Halloween 2020, Day 4

The ghost knew his master was about to die, and he wasn’t exactly unhappy about it.

He knew that sounded bad. You’d think, after all those years together, that even he might have felt a twinge of sadness about the whole situation. But it’s hard to feel sorry for someone when: a) you’re a ghost, and everyone knows ghosts don’t have hearts, and b) that someone made her living out of forcing you to make other people miserable.

He stared at her now as she lay on the narrow bed, gray and gaunt in the light of the full moon, her breath rasping and shallow. Watching her teeter slowly toward the end was a bit like watching a grape slowly become a raisin: the years had sucked the life and vitality out of her until she was nothing but a wrinkled shell of her former self.

“Well,” she wheezed, squinting at him.

Well, he said.

“One more for the road, eh?” she said, nodding to the full moon out the window. And she grimaced as she offered him the ring finger of her right hand, as she had done so many times before.

The ghost nodded. It seemed frivolous, but after all, he still needed to eat, whether or not his master lay dying. As he bent his head over the wrinkled hand, his sharp little teeth pricking the skin worn and calloused from time and use, the witch let out a sharp breath. Her blood used to be rich and strong and so thick with her magic that the ghost could get himself drunk on it, if he wasn’t careful. Now all he tasted was the stale tang of age, the sour notes that came with impending death, and a bitter aftertaste he couldn’t quite place. Regret, perhaps.

It was the regret that was hardest to swallow.

The ghost drank nothing more than he had to, finishing quickly and sealing the tiny pinpricks of his teeth on her skin with spit. It is done, he told her, the words familiar as a favorite song, the ritual as comforting as a warm blanket. And I am bound to you, until the end.

The witch patted his horned head gently. Her touch surprised him—she had never been particularly affectionate. “Well,” she said, her voice nothing more than a sigh. “The end is now.”

– from The Girl and the Ghost by Hanna Alkaf (2020)

This year I fell in love with the middle-grade novel The Girl and the Ghost, which is based on Malaysian folktales about the pelesit, a shape-shifting spirit bound to serve a single master. In the novel, young Suraya inherits such a ghost from her witch grandmother and learns that this pelesit is loyal – and jealous. Hanna Alkaf offers genuine chills as well as laughs, but most importantly she delivers a thought-provoking, heart-warming, life-affirming story of loss, grief, friendship, and family. The characters feel so real! 

Don’t let the middle-grade classification of this story fool you; The Girl and the Ghost has much to offer readers of all ages, including plenty of ghosts, graveyards, and spookiness.

You can read a longer excerpt from The Girl and the Ghost here or listen to sample from the audiobook here.  

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