“Would you like me to walk you? It’s not too far up the road,” he offered with a longing on his face that sent my heart into a flurry.
“Sure,” I muttered, relieved to hear that I could speak again.
We began our walk in silence, but after a few moments, I opened my mouth, praying that the words would actually come out.
“Um, I think I’m a little early,” I began. “Abby asked me to come over around noon, and it’s only 11:30. I had planned to make a stop on the way over here because the stop I needed to make was in the neighborhood, but then I decided to just do it on the way home so that’s why I’m early, and—” I shut up, realizing that I had just rambled on like a babbling idiot.
Great, at first it was that I couldn’t get any words out, and now I couldn’t shut up. My stomach began to knot up, and I felt my face flush. I was annoying myself, so I couldn’t imagine what Blake was thinking. Actually I knew what he was thinking … He’s thinking that I’m a mute, klutzy, fumbling, rambling idiot, I concluded to myself. Why would he think anything else? The last few times I had been around him, I certainly acted in those heinous ways.
I swore I heard him chuckle, but when I glanced over in his direction, his face showed no amusement. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Abby will be thrilled at the idea of you being early.” He turned, catching my gaze. For a number of moments, I can’t be exactly sure how long, I gazed at him and took in his deep blue eyes, his chiseled jaw line, the dimple on the left side of his face that I hadn’t noticed until then, and every other perfect feature he held. Just like Abby, he had changed from the first night I had seen him after the senior’s party. Not a drastic change like hers, but still there was a difference. His blonde hair was still long and wavy, but a few inches had been cut. I didn’t remember him having any facial hair before, but now he looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days and stubble was forming on his face.
I swallowed hard and stopped walking, noticing that I had been just following his lead. He stopped in front of what from the corner of my eye looked like a large piece of wood. I looked up and saw that we were standing in front of the largest wooden gate I had ever seen. It looked like it belonged in front of a fortress, not protecting some home in small-town Marblehead. It must have been at least fifteen feet high and thirty feet wide, I guessed. A trace scent of fresh paint hit my nose.
“Here, allow me,” Blake began as he reached for the door, unlatching the lock and pushing the gate open. “I just finished painting it, and I don’t know how dry it is.”
When the gate swung open, it revealed the largest, most grandiose, intricately detailed home I had ever seen. I stood there in shock as my eyes swept from left to right, trying to take it all in. The old white paint was still peeling away from the brick it had once clung to, and the black shutters were in major need of re-staining. A large porch stretched across the entire length of the house, and a stone staircase led to the large red door. It was so bright red that it must have been recently painted.
“I wanted to say sorry for my behavior the first night we met,” Blake said, breaking my focus on the house and calling my attention back to him.
He looked intently at me, and I couldn’t deny that my face felt twisted with shock. Never in a million years did I think he would actually apologize for that. There was no reason to. “No big deal. Everyone is entitled to an off day, right?” I responded, hoping that he would chalk up all of my peculiar incidences to just a bunch of off days.
“Well, you girls have fun.” He smiled, revealing the dimple on his left cheek again and sending my stomach into full-on summersaults. His eyes retreated from mine back toward the house.
When I followed his gaze, I saw Abby bouncing down the stone staircase, making her way down the long, curved driveway toward us. “Hi, Meredith. You’re early!” She smiled as she approached. She truly sounded excited about my being there, just like Blake had said she would be.
“Yeah, sorry, I had planned to—”
“Oh, don’t worry about it,” she cheerfully cut me off. “I’m actually glad you’re early. I had everything all set up this morning, so we can get started right now.” She turned to Blake, giving him a pointed look. “If you’re ready of course.” She smiled, turning back to me. And I couldn’t help but wonder if they were having another brother-and-sister quarrel.
“Sure, I’m ready.” That was my main reason for coming there, right? And as much as I tried, there was no way to lie, especially not to myself. I knew why I had really accepted Abby’s invitation: it had been to see Blake. There was no way of explaining why I wanted to see him so badly. Why I felt a certain way when I was in his presence. But I tried to look on the bright side: we had spoken a few words and I had proved somewhat that I was not a total weirdo … or at least, I hoped I had.
Abby turned on her heels and headed back toward the large house. I followed, but not before looking at Blake once more. When our eyes met, he gave me a delicate smile before turning around himself and walking in the opposite direction. I couldn’t help but wish he wasn’t going.
Chapter Nine
I walked quickly, trying to catch up to Abby with her light and bubbly bounce. She flew up the stairs, and I hesitated before placing my foot on the first stone step. I couldn’t describe what was happening, but a strange feeling came over me when I was a few feet shy of the staircase. There was some energy in the air that I couldn’t quite explain, but it gave me a gut instinct that something weird was going on. I shook it off, thinking it was just all in my head. It had not been the best idea to think about all the scary stories I’d heard as a child on the way over. I began the walk up, trying to fight off my nerves with each step. When I reached the top, I looked forward to the open door and saw Abby standing in the foyer waiting for me.
“You coming?” she asked, a puzzled look crossing her face.
