Although it was a warm spring day, Alani couldn’t stop shivering. The sunny street seemed filled with shadows, and her skin prickled as she craned her neck to read the house numbers. There it was, number 143. Surreptitiously pulling up her sleeve, she double-checked the number scrawled on her wrist in biro. 143. It was the right house. Still, she hesitated, eyes flicking nervously back and forth between the number she had written and the number on the simple black and white plate next to the door, as if she could possibly be in doubt that the two numbers were the same. The house looked so ordinary, flowers in the garden, a bench in front of the window, the path slightly overgrown with weeds between the paving stones. Even so, it took her several more minutes to work up the courage to walk up to the front door, finally having to drive her fingernails deep into her palms to make herself move. Swallowing hard, she pressed the doorbell, feeling more scared than she had ever felt before.
Nothing stirred inside the house. She was torn between relief at the reprieve and dread that she would have to make herself come back again later. She had to do this, she told herself. It was the only way, the only possibility of saving herself. Steeling herself to ring the bell again, her finger was just resting on the button when movement behind the glass in the door almost made her jump out of her skin. A shape was approaching the door, someone was coming… Her heart beat faster as a key grated in the lock, and the door swung open.
The woman standing in the doorway, her beige coat on as if she were about to go out, looked utterly ordinary. Yet Alani felt a wave of terror. It was her, the same frumpy shoes, the same bulky coat. She threw a quick glance at the face, not daring to look into the eyes. Unremarkable except for the lumps on her cheeks. At the sight of them, Alani thought she might throw up in horror. It was those lumps that had started it all…
It had happened a few weeks ago. Getting the train home from school, she and her friends climbed up to the top level of the double-decker carriage and sprawled out across a set of double seats, dumping their bags and coats in a messy pile and turning on their music. After a group moan about how crappy their English lesson had been, and what a total prick Mr Menzies was, Amy and Jasmine started teasing her about Richard, who sat behind her in English, and who they knew had a crush on her. ‘Bet that’s why you almost missed the train’, Amy mocked. ‘Back behind the Science block, oh, oh, Richard, oh you sexy beast, touch me…’. She panted and gasped in erotic parody. ‘Like I would’, said Alani. ‘He’s so ugly. All those zits. And he stinks of chips all the time. Totally rancid’. Richard wasn’t actually that bad, but neither was he one of the hot boys in the class, and she was mortified that he’d dared to show that he liked her, laying her wide open to her friends’ teasing. ‘If he likes chips that much, then you two would be the perfect couple’, laughed Jasmine. ‘Lots of lovely grease!’. Alani’s eyes started to fill at the jibe about her hair, which, no matter how often she washed it, always seemed to leave a film of grease over her forehead. Seeing this, Jasmine’s eyes glinted in malice. ‘Sooo handy, all that grease. Just think, how useful it’ll be to grease up…’. Her suggestions rapidly became filthy, and Amy chipped in with her own embellishments, grinning. Once they were off like this they could keep on for hours, without mercy, stopping only when they got bored, which was often long after their victim was reduced to tears. Desperately looking around for something to distract her friends, Alani saw the woman sitting in the double seats opposite, on her own, staring out of the window vacantly, as if she didn’t even know where she was.
She nudged Amy with her elbow, and smirked. ‘I bet her over there would be glad to get off with Richard. Bet she’s still a virgin, the ugly old cow’. Looking over with cursory glances, the girls first seemed still intent on continuing their spiteful attack, until Jasmine suddenly snorted. ‘Look at those lumps on her face’, she whispered. ‘God, she’s got some, like, skin cancer or something’. ‘Euuuww’, squealed Amy. Their exchange of disgusted comments got louder, until they must have been audible through the whole carriage, but the woman continued to stare out of the window, only one side of her face visible. Amy prodded Alani. ‘Ask her if it’s the same on the other side of her face’, she said, ‘Go on!’. Alani hesitated, but the distraction seemed to be working so well, and if she refused then they might go back to teasing her again. ‘Hey’, she called, then louder. ‘What are those lumps all over your face?’. There was no answer. ‘Are they on the other side, too?’. There was no response again, and she repeated the question, slowly and deliberately, as if the woman were deaf, or stupid. Suddenly, the woman turned around. ‘Yes’, she said, quietly but defiantly, her voice quivering slightly. ‘Yes, they do’. The girls howled with laughter. ‘Take a picture!’, called Amy, and Alani picked up her phone and snapped a picture, then shared it with her friends, who proceeded to loudly tear apart every aspect of the woman’s appearance.
