13 Hauntings

by Clarice Black

  Amy looked at her sister in alarm. “What?”

  Kelly was staring, wide-mouthed, at the fireplace. Amy turned her head to follow her gaze and let out a gasp. The glass fireplace screen was broken; pieces of gold-accented glass were hanging limply from the brass frame while another pile lay in a heap in the middle. As if someone had kicked it in.

  “Was that like that before?” Kelly asked, pointing. She had gone from shocked to mildly irritated at the drop of a hat. “Does Mum know about this?”

  “I doubt it,” Amy replied. “I’m sure she would’ve mentioned it if she did.” Suddenly, she thought of something and took her cell phone from the back pocket of her skinny jeans. She swiped through her photos and found the one she had taken of the living room area on that first visit with their mum.

  The glass fireplace screen was in the shot. Undamaged and in one piece.

  Amy didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. She moved closer to her sister and handed over the phone without an explanation, hoping the photo would explain itself.

  Kelly looked at the picture, and then she clicked on it, zooming in so she could more closely examine it. The fireplace had been intact. She couldn’t remember if had been intact the entire time she had been in the house, but it had been intact a few weeks ago, when their mother had bought the house.

  “It’s… It’s nothing, I’m sure,” she said, still trying her best to cling to reason. “One of the movers must’ve broken it accidentally. It was probably old and fragile anyway.”

  Amy was not so convinced, but she did not want to get into yet another argument. She’d had enough of that. Instead, she went back to the fireplace and knelt down to get a better look at the screen. “I suppose you’re right,” she said at last. “Still, we should replace this if we want to have a fire one of these nights.”

  “Let’s tell Mum about it in the morning,” Kelly said. “Now come over here and help me move these chairs over there. We’ll probably be hiring movers again to get all these unneeded things out of here.”

  Jen stood in front of the fireplace, pondering the broken screen. She leaned down and gingerly touched the glass, careful to keep away from the sharp, broken edges. “This feels rather flimsy as it is,” she said decisively, standing back up to her full height. “I believe Kelly’s right. One of the workmen must have bumped against it. It’s really no matter. We can replace it with a better one.”

  Amy was surprised at how unaffected Jen was. This type of thing would normally have had her calling the moving company to complain, but she was off into the kitchen to concern herself over breakfast without even giving it another glance.

  “Is Mum acting strangely to you?” Amy asked Kelly, who was sitting on the old couch in the living room, sipping her coffee and reading a thick book. “She doesn’t seem like herself.”

  “It’s normal when someone is going through something emotionally traumatic, for them to act differently,” Kelly said, not even looking up from her book. It was quite clear that she had had enough of Amy’s antics. Even if she did find certain things bizarre or maybe even alarming, she did not think there was much use in going on and on about it. “She will get over this in time. I think you should find something else to do with your time, while you wait for that to happen. Didn’t you bring your keyboard?”

  Amy sighed dramatically. She had indeed brought her lightweight, silver Casio keyboard along. She imagined that it would probably gather dust in the corner of the spare room, though. “Are you giving me an assignment so you can be rid of me?” She smirked at her sister.

  Kelly finally looked up from her book and smirked back at Amy, “I just don’t want you getting cabin fever here. This is supposed to be a vacation from the stress of the city.”

  With a roll of her eyes, Amy went off to the kitchen.

  She stopped short in the doorway. Jen was wandering around the kitchen, aimlessly, arguing with herself in a low voice. She didn’t sound at all like herself. “We will manage… Somehow we will manage. We don’t need him. No. We can do this. Somehow we can do this…”

  “Mum?” Amy said nervously, her heart going out to her mother even though she was scaring her a little. “Are you all right?”

  Jen quickly jerked her head in Amy’s direction. She appeared angry to see her, but her expression quickly softened and her blue eyes returned to their usual, gentle state. “Yes, Amy, I just seem to have misplaced the salt.”

  Amy raised an eyebrow at her, came into the room and found the salt shaker on the counter, in plain sight. The way Jen had been wandering around had not been the way one normally moves when looking for something on a countertop. She had been pacing, stalking around almost, and the things she had been muttering…

  Handing the salt shaker over to her mum, she continued to feel baffled and more than a little bit spooked. Kelly had told her that their mother was going through the normal stages of grief, but Amy did not think that was all this was. Could their mum be losing her mind altogether? Such a thought made her sad and distraught, especially since she seemed to be the only one who was noticing.

  The three ladies had a nice brekky of omelettes together. Jen seemed to be back to her normal self; smiling and asking her two daughters questions. Amy felt like she would be bringing everything down if she brought up the strangeness she had witnessed in the kitchen; their mum was certainly not bringing it up. She knew that Kelly would accuse her of being obsessed and needing a hobby, so she decided to let it rest for the time being.

  “I am glad to see that you’ve had a good rest here already,” Kelly complimented. “My bed was comfortable and without the sound of traffic I slept like a baby.”

  Jen beamed at her. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it? My bed has the most divine curtains, so I can shut out the world if I want to. It’s heavenly.”

