by Dan Dillard
Chapter 8
“Just because I think angels or demons may only be electrical remnants of former flesh and blood beings does not make them less horrific or any less dangerous. The unexplained is still just that. What could these beings want? Life is the obvious answer... but what if it's more than that? How far will they go to realize their goals?”
-Ethan Jacobs, Electric Journal entry #27
..ooOOoo..
Everyone stared at her just long enough to make her uncomfortable. She was about to defend herself or say never mind when Aaron piped in.
“Should I get a Wee-Gee or something? Maybe some weed and candles?”
Kay looked understandably hurt. The statement seemed to dismiss her so quickly. Her comment was startling, especially in a room full of drunken strangers, but it was Ethan's platinum opportunity, and he scrambled to not screw it up.
“Um… Ouija boards are superstitious crap. Weed would be good, but I’m not sure how it applies here.”
He emphasized the pronunciation of Ouija, trying not to ruin a great evening by geeking out too much. It was hard to take much stock in something sold as a toy.
“In my experience, weed always applies,” said Kay, looking at the ceiling as if someone else had said it.
Emily looked confused. “Wait. What’s wrong with Ouija boards? I thought they were used to speak with the dead—if you believe that sort of thing is possible.”
Ethan decided not to step on Emily's toes. Her interest was a good thing.
“I don't mean to pick on anyone's beliefs and I think the idea of talking boards might have merit in the right hands. I just have a hard time using something that says ‘Parker Brothers’ on the bottom as a serious paranormal tool. Why can’t a ghost just use a pen and paper?”
He was proud of that explanation. Not too tart, not too sweet.
Emily questioned, “Do you believe?”
He considered the words carefully for a moment. He didn't attend church after his fifth year and was practically trained to be skeptical of religion. He wondered how people could sit every Sunday morning listening while someone else told them what to think.
However, he had no desire to offend anyone, and thought for a moment about how to best phrase his response.
“In ghosts? Let's say that I'd like to believe. I just need more evidence before I'll start shouting from the rooftops.”
He gave her a warm smile.
“I’ll put it like this, I think the possibility is there, but I don’t think it’s so much supernatural as it is scientific. We just need to look at the study of spooks, or even aliens and Bigfoot, in a different way.”
“Holy shit,” said Kay. “You have really given this some thought, haven’t you?”
“He's got a slight obsession,” said Aaron.
“It’s been a hobby of mine for a long time,” Ethan said.
Aaron coughed on purpose. “Hobby. Right.”
Then he put the focus back on Kay. “Please, tell us what you saw.”
Emily put her arm around him and her head on his shoulder, her eyes fixed on Kay as if she were watching a movie. Kay sat forward on the loveseat and described herself as a little girl.
“I was shy... painfully shy,” she began.
“Right,” said Aaron.
“Don't let the beer talk for you, sweetie,” she responded, putting a finger to his lips.
“I was six, maybe seven years old, and I had this imaginary friend.”
Emily spoke up, “I had one. His name was 'Follow'. He was my shadow.”
“That's actually pretty clever,” Ethan said.
Emily looked at Kay. “I'm sorry! Finish your story.”
“This friend was different. It wasn’t imagination and it wasn't a hallucination, either, ya know? I mean, deep down, kids know the difference between real and imagined, right?
The group nodded in unison, all eyes on her.
“I didn’t have any attachment to it like you do with an imaginary friend. It didn’t go with me because I wanted it to… it just showed up here and there.”
She blushed before continuing, fixing her gaze on Emily’s shoes.
“What? Go ahead,” Emily said.
“I had... this stuffed rabbit... named Ears, that I took with me everywhere. I dressed him up and talked to him and made him dance. I'd make him talk back to me—willed him to life out of boredom—but I knew he wasn’t alive.”
The thought brought warm smiles to Emily and Aaron’s faces, while Ethan was focused on the meat of the story—ghosts.
“That was the difference,” she continued, “It wasn't like Ears. I knew it was real, it was there with me, and I was never a willing participant.”
