Home, Sweet Haunt

by P. J. Night

  “Sounds like a challenge,” Aleah told LL. Everyone sat quietly while Aleah browsed websites. The only noise was her fingers striking keyboard keys, until she said, “Okay. I think— Wait. What’s this?” Aleah leaned forward so that her face was eerily illuminated by the screen. “Here it is. What I’d been looking for all along. A story about this exact building.”

  “Ha! I knew it!” Caitlin pumped the air. “There is a ghost on the ninth floor after all.”

  “No.” Aleah scanned through the story, then reported, “But I think this might be the source of the ghost rumor, Caitlin.” She began to retell the news story. “Earlier tonight, I looked for stories about people who died, or ghost stories. This is different. This is about a fire.”

  “A fire?” Nora had been lying down on the sleeping bag. Now she sat up and moved to the edge of her bedding. A chill rose up her spine as Aleah began to interpret the report in her own storyteller style.

  “The fire began in the kitchen.” Aleah’s voice was soft and vibrated through the silence. “It was so late at night, it was early in the morning. Very few people in the building were awake.”

  The way Aleah was speaking drew them all into the story. LL came and sat next to Nora. Caitlin moved near Aleah. They were in a circle, knees touching.

  “Four people lived in the apartment. A mother. A father. And two children.”

  Nora knew this story. But she didn’t say anything, not yet.

  “The blaze quickly spread from the kitchen into the living room, turning everything it touched into hot white ash. The mother and father fought the flames with water, blankets, and an old fire extinguisher they’d had in the pantry but had forgotten to replace when it expired.”

  Nora could smell the smoke on her pajamas. The constant reminder . . .

  “The neighbors could hear the children screaming. They reported that the parents sent the kids to safety in a back bedroom. It isn’t fire that usually kills in these situations, it’s the smoke. They warned the children to stay close to the floor and not to open any windows, for fear of—”

  “Backdraft,” Nora supplied the word.

  Aleah glanced up at her with curiosity. Nora shrugged as if it was a common phrase that everyone should know, and Aleah went on.

  “Men and women from the surrounding apartments tried to open the front door, but it was jammed. They wanted to help, but the heat was intense. Smoke was filling the hallway, making it hard for the rescuers to breathe.”

  “This is horrible!” Caitlin said. “When did it happen?”

  Aleah scrolled down the page. “Um, actually, just before your family moved to town.”

  “What happened next?” LL asked. “I hope the fire department came.”

  “They did,” Nora said, adding, “But the reporter arrived first.”

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  “I forgot you’ve lived in this apartment building a long time,” Caitlin said.

  “All my life,” Nora replied.

  “Were you here the day of the fire?” LL asked. “It sounds so awful.”

  Nora nodded, small and timid. “I was here.”

  She’d never talked to anyone except her family about the fire before. Nora could see the other girls were anxious to hear her firsthand account. Not that she didn’t want to tell them. It just felt so strange. The fire. What happened after. Her parents’ freak-out. The homeschooling and their refusal to let her do anything, because they were intensely afraid of the world.

  She just wanted to be Normal Nora.

  Not this Nora, the girl who’d survived a fire.

  Aleah, always seeking the facts, asked, “Did you know that the fire investigator reported that the fire started because of exposed electrical wiring in—”

  “In the oven,” Nora finished. “Yes. They said that.”

  “The fire department told you?” Caitlin reached out and put a hand on Nora’s knee. It was a sign of trust and friendship.

  Nora put her own hand on top of Caitlin’s and gave it a squeeze. “They didn’t have to tell me.”

  LL and Aleah reached out and instinctively put their own hands on Nora’s and Caitlin’s, forming a pile. Nora took a deep breath. “I could hear them talking.”

  Get it done and tell the truth. Nora blurted out the last bit.

  “The firefighters were standing in my kitchen.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “We survived.” All eyes were looking at Nora. “We hid in my bedroom while the firefighters broke down the front door.”