They carried on in this vein until the next station, but the woman ignored their shrieks and laughter, gathering up her possessions to leave the train in stony silence. As she stepped out into the aisle, Alani thrust the phone in her face, with the picture. ‘Do you like it?’, she asked. The woman stopped, and turned to face Alani. ‘Do you like this?’, she asked, her voice now very shaky and on the edge of tears. ‘Being horrible to someone, for no reason?’. Alani felt suddenly very uncomfortable. ‘She has got a reason’, called Jasmine. ‘You’re an ugly bitch!’. Feeling supported, Alani laughed. ‘Yeah!’, she said. ‘You’re like some old witch or troll!’. The woman fixed her with a suddenly piercing gaze. ‘Yes’, she replied, her voice now steady and surprisingly strong. ‘So I’d watch out if I were you. Witches, trolls, demons – anger them and they’ll take revenge’. Then she stepped closer and hissed, ‘My curse on you!’. Then she stalked off down the stairs. Amy and Jasmine fell about laughing hysterically, but Alani couldn’t join in. Looking out of the window uneasily, as the train pulled out from the station, she couldn’t see the woman anywhere…
The next day at school, she failed her maths test. ‘It’s the curse!’, Amy whispered, eyes goggling and mouth gaping in theatrical horror, before dissolving into giggles. Alani didn’t find it funny. As soon as she could, she deleted the picture from her phone. The next day, after break, she pulled her phone out of her bag to check her messages. As the screen lit up, she dropped it with a cry. The photo was on her background. She hardly heard her friends’ mirth and imitation spooky noises, as she struggled to find the settings and remove the picture, with trembling, sweaty fingers.
Over the next days, the photo kept reappearing. Turning to the right page in Macbeth for her English lesson, a print-out of the photo slipped out onto her desk. Flipping open her chromebook for a French quiz, she stifled a shriek as she saw that the photo was open in a tab of her browser. Soon, she couldn’t look at any screen or in any book without her stomach tying up in knots and her heart pounding in her mouth. Worse, the effects of the curse weren’t confined to the perpetual reappearance of the photo.
Getting out her make-up bag to do a touch-up, the pots of eyeshadow were filled with a stinking slime. Her appetite was mostly gone, but when her friends finally persuaded her to take a bite of her lunchtime sandwich, she spat it out. It was filled with dead flies. Even her bottle of water started to taste foul. She found it hard to complete her schoolwork, and her homework marks plummeted. Each night, she struggled to fall asleep, only to be jolted awake by a shadowy form bending over her, which turned out to be the curtain, or the wardrobe.
The final straw came when her phone rang one afternoon. She barely touched it anymore, but the call might be important. Reluctantly pulling it out to answer, the hated photo appeared once more on her screen. Only this time, the features were distorted, the eyes a demonic green, the tight-lipped mouth seeming to melt into a gaping grimace. Alani only just made it to the toilet in time to throw up. Sitting on the floor, her head spinning, her hands cold and clammy, the falsely concerned coos of her friends drifting in under the door, she made a decision. This had to stop.
In her mind, she ran through every film she had ever seen about curses and possession, and considered what she could do. Destroying the photo clearly didn’t help. Somehow, she didn’t think you could exorcise a phone. She could throw it away, but her parents would be furious, and she shuddered at the thought that it might turn up again anyway. Besides, it wasn’t the only place the photos were appearing. Although maybe scrapping the phone might count as some sort of penance or something? Then her train of thought changed, and she knew what she needed to do.
