Part

On a sleepless night He lay fidgeting, at His nightshirt’s collar. A button had popped out, he thought. It must have fallen under the bed,but He was unsure where.
Interrupting His thoughts was the patter of rushed steps above Him. 

They were small and little, like a child’s. It reminded Him of the one time He was able to stay at a friend’s house. They had a large family in spite of a little house. With little children that refused to settle down for a minute as they clattered heavily on the floorboards as they scared each other with scary stories. He had been one of those children once. Not that He remembered any of their faces.
But He was at home in the family villa—-alone. No children have lived in this house for over ten years. And surely, Mother wasn’t running around. 

He walked upstairs tracing, guided by the thin threads that hung frayed and loose from the walls. He looked down into the darkness of the hall and found nothing. But from the blackness, He heard behind him, the breathing of someone excited—anticipating .

He turned and surely enough there was a ghost. 

Small and frail, she smiled at Him with plucked out eyes, tangled cobweb hair spilling over a featureless shift.
He looked over her shoulder, beyond her, through her. He turned, his face mangled with a forced obliviousness. He did not see her, he told himself in his head. But she seemed to have heard. 

A step forward to follow. A soft patter of steps behind Him.
He kept a steady pace, tracing the thread along the walls. But steady as His feet were, His hands trembled at every sound that arose behind him–it stepped ever so slightly out of sync with him, as though making sure He just knew it was there.  

Soon the threads which wrapped the house were all shaking, alerting whatever spiders and other lurking things to his predicament. 

He walked through the first door He saw, quickly closing it behind him in what He hoped seemed natural. By all means, the ghost could probably just walk right through. But He kept His cool. He did not see the ghost, He thought to himself. No, there was just darkness and the wind making all that ruckus on the floor. All that heavy ruckus was wind and dust. 

And to his surprise and fortune, nothing came through the door. He was clever enough not to tempt fate, not daring to open up the door again. But still, nothing came through. The night was still at least in the moment. 

He took a breath to calm down and immediately started choking on it—there was a hand coming up from the drain.

The morning was a fitful bliss after an exhausting night. As soon as the sun came up, He fumbled the numbers on his telephone, sending a worried message down the line. 

About an hour later, His best friend arrived at the old villa. Friend felt very old stepping out of his car and onto the threshold. It was different from how Friend remembered it, perhaps because it was the same as it was–nothing had been moved in the past decade or so. All untouched saved by the dust and the growing threads that wrapped the house in a tangle. It’s the type of place he would tell his daughter to avoid if he didn’t know the owner. And even then… Friend shook his head.

Friend found the front door unlocked and walked in, following a single shivering thread into the kitchen, finding Him pale as a sheet with a cup of steaming coffee turning the skin red on His hands. His eyes were dark from the good five hours He spent stiffly awaiting the morning light, avoiding the grasping hand from the drain. 

“Sounds like you have a ghost problem.” said Friend after His long story.  

“I didn’t call you here just for you to tell me old news.” He burst out. “Tell me how to get rid of them.” He was on his knees, pulling at his friend’s leg.

“Do you really?” asked Friend, scratching at his beard.  

He cocked His head in confusion and disbelief. “I am terrified out of my mind. Of course I want them out of here.”  

“You seem awfully lonely over here,” said his friend.

“I am not lonely” He said, angrily. “A lonely person wouldn’t have a Friend over for coffee.”

“You haven’t offered me coffee yet.”

His tired face scrunched up, annoyed.

“What will you have?” He grumbled. 

“Black, two sugars please.” 

He got up indignantly. Angrily muttering to Himself as He pulled a string to grab a coffee cup, the cup flying from the cupboard into His hand. He did the same to the coffee pot and the sugar.
“For your information-” He said, aggressively stirring the sugar in “- I have my mother.” 

He gestured to a chair at the end of the kitchen counter. 

There was a black spool of thread where his mother ought to be sitting. He scratched his head in confusion.

“When was the last time you saw her?” asked Friend.

“I-” He started. “That’s not the point!” He pushed the coffee into Friend's chest.“I want to 

get rid of these ghosts, and I want to get rid of them…soon. Preferably now. Or better yet, right this second. You always knew the stories to get rid of them”

“And also I told all of them to you.” 

“Well…I forgot.”

“What else have you forgotten?” asked Friend. 

He looked away, seemingly ready to pull his hair out. 

 “Alright alright,” said his friend, pulling up a chair. He took a long swig of the slightly 

sweet coffee. It tasted watery and musty. Friend sighed a bitter breath. Friend could have been anywhere else right now. Ideally with his daughter, who had grown terribly fond of wandering around at night. Friend thought for a moment what scary things he could tell her. Perhaps he could tell this story to her.
“What do you know about ghosts?” Friend asked.
“They’re  scary. And they’re dead.” He said,
“They’re so much more than that.” The chair tumbled over as he got up, caught by its own strings. “They’re memories.” 

“You don’t have to be dead to be a ghost.” continued Friend.  “Did you know that? You

just had to have died. Somehow, someway.” 

“What’s the how?” He asked, “What’s the way?” 