  “Just don’t become a shut-in,” Amy said, smiling a little to let them know that she meant it as a joke. It was sincere, but it was a joke, too.

  Their mum looked at her, slightly confused. “Just let me enjoy the peace and solitude, please?”

  “I am,” Amy said. “I will… I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Kelly looked from Amy to their mother. She didn’t know why there always had to be so much tension between them lately. She supposed that a lot of it was due to what their father had put their family through, but some of it was also due to Amy being such a moody teenager. She needed to grow up, and faster than normal. Kelly would have sympathized with her more if she was not so stubborn. “We’re glad that you feel comfortable here,” she said instead of lingering on Amy’s awkwardness. “I think you were right. We needed a break from London life.”

  Jen was pleased by that.

  After breakfast, Amy graciously offered to do the dishes while their mum tidied up. Kelly excused herself to go upstairs and get ready for the day. Amy had her music to focus on, but Kelly’s life had centred around work for so long that she didn’t know what to do with herself. She meant what she had said. She’d needed a break without even realizing it before.

  She put on a pretty, summery dress that was bright green with white flowers on it. It was a tropical dress, perfect for summer. The house they were in made Kelly think more of autumn, but she did not think this dress looked too out of place. She thought that she might go into town later in the afternoon and get a few things, maybe a few groceries and the like.

  Going into the bathroom that she shared with Amy, Kelly put her toothbrush under the tap before applying toothpaste and brushing her teeth. She looked herself over. Long blonde hair, fringe off to the side on her forehead, she looked like she had stepped out of the seventies. Even though both she and Amy had inherited their father’s hair colour, they got their dazzling looks from Jen, who looked like the lead singer of The Carpenters, even to this day. Kelly hoped to age as well as she had, albeit without the marital woes which had seemed to age their mother more in the past few weeks than she had aged her entire life.r />
  While she was brushing her teeth, Kelly heard footsteps in the hallway. Her mother must have been going into the master bedroom to take a shower and get cleaned up. She heard her muttering to herself, but it was the sort of thing that Jen would sometimes say under her breath. “Wait, where was I going?” was one thing Kelly caught. She smirked a little. Classic Mum.

  She finished brushing her teeth and then moved on to brushing her hair and applying light makeup. If she was to go exploring in town, she thought she should make an effort to look her best. As she was leaving the bathroom, Kelly saw her mum out of the corner of her eye. Rather than appearing to be getting ready, she looked like she was swaying slightly back and forth while standing still. Kelly stopped walking and turned to look; at that moment her mum moved away from the view of the doorway.

  “Mum?” Kelly asked, walking down the hall towards the room. She went into the doorway to find no one in the room.

  It felt as though the bottom of Kelly’s stomach had fallen out. She grasped the wooden doorframe of the bedroom. The four poster bed was there, with the curtains open. There was no sign of her mother.

  Now Kelly knew how Amy felt.

  “Mum?!” she cried out, turning from the room and rushing down the stairs, taking them two at a time by the end and nearly tripping over herself. She hurried into the living room, looking for her mother or her sister.

  Jen was sitting in the living room on the old couch, as Kelly had that morning, leafing through an aged volume from the house’s bookshelf. She looked up as Kelly frantically rushed into the room. “What on earth is the matter?”

  Kelly took a moment to catch her breath. “Were you just upstairs in your room?” she asked. The only logical explanation in her mind was that her mother had somehow left the bedroom without her noticing, and had somehow slipped past her in the hall. It did not make any sense, but she clung to the allusion of it possibly being true.

  The trouble was that her mother looked just as confused as she was. “Of course not, darling. I’ve been down here catching up on some light reading.” Now that Kelly thought about it, her mum was still wearing the same outfit as before. She didn’t seem to have made any attempt to go upstairs and ready herself for the day ahead, as Kelly had. “You look fancy,” her mum said then, pulling her from her reverie.

  She had almost forgotten that she had been planning a brief outing into town that day. “Oh… Yeah, thank you,” she said, still looking at her mother with a perplexed expression. She could not believe what she had seen. But, then again, had she really seen it?

  “Is there still any of that coffee left?” Kelly asked then, determined to put this behind her. She did not want to end up feeling crazy like Amy did. Then she realized that perhaps her sister was the one she should be talking to.

  “Yes, sweetheart,” Jen said to her obviously addled daughter.

  But rather than going back towards the kitchen, Kelly headed for the stairs and climbed them upstairs. She could hear the faint sound of the keyboard coming from the spare room, which was going to serve as a sort of study while they were staying in the house. It could have possibly become a guest room, but for the moment Kelly was not sure that their mother was ready to entertain visitors.

  Kelly lightly knocked on the spare room’s door and went inside.

  Amy was not there. The music had also stopped.

  Kelly brought her hands to her head, wondering if she was hallucinating due to illness. This was not right!

  Just then, Amy opened her bedroom door. “Kelly?” she asked, looking about as mystified as Jen had. “Are you all right?”

  Kelly let out a cry and rushed to her sister, pulling her into the bedroom and closing the door behind her. No matter what, she knew that she could trust Amy with this. Amy would not judge her, because Amy had apparently had similar experiences!

