October Darlings

by Wendolyn Baird

  He raises his hand to the wall, and where his palm should touch the wallpaper, a deep liquid stains its way towards the ceiling, blotching the door above our heads in such a gruesome display that couldn’t possibly be anything but blood.

  Sabrina and Nick let out an onslaught of cuss words that blend in the back of my mind, but I can’t focus on them. Not while the faceless man stares me down. He has no eyes, but I can feel them, nonetheless, piercing their way to my soul. Acknowledging me, claiming me, warning me.

  With a slow shake of his head, he turns to the hall door and back to me, pressing on the wall again.

  As I watch him, my heart stutters with faint half beats that sustain me in a way that feels like my mortality is slipping away.

  He shakes his ghostly head my way, stumbling away from the wall, closer to us. The door shakes behind him, and as he turns his gaze away from my eyes, I draw a single breath, as deeply as I can.

  Shaking rattles the walls, just like it did yesterday in the hallway, but this time, there’s nothing for me to hold onto. More frames threaten to fall, and Delia’s pens roll off her desk.

  Sabrina gasps out loud, drawing the specter’s attention back to our group, and the tremors stop.

  He tilts his head, listening for something far beyond my own ears. The bedroom door swings open, and before I can blink, he’s gone.

  Rushing to my feet, I race forward, throwing my hands out to where he stood. “Wait! Where are you going? What do you want?”

  “Who are you talking to? Get away from there!” Nick stares at me in horror, a towel still hanging halfheartedly from his shoulders. At his side, Sabrina cowers behind her cousin, her eyes gleaming strangely.

  “You didn’t see him?”

  “See who? There’s nothing there but a freaking bleeding wall! You said this place wasn’t haunted!”

  “So, it’s true,” Sabrina whispers. “You can see them.”

  As if I wasn’t already frozen to the bone, Sabrina’s comment sends a chill through me so strong it nearly knocks me off my feet. “What’s true? What do you know about me?”

  She blinks at me, one hand clutching her forehead, the other hanging onto Nick’s sleeve. His arm is bleeding from where a spare bit of glass ricocheted onto him, and Sabrina’s phone is laying beside her with a flashing screen.

  “The books said your family is haunted; you’re clairvoyants.”

  “The hell is a clairvoyant?” Nick explodes before I can process what she’s saying. “People can’t be haunted, only places, and this place belongs on one of those ghost hunting shows. I vote we call for backup and wait for them to find your aunt. I’m not sticking for any more of this.”

  His obvious disgust stings even as the shock of my vision fades away.

  “And who are we supposed to call?” I fume at him, my blood pumping to bring fire to my face. “I just found out there are actual ghosts in my house! My aunt wasn’t making things up, I’m not going crazy— although I sure feel like I am! And nobody, absolutely nobody can help us. All those ghost hunting shows have one thing in common, the dudes go into a creepy place, film themselves flipping out, and run away. Nobody ever actually does anything to the ghosts!”

  “She’s got a point, it’s not like we can yell boo and throw a net over a spirit; they’re non-corporeal, even the ones with the ability to move things.”

  “Okay, how the hell do you know all this?" I focus back on Sabrina. “Am I just some joke to you? A way into your very ghost hunt?”

  “No! I told you, I love gravesites; that comes with a lot of research, and not all of it is scientific, I’ll admit, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I’ve been reading about the possibilities of real-life ghosts for like a year now, but I didn’t think this place was really haunted! I just wanted to check out the secret tunnels! Do you think I would have come in here if I thought I was going to have stuff thrown at me and see that?” She points at the wall behind me, her legs shaking as she tries to stand. “How do you know your aunt wasn’t taken by one of them? How do you know we aren’t next? I’m with Nick on this, we need to leave.”

  It’s my turn to be speechless as she begins to cry. It isn’t possible for Delia to disappear in her own home, she’s lived here on her own for years. If the ghosts were dangerous, something would have happened by now. My dad wouldn’t have sent me... not if he knew about them.

