Short Fiction Writing Challenge

In partnership with the National Writing Project of Acadiana + The Current

2024 theme:
”Forces of nature”

Is it tremors below or storms above? Maybe it’s gravity, electromagnetism, or the dynamic people in our lives. These Forces of Nature act upon us all.

Prize recipient

LIZZIE GUITREAU DORIA

Lizzie’s background as a storyteller has chiefly been centered in the filmmaking space. Born and raised in South Louisiana, Lizzie values stories deeply rooted in the American south and queer stories that make her feel the unexpected. How to Catch a Ghost is Lizzie’s first published piece of work and is the first place recipient of the 2024 Southern Screen Short Fiction Writing Challenge.

“To Catch a Ghost”

How to catch a ghost – first, make a comfortable place for it.

I agreed to take care of my mother’s house hoping it would be haunted. Preferably, by her.

I thought to look up some helpful tips on a dark corner of Reddit or in a witchy book I surely owned, but then I remembered. No books. She’d be terribly annoyed and would surely not choose this side of the void if I had my nose in a book. So I was working off of instinct.

It’s common knowledge that ghosts enjoy darkness. I pull the plain cotton sheets off the beds and shroud the windows. Barely any cold winter light peeks through.

I light candles. All of her scented candles come together in a heady cloud – fresh linen over sugar cookie over moonlight path, whatever that’s supposed to smell like.

I lay a few of her possessions on the living room floor– a tube of lipstick, a metal manicure kit an unwashed coffee cup, a tea napkin made by her grandmother. They buried her with the delicate gold watch she never took off or else I would have that here as well.

They laid her body to rest this past November. Right as the birds flew off to wherever they go in winter, the fish go to ground, and the only movement I’d see in the woods behind her house came from vultures circling for roadkill overhead and the occasional defiant deer.

I’ve rid the house of salt, taken her bibles to goodwill, let the cobwebs high in the corners of the closet remain untouched. Winter has fully taken it’s hold. Not even the deer come around anymore.

I am ready for her.

How to catch a ghost – second, make sure the spirit feels welcome.

I start my nightly ritual. I don’t turn on any lights when I am working. In fact, I had the power turned off to the place last month. If I need to see into the nooks and crannies and top shelves of the closet I use an old lantern I found in the shed. I pace the halls now with it, speaking into the walls. Speaking into the floors, the ceilings, telling stories she would have remembered.

Irene breaking her pinky finger on the trampoline. That time I brought home a baby squirrel and hid it in a box in my closet for a month. When she had the house painted a rich green and the neighbors complained it reflected a sickly tint into their kitchen. The time the Christmas tree fell over in the night and lit a small fire on the living room carpet. I stare at the burn mark now, usually covered by a wellworn rug that I cleared out with the used bible study workbooks and magazine cuttings of recipes never attempted.

After weeks of this, I’ve wrung myself dry of our stories.

The doorway to the living room is where she collapsed the final time, when they told me it was best if someone were to stay with her around the clock, prodding me with their pointed language. Because I was the only one of her daughters without kids, the implication. Irene couldn’t shoulder the burden. Wouldn’t.

My mother awoke one day and found me reading by her bedside. I’m sure I had a small smile on my face, the book was fucking delightful. She used to scold me as a kid for reading so much. There are worse things I could be doing I’d grumble back at her. But we both knew I was trying to escape. Choosing to be elsewhere.

When I noticed her eyes on me, I lowered my book. What did she think of me, sitting there, enjoying myself at her death bed? Her dud of a daughter, unmarried, unblessed with children.

I fiddle with the lantern, turning the dimmer up and down, up and down. The shadows on the wall dance and retreat. I feel a burning in my palms, a prickling down the skin of my scalp. I try to keep my shame at bay, afraid it will keep her away. But the shame is for her in the first place, why I keep up this nightly ritual.

How to catch a ghost – lastly, invite her in.

The doctor wanted to give her time. That’s what he said when he handed over a small stack of prescriptions we couldn’t afford, drugs she wouldn’t take in the end because the one for nausea made her jittery and the one to help her sleep made her forgetful and the one for pain just erased us all. In the end it bought us a month. A month for me to move a carload of my things into this house, to convince Irene I had it under control, to hide my horror as my mother gracelessly hobbled her way out of life. She had a form of cancer they could only operate on once, he said.

Once to get it right, to eradicate it and if it spread...

I slide my back down the hallway wall. From this place I had a vantage point of her hospital bed setup in the living room and whatever was on the stove heating up. If there was a place for a ghost to show up, it would be here. This is where it all ended, where the veil opened to accept her. It was days more before her body had given out, but I sat here and watched the light leave my mother’s eyes on a Monday night in November.

I imagine her still here in this house, a foot in each world. I close my eyes. Bring my sweaty palms together in front of my face.

My first instinct is to pray. Palms halfway up to my forehead I doubt this instinct. She wasn’t god. Nor did I believe god was real enough to interfere in this matter. But someone out there had to be in charge of the expired souls.

I battle my doubts and mumble into the darkness. To the dark spirit in charge of my, um, my mother’s soul I guess.

Silence. I feel foolish.

If you’re there. I have a message for her.

This is never going to work. But it has to work.

You can tell her that if she chooses to stay here, in this house, I-I wouldn’t mind. It is her house

after all.

She can’t really be gone. In the end, she left without grace, without dignity. It was ugly and tortured and dragged on for days. I saw her soul separate from her body and only the body left this house. I could feel it.

If she’s here. Tell her she can stay.

Do I feel a chill in the room? Is that my own nerves? A frisson passes through me. Either I am freaking myself out or I am better at this than I thought.

Mom are you here?

The air in the room takes on a heavy feeling. The candlelight dances in maniacal shadows across the sheeted windows, the cloying scent scrapes down my throat.

Mom are you here.

My heart is pounding.

I sit and hear nothing. Listen as the nothing grows louder and louder, until it’s a roar in my ears. Until it pushes me down down down against the floorboards.

My stomach is lead. My head is iron. My limbs are being crushed.

Hello mom I rasp. Welcome back. Welcome home.

The room grows even darker. The candles seem to dim.
The floor is wet. I’m crying. When did I start crying?

The silence falls and falls and falls and pulls me down with it.

---

I awake on the floor in the living room, in the square of light where I’d position my mother’s bed on sunny days. It is dawn. Or what seems like dawn from the weak light leaking in from the window. The bedsheet lays limp on the floor next to me.

I feel alone in the house.

A great numb feeling rolls through me, throbbing slowly somewhere in my chest cavity. I sit up and pull my hands into my lap. I’d lain atop one all night and it is incredibly numb. There is a wood splinter in my palm I cannot even feel. I close my eyes and leave it there.

Soon I rise and pull the remaining bedsheets from the windows. Clear blue winter light floods in.

It turns out the only spirit haunting this place is me.