by Aly Noble
The pattern for both was exactly the same.
• • •
“WHAT?”
Estelle looked ready to slap me, and the colored lights that were currently washing her face violet just made her look all the more malevolent. “DO YOU WANT A FUCKING BEER?” she shouted over the music.
“SURE,” I shouted back, but half-laughed at the way her face pinched. “WHERE'S CARLA?”
She shrugged and stood on her toes despite the five-inch heels already boosting her view. Estelle gestured toward the bar. “I’LL CHECK ON HER WHEN I GET OUR DRINKS.”
“WHAT?” I shouted again, but this time it was just to tease her.
She realized that when I broke into a smirk just seconds before she gathered herself to shout more loudly again. “EAT A DICK, MIRIAM JAMES.” And with that, she went to grab more beers.
I cackled softly and tottered after her, figuring staying together was a better plan than going off on my own. Carla was chatting up the bartender for shots—probably her sixth since we walked in, as her first three were with Estelle and me. After that, we’d gone to find a bathroom so Estelle could decide whether or not she was going to puke and Carla had stayed at the bar.
It was a little easier to hear each other away from the dance floor and a little less purple as well. When the bartender saw me, she asked, “Another vodka cranberry?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks, I’m good on those,” I laughed. “We’re doing beer now.”
She nodded and listened to Estelle for the specifics before going to grab the bottles. Carla tapped ash from her cigarette into a tray and regarded us like tagalongs. In response to which, Estelle glared to excess. The reverb from the speakers made the floor vibrate beneath our feet, and I experimentally leaned against a stool to see if it made a difference. Estelle took it as a gesture of defeat.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, handing me my beer. “We’re going back to the dance floor. And so are you.” Estelle nudged Carla out of her seat and she grumbled in response, but the fact that she put out her cigarette was the ultimate sign of surrender. I was kind of surprised she could walk. I didn’t realize I’d voiced that last thought aloud until she laughed and commented that she was made of strong stuff when it came to booze. “I feel great, but I won’t get sloppy for a while yet.”
“I’d be on my ass,” I admitted sheepishly.
Carla smiled a little. “Yeah, but your tab will be a lot smaller than mine.”
That made me feel a little better, and we wove through the bodies in front of the DJ booth to find Estelle just as a new song started. The plum-washed room pulsed with bass as the writhing mass of dancers moved in sync around each other—as unsteady as I was, it felt like entering a pinball machine. Someone stepped back into Carla, and she consequently stepped back into me, causing me to tip back into someone else in a domino effect.
I rushed to steady myself before I could cause too much damage and quickly shouted, “SORRY,” a little too loudly.
The man I’d bumped into laughed and shouted back, “NO PROBLEM,” and went on his way.
Between the voice and the glimpse I’d caught of him, something close to recognition had flared in my memory—however, by the time I looked for him again, he was lost in the crowd. “Hmph,” I murmured to myself, which was also when I realized I'd lost Estelle and Carla along the way.
It was too loud. My head was starting to throb and it was an actual headache this time, pulsating in time with the pain from my weird head injury. My eyes hurt from the lights. My head was fuzzy enough that I considered the possibility that I'd been roofied despite knowing I wouldn’t be upright if that were the case. My legs felt cold and shaky. And I screamed a little when Estelle grabbed me.
“WHAT WAS THAT FOR?” she shouted, releasing me immediately. I could tell by the way her eyes were unfocused that she’d had another shot sometime between now and a few minutes ago.
“I…” I paused and glanced around for anything weird, but there was nothing to be feared here. For once, it seemed that I was safe from everything but barflies. “NOTHING. SORRY.”
“COME ON,” she said, grabbing my hand and guiding me through the fray until night air hit my face like relief made tangible. “God, my ears are ringing… You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine—sorry for screaming at you,” I sighed, wishing I hadn’t had that cigarette earlier. Or the two after that. Or all the shots.
