When these things happened, big “bumps in the night,” we were never able to sleep after. And in a weird way I think we both kind of looked forward to them. These nights make up the stories we’ll eventually tell about our days working at the haunted inn. If Alf and I can be friends forever then we could even tell them together and reminisce about how fun it was to sit up all night long and drink coffee after coffee. We’d do the annoying thing that people who have known each other forever do, interrupt with details while the other one has the reins of the story, talk at the same time, laugh together over the bits that really aren’t that funny if you weren’t there.
Naturally Alf flicked the kitchen light five times before leaving it on.
We both looked around from the open kitchen door. The coast appeared to be clear. But of course I knew that if we were in patterned space this kitchen would be crawling with mumbling OTHERS.
“Make coffee, Alfred,” I demanded.
“You make the coffee.”
“Ha, please. Go make coffee.”
“Why?”
“Because your name is Alfred! Blame your parents, not me.”
“Can you come in with me?”
“Oh, fine.”
So I followed him into the kitchen and watched him work.
“Party’s almost here,” he said, pulling the big coffee can from above the sink. It’s tomorrow night. Or, technically, tonight.
“Yep.”
“I hope something crazy happens.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know. You know what I mean.”
“Like something spoooooooooooky?”
I grabbed our respective mugs, mine brown with sort of puffed-up pumpkins on it and Alf’s white and plain with some law school crest embossed into the side. We always use the same mugs for some reason.
Olivia only drinks tea and she does it from a real teacup with a tiny handle hardly big enough for her finger’s wrinkled tip.
Real teacups are too small. No room for sloshing around so they’re impossible to carry anywhere. Those cups force you to sit and be seated and do nothing but sip. Maybe that’s why ladies in Victorian movies are never DOING anything. Bound to the table by their teacups. Bound to the table by THE THREAT OF MESS.
“Yes, obviously something spooky. Do you know how cool that would be? Not only are we throwing an Anniversary party IN Margaret and Wink’s suite, but if something actually happened too? It would become a legend.”
“When are you getting beer?” I asked.
Alf held up a hand to show that he was counting scoops and couldn’t be distracted. I gave him a look like, you really can’t talk and count to twelve at the same time? And he gave me a look back, like a retard-face look.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” he finally answered.
“Are you gonna use your ID? Or are you gonna get Dwayne to do it?” Dwayne is an older kid. Kind of a weirdo who is always up for buying younger kids beer in exchange for an invite to a party. He likes to mac on younger girls and always tries to impress everybody with how much he can drink so usually he ends up sprawled on a lawn somewhere, a crumpled island in a sea of his own puke by midnight.
“I’ll do it. I don’t wanna deal with Dwayne.”
“You better not fuck up, Alf.”
“Um, yeah, I know, Noelle, but thanks for the hot tip.”
“I better not be beerless. Otherwise I’m going to make you break into your dad’s liquor cabinet. And you know how you hate that.”
“I hate you.”
And I shoved his coffee mug at him fast, across the table so it slid too close to the edge. I don’t know why I did that. It was kind of stupid. I didn’t want Alf’s mug to break.
“Whoa! Watch it, psycho! I’m just kidding.”
“I know.”
And then Alf gave me another weird look, but this one was sort of scared, like, “Okay, dear god, please let me ask you if you’re okay” without actually having to make things weird by saying out loud, “Okay, dear god, please let me ask you if you’re okay,” all serious and annoying.
“Okay, we’re awake now.” I decided to change the subject. “What should we do?”
“Well, I was thinking maybe we could take the Ouija board up to the suite. See if we can’t get things going in there. We won’t have time before the party.”
“Are you fucking retarded, Alf?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would we go up there in the middle of the goddamn night with a Ouija board? Does anyone REALLY do that? Except for people in movies that are about to be brutally murdered?”
“Wow, you’re really scared. Okay fine, we don’t have to.”
“I know you’re scared too. Why would you flick the lights five times if you weren’t scared of something?!”
“Of course I’m scared, Noelle, that’s why I wanna go up!”
“To just, feel horribly scared?”
“Yeah, obviously.”
“But what if something happens?”
“If something happens, that’s even better.”
“I don’t know, Alf. If this were a movie, I’d be yelling at us not to do this.”
He was quiet for a minute before he spoke again, contemplating whether or not to say what he wanted to say next.
“Okay, I’m just going to ask. Are you okay?”
I must have sounded too serious about not wanting to go up.
“Yeah, of course I’m okay.”
And that probably sounded too defensive.
“Noelle, no you’re not. You love getting scared. We’ve talked about this. We heard a crash in the suite. Tomorrow is the Anniversary. Are you seriously considering NOT taking a Ouija board up there?”
“Okay, fine, let’s go upstairs.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a bully. We don’t have to.”
“Alf, don’t flatter yourself, you couldn’t be a bully if you tried. I want to go up. You’re right, it’ll be fun.”
