by Ania Ahlborn
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.” Lucas crouched, slid his fingers beneath the bottom edges of a particularly heavy box, and lifted with his knees.
“What the hell are you talking about? Of course you should have brought it up. Suddenly we’ve got secrets between us?”
Lucas stepped around Mark and hopped out of the truck. Wet splotches of rain bloomed against brown cardboard. He didn’t wait for Mark to follow him inside. If anything, he’d use the rain as an excuse to gain some momentary distance. It would give him a minute to breathe past the emotion welling up inside his throat.
Mark followed him inside the foyer a few seconds later, but neither of them spoke. They walked to their designated areas—Lucas to his new study just off the living room, Mark to the kitchen with a clattering box of pots and pans. When they met back at the truck a minute later, their conversation continued uninterrupted.
“I wasn’t going to keep it from you, I just don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.” Lucas climbed back into the truck, slid his fingers through his hair. “Because if she can cheat on me now, she’s always been capable of doing it, right? Hell, maybe she’s done it before and I was too stupid to notice I married—”
“A fake,” Mark finished. “A cheating slut.”
The scorn in Mark’s voice, his disgusted expression, made Lucas feel better about allowing his grief to metastasize into rage. Mark knew how these things went. Years ago, Mark had been married to his high school sweetheart. Amanda had been a pretty girl with vibrant red hair and a smile that could stop even the most steadfast heart. Mark and Amanda had their standard problems. She griped about Mark leaving his cereal bowl in the sink every morning; he complained about Mandy hogging all the closet space with her endless racks of clothes. But it had all been lighthearted, the kind of fodder a loving couple stores up for harmless dinnertime jabs. And then, one day, Amanda started taking it far more seriously than Mark could comprehend. Suddenly, the cereal bowl was a personal affront, his quiet mutterings about closet space a code for her crowding him. Out of nowhere, Amanda decided that maybe they both needed a break. Mark panicked, tried to fix a problem he didn’t even understand with gifts and pleading and subordination. It didn’t work. A few months later, she sat him down and told him it was over. That, and she was keeping the house.
At first, all Mark could think was that it had all been his fault. He and Lucas spent hours on the phone while Mark racked his brain, trying to figure out what he had done wrong. How could he repair it? How could he fix himself? He started seeing a therapist, spent two hours a week spitting self-depreciation at a hired stranger, all in the hopes of finding some answers. After months of dumping money into a shrink that wasn’t helping, he found out Amanda had been sleeping with someone else. It had been going on for over a year.
Lucas had then watched his best friend live through a nightmare. He had listened to stories of how Mark had to pack up his things, how he had tossed out photos and hung Amanda’s wedding dress dead center where all his stuff used to hang in the closet—just a little reminder of the lifelong promise she had broken. She had gone so far as keeping the dog, even though she hadn’t wanted a pet in the first place. Goober the golden retriever was now living somewhere in Seattle with “the megabitch.” That was six years ago. Mark still hated her guts, and probably would until the day he died.
Lucas was terrified to find himself in a similar situation. Except, instead of Goober the yellow-haired dog, he and Caroline would be battling over Virginia the yellow-haired girl.
A scream sounded from somewhere inside the house, muffled by the rain but definitely distinct as it slithered out the open double doors. The sound of it weakened Lucas’s knees. His grip on the box in his arms slipped, the box slamming against the truck’s floor with a hollow thud. Another crunch. More broken glass.
Mark twisted to look over his shoulder, but Lucas was already running. He leaped from the truck and bolted for the house, crushed gravel flying out from beneath the soles of his shoes.
Both men bounded into the house like a pair of heroes only to stop short. Jeanie stood at the top of the stairs. She was bleeding, a vibrant red dribble inching its way down the side of her face, her left eyebrow in full bloom.
Lucas sprinted up the stairs, the rush of adrenaline making his head spin. By the time he reached the top riser, he was sure he was about to pass out from the sickening surge of panic. But rather than tumbling back down the stairs to the redbrick floor below, he caught his kid by the shoulders and stared at her, startled by the swath of red that dappled her skin.
“Jesus, what happened?” Alarm shot through his bloodstream when, rather than responding, Jeanie only cried. She reached out to touch the gash across the ridge of her eye. All the while, that nagging sense of being in the wrong refused to leave Lucas’s thoughts.
This was a mistake.
A bad idea.
This house wasn’t meant to be lived in by anyone, not after the things that had happened within these walls.
But the voice of reason chimed in just as it always did. You’re overreacting. This isn’t a horror movie. Halcomb’s house hadn’t stood empty for thirty years. Despite its gruesome history, people had occupied the place on the regular up until a few years ago. These were simple enough details to look up through Realtor sites and public records. And yet, there was his kid, crying, bleeding, looking afraid.
“Jeanie?” She met his insistence with more sobbing, as though speaking her name only amplified her hysteria. “Virginia!” He shook her by the shoulder, hoping it would snap her out of what Caroline used to call the screaming-meemies.
“Hey, kid!” Mark leaned down to meet her gaze, snapping his fingers at her face. “Hey! Chill out. What the hell happened?”