  Darting out into the hallway, I stomp down the stairs, my veins blazing with purpose. Dad may not believe in Nix House, but I can’t deny its peculiarity. Delia loves this place, and I did too, once upon a time. There’s no way in hell the house’s less than lively occupants did anything to hurt her.

  “Delia!”

  I head straight for the downstairs hall, running blindly as I left the candle upstairs and my phone’s still on my bed. What my eyes can’t see, my feet remember. Two feet to my right is a table, another foot in front of me is the raised floorboard that always tripped me up. I leap through the open doorway, and a hard object hits me square in the back, hard.

  Maybe I was wrong after all.

  The floor is cold and harsh beneath my chin, and as I struggle to my knees, a quick kick lands in the side of ribs, shooting a sharp, wrenching pain through me yet again, but before I can recover, icy hands pull at my hair. Clawing against my scalp, nimble fingers snarl the damp strands into knots and leave burning scratches at my roots.

  “How could you forget me?” it rasps. “Are you going away again? I don’t like it when people do that.”

  Man, woman, or child, I can’t identify the voice. All I know is that it’s dead.

  “Let go of her!” Delia yells out, her ringing words cracking through the hallway like a whip.

  My face slams into the floor as the spirit shoves away from me. Blistering red dots and cloudy black spots cover the rest of my vision completely. I can’t catch my balance enough to stand, and my palms slip against a liquid on the floor. Gasping in mouthfuls of air stings both my throat and my lips. Sore, swollen, and splattered in a metallic taste that must be more blood, I can’t even force words to form for help.

  “No, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen like this!” Delia fusses somewhere above me. “None of this was supposed to happen this way, it wasn’t the plan, it wasn’t what I signed up for! Ah, hell, who am I kidding? I didn’t sign up for any of this!”

  Ginger hands touch my shoulders, and I jerk away automatically, but they’re warm, not cold, and it’s my aunt trying to help me. Gagging on the blood that threatens to run down my throat, I allow her to help me into a sitting position, and slowly, my vision returns.

  Her hair is disheveled, her clothes are coated in cobwebs, and there’s a heavy opal swinging back and forth in front of my face as she kneels before me. I want to ask her where she was, what’s happening and why... but most of all who attacked me? Who did I forget?

  There’s an agony in my chest I can’t confront right now. I’m not ready for those answers. I just need the world to stop spinning long enough to get my bearings. Delia holds my face in her hands, and it’s only that fact that holds me upright. I’m more battered than I’ve ever been in my life, and that’s nothing compared to how my mind’s reeling. Every breath hitches in my throat and I can’t stop shaking.

  “What happened to her? Is she okay?” Clattering footsteps announce Nick’s arrival downstairs.

  “For crying out loud! Isn’t there a single one of you who isn’t bleeding? How did y’all get in here anyhow?”

  Coughing, I answer for them. “It was raining. They came looking for me. I needed my camera. It’s my fault.” In my peripheral, Sabrina shifts nearer, and if anything, Nick is even more stricken than he was before.

  “No, no.” Delia smooths my hair back. “No darling, none of this is your fault.”

  “Where were you?” I sound like a child, hanging onto her the way I am, but I can’t stop. “I was so scared.”

  “I know, darling. I know.” She curses under her breath and spits a mouthfu
l of hair away from her face. “Alright, everyone in the kitchen, now! It’s usually the calmest place in the house, so I doubt the spirits will bother us there.”

  Sounds of disbelief echo above my pounding head, and I agree with them.

  “Really,” Delia insists. Pulling me to my face, she holds us back through the dining room and begins bandaging us up, completely ignoring the fitful questions we throw at her.

  Nick’s arm, once cleaned up, is nothing more than a shallow scratch, and besides the ill-fitting hoodie, Sabrina looks much the same as she did when she entered Nix House, albeit shaken. Cups of steaming tea linger in their hands as Delia flips sandwiches over on the stove, toasting the edges of the bread while cheese and strips of bacon cook in between. In the flickering candlelight, the scene would be almost normal if we were anywhere but here. Just a power outage in a storm, just a couple of imaginations run wild. But my aching body is proof against the lie I wish I could believe.

