The house is small. Standard semi-detached, red brick, white accents. The driveway has been paved over, dug up, then paved over again; a myriad of hands splitting earth and pouring concrete, land soiled by the whims of human aesthetics.
Its insides have been painted, rustic floral shirked for modern grey. There’s a beam in the hallway, pencil marks press through, even from beneath the varnish. My brother’s height, my height, organised by age. Ten, I fell out of a tree; eleven, I first cut myself; twelve, it got bad; thirteen, it got worse. There used to be a smear at the bottom of the stairs; fake blood my brother spilled on halloween. I remember the dull pinkness, its stubbornness desecrating the faded brown carpet. When I think about the first time my father hit me, small and scared and trying to wriggle from his grasp, the smear is all I see. It’s tiled over now, but I can still trace its edges with my feet.
Even in my father’s absence, I feel his presence; the leer of his gaze, the stomp of his work boots. It fills the halls, rises like heat in every room, as if his anger had seeped from him and into the brick. His phantom, the eeriness of his blue eyes, linger even as I sleep. So I strip the walls again, paper over sordid memory after sordid memory, yet the foundations are infected with his sickness. Exorcisms do not work, the rot cannot be cut out.
So I douse the beams, set the structure alight, watch as it crumbles to ash. Yet, as I stand before the heat of the flames, the low bass of his voice whispers to me between the pop of embers. Always goading, always aloof, always my father. It remains, even as the wood cools. Where do ghosts go when the house crumbles? There always must be one left haunted.
I feel my father’s large hand on my shoulder. I bring the can of gasoline to my lips.
– Abigail WILLIAMS