She heard the boy on three separate occasions. A faint giggle, a question, and a statement. In that order. She thought he may have said, “Come look, Mommy.”
It was perhaps a week after she heard the boy’s statement that Annabelle first saw him. He was maybe four. He had straight, light brown hair in a haircut that was common for a boy his age. He wore a collarless shirt and pants the likes of which Annabelle had never seen. The boy’s overall appearance was alien to her.
The boy ran down the main hallway, the polished wooden floor reflecting the eerie image of the child charging towards Annabelle. Her voice caught in her throat, and she threw her hands in front of her to stop the boy. She closed her eyes in anticipation of a collision. It never came. She opened her eyes, and the hall was empty of everything except the paintings that had always hung on crimson walls.
She began to move through the house to find the boy, but could not. She sat down in defeat at the oak table in the formal dining room of the house, listening to the silence.
Weeks passed without further incident. She began to regain normalcy in her thoughts, dismissing that this spectral boy was haunting her.
Annabelle was walking down the stairs on a cool day and she began to feel a sharp tingle running down the length of her spine. A giggle echoed up the stairway towards her. She paused, waiting breathlessly, but nothing followed. She took another step and again came the faint child-like laughter.
Taking the steps as fast as she dared, Annabelle fled to the first floor and rounded the corner into the long hallway. The boy was standing at the end of the hall. His smile faded and the boy screamed. The boy was before her as a diaphanous delusion.
“Who are you?” she croaked.
“Mommy!” the boy screamed. His voice was muffled, as though passing through a thick curtain.
“Wait,” Annabelle plead, moving forward.
He stared at her, but then looked up, some unknown entity taking his attention from Annabelle. To her total discomfit, the boy began to lift into the air, and with spectral dispersion, was gone.
Annabelle next saw the boy years later. She didn’t remember time passing so fast, but the boy was clearly older. He was maybe eight, and had gained some weight. She saw him in one of the bedrooms, sitting on the side of the bed, staring at a blank wall.
The boy was not solid, but as clear to her as a cloud in the sky. And like a cloud, he was there but out of her reach.
“Hello?” Annabelle said.
The boy did not move. He sat surveying a vast space of nothingness.
“Hello. Can you hear me?”
The boy remained still, a statuesque specter. She moved around and saw his face, a distant but halcyon look of bemusement.
She focused her attention on him, cleared her throat and demanded, “Boy! What are you doing here?”
At last he moved. The boy turned, glanced around the room before bringing his eyes back, and seemed to see her for the first time. He panicked, scrambling from the bed shrieking.
The boy moved shortly after that. Annabelle learned to keep her distance from then on, walking hallways when she knew the living would not interrupt her.