Going to the computer science teacher with a sob story about an accidentally deleted homework assignment, she managed to find out how to retrieve the original deleted photo. She didn’t dare tell Jasmine and Amy what she was up to. Under the cover of a deadly dull film during Geography, she uploaded the photo to Google image search. Part of her didn’t believe this could work – demons or witches wouldn’t have websites or social media profiles, would they? But amazingly, a hit popped up, with a photo that looked, while not identical, unpleasantly familiar. Not daring to look at it properly – what if it was a cursed website? – she typed the word ‘address’ into the search bar – and found a match. Pulling the edge of her bag over the phone so that all she could see was the address, she quickly scribbled the house number and street name on her wrist.
Now, here she was, standing on the doorstep. ‘Yes?’, asked the woman. ‘Are you collecting for something?’. Alani looked up, and was vastly relieved to see only a pair of normal brown eyes, looking at her with a quizzical, not demonic, gaze. Even then, it was hard to do what she’d come for. Her throat tight, she mumbled, ‘I’m sorry’. ‘What did you say?’, asked the woman. She took a deep breath, and spoke louder. ‘I’m sorry for what I did’. After looking at her in a moment’s silence, brow furrowed, the woman’s face cleared, then tightened. ‘It’s you’, she said, flatly, ‘the girl from the train’. ‘Yes’, said Alani. ‘I was really horrible, I’m sorry’. The woman regarded her with obvious suspicion, glancing up and down the street, perhaps looking for the other girls. ‘I really mean it’, stammered Alani. ‘Really’. The tears starting in her eyes seemed to convince the woman, although she still looked rather confused. ‘Well’, she said. ‘Thank you, I suppose. It’s good of you to apologise’. When Alani remained silent, she gave her a little nod, then said, ‘Well, um. Don’t do it again. Goodbye’, and started to close the door.
It was Alani’s turn for confusion. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, surely? As the door was almost closed, in panic, she blurted out, ‘So, will you lift the curse, then? Please!’. The door swung open again, and the woman regarded her angrily. ‘So this is just a wind-up after all, is it?’, she demanded. Now the words tumbled out in a flood, as Alani told the whole story of the past weeks, in odd, disjointed fragments, sobbing in big gulps.
The next thing she knew, she was seated in the living room, a cosy space with comfortable chairs, a wooden mantelpiece surrounding an unlit fire, and a shelf full of framed photographs and flowers. Pulling little bits of skin off her fingers in agitation and dropping them on the rug, while the woman got her a glass of water from the kitchen. She put this down on the table in front of Alani, then settled into a chair opposite her, unzipping her coat. Alani was surprised to see that she was dressed in a suit that, if not fashionable, was actually quite smart. She hovered on the edge of feeling utterly embarrassed, and kept repeating to herself that she hadn’t been imagining things. It had really happened. The photo, the flies in her sandwich, her marks at school…
Looking at her steadily, the woman said. ‘I’m sorry for what I said to you. It was a stupid, childish thing to do. You hurt me, and I wanted to hurt you back. But I’m an adult, I shouldn’t have let myself get so riled by a bunch of silly teenagers’. Looking to one side, she added, almost inaudibly, a hitch in her voice, ‘It had just been a really, really bad day’. Clearing her throat, she turned back, and said, briskly, ‘But I can assure you I didn’t actually curse you. Surely you don’t believe in such things? At your age?’. Alani felt worse than ever, and wanted to stand up and run out of the house. But the memory of the terrors of the last days still lingered. ‘But I kept failing everything’, she said, obstinately. ‘And that photo, it kept coming back, and then with those creepy eyes…’. ‘Never failed a test before?’, asked the woman. ‘Well, yes…’. ‘And have you been concentrating on your schoolwork recently?’. No, thought Alani, slowly, she hadn’t. She had been far too upset. As if she could read her thoughts, the woman nodded. ‘And as for the rest of it… Why don’t you look on your phone, google something like ‘photo filter’ and ‘demon’, or ‘devil’, or ‘scary’.’ Fishing out her phone, Alani did as she was told, and her heart sank as the screen filled with pictures with very similar effects to the one she had seen. Underneath her feeling of humiliation, anger began to seethe. ‘But, who –?’. ‘Who do you know who can get at your phone, at your bag, who might have a bit of a habit of being mean?’. The woman’s lips twisted wryly as she asked this question.