  “Awful!” LL exclaimed. “You must have been so scared.”

  Nora thought back to that morning. Oddly, she didn’t recall feeling fear. Her parents were so mellow about it all. Her dad said they’d be fine, and she believed him. “We could hear the fire trucks outside. And the voices in the hall.” Memories flooded over Nora. “I never thought that we might die. Or if I thought it, I never let the idea stick.”

  No one asked any questions, so Nora went on. “The worst part was the heat. And the smoke.” She shivered. “It was hard to breathe.”

  “Now I have goose bumps.” LL rubbed her arms.

  Caitlin put her arm around Nora. “So the fire department broke down the door?”

  “Yes,” Nora said. She was actually relieved to be telling her new friends about that day. “They used axes to knock it down, then burst in with water hoses.” She closed her eyes as she recalled the strong woman who had picked her up and carried her down the apartment stairs. Nora had rested her head against the woman’s shoulder. She’d smelled like rose water perfume. It was a million times better than the smoke, and Nora hadn’t wanted to be set down when they reached the sidewalk.

  “My mom, Dad, me, and Lucas, we were all put in an ambulance and given oxygen.” Nora cupped her hand over her mouth to show them what it was like. She could hear them all inhale as if reliving the experience alongside her.

  “I should write this down for you,” Aleah said. “You might want to write a book someday.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget the details of that night,” Nora told her, then added, “You can write the book about me, if you want.” She considered the project and said, “I might draw the pictures for it.” After she took art classes, of course. If gymnastics wasn’t a perfect fit, art classes could be next on the list of things to try.

  Having spent so much time with Caitlin and her friends that night, Nora was now even more determined to find something she was really, really good at.

  “What happened next?” LL asked.

  Nora started to spill all about her parents and their financial cutbacks and school, but suddenly stopped herself. “Can I use your computer for a sec?” Nora asked Aleah.

  “Sure,” Aleah said. She turned the laptop toward Nora.

  Nora stared down at the keyboard. How long had it been since her computer had fried in the fire? Two months, but it felt like forever since she’d typed. Nora ran her fingers across the keys. They made little clicky noises. It was all she could do to stay focused on what she wanted to show her friends instead of taking a few minutes extra to check her e-mail account. Though who would e-mail her? Not like Hallie and Lindsay were sending messages.

  She’d love to play a game. There were so many she’d liked before her parents let the Internet go.

  Nora used to like surfing around websites. Reading strange facts, movie reviews, the latest fashion, watching funny videos. She set her hands flat over Aleah’s keyboard and wondered what had happened on all her favorite TV shows.

  It was amazing how much she’d taken her computer and the Internet for granted when she’d had them, and how much she missed it now that she didn’t.

  Nora sighed.

  And focused.

  She typed information about the fire into the search bar.

  Only one video popped up.

  “Here.” Nora turned the screen so that everyone could see. And then she pressed play.

  The blond reporter, the one who ha
d been the first to arrive on the scene, was standing on the sidewalk below Nora’s window, holding a microphone in her hand.

  Nora sat up straighter. She’d never actually seen the news report. This first part was what she’d seen through her window.

  A few minutes in, Mrs. Daugherty came out onto the sidewalk in her pink robe and slippers.

  “Isn’t that—” LL began.

  The others shushed her.

  Nora nodded.

  “I smelled the smoke in my apartment,” the old lady said. “There are children up there.” She pointed at Nora’s bedroom window. “Help them!”

  The camera panned up and Nora wondered if they hadn’t done some fancy editing back at the studio. There she was waving. She was certain that she’d waved earlier on. Not while Mrs. Daugherty was being interviewed. While watching the newscast, Nora’s brain felt heavy and the details seemed fuzzy.

  Things didn’t appear to be unfolding as she remembered.

  The sirens sounded higher pitched. The smoke pouring from the building was darker gray. She was seeing the event from a whole other perspective. It felt removed, like a movie of someone else’s story, not her history.

