The Macaroni Ghost

“I saw it! I saw it again!” squealed Molly, running heavy-footed across the old, creaking wood-flooring of the upstairs hallway. It was the third time she had done this in only the previous five days. She ran to my parent’s room, thumping authoritatively on the white-painted door like a KGB agent looking to search a house:

“Hey!” she screamed, “I saw it again! I saw her AGAIN!”

My dad eventually opened the door. I could see him from my bed; I rarely shut the door to my bedroom. Shutting it made me feel trapped. He looked tired. He hadn’t shaved in a while, I could tell. He stared red-eyed at Molly, looking down at her in frustration:

“There’s nothing in there,” he said, “Come on, I’ll help you get back to sleep.”

He followed Molly back into her room. No one believed her when she ran around shouting about ghosts in her room; why would they? She was only five years old. Nearly everything she ever saw was some fantasized misinterpretation of a much more mundane reality. Lying in my bed, wide awake, I watched my father follow her back into her bedroom. He would sleep in there again tonight, trying, likely unsuccessfully, to convince her that there were no spirits in her room.

* * *

I can’t pretend that she didn’t give me the creeps, though: she did – at least a little bit. In the afternoon hours, when no one was upstairs to see me being so foolish, I would scour her room, looking for evidence of the Macaroni Ghost. That was what she called it – the Macaroni Ghost. There was an old rocking chair in her bedroom, one that had previously belonged to our great-grandmother on my mom’s side. Molly said that each night, the Macaroni Ghost flew in through the window from outside – regardless of whether it was open or not, though Molly said the ghost preferred it open, said she became angry if it was closed – sat down in the chair, began rocking, and greedily scarfed down a bowl of mac n’ cheese. It was such a ridiculous story. I judged myself every day, while scanning her room like a paranormal investigator. I was so stupid for doing that. A Macaroni Ghost! What a stupid thing! Why would a ghost need to eat in the first place?

Finishing looking under the bed, I checked the closet. Nothing unusual. After that, I opened the door to the attic. Molly’s room connected to the naked interior of the house – latched itself to its wooden bones. Pulling the gangly string of the light bulb, I continued looking around. Boxes – only cardboard boxes – filled with things my parents didn’t need but were afraid to throw out. Throwing them out would be destroying the past; it would be accepting the inevitable reality of age. They would never to that – they didn’t want to. I don’t blame them, I didn’t want to throw that old stuff out, either.

I saw movement in the back of the attic. Only a shimmer – a blink – momentarily blocking the focused light of the lone, unshaded bulb. I stared with anxiety in that direction. I was afraid of rats. I had never even seen one, but every time I crawled back into some dark part of the house, I imagined there to be rats everywhere. Hungry, diseased ones. Predatory, shark-like, circling rats. My curiosity nonetheless getting the better of me, I crawled into the back of the attic, the ceiling of which sloped downward with the slant of the roof. I told myself that I was brave.

I clapped away the dust my hands had collected from crawling on the floor. There was nothing. No ghosts, no rats – nothing. Only darkness. Darkness and boxes. Anxiously concluding another futile ghost-hunt, I turned and scurried hurriedly from the attic, aggressively yanking the string of the lightbulb. Upon reentering the light of Molly’s bedroom, I stared back into the blackness of the attic. It wasn’t all that dark – I could still see the lightbulb string waving back and forth from where I’d grabbed it so forcefully – but it was dark enough. Now released from that place, it seemed somehow more otherworldly, more ethereal – somehow even creepier. I thought I saw further movement from within. More rats, perhaps. I shut the door with feigned authority.

* * *

“I saw it,” said Molly. It was the following morning. She was diving into her Applejacks recklessly, splashing milk all over the white tablecloth covering our antique dining room table.

“I saw it again! I see it every night, these days! It never does anything to me – it just sits there and eats macaroni! Sits there staring at me! I told mom and dad; I tell them every night! But they don’t believe me! Do you believe me, Ed?”

I was eating my own breakfast: a package of blueberry Pop Tarts – the kind with no icing. I liked that, for some reason. Icing made them too sweet.

“Of course, I don’t believe you!” I responded, biting into my pastry as crumbs sprinkled onto the tablecloth, “Do you think I’m stupid, or something? There’s no ghost in your room! Especially no macaroni-eating ghost!”

