They settled on the living room floor, bottles of whiskey, scotch, and vodka lined in front of them. Bags of snacks were within reach and the need to leave the spot they had settled in for anything other than the bathroom didn’t exist. It was a good setup, they all agreed.
It was Jeremy’s idea to start with the scotch. Get the worst out of the way, so to speak. It wasn’t a bad idea. Given the choice they’d all pick the vodka over the other options. But they had all week. They had a lot of time to drink and indulge in junk food. They’d brought real food as well, but what was the fun of real food and liquor?
Adam lined up the glasses on the table, poured two fingers of scotch into each one, and passed them out to his friends.
“Cheers.”
The glasses clinked, the liquor disappeared, and half of them coughed and sputtered as it burned their throat.
“Jesus, why are we drinking this again?” Miriam glanced into her glass, which still had half of its contents. She’d never been one to drink much more than wine.
“So that we don’t have to drink it later,” Jeremy reasoned. He reached for the bottle to refill his glass. “Trust me, it’ll taste better the more you drink.”
“You have a lot of experience with scotch, Jer?” Sophia raised a brow, but still accepted the bottle when it was passed to her. She wasn’t going to be accused of wimping out.
“What do you think my father drinks?” Jeremy lifted the glass and downed it with only a slight grimace. He may not be outspoken but he could hold his liquor.
Sophia, not to be outdone, mimicked his movement.
“Well I have no clue how you can like this crap.” Miriam choked down what was left in her glass and set it aside. She’d wait till they got into the whiskey before she started again. At the rate they were passing the bottle around it wouldn’t take long.
“Awe, M, don’t give up on us now. You’ve at least got another one in you.” Adam, on his third or fourth glass now, grinned widely. “It does taste better after that second glass.”
She accepted the glass Will handed her and looked at the amber liquid questionable. She really had nothing to lose, other then potentially the contents of her stomach after a few glasses. “What the hell.” She shrugged and forced it down.
They’d polished off almost the whole bottle within an hour and none of them felt like moving. The room spun slightly and felt a little floaty, but they were far from done for the evening. Sophia had opened a bag of crisps and was passing it about. They were eating it with sloth-like enthusiasm.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have drank it all so fast.” Adam mumbled over a mouthful of crisps. His stomach was feeling a little queasy but he was a long way from throwing up.
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Jeremy provided as he took the bag.
He was just about to shove a handful of crisps into his mouth when he heard someone pound on the door. He paused in the action to see if anyone else had heard it. No one was reacting. Perhaps he was hearing things.
He popped the crisps into his mouth and chewed.
The pounding came again and this time he saw Will jolt at the sound. So perhaps he wasn’t hearing things.
“Someone order pizza?” Will asked, his eyes going to the door. They had the glazed look of someone who’d been drinking but Jeremy could see the confusion in them.
“Yeah, because pizza would deliver out here you idiot.” Sophia smacked him in the shoulder, but still looked towards the door curiously.
The pounding came again.
The five of them stumbled to the door, using the furniture and each other for support. Adam grabbed the door handle, yanked the door open, and stared out into nothing. His brow creased in question. He stepped out onto the porch, looked further out into the dark, and then shrugged.
“No one there,” he announced as he turned back to the group, pulling the door closed behind him.
“That must be some pretty strong scotch your dad has if we’re hearing things,” Miriam joked but there was a hesitancy in it as she glanced back towards the door.
“Let’s just sit back down. I don’t like the way the room keeps spinning.” Sophia grabbed the back of the chair for support but she could feel the liquor coming back on her. If she didn’t sit back down she’d be the first to toss her cookies and she didn’t really want that honour.
They made it back to the living room floor, settled into their original spots, and continued to work through the bag of crisps. They were well into their second bag when the knocking started again.
They all glanced at the door.
“You hear that?” Miriam asked.
“Nope.” Will shook his head enthusiastically. He refused to even look at the door. “Didn’t hear a damn thing. And that’s probably the way it should be.”
The rest of them looked at him in confusion, but he just shoved another handful of crisps into his mouth and pretended not to hear the knocking when it sounded again.
Jeremy took the bag of crisps with hesitation. He wasn’t certain that ignoring the noise was the best course of action. He wasn’t certain that staying in the cabin was the best course of action. But the group didn’t listen to him. It wasn’t the time for a voice of reason. So he’d keep his mouth shut, or full of crisps in this case.
Still, he could sense the unease that had settled into the group. No one was touching the liquor anymore. They had settled for eating their snack food and chatting about people they’d gone to school with.
