The Seance in Apartment 10

by Ambrose Ibsen

  Except for talk of Cat's condition, Julia, Annie and I had said precious little to one another all night. An aneurysm, I explained to them, was something that could conceivably affect anyone, even someone young and healthy. Often, such things went undetected for many years, and could blow without much provocation. Annie and Julia accepted this information with a nod, but in their eyes I could see a twinkle of incredulity, which I myself shared.

  When they looked at me, they seemed to be saying, Sure, it could happen to anyone, at any time. But why did that vessel in her head blow during the séance, of all times?

  There was another aspect to the grisly episode which we didn't discuss aloud, but that weighed heavily on our minds nonetheless. Cat's face. There had been real terror etched across it. Why? What had she seen, in those dark moments before the lights flashed back on, that had scared her so terribly and that the rest of us had mercifully missed?

  When morning came and there was still no change in Cat's condition, the three of us decided to head home. Annie and Julia had gotten more than enough of my studio the night before, and stopped by just long enough to retrieve their things. They offered to let me stay over at their houses, but I declined. Instead, I let them drop me off at the apartment with promises that I'd call them if I needed anything.

  Returning to the studio was hard to do. No sooner did I crack open the door than did I get a whiff of drying blood. The warmth of the early morning was curdling the thick, red paste that was matted on my carpet, and as I approached the massive stain I knew that there'd be no getting it out. Nonetheless, taking up several rags and some cleaning solution, I did my best to scrub the blood away.

  The place felt violated. Things had happened there that I would never be able to expunge from my memory. Even when I'd managed to clean the carpet to the best of my ability, leaving a large, ruddy, oval-shaped stain in front of the futon, and had walked the blood-encrusted Ouija board out to the dumpster, the place maintained an air of hostility. It wasn't my little apartment anymore. It was the site of something traumatizing, of something profane and unsettling.

  I Googled so many home remedies for getting blood out of carpeting that my search history probably looked like a serial killer's. Some succeeded in making the color fade but couldn't altogether rid the carpet of the blood stain. Within a day, the smell had mostly gone; I'd left the window open, allowing the rainy breeze to chase the nauseating scent of blood out.

  When I finally slept, crashing about midday in an exhausted heap, I turned onto my side and looked towards the window.

  Cat had been staring through that window when her aneurysm had gone. She'd seen something that'd scared her, pushed her to the very edge and sent her blood pressure surging to its limits. What had it been? The rain... the rain had been falling upwards, I thought, shaking my head. Maybe she saw something else, too.

  Blinking heavily, my mind was plunged into a numbing sleep. I couldn't have stayed awake any longer even if I'd wanted to.

  The next day, an equally rainy and unpleasant Sunday, brought nothing in the way of good news. There'd been no change in Cat's condition over the course of the day. There was some talk of transferring her to a bigger hospital in another city, but the logistics of that weren't really made known to me. I heard it through the grapevine, from Annie, who'd stopped in to visit Cat and her parents.

  One thing Annie didn't do, though, was to stop by the apartment and visit me.

  I couldn't blame her. Since the incident I highly doubted I'd ever manage to get her or Julia to set foot back in my place. In many respects, I wasn't even comfortable there any longer, though with a cheap rug blocking out the brown splotch on the carpet I was trying my damnedest to move past it all.

  I didn't tell my dad about what had happened, and had no plans to do so. He'd worry about me, offer to come and get me, or to “talk” about it, and speaking to another person about what I'd seen that night wasn't really a priority of mine. Cat, an acquaintance, had suffered a medical emergency while staying at my place. Of course, there was more to it than that, but at risk of having my religious father accuse me of “witchcraft” for experimenting with a Ouija board, I decided to just spare myself the entire uncomfortable conversation.

  As the afternoon wore on I found myself still lazing in bed, infomercials playing on the television for background noise, thinking back to that séance. Everything had happened so fast, and in the excitement that followed I hadn't really put a whole lot of thought into what I'd seen and experienced while we'd tooled around with the spirit board.

  Was it really mom?

  During the séance we'd made contact with something, a presence, that had claimed to be my mother. Though it was possible that Cat or one of the others had been nudging the planchette, the mention of “Melanie Mouse” really made me wonder whether or not we'd connected with my mother.

  I scanned the studio; took in the white walls, the shadowed door, the misty window, the dark, narrow stretch between the kitchen and bathroom. I was alone in the apartment.

  But if Cat was to be believed, there was more to our world than met the eye.

  Possibly we'd invited something into this apartment, had tapped into a world where the dead roamed. What if it was true? Had my mother really reached out to us during the séance? And if so, then where was she now?

  Is she still here in the apartment with me?

  It occurred to me that we didn't follow all of Cat's rules when playing with the board. She'd explained how to carry out a séance, had pointed out the importance of signing off at the end, lest we leave a connection between the worlds open. We hadn't said “Goodbye”, though. Not that it mattered now; I'd ditched the board. There was no way I was going to keep it, and I'd been in no hurry to mess around with it by myself to finish what we'd started.