“I like to think we die a little every day: A bit of hair falls off. We clip off our nails. We scratch at our skin. We cry and we bleed. And we heal. All the while leaving things behind—those are the ghosts.”
“That still doesn’t help my situation.”
“Doesn’t it?” 

“No.” 

“Well, I’ve done all I can.” said his best friend, grimacing as he took another sip of terrible coffee. “You ought to get new grounds.”
He went over to pour it down the sink, which seemed to happily hum as it sailed into the

drain.

“At least someone enjoys this stuff,” said Friend. 

.
That night, He found himself wondering about His mother. Friend had left him rather

quickly, leaving him with only thoughts in the dark. He strolled through the hollow house

carefully, looking past corners, listening. But alas, there were no ghosts. There was nothing at all save for the web of tangled threads.
He traced the countless strings with His finger. Absent-mindedly, he plucked one, sending a single clear note ringing through the empty house. He doesn’t quite remember where they all lead. He doesn’t quite remember much of anything. But the note reminded him of his mother’s voice. 

She used to hum when she held him. 

“Silly boy, have you lost your buttons again?” His mother had said, doting on him, the pouting child. She had put him on her lap

“I haven’t lost them.” he said, in his high little voice. “I’ve only-”
“‘-forgotten. Yes, I know, sweetheart.” she said, taking a needle to darn a new button on.
“I swear if it weren’t just sewn to you, all your things would be gone with the wind. Why, I might just have to sew your head on tight, since you lose it so much.”

He did not remember that story. Only that the things were on threads, and that if he

followed each line, He’d find its end. 

A sink was turned, and he rushed into the bathroom. But His mother was nowhere to be found. Just a tub in the bathroom of a house where he thought he saw a ghost. 

The strings all seemed to lead down the drain. Instead of pulling, he decided to politely knock on the tiles by its entrance.
All at once, the strings began to tighten, shivering as they sang a clear harmonious tune. Coming from the depths of that dark hole, a single arm emerged. Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t really much of an arm at all. It was just a hodgepodge of hair and blood and flesh mixed with bits of plastic, and all sorts of bits and bobs one might accidentally drop down a drain pipe.
It stretched out its hand towards Him. 

He would have normally run at this point. But He seemed to have forgotten fear. Instead something else was returned. 

Nestled in what ought to have been its palm was a single black button. 

Though hesitant, He took it.

 Attached to the little button was a single loose string, pulling away with the arm. He thought about finding a way to cut it at first. Perhaps He could find himself a pair of scissors. But a little screaming part inside of his empty brain kept his hands going. 

“I’m going to find you.” He whispered, yanking the thread. 

As He did, a loud creaking began filling the house. At first, it was just dust, but soon all manner of things came tumbling down all about the

house: Chairs, cups and doors. 

"I'm going to remember your faces, and we can live here together."

Next came the roof and the walls, breaking down and crumbling all about him.

"It'll be nice.  I can buy us new coffee."
He just kept on pulling, in the space where there once was a house, where there might have been a family villa.
And as the string neared its end, having unraveled His shoes and His clothes, there was still just a bit sticking out of His little pinky toe. He had unraveled maybe about half of His toe at that point—just where the nail came right out.
That’s when He saw her, face looming out of the dust cloud: the ghost.  Small and frail, she did not smile at him this time. Her face was somber and almost fearful, framed by her long hair and dirty shift, she looked almost alive.
That almost comforted Him.

“Could you help me with this?” He asked, offering her the string.

 “I don’t think this is something I can do by myself. Maybe you can find them for me?”
Wordlessly, she nodded. Taking the string and pulling as hard as her little arms could. And she could see His face hurting each time she pulled. Eyes widening each time as something returned and was lost just as quickly. 

"Don't stop pulling, " He said, 'I think I'm starting to remember"  

“What is it?” the ghost asked, pulling as quickly as she could. 

A smile crept onto His face only for them to unravel. 

“They were already gone.” He said, as the thread of even his words were pulled apart.

Alone now, in the dusty nowhere the ghost began to cry.
There were footsteps again, loud and heavy, coming up from behind her. She was swept up in strong arms. 

“Hey there, sweetheart,” said her father. “Is this where you’ve been wandering to at night? I told you not to bother with these sorts of places. ”
She held him tightly, crying into his shirt.
He looked around at the dust and debris. It would get thrown out by the wind or turn to soil in the rain. 

“I used to live here, you know?” said her father. “But when your grandma died, I left it to-I left it to my friend.” 

She buried her sobbing face deeper into his chest.
“I suppose you don’t need an old man’s stories,” said her Father.“ Why don’t you tell me the story when we get home.”
He walked her the whole way, sneezing every now and then from the dust. When they got to the doorstep of their little house, she was no longer crying, instead she seemed to be fidgeting with his sleeve.
“What have you got there, sweetie?” he asked 

She showed him a bit of loose string hanging from his shirt. 

“Ah.”

He took the string, wrapping it once, twice around his finger. He pinched one end to keep it from getting loose and holding the other end, he severed it by running it along his canine.

“There.” he said, kissing her forehead. “Now, we can just forget about that.”