She managed to whisper, “I fell,” her words stifled by weeping she couldn’t control.
“Fell from where?” Lucas asked.
“The tub. I was hanging up my pj’s and I . . .”
Both men looked through the open bathroom door. Jeanie’s pajamas hung akimbo from the tension rod. A small blotch of red stood out in gruesome contrast against the lip of the blue enamel tub.
“Oh man. Christ . . . you could have killed yourself,” Lucas told her.
“You can’t join the circus if you’re dead, kid,” Mark said.
“Gee, thanks, buddy. Come on.” Lucas caught her by the hand. “Let’s get that cleaned up. You scared the hell out of me. If you ever do that again . . .”
She shook her head as the three of them descended the stairs. “I won’t.” She hiccupped, then paused, as though about to say something more. But rather than relating the story of how she’d cracked her head open, she went quiet. And that silence twisted Lucas up inside, because he could see it on her face.
Jeanie had definitely seen something upstairs, and she wasn’t going to tell him what.
13
* * *
VEE SPENT THE rest of the day in front of the television with a ziplock bag full of ice pressed over her right eye. Both her dad and Uncle Mark took the opportunity to introduce her to one of their favorite movies, Heathers. And while she found Christian Slater gorgeous and Winona Ryder’s style awesome enough to emulate, she just couldn’t focus.
Her head hurt, and the girl in the mirror continued to open her mouth wide, wider still, while her ratty old sweater bloomed red with blood.
Vee told herself that what she’d seen had been a figment of her imagination. It couldn’t have been real. No way. But the more she replayed in her mind what she’d seen, the more she was sure she had felt her own shirt go wet and sticky with something warm. She could swear that, when they had opened their mouths to scream, they had done so in unison because they had somehow, if only for a moment, merged into one.
That’s impossible, she told herself. Just forget it. You’re going crazy.
She
grabbed her phone and texted Heidi.
What if I told you this house is haunted?
A minute later, a reply:
Haha. R U really that bored?
She closed her eyes, bit back her sudden urge to cry, and let her phone tumble between the cushions of the couch.
Twenty minutes into Heathers, Uncle Mark took a call. He left a few moments later, called back to Seattle. Vee’s dad tried to watch the movie after Uncle Mark left, but Vee could tell his mind was wandering. Eventually, he murmured about needing to check something, went into his study, and failed to return. She could hear him on the phone, discussing a meeting that was supposed to occur the next day.
When Vee’s headache grew worse, she considered telling her dad. The previous summer, she had marathoned a few seasons of House M.D., and now knew about all sorts of mysterious medical conditions. Concussions could be dangerous, which meant the chance of her dad taking her to the hospital if she did reveal her worsening headache was more than likely ninety percent. And while Vee loved Dr. House, she hated hospitals. She waited a little longer for her dad to come back. When he didn’t, she fished her phone out from beneath the cushions, turned off the TV, took a couple of Tylenol, and kept herself busy with hauling boxes up the stairs, ignoring the pain.
Because if her dad didn’t care that she was hurt, maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe she wasn’t important enough to worry about.
· · ·
A few hours later, Vee’s dad stepped into her room. She almost told him to get out, angry that he’d ditched her for so long without making sure she hadn’t died. “We should go,” he told her, only to be derailed by the fact that she was already in bed. The last thing she wanted to do was socialize with Uncle Mark and Selma. Hugging a pillow to her chest, she gave him a weary glance.
“I don’t feel great,” she told him. “Can I just stay here?”
He approached the bed, lifted the makeshift ice pack she’d made out of a Ziploc and ice cubes off of her eye, and frowned. “You’re going to have a pretty fancy shiner, kid.”
“Great,” she murmured. “I’ll be sure to take a picture and email it to Mom.”
“That would be perfect,” he said, giving her a rueful smile. “Be sure to tell her I socked you a good one, will you?”
“Planning on it.” Turning her face back into her pillow, she could sense him vacillating between staying with her and going downstairs. After a moment, he drew the curtains over the orange sunset and left. Figures, she thought. He hasn’t even considered the hospital. For all he cares, I may as well die in my sleep. She listened to the soft tones of another phone call—her dad talking to either Selma or Mark, apologizing. Jeanie doesn’t feel too hot after taking that fall.
She considered telling him about what she had seen, if only for the attention, but her dad didn’t believe in ghosts and she didn’t want to come off as a lunatic. She already felt stupid enough about sobbing in front of Uncle Mark. The last thing she needed was her father looking at her like she’d lost her mind.
But the darker her room got, the more overwhelmed she was by a feeling she couldn’t place. It wasn’t fear, but more of a sensation that came from deep within her gut. It was like static electricity. Maybe if she moved too fast, she’d light up the room with a trail of sparks. And the air, it felt thick, hard to inhale, pushing her toward mild panic because what if it wasn’t the room, what if it really was her? What if she had a brain bleed and her lungs were on the verge of collapsing? What if she had waited too long to tell her dad she needed help and now, if she tried to get up, she’d be dead by morning?
