The Game We Never Finished

When I was four, the house on Marrow Lane felt like a castle of shadows and creaking floorboards. My brother, Elias, was nine and my best friend. One night, long after the summer sun had bled into the horizon, I woke to the sound of my door whispering open. Elias stood there, his face half-lit by the hallway’s dim nightlight. ‘You awake?’ he asked, already grinning. ‘Let’s play.’

I slipped out of bed, my feet silent on the cold wood, and we huddled under my window, building a city from blocks and a scattered deck of cards. Elias was always the architect, and I was the one who knocked down towers. We laughed in whispers, our breath fogging the glass. I remember the way the moonlight caught his hair, the same pale blond as mine, and how his eyes seemed too dark, like bottomless wells.

Then came the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs. My parents were coming up to tuck us in. I scrambled back into bed, pulling the covers to my chin, but Elias just stood there, staring at the door. When it opened, my mother’s face softened into a smile, but my father’s eyes darted around the room, landing on the scattered blocks. ‘What are you doing out of bed, Mara?’ Mom asked gently.

I pointed to the corner. ‘I was playing with Elias.’ The silence that followed was so thick I could taste it. My parents exchanged a look, one that I now recognize as horror. Dad’s jaw tightened, and Mom’s hand trembled as she reached for me. ‘There’s no one there, sweetheart,’ she said, but her voice cracked. They put me back under the covers, kissed my forehead, and left without another word. I fell asleep wondering why they couldn’t see him.

Years passed, and Elias became a kind of ghost in our household — not in the supernatural sense, but in the way we never spoke his name. I was ten when the questions started. Why did I have to go to bed so early while he stayed up? Why was there no extra bed in the room I shared with my sister, Maggie? Why did my mother flinch whenever I mentioned his name?

One evening, after Maggie had gone to sleep, I cornered my parents in the kitchen. ‘Why doesn’t Elias have his own room? Why does he get to stay up?’ My mother’s face went pale. My father put down his coffee cup, his hands shaking. They exchanged that same look from years ago, and then my mother sat me down. ‘Mara, you didn’t have an older brother,’ she said, her voice distant. ‘You had a stillborn. A boy. We named him Elias, but he never took a breath.’

I remember the world tilting. ‘But I played with him,’ I said. ‘He comes to my room at night. He talks to me.’ My mother gripped my shoulders. ‘That was years ago, Mara. You haven’t mentioned him in ages.’ But I had. I just hadn’t said his name — I thought they knew. And now, at eighteen, I’m back in that house, because my parents are moving and I need to sort through my childhood belongings.

The house smells like dust and old memories. I’m in my old room, now bare except for a few boxes. The nightlight in the hallway flickers, just like it did back then. I hear a creak from the stairs, soft and deliberate. My heart pounds as I scan the empty hallway. The air grows cold, and I feel a presence behind me. I turn slowly.

Elias stands there, older now, the same pale blond hair, but his eyes are completely black, and his skin has a waxy sheen. He’s holding a block from our old game. ‘You never finished our castle,’ he says, his voice like wind through a cracked pane. ‘I’ve been waiting.’

I step back, my spine against the wall. ‘You’re not real,’ I whisper. But he smiles, and his teeth are too sharp. ‘I’m as real as you are, Mara. And we have a game to finish.’ He drops the block, and it clatters to the floor, the sound echoing into a darkness that seems to swallow the room. I realize then that the door is gone, and the walls are closing in. I hear my mother’s voice from a great distance, calling my name, but it’s faded, like a memory.

Elias holds out his hand, and I see the game we never finished — the castle, the cards, the tower I was supposed to knock down. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘You’ll never grow old if you stay with me.’ And in that moment, I understand that he’s not a ghost. He’s something that has been waiting, patient, for me to return. I take a step forward, and the darkness folds around us like a shroud, and I know I will never leave this game.