I nodded and continued to make my way across the wide porch and through the doorway.
“Wow,” I gasped when I entered the marble foyer. I stood there in awe, looking up at the winding staircase that continued as far as I could see. In my imagination, these homes had been dark and drab on the inside, all covered with dark wood paneling, cobwebs, and dust—just what you would picture a haunted house to look like. This house was not even close to dark and drab. There was sunlight spilling in from windows in every direction I looked.
There was a large room on my left that must have been the dining room. The huge glass chandelier hanging in it looked to be about the same size as our refrigerator at home. It was full of clear crystals, cascading down and making a point at the end. It was perfectly centered over what looked to be a table underneath a lot of plastic, stretching the entire length of the room. That must be one of the rooms we’re going to paint samples in, I thought to myself.
To my right was another large room that must have been the living room, or at least one of them. There was a lot of white furniture, all Victorian-style couches and chairs pushed to the middle of the room, but there was no plastic protecting it. I did notice a lot of plastic beneath a large blank wall. It was opposite a stone wall that held the largest fireplace I had ever seen. All the walls I could see were stark white, as if they had been stripped of all paint or wallpaper, leaving a fresh clean slate. She had not been joking when she had said she needed help in picking out paint colors.
“Follow me. I’ll give you a quick tour before we get started,” she said as she began to walk down the long hallway directly in front of us.
Still feeling a little uneasy, I followed closely behind her, looking around constantly and marveling over every inch of the amazing home. I never had enough time to take in a room before moving onto the next. We entered the kitchen, and I was taken aback by its size. I swore that the entire first floor of our house would have fit in that one single room. A large island sat in the middle; it was a beautiful white marble, with thin black veins shooting through it, almost giving it an overall grey color. The countertops matched the island, and
the tall cabinets that towered over them had been stripped of their paint. There was no table in what looked to be the breakfast area, but I did see a large sheet of plastic covering the ground with a few sample paint cans laying on top. I realized that this was not going to be a quick and easy task; this was going to be a long process.
From the kitchen, we made our way back down the long hallway that led to the front door. We took a sharp turn before entering the foyer, leading us up the stairs to the second floor. The upstairs was quite a different atmosphere from the downstairs. It was exactly what you would expect if you pictured a haunted house. Most of the doors were closed, leaving the hallway dark and feeling very isolating.
There was one door opened at the far end of the hallway on the left. I could see the natural light glowing from the inside of the room. “This is my room,” Abby said as we approached the opened doorway. We walked into the pinkest room I had ever seen. It looked like someone had thrown up pink all over the walls, bedspread, and accessories. The only non-pink color I could see was the hardwood floors beneath our feet.
“It’s ... nice,” I said, hoping it came out sounding fairly believable. “You must like pink.”
She laughed. “No, I actually hate the dreadful color. Since we have only been here for a few weeks, we decided to get started on the downstairs first. But as soon as we finish with that, my room is next in line. I don’t know what was going on inside the person’s head that decorated this room.” She shook her head and then gestured toward the hallway. “Shall we?”
I nodded and followed her out. As we made our way back down the long, dark hallway toward the stairs, I noticed a door that had been closed was now open. As we passed, I foolishly peered inside and saw Blake lying on his bed, reading a book. We made eye contact, but I quickly averted my gaze and looked back down the hallway, angry with myself for even looking. It was clear to me that there was something between us, even if I was the only one who felt it. Every time I saw him, my heart fluttered and my stomach did weird flip-flops. Just at the sight of him. I had never felt anything like it before. It was frustrating to me that the first time I felt any interest in someone, he was a tourist who showed up a couple months before I planned to leave town. Just my luck.
“So I figured something bright and cheery for the kitchen. Maybe a sunny yellow or sky blue?” Abby said as we got back downstairs and started heading down the long hallway toward the kitchen. Upon entering the brightly lit room, she bent down and lifted the top off the sample paint cans. She revealed two yellow shades and two shades of blue. She handed me a paintbrush and began to instruct me on what to do.
When she finished her explanation, she said, “I thought you could paint the blue samples and I could paint the yellow. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” I answered, taking the paintbrush from her hands and bending down to dip it in the lighter shade of blue on the left. I began to paint a large square on the white wall in front of me. The smell of paint made my stomach turn a little, but I ignored it and continued to paint the outline of my square. After we finished painting the four squares, we moved on to the next room, allowing the paint to dry before we made our final decisions. We continued the process in each room that she had set up with paint samples, which was pretty much every room downstairs except the one with its door shut.
Finally we made our way into the amazing living room, the room where the large stone fireplace took up the entire back wall. I followed Abby, and we came to a stop at the large empty wall with the wad of plastic beneath it. She lifted off the lids to each of the sample paint cans, like she had done in each room before. These colors were much different than the ones we had been experimenting with in the other rooms. These colors were all dark shades of blues, teals, and browns. She handed me a fresh paintbrush, and I started with the sample nearest to me. It was a beautiful, dark blue steel color. I picked up the brush and began to paint the outline of my square.
