The Seance in Apartment 10

by Ambrose Ibsen

  The alley was a one-way street which led to a parking lot in the rear of both establishments. The sun was in just such a position where the inside of this alley was cast in shadow, and standing in it, looking out across the street in our general direction, was a single person.

  I nearly choked on my food, coughing loudly.

  “Tori, you OK?” asked Julia, handing me my tea.

  It took me a minute to catch my breath. I took a sip of tea and sat hard against the back of my chair, looking past Julia's worried face and out into the street. Julia's eyes followed. The ice cubes in my tea rattled against the glass as I went to set it down.

  There was no one out there.

  Staring through the cafe window I could no longer see the figure dressed in black standing in the alleyway. Just a minute ago, the entity had been there, the same one I'd seen outside my apartment window, twice. The very same one I'd thought I'd glimpsed on my fire escape the night before. Without any conscious effort, I uttered the name “Evelyn” under my breath.

  “Tori, what's the matter?” asked Julia, gripping my wrist. I snapped out of my trance immediately. She looked out the window again, then studied my face closely. At this proximity I could have counted her freckles. “What happened?” She made a half-turn towards the window again.

  “N-no, it's nothing,” I replied. “I was just choking for a second there.” I took a deep breath and a long sip from my glass. “Sorry.”

  Julia didn't believe me, but rather than argue the point she took to playing with her hair. Julia was the worst about that. Whenever she got bored or nervous—or God forbid bored and nervous—she'd reach for her red ponytail, twisting it and tensing it in her fingers till it lost its perfect shape and she lost a few hairs. “Whatever.”

  I finished up my food quickly and excused myself to the bathroom, where I splashed cold water in my face and looked myself over in the mirror. You're losing it, I thought. Hold yourself together. There's nothing to be scared of. There was no one in that alley and you know it. Certainly not... not...

  Evelyn.

  Somewhere along the line, despite not knowing a thing about the woman other than her name, I'd come to start calling that black-garbed figure Evelyn. Shuddering, I dried my face with paper towels and then looked at myself closely, singling out the dark circles under my eyes that Julia had pointed out. They were especially pronounced. My skin wasn't a great color, and the whites of my eyes were looking bloodshot as well. I left the bathroom and returned to the table, taking care of my plates and garbage. “OK, ready to go?”

  Julia had barely made it through half of her salad. She abandoned it by the garbage for the fruit flies and followed me out the door. We power-walked down to the laundromat, and as we did so, I kept one eye on the alley between the florist's and the ice cream shop.

  There was no one there.

  To save a little money, I singled out the only jumbo-sized dryer in the laundromat and threw all of my clothes in it at once. Dropping the last of my quarters into the slot, the dull display on its face flashed “75” in big, red numerals. That meant we had seventy five whole minutes to kill.

  Not wanting to stick around the laundromat like the old couple who were still, even after our lunch, fussing over a mound of socks, we walked up and down the strip looking for some place that was open. As before, we had few choices, and ultimately dropped into a coffee shop, where we split an iced coffee and perused stacks of used books.

  The whole time, Julia didn't talk much. Now and then she'd give me a sort of suspicious look, like she knew I was holding back from telling her everything about the apartment, but when caught she'd just awkwardly smile. At one point, she asked me how my dad was doing, and I told her that he was planning on coming by for a visit sometime soon. Later on, before we returned to the laundromat, she asked me if I'd talked much to Annie in the past few days. She was probably hoping that I'd spilled my guts to Annie and that she'd be able to get the scoop about my real thoughts on the apartment afterward, from her. I answered honestly, and told her we'd just texted back and forth a bit.

  I was glad that she was concerned for me. It meant a lot to have friends in my life who wanted to look out for my safety and comfort. But at the same time, Julia's prodding grew irksome, because I knew, deep down, that it wasn't solely out of kindness that she kept on asking.