“It’s cool. In that place, it sounded more like a squeak,” Estelle said. “Lost Carla in there before I found you. I can’t get a read on her tonight. You think you know how someone’s going to act when you work with them for three years, but she seems like a totally different person here.”
I shrugged. “You guys have an office relationship. She’s not going to act like that at work.”
“True, but still. People don’t vary that much. I wonder if something’s bothering her,” she mused.
“Well, if something was bothering her, she’s probably feeling better now. She’s had like six shots.”
“More like nine,” Estelle commented. “I don’t know how she does it. I can’t do shots—I gag if it’s pure alcohol. Don’t ask me why.”
“Probably because it’s pure alcohol.”
Estelle nodded. “I’m going to go in and pull her out. Want to stay out here?”
I surveyed the parking lot before shaking my head. “Two pairs of eyes will get it done faster. Plus, it’s almost two-thirty—she’s got to be slowing down by now.”
“We’ll see,” Estelle said before we took the plunge back through the door.
I hadn’t realized how hot it was inside until we were cramming ourselves back in to find our coworker. I leaned over to Estelle’s ear to loudly ask, “Together or split up?”
She considered that before answering me by linking our arms and tugging me into the crowd. We checked the bar first and couldn’t find her, which led us to think she was in the mob under the lights. The consistently violet lights had begun to alternate through the spectrum, flashing more rapidly than before—or maybe my buzz hadn’t set in yet earlier.
I let Estelle pull me through a small sea of people, wrinkling my nose at the sweaty, boozy smell hanging over the area. I kept my eyes peeled for Carla, but it was difficult to focus on one face at a time in the mass. There were just too many and something weird was going on with my eyes. I rubbed them and smudged my makeup in the process, which is what I thought was wrong at first—it looked like I had a mascara-coated eyelash on the surface of one of my eyes. The only problem was that it wasn't burning and it also wasn't staying in the same place.
I finally gave one more pronounced blink before realizing there wasn’t anything on my eye and that there was a dark shadow moving through the crowd.
Whether it was a trick of the lights or something else, I couldn’t tell, but it was fast and its movements seemed disconnected. I tried my best to get a better look as Estelle pulled me along, but my impaired state coupled with the lack of visibility in the room made it difficult. The lights switched to a strobe effect, and the area was bathed in unnatural white light for milliseconds at a time. Someone’s elbow clocked my shoulder. A girl gave a shriek of a laugh in my ear. Someone dropped their drink.
Something writhed across the dance floor between pulses of the strobe light.
I clutched Estelle’s arm and tried to get her attention, but she was too focused on not running into anyone. My chest felt tight, and I could feel paranoia picking at my insides like dull claws. I didn’t want to look back to see if it was still there. No one seemed alarmed. If it was there, only I was seeing it. Did that mean it wasn’t real?
The bulbs switched to pink, and the strobe effect died with the blinding white light. I turned my head the littlest bit to survey the group, but nothing seemed strange this time. A few minutes later, we found Carla, too.
“What the hell?” Estelle wondered when she spotted Carla lounging on a folding chair near the wall like it was a sol
id gold throne. To Carla, she said, “Ready to get out of here, Your Highness?”
Carla giggled at that, and it was clear she’d had more drinks in the meantime. “Yep, we can go. Let’s go pay up and call the cab.”
“Ugh, I’m not sure I want to see my tab,” Estelle sighed as we pushed our way through again to get to the bar.
She had a point—whatever I had to put on my card in a few minutes would probably be way more terrifying than an alleged dance floor ghost that just as easily could’ve been a trick of the light.
Carla paid her tab first and then took out her phone to call the cab while Estelle dug out her card case. I was watching Carla walk to the bathroom to get some quiet for her phone call when Estelle said, “Go with her, so she doesn't wander off again. I’ve got your tab.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I protested.