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Hallucinations

  Kelly stood against the door in Amy’s bedroom, not that there was really anything for her to be keeping out. She had not seen anything, she’d only heard something that was not there, couldn’t be there. Something unseen and, she hoped, imagined.

  “Did you hear that music coming from your keyboard?” Kelly demanded of her, using every ounce of her will to keep calm. “Someone was definitely playing your keyboard! I looked in the room and you weren’t there. No one was there!”

  Amy stared at her, taking her completely seriously, for which Kelly was most relieved. “No, I didn’t hear any music playing… Are you sure it wasn’t Mum?”

  Kelly shook her head earnestly. “Mum’s downstairs, reading on the couch! I came up here and heard the keyboard. I was trying to find you, but it wasn’t you.” She brought her hands up to her head and ran her fingers through her hair. She had painted her nails a pretty shade of purple just the other day, so she did not want to start chewing on them but she was so close to doing so now. “What the fuck is going on, Amy??”

  Giving her a half-indignant sort of look, Amy shook her head at her sister. “I don’t know, but we’re not going to find out if we just hide out in here. Was that the only weird thing you noticed? We’ve got the cold spot in the kitchen, the shattered glass on the fireplace, the keyboard playing with no pianist…?”

  “And Mum not actually being in her room.”

  Amy blinked. “What?”

  Kelly took a deep breath. She realized that it sounded weird the way she had expressed it. “I thought I saw Mum in her room while I was getting myself ready. I heard her there, but when I went into the room, she was not there. She was downstairs. She has not changed clothes yet. She has not come upstairs.”

  “I thought I heard her walking in the hallway earlier…” Amy said hollowly, staring into space as she thought about this. The weirdness was just stacking up now.

  “It wasn’t her,” Kelly said, shaking her head. “It was imagined… Unless it was something. But what?”

  Amy furrowed her brows as she looked at her sister. “We could not have both imagined the same thing.”

  Suddenly, the sound of light footfalls could be heard in the hall. They widened their eyes at each other, but Amy shushed Kelly before she could accidentally make a peep in her shock. They stood together; ears pressed against the door, and listened.

  “Flap, flap, flap.”

  It didn’t sound like her mother’s steps. It sounded like the sound of bare feet on the hardwood floor, and their mother usually walked around the house in her dainty, pink slippers. Especially since she would be treading in still-unfamiliar territory, she wouldn’t walk around barefoot.

  “There is someone in our house!” Kelly whisper-hissed to Amy.

  Coming to the same conclusion, the younger sister didn’t know what to do about it. She froze and continued listening as the steps passed the door and kept going down the hall, eventually fading away. After waiting a beat to make sure they were really gone, Amy opened the door a smidge and peeked into the hallway to see if there was any sign of anyone, be it the owner of the bare feet or not.

  There was no one there. This time, it was not so surprising. “Holy shit…”

  Kelly peeked out with her. “This is too much,” she said. “We’ve got to tell Mum. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Amy scoffed at her, coming back into the room and closing the door again so they could confer in private. “You think Mum is really going to listen and go along with that? She’s attached to this place. She is not seeing reason anymore.”

  “So we’re supposed to just ignore these strange noises??”

  Amy quickly shushed her, gently placing her hands on Kelly’s shoulders and looking her in the eyes. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, but we have got to find a way to convince Mum of what is going on. So far, I don’t think she has noticed anything, which is part of why she is not listening. We probably sound insane… I know I feel insane.”

  Kelly took her sister’s hand. “I am glad that I came with you guys. I can’t imagine what this would be
like if it was just you here with all of this.”

  They agreed that they would start showing their mother as soon as any bizarre happenings occurred, such as with the fireplace earlier. Surely, they thought, their mother would come around and start finding fault with these occurrences as well. She had to.

  Waiting for their mum to be on the same page as them was not very good for either of their psyches. Kelly never did go out to explore the town, choosing to stay with her family in case anything really bad happened. So far, the strange things had all been minor. All the happenings were spooky, but could easily be shrugged off as some sort of freak occurrence, especially by their mother or the police, should they decide to contact them at any point. She thought it slightly amusing now, when she recalled that she had worried about Amy experiencing cabin fever. She remembered, too, how calm and relaxed she had been when told about the kitchen and the fireplace. These things happen, she had thought. This isn’t anything to worry about.

  Her nail polish was totally ruined now that she had begun chewing at her nails again.

  When they went to bed at night, she found it difficult to fall asleep, imagining some unseen figure coming for her as she lay there, all vulnerable. She hadn’t had this problem since she was a child, and she hadn’t missed it.

  One night, after several days of normalcy in the house following that long run of spooky strangeness, Kelly was lying in her bed, snuggled up under the blankets, when she heard a low moaning sound. Eyes darting open, she sat up in bed, still clutching her sheets to her. “Wh- Who’s there?” she asked into the darkened room.

  There was no answer, but the moaning continued. No words were being said; it was simply a low “Ohhh” like someone in pain or feeling ill. Kelly would have felt sympathy had it been someone she could comfort. But there was no one there, and that was a problem.