“Follow me,” she said. Lifting the corner of her blue dress, she turned around and started down the hall. I glanced up at Greg who was floating beside me.

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said. He didn’t sound convincing.

Taking a deep breath, I followed her through a few passageways, and then up a flight of stairs. At the top of the stairs were a pair of thick wooden doors and Melissa pulled out a wad of keys and unlocked them. I’d never been in this corner of the castle before. As she closed the doors behind us, I looked around in surprise. This almost looked like a modern living room. There was even a T.V. Maybe this was where she and Allan lived.

Walking through the living area, she led me to another door and opened it. Inside, I could see an office space. She gestured me through the door.

“Please take a seat,” she said as she crossed the room and sat down at the large desk.

Trying to hide how nervous I was, I quickly took a seat and looked around. This office was like a strange mish-mash of modern and medieval. The desk looked like an antique, but the laptop sitting on it certainly wasn’t. The walls were lined with bookshelves that contained dusty books and other odds and ends. I was filled with a strange sense of déjà vu because a lot of the stuff, like the crystals and incense, reminded me of The Black Cat shop I had visited at the beginning of the summer. As Melissa settled into her seat, I could see how much she matched her surroundings. She would have fit right in running a Wiccan shop.

“So where’s Allan?” I asked, hoping I sounded nonchalant. I wished he was here. If he was here, he might be able to plead in my defense. She probably thought he and I were messing around, but maybe he could convince her that this really was an honest mistake.

“I have him on clean-up duty in the stables,” she said dryly. “That’s what he gets for stealing my car.”

My hope deflated. I might as well start packing my bags.

Melissa leaned forward on the desk, her bracelets jingling together as she clasped her hands. “How do you like working here Jessica?” she asked with a tight smile.

“I like it a lot,” I said in a rush. “In fact, I really, really like it and I would do anything to keep this job. I’m so sorry about this morning. Honestly, it was a complete accident and I swear I’ll never be late again—”

“Jessica!” she said, raising her hands, “Jessica, slow down, I’m not going to fire you.”

“Oh,” I whispered, shifting in my seat. My heart was beating fast. “That’s, uh, that’s good.”

She gave me a weak smile, but then she shook her head. “I—I guess I should just get to the point. This is all a bit unusual, but I have to know.” Her gaze grew solemn. “How much do you know about my son?”

The question caught me off-guard. Was she asking if I knew about Allan seeing ghosts, or if I knew that the ghost stuff was real? “Um,” I began, my mind racing, “I know that he doesn’t bleach his hair white.” Allan had mentioned that his white hair was tied to his ability to see ghosts. If his mom knew about that, then maybe she’d pick up on the hint.

Melissa nodded. “So you’re aware that he claims he can see ghosts?”

“Yes,” I whispered, my guard up.

She leaned forward. “Do you believe him?”

I pursed my lips, weighing my options in my mind. Should I tell the truth? Would she think I was crazy too, or did she know? I took a deep breath. “I do,” I said at last.

She nodded again as she settled back in her seat. “Good,” she said, “I was beginning to lose hope that he’d ever find someone to confide in.”

My eyes widened. “So you believe him too?” I asked.

“It took me a long time,” she murmured, “far too long, but finally, I believed him.” She looked up. “How did you get him to tell you?”

I shrugged, feeling super awkward. “Uh, yeah, it was kind of an accident. I was being haunted and he helped me out. It sort of just went from there.”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “So you’ve dealt with a ghost firsthand?”

I shared a glanced with Greg who was still standing beside me. “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

She smiled. “No wonder he was able to open up to you.” Her smile faded somewhat. “Now, for the real reason I needed to talk to you Jessica.”

I felt a thrill of worry. I thought we’d almost wrapped this up, ending as unlikely friends. I was wrong.

“I know this isn’t my place,” she began, “and maybe it would be better if I just kept my mouth shut, but I just—there’s something you should know about Allan if you’re going to continue being around him.”

