New Build

A Halloween short story about a new build, an influencer and a ghost

I was in the middle of the building when the blaze began. I didn’t run downstairs or jump from the window. I stayed still like a tombstone and watched the flames lick the walls until they crumbled. The hotel burned down and the heat consumed me.

In the years that followed, only teenagers hung about in the rubble, breaking in at night to drink cheap cider and smoke cigarettes under the stars. I’d scare them, but I didn’t enjoy it. I felt sorry for them in a strange way so I did my work half-heartedly. I always felt bad about it afterwards. As the years passed, flowers sprung up all over the empty lot. 

They left it in ruins for a long time. I thought I would live that way forever. The salt spray air blew through me. There was nowhere to shelter in winter when the wind gnashed its fierce teeth. I watched them shutter and reopen the funfair and ice cream stalls season after season. 

Then one day the builders arrived. They demolished the last remnants of the staircase. They swept away the remainder of the crumbling walls. 

At first, I was confused then disappointed and finally appalled. Bare white walls, glass balconies and long grey corridors were constructed in place of the old hotel. I felt a sense of betrayal. There would be no embellished staircases. No grand stone pillars. No rich wooden drinks cabinets to rattle behind the bar. The world had changed and I could not change with it. If I’d had a heart, it would have dropped. 

The rich tourists had stopped coming to town and young professionals arrived in their place. They were always distracted, always tapping at their strange machines. I slammed cupboard doors and made water spray out of taps at extreme temperatures, but all they did was ring the building manager and complain. They didn’t possess the imagination to believe in me. They didn’t have the imagination to be scared. All they had were their grey sofas and hideous blobby art and luxury bath products. I hated them more than I hated the stupid tourists from before. 

The spirit drained out of me. How was I expected to work in these conditions? I had already died once and I was dying again. Perhaps I would die a hundred deaths. I stopped playing tricks altogether. I spent most nights moping around the sterile corridors and drifting through white walls mourning all I’d lost.

Then she moved in. 

Her skin glowed beneath the orange sunset as her eyes moved languidly across the flat. They reminded me of the ocean. I thought of all those years ago, sitting out on deck chairs on the pier. The sea a magnet for our desire. I missed it. She reminded me of those moments. The ugly building silhouetted her beautiful form.

The rooms didn’t feel so soulless anymore. Now, there was light and hope and wonder. She was so alluring and so alive.

I had never been more aware of my own lack of corporeality. But I wasn’t jealous. It was lust at first. And then it was love. 

No one else had ever talked to me like she did. She was always telling me about her new makeup and skincare and where she got it from. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t have skin anymore, but I couldn’t speak. Sometimes she would tell me about her day or a bad date she had been on (they were always bad) as she curled her hair. Whenever she spoke to me, she would sit in front of the mirror with a small round light and face the little rectangular machine while she applied her makeup. Perhaps she thought I lived inside the machine.

My longing for her made me weep. When I wept, flowers grew. Ever since my death, flowers had sprouted up whenever I was sad. No matter how dead I was, I could still produce new life. They grew all around the building and I picked them for her then laid them at her front door.

I hid in the walls and listened to her talk. I was with her always. I knew her better than all the living people she invited over.

“Have you figured out who’s been leaving the flowers yet?” her friend with the big eyes and bigger lips asked.

“No idea,” she said, pouring a glass of Chardonnay. “It is scaring me a bit though.” She paused. “This guy followed my TikTok the other week and he’s been commenting weird stuff on all my videos. Even ones from, like, a year ago.” 

“It’s scary,” the friend said. “Remember when I was being stalked last year? He used to follow me to the gym.”

“Yeah, but he went away of his own accord in the end, didn’t he? Anyway, it’s only flowers. It’s fairly harmless.”

“For now,” the friend warned. “You should get one of those doorbells with the cameras in them. Then you can see who’s been leaving the flowers.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said. “I can’t go to the police about someone leaving flowers outside my door. They’d laugh at me.”

“They should take these things more seriously before it’s too late,” her friend said in a matter-of-fact way. 

Listening to their conversation, I felt ashamed, rejected and confused. I was too sentimental, a creep, a pervert, a sap. It was silly to think the flowers would make her happy. Flowers from the living were sweet, romantic, caring. Flowers from the dead were frightening and morbid. When I cried, more flowers grew and I didn’t know where to put them.