  Nora shook her head as she watched the firefighter carry her to the ambulance. Behind her, so close to Nora she could have reached out and touched his hand, was a soldier. In a strange old-fashioned jacket.

  Forgetting for an instant that her friends were also watching, Nora reached forward and paused the video. Something was very odd. The soldier seemed to be whispering something in her ear.

  “Do you see that guy?” Nora asked her friends, pointing at the screen. “The one in the old uniform?”

  “No,” LL said. “Just you and the firefighters. What do you see?”

  “I don’t know.” Nora fell silent as she stared at the man on the screen.

  “Press play,” Caitlin said. Her voice effectively zapped Nora out of her fog.

  She tapped the cursor and stared at the screen as the man disappeared behind a police car.

  The next part Nora recalled clearly. Other firefighters brought Lucas, and two others escorted her parents down. They all sat in the ambulance for a short time, breathing through oxygen masks until they were cleared as being healthy.

  Then her family stepped into a cheering crowd and faced the reporter’s microphone.

  The blonde on the computer screen shoved the microphone into Nora’s face.

  Nora remembered thinking her hair was a mess, there was soot on her face, and she was wearing pajamas. Not exactly the way she wanted to present herself the first time she was on TV.

  On-screen, Nora watched as she fidgeted with her hair and tried in vain to cover her pajamas with her arms.

  The reporter asked her, “What happened up there?”

  Nora began to answer, when Lucas popped his head into the frame. “We had a fire.” Then he waved at the camera. “Hello!” he shouted.

  The reporter moved away from Nora to ask her parents a few questions. Her father mentioned that he’d reported the faulty oven wiring many times to the property manager, but had never had a response.

  The reporter asked, “Do you have rental insurance to cover the damages?”

  Her father shook his head solemnly. “No. The fire wasn’t our fault. We can’t afford to go anywhere else. We’ll have to stay here while the apartment is repaired.”

  That was the beginning. Nora could see the shift, right there, right then, in her father’s face.

  It was the responsibility of the owner of the building and the property manager to set things straight. Her dad wasn’t going to budge, not him or his family, until they fixed the apartment.

  “We won’t leave.” He’d made his threat on live TV.

  Nora knew now that the threat hadn’t worked.

  They hadn’t left the apartment, but nothing had been fixed either.

  “We don’t believe the fire is our responsibility,” the owner of the building was now saying in a separate interview. “The wiring was old, but safe. We will be conducting an investigation to find out the real cause of the fire. The tenants will need to pay for the repairs themselves. If they don’t cover the costs, when the family goes out—for groceries, dinner, food—we will lock them out.”

  “We aren’t going anywhere,” Nora’s mother told the reporter.

  It was a battle of wills between her parents and the people in charge of the building.

  The video faded to black and Nora sighed.

  “Wow,” Caitlin said as Nora passed the computer back to Aleah. “A fire.”

  “Yeah,” Nora said.

  “Your parents are tough,” Aleah said.

  “I know,” Nora replied. Boy, were they!

  “You’re really lucky to have survived,” LL told Nora.

  “Yes,” Nora agreed. “Very lucky.” She had a headache. So much information in that video. And so much she didn’t understand.

  “You look tired,” Aleah noted. “Trick-or-treating, ghost hunting, falling down a pitch-black shaft—a lot has happened tonight!”

  Nora nodded.

  “Why don’t we all go to sleep,” Caitlin suggested, slipping away and settling into her sleeping bag. “We can talk more tomorrow.”

  The others agreed. Nora didn’t say anything. She felt a thousand emotions: sad that she’d missed so much of the world outside her apartment, mad at her parents’ stubbornness, frustrated that she was caught in the middle of their feud with the landlord, sympathetic to their determination to see things set right.

  She was confused and tired. So very tired.

  But as she closed her eyes, one emotion felt bigger than all the others.

  It was happiness.