She took a deep breath. “I know he would probably never tell you this, and if he ever did, I wouldn’t want you to react badly.” She stared down at the top of the desk. “If this was a harmless secret, I’d just let it be, but I’ve got to consider your safety. If you’re going to be involved with my son, I’d like you to know just who you’re involved with.” Her eyes met mine. “What has Allan told you about his life?”

My heart was starting to beat fast again. Was Allan dangerous somehow? “He’s told me that he’s been in and out of hospitals a lot. That’s about it.”

Melissa nodded. “The past three years have been better,” she said. “He hasn’t had any relapses, any suicidal tendencies. I don’t want to tell you all this and scare you away, because he really has been doing so well. But before that, it was hard.” She stared down at her desk. “I really am so ashamed that I didn’t believe him sooner. I think that if I had, he might have been doing well for a lot more than three years.”

She glanced up at me. “It’s just a lot to swallow. I always thought I was someone who was open-minded about that sort of stuff, spirits and the afterlife and what not. But then I was actually confronted with it and I crumbled. Doctors were telling me that my son was insane while he was adamant that the things he was seeing were real. I tried talking to him about it, but every time we talked my mind was just reeling, trying to figure out what was causing this, or how it could be fixed. It wasn’t until he was fifteen that I finally started to really listen to him, and even then, it was a long time before I believed him.”

Melissa looked around the room, as if she didn’t know where to rest her eyes. “And you know,” she whispered, “a part of me didn’t want to believe him, because I was afraid of him.” She returned her gaze to me. “Has Allan ever told you why he can see the dead?”

My hands fidgeted with the armrests of my chair. “He’s been pretty vague about that. He’s just said that he was possessed by a really bad spirit.”

Melissa laughed. “That’s an understatement!” she said. She leaned back in her chair, resting her hands in her lap. “As you know,” she began, “I’m a bit obsessed with old things. While Allan was still a little boy, my husband and I were nearing the end of finishing the insane project of building a castle. We were getting it furnished, but I still felt that it lacked an air of authenticity, so while my husband kept things under control here, I took Allan with me to visit all sorts of antique shops.”

“I remember there was one place we went to, when Allan was about eight or nine. I was looking around, getting a few things, when I came across this beautiful big ceramic bowl. The owner of the shop couldn’t tell me how old it was, but to me it just looked ancient, with all these intricate designs and symbols running down the sides. After I bought it, Allan seemed to take a real liking to it, but I didn’t think much about it at the time.”

I took a shallow breath as Melissa talked. Allan had said that I wasn’t the first person to be haunted by something his mother bought.

“When our trip was done, the two of us returned to the castle and for a few weeks, everything was fine.” She furrowed her eyebrows. “But then I noticed Allan acting odd. He would talk endlessly about a new friend he had, a lady who lived in the cauldron. I asked him to describe her to me one day, and he told me that she was beautiful, with very dark skin and funny clothes. I figured he’d seen something on T.V. and his imagination had just run wild. I didn’t worry about it too much.” She pursed her lips before continuing.

“Things got worse after that. Allan started acting out, screaming and hitting and acting terrible. Any time we tried to punish him for it, he’d claim that the woman in the cauldron made him do it. I told him not to blame his made up friends for the things he was doing, but that would just make him start crying.”

I leaned forward in my seat. Melissa’s face had grown pale, though her voice remained steady. “I would find him sitting outside, tearing legs off of insects and watching them die. When I told him not to do that, he would just giggle. One day, I found him holding a live bird and he was pulling out the feathers, one by one.”

I felt sick as I imagined it. Allan, sad and hurting as he was, wouldn’t deliberately bring pain to anything. It just didn’t sound like him.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Melissa murmured. “I was terrified by the change I saw overcoming him. In the course of a few weeks he went from the sweetest, happiest little boy in the world, to something I was afraid of.” She closed her eyes. I could see a tear streak down her face.

