The Haunted

by Danielle Vega

  “Good,” she said, cheeks flushing as she looked back down at her plate. A pea escaped from the prongs of her fork and she stabbed it, viciously. “Surprisingly good, actually.”

  “Really?” Now, her mother was studying her, a wrinkle creasing the skin between her eyebrows. Her voice sounded casual, but Hendricks wasn’t fooled. “Why surprisingly good?”

  She probably thought Hendricks didn’t notice the look that passed between her and her dad. They hadn’t talked to her about it, but she figured they thought it was too early for her to start dating again.

  You don’t have to worry about that, she thought.

  “Did you meet anyone interesting?” her dad asked, taking a sip of wine.

  Hendricks might’ve groaned, but she was in too good a mood. Instead, she flicked her fork so that the pea shot across her plate and landed in a pile of mashed potatoes.

  Score, she thought.

  “Define interesting,” she said.

  Her mother started to reply, then merely pressed her lips back together, and Hendricks knew she couldn’t bring herself to ask, Did you meet a boy?

  She bit her lip. Was it that obvious? She kept replaying the moment in the cafeteria this morning, how Connor’s face had gotten all scrunched up and nervous before he’d asked her out, how he’d been so cool when she told him she needed some time to think about it before giving him an answer.

  She wasn’t going to say yes. Yes was a bad idea on so many levels. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy this part, the part before anything had even happened, when there weren’t any expectations. She knew that as soon as she told Connor she couldn’t date him it would all be over. She had to savor this while she still could.

  “You know, I actually have a ton of homework to do,” Hendricks said, grabbing her dinner plate and pushing back from her chair. “I should take the rest of this upstairs.”

  “Would you like me to bring you some tea?” her mother called as Hendricks left the room.

  Hendricks had a feeling that her mother was going to bring her tea regardless of what she said, probably picturing the two of them lying across her bed and having a “serious conversation” about dating and boys. An unexpected lump rose in her throat.

  “I’m good, but thanks.” And then she went to her room and closed the door behind her.

  Setting her dinner plate on her dresser, Hendricks picked up her book bag and flopped onto her bed. She considered actually doing her homework, but she didn’t have much yet. Most of her teachers had told her that she should just listen to the lectures and try to follow along.

  Instead, she went to her closet and dug around inside, locating a familiar orange soccer jersey.

  It was Grayson’s. Or, at least, it used to be. He’d given it to her last year, after one of his friends had accidentally spilled his beer all over her at a party, ruining her shirt. Even now, after everything that had happened between them, it hurt Hendricks’s heart to imagine giving it up.

  She didn’t want Grayson back. But that didn’t mean she didn’t miss him sometimes. Maybe not him, exactly, but how it’d felt to be with him. For a little while, she’d had one person who loved her more than anyone else. She’d had a person to go out with on Friday nights, and hang out with her at parties, and call before she went to sleep at night. It’d been nice. She missed it. She brought the jersey to her nose and breathed it in. It still smelled woodsy and clean, like Grayson.

  For a second—just a second—she considered what it would be like if she told Connor yes.

  Where would he take her on their date? Was this the kind of place where guys took girls to old-fashioned soda shops to split a milkshake? Or did that sort of thing only happen in movies?

  She shook her head, suddenly disgusted with herself. What was wrong with her? She’d just gotten rid of Grayson for good. Was she really sitting here with his old jersey, feeling all sad and mopey about how things used to be? Did she really want to jump into another thing so soon?

  No, she thought firmly, she really, really didn’t.

  She needed a distraction to keep her from obsessing. She tossed the jersey back into her closet and emptied her new schoolbooks, notebooks, and pens onto the faded duvet.

  French, she thought, sliding her textbook toward her. She’d study French.

  Her eyes glazed over as she flipped through the pages, trying to find the chapter they’d been talking about in class.

  She wasn’t facing the window, but she could see the gauzy curtain from the corner of her eye. The moment she looked down at her book, she was sure she saw the curtain flick, as if it had been reaching for her while her eyes had been turned away. But when she jerked around to look at it directly, it was still.

  Her skin crept.

  There’s nothing there, she thought, feeling stupid.

  But she stared at it for a while longer. Just to be sure.

  It was a white curtain, made of a thin material intended to let in the sunlight. But there was no sunlight now, only flat darkness. It made Hendricks think of shrouds used to cover dead bodies. Without meaning to, she pictured bloodstains and a gaping mouth. She felt her body temperature drop by several degrees.

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she considered the idea that the curtain had been reaching for her, but that it’d gone still again the second she turned to look at it. It was a silly, childish thought, and she was embarrassed the second it went through her head. But she couldn’t unthink it.

  Something shifted in the hall outside her door. Hendricks jerked around, and her hand slipped. The corner of the page cut deep into the pad of her finger.

  “Shit,” she said, watching a line of red appear on her thumb. She stuck her thumb into her mouth to stop the bleeding. She didn’t think they’d even unpacked the Band-Aids yet . . .

  A laugh sounded on the other side of her door. Hendricks’s head shot up, the hairs on the back of her neck twitching.

  That laugh . . . it had sounded just like Grayson.