  With all that had happened, Nora was grateful to be alive.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Hello, Nora,” the man said in a voice so soft she could barely hear his words. Nora sat up in her sleeping bag. She knew she was dreaming and tried to wake herself up. Pinching her arms didn’t help. The girls were all asleep on the floor nearby. None of them saw the man sitting in a chair that didn’t exist, or heard him speaking in an indistinguishable accent from some faraway country.

  Only her.

  Nora wasn’t afraid. “I saw you on the video. You were there, at the fire.”

  “Yes,” he said in his strange accent. “I visited you there. Do you remember what I said?”

  Nora thought about that day. She replayed the video in her head. “No,” she admitted. “What was the message?”

  “I said that it wasn’t your time.” The man leaned back in the chair.

  Nora considered that. “And the woman who disappeared? The one from the Internet story? You were the one who asked her for directions. What about her?”

  “Her time had come,” he said simply.

  This was an odd conversation in a bizarre dream. Nora pinched herself again, thinking it would be best to wake up and get this guy out of her head. No matter how hard she pinched her leg, he wouldn’t disappear.

  As long as he stayed, she had a question for him. She didn’t know why she wanted to know, but she did. “When will it be my time?” Nora let the question hang in the air.

  “It already passed,” he said before fading into the darkness.

  Nora stared at the empty spot where he’d been sitting and shook her head. What did that mean: It already passed? It made no sense at all.

  He’d never actually mentioned death. Could it be that there was something else he was talking about? Nora was so confused. And the more she thought about his words, the more her confusion grew.

  It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be . . .

  “No! No! No! I don’t want to die!”

  Nora woke up screaming.

  She was awake. That was for certain.

  She’d been screaming. That was for certain too.

  So why were her friends all still asleep?

  “Caitlin?” Nora got out of her sleeping bag and went over to Caitlin. She was the clo
sest.

  “Caity?” Nora poked Caitlin on the arm.

  “Ugrla,” Caitlin mumbled, swatting at Nora as if she was a bug and rolling over before letting out a huge snore.

  “Wow. She must be exhausted,” Nora said, moving on to wake up LL. She stepped over LL’s duffel bag and quietly bent down next to her pillow.

  “Hey,” she whispered in LL’s ear. “I can’t sleep. I had a bad dream. Wake up and hang out with me.”

  LL didn’t move. Nora tried to get Aleah to wake up, but same thing. She was crashed out. Nora checked the time. It had only been a few hours since they’d gone to bed. No wonder no one had heard her scream or woke up now. They were all sound asleep.

  The first rays of sunlight were starting to turn the sky orange and yellow. Nora sat down on the couch and wondered if the girls would wake up when the room was completely filled with light, or if they’d sleep a lot later than that. She hoped the light would get them up.

  To waste time, she flipped through one of Caitlin’s gymnastics magazines while she waited.

  When the sun was fully round in the sky, Caitlin began to stir.

  “Hi.” Nora was happy when Caitlin peeled out of her sleeping bag and stood up. She’d been lonely.

  “Where’s Nora?” Caitlin woke up Aleah.

  Aleah yawned. “What do you mean?”

  “Yeah,” Nora asked Caitlin, “what do you mean? I’m right here.”

  “Did she go home?” Aleah asked Caitlin.

  Caitlin shrugged, and then they both woke LL.

  “Go away,” LL muttered, slinking down into her sleeping bag like a turtle into a shell. “Studies show that the average person needs six to eight hours of sleep, or else.”

  “Nora’s gone,” Aleah said. “Did she tell you she was leaving?”

  “No.” LL looked at Nora’s empty sleeping bag.

  “Heeellllooo.” Getting off the couch, Nora stepped into the center of the room. She waved her arms and stomped her feet. “I’m right here.”

  LL looked toward her but didn’t make eye contact. Caitlin’s cat, however, hissed at Nora.

  Ignoring the feline’s glare and knowing she was a scaredy-cat, Nora stomped louder. The cat scurried away, but no one else reacted to the noise.