“I went into his room one afternoon,” she whispered, her voice barely audible, “and I saw him sitting in the middle of the floor, with that ceramic cauldron placed right in front of him. The bottom of the bowl was filled with blood and around Allan were the strange symbols of the cauldron, written in blood.” Her voice started to shake but she cleared her throat and continued. “At first I didn’t realize where the blood had come from. I was afraid he’d killed an animal. But then I saw that he was holding a knife in his tiny hands and I saw that my baby had cut into his own arm.”

She shook her head, fighting to remain composed. I was frozen in place. This was sickening. When Allan told me that he’d been haunted by something awful, I’d had no idea what to imagine. I figured it would be like Greg haunting me but worse, with flickering lights and scary noises. I had no idea the ghost physically hurt him.

“I panicked,” she said after a moment. Her voice sounded numb. “I grabbed him and I rushed him to the hospital. As they were stitching him back up, I asked the doctors what I should do, who I should see. They gave me the name of a psychiatrist and they assured me that the wound was not as terrible as it looked. As we drove back here, I tried asking Allan why he’d done this. His only response was that the voice in his head told him to.” Her fingers tapped against the desk. “I don’t need to tell you how truly horrified I was by all of this. I had a son who was a danger to himself and I didn’t know what to do.”

She sat very still, her tense face staring at the desktop in front of her. I was surprised at how calmly she was telling me everything. It was like she wasn’t letting herself feel at all, for fear she might not be able to get through it.

“We returned home that night. My husband and I cleaned up Allan’s room, and I hid the cauldron. Then we went to sleep.” Her voice suddenly dropped to a whisper, as if what she had to say next shouldn’t even be uttered aloud. I leaned forward even further, so that I could catch her words.

“I’m a light sleeper,” she murmured. “In the middle of the night, I could hear Allan come into our room. I thought he might just climb in bed with us, but I heard his footsteps stop right next to me.” Her lips pressed together in a tight, thin line before she spoke again. “I don’t remember if he said something then, or just made a noise, but for whatever reason, I opened my eyes.”

I realized that I’d stopped breathing but somehow, I couldn’t make myself take a breath.

“I saw my son,” she said, her voice completely detached, “I saw my little boy standing above me. Only, when I looked into his eyes, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t my son at all. He was—” She shook her head and took a deep breath. “He was holding a long kitchen knife—” She broke off again, raising her hand to her neck.

Silence stretched between us for a long moment. Her voice was barely audible when she began again. “He tried to kill us that night Jessica,” she whispered. “My husband stopped him in time, but that doesn’t change what he tried to do.”

Silence filled the office again. My mind was reeling as I tried to process it all. This story couldn’t be real. This couldn’t really have been a part of Allan’s childhood.

“We took him back to the hospital after that,” Melissa said at last. “We didn’t know what else to do. He was there for a long time, not getting any better. The doctors told me that I had a psychopath for a son and that he’d be that way for the rest of his life.” She laid her hands over her chest. “That broke my heart to hear, and for a long time, it seemed that the doctors were right. Allan wasn’t getting any better. He wasn’t eating, he got so pale, and his brown hair started falling out. I felt entirely helpless as I watched my little boy slowly fade away.”

I bit my lip as I listened. So that was it. That was what Allan didn’t want to tell me.

Melissa heaved a sigh. “After a couple of months, he finally started to get better. I don’t know how or why the change came over him, but he started to act like himself again. My husband and I were so relieved.” She gave me a helpless smile. “The relief was short lived. It was soon after that when Allan started telling us about the people he saw in the hospital, people he claimed were dead. And even though he was acting more like himself, he was still so pale and weak, and when his hair started growing back in, it was white.” She took a steadying breath.

“I suppose you pretty much know the rest. Allan kept telling us that he was seeing ghosts, my husband and I didn’t believe him, and as a result he fell into a deep depression. My husband left early on. For the next decade it was just me and Allan, dealing with the constant cycle of hospitals. Allan would be doing well, then he’d relapse and try to commit suicide.” She shook her head. “It’s torture to watch your child go through that.”

“Once I finally told Allan that I believed him, he started to make a real, noticeable difference for the better. Since then, I’ve talked to him about that night when he was nine and he told me everything.” She smiled again. “It broke my heart to hear him tell me what he went through, but it was such a relief too. For years I’d been afraid of my son, afraid that there was some evil side to him, but I was completely wrong.”