  Julia liked to gossip. She wasn't overt about it, but she was the kind of girl who enjoyed a good bit of drama. Wherever there was a story she could really sink her teeth into, Julia would do her best to tease it out, so that later on she could talk about it with her friends. Maybe her summer was so boring that she felt the need to include herself in someone else's drama. I knew I wasn't immune to Julia's gossiping tendencies; and neither was Annie, for that matter. Two semesters ago, Annie had dated a real lousy guy named Gus. The two had had a pretty nasty break-up—several of them, in fact—and Julia had reported to me about the newest events in Annieland like a news anchor, in real-time. This was the same kind of thing.

  Any tidbit I gave Julia during this outing would be hashed and rehashed behind my back, used as conversational fuel between herself and Annie.

  We got back to the laundromat and I folded all of my clothes quickly and messily. It was getting late, would be dark soon, and Julia had to be on her way. Tucking my clothes back into my bag, I hauled it back to Julia's car and we took off. I thanked her repeatedly for her help, and for the lunch. Despite the lulls in conversation, I felt recharged for having spent the day with her, and I wanted her to know it.

  But as we pulled up to the parking lot of the Lamplight complex, all of those fuzzy feelings receded markedly. The sight of those three, grey columns rising up into the darkening sky made my breath catch, and I had to fight back the urge to squirm in my seat. As we approached my building, I couldn't help but look up into the fifth floor window, citing what Julia had said before, about seeing someone in it. There was still no one there.

  Of course there isn't anyone there, you idiot.

  Hoisting my bag onto my shoulder, I stepped out of the car and thanked Julia one last time. “Really, thank you for today. I appreciate it.”

  Julia smiled wanly. “No problem. Let's do it again soon, OK?” Before driving off, she added, her smile drooping. “If anything happens... or if you need anything, you know...”

  “I'll call you, for sure,” I said, giving a cheesy thumbs-up. “Drive safe, OK?”

  Julia nodded and circled around the lot. She was gone, out of sight, before I even made it to the front door, and as she drove away I could tell that she was staring into her rearview.

  16

  I'd seen the follow-up call from Annie, not an hour after Julia's departure, coming from a mile away. “Hello?” I answered, separating my clothes and placing them neatly into the appropriate drawers. Somehow, over the course of the day, the apartment had cooled down so that the interior was almost tolerable, and I could no longer smell the pesticides the exterminator had set down earlier.

  “Hey, it's Annie.” Her voice was pensive, weighed down by something. She wasn't calling just to say hi.

  I played dumb and did my best high school jock impression, deepening my voice. “You see the game last night, dude? It was pretty badass, huh? That touchdown was tops, bro. I love the Indians.”

  Annie chortled. “The Indians are a baseball team.”

  “You would know,” I replied. “I've always hated sports. So, what's up?”

  “Nothing much,” replied Annie. I could picture her, sitting in her bedroom back home, twirling her pink lock of hair in her fingers. “I heard you went out to lunch with Julia today.”

  I smirked. “Jealous? If you want, I'll let you come out and treat me. I'm a cheap date. Promise.”

  “She said you're not looking too well.” She held her breath.

  “Is that what she said?” My laugh was a little caustic. “Spent the whole day with the broad and that's all she mentioned? Well, it's true.” I rolled my eyes. “I look l
ike total shit, as a matter of fact. Can't even look at myself in the mirror.”

  Annie wasn't taking the bait, wasn't laughing like I'd hoped. “She's worried about you, Tori. And... and I am, too. That apartment you're living in--”

  I took the phone in my other hand and walked over to the window. “Oh, the apartment again? Look, it's like I told Julia. This place is fine. It's totally fine. I've had, you know... some hiccoughs, OK? But it's a new place, and there will always be hurdles to clear. I appreciate the worry, but you guys needn't torture yourselves.”

  Annie sighed. “I knew you'd say that, but do you even know anything about that place? About its history?”

  I cleared my throat. “I... I mean... I know some things about it, yeah.”

  “Did you know that someone died in it?” she continued in a whisper.