They’d just gotten back into a comfortable state. They were chatting and laughing. They were poking fun at each other. They’d almost forgotten about the phantom knocking. It was almost as though they were just a normal group of kids having a fun time at a cabin.
Then they heard it.
The scream echoed through every corner of the cabin. Shrill and loud, it had each of them freezing in place.
The hairs rose on their arms, on the backs of the their necks. They glanced around themselves, searching for a source, but seeing that the noise came from no one present.
The sound cut off as quickly as it had started, leaving the air empty of it’s sound. The chill of it seemed to linger before they all jumped to their feet.
“You all heard that.” It wasn’t a question, but Jeremy looked from face to face for confirmation regardless. He didn’t need to be the one who was imagining screams now.
“Yeah, we heard it.” Adam nodded, rubbing the chill out of his arms. “Let’s check the rooms, make sure we’re still alone.”
“You think somebody else might be here?” Miriam’s voice shook with the question. She didn’t want to consider that there might be someone else hiding in the cabin.
“Well somebody screamed,” Will replied in a matter of fact tone. “And it wasn’t any of us.”
They went from room to room as a group, searching under beds and in closets. They only felt half ridiculous doing it. But after searching the entire cabin they found nothing. Not a trace of anyone other than them.
They returned to the living room, all of them feeling uneasy with the situation. Who had screamed? Who had banged on the door? Were they simply imagining things? Were they just drunk?
None of them were willing to voice an opinion on the matter but none of them wanted to leave the living room. They slept on the living room floor that night. The boys took the floor and the girls took the couches. None of them wanted to be alone in the bedrooms or far from each other. Not after what had already happened.
Chapter 4
Foul Odor
* * *
The night passed without incident. The alcohol set in and they drifted into a deep sleep. If there were noises they didn’t hear them. A stampede probably wouldn’t have awakened the group of them asleep in that room. It wasn’t until dawn that the group awoke, one after the other, noses curled and faces scrunched in protest to the smell that filled their senses.
“What the bloody hell is that?” Will sat up, blinked slowly as the world spun around hi
m. He fought to keep the bile from rising into his throat as he settled back against the couch. “It’s foul.”
Sophia took a long inhale and regretted it instantly. Her stomach churned and she barely made it to the sink before she threw up. Usually such an episode would have brought out laughter from her friends. But no one was laughing right now. No one could find the humour with that smell permeating the air.
She wiped at her mouth and glanced back over at her friends. “Did something die?”
“Sure as hell smells like it,” Miriam pulled her t-shirt over her nose in an attempt to mask the scent. It was useless. It seemed to seep through everything.
“Well I’m not volunteering for road kill cleanup crew,” Adam grumbled. “If something died one of you go find it.” He lay back down on the floor and pulled a blanket over his head in an attempt to block the smell.
“Always the brave and noble one, Bolton.” Jeremy rolled his eyes as he climbed to his feet. He’d drunken less and ate more the previous night but the smell was even making his strong stomach turn. It had been a long time since he’d come across anything that smelt that foul. “I’ll check outside, under the porch and cabin, if someone can find the nerve to check the rooms.”
“You really think something might have come in here last night?” Sophia’s voice was unsteady as she said it. Whether from worry or the fact that she’d just thrown up it was unclear.
“That could explain the banging,” Will suggested and received several skeptical glanced. “Animal trapped somewhere, trying to claw it’s way out.”
“It was clearly the front door.” Jeremy glanced towards the door as if waiting for the sound to start again.
“Are you positive?” Will tossed in a kernel of doubt. “We were all pretty drunk. It could have been coming from anywhere.”
“But what about the scream?” Miriam mumbled through her shirt.
“Well…” Will paused and then faltered.
“Can’t explain that one away, can you?” Jeremy grinned, but he wasn’t certain why he was taking any satisfaction in the moment. If the scream was real, then they had problems.
“Oh bugger off and go look for dead things.”
No one found anything. Much like with the scream, the house was clear and clean. There wasn’t a trace of another individual there that they should worry about, be it animal or human. Still, they settled into the living room rather then venture into the closed off rooms of the house.
They seemed to have decided that the living room was a safe zone. Safe from what, none of them would really talk about. But while they were in that room they were all together, they could see the door, and they could access the kitchen. They had everything they needed. They made occasional trips to the bathroom, but that was as far as anyone was willing to go down the hallway unaccompanied.
