24 Secret Agent

TITLE: Into the Dark
GENRE: Young Adult


I was four years old when I first saw a ghost.

I met him in the bathroom of my mother’s latest “gentleman friend’s” house, in my search for a clean towel to dry my hands.

Bottom drawer, an unfamiliar voice said. Tucked behind the razor blades.

I gasped and turned toward the sound, my soggy hands collapsing at my sides.

The stranger sat on the bathtub’s ledge, his arms crossed over his chest and one black combat boot kicked over his knee. Everything I’d ever been taught told me to run, but I was too entranced, too fascinated, to do the safe thing.

This stranger was unlike any other man I had ever seen, like a character from a Japanese cartoon or an image in a painting. He was dressed in all black—black boots, black pants, and long black trench. His skin was an unblemished pale, his eyes like stars against a dark canvas—stars so bright I could hardly stand to look at him, but so mesmerizing I couldn’t turn away.

You are making quite the mess, he said with a disapproving nod toward the puddled white tiles.

I could hear his words, clearer than glass. I knew that if I opened the bottom drawer a towel would be there, hiding behind the razorblades. I knew I should find it, clean up my mess, and run the heck away. But all I could do was stare, my eyes bulging from their sockets like marshmallows.