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Rippling Waves

By Fainne J. Firmin

 

Once upon a time, I quite liked my cousin. I mean, he’d agreed to me and my best friend Natasha staying in his place for the whole summer alone. That was great. It was also why I was running around the attic with a straw broom swatting at the air.

 

I had no idea what was making the noise, but it didn’t sound like a bug or a bird, and after laying a ghost to rest three day previous, I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to be found in a natural history book.

 

One moment it’d be at one end of the attic, a weird sound like a combination of buzzing and tapping, and then it skittered along a wild path to the other end. So I was navigating by sound, trying to hit it and hoping I didn’t fall through the open hatch in the floor to the bedroom below.

 

I brought the bristled down in a corner with a yell. My chest was heaving. “Did you get it?” Natasha called up. The noise skittered away again. “I’ll take that as a no.”

 

I straightened up and tucked an auburn lock behind my ear. My bun was over half fallen out. Fully annoyed by that sound and wanting ear plugs, I walked over to the hatch and climbed down the ladder, dragging the broom with me.

 

“You checked that notebook we found about Avira, right? There was nothing about weird sounds in the house?” I asked.

 

Natasha sighed. “I checked and double checked. There’s stuff that’s to scribble out to read, and it was incomplete about Avira in the first place. It’s not any help.”

 

“How does one know about a ghost living in the forest that appears twice a day but not about noises in the attic?” I grumbled. “Well in that case, we’ll just have to go to the library again.”

 

“And look up what?”

 

“Anything and everything. Can, I don’t know, fairies exist in the same realm as ghosts?” I supposed it was possible, though it could be just as impossible. After all, ghosts weren’t supposed to exist and we had one as a neighbour. Natasha just gave me a look. “Oh whatever. Let’s just try to pretend it doesn’t exist for now.”

 

There was a sound like whatever it was was doing a jig. “I hope it shuts up when we go to bed,” Natasha said.

 

“If not . . .” I hefted the broom. “It won’t get a good night’s sleep.” I thumped the handle on the ceiling a couple times.

 

Dust trickled down. I grinned and Natasha cracked a smile. “Got the movie queued up?”

 

“Yup. The Princess Bride is all set up and I’ve made two big bowls of popcorn,” she said. “Time for a movie night.”

 

“Now all we need are milkshakes,” I said, setting the broom aside and heading to the door. “To bad the grocery store only had vanilla ice cream.” The invisible thing made more noise. “If it stops the movie, I will smack the sense out of it.”

 

“You’re going to smack the sense out of an invisible noise maker?”

 

“I dug up a ghost’s bones. I think I can handle it.”

 

“And here I was hoping that the ghost would be the last of the supernatural.”

 

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