Ethan swallowed hard. He felt for her in a way he’d never experienced while reading the stories of encounters. He could see the hollowness in her eyes as she spoke and the way her hands trembled as she mentioned ‘it’.
“Did anyone else see it?" Emily asked, concern written across her delicate features. "Did you talk to your parents or brother or sister about it?”
Kay raised her eyes from the floor just long enough to give her a nervous glance.
“Only child. Mom and Dad never let on that they saw anything, and as far as they were concerned, I was just a happy kid with a vivid imagination. 'Nothin' to worry about', Dad would say. 'I'm the scariest thing in this house!'“
Ethan shuddered.
There's nothing else out there.
Kay looked back at the floor. “I guessed that as long as my imaginary friend didn’t bother them, everything was cool.”
Her tone changed. She got still and very quiet. Her eyes grew wide and distant as she relived the memory.
The only thing missing from the setting was a campfire and sleeping bags. Maybe a flashlight pointing towards her chin and casting eerie shadows, like you might see on a counselor’s face during an intense fireside ghost story. Had this been a campfire story, her peers would have been mesmerized, eager for the impending pounce.
The others lapped up each word like milk from a saucer, partially due to the subject matter, but greatly enhanced by the effects of the alcohol. A sober individual would have expected a ‘BOO!’ at any minute.
“Everything was fine until I got a little older, maybe nine or ten. I started to outgrow my invisible friend. That's when things in my room started to move—even disappear.”
“What?” Ethan said. “Kids misplace things all the time. I mean, maybe you were just mistaken.”
“No, I checked. I would deliberately leave things in one place, and when I'd come back to check on them, they would be somewhere else. Even if I was just gone for a moment.”
“Like what things?” Aaron asked.
“You want examples? Like my bedroom door. I would pull it shut and make sure it latched. Then I'd walk down the hallway to my parents' room. After a few seconds I'd go back and it would be open.
“I remember placing my dolls in a pyramid on this little bookshelf. Ears went on top. I spent all morning setting up that side of my room and getting everything just right. I ran to get my mother so she could see and when I got back, they were all in their old positions... it was like I had never rearranged them.”
Her voice changed, becoming like a child’s, softer and higher pitched. Aaron turned spectator, shifting in his seat to view her like he was watching a movie. Then he said what everyone else was thinking.
“They fell. Something shifted and they fell.”
She paused just long enough for him to finish and went back to her story, desperate to finish and get it completely off of her chest.
“Mom and Dad used that excuse and didn't let me explain. I had stacked them up on the shelf, but when we got back to my room, they weren't in a jumbled pile like they had fallen—they were all lined up on my bed in order of size. I never touched any of the dolls again, although Ears stayed with me at all times; he was my protector.”
She looked to her
left as if she could see her stuffed rabbit, and smiled a strange smile…a childlike smile.
“Weird,” said Emily.
Ethan smiled and whispered, “What? The doll story or the imaginary rabbit she's looking at?”
“Take your pick,” she replied.
Kay continued, oblivious to the sidebar conversation.
“One afternoon, I cleaned my room and ran downstairs to get a drink. I was gone thirty seconds at most. When I got back to my bedroom, the books on my shelf were backwards. The spines against the wall and the pages facing out, y' know? And I remember the room had an odd smell and it was very cold.”
“You’re fuckin’ with us,” Ethan accused.
It was an involuntary impulse. He had no intention of upsetting her or disagreeing, but just couldn’t process what he was hearing. An elbow in the ribs from Emily emphasized his error.
“Sorry. It's just very rare to have a spirit that maneuvers objects. Please…go ahead.”
He zipped his lips and placed his chin on his balled fists, elbows on his lap.
Kay stayed in her reverie, barely aware of the audience around her.
“Another day, I found that my entire box of crayons had been broken into tiny pieces and put back in the box. There wasn’t a stray scrap anywhere. I remember asking Mom for new ones and she got pissed,” she said.
