Annabelle’s Saturday afternoon ghost banishing
Date: 2025-08-02 12:30
(Annabelle’s Saturday afternoon ghost banishing)
[Sat Aug 2 2025]
In an empty house
It is about 60F(15C) degrees. The mist is heaviest At Foxglove and Sidney/span>/spanThe front door of the Federal-style faculty house stands slightly ajar, its brass hinges gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. Annabelle steps onto the wraparound porch, her footsteps echoing hollowly on the painted wooden boards. The call that brought her here had been brief and urgent – a neighbor reporting strange sounds and flickering lights from what should be an empty house scheduled for renovation next month.
Inside, dust motes dance in the geometric patterns of light streaming through tall windows. The hardwood floors creak softly under her weight as she enters the main hallway. Built-in bookshelves line the walls, their empty shelves bearing only dust and the occasional forgotten paperclip. A faint mustiness hangs in the still air, mixing with something else – the lingering scent of old paper and ink, as if someone had recently been burning documents.
From somewhere deeper in the house comes a soft scratching sound, rhythmic and persistent, like a pen moving across paper. The sound stops abruptly when Annabelle’s foot hits a particularly loud floorboard, then resumes a moment later from what might be the study or back parlor. Outside, students’ voices drift past on the tree-lined sidewalk, their casual chatter a stark contrast to the oppressive silence that seems to press against the windows from within.
“Hello?” Annabelle calls out, jerking her skateboard up as she hits the stairs and jogs in. “I got a call? I’m from The Order, or Windermere Teaching Hospital. Is anyone there!?”
“Finally… someone who understands… you must help me finish…“
Annabelle yelps, bringing her board close to her body in an immediate defense mechanism. “Sorry? H-hello, where are you?”
“In here, child. Quickly now – they’ll be watching soon. The symbols… I’m so close to understanding what they tried to hide from us.“
The temperature in the hallway drops noticeably, and Annabelle’s breath begins to mist slightly. Through the doorway leading toward the back of the house, she can see the faint glow of what appears to be candlelight flickering against the far wall. The scent of old paper grows stronger, now mixed with the acrid smell of burning wax.
A leather-bound journal slides across the hardwood floor from the parlor doorway, coming to rest at Annabelle’s feet. Its pages flutter open to reveal dense handwriting in fading ink, interspersed with strange geometric symbols that seem to shift and writhe when looked at directly.
Annabelle lifts her foot on impulse, suddenly frigid and much less willing to entertain the call to duty. “H-hey, uh. I don’t know anything about magic. I’m not qualified. I was literally born two weeks ago, so, y-you probably don’t have a scholar in me. If you need friend, um, Casper? I hope you’re a Casper like, because I’m not willing to join Annabel Lee in the ocean.” She babbles.
A sharp intake of breath echoes from the parlor, followed by the sound of papers rustling frantically. The candlelight flickers more violently, casting dancing shadows that seem to reach toward the hallway.
“Two weeks? No, no, that’s impossible. You’re here, you answered the call. You must be one of my students – Margaret’s students always find their way back.” The voice grows more agitated, tinged with confusion. “The symbols don’t lie, child. Look at them. LOOK!“
The journal at Annabelle’s feet begins to flip its own pages rapidly, the strange geometric symbols seeming to pulse with a faint luminescence. A cold wind suddenly gusts through the house despite the closed windows, carrying with it the musty scent of old libraries and something else – the metallic tang of fear.
From the parlor comes the sound of furniture scraping against the floor, as if someone is frantically rearranging a workspace.
“They dismissed me, you know. Said my methods were inappropriate. But I was so close to the truth about what they’ve been hiding in the archives…“
Dutiful, but feeling rebellious to authority figures, the nurse takes three back steps away from the flourish of pages. “You’d think it’s impossible, right? That’s my life.” She laments with a nervous shrug and a forced rictus. “Well, l-look at it this way. Windermere University is a campus wherein the faculty plots against itself in order to curate the magical education of the student body to their own politics of how things should be. I dropped out yesterday, dismissal is good, because, like, it’s not like they give you a greater degree of resources than you could find elsewhere?” Annabelle begins to rationalize.
The scratching sound stops abruptly. For a moment, the house falls into an eerie silence broken only by the distant hum of afternoon traffic. Then comes a low, bitter laugh from the parlor.
“Dropped out… yes, yes, you see it too, don’t you? The corruption, the deliberate suppression of knowledge.” The voice takes on a conspiratorial whisper. “They fear what students might discover if given access to the real archives. The sealed sections, the collections they claim are ‘lost’ or ‘damaged beyond study.’“
A chair creaks as if someone has sat down heavily. The journal’s pages stop fluttering and settle on a page covered in increasingly frantic handwriting. Words like “THEY’RE WATCHING” and “MUST COMPLETE THE TRANSLATION” are scrawled in the margins around symbols that hurt to look at directly.
“But you’re here now, aren’t you? Even if you’ve rejected their system. Perhaps… perhaps that makes you the perfect student. Untainted by their academic orthodoxy.” The temperature drops another few degrees, and frost begins to form on the window panes despite the August heat outside.
