Ellen woke up hearing a scream and footsteps. Someone was certainly outside the room. But who could it be, in the middle of the night? The only other person in the house was a distant relative of Ellen's, an old woman whom Ellen called Aunt Melissa. She herself was a horror, like her house and the legends about it. She always smiled, showing all of her rotten, brown teeth, her face bony like a skull's. And she was too old to scream that loud; she could only croak like a toad. Moreover, she preferred to sleep at night.
Ellen switched on the light and grabbed a torch. She had always known that something wrong was going on in the mansion; food and water went missing every day and she heard footsteps at night. Stories, or rather, rumors spread among the rest of the family that Aunt Melissa's grandson had disappeared into the house shortly after the death of his parents. For some reason, the boy was feared by everyone and it seemed that Aunt Melissa had found him lying dead in the house; the cause remained unknown. People feared Aunt Melissa as well; perhaps by her looks, or by the stories about her. Maybe that was why she lived in a remote place. But Ellen knew that she had decided to get in touch with her family again, and had invited Ellen to stay at her house for a few days. Despite Ellen's protests, she was forced to go, for her parents thought it would be wrong to not accept her invitation.
But now, Ellen had decided against coming back to the mansion again. She mustered all her courage and walked to the door. She opened it with a creek. Ellen peeped out and shone her torch at the corridors- all clear. She was prepared to go back to shut the door and go back to sleep when….
"BOOO!" someone howled. Ellen turned and flashed her torch and found a ghost there. A typical ghost, a prankster covered from head to toe in a white cloth. Though the voice hadn't come from the ghost; it was just not the right direction. Ellen laughed.
"You don't scare me," she said, her hand eagerly reaching out to take off the cloth and reveal the identity of the culprit. But when she did, something unexpected happened. Her hand passed right through the ghost, as though it was made of air. Her face turned white. No, it couldn't be a real ghost.
Then she heard laughter; not from the ghost but from a boy standing next to her. She was so scared that she hadn't noticed him. He must have been a little older than she was, and taller too.
"Well, it's my turn to laugh." He looked at Ellen, who was still staring at the ghost in confusion. "That is a hologram. And in case you're wondering who screamed, it was me."
Ellen now stared at him. She couldn't help relating the boy with the stories she had heard. "Who are you?" she asked, though she already knew the answer.
"I am the person you think I am."
"Then I must be dreaming, or you must be a ghost."
"Neither is true. I am real. You must be Ellen." He guessed.
"Right." She nodded. "How are you here? I thought you were dead!"
"I think you'll figure that out yourself." He sighed. "I was bored. It's been long since I scared someone. I last scared …..Well, you'll figure out that too. And you'll have your riddles solved."
Ellen groaned. She couldn't understand a thing of what the boy was telling her.
"The person I last scared was much more scared than you were when I showed him one of my holograms. He fled from the house."
What was he blabbering? She wanted to ask him questions, but she knew that they would be answered with even more questions, which she didn't want to hear.
"You seem to know a lot about holograms." Ellen said.
"I do. I am an expert with holograms. I just have the unfortunate talent to create illusions…."
Unfortunate? Ellen had wished all her life to have a talent like that, and now here was a person who thought it was unfortunate. She watched as the boy walked up the stairs to the third floor of the mansion, where she was banned from going.
She decided talk to Aunt Melissa about it during breakfast the following day.
"What's in the third floor?" She asked casually.
"Nothing you need to know about." Aunt Melissa answered.
It was no point beating around the bush. She had to come straight to the topic.
"I think I saw the boy yesterday."
"Which boy?" Aunt Melissa asked, not paying much attention to her.
"Your grandson. He even spoke to me."
"Listen to me carefully now." Aunt Melissa said. "He could make holograms. Don't you think that's not ordinary? That is why he was feared. And because I was his grandmother, so was I. Which is why I am glad he's gone. And why we shouldn't continue this conversation."
Ellen paused to think. If things were that way, she wouldn't have wanted the talent, with people fearing her all the time. She would have wanted to disappear….
"But I did see him." Ellen repeated.
"I told you he made holograms. They still exist. I think I might have seen one or two illusions before in this house. Or perhaps you were dreaming. Well, I am sure he is dead. I even hired a man from the town to have him buried after I found him dead in a room in the third floor. I still don't know how he died, but I don't want to know."
So that must be why nobody went to the third floor.
"You saw him being buried?" Ellen asked.
"I was in the town. Though, when I returned, the man wasn't here. But the dead body was gone too, so I think he buried the boy somewhere."
Then it struck Ellen.
'I found him dead in the room,' Aunt Melissa had said. The dead body must have been a hologram. But the burial….Ellen knew that holograms couldn't be buried. Unless the man had attempted and found that it was a hologram and fled. This perfectly matched with what the boy had said, 'He fled from the house,' the person the boy had been talking about must have been the man Aunt Melissa hired. That solved it. But that meant….
That meant he faked his death.
"He's still here," she whispered to herself, "Right in this house."