Ethan remembered wanting a football for Christmas and not getting it. He cried and his father told him it was wrong to expect things, even at Christmas. It was the last time he remembered asking for anything.
Kay continued in her childlike voice, “I never blamed it, whatever it was—not to my parents. I never told them anything.”
Emily interrupted. “Why not?”
The question startled Kay from her memories. She sounded momentarily grown up as she responded.
“I don’t know. I guess because nothing threatening or violent ever happened, and I never actually saw any of these things happening—just the results.”
“Nothing scary? I mean, I’m freaked out right now. You were terrified, right?” Aaron asked, shuddering.
Each was so engrossed that a well placed firecracker would have sent them into cardiac arrest. Kay straightened up and rushed to the end of her story. She'd obviously had enough of the subject.
“One day, I just decided I was too old, that I didn’t believe in it anymore.Like kids do with Santa.”
“And that was it?” Emily asked.
“No, that’s when I saw it.”
She went silent, unintentionally allowing the horror of it all to sink in. Then she took a large gulp of wine, trying to recapture the calm she’d had a few minutes before. Her fingers trembled against the stemmed glass as she swallowed, then steadied.
Ethan was full of questions. This was no crazy person. She was educated and sane and right there in front of him. She wasn’t on some TV show grubbing for money. She was accessible, and he wanted to talk with her for hours. He was at once frozen, speechless, and delighted.
All mouths open, the group waited for her to speak again so they could each breathe, but she didn’t speak. She just stared into space. Ethan waved his hand in her field of view to snap her out of it.
“Saw what? What did you see?” he demanded.
He needed her to keep talking before they sobered up and the opportunity was gone, possibly forever. Kay looked at him and came back to the moment.
“I’m not sure,” she started. “A shadow, but all fluid, y' know? Maybe ‘mist’ is a better word.”
She closed her eyes like she was trying to see it again in her mind and her fingers trembled once again. Ethan's breathing became shallow and quickened. He soaked up every word.
“It was just there…staring at me. It had thickness…volume. It was a real presence. I could feel its gaze, but couldn’t see any eyes. No features at all. It was just a...thing.”
Her eyes opened, but remained unfocused.
“I could feel it seeing me.”
Her eyes welled with tears and she swiped them away, first with the back of her hand and then her palm, smearing her mascara. Emily hopped up and grabbed her a napkin from the counter, dipping it into a water glass. Kay took it from her with a nod and blotted her eyes.
“And you weren’t scared?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t remember being scared right then. I was a kid. You know kids will play with a poisonous snake until someone tells them it's bad. Besides, it didn’t have an evil groove to it. It felt more like sadness or loss, like it was saying good-bye. And then it was gone.”
Aaron shuddered and shook his head.
“You were a braver than I was. I’d still be having nightmares,” he said.
Ethan laughed, “Yep, you never did well with scary movies or even Halloween parties.”
Kay interrupted, “I was scared later, though. It became my boogeyman, and I was afraid I would see it again everywhere there was a shadow or dark place. I didn’t sleep for weeks after that.”
She tried to wrap it up, talking rapidly as she grasped for anything that would change the subject. Ethan shifted in his seat and was ready to ask a dozen questions, when Kay held up a hand in protest. She looked at him like a mother disciplining a child.
“Don’t invite the possibility, Ethan. Not out loud ... not even in your mind. It’s best to keep yourself planted firmly with real living people.”
She paused after delivering the warning, and looked at each of the others squarely so they knew she meant business. Aaron put his arm around her. Relief washed over her face as if she had purged long held secrets.
Ethan's need for information amplified. He could tell Kay was done answering questions, and it made him antsy. He was jealous of her experience, even after seeing firsthand the effect it could have on a person. That was no act he witnessed. She was terrified to this day from something that had happened fifteen plus years ago, and his passion was completely recharged, if it had waned at all. Kay settled back into Aaron's arms and he wrapped her up gladly and kissed her on the top of her head. The tension in the room dissipated and the action shifted more towards boredom and yawns.