  I twisted around in bed, the covers beneath me having grown slightly damp with sweat, and looked out the window at the grey sky. Let's suppose that all of that was real. Our séance was legit and we managed to talk to my mom. That's pretty crazy. But if we didn't follow the rules and say goodbye, does that mean that the séance was never finished? Is it possible that she's still here? I yawned. And would it be such a bad thing if she were?

  Somehow, the idea of my mother's spirit lingering in the studio was comforting to me. I'd missed her terribly for so long, and knowing that she was still out there, in some form, was a great feeling. “Was it really you, mom?” I squeaked aloud, sitting up in bed.

  There was no reply, of course.

  “I would have liked to talk to you more,” I added, standing up and heading for the shower.

  Playing a little music on my phone, I treated myself to a quick rinse and then dried off. I had designs to prep a basic lunch and ambled into the kitchen, half-dressed, to make myself a sandwich. Tapping my foot to the music, I listened to some energetic dance stuff to get my mind off of the whole ordeal. Daft Punk came on and I sang along while spreading peanut butter over a slice of bread.

  Washing the knife and a few odds and ends in the sink, I took my phone and sandwich with me over to the futon and plopped down to eat. The music had changed, and an annoying commercial had come on. An overly enthusiastic announcer was trying to sell me a new Lexus. Lowering the volume, I started into my food and waited for the music to resume.

  It was during that lull that I first heard it.

  The droning.

  I'd thought I'd heard something from the kitchen, when I'd still been listening to “One More Time”, but I'd written it off as interference or a quirk of my low quality phone speaker. Now, from the futon, with my music lower, I could really hear it. I chewed slowly, eyed my phone with curiosity, and wondered why it was making such a dreadful noise. It didn't sound digital, really. The more I listened, the more I thought it to possess a distinctly human character.

  I muted the phone mid-bite.

  The strange noise continued.

  Feeling the sandwich sticking to the roof of my mouth, I tried to figure out wher
e the sound was coming from if not my phone. I peered around the studio. The television had been turned off prior to my shower, and none of the appliances in the kitchen seemed to be the culprit.

  The more I listened, the more it sounded like a low, droning moan.

  Setting my plate down, I got up and began to pace, noticing that it became louder the closer I walked to my window. Pulling my curtains to one side, I glanced through the misty glass and had a look outside. The screen was dappled in rain, and the panes were covered in warm rivulets so that I couldn't really see the ground below so clearly as normal.

  But that was where it was coming from.

  I backed away from my window just a bit as my sights were centered on a figure, standing on the grounds below. The rain was falling hard, which made it difficult for me to make out a whole lot, but I could tell that the person was dressed in black, completely. It was a flowing garment, whatever it was, and the face was covered by a thin, almost see-through veil. It was something fit for a funeral.

  One thing I could be sure of, despite the poor view, was that they were looking up at my window.

  The droning sound continued. It was indeed a long, continuous groan I'd been hearing, and it stretched on in such a way that I wondered when the person might stop to breathe. My stomach juggled the single bite of the sandwich I'd ingested as I listened to it. It was an awful sound, profoundly unsettling, and despite the humidity I decided to shut my window to keep it out. Melting in my apartment seemed preferable to listening to such a racket. I closed my curtains, too, and put on the lights.

  “Who the hell is that?” I asked aloud. “Is that the person who's living on the second floor? What are they thinking? Standing out there in the rain like a freaking weirdo...”

  I could still hear it through the glass. It'd been dampened somewhat, but the noise did not cease. Growing agitated, I considered marching down there and confronting them, but opted instead to turn my TV on at high volume. For all of my annoyance, I found I really didn't want to think about it, and would not have been able to muster the courage to walk downstairs and approach them. It was too damn weird.

  The noise eventually stopped. I don't know exactly when. An hour or so later, when I turned down the volume on my TV and went to the bathroom, I found I couldn't hear it anymore. The rain had stopped, too, and I made my way over to the window to have a look at the outside.

  There was no one standing there anymore.

  I chose to shrug it off. “Looks like only the freaks stayed behind in Moorlake for the summer.”

  9

  I woke up, had barely been sleeping in the first place, when I saw it.

  The night was warm, but I had the sheets spread over me, and at the sight of it I began to pull them higher, taut, to my chin. The wind teased the curtains, sent them swaying.

  Was there someone outside, standing on my fire escape?

  I narrowed my gaze, studied the moonlit window closely from the edge of my futon.

  No, no. It was just a trick of the curtains. You saw them moving, saw the fabric reflected in the glass. That's all.

  I looked over at the door to the studio, to its nearest corner, and found it black with shadow. Within that shadow, I thought I saw something move against the wall, something turning to meet my gaze.

  The dark is playing tricks on your mind. Quit it, Tori. You're going to give yourself a heart attack.

  What I now felt, and had been feeling for the better part of the day, was a sense that this space was not fully my own. That is, that I was sharing it with someone else. The apartment felt somehow crowded beyond its usual smallness. I had dispelled the notion multiple times, had searched the entire unit thoroughly and found no evidence to support my frightened hunch, but still it returned. It was even worse in the dark. Without the lights on, I felt a terrible certainty in the back of my head that someone was dwelling nearby and that they might, at some moment of their own choosing, finally reveal themselves.

