by Aly Noble
“Maybe,” I sighed. “I don't know. I guess I spent the night mulling it over and I’m still trying to piece it together in a way that makes sense.”
“You’re still living there?”
“I don’t have much of a choice,” I admitted and added before he could argue, “besides, it doesn’t seem to matter much. The thing I saw last night popped up in the Willow Press office, not my house.”
He paused again. “Okay, so I don't know a lot about possession and demons and all that…” Trevor paused one more time, and it sounded like he made an aside to someone that he was discussing a book with me. “But wouldn’t it be limited to the house if this were a possession story?”
“Are you getting weird looks or something? Where are you?”
“In Lansing for the day,” he said distractedly. “Meeting with a client and then a blind date, courtesy of my nosy friends.”
“Good luck with that,” I said before answering his question. “As for the house, I would assume so, but I don’t know what else that thing could have been.”
“And you’re sure you saw what you think you saw? You weren’t sleep deprived or on new meds or—”
“Seriously, Trevor? We were leveling.”
“I’m just asking,” he said quickly with a gusty sigh. “Covering bases and all that…” I shook my head and drained the rest of my coffee just before he quietly asked, “So... What did it look like?”
I felt stupid even choosing the words. “Are you taking me seriously? I feel like you are, but I just need you to say it. You have no idea what I’ve been through these past two months.”
“I’m taking you surprisingly seriously, Miri,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re not sleeping at a friend’s house though. But I guess if something showed up away from there… You’ve already considered all this, never mind.”
A sigh eased from the pits of my lungs—I felt like all I ever emoted anymore were sigh-oriented moods. “It was big. Not like fat, but tall and its shoulders were broad. I think it was black or brown, but it could’ve been that the lights were out. Its eyes didn’t reflect the little bit of light in the room, and it had four arms—”
“Are you—”
“Yes, I’m sure! I sound crazy to myself, I promise,” I said emphatically. “This is surprisingly hard to articulate only because I feel like such a basket-case. But it happened."
He put in a lengthy pause before asking, “Anything else?”
“That’s all I could make out—it was enough though.”
“Jesus,” he groaned. “And what did you mean earlier when you said the house is definitely haunted? Like it was separate from what we're talking about now?”
“Because I literally live with a ghost,” I said.
“No kidding? Is it…a bad ghost?” He laughed at himself after completing the sentence.
“Debatable,” I smirked, glancing toward the house. “I don’t know what to think about him right now.”
“Him? Not just a floating orb in photographs, but an actual… Miri, what the hell are you still doing there?”
“Says my realtor who convinced me this was a great sell,” I pointed out.
“To be very clear, I didn’t know it was this bad,” Trevor assured me.
“His name is Jonah. We were fine until the other day—he thought I was trying to exorcise him or something because there were sage stubs out in the yard and salt on the floor.”
“And that wasn't you?”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t even know why he was so mad until I found out what white sage is supposed to do.”
“Did you ever find out who it was?”
“No,” I murmured as I wandered further into the yard, nudging a dry brown leaf with my foot. “Until I found the sage, I figured I’d just spilled salt or something because I guess it wasn’t a big deal to me. Even then, they could’ve just been out there from someone else who lived here or a superstitious neighbor, and I didn’t know about them. I don’t know who would try to evict my ghost for me. Or why.”
“Was your car accident part of all this?”
I felt a distinct craving for a cigarette, so I sipped cold coffee instead. “You’re catching on fast.”
“What exactly happened then?”
I wondered if I still had a pack in my purse even though I knew I’d tossed them all years ago. “I was driving home late one night and, out of nowhere, some guy was out in the road and I hit him.”
“I’m sorry—what?”
“Yeah,” I reinforced. “Only I know that though because there was no guy in the street, no sign of damage to my car, and no reason to take me seriously. I hit him, I called 911, and he was a speedbump for about thirty seconds, then when I turned around, he was upright and coming after me.”
“…What?”
I opened my mouth to repeat myself and elaborate when a twig snapped behind me. I whirled to see a stout man with a thick mustache and a grey t-shirt that read, “Grendling Trim & Trees.” Not even close to what I was expecting after getting so keyed up. “Jesus,” I enunciated breathlessly. “Hi.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I’m here for yard maintenance,” he said, gesturing toward his truck in the drive. “I rang the doorbell a few times before I realized you were outside. Just wanted you to know I was here.”
“No, I'm sorry—thanks for the head’s up…?”
“Tom Rhodes, ma’am.”
I shook his hand. “Tom. I’m Miri. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you. I’ll just get to work. Carry on and watch out for poison ivy.”
“Thanks,” I said before putting the phone back to my ear.
“Was that Tom?” Trevor asked conversationally. “Super nice guy. I asked for him specifically.”
“Thanks for taking care of that, Trevor,” I said, continuing to roam as I picked up my story again. “But yeah. I turned around, and he was just standing there. And then when I got back in the car and drove off, he somehow ended up in my back seat. That's where my head injury came from.”
“And none of these things are connected, you think?”