  But Grayson was in Philly. So that wasn’t possible.

  She crept across the room, easing her door open. The hall was empty. Moonlight snuck in through the opposite window, painting the fresh floorboards and giving the plastic sheeting still hanging from the unfinished walls a strange, silvery sheen. Otherwise, everything was dark.

  “Mom?” Hendricks called, thinking her mother had brought up tea after all. But she could hear her mother’s voice downstairs, calling for her dad to help with the dishes. Besides, the laugh had sounded like a boy’s.

  The cut on Hendricks’s thumb smarted. The taste of blood was coppery on her tongue. She stepped into the hall, shivering a little. This old house was so drafty. Even though she could tell that the hall window was closed, there was still a breeze rustling the plastic against the walls, snaking around her ankles.

  “Hello?” she murmured, lips moving around her thumb. Something uneasy prickled below her skin. She almost expected an answer, but the hall stayed quiet.

  Slowly, the muscles in Hendricks’s shoulders began to relax. Maybe she’d drifted off while reading her French book and . . . dreamed the laugh. Shaking her head, she stepped back into her bedroom, one hand already pushing the door closed.

  A voice, low and deep, said, “What are you doing here, loser?”

  Hendricks jerked around, her heart hammering.

  “Who’s there?” She tried to keep her voice even, but she could hear the tremor that had crept into her words. Her brain flashed to Portia banging on the window the day before. Maybe she’d convinced one of the guys at their lunch table to swing by and mess with her.

  She stepped fully into the hallway now. The new floors out here were still splintery, and Hendricks could feel tiny shards of wood separating from the floorboards, pricking her toes. She heard the low hum of her parents’ voices drift up from the living room, but there was
another sound beneath that. Hendricks paused, head cocked, listening.

  More laughing.

  Goose bumps crept up her arms. Now that Hendricks was listening for it, she couldn’t deny what she heard. Someone was in her house. Someone was in her house laughing.

  A shudder went down her back. Her eyes were drawn to the shadows behind the plastic covering her walls. She clenched and unclenched her fists and realized that sweat had broken out on her palms.

  The laughter seemed to be coming from the bathroom. Hendricks crept down the hallway, every moment expecting the floorboards to creak and groan beneath her feet. But they were new, and her movements were silent. She stopped outside the bathroom and pressed her ear to the door.

  She heard voices now. It sounded like two guys talking.

  Hendricks swore, quietly, her whole body relaxing as she realized what must’ve happened. She’d been listening to a podcast about sheet masks while she got ready for school that morning, and she must’ve forgotten to turn her Bluetooth speaker off. It was probably picking up her dad’s phone downstairs. It did that sometimes.

  Relieved, she pushed the door open and flicked the light on, eyes already scanning the sink for her bright-blue speaker . . .

  She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror above the sink, and felt her stomach drop.

  Her long, blond hair had been chopped short. Spiky locks stuck straight up in some places. In others, it’d been hacked so close to her scalp that she could see spots of raw, bleeding skin.

  Hendricks’s chest tightened. She lifted a shaking hand to her head, cringing as her fingers brushed against a deep gash where her hair had been cut too close to her skin. Blood bubbled up beneath her fingers and trickled over her face in dark rivulets.

  And that wasn’t all. Someone had drawn on her face with blue Sharpie, circling her forehead, her nose, a spot on her chin.

  Acne, they’d written. Nose too big. Mole.

  The familiar hot burn of shame rose in her cheeks. She might’ve thought she was imagining this, somehow, except that she could feel the blood trailing down her skin, and the steady throb of pain from the deep gash in her scalp.

  Hendricks staggered backward, crashing into the bathroom door. He’s here, her mind screamed. It was the only explanation. He’d crawled through her window; he’d done this to her while she was sleeping. He’d always said she’d be ruined if they ever broke up, that no one would want her if she left him.

  Now he’d made sure of it.

  Hendricks drew in a long, sobbing breath and grasped for the doorknob behind her back. She threw it open and raced back to her room, slamming her door so hard the wall shuddered.

  That’s when she saw the dinner knife she’d brought up from downstairs. It was protruding from the back of her door. Like a warning.

  The scream seemed to rip out of her. It clawed up her throat and exploded from her lips, so loud that her ears were still ringing seconds later.

  Footsteps pounded down the hall. Hendricks lurched away from her door, but it was her dad who tore into her bedroom, not Grayson.

  “What happened?” He was already looking around for the intruder, his mind clearly following the same path that Hendricks’s had. “Is that little prick here?”

  Hendricks shook her head and motioned to her face, her hair.

  Her father only blinked at her, frowning. “Hendricks?” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t—don’t you see what he did?”

  The perplexed look didn’t leave her father’s face. Confused now, Hendricks spun to face the mirror hanging above her dresser.

  What she saw caused the blood to chill in her veins.

  Her reflection was normal again. Her hair hadn’t been hacked off. It was still in a bun, a bit messier now that she’d been digging her fingers into it, but it was all there. There was no Sharpie on her face, no blood dripping down her cheeks. Everything looked exactly like it was supposed to.