As the day wore on they forgot about the weird events. For most of them it was as though they had never happened. They dismissed them as too much drinking. They dismissed them as just something strange with the cabin. And they went on with their post-school celebrations. Will cooked lunch, Sophia mixed some more drinks, and Miriam picked out a movie for them to watch.
They managed to kill most of the day with movies and conversation, snacks and drinks. Everyone returned to their usual light hearted mentality. Or, at least, almost everyone.
Will was strangely quiet through the morning and in afternoon, his quick wit sedated by the morning’s events. He sat on the couch, ate and drank what was put in front of him, but said very little. He wasn’t so quick to dismiss what had happened even if he hadn’t said much about them since they’d happened.
Jeremy had a similar response. While the other three continued with their adventure. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. The sense of unease wasn’t leaving him. It hadn’t left him since he’d first stepped foot into the cabin.
There was something wrong about this place, something off. He was beginning to understand why it had been closed off for so long, why Egerton didn’t come here. There was something unnatural here. He could feel it. He just wasn’t certain if the others could as well. If they could, he couldn’t understand how they could be continuing on they way they were, as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing was strange.
“There is something not right here,” Jeremy leaned over on the couch and whispered to Will who was seated beside him.
Will turned over to look at him with empty eyes. “What are you on about, Jer?” He was tired. He couldn’t explain why he felt so exhausted, but he wanted nothing more than to go to sleep and forget about the events of the last twenty-four hours.
“Something is going on here. Tell me I’m not the only one who thinks it.” Jeremy held his gaze, searching his eyes for some hint that he understood, some hint that he was on the same page about what was going on here.
Will considered his friend. Jeremy had always been the intelligent one. The one to draw the connections, think outside of the box. He was thriving at university whereas half of them were floundering, not that he would leave any of them behind. He had never been one to abandon his friends, even if it meant that he had to put up with their inability to grasp basic concepts. They all poked fun at him for being the nerd, for being smart, but when push came to shove them each relied on him for something.
Will considered if this would be one of those situations again. “I don’t know if there is something going on here, Jer. It’s been one night. A few weird things have happened. I’m not going to call in an exorcist.”
“I wasn’t saying –”
The rest of his sentence was cut off by the sound of sobs. Jeremy wasn’t certain he heard it at first. It was s soft sound that seemed to grow in intensity. The other three were playing music in the kitchen and chatting loudly, but just under all the ruckus he could make out the sound of somebody crying. The sound of somebody crying like their heart had been ripped from their chest and crushed in front of them.
“Do you hear that?” He looked at Will who had also gone still.
Will shook his head but it was clear by the look in his eyes that he heard it. His hand squeezed into tight fists, his knuckles went white, but he still shook his head in denial.
He didn’t want to admit that he heard it. Admitting that he heard it would be admitting that it was real. And admitting that it was real would be acknowledging that Jeremy was right, that there was something going on here. Will was not ready to do any of those things.
Help me.
Jeremy turned his head slowly to the left. It had sounded as though the voice had come right from behind him. He didn’t want to look, but he did anyway. He couldn’t help himself. His curiosity won over his common sense in one of those rare occasions. He turned his head and found nothing but empty air.
Help me, please.
Will jolted in his seat on the couch. The voice was right in his ear. He turned to find it but found nothing there. His eyes met Jeremy’s across the couch.
“You hear it too?” His voice was shaking as he asked.
Jeremy nodded as the voice pleaded again, as the sobbing got louder.
They looked towards their friends in the kitchen. None of them seemed to notice what was happening. They were still singing along to their music and joking about finals. It was as though there was a barrier between the two rooms, an invisible sound block that prevented the two interactions from merging.
HELP ME!
The voice shrieked rather than begged and this time with such ferocity that it pierced the barrier between the rooms and shattered the glass that was in Sophia’s hand.
She looked down at her hand, empty of the glass. The confusion was clear on her face but there was no harm done to her. The shattered glass lay at her feet.
“I guess I don’t know my own strength,” she joked dancing over glass shards so she could wash any remaining pieces from her hands.
Will and Jeremy stared from the couch. It was like watching something on a television screen. They had no idea what
had even happened. They thought it was just an accident, a bad glass or too much pressure. They hadn’t heard the sobs. They hadn’t heard the screams. They were oblivious.
Miriam glanced over at the two boys on the couch and frowned. “What’s up with you two? It looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Will and Jeremy exchanged a glance and it was full of so many questions. Should they tell the others? Could they even explain what had just happened? Should they leave? Would the others listen? Or was it better to just let it all be for now, to wait it out?
“Cat got your tongue?” