Moving On
by Safiya Lahlaf
The house past the old convent at the end of the road was sinking. Both buildings emerged from dense woods that embraced the winding street, as if the forest was trying to reclaim them. The small structure wasn’t really a house, more of a shed—perhaps once used by the nuns for storage or gardening or Satanic worship—and had been abandoned for as long as anyone could remember.
The legend went that a group of nineteenth-century nuns had been hanged for performing dark rituals, their ghosts haunting the sinking house that was on its way down to hell. Kids from the local high school had at one time held Halloween parties there, until someone took the pranks too far and parents complained. The police started leaving a patrol car to keep watch over the street for the entire month of October. Once the kids found a different haunt, all the police had left to do was shoo away the occasional paranormal activity seekers, Geiger counters clicking their discontent as the ghost hunters were forced to retreat. Otherwise, the only people who frequented the road were the nuns themselves.
The truth was that the house was sinking, but only due to poor structural fill when it had been built. Agnes would know—she had been there when the good-for-nothing builders chose a spot right on top of a sinkhole, despite her warning against it. And what happened? The shed settled and a beam broke and next thing she knew, Agnes was attending her own funeral. She didn’t mind being dead, not really. Solitary by nature, she found herself quite suited to the life of a ghost. In fact, she was relieved when the children had finally stopped hanging around.
Now, though, she often found herself rollerblading with the nuns whenever they emerged from the convent to take their exercise. Agnes couldn’t actually rollerblade herself, but she could glide beside the nuns as they propelled themselves along, imagining the feel of the wind ruffling her hair. It had been a long time since she had felt anything, so this took a lot of concentration; she almost lost her balance.
“Careful,” said Sister Mary, who was Agnes’s favorite. As was often the case, Agnes wasn’t sure if Sister Mary was talking to her or to someone else—this time, the young man driving a pickup truck much too quickly down the road’s narrow turns.
“Thank you. Rollerblading is much harder than I thought. You make it look easy.”
Sister Mary began to hum as she sped along, her habit dancing around her.
Safiya Lahlaf grew up in Massachusetts and currently lives in Philadelphia, where she is completing her radiology residency. She writes fiction and poetry.