“Come closer, child. Let me show you what they didn’t want you to learn.“
“No thank you.” Annabelle answers precociously, testing the door-nob for signs of opening into the warmer, wide world. “I had a thing” She objectifies a harsh note for it, disdain just in that word before her tone goes back to nervous, “visit me and paint on my like a clay doll. I don’t want to know the things I shouldn’t know. I’m perfect and smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. I like to p-process of learning, thanks. Now, um. Do you need medical care or immediate psychic consideration?”
The doorknob turns easily in Annabelle’s hand, but the door itself refuses to budge – as if the frame has somehow warped shut. The brass feels ice-cold against her palm despite the afternoon heat.
A sound like papers being swept off a desk comes from the parlor, followed by a chair scraping violently across the floor. The voice when it comes again is sharper, more desperate.
“Medical care? MEDICAL CARE?/span>/spanThey said the same thing, you know. Heat exhaustion, they wrote in their reports. Dehydration. As if I hadn’t been drinking water, as if I hadn’t been taking care of myself while working on the most important discovery of the century!“
The candlelight in the parlor suddenly flares brighter, casting long shadows that stretch into the hallway. The journal on the floor snaps shut with an audible thud.
“I don’t need medical care, child. I need someone to finish what I started. To prove that Margaret Holloway wasn’t just some delusional old woman who died alone in the heat.” The temperature plummets further, and Annabelle can now see her breath clearly. “The symbols… they’re a warning. About something terrible that’s been hidden for centuries.“
“I’m a Certified Emergency Nurse.” Annabelle shares, giving the door one desperate budge of her shoulder before giving up and conceding to hold herself in the cold while she shivers. “Not a magician. As a nurse, it’s my duty to encourage you to take care of yourself, even if you’re dead. I met Mister named Mars yesterday and she said she was a vampire, and a monster, but I think that just means she has different needs. Like blood. It doesn’t seem like you’re in a healthy state of mind, m-mentally so-so-so maybe we should be more considerate of like, the why before the do, here.”
The house falls silent for a long moment. Even the scratching stops. When the voice returns, it’s quieter, more fragile – like an old woman suddenly remembering she’s tired.
“A nurse… yes, I suppose… I suppose I haven’t been taking very good care of myself, have I?” There’s a soft sigh from the parlor. “Thirty-six years I’ve been working on this translation. Thirty-six years since they found me here, clutching my journal, my life’s work incomplete.“
The oppressive cold begins to ease slightly, though frost still clings to the windows. The candlelight wavers, becoming less harsh.
“Mars, you said? A vampire who acknowledges what she is?” A pause. “I wonder… I wonder if I’ve been so focused on proving I wasn’t delusional that I never stopped to consider what I actually became.”
The journal on the floor opens again, but gently this time. The pages settle on what appears to be a final entry, the handwriting growing increasingly shaky toward the bottom.
“Perhaps… perhaps you’re right about the ‘why’ before the ‘do.’ Tell me, nurse – what do you think happens when someone dies believing their life’s work was stolen from them?“
“Sometimes nothing.” Annabelle responds instantly, mouth hung open for a response and just landing on a bitter truth as she looks down at the floor. “Sometimes justice, probably. Maybe something magical, but magic often is pretty bad. I think hearts can break twice. Once the body gives up, then it’s the soul, maybe? If they died believing they were robbed, they probably build up a lot of grief, not peace. Sometimes things that are stolen still go on to have purpose, though. Sometimes they help people. That doesn’t make it fair, but it doesn’t mean it came to nothing.”
“-I I think, anyway.” Annabelle equivocates.
The scratching sound resumes from the parlor, but slower now, more deliberate. Like someone carefully writing rather than frantically scribbling.
“Hearts breaking twice…” The voice is thoughtful, distant. “Yes, I think… I think mine did break twice. First when they dismissed me, told me my life’s work was worthless pseudoscience. Then again when I realized I was dying before I could prove them wrong.“
A single page tears from the journal and drifts toward Annabelle, settling gently at her feet. This one shows cleaner handwriting – an earlier entry describing the joy of discovery, of sharing knowledge with eager students who hung on every word.
“I had seventeen doctoral students over the years. Brilliant minds, all of them. I wonder… I wonder what they went on to discover after I was gone. Whether any of them remembered what I taught them about looking beyond the accepted narratives.“
The temperature continues to warm slightly. Through the parlor doorway, a figure becomes faintly visible – an elderly woman in a cardigan, hunched over a desk covered in papers, her gray hair pulled back in a loose bun.
“Perhaps my work did have purpose, even if I never got to see it completed. Perhaps that’s enough for a heart to heal, even a twice-broken one.“
“I think that’s a good take away.” Annabelle comments, not least of all for reasons relating to her life and safety- encouraging this behavior of warmth. “I wish I had peace of mind. I can give it to people, but, well.” She leaves her own problems for the road, and with a telempathic thought, and a visual, she reaches out to the psychic form and projects at peace over its emotions.
As Annabelle reaches out with her empathic abilities, the figure in the parlor straightens slowly, her shoulders losing their hunched tension. The frantic energy that had been crackling through the house settles into something calmer, like a storm finally passing.
