gushing, Upgrade to a Paid Subscription.

🚨 ANY SUBSCRIPTIONS WILL ALSO GET A 🌟FREE🌟 FULL-LENGTH HORROR NOVEL AS A THANKS! 🚨

---

TALES FROM CENTER:

BITTEN THEN WRITTEN:

---

Thank you from the depths of my soul for being here. Keep striving to “be the best you that you can be” at this moment.