“I don’t know if they’re connected,” I admitted. “I’ve thought about the possibility of them all being the same entity in different forms, and I’ve considered that they might all be individual cases. I just don’t know.”
“I don’t really know what to tell you, honestly,” he said as I meandered down the side of the hill, rolling my now empty mug around on my fingers by the handle. “There’s a big church on the outskirts of town… Their priest may be certified to perform an exorcism if it comes to that—my parents used to go there when they lived in town, and I know a friend of theirs had an issue with her house being ‘haunted.’ It turned out to be rats, but she had someone out before she thought to try the exterminator.”
I nodded, approaching the “river” Bethaline had told me about more than once, which was really more of a thick creek. I edged toward the water and set my mug in the grass so I could touch the current, the cold water a shock to my skin after it had been pressed to the warm ceramic for so long. “Sounds like something to keep in mind… It doesn’t seem like the house is the problem though.”
“Couldn't hurt,” he figured, sounding exhausted. “I imagine some weird shit happened in that house while the Prices lived there.”
“Who?” I asked, pushing around the river rock and examining a few of the smaller stones.
“The couple I told you about who owned the house. The murder-suicide. They lived there for the longest. Everyone kind of saw it coming because the husband, Connor, was in bad shape. Not that anyone in town thought that he’d kill himself and his wife, of course. But when it happened, no one was really as surprised as they should’ve been.”
I tucked away that name to research later, still picking at the rocks and remembering a worry stone I'd had when I was a teenager. “That’s sad. Was he just kind of…off?”
“For the most part. Some people threw out that he was a S
atanist just because he stopped going to church, but that’s what can happen in a small town,” he pointed out.
“Must be why they hate me,” I figured, frowning when my hand brushed something smooth beneath the water. I dug around a fleck of a polished surface until a muddy stone popped free from the sediment. I smoothed muck away from the surface of the pebble-sized rock until it shone white and added absently, “I guess I shouldn’t say that. The people here are really nice.”
“They are. It almost makes the demons worth it, right?”
I smirked. “Almost.”
“Well… I don’t really know how to say ‘good luck’ to a possible demon problem, but… Good luck. I have to go meet with a client, but I’ll check in with you in a couple of days,” he said uncertainly. “Still doesn’t seem feasible. Like I believe you, but I don’t want to.”
I nodded and glanced back at the house, pocketing the stone and picking up my mug before heading back. “I know the feeling.”
Chapter 17
It took me until there were three people in my bathroom to remember how much I hated sharing a bathroom.
“Estelle, you’re going to re-injure me,” I complained as she took a curling wand to a hank of my hair.
“What’s going to ‘re-injure’ you—were that even a word—is putting this hair dye shit on your head when you have a head injury,” she mumbled, making a purple spiral around the iron.
“It’s closed up. I’m fine,” I grumbled. “Though it’s still sore. I feel like it shouldn’t still be sore.”
“Move, guys,” Carla interjected, stepping around Estelle and jostling her as she desperately tried to avoid pressing a hot tool to my temple.
“Jesus, Carla, I’m packing heat,” Estelle snapped. “Be careful.”
“Yikes. Didn’t see that,” she said embarrassedly. “Sorry. Are we still crashing here afterward?”
“We’re going to have to unless we go to your place, Carla,” Estelle pointed out. “My folks are coming in tomorrow morning at like ten and Hungover Me can’t deal with their scorn when they find us strewn around the living room.”
“It’s fine if you guys crash here,” I said before I had to stay over at Carla’s house. I wanted my own bed—if I made it up the stairs, that is. “Taxi out, taxi back?”
“Perfect,” Estelle said with a pleased tone, though it was equally possible that she was talking about the pristinely swirled violet lock she’d just wound off the curling wand in her hand.
Carla opened my bathroom window and lit up, offering the pack to Estelle and me once she'd taken a drag. “Ugh, no thanks,” Estelle said as I caved and accepted a cigarette against my better judgment. She held off on taking another section of my hair until I leaned away from Carla’s lighter and puffed. “I offer to do your hair and this is how you repay me. Lung cancer.”
“Sorry,” I sighed, turning on a plug-in fan to help chase the smoke to the window. “I’ve been craving one for weeks.”
“When did you quit?” Carla asked.
I gave that some thought. “Two and a half years ago.”
“You’re stronger than I am,” she murmured, inhaling again.
“Sometimes,” I said, tapping the ash off over the toilet.
“This is the weirdest blow I’ve ever seen,” Estelle grumbled behind my head.
“What’s that?” I asked, feeling like something out of place had clicked back in now that I was falling into old habits.
“Your head. You hit this on your headrest?”
“My hair got pulled out, remember?” I reminded her, wording it so Carla wouldn’t start asking questions.
“Sure, but… No, I guess that makes sense,” she conceded. “I’m almost done, by the way.”
“Thank you,” I murmured around my cigarette, checking Facebook while she finished. I’d added Trevor and my brother’s newest girlfriend as friends by the time she finished.
“Voila!” she exclaimed, stepping back to admire her work. “Now let it sit for like five or ten minutes so it cools and then you can mess it up. Do your makeup or something while you’re waiting. I don’t trust you to not fuck with it.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said sardonically, but shifted out of the chair she’d dragged in to take over the mirror while she started on Carla.