  “Nix House is as old as the family itself. Some call us cursed, others call us blessed, it all depends on how you feel about it.”

  As always, her fallback response to a disaster is comfort food and a strong cup of tea, and she mutters irritably at us as she cooks. The sizzle of butter in the pan pops as she shuffles the food around and her head tilts to the side. Listening.

  “Yes, Mama,” she smiles. “I know how you feel.”

  Nana! Why can’t I hear her?

  Waving her spatula at us, Delia goes on calmly, as if my dead grandmother wasn’t just talking to her, as if I wasn’t just attacked in the hall. “Most of the folks hanging about are family, loved ones. They watch over us and keep the place from getting too lonely. But a couple things happened today that threw a bit of chaos into the mix, and spirits, you know... They don’t like change.”

  “Who does?” I scoff. Slumped over the table and leaning on my good cheek, I’m done holding it together. “I just found out ghosts are real, and they want to kill me.”

  “No, darling, they don’t want to kill you.”

  “Hold up, do you not see her face?” Sabrina cuts in, angry in my defense. “Her eye looks half swollen and I bet it’s going to turn purple. And on top of that, there’s an entire bedroom full of broken glass and blood that like, ran up the wall. If they weren’t trying to kill us, they did a hell of a job keeping us alive because I almost had a heart attack and I’m the only one not bruised up or cut.”

  Delia turns to us fully, taking in Sabrina’s furious stance, her palms pressed against the table and Nick holding her arm in warning at my other side. I’m too worn to even react. Just sitting at the table is trying.

  “We had an intruder on the property, something that hasn’t happened in over a decade. I don’t expect it to happen again for another long while, but they weren’t railing out against a couple of teenagers wandering through the halls, I’ll tell you that.”

  I meet her gaze with an open mouth, knowing full well what I heard. Is it possible Delia didn’t hear the voice in the hallway?

  Seeing my expression, Delia shakes her head to the side in such a small gesture I could almost have imagined it, but the downturn of her lips tells me I haven’t. Another warning, this time from a living relative. Whatever she heard or didn’t hear, it’s obvious her first concern is keeping Sabrina and Nick calm.

  A tingle at the back of my neck stops my bitterness as I peer out the kitchen window again. The road is still flooded, so they’ll have to wait a bit longer before they get to go home. At least they can go home somewhere else. What luck!

  Except... maybe it was luck that we were able to get into the house before the rain got so bad. Could it be possible Nix House was urging us in to protect us? The door opening on its own, slamming shut behind us, the way we heard the movement in the halls and were able to duck down before the glass hit the wall— even how the spirit upstairs blocked us in momentarily.

  The shadow man in the yard was able to bring with him gales of wind, and only the rain made him dissipate. Where did the rain come from?

  “Is it normal for flash floods to happen so quickly out here?”

  Nick startles at the change in conversation, meeting my eyes for the first time since I started talking to the air. “No, it’s not.”

  Delia turns her nose up at us, clicking the stove off and bustling around for plates. “Now that had nothing to do with ghosts, just bad timing if you ask me.”

  “How do you know?” I want to tell her about the shadow in the yard but talking about it out loud would make it more... real. I don't think a thing like that needs any more power. Dad always said that to even watch scary movies could open doors. I’d shudder to think of what he’d say about me talking to ghosts. Now I get why he and Delia don’t get along.

  “I know because there’s a big difference between being aware of the spare energy the dead leave behind and having some sort of magic weathervane to influence the world around us.”

  “Does that mean you don’t have magic?” Sabrina asks before I can, and I squint at her detecting the slightest bit of disappointment in her voice. She may be scared witless, but somehow, I think her interest in Nix House is just getting started.

  “No, of course we don’t have magic.”

  “None at all?” I frown.

  “No, of course not. There’s a difference between clairvoyance and witchcraft. Goodness darling, I thought once you moved in, you’d get back in the swing of things. You knew this house nearly better than me when you were little.”

  “I did?” I sink back in my chair. The sandwich Delia plops in front of me goes untouched while the others busy themselves with the food. Nick scarfs down three on his own, and I stare listlessly as Sabrina tears her two into triangles before eating.

  Outside the steady cadence of rain continues, softer, but persistent. The rarely used landline goes off on the wall, and Delia murmurs into the receiver, cobwebs still clinging to her hair. It’s so much easier to let my eyes unfocus and zone out. Unthinking, unfeeling.

  Life goes on around me; Nick clearing the table and insisting on helping with the dishes, Sabrina borrowing the phone to call her mother, Delia hovering over me with ice packs and a balm that smells like a witch hazel toner. I let them discuss things among themselves, and my unmoving limbs become nothing more than an extension of the emptiness I feel inside.

  I’m pushed towards the den at some point, wrapped in a blanket, and set in front of the TV. Sabrina curls up at my feet, watching me instead of the TV. Nick leaves a hesitant arm on the back of the couch behind me, and never looks away from the doorway. I watch the flashing lights on the TV without processing the show or the actors, just watching the colors move from one side to the next. We’re staged like figures in a dollhouse while Delia fixes the mess upstairs and in the hall, and I haven’t felt this disconnected from the world since Dad got his diagnosis.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I blink at Sabrina. “Do you?”

  “You saw something upstairs, and obviously something when you ran out of the room. Are you okay? Because from everything we saw, I don’t feel that great... and you live here.”

  “I...” I falter.

  She twists around completely, resting her arms on my shins, and Nick drops his hand to my shoulder lightly. They’re not running for the hills; they’re not leaving me alone.

  “I never saw anything before today. But walking around alone has always been kind of creepy.” I laugh, surprising even myself. “I climbed out my bedroom window this morning so I wouldn’t have to walk down the hallway.”

  “Hey, that seems like a good plan to me. If I thought that was an option, I probably would have done it the second that door shut when we walked in!” Nick’s rushed confession sends a spark of warmth through my chest, giving me the courage to keep talking. They don’t think I’m crazy, or that this is my fault.

  “So, anyway, my aunt wanted to talk out in the cemetery this morning. I guess about all this,” I wave my hand, “bu
t I freaked out and ran away. And that’s when I ran into y’all.”

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I barely said hi before asking you about the cemetery, and your dad, and like everything else! Wow you must hate me, I am so sorry!”

  “No! No, you’re good, uhm, you couldn’t have known.”

  Comforting Sabrina is like a balm, soothing the rough edges even as my walls shudder in place. I don’t want to go through this alone. I couldn’t imagine anyone would stick by me with everything going on with my dad, and here’s someone sitting in the middle of a haunted house without flinching. Well, at least not anymore.

  “Do you believe your aunt? That you’re safe here?” Nick’s furrowed brow has been stuck in such a permanent expression all day, it’s hard to picture what his smile’s like.

  I shrug. Delia can claim what she wants, but metal scorpions coming to life are definitely more magical than ghost-like. Either she’s lying, or there’s more going on than she’s aware of.

  “I want to think about absolutely anything and everything but today. That’s what I want.” I duck my chin under the blanket and pull it tighter around my body. It’s almost like a cocoon, and the closer the fabric is, the safer I feel, like hiding under the blanket can keep the rest of the house out.

  They exchange nods and although Nick keeps his gaze trained on the door, they settle into a casualness that’s even more staged than before. The effort is cute though and makes it easier to be present.

  “Okay, twenty questions or would you rather?”

  “Ooh would you rather! Would you rather!”

  “Shut it, Sabrina, I was asking Addie.”

  “So? I get an opinion too!”

  “Uhm, how about something less intrusive?” I suggest. “Why don’t you tell me about what y’all do around here for fun? I didn’t even see a movie theater driving through town.”

  “No worries, we’ve got a movie theater,” Nick begins.

  “Except there’s a total of three screens and with how much they charge for popcorn, it’s not even worth it. You’re way better off going to the drive-in!”