That was the problem with House M.D. It’s why her dad had blocked WebMD on her laptop. She’s a hypochondriac, her mother had said. She’s got a new type of cancer every day of the week. It was an exaggeration. Vee knew she didn’t have cancer, especially not every day of the week. But a brain bleed was a definite possibility, and the block on her computer didn’t matter. They could freeze her out on the laptop, but not her phone.
The longer she lay on her mattress in the darkness of her new room, the more convinced she was that it wasn’t her, it was her surroundings. There was popping coming from the insides of the walls, the kind of noise that comes with settling and temperature shifts. Normal noises, she thought. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an old house sagging on its weary bones. Except the shadows that lurked in the corners of Vee’s room seemed darker than they should have been.
She tried to keep her eyes shut, to ignore the strange feeling and forget the girl who kept flitting in and out of her memory like a dying lightbulb. The stringy blond hair. The way her eyes had rolled into the back of her head. Her pale blue skin. Her gaping mouth and the blood that soaked into her sweater, so dark it looked more black than red. And then the disembodied baby’s cry just before the scream that had come from Vee’s throat.
The reflection’s eyes had rolled forward, snapped into their rightful position, and they had stared. The fact that their gazes had met was what scared Vee the most. She’d seen something in that girl’s face that almost seemed as though the stranger in the mirror knew who Vee was.
As though the leering boy in the orchard had announced Vee’s presence and the girl had now come around to say hello.
Hours passed. She tried to sleep. But the bumps and creaks that emanated from the surrounding walls kept her eyes wide open. That, and the glass of water she’d gulped down along with her final dose of Tylenol was coming back to haunt her.
She hated the fact that she was so scared; it made her feel like a fraud. All those times she’d talked herself up to Tim, how casually she had said oh, I’m totally in when he had suggested they explore abandoned buildings during the summer—before she knew she’d be spending that time thousands of miles away. The way she had laughed along with Tim and Heidi when they had watched the Paranormal Activity movies, as though the stuff that was happening on screen wouldn’t have fazed her at all. Back then, she was sure she had the guts to deal with shadows and unexplained noises. She had convinced herself that if she was ever lucky enough to see a ghost, the last thing she would do was run. But all that bravado had been a lie. Because talking about fear was a lot different than actually facing it. The unknown was exciting until it was time to step into the void.
She needed to pee. Her back teeth were starting to swim. With no choice but to take a deep breath and roll onto her side, she let her gaze dart across the night shadows that swallowed up her room. She searched the darkness for the mirror girl she was sure would be there somewhere, watching her sleep.
Her heart sputtered up her throat when her gaze fell on the closet door. She gaped at it, sure that it was slowly swinging inward.
The receding thump of her headache flared up with the hiccup of her pulse. A flash of pain lit up her head from the inside out, and she pinched her eyes shut against the discomfort. When she reopened them, the closet door was closed.
It was always closed, she thought. You’re acting like an idiot, totally freaking out.
Pressing her lips into a tight line, she hummed deep in her throat to keep her nerves in check while reluctantly rising to her feet. She wobbled toward her bedroom door—which she had left open but, it seemed, her father had shut. She slogged toward it, her mouth sour with remnants of acetaminophen and pain.
When she stepped into the hall, she found the house silent—nothing but the patter of rain against the roof. Glancing over the upstairs hallway banister, she could see the lights in her father’s study were off. There was no soft tapping of her dad’s laptop keys, no quiet music he’d play when the mood hit him just right.
Her bladder clenched. She turned away from the living room one story below. But when she reached for the knob of the bathroom door, her fingers tingled with tiny needle pricks. She snatched her hand away. Don’t go in there, the sensation warned. There’s something wrong with that place.
Shooting
a glance down the hall, she considered sneaking into her dad’s room and using the bathroom there. But he was a light sleeper. She was bound to wake him. And what will you tell him when he asks why you’re using his bathroom instead of your own? How will you explain it away when he sees that you’re scared? If her dad saw the fear in her eyes, he’d demand to know what was up. She’d have to tell him about the girl, and while that would possibly win her a one-way ticket back to Queens as soon as her mom returned from her business trip, she wasn’t sure she was ready to leave just yet. If she sucked up her fear, she’d have something no other girl could touch. A damn good story about how she’d spent the summer in a haunted house was bound to win Tim’s heart.
She turned away from the blue bathroom and slunk down the stairs, nearly tumbling down the top few risers when her foot skidded across the carpeted edge. Catching herself on the banister, she shot a wide-eyed glance up to her father’s door. She waited for him to come rushing into the hall. What the hell is going on? Why are you up? What are you doing? When he didn’t appear in the doorway, she exhaled a quiet laugh. Of course he wasn’t coming.
She continued to descend the steps, more carefully this time. Her head felt fuzzy, as though soft tufts of grass had sprouted along the inner curve of her skull. She imagined blood pooling along the wrinkles of her brain, coating it like a bucket of red paint. Because while she felt silly being so scared, perhaps what she’d seen in the bathroom was a symptom of something bigger. Maybe there really had been no girl.