Because maybe it’s Sybil up there.47 And maybe we can see her for real this time. Not just in patterned space. Maybe Alf will see her too and maybe I can tell him everything and then it’ll all be okay.
“There you go. It will be fun. I know sometimes this place can be weird, it can kind of get to you, right?”
I nodded because I couldn’t get the word YES out. My throat suddenly felt all pulled tight like the strings on a hoodie closing up. And I wondered then, for the first time, if maybe Alf was having his own strange experiences as well, maybe it was something HE did to make the cats disappear. I fucking hope so. I really would rather the missing cats be all Alf’s fault somehow than mine.
“So I get that maybe you’re just having a weird night. I don’t think you’re chicken. Okay? We don’t have to go upstairs.”
And I smiled. And poured us big cups of coffee, then destroyed them with cream and sugar. That’s what Herman says when I fix coffee. That I destroy mine. He likes it black because it kickstarts his spastic bowels.
“Alfred. I’m fine. But thanks for caring. It’s sweet.”
And he turned so red, especially his ears, and I got up and left the kitchen before he could shift into anything I didn’t want to talk about.
We kept the Ouija board in the closet near the back door. On the very top shelf, near the back so we had to grab for it up there without really being able to see. I tried but couldn’t find it with my splayed, reaching fingers. And then suddenly I felt very scared to be reaching into darkness like that.
I went back into the kitchen and grabbed a chair. Alf was just getting up to refill our coffees. I pulled the chair to the closet and peered over the shelf.
The Ouija board was gone.
I got down from the chair and walked down the hall to the lobby.
The Ouija board w
as sitting on the front desk.
“Oh you got it already?” asked Alf, our topped-up coffees in his hands.
And for some reason I said, “Yes, I got it.”
I don’t know why I said yes. I should have said, “Um, no, I didn’t, Alf. It’s pretty fucked up, though, that something in this house seems to want us to go up to the suite and use it though, right? In fact, maybe we should just forget it and go back to bed.”
But I didn’t say that.
Instead of saying that, I grabbed it and ran48 up to Margaret and Wink’s top floor suite.
46. Rule 2: Tell yourself you want to see a ghost if you really DON’T want to see a ghost.
47. Preliminary conversations with child psychologists hired to work on the diary reveal that this line holds particular psychological significance: the point in which Noelle seems to want to conflate her real world with the unreal world of “patterned space.”
48. Rule 7: RUN up and down all staircases.
Twenty-First Entry
The suite had changed a lot since it was Margaret and Wink’s apartment. After it became a hotel, management hired a man named Claude to totally redecorate the inside, probably so that it looked absolutely nothing like the way it had in the pictures all over the newspaper, filthy and spattered with blood and grease and vomit.
The last two fingers of each of Claude’s hands were fused together, one mega nail and a wide joint. Olivia had met him once a long time ago and told us she didn’t notice his fingers till she was already shaking his hand.
Claude had employed a then-modern, now very dated-looking Southwestern motif, those sharp, almost offensive Mexican prints, a mess of decorative arrows and turquoise stones, strips of leather on the floor and cowhide pillows that were prickly and uncomfortable.
Alf and I sat in the middle of the room, Alf with a cowhide pillow over his crossed legs, his arms lying overtop to reach the planchette.49 I made a cushion of my calves and the convenient curve of my socked heels. The way my father begged me not to sit because I’ll “ruin my knees!” Hot coffees steamed next to us on the floor.
“Alf, what’s with the pillow?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you planning on getting a boner tonight?”
“What? No!”
“Then what’s with that boner-hider pillow in your lap? Get rid of it, it’s weirding me out.”
“I can sit how I want!”
“Please, Alf, you look like a fat girl, come on.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a classic fat girl move, sitting with a pillow on your lap. I do it all the time.”
“You’re not a fat girl.”
“Okay, well, neither are you so lose the pillow, okay?”
“Noelle, you’re so edgy lately.”
“I’m always edgy.”
“Okay, fine, but lately it’s been worse. You know what I’m talking about. What the hell is the matter with you?”
Let’s see, why am I on edge? Could it be the fact that Alf has this frustrating goddamn crush on me? So that we can never be friends forever now? Or what about the fact that I’m walking in my sleep and seemingly interacting with ghosts, or that I’m abusing Olivia’s poor cats? Could that be why I’m edgy? OR WHAT ABOUT THE FACT THAT MY FUCKING FATHER IS A FUCKING LIAR!
I took a big gulp of my coffee, hoping it would distract me. “Nothing is the matter, okay? Now let’s do this. Who do you want to contact?”
“I don’t know. Probably Wink or Margaret,” Alf suggested.
“What about the big guy?” I asked.
“Nathanial Holcomb?”
I nodded.
“I think he’s in the basement.”
“You don’t think they’re all just everywhere?”
“I don’t know if it works like that.”