  It was paranoia, I told myself. Recent stress was affecting my mood. Thoughts of Ouija séances and of Cat bleeding out on the rug returned without warning, and had disturbed my usually carefree mental state. Paranoia... it was only paranoia. I just needed more time to process everything that'd happened, to get over the shock.

  Forcing myself out of bed, my mouth parched for the warm air, I decided to pour myself a glass of water. As I did so, standing in front of the kitchen sink in the dark, letting the tap run till it was good and cold, I wondered something aloud, my voice gravelly and tired. “Is it you, mom? Is it you I'm sensing in here with me?”

  There wasn't any reply. I chuckled and downed my glass of water. “You've been doing a whole lot of that, lately. Talking to yourself,” I continued. “Good thing there's no one above or below you, else they'd think you were crazy.” I'd never been much in the habit of talking to myself, but in this apartment it somehow felt right. I thought that if I didn't break up the perpetual silence with a bit of dialogue, something would close in on me, would latch onto me and smother me.

  “It's been two years, mom,” I said, setting down my glass and leaning against the creaky cupboard. “I can't believe so much time has passed. And, you know, I still think about you every day.” I shook my head. “I almost didn't go to college after you passed. Dad forced me into it, said that it's what you would've wanted, and I knew he was right, but honestly? I always felt a little guilty for that. I felt like I should have put my life on hold for a little while, taken more time to grieve.” With a sigh, I returned to the futon, the desire to sleep having gone from me completely.

  I picked up the remote and turned on the TV, flipping through the couple of channels I had access to and happening upon one of those late-night talkshows. I wasn't sure exactly what time it was; if this was The Late Show or The Late, Late Show or maybe The Late Late Late Show That Only Insomniacs Get Around To Watching, but I watched as the douchey host rambled on about some recent celebrity spat. The audience laughed—howled—during every pause, and now and then the bandleader, sitting at his keyboard, would offer some minor quip.

  The reception wasn't very good, and the broadcast proved kind of streaky and discolored. Visual snow broke out around the edges of the screen from time to time, and there were breaks in the sound, which made it so that I had to try and piece together the jokes after the fact. Rocking at the edge of the futon, I trained my ears on the crappy audio and tried to listen. The show wasn't really my style, but I was in need of some kind of laugh, some sort of distraction.

  And then I heard it.

  Swallowing hard, I subconsciously gave my head a slight shake, as if in disbelief. Reaching instinctively for the remote, I turned it up a few notches, the sound not improving in the least for it. The visual snow continued, and the broadcast froze up for a few seconds.

  I heard it again, and this time, my hands were clutching the sheets. I looked towards the window. Not because I wanted to, but because I felt forced to. There was something that wanted my attention.

  It was the same noise I'd heard earlier that day, coming up from below my window. The droning moan that stranger had made in the rain. I recalled the shape of that visitor in black, shivered for it as the television momentarily muted and the vocalization reached up and slithered into my ears. Up until that point, I'd put that weird incident completely out of my mind. But now it was back, well after midnight.

  Tired of the tug-of-war between the two sources of noise, I tapped the power button on the remote and shut off the television. Still teetering on the futon, I glanced over at the window, catching only the rustling of the curtains as a rain-scented breeze washed over the building. The droning went on all that time, a single note stretched to a ludicrous degree and festooned by a ragged, breathy quality. It sounded like something that was dying a slow, painful death.

  I walked over to the window, unable to feel my feet as I did so. My entire body tensed up as I reached out to move the curtains aside. First I looked out ahead, at the shape of the fir
e escape. There was no one there. Then, looking below, to the grounds visible just beyond the mess of railing, I saw something.

  Someone.

  Hunched, black, swaying from side to side like the blades of grass did in the breeze, was a human figure.

  Was it a man or a woman? The veil gave the impression of the latter, though the longer I watched the figure, heard its terrible voice, the less sure I became that it was even properly human. Of course it's a person, I thought. What else could it be? But despite these thoughts, I was struck by the visitor's peculiarity. It may have been human in shape, but it wasn't acting like any human I'd ever known. It was like something utterly alien, merely putting on a show with a human disguise. No person of sound mind would stand outside in the middle of the night making noises like these.

  I was frightened. There's no sense in denying it. My hands were shaking as I shut the window and drew the curtains, and I hastily returned to bed, stopping only to snatch up my earbuds from the kitchen counter. Queuing up some quiet music on my phone, I climbed into the futon and tried to eclipse my fear with anger. I don't know who they think they are, or what they're trying to do, but this crap has to stop. It's annoying. Creepy. I mean, the other people living in this complex probably don't appreciate it, either. Maybe... that person down there is the one who's living on the second floor. I gulped and set my head down on the pillow, eyes wide. I'm going down there tomorrow. I'm going to knock on that door and see if that's the case. If that person answers the door... I'm... I'm going to give them a piece of my mind.

  I only managed to fall asleep just as the sky began to lighten. I was pretty sure that the noise outside the building had stopped, but I kept my earbuds in all the same, streaming calming music until my phone nearly died.