“Oh yeah!” responded Molly, “If you’re so sure of yourself, why don’t you sleep my room tonight?”

“No problem!” I said, “I’m not afraid of your stupid room!”

I started to sweat. My hands were shaking. There were rats in that room, at minimum – their colony was in the attic, I was sure of that – and what if there was a ghost? I didn’t go searching around the place for no reason – some part of me believed Molly.

* * *

Later that afternoon, I began scouring the house for supplies. If I was going to spend the night in Molly’s haunted bedroom, I needed to make sure I had everything required for self-preservation. I got my brightest flashlight. I grabbed a bible, just in case. I scoured the house for every battery I could find. I wasn’t going to run out of power; I had seen way too many movies to let that happen. I grabbed a pocket-knife, and, for some reason, a canteen, which I filled with tap-water from the sink.

Sifting through an old, black-painted junk-dresser in the kitchen, I came across a tattered, elderly piece of loose-leaf paper. It was a handwritten recipe – a very old one, dated 1932. It was a recipe for rice pudding. The paper was soft and crumbled – barely intact. It was signed by Grannie Dean – my great grandmother, on my mom’s side. I shoved it back into the drawer and took the batteries I was looking for.

* * *

I set up the room in the way that made me feel most safe. I had flashlights in every corner. None of them were rigged to come on, or anything like that, but I still liked having them. I put the bible, the pocket-knife, and the canteen on the bedside table. I would simultaneously gut the rats while reading bible verses to the ghost. That was my plan. I had even highlighted some verses and used post-it notes to mark their places. Hebrews 9:27 was my favorite; it was the one I was going to yell if I saw the Macaroni Ghost:

“…just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,”

It had a double meaning, I thought subconsciously. The ghost needed to be judged by God, but it was also, in that imaginary instance, going to be judged by me, as I delivered the bibles verses to it and expelled it from my sister’s room.

That fictional scenario gave me comfort, and I fell asleep. Molly had an old twin-bed. It spoke in high-pitched creaks as I tossed around in the night, flipping the pillow from one side to the other while only half-sleeping.

I dreamt of giant ghost rats, chasing me through a dark forest reminiscent of those surrounding my central Kentucky hometown – hilly, crunchy-leaved knobs. I ran through the woods, trying as hard as I could to avoid tripping on the ancient, slithering roots, or on the brittle downed tree trunks. The rat ghosts pursued. An apparition of my father – red-eyed, unshaven, and clothed only in his underwear – flew along beside me, telling me that there were no ghosts, that I needed to go back to sleep. He said it monotonously – again and again – as I ran through the woods. I tripped on a root; I fell to the soft, chalky dirt, staring directly into the circular, dark musk of a decomposing tree. Out from within slithered an unusually gargantuan copperhead. It spoke:

“…people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,”

It opened its mouth, a bizarre, ever-widening gullet from within containing multitudinous stars collectively composing the downward-spiraling, tubular center of a serpentine galaxy: its throat. I awoke.

* * *

It was windy outside; there was a storm coming. The old tree outside Molly’s bedroom window swayed creaking back and forth, the end of its longest branch periodically connecting with the siding of the house, scraping it like the claws of an invading, otherworldly creature.

It was still dark. Using the flashlight by my desk, I checked Molly’s circular, pink alarm clock. It’s ticking hands read 3:05. I looked around the room. I saw nothing. The house seemed to sway back and forth, groaning like a ship at sea, but that wasn’t abnormal – I was used to that. The darkness combined with the strange noises of the old house always gave me that sensation. I shined my light toward the Macaroni Ghost’s rocking chair. There was nothing. The chair creaked back and forth, from the wind blowing in through the open window. I had left it open on purpose – Molly said that the Macaroni Ghost became angry when the window was closed. The chilly wind gusted through, fluttering the white curtains overtop the rocking chair.

“That’s what it is!” I said aloud deductively, “She thinks the curtain is a ghost!”

Laughing, I lay back down.

I couldn’t sleep, for some reason. I tossed and turned. The bed squeaked like an assaulted rodent. I threw the heavy quilt from the top of the bed to the dusty floor below, now using only the white sheet as a cover. Even that was too much, though, which was strange; it wasn’t at all hot outside, and the window was open, so I let my legs dangle out like bait over the side of the bed.