I glanced down at my hands, a feeling of guilt washing over me. This was why Allan had told me over and over how dangerous possession was. He didn’t want anything like that happening to me, and yet, I’d brushed off his warnings. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was, to only be haunted by Greg. He was obnoxious, sure, but he was a far cry from evil.

Melissa glanced at me. “I don’t believe my son is dangerous,” she said, “I just wanted you to know what he’s been through. Honestly, I think a healthy relationship would be good for him now, but only if he can trust that person.” Her hands folded on the desk. “If you think that this is too much, then that’s perfectly understandable. I just want you to know what you are getting yourself into, if you decide to pursue a relationship with my son.”

I took a deep breath, looking anywhere else in the room but at her. This was a weird conversation to have with anyone’s mom, but I guess I could see where she was coming from. If Allan ever did work up the courage to tell me this, he’d probably be terrified of my reaction. At least now I had some time to process it. And boy, was it a lot to process.

“I think that everyone has stuff that they’re afraid to tell anyone else,” I said, “because they don’t want the other person to think less of them.” I shrugged. “Allan’s a good person. Hearing all of this doesn’t change the way I view him, but it does help me understand him better, so, thank you.”

Melissa smiled at me. “You have no idea what it means to me to hear you say that,” she said. Taking a deep breath, she stood up. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to take up so much of your time. I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to dinner.”

I stood up as well, unsure of what to do with myself. “It’s, uh, it’s all good,” I said. I wondered if I should shake her hand, or say goodbye, but instead I just turned around and headed out the door. As I walked back into the castle’s main hallway, I realized that I wasn’t hungry anymore. Numbly, I headed back to my room.

How was someone supposed to work through an information dump like that? As I reached my room, I pulled open the door and stepped inside. It was too much. It was impossible! Sitting down on my bed, I stared at the pile of junk in front of me. My mind was refusing to think.

“That explains it all.”

I glanced up as Greg strode through the closed door. “You heard everything?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said. “It makes sense now, why Allan has always felt off to me. Being possessed by something so devilish would leave darkness in anyone.”

“I can’t comprehend it,” I murmured. “He was just a little kid. That ghost pretty much ruined his whole life.” I glanced up to meet Greg’s gaze. “Thank you,” I said, “thank you a hundred times over for just being annoying. I could have had it a lot worse.”

Greg let out a laugh then, a robust, full-bodied laugh. “Never would I have thought to hear such words, but you are welcome!”

I smiled too, but it soon faded when I thought about what Melissa had said. Allan had confided in me a lot last night, but what his mom had just told me was darker, heavier. It wasn’t something I could just ignore. It made me worried too, of course, to develop feelings for someone who was, in many ways, a time bomb. What if Allan relapsed again? What if we were in a relationship and he still hated himself? What if he became suicidal? Could I bear that, after what happened to my mother? I buried my head in my hands. Allan didn’t need someone who was going to flake out. He needed someone who would try their hardest to support him.

“Greg,” I whispered, “I think I still like Allan.”

He looked at me with wide eyes. “Even after hearing all that? He tried to murder his parents.”

“That wasn’t him,” I countered. “He got possessed because he was too trusting. I know so much about him now, and I don’t want to betray that trust. The past happened, that’s true, but he’s worked so hard for a future. I’ve never seen someone who’s been through so much still try to be happy.”

“Happy?” retorted Greg. “I’ve seen him irate at best.”

“That’s because you’re a ghost,” I said with a laugh, “and I think we’ve established that he doesn’t like those very much.” I looked down. “But who am I kidding? I don’t even know if he feels the same way I do. I’m letting myself get carried away.”

Greg stared at me, a warm smile on his bearded face. “It’s alright to get carried away at times,” he murmured. “When you love someone, getting carried away is the best part.” He looked away, his smile fading. “Enjoy it, before reality comes knocking.” And with that, he was gone.