“Oh…” Margaret’s voice carries wonder, as if she’s feeling something she’d forgotten existed. “Oh, child. That’s… that’s what I used to feel when my students finally understood a particularly difficult concept. That moment of connection, of shared understanding.“
The candlelight in the parlor grows steadier, warmer. The frost on the windows begins to melt, droplets running down the glass like tears. The oppressive weight that had been pressing against the house seems to lift.
“You said you can give peace to people but not to yourself.” Margaret’s form becomes clearer – a woman in her sixties with kind eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, though her edges remain translucent. “Perhaps… perhaps that’s because peace isn’t something we can give ourselves alone. It comes from connection, from knowing our work mattered to someone else.“
She looks down at the papers scattered across her desk, then back toward the hallway where Annabelle stands.
“Thank you for listening to an old professor’s concerns about her students. That’s all I ever really wanted – to know they were alright.“
Annabelle sniffles a little, the oppressive weight of a night spent crying still red-rimmed on her eyes as she watches the ghostly professor still standing stiffly at the door. “..Can I get you anything else? I can keep listening, if that’s what you need.”
Margaret’s translucent form turns fully toward Annabelle, and for the first time, she steps away from her desk. Her footsteps make no sound on the hardwood as she approaches the doorway between the parlor and hallway, stopping just at the threshold.
“You’ve been crying,” she observes gently, her professor’s instincts still sharp even in death. “And you said you were born two weeks ago. That’s quite a burden for someone so new to… whatever you’ve become.“
The house has grown noticeably warmer now, the oppressive atmosphere replaced by something that feels almost cozy despite the emptiness. Margaret glances back at her scattered papers, then at the journal still open on the floor.
“I spent thirty-six years trying to finish something that was already complete the moment I shared it with my first student. The symbols, the warnings, the hidden knowledge – it was never about the translation itself. It was about teaching others to question, to look deeper.” She pauses, studying Annabelle’s face. “What I need now isn’t more time with my research. What I need is to know that questioning spirit lives on.“
She extends a ghostly hand, not quite touching but offering comfort. “Perhaps you could tell me what brought those tears? Sometimes an old professor’s ear is exactly what a troubled student needs.“
“I’m born from a dream and my dad and life aren’t real and mom left maybe two days ago now to some place in the middle east after I thought she’d left me when I was ten- and-and I have the genetics of some other boy that isn’t my dad, my Not Dad, and- and I just..” Annabelle’s flood doesn’t manage to break the dam, and she sobers up. “..I have people to talk to it about. It’s hard, but, yeah. People have been really supportive. It’s the only reason I’m able to really help others right now. I don’t know what else to do.”
Margaret’s expression softens with the kind of understanding that comes from decades of listening to students grapple with life’s complexities. She nods slowly, her ghostly form seeming more solid somehow in this moment of genuine connection.
“Born from a dream… that’s quite literal in ways most people never experience, isn’t it?” She settles into a chair that materializes faintly around her, the gesture so natural it’s clear this is how she always listened to troubled students. “Identity crises are difficult enough when you have a conventional foundation to question. When the very nature of your existence is uncertain…“
The journal on the floor closes gently and slides back toward the parlor, no longer demanding attention. Margaret’s research papers begin to organize themselves into neat stacks, as if finally finding their proper order.
“You know, in all my years studying hidden knowledge and suppressed truths, I learned that the most profound discoveries often come not from ancient symbols or secret archives, but from the simple act of one person truly listening to another.” She looks directly at Annabelle. “You say you don’t know what else to do besides help others. Perhaps that’s not a limitation, child. Perhaps that’s exactly who you’re meant to be.“
The afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows grows warmer, more golden, as if the house itself is beginning to remember what peace feels like.
Annabelle paws a thumb at her eyes, shrugging to the wisdom. “Maybe, ma’am. I hope I can always be that perfect. I don’t want to hurt people but even the patients at the hospital try to stab me sometimes. I hope the wards keep working. They didn’t last month and a lot of people got bitten by werewolves. That’s unrelated but- well. Thanks for listening. I’m okay.”
Margaret chuckles softly, a sound like rustling autumn leaves. “Werewolf attacks at the hospital? My dear, you’re living in far more interesting times than I ever did. Though I suppose every generation thinks theirs is uniquely challenging.“
She stands from her chair, which fades as she rises. The stacks of papers on her desk begin to glow with a gentle, warm light – not the harsh flicker of before, but something peaceful and complete.
“You know, I spent decades believing that perfection meant having all the answers, completing every translation, proving every theory. But listening to you now… I think perhaps perfection is simpler than that. It’s showing up when someone calls for help, even when you’re frightened. It’s offering comfort even when your own heart is breaking.“
The house around them begins to brighten, the oppressive shadows retreating to normal afternoon dimness. Margaret’s form grows more translucent, but her smile remains clear and warm.
“The wards will hold, child. Not because of any magic I understand, but because there are people like you willing to tend them. People who choose to help even when they’re afraid, even when they don’t have all the answers.“
She looks once more at her research, then back to Annabelle. “I think… I think my work here is finally complete.“