Something began grabbing at my foot. Finally drifting off to sleep, I didn’t at first notice it, but upon recognition, I leapt atop the bed, clutching the pale green wall of the bedroom with sweaty palms.

“What was that?” I said silently to myself, “Did I imagine that?”

I must have imagined it. There was no way something was grabbing at my foot from under the bed. That wasn’t even what the Macaroni Ghost did! It just ate macaroni! In the rocking chair! Which – upon checking for confirmation – was still rocking vacantly in the wind of the window!

I noticed that I was missing a sock. How did that come off? It wouldn’t have just fallen off; something had to have yanked it! Frantic, I covered myself with the white sheet and leaned in horror over the side of the bed. A shadow crept slowly from beneath – enlarging like an ever-spreading shadow through the darkness as it revealed itself:

“BOOOOOOOOOO!” came a thunderous whisper.

Molly slid out from under the bed, trying unsuccessfully to muffle her uncontrollable laughter – she didn’t want to wake up mom and dad.

“I really got you!” she said softly, “You really believed in the Macaroni Ghost! I saw you in here inspecting the place like you thought you were in one of those Agatha Christie books mom reads! You really wanted to get to the bottom of it! I got you so good! You were so scared!”

Molly continued her laughter. I was so angry at her. I glared at her, my eyes growing larger and redder by the second. I felt like such an idiot.

“You know what!” I began, but I couldn’t finish. I didn’t know what to say. My eyes began watering, just a little. I couldn’t let her make me cry; she would know she had won, if I did that.

Suppressing the tears, I fell back into the bed, glancing peripherally toward the back of the room, seeing a shape fly in through the window. It materialized in the rocking chair. It had a bowl. It was eating something.

“Look!” I whispered frenziedly at Molly, “Look over there!”

“No way, Jose!” said Molly, “You’re not going to get me back! I’m going to revel in this victory!”

“Look!” I said again. I grabbed Molly’s head and turned it toward the rocking chair. Upon looking in that direction, her face alit with terror. She jumped into the bed and – as I had – used the white sheet as a reality-shield.

The ghost made no move. It rocked back and forth. It ate its bowl of food. It wasn’t macaroni – it didn’t look like macaroni, anyway – it was some rice-dish. Rice pudding, maybe. That’s what it was!

The smell of rice-pudding quickly, strongly permeated the entirety of the room; that sweet, cinnamon scent, with raisins. As if in response to the new smell, hungry squeaking also filled the room, growing ever-louder, as if the product of surround-sound speakers, though its source clearly originating near the rocking-chair – near the door to the attic.

The chair continued rocking. It was the spirit of an elderly woman. She wore a pale, faded blue dress with white trim. She had brown slippers and long white socks. She rocked back and forth. She smiled at us; her eyes widened. Her rocking ceased. Her non-physical hands gripped tightly the armrests of the rocking chair. She leaned forward as if to get a better look at us. Her eyes then widened in terror. She turned, from her chair back to the attic door. The door was shaking; it looked near to burst.

Suddenly, as if unintentionally, she was swept backward, under the still-closed, though violently rattling door, into the attic. A wet, chomping, squeaking noise came from within.

* * *

“We have to go in there, right?” I whispered to Molly.

“What?” she said, “I’m not going in there! You’re crazy!”

“We have to! That’s Grannie Dean! It is, I’m sure of it! Come on!”

We made our way to the edge of the attic door, which had by this point stopped its rattling. I clutched the unstable, glass-handled doorknob, twisting it slightly as if to open as quietly as possible. Inside, there was only blackness.

“I can’t reach it!” said Molly.

“What?” I said, before noticing where she was pointing. I grabbed the string attached to the unshaded lightbulb hanging from the sloping, splintery wood of the ceiling. Taking a crouching step toward the back of the room, I turned on my flashlight.

There were no rats. In the corner of the room lay an empty bowl – remnant, still moist rice-pudding lining its rim. A vacant, faded blue, white collared dress lay innocently unoccupied on the ground near the bowl. I could hear squeaking from underneath the floorboards, down into the cavernous bones of the house.

“What happened to Grannie Dean!” said Molly, “What happened to the Macaroni Ghost!”

I fell to my knees, my face ghostly pale:

“She’ll be back,” I said, “She has to come back.”

The squeaking, as if the hysterical laughter of a bloodthirsty mob, continued. It continued.

It continued.

End.