We found a boy in our new house, curled up half in the chimney and half in a hole that led into the attic. I wasn't supposed to look when they were removing him but I managed to catch a glimpse of his shriveled, grey little face. He was about my sister's size.
I remembered that he was wearing a red shirt and blue shorts - that stood out to me more than his partially open eyes or the lingering smell of burning meat that wafted down the chimney whenever we lit the fire. I didn't see those clothes again until I walked into my sister's room when she was playing with her dolls.
The boy was curled up in the corner, same position as we'd found him in only now he was upright and his head was facing my sister. She'd been talking about her new friend Jamie all week but we thought she meant someone from school, not the dead boy in our chimney.
She got so excited when she realised I could see him too, demanded we all have a tea party to celebrate and kept shushing me whenever I tried to ask Jamie why he was still here. She told me she'd already tried asking and it made him angry so she never tried again.
"That's where the cat went," she said, "Jamie made him disappear into the chimney and didn't talk to me for a whole week!" As if that was more important than the fact that a ghost was able to make physical contact and had actively killed our cat.
Of course our parents didn't believe me until they checked the chimney and found it occupied. Dad called for a priest when we were at school and mum was at work, didn't want us to worry apparently. If they hadn't still been there when we got home, sweating and swearing in English and Latin, we might have felt safer.
Needless to say Jamie hasn't left and we're planning to as soon as possible. We're living every day as close to normal as possible just in case he gets upset again. I don't think he could fit our parents into the chimney but I don't want to find out either.
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