  Without realizing it, I began squeezing the life out of my phone. The case creaked as I held it to my ear. “Yeah, I know about that,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  She called my bluff. “So, what are you still doing there? That's scary, Tori. I know you. There's no way you're down with living in a place where some lady hung herself.”

  “How'd you find out?” I spit out the words, probably sounded accusatory.

  Annie hesitated. “After what happened with Cat, I just decided to look into it. Funny things happen when you type in the name of your apartment complex into Google. It was on the first page. Local news.”

  A small laugh built up in my throat. “Well, good job. You're a fine detective, Annie. Want a cookie or something? Give me a break.”

  “It wasn't a good place for playing with a Ouija board. We probably made contact with the spirit of... of that dead woman,” said Annie. “Think about it. And Cat, when she saw... whatever it was in that apartment... it almost killed her.”

  “OK, now you're sounding like frigging Julia, all paranoid and crap. Let me be clear, Annie. What happened to Cat is terrible. And it's sad. And it's a lot of things, OK, but it's not because of... because of a ghost.” I breathed through clenched teeth. “And another thing. Don't say a word to Julia about this suicide thing, got that? If you do, then I'll never be able to get her to drop it. She'll come out here and take me to lunch every day, ruining the meal with questions. I don't need that.”

  Groaning, Annie replied, “Fine. We're just worried about you, Tori. We don't want... we don't want anything to happen to you at the apartment. That's all.”

  “Well, you can both relax, because there's nothing here. Nothing that can hurt me. Unless I have a heart attack because my shower water gets too cold. I mean, that's a possibility. But aside from that, there's nothing.” I said that with a lot of conviction in my voice. I could probably have won an Oscar for that delivery.

  But in my heart, I didn't believe it.

  I wanted to act tough in front of my friends, put on a brave face, and make it look like my decision to move into this apartment was a good one. But internally, my own faith in the move was crumbling. If things didn't turn around for me, and fast, I'd be searching for some sort of excuse to give for why I'd chosen, in the end, to abandon my lease.

  “A few good nights' sleep and I'll be ship-shape. I've had trouble sleeping since the move, but I'll get used to the futon soon enough,” I said.

  We had a little back and forth about what she'd been up to. Her anime convention was coming up and she'd be taking a bus to Chicago in the next few days. She planned to meet up with some of her internet buddies, as well as various voice actors and artists she was fond of. When we brought the conversation back to her and her plans, her tone lightened considerably.

  “Well,” I said, yawning, “I'm going to let you go, Annie. Feeling a bit tired. Bed is sounding pretty good right about now.”

  I could hear her as she weighed her reply. “Be careful,” she said after a moment.

  I laughed. “Be careful? What, in my dreams?”

  Annie only sighed.

  It was that night, after getting off the phone with Annie, that I began to have the dreams. I've never been the sort of person who can recall their dreams with much clarity, but the dreams I began having in the studio were far different from any others I'd ever experienced.

  Twice I dreamt of that apartment above my own, the eleventh unit, where Evelyn had lived. In the first, I found myself walking up the stairwell and entering the apartment through the front door. All of the lights were off, and yet I could see. There existed about the shadowed space a sort of eerie phosphorescence, a light without clear origin, that illuminated everything I was meant to see, and which eschewed all of those details that were evidently none of my concern. I shuffled, half-blind, across the carpet of the main room, walked into the shadowed kitchen, and then turned around to face the bathroom. It was then that I saw her, standing in front of the bathroom sink, facing the mirror.

  Evelyn.

  There isn't much I can say about her appearance; nothing in her face struck me as particularly noteworthy. She had plain, even features and dark hair that had gone half-grey. Her hands were lined in thick veins, and they were wrapped around the edges of the sink for support. She was dressed in a black, rough-looking cotton dress and was barefoot against the linoleum floor.

  And she was speaking.

  I never did hear her voice. She was leaning over the sink, staring widely into the mirror before her, and her lips moved as though she were deep in conversation with someone. Just who it was I couldn't say. The bathroom door was half-closed, and from where I stood I couldn't get a good look at the mirror.