  “No,” Hendricks breathed, leaning closer to the mirror. She ran her hands over her face, her lips. She pulled her hair out of its bun, fingers shaking. “You don’t understand, a second ago it was different.”

  Her dad was staring at her, frowning slightly. “What was different?”

  Hendricks’s throat felt tight. She didn’t want to admit what she’d seen. What she’d thought she’d seen. It was too crazy to say out loud.

  “I don’t know,” she mumbled, twisting her hair back into a bun.

  Her father didn’t look convinced. Awkwardly, he said, “That counselor we talked to said stuff like this might happen, remember? Something like forty percent of people with PTSD experience auditory or visual hallucinations.”

  “Jesus, Dad, I don’t have PTSD,” Hendricks said, her voice thick. “It was a trick of the light or something.”

  “I’m just saying, I know you told us you didn’t want to talk to anyone about what happened, but maybe—”

  “I’m fine.”

  There was a long pause. Hendricks’s dad appeared to be having some sort of internal battle with himself.

  The word therapy had been thrown around a lot over the last few months. Hendricks had told her parents that she didn’t want to sit on some old man’s couch and talk about her feelings, that she wouldn’t even know where to start, and they’d agreed to let her try to handle things on her own for a while. But Hendricks knew they weren’t so sure that was the right choice. Sometimes she wasn’t so sure herself.

  “Okay,” her dad said, finally. “Just try to get some rest?”

  Hendricks heard what he wasn’t saying. I’ll let this go once. But if it happens again, we’re getting your mother and doctors and prescription medication involved.

  She nodded, stiffly, staring at him until he backed into the hallway.

  When she closed the door, she saw that the steak knife was still embedded in the wood.

  CHAPTER

  7

  The next morning, Hendricks hurried downstairs while her parents were getting ready for work. She heard their voices drift beneath their closed door.

  “Someone needs to talk to her about her anxiety, Diane,” her dad was saying.

  “I just don’t know whether that should be us,” her mom responded. “I still think a therapist would—”

  Hendricks hurried down the stairs, tuning the rest of their argument out. She didn’t need a therapist, and the only way she could think to avoid that argument was to avoid her parents completely. She grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the kitchen island and scrawled a quick note.

  Told Portia I’d meet her before school. See you later!

  It was a lie, but whatever. Her parents would just be relieved she had a Portia. She shoved the apple into her mouth and, clenching it between her teeth, she slipped into her coat and shot out the door.

  The day was gray and blustery, but warmer than it had been when she first got here. Warm enough that Hendricks left her coat unzipped, enjoying the feel of the breeze against her hot cheeks.

  Someone was walking just ahead of her, head hunched so she couldn’t see his face. She followed him for a block and a half before she recognized the black clothes, the retro haircut. It was that guy from after her party, the one who’d been smoking by her pool and wouldn’t tell her his name.

  “Hey!” she shouted, jogging to catch up with him. “Wait up!”

  His posture stiffened. He hesitated, but didn’t turn around.

  “Are you following me or something?” Hendricks joked, bumping her shoulder into his.

  He touched his arm, like her little shoulder bump had actually hurt him. His face was guarded as he jerked his chin at a run-down house on the corner. “I told you, we’re neighbors. Sort of.”

  Right, Hendricks thought, nodding. She remembered him saying something about living in the house just behind hers.

>   “Maybe we should build one of those soup-can telephones,” she joked. “You know, like in old television shows? You connect the soup cans with strings and it’s supposed to . . . do something.”

  She trailed off, frowning. He’d started walking again, his face tilted away from hers. “Yeah, whatever,” he said.

  “It was a joke,” Hendricks said, catching up with him again. “Because everyone has cell phones now. Why would you need to build a soup-can—”

  “Not everyone has a cell phone.” He hit the word everyone hard and cast a look her way, clearly indicating that she was being insensitive, somehow. She felt her cheeks color.

  “Sorry,” she muttered. She wasn’t sure why he was being so cold or why she was apologizing. He’d been nicer the other night.

  She cleared her throat, trying again. “So I haven’t seen you around school.”

  He frowned, slightly. “Yeah, I can think of about ten thousand places I’d rather be than that hellhole.”

  “Wow, a kid who dresses all in black and hates school. Original.”

  “Wasn’t aware that I was going to be quizzed on my originality on this fine Thursday morning.” He stopped walking and turned to face Hendricks fully, his dark eyes fixed on her, searching. “Did you need something?”

  Hendricks felt something thrum below the surface of her skin. She was suddenly tongue-tied. “I—I just wanted to say hi.”

  He didn’t smile. “Hi.”

  Hendricks chewed her lip. Why did it feel like he was sizing her up? Trying to decide whether she was worth his time?

  Was it what she was wearing? She glanced down at herself. She had to admit, she hadn’t put a lot of thought into her outfit this morning. The boyfriend jeans weren’t the current style, but they were Citizens.

  Grayson used to tell her he liked the way they hung off her hips. Of course, he’d also said that she should wear something formfitting on top or else it looked “sloppy.”

  Hendricks had paired the boyfriend jeans with her old track sweatshirt and a pair of beat-up Vans. She hadn’t even bothered with her hair, which was still wet from her shower and bunched in a knot on the top of her head.