“Put that out if you’re not going to hang out by the window,” Estelle said with a grimace at the smoky plumes wafting toward the ceiling. “Don’t you have a smoke detector somewhere? You’re going to set it off if you do. And you should.”
“There’s one downstairs by the kitchen,” I murmured, edging toward the window. “I’m not going to set anything off.”
“So, is it true, Miri?”
We both looked at Carla. I answered. “Is what true?”
She smirked and tossed the butt of her cigarette into the toilet. “Is this place haunted?”
“Yeah,” I said flatly. “Why?”
Carla didn’t seem to be expecting such a blunt answer. “How do you know?”
“I actually live with a ghost,” I replied. As her facial expressions continued to morph, this felt increasingly more like a game. “This is a house full of weird shit.”
“You’re just making fun of me now,” she accused.
I sighed and closed the article on the Prices I'd been reading with limited interest. “I’m not making fun of you. I’m answering your question.”
“Well, then where is it?”
“He,” I corrected tiredly, “is wherever he feels like being at the moment. I don’t have a bell on him.”
“You’re so full of shit,” she declared, jumping as Estelle accidentally—though I suspected maybe not so accidentally—brushed Carla’s ear with the curling wand.
“Sorry,” Estelle said quickly, pokerface engaged. “So, are we going to pregame? Or just do this?”
“I might have one bottle of cheap wine in the kitchen, but that’s iffy… So we’re probably just going to have to go.”
“How do you not have booze in your house?”
“I’m poor, Montecarlo,” I griped, putting out my cigarette.
“Patch has to rake in enough for an alcohol budget,” she mumbled.
“Barely. Especially after all the repair expenses,” I sighed. “We could go down and get a beer at Jill’s.”
“That’s an extra cab ride if we’re not taking cars,” Estelle sighed. “Though I need to stop there again sometime soon. Let’s just bite it and go spend our savings on half-glasses of wine.”
“I think I can afford two half-glasses,” I figured.
“I’ll get you a third half-glass if you’re good,” Estelle mumbled around a bobby pin.
“Thanks, Mom.”
She snorted softly, but her smile faded when the wind blew and the house gave a quiet groan. Estelle and Carla both looked at me with alarm and inquiry, waiting to see if I felt the need to freak out over the noise.
“Spookies,” I said quietly, and they both muttered obscenities in my general direction.
“Jesus,” Estelle exhaled loudly, finishing with Carla’s hair in a matter of minutes with the adrenaline boost. “Done. Let’s call the cab and get the fuck out of here.”
“You’re the one who wanted to crash here,” I reminded her as I got back in front of the mirror and worked on my eyeliner.
“Yeah, when I’m drunk and can’t care about stupid old house noises.”
“Irresponsible,” I admonished playfully as Estelle and Carla both headed downstairs.
After applying one more coat of mascara, I leaned away from the mirror and started toward the door. I faltered, however, when I went to mess up my hair a bit and remembered what Estelle had said about my head. I retreated slowly back to the mirror and tried my best to angle my head in such a way that I could see it. Despite my best efforts with and without a hand mirror to throw back the reflection, I couldn't seem to get a look.
Finally, I just pulled my hair up as much as I could, nearly threw my shoulder out while tr
ying to get my phone in the right spot, and snapped a picture of it to assess instead.
“Miri, get your ass down here! Cab’s here!” Estelle called up the stairs.
“On my way!” I said, locking my phone and shoving it in my pocket on the way down the stairs.
Estelle handed me my purse when I got to the door. They went out ahead of me and, as I pulled the door shut, my eyes reflexively flickered down the hall—which was empty just as it should have been. So what, Jonah was on one of his MIA streaks again. I didn’t know why I minded. Maybe because it made me more suspicious and, at the root of everything, I didn’t want to suspect him.
I shut the door and locked up before heading down the porch steps to the cab waiting by the curb of the driveway. I slid into the back seat with Carla and buckled up while Estelle gave the driver the club address for his GPS in the front. I glanced over at Carla and saw that she was on another cigarette already, so I rolled down the window and stared at my yard, noticing that it looked a lot better now that Tom was taking care of it.
As the cab rumbled off the walk and down the street toward God-knows-where, I put my passcode into my phone and pulled up my photos. When the awkwardly angled shot of the back of my head expanded on my screen, I was almost miffed at the fact that the scab wasn’t more prominent, if only because I’d been making such a big deal about it. However, I saw what Estelle meant about it when I zoomed in. It didn’t look like a patch of hair had been yanked out—at least, not at random. It also didn’t look like it was healing as it should.
I frowned at my phone and held it out a little from my face, looking over the wound as a whole. It looked like something. Nothing definable, but something I’d seen before. Carla said something then about doing shots, to which Estelle revolted, and I tuned them both out to study the photo until I placed what it was.
I flicked my fingertip across the screen to a different picture taken quite a while before it—it was the photo of the reddish streaks of liquid I'd spat across the ground during my jog.