Alani clenched her hands into fists. The anger was swelling into a blazing fury. Those bitches, she thought. I’ll, I’ll… I’ll do… What? What could she do? A familiar feeling of uselessness swept over her, extinguishing the fire in a black coldness. Aloud, she repeated, in defeat, ‘What can I do?’. She had only been speaking her thoughts, but the woman, thinking that the question was directed at her, looked startled. ‘How should I know? I don’t know your friends.’. She mused, ’You could tell a teacher, and they might do something.’ She sighed, ‘Although they don’t often seem to, in cases like these. You could try to get back at your friends, of course. But then they’ll just do something nasty back to you, and it’ll only get worse and worse. You could try telling them how much they’ve hurt you.’ She sighed again. ‘But I doubt they’d be willing to admit how cruel they’ve been and say sorry. That’s the sort of thing that only happens on TV. They’re probably far too scared to ever let someone through their armour that way’.
Alani lifted her head. ‘Scared?’, she repeated, in disbelief. Amy and Jasmine breezed through life with easy self-confidence. Angry teachers, scolding parents, boys shouting insults – it all just bounced off them. The woman laughed. ‘Of course they are. All teenagers are terrified of not fitting in. A lot of adults, actually, too. But it’s worst when you’re a teenager. When someone’s being nasty, it’s usually because they’re scared. Scared that they aren’t good enough, scared that no one likes them.’ She looked directly into Alani’s face. ‘Scared that they’ll be the ones picked on if they don’t pick on someone else…’. Alani dropped her gaze, ashamed. ‘Always remember, all those people who look like they’re so confident, like they’re better than anyone else – inside, they’re scared stiff. Too scared to show anyone their real self. That’s what I used to tell my daughters’.
Tears glistened suddenly in her eyes, as she looked to one side again. Following her gaze this time, Alani saw the photos that crowded the shelf. In them, two happy little girls appeared, at various ages. Cuddling with the woman on a sofa. Riding on her shoulders at the beach. Baking biscuits together, mouths sticky with melted chocolate. It occurred to Alani that there were a lot of photos, and that there were candles in front of them, arranged almost like a shrine. An uneasy sense of compassion filled her as she recalled that the woman had said ‘used to’ when talking about her daughters, and she began to suspect that when she had said ‘a really bad day’, it had been the understatement of the century. She felt even worse for having made fun of a grieving mother, and quickly looked away from the photos. The woman stood up. ‘There’s nothing more I can do. It’s time for you to go. And time for me to go, too. I’ve lingered too long already’.
Standing outside on the street, Alani felt drained. Her fear had gone; the anger that followed it had gone, too, and she was simply exhausted. She’d think about what to do about Amy and Jasmine later. She couldn’t credit what the woman had said, that her popular, attractive, lively friends could ever be scared. But somehow, just the thought of it, even though she couldn’t believe it, made her feel lighter inside, as if a leaden weight had disappeared from her stomach. And she felt a small spark of pride, that even though she’d been dumb enough to fall for her friends’ pranks, still she had come here all by herself and found out the truth. Thinking back, it must have been so easy for them to go in her bag while she was in the loo, or getting changed at gym, to meddle with her phone or her lunch. They always kept an eye on each other’s bags, and they knew each other’s passwords. I trusted them, she thought. But at least she hadn’t trusted them with what she was going to do today. Imagine that, she thought, they’d probably have been hiding behind the hedge, ready for a good laugh.
Suddenly, she realised that she had been standing there on the street for a while. Nice as the woman had turned out to be, she didn’t really fancy being there when she came out. It was odd, in fact, that she hadn’t left yet, when she had been in such a hurry to go. The truth started to dawn, and she turned to look properly at the pictures on the shelf, visible through the window. At the single portrait photo at one end, with the bouquet of flowers next to it, that she hadn’t noticed before in her agitation. The now-familiar face, here transformed by a warm smile and laughing eyes. As in a trance, she reached for her phone and opened the link where she’d found the address, this time reading it properly. An obituary, for a loving wife and mother, knocked down by a lorry while rushing to catch the morning train. Chills ran down her spine as she read the date of the accident – that fateful day that she had taken the photo.
A forgiving ghost was infinitely preferable to a vengeful demon, and yet-. Although it was a warm spring day, Alani couldn’t stop shivering.