Okay guys it is that time again! I keep losing my train of thought and ending up with something totally random on these stories, but this one is possibly the first in a series and I love it immensely. I wrote the whole thing in about 20 minutes so I apologize profusely for the quality, but HERE YA GO:

Tabitha clings to my skirts. “Mama, I don’t want you to fight the monster,” she whispers, her voice cracking.

I raise the rolling pin slowly in my free hand. The other is curled around her shoulder. “My small one, I need you to let go,” I say as gently as I’m able.

Tears brim in her eyes. She’s only four, the wee mite. She has had no time to understand the world, to know the monsters that lurk in the dark. Mama is supposed to know all things. 

I don’t, of course. Most days I feel like a bloomin’ idiot. But I know how to do this one thing.

Softly I walk toward the basement stairs. Tabitha does not follow, her fear enough to restrain her. I point her toward the sitting room. “Go wait for me.”

She is gone, finally obedient.

Rolling pin in hand, I descend the dark stairs, and the feeling of deja vu surrounds me on all sides. Sure, I’ve been in the basement before, but this feeling is different. The basement itself, its creaking floorboards and shadowed ceilings and all, is meaningless. The moment, though? The moment is as familiar as breathing.

I turn in a slow circle, rolling pin still upraised, and take in the darkness. My eyes adjust slowly to the heavy darkness. For that, I can be thankful.

“Come out,” I call into the darkness. “Let’s discuss this. Man to man.”

Silence reigns. The entire basement is dark and still. Remnants of the furniture my husband, Robert, was attempting to fix before the job became too much for him—these shapes stare back at me out of the darkness. I swallow and take another step, deeper into the abyss. Silence rings in my ears, all I can hear.

One footstep. Perhaps there is nothing down here. I squint into the shadows. Two footsteps.

Something screams.

I lunge backward, heavy skirts weighing me down, and brandish the rolling pin. With the other hand I strike a match from the box I keep in my apron pocket. “Who is there?” I hiss.

The match’s light burns only for a moment. In its orange glow I see it: the ghost. Hat askew, patch over his eye, no light behind his skull’s eye socket. He is a skeleton of a man, all his bones visible. His tattered jacket is falling off him.

The orange light goes out and he charges.

I slam the rolling pin down and catch him by the throat, letting the match fall to the ground. Ghosts are not as fast as they think they are.

He hisses, a few yards from my face. “You,” he hisses. “How did you get here?”

“I think a better question would be: Why are you in my house, lad?” I brandish the pin against his chin. Ghosts do not die the same way as humans, and this pin would struggle to kill anyone, but he goes stiff anyway, stiff as bones. “You came to my house.”

“Agatha Locksley,” he whispers. “You retired, didn’t you?”

“You’re in my home. I will defend my home against you.”

“Oh, because you have a child now,” he sneers. “Children made you weak. No woman is capable of being strong who’s become a mother.”

Once, he might have been expressing the zeitgeist of the age, but this is the year 1902 and it’s a new century. I slam the rolling pin down over his head. He yells out and reels, my hand still around his throat. Ghosts can’t choke—they have no throats or lungs—but it’s a good place to hold onto him and ensure he can’t escape.

“And yet you still fear me,” I say softly, and I light another match and set him on fire.

Ghosts don’t have bodies, but I learned a while ago they can still burn. They terrorize, they lurk in basements, they follow—and they’ve always followed me. The day I learned you could set one on fire was the day the ghosts stopped following me and started fleeing.

“Locksley!” he roars, and then the inferno takes him up like a torch and he’s gone in front of my eyes. Only a pile of ashes remains in my basement.

I leave it there. Robert can fix that when he gets home from business and finally tends to the furniture. Wait until I tell him about this.

Tabitha is huddled upstairs on the couch. “Mama!” She runs to me and throws both arms around her legs. “Is the monster gone?”

“It’s gone, little one. You are safe.” 

She does not know the meaning of the name Agatha Locksley. She knows only that I am her mother.

That feels far more important than being a ghost hunter.