“So you live with your aunt?” Abby asked, totally catching me off guard.
I wondered how she had known, but then I remembered mentioning my aunt at the hardware store the day before. It would be easy enough to put together, I guessed. “Uh, yeah. Well, she’s not really my aunt … I’ve just called her that since I was little.”
“Oh.” She looked as if she wanted to dig deeper into the topic, but she refrained. “Well, what are your plans after this summer? You did just graduate from high school, right?”
“Yeah, just a couple weeks ago. I’m planning on traveling a bit after I get some money saved up, but it’s all still up in the air right now.”
She nodded.
If she was going to ask personal questions, then I thought that was my chance to ask one, too. “So do you and your brother live in this big house all alone, or do you have parents?”
She laughed. “Of course we have parents. They went into town but should be home any second now. They have actually wanted to meet you since we arrived here.” She paused, looking apprehensive, as if she had just said too much.
Just then the front door opened behind us. When I turned around, I found two people staring at me wide-eyed.
“Mother, Father,” Abby spoke up. “This is Meredith, the girl I met in town a few days ago.”
There was an uncomfortable silence for a moment. They gave me the same weird feeling as Abby and Blake had when I first saw each of them.
“Of course!” Abby’s father spoke as he began walking toward me with a smile on his face. He crossed the room quickly and held out his hand. “I’m Samuel Harper. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Meredith.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too. You have a beautiful home. It’s amazing what you’ve done with the place.” When I looked into his eyes, I saw an older rendition of Blake, except for his hair that was beginning to grey. There was no mistaking they were father and son.
“Well, thank you. But I must say it’s mostly Abby’s doing. She has been working around the clock since we got here.” He looked toward Abby, giving her a proud glance.
Just then Abby’s mother came to stand beside Samuel. “Hello, I’m Annette Harper. Sorry, I was just taken aback for a moment. You reminded me of someone I used to know. It took me by surprise.”
She looked to be a little nervous, but there was something sweet and caring about her. Or maybe the correct description was motherly. The moment I looked into her eyes, I knew where Abby got the startling green color of hers. Her hair was a dark auburn color and it was pinned back into what looked like a low bun. She was dressed very conservative but it seemed to suit her.
“It’s nice to meet you.” I smiled.
“Well, we will not delay you two any longer. Your mother and I will be out back, should you need us for anything,” Samuel said to Abby.
When he finished, his eyes met mine. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Meredith.” He smiled.
The way they spoke. It was so eloquent and refined-sounding, much like Abby had spoken to me the day outside the dress shop. It made me feel intimidated.
“You too, sir.” Sir? I don’t think I’d ever called anyone sir before.
They both turned and exited the room.
“Sorry, that was a little awkward. They are very sweet, but so out-of-date,” Abby said as she turned back toward the wall, picking up her paintbrush and continuing to paint the sample square she had been working on.
“They seem nice,” I said.
After seeing Abby’s parents, I missed my family more than ever. I missed calling someone Mom and Dad, and I missed my parents looking at me like Samuel had just looked at Abby. It was clear her parents loved her very much. Suddenly, I was extremely envious of the girl standing beside me.
Turning back around, I continued with my painting, but just as I put my brush to the wall, my head began to pound. The pain was in the same location as when I had gotten the past few headaches after my dreams. I grabbed the back of my head with my left hand, trying to ease some of the throbbing by rubbing it, but the
pain consumed me, forcing me to drop the brush out of my right hand so I could use it to steady myself against the wall. Through the pain, I saw the brush hit the ground, splattering paint all over me and the floor.
“Meredith, are you okay?” I could hear the panic in Abby’s voice, but I wasn’t able to focus on her face.
The large room became blurry and began to spin. Oh, no, not here. That was the only thought that crossed my mind. It was one thing to deal with this in my bedroom, somewhere where no one could see me, but not there. Not in front of Abby, or even worse, Blake. I saw the vision of a man. The man was familiar to me: it was one of the men that had haunted my dreams the other night, the same man that stood near the tree line while my sister and I played in the backyard. As my vision tunneled, I began to see his surroundings more clearly. He looked to be in a small, dark area, in between two brick buildings, maybe. I could see dumpsters, graffiti on the walls, and street lamps in the distance. The exact location was not recognizable, but his face was all too clear. His eyes were as dark as coal and were a perfect match to his jet black hair. He was smiling the same evil smile, seemingly happy, admiring something as he glanced downward. Then I gasped out loud. The man was holding someone in his grasp, and that someone was me.
Suddenly the vision was gone, and the pain in my head began to diminish. My heart sank as I realized that something was very, very wrong with me. Apparently these attacks, or whatever they were, were coming whenever they felt like it. The vision had scared me to the point that I had forgotten where I was until I heard Abby’s frantic voice. “Meredith, talk to me. Are you okay?”
“Bathroom?” I choked out, hoping she was able to understand my mumbling.
“Here, let me help you.” She grabbed my arm, guiding me down the hall and stopping at the opened door on the right.
“I’ll take it from here,” I stuttered, walking in and shutting the door behind me.
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