I happened to know that it did work like that. Because I’d seen it.
“I guess either way, this is Margaret and Wink’s apartment so they’re probably the most appropriate,” I said. Instead of telling him what I knew, what I’d seen in my waking sleep.
“Yeah, good point.”
“Okay, you start.”
He was hesitating, though, just sitting there staring at the board.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
“No, no.”
“Are you scared?”
“It’s not that, alright, Noelle?”
“Well what is it, Alf?”
“I don’t know. I just, maybe we can try to contact my sister.”
This I wasn’t expecting. Alf hadn’t brought up his sister again after that first time in the middle of the night when he’d told me about how she died. I didn’t even know her name.
“We can try if you want to, Alf. But I don’t really know how this works.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like maybe we can only contact spirits who’ve died here, you know what I mean? And like, if we can contact any spirit anywhere, I don’t know that we necessarily want to drag your sister to this place.”
And I don’t want to talk to your dead sister, Alf. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I want to talk to Sybil. I want ask Sybil where the cats went, and whether or not Sammy’s REALLY lying half-dead in the basement. I want to ask her what the house wants with me, why it keeps waking me up, why its permanent residents are always talking to me and whispering at me and maybe making me do terrible things to that poor cat.
“Yeah, okay. That makes sense.”
“But hey, Alf, we can do whatever you want.”
“Let’s not, then. Let’s not do it now. Or not here, in the suite.”
“Okay. So you wanna try and contact Margaret then? Or Wink?”
“Sure,” he sniffed. He was tearing up.
“Alf, what’s the matter?”
“I just, for some reason for the past few nights, I just, I can’t get her out of my head. I’m seeing her drowning again over and over and it just, I can’t shake it. Even when I fall asleep it’s all I dream about.”50
“Well, fuck this then, let’s just go back downstairs and play cards.”
“No. No, I want to do this. It’ll be fun, okay? I just, I wanna see something. It’ll make me feel better if we see something. Honestly.”
I nodded. And smiled, a massive smile so big and insane as to be infectious and finally it made Alf laugh.
We each placed the first two fingers of both hands on the planchette, as delicately as we could. Our backs straightened too because Ouija boards can always do that to a person. Maybe an involuntary gesture of respect for the dead.
“Okay, so, who do you want then?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Alf, you’re running this thing.”
“Margaret, I guess?”
“Better make sure your boner-hider’s in place.”
And he laughed and told me to shut up.
Then started his séance.
“We want to speak to the woman who lived here. The woman who was eaten.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“I don’t know. It’s solemn Ouija board talk. Haven’t you ever seen a movie before?”
“Well, how is saying it like that more formal, or, like, more respectful than just saying Margaret?”
“Okay, this is what I’m talking about.”
“What?”
“You’re being so unpleasant! Would you just let me lead this thing?”
“Fine, cripes, don’t let me kill your boner.”
He rolled his eyes before continuing. “Margaret, we’d like to speak to you. Are you with us?”
Nothing happened. Nothing moved. There weren’t even any sounds really, which was actual
ly kind of weird for the inn, such an old creaky house with so many, even just regular bumps in the night, like pipes working in the walls, or wind rattling shutters, stuff like that. The conspicuous quiet I used to think was kind of funny, but hated now after last night.
“Alf, I don’t think they’re going to talk to you unless you free your boner.”
“What?”
“Lose the pillow! They think you’re a fat girl. They don’t want to talk to you.”
He flung the pillow at me. “There. Are you happy?”
I nodded.
Alf continued: “We want to speak to Margaret.”
Silence.
“Margaret, if you’re with us, please give us a sign.”
“Okay okay okay, I’m sorry to interrupt again, but come on.”
“What?!”
“Why do we ask for a sign? Like, why don’t we ask them to use all of the signs on the goddamn Ouija board we’re using, like fucking YES and fucking NO, instead of making us try to figure out the significance of some other random thing?”
And Alf burst out laughing and yelled, “FINE!” in fake exasperation.
“Okay! Margaret! Please, if you don’t mind, whether with a candle flickering, lights turning off, a picture falling, or EVEN using this Ouija board, indicate to us that you’re here.”
Nothing. Nothing but the sound of a car passing outside. The tires on the road sounded rainy wet.
“Alfred, we don’t have any candles lit,” I said.
“Okay, genius. That’s it,” he said. “Why don’t you lead the séance if you think you’re so good at it.”
“Hey, I didn’t say I was even good at it. I’m just not an idiot.”
We laughed and then I cleared my throat and we started again.
“Is Margaret in the room?” I asked.
And suddenly the planchette twitched and Alf and I both pulled our hands back at the same time, startled. I could see in his face he really hadn’t done it, he hadn’t moved a muscle, and I hadn’t either, or so I thought. Maybe I’d had a little spasm in my finger or something. A spontaneous reflex, so small I could barely feel it.
The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) Page 12