  So I started through the murk towards the bathroom, which leaked out a yellowish light. Why are you talking to yourself? I thought, reaching out to touch the bathroom door. I felt the coolness of the door against my fingertips as I nudged it open, heard its whining hinges. In that moment, it all felt very real to me.

  The dream ended shortly thereafter, but not before Evelyn began to turn towards me. It was almost as though she'd sensed me intruding upon her private conversation and was turning to scold me. And at the same time, though I'd be a liar if I said I knew just what, it seemed to me that something in the mirror, independent of Evelyn's reflection, moved to look at me as well.

  I awoke with a start before sunrise, and when I'd had a few moments to sit up and consider what I'd just dreamt, I had considerable trouble drifting back to sleep.

  But the next night, Evelyn found her way into my dreams once again. And this dream was a bit different from the first. I spent the day in the apartment, reading and watching movies on my phone, and by the time I crawled into bed my memory of the first dream had faded somewhat. A fluke, I thought. A simple nightmare.

  But the dreams that accosted me that second night were a seeming continuation of the first. I sensed in them some kind of linear story, a progression; and also, an unmistakable feeling that I was an unwelcome intruder. At no point in my dreaming did I feel I had any business seeing such things play out. I was eavesdropping on something private.

  Returning to apartment 11, the path ahead marked in sparse light and the path behind covered up by crawling darkness, I walked through the main room, floated weightlessly into the kitchen, and then turned once more to face the bathroom. This time, the door was completely open, and I could see Evelyn far more clearly than before.

  I could see that she was crying. Her eyes, large and yellowed, were brimming with tears, and her veiny hands had found their way up to the medicine cabinet, where she buried her nails into the wood and scratched at it like an animal. From her lips there poured animalistic wails, broken only by a single, gasping word. “No!” She blurted it again and again, while striking blows upon the mirror and cabinet that housed it. “No, no, no!”

  My pulse began to rise and I could feel both warmth and tightness in my chest.

  There was a terrible pounding noise coming from somewhere in the apartment. At first I took it for the sound of my heart, but the beats were too irregular, too violent for that.

  D
rawing closer to the bathroom, I soon discovered the true source.

  There was a book on the floor, an ancient-looking thing with a cover made of silvery metal. It had fallen from the bathroom sink, where Evelyn had apparently been reading it, and it moved very slightly at her feet, seemingly of its own accord. The outside of the tome was decorated ornately, featuring a series of interconnected circles which had been painstakingly pressed into the metal with some fine instrument. The hundreds—thousands—of little impressions, when taken as a whole, had a dizzying visual effect. There was no title on the book's cover, and I couldn't be sure what kind of knowledge was contained in it, but what I encountered next gave me sufficient grounds to guess.

  Blood dripped into the sink from Evelyn's fingertips as she raged on against the cabinet, oblivious to my presence. “No!” she screamed, her throat ragged.

  The pounding came not from Evelyn's hands, nor from my heart. The rough, violent beats were coming from the other side of the mirror. As I stepped into the bathroom and stood behind Evelyn, I found something reflected in the mirror that shouldn't have been there.

  It's probably too generous to call the shape I saw a real “face”. That it belonged to something generally human in shape, and that it had certain characteristics that reminded me of a mouth, of eyes, may have been true, but if this was in fact a face then it was like no face I'd ever seen or even conceived of, except for in my nightmares. It was black as pitch and warped, seeming to distort the mirror itself with its aberrancy. Where its eyes and mouth should have been there was empty space. The entire thing throbbed and roiled like a mass of storm clouds, and would sometimes approximate a more human appearance, only to grow muddied and nebulous moments later.

  I couldn't bear to look at it very long, and I tried to avert my eyes from the mirror. Everything else within my frame of view was hardly more pleasant however. I heard the clink of two fingernails as they were torn from Evelyn's fingers and landed in the sink. Her screams left my ears ringing in the enclosed space, and the light overhead began to flicker.