Elliott couldn’t always see ghosts. Or rather, he wasn’t born with the ability. Nowadays he can pretty much always see ghosts if he chooses — which is quite confusing, isn’t it?

The thing is, Elliott’s ability came from almost drowning seven years ago, and I never experienced anything even remotely similar over the last… roughly six-and-a-half years of our lifetime, I guess? So I have to leave the actual psychic part of things to him. The seeing and hearing ghosts, seeing and hearing literal demons, actually getting possessed by said literal demons… god, it’s all completely terrifying to hear about after-or-during the fact. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be him.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like to be him, at least.

“Look what I managed to get!” Elliott said when it came time to open our presents on our fourteenth birthday, holding up a small unwrapped box. His eyes seemed to glow for a split-second, and he grimaced, but forced a ‘real’ smile almost immediately.

I took the box and opened it to reveal a pair of glasses. Hilarious, because it was Elliott who needed glasses. My vision had always been fine. They didn’t look particularly interesting — just simple pound-shop reading glasses — but something had to be different about them.

Mum and Dad both looked as confused as I felt.

“How nice,” Dad said slowly. “I’m sure Oliver will make good use of them.”

“That’s the point, Dad!” Elliott groaned, as if we all knew what the gift was. “Come on, put them on! I want to make sure they work!”

Well, it couldn’t hurt to try them on, could it?

So I did — and then found myself screaming.

The world had gone grey, with only a handful of things still visible in colour. Elliott was still just Elliott (and grinning like a total psycho, given my reaction), and our parents eyes still held their colour… but what looked like a monster was standing just behind my twin. And it looked like it wanted to murder him.

And it probably could, too.

“Take it they ‘work’?” Mum whispered.

“Look behind you, Oliver,” Elliott laughed, as if this were all a funny joke.

“What do you mean, ‘look behind you’? Look behind you!”

Elliott had managed to make these glasses allow someone like me to see what he could see — just with no choice in the matter. Which might make our lives a little easier in future… okay, it was actually a pretty clever gift.

I was still completely horrified by what I could see.

“Hm?” Elliott twisted his head round to look up at the creature and then went completely white. “Oh. Okay then… maybe we should move this else-?”

A shadow of a claw-like finger crept across Elliott’s neck and went startlingly black for a few seconds. When it returned to its half-transparent state, he collapsed to the floor without a sound.

I was half convinced he was dead, but leaning over to check let me know that he was still pretty much conscious — if a little bit absent.

God.

Would this be worse without the glasses? Not knowing what just happened until he could explain it afterwards? Or would that be better?

I didn’t even know.

And I realised I might just prefer it the way things usually are.

With Elliott seeing the supernatural things, and me helping him not get killed by about a third of them on an almost-weekly basis.

Probably for the best that only one of us actually has these abilities, in the end.