The Haunted

by Bentley Little

  She lowered her spoon, the skin prickling on her arms, and glanced quickly over at her sister.

  “What happened?” Diane asked.

  He frowned, shaking his head. “I can’t remember exactly. But it was some kind of nightmare, because your mother said I was thrashing around and calling out in my sleep. She had to wake me up.”

  “I did!”

  Claire’s heart was pounding.

  Her dad spoke slowly, and she wasn’t sure whether the import that gave his words was intentional or not. “The only thing I remember,” he said, and Claire felt cold, because she knew what was coming next, “is that it had something to do with your basement.”

  Nine

  Finally, her friends were going to be able to stay over, and Megan planned for the slumber party by writing down lists of food, drinks, games, movies, everything they would need. She didn’t want to leave anything to chance, and as each item was found or purchased, each task completed, she made a check next to the entry on the appropriate list. Her parents had even arranged for James to spend the night at Robbie’s house, so she and her friends would have the place to themselves, and that alone was worth the wait.

  James’s friend might have stayed over first, but she was going to have a party. And it was going to be good.

  The day of, everything went smoothly.

  Until it didn’t.

  After lunch, her dad took James over to his friend’s house, while Megan and her mom baked brownies and mixed together the dip for potato chips. When her dad returned, he took her over to Safeway, where she rented two Twilight DVDs from the Redbox. There were three girls coming over, and originally she’d planned for all of them to camp out in the living room, but her dad had put the brakes on that idea (“I’m not giving up my entire evening for your friends,” was what he’d said, and she’d been tempted to respond, “Why don’t you find something to do besides watch TV all night?” but she sensed that this was not the time to push back). She’d then thought about having two of her friends spend the night in James’s room (that would drive her brother crazy!), but since it was her party, she knew that whoever didn’t get to sleep in her room would feel slighted. And she didn’t want to make enemies of any of her friends.

  So she’d decided to rearrange her own room so there’d be enough space for everyone. It was harder than she’d thought, not just because she needed to create an area big enough for two sleeping bags and the feather mattress (she was still going to sleep in her bed), but because she needed to put away things that weren’t cool and replace them with things that were. The last thing she needed was to get a reputation as a geek or a nerd.

  She was removing a World Wildlife Federation poster of a herd of running horses from the wall at the head of her bed when her iPhone beeped. Putting the tacks down on top of her dresser, Megan picked up the phone and looked at the message on-screen.

  Take off your pants.

  She erased it, her heart thumping crazily.

  The message popped up again.

  Take off your pants.

  A bolt of fear shot through her.

  “Mom!” she yelled. “Mom!”

  Her mother came hurrying up the stairs and into her room. “What is it?” Megan immediately handed over the phone. A shadow crossed over her mom’s face as she read the text. “Who sent this?”

  “I don’t know!” Megan was almost crying.

  “Have you ever gotten anything like this before?”

  There was a second’s pause, too short to be noticed. “No.” Her mind was whirring. She was scared, and she was glad that she’d shown this to her mom—

  Take off your pants.

  —because it was too serious to keep to herself. Her parents needed to know about it. But if her mom found out about the other weird messages Megan had received, she would definitely take her phone away—and probably restrict her Internet access. She might do that anyway, but Megan wasn’t going to help her.

  “Who do you think would send you something like this? Is there a boy from one of your classes … ?”

  “I don’t know!” Megan insisted. And she didn’t.

  Only …

  Only she didn’t think it was anyone familiar, did she? No. For whatever reason, she thought it was a man, an adult, someone she didn’t know but who somehow knew her. She had no idea where she’d gotten this impression or why she believed it to be true, but she did.

  “Well, I’m keeping your phone until we get everything sorted out. I don’t like this at all, and your father won’t, either. This is scary stuff. There are all sorts of predators out there, and until we find out who’s doing this, I don’t want you calling, texting, tweeting, IM-ing or anything like that. Do you understand?”

  Megan nodded. In a way, she was relieved. She needed to get hold of her friends and tell them not to send any texts or leave any embarrassing messages, but at least she didn’t have to worry about some psycho pervert harassing her. She could just get on with her life and concentrate on her slumber party.

  Maybe it was someone who found out about the party but wasn’t invited. …

  No. It was a man. Besides, she didn’t have the kind of social standing that would make anyone jealous of not being invited. Her friends were probably the only ones who would want to sleep over.

  “Thanks, Mom,” she said, and smiled gratefully.

  “If anything else like this comes up—”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  Her mother smiled back, and Megan returned to rearranging her room, although she could not help peeking out the window at the street outside as she took the horse poster off her wall.

  Zoe arrived early, shortly after three. Her mother said that she’d been antsy all day, and she’d finally given in and brought her over. While the moms talked downstairs, Megan led Zoe up to her room and let her pick out a sleeping spot. “First come, first served.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  “My bed.”

  “I’ll sleep next to the bed, on the feather mattress.”

  Megan grinned. “Then I guess Julie and Kate get the floor.”

  Zoe went downstairs, said good-bye to her mom, and brought up her luggage, placing it next to the spot where she’d be sleeping. “I brought a Ouija board,” she said, pulling the Parker Brothers box out of her suitcase.

  Megan said nothing, although the idea made her uncomfortable. It was just a game, she told herself. A mass-produced product stamped out by a factory and sold in toy stores. But it still made her feel uneasy, and she changed the subject, explaining that she’d rented two movies for tonight, and that they were going to have not only pizza for dinner but ice cream and brownies for dessert.

  Megan was glad Zoe had come early. Zoe was her best friend, and the two of them had time to talk a little, gossip and plan, before the other two girls came over.

  Julie and Kate arrived together shortly after five, driven by Kate’s mom. It was so nice not having James around, and the four of them ate pizza, watched one of the Twilight movies, ate dessert, watched the other movie, and then went upstairs, ostensibly to bed. But the moment the door was closed, Zoe got out her Ouija board.

  “I don’t—” Megan began.

  “Cool!” Julie took the box from Zoe, opening one end and tipping it. An instruction book fell out, and she handed the box back to Zoe, picking up the instructions.

  Zoe took out the board itself, putting it on her lap.

  “What’s a planchette?” Julie asked, reading.

  “It’s this pointer.” Taking it out of the box, Zoe placed it on the board, a heart-shaped piece of plastic with short felt-tipped legs.

  Julie continued to read the directions. “So, we …”

  Kate pulled the booklet out of her hands. “Come on. Everyone knows how to use a Ouija board. It’s not brain surgery.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Okay, then,” Megan said. “You’re responsible for writing things down.” She handed Julie a pen and a Hello Kitty not
epad before sitting down on the floor next to Zoe and Kate, the three of them forming a triangle. They each placed a portion of the board on their laps, adjusting it until it was as flat as possible, then placing their curved fingers atop the planchette in the center of the board.

  “So it’s going to spell things out, and I just write them down?” Julie asked uncertainly.

  “Yeah,” Zoe told her. “Now everyone be quiet. And concentrate.” She took a deep breath. “Is there anyone there?” she asked in a solemn voice.

  Nothing happened. They waited a few moments; then Zoe spoke again. “Is someone there?”

  The planchette started to slide slowly across the board

  “You’re pushing it!” Kate accused Zoe.

  “No, I’m not!”

  “I’m not moving it,” Megan said.

  “No one’s moving it,” Zoe told them. “It’s working. Now just shut up and concentrate.” The pointer had stopped sliding, but they all quieted down, and in a moment it started up again, moving over the board in an ever-widening circle. When it came close to the edge, the pattern changed, and it began sliding slowly to the left and right before finally stopping, its tip pointing to a letter on the top row of the alphabet.

  “I!” Zoe announced.

  Julie wrote it down.

  The pointer moved again.

  “C!”

  It slid over to the opposite side of the board.

  “U!”

  I C U Megan

  Megan lifted her hands before the device could move any farther.

  “Hey!”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Megan!”

  Her friends cried out in surprise and disappointment, but she didn’t want to know where this was going, didn’t want the next letter to be M. She still wasn’t sure she believed that the Ouija board actually worked, but she was starting to, and she was afraid to see where the pointer would land.

  What if it spelled out, Take off your pants?

  “I’m not playing anymore,” Megan said.

  “Are you scared?” Zoe teased.

  “Yes,” she stated matter-of-factly, and that shut them up. Suddenly, all of them seemed a little nervous, and Megan helped Zoe put the pieces of the game back in the box. Julie handed back the instructions.

  For a moment, none of them were sure of what to do.

  “I know,” Julie said brightly. “Let’s play Truth or Dare.”

  “Yeah!” They all thought that was a good idea, but before they played the game, they decided to change into their pajamas, each of them taking turns in the bathroom. Megan was last, and her friends were giggling when she came back into the bedroom. She was afraid she’d missed something, but Zoe, sensing her concern, said, “We were just laughing at Kate’s pj’s.”

  Megan didn’t see what was so funny. They were kind of old, yeah, and they were Finding Nemo pajamas, which was kind of babyish, but …

  Julie pointed between Kate’s legs, where the tail of an orange Nemo was protruding from a seam directly over Kate’s crotch. Megan started laughing, too, and Kate said, “All right. That’s enough. Truth or Dare: who’s going first?”

  “I’ll go,” Zoe volunteered.

  “Truth or dare?”

  Zoe and Julie both opted for truth, and to much delighted squealing, they answered questions about their feelings for two of the hottest boys in school. But when it came time for Megan’s turn, and she chose truth, Kate asked her, surprisingly, “Why did you stop the Ouija board?”

  Startled, Megan didn’t immediately respond. She briefly considered lying, but her friends had all been honest, and it wouldn’t have been right for her to be the only one not telling the truth. Besides, she’d already admitted it. “Because I was scared,” she said.

  They all laughed, but to her relief, no further questions were asked. That was the end of it. After her, Kate chose dare, and when she refused to lift up her pajama top and show them her chest, her punishment was to go into James’s room and kiss his pillow.

  On the next round, Julie got to ask the questions and decide the dares, and when Megan’s turn came up and she once again chose truth, Julie asked, “Why were you scared of the Ouija board?”

  Megan looked at the faces of her friends, who were all watching her intently, as though the fate of important issues rested on her answer. She saw no trace of humor on any of their faces and wondered whether they had planned this, whether this line of questioning was intentional, an attempt to … to … what?

  Nothing. She was just being paranoid. She forced herself to laugh, and they laughed, too, and the spell was broken. Once again, she decided to answer honestly. “Because I think my house might be haunted.”

  That did not go over the way she thought it would. Instead of being greeted with derision and laughter, her admission was met with a weak chuckle from Zoe and nervous glances around the room from Julie and Kate.

  They feel it, too.

  That was why they were pursuing this line of questioning.

  Megan suddenly felt cold. As if on cue, the lights flickered, and all four of them jumped. Zoe, Kate and Julie tried to laugh it off, but Megan wasn’t laughing. And neither were her friends. Not really. They were anxious, frightened. Megan looked around. The room seemed darker than it had a few moments prior, the corners filled with a gathering gloom. It was probably nothing, she told herself, but even as she did so, the darkness in the far corner seemed to become less amorphous, more of a … shape.

  Zoe saw it, too. “Look,” she whispered, pointing.

  There was a figure in the corner now, a tall, thin form with the nebulous, wavy contours of a plume of smoke, and it twisted and turned until its vaguely humanoid shape was facing them full-on.

  It moved toward them.

  The girls screamed. All of them. Spontaneously. Their simultaneous cries of terror melded into a single earsplitting screech, and the figure promptly disappeared.

  “Keep it down up there!” her mom ordered, calling from the foot of the stairs.

  Instantly, the real world reasserted itself. Gone was the gloom in the corners, the dimness of the light. Everything reverted back to normal, and, more grateful than she had ever been for anything in her life, Megan called down, “Sorry, Mom! We will!”

  She looked about the room, saw nothing out of the ordinary, nothing suspicious or unusual, only her furniture and possessions and the luggage and sleeping bags of her friends. She walked over to her bed, not wanting to meet anyone’s eyes. No one said a word, and when she suggested that they go to sleep, there were no objections, only murmured agreement.

  Everyone got under their covers or into their sleeping bags. Without asking any of her friends, Megan left her desk lamp on, and none of them asked her to turn it off, although, immediately, she wished she’d left all of the lights on. The lamp was dim, its glow yellowish and weak, the feeble illumination throwing the corners of the room into a too-familiar darkness. But she watched and waited, and the darkness never resolved itself into anything more, and after a few minutes, she allowed herself to relax and settle back, satisfied that, whatever had happened, it was all over now.

  Haunted.

  It was the first time she’d said the word aloud, the first time she’d even thought about it that directly, but she believed it. So did her friends. She heard surreptitious whispering from down on the floor and wondered what they were saying to one another. Probably that they were never going to come over to her house again.

  She couldn’t blame them. She didn’t want to be here—and this was her home.

  Why in the world had they moved?

  James.

  As usual, that little pansy was at the root of all her problems.

  Megan stared up at the ceiling, wondering what, if anything, she should tell her parents about tonight. Would they believe any of it? Maybe they would if all of them described what had happened, although she wasn’t sure her friends would be willing to admit to anything in the morning. Daylight somehow had
the effect of making night fears seem less real.

  The whispering had stopped. She wanted to ask Zoe whether she was asleep yet—Zoe was the one person who might not run away from all this—but didn’t want to wake Kate or Julie, didn’t want them to hear what she had to say. So she remained silent, trying not to think about what had happened but unable to think of anything else.

  Haunted.

  From downstairs came the sounds of her parents getting ready for bed. The television was shut off, doors were closed, a toilet flushed.

  Gradually, the house grew silent.

  Too silent.

  Lying there, she began to think that she was the only living person in the house. The idea was absurd, but all attempts to convince herself of that failed, and the thought soon hardened into a conviction. Finally, she could no longer restrain herself and leaned over the side of the bed to make sure her friends were still alive. To her great relief, they were. Julie was snoring slightly, and Zoe stirred on the feather mattress. Kate coughed.

  Happy to have her fears dispelled, Megan leaned back on her pillow—

  And glimpsed movement out of the corner of her eye.

  Her heart leaped in her chest.

  Slowly, she turned her head to the right.

  The monster emerged from the wall where it had been hiding, retaining some of the color and shading of not only the wall but the dresser and door. She was the only one who saw it, the only one awake, and she remained perfectly still, afraid to move, watching through squinting eyes that she hoped made it look as though she were asleep.

  The creature was as wide as it was tall, and its head nearly brushed the ceiling. If that was its head. For the parts of its form seemed to have no correlation in the human or animal world. Indeed, its form was constantly shifting, what had seemed an arm retracting into a torso, the torso twisting and turning, becoming a head and then a foot.

  The only constant was that there was a face. It might change position, but it was there, and it was a terrible thing to see, a raging chaos of unblinking eyes and ferociously fanged maw.

  The monster hovered over her friends on the floor before gently lifting the sheet that covered Zoe. It pulled up her oversize T-shirt, but she did not awaken, and a long tentacle—for that was what it looked like—reached out and slipped beneath the material. Megan wanted to scream—