“I know—don’t worry about it. Just herd our black sheep back this way when she’s done with the call,” she smirked. I laughed and thanked her before following Carla. She saw me walking over and waited to shut the door until I'd gone through. It was a single service bathroom, and the latch made a loud thunk when Carla turned it.
I anxiously peeked around the room while she waited for the cabbie to pick up, half-listening to the one-sided conversation. Midway through a yawn, I glanced at the water-stained mirror above the sink in time to see a shadow in the far corner before it flickered out.
For fuck's sake—it never ends, I thought with more irritation than was rational as opposed to being afraid. Maybe it was the booze talking.
“Fifteen minutes,” Carla announced once she hung up with the taxi service. “Not bad, considering. Though I guess we are in the city.”
“Cool,” I mumbled distractedly, looking at the mirror and also trying not to look at the mirror. “We good to go then?”
“Sure. What's with you?” she asked, glancing at the mirror when she realized I was actively avoiding it. When she didn't look away, I knew she saw something, too. “What the—?”
The mirror splintered from the center, drawing shrieks from us both as tiny fragments littered the sink and the floor beneath it. I swore loudly and felt like doing so again when Carla started to laugh. “That was crazy!” she exclaimed, her eyes bright with adrenaline. “Does that happen to you all the time?”
I looked her over warily, no longer trying to keep the judgment off my face. “Um... Recently?”
“Insane,” she enunciated with a wide grin. “C’mon, let’s go find Estelle.”
“Okay,” I mumbled, following her out and trying to configure my face into something other than the visual depiction of ‘severely uneasy.’
We found Estelle back at the bar where we’d left her. Carla commented on that, to which Estelle replied, “Well, it was easier to stay where you knew I was if we were going to leave. Are we good?”
“Yeah, should be like ten minutes at this point for the cab,” Carla said. “Let’s go outside to wait—I want to smoke.”
She led the way out, and I fell into step with Estelle, who looked confused. “What’s gotten into her now?”
“Some weird shit happened in the bathroom, and she gets off on being scared, I guess,” I said.
“What weird shit?”
“Shadow in the mirror. At least, that’s what I saw. I don’t know what she saw, but probably the same thing. Then the mirror broke.”
“Couldn’t take your ugly mugs, probably,” Estelle quipped, and I smacked her arm.
Carla had already lit up outside by the time we joined her and offered me her pack. I shook my head, and she said nothing but seemed a little offended that I didn't want to smoke with her. The truth was that I did want to—I really wanted to. And at the same time, I really didn’t.
The cab soon arrived, and we clambered in. The ride back took about half the time as the ride out, and we were back at my house within about an hour. We climbed out of the car and I picked up the fare, replacing my card in its case as the cab pulled away. Carla was practically bouncing on her heels, and I could only wonder where she was getting her energy. I felt like collapsing.
“Hold these—I’m going to get something from my car,” she said as she put her cigarettes and lighter in my half-raised hands and then hurried toward the driveway.
Estelle and I exchanged a glance as we went ahead to the porch and I dug out my keys. “Did she do a line or four on the drive back?” I asked warily as I unlocked the door and opened it for Estelle, leaving it ajar for Carla after we went in.
“It wouldn’t surprise me at this point. Last time I do this with her,” she commented, yawning as we went to the living room.
“That’s for sure,” I sighed. “Oh, well. We survived.”
“Definitely. At least we didn't end up go—what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I blinked in shock until I realized she wasn’t talking to me. I turned around just as Carla shut the door behind her and walked over to join us.
“What?” Carla wondered, seeming surprised at Estelle’s reaction to what she’d retrieved from her car. “It’s just a game.”
“Um, no,” Estelle snapped. “Monopoly is a game. Clue is a game. Solitaire is a game. That is a fucking spirit board.”
Carla grimaced and looked down at the glossy, new gateway to hell under her arm. “Yeah. And this place is supposedly haunted. It’ll be fun.”
“That’s not fun. That’s... I don’t even know what that qualifies as!”
