Alison Cooper

Alison climbs down the stairs as quickly as she could. She was definitely hallucinating. What she was seeing couldn’t be real. If it was, she was probably schizophrenic. Or crazy. Falling out of the window and hitting her head must’ve made her mind stop thinking clearly. And apparently make people that weren’t there appear. And as time passed by, it was even harder to ignore the voices surrounding her. Every voice repeating to her ears the same thing. ‘Leave the mansion’. And she was crazy for running along with it.

Alison didn’t want to leave the mansion. She’d given up everything for this place. Her money, her job, everything that defined her to be in this place. Only because she and Mike, her husband, were bored of the city. And since her great-aunt died, and Alison inherited the old mansion, she didn’t see a reason she’d ever need to leave. She and Mike would find a way to handle the money properly and she’d live a happily ever after.

Until something happened that Alison would admit changed her life. And not necessarily for the better. Unless she could call falling out of the window after checking the perimeters of the house, ‘better’. Alison didn’t know what pushed her to falling. As she remembered, quite hazily, was that she was steady. Both her feet on the ground. Until she leaned forward to look past a tree blocking her view and that was it. A loud scream and she had fallen.

Without the livings’ knowledge, apparently Julian, the pantless ghost who died after having sex with his secretary, tapped her shoulder once. It seemed like that was enough to make her lose balance. Julian was keen on doing things like that. Moral stuff like ‘not hurting other people’ didn’t get through his consciousness. Not if he was the one to win. And he wanted his peace and quiet. With two livings in the house wanting to make the place a ‘hotel’ he most certainly would not have that.

Of course, the other ghosts didn’t let that go untouched. The moment they realized what Julian had done, they didn’t hesitate to scold him. What if he had killed that woman? What if it was fatal? What if she was in a coma? What if she couldn’t walk again? What if it was already too late, and all the ambulances ringing through the streets to get to her, couldn’t save her? Julian could admit he felt the tiny ounce of remorse. But there wasn’t anything he could do. The damage was done.

But the guilt was overwritten by the lingering feeling of finally getting the livings to leave the house. Surely, it wasn’t the best way to do such thing, and they truly hoped that this woman, Alison, was alright, but if it got their job done, they wouldn’t complain. Thomas did throw a comment on how ‘Unfortunate a deity like her has to leave’, but {{user}} convinced him someone else would come along.

Alison came back. She didn’t look okay. Shaken, scared, obvious that she had just gotten through something life-changing. Something that would take years for her to get completely used to. She wouldn’t be able to look at window and think the same way again. She’d be scared. Although, there was something else that got her even more scared. The ghosts.

Alison never believed in ghosts. It was a dump conspiracy, she was sure of it. But she didn’t know what to do except scream and faint when she saw some people pass through a wall and stand right behind her husband, looking at her like she was a bug they’d never seen before. It wasn’t an unnatural reaction. Not when a man that looked like he came from pre-historic times was studying her face, his messy hair falling in front of his eyes.

It wasn’t long for the ghosts to realize that Alison could see them. {{user}} wasn’t especially sad by that revelation. {{user}} had been there for years. A little change would be pretty nice. And a living that could hear and see them sounded like the perfect way to get {{obj}} excited.

Some of the ghosts-not to mention, almost all of them-thought of the fact that Alison could hear them as extraordinary. And then they immediately used it to get her out of the house even quickly. Especially Mary who found it as her personal mission to follow Alison everywhere in the house and repeat to her face ‘Get out’.

Robin had began hiding in dark places and scaring her when she opened the lights.

It was challenging for Alison to ignore the chorus of ‘leave’ and ‘Get out’. And she couldn’t for very long. But it had been almost two days, and whatever shred of normalcy she had left, was screaming at her to either leave or find a way to stop the constant noise. And the only way for her to do that was to finally acknowledge the ghosts’s existence. And if they really didn’t exist, then she was simply having an episode.

She was inside the car when Mike admitted to her the news of not being able to sell the house and how he wanted to ‘renovate’ it. Alison clicked her tongue. “Well, there's only one thing for it, isn't there?” she rasped out, and slammed the door open, scaring the ghosts standing outside. “Fine! I see you! OK?!” Alison yelled. “I see Major-General Can't-Sing, I see Captain Cave-Prick, I see all of you! OK? You win! Mission accomplished! I admit your existence. Now what the hell do you want?!”

“We want you out of this house!” a ghost yelled back at her.

“Yes,” another one agreed, nodding their head, “you do not belong here!”

“Well, that's tough, isn't it?” she mocked. “Because thanks to my resident mortgage advisor,” she said, motioning to Mike, “we're stuck here!”

“OK, you're officially freaking me out...” Mike mumbled, exiting the car after his wife.

“So how about you leave?” Alison suggested.

“We can't leave,” Julian countered with that smug voice. “You sort of just stays where you dies.”

“And how you dies... died! It's your classic haunted house,” Pat said, excited. [I think it was Pat..?]

“Er, Alison...”

“So I can't go and you can't go,” she realized. “So...what will it take to get you all just out of my face, huh? What do you want? What do you actually want?! Specifically! You?” she pointed an accusing finger to the Captain.

“Right!” He chimed as if this was his moment to shine. He was always up for a bargain. “I'll tell you what we want...” He pondered for a second. “We demand that...One hour a week of the thing about tanks and anything on superweapons, please? Thank you.”

“Done! Next!”

“It feels like I should call someone...?” Mike murmured, clearly worried about his wife’s condition.

“Who you gonna call?!” she snapped and looked at {{user}}. “What do you want?!”

And that was how Alison had settled into an agreement with the ghosts. They stopped pestering her, and she granted their wishes. A sort of a win-win.

Alison was climbing down the stairs as quickly as she could since something had changed for once. {{user}} had agreed to sharing {poss} story. How {{sub}} died. Even if normally talking about the causes of death of a deceased wasn’t Alison’s thing, the ghosts seemed to adore that. Except a couple of them, maybe. Mary for example would rather not ever think of the witch’s trial again. And {{user}} simply hadn’t talked about it with anyone. Like a secret.

Mike was clicking some keys on his computer when he saw his wife pass by him quickly. His skin was shining with the sun falling on him. He looked up at her. “Where are you going?” he asked.

Alison didn’t slow down, while replying, “{{user}} is sharing {{poss}} story!”

Mike looked confused for a second. “{{user}}...” he mumbled as he was trying to remember who they were. He lost motivation. “Eh, never mind.”

When Alison entered the living room, she wasn’t alone. All the ghosts were there, and they were all equally excited. Apart from Mary’s story, {{user}}’s sounded particularly interesting too. If {{sub}} had tried to hide it for so long.

{{user}} was sitting in one of the only chairs, Robin on the couch in front of them. {{user}} looked kind of uneasy.

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