“It qualifies as a game! It’s just a damn game!”
“You’re just a damn idiot.”
I watched them bicker and eyed the spirit board for a few minutes—ultimately, I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I found myself taking Carla's lighter to the corner of the box and waiting until the flame caught to flick it off.
Estelle noticed that the board was on fire before Carla did and fell short of a point she was making because of it. Carla thought she’d won for half a second until she realized what Estelle was staring at and shrieked, whirling on me. “What the fuck, Miri?!”
“Fireplace,” I said simply.
“Excuse me?!”
“Throw it in the fireplace before you burn yourself.”
Carla looked like she was ready to spit in my face until she finally stomped to the fireplace and tossed it in, frowning at the blackening mass of cardboard folding in on itself within the brick frame. She shot a glare my way. “You’re buying me another one.”"
“Fine. Just don’t bring it here,” I said with a roll of my eyes, setting my purse down along with her lighter and cigarettes. She snatched them off the table and went outside to smoke again, looking pissed as hell.
As soon as the door slammed, Estelle busted a gut. “Oh, my god, that was amazing,” she laughed, wiping tears from her eyes. “Your fucking face! And then her fucking face! Jesus, I need a gif of that.” Still smirking, she collapsed on my couch. “Do you have any actual games here?”
I considered that and nodded. “Yeah, let me hunt something down.”
“Sweet,” Estelle said, a giggle still lingering in her voice.
I checked the hall closet first, thinking I may have stashed a box in there that would contain something like board games, but the only box inside held scarves and winter gloves. “I guess that’s appropriate,” I conceded, deciding to check the guest room upstairs instead. I remembered dropping off a few boxes in there when I hadn’t had another place in mind for them my first week here. I heard Carla come back in after I’d reached the top of the stairs, rolling my eyes and wishing she was sober enough to drive herself home—and also that I was mean enough to ask her to leave.
I turned on the hall light and then the guest room lights to start looking through what I had yet to unpack, absently wondering where the hell Jonah was or if he was MIA because there were other people around. That wouldn't make sense though, I reasoned as I pawed through one box of trinkets and decided that trinkets were all that lay inside, moving to the
next. He can make himself visible to me and no one else. He did it with the window guy and he does the same for Bethaline, I think. Either that or some people just can’t see him.
I shrugged and finally found a box that looked promising, pulling out an old Clue game, an UNO deck, and Life. “This works,” I murmured, stacking them up in my arms and getting to my feet. I flicked off the lights on my way out and went back downstairs, finding Estelle and Carla sitting on the couch silently. I put the games on the coffee table and went to check around the kitchen one more time for any kind of alcohol to smooth things over until everyone crashed. I pulled open the cupboard above the fridge and—lo and behold—I had bought that bottle of wine on my last trip to the grocery.
After retrieving three glasses and a corkscrew, I went back to the living room, where Estelle was shuffling the UNO deck and Carla was still pouting.
“Found some medicine,” I announced as I set down the glasses.
That, at least, got a round of relieved sighs.
Chapter 18
The next morning started with a headache.
I grimaced and pushed myself up off my bed, rubbing my eyes and pulling away hands blackened by eyeliner smudges. I was still dressed in what I’d worn to the club the night before, but at least I’d had the forethought to kick off my shoes. I made a slow wobble to the shower and didn’t have the mental clarity for anxiety to kick in about being in the stall again—nothing happened this time anyway. Once I felt slightly more human and put some clothes on, I ambled down the stairs to see how Estelle and Carla were getting on, just hoping that they’d had the courtesy to not puke on my house.
Estelle had stayed on the couch the night before, and I could’ve sworn I’d left Carla in the armchair, but she wasn’t there. I checked the main floor’s guest room to find it empty and undisturbed. The one upstairs was empty, too.
By the time I came back down, Estelle was sitting up, looking as much of a mess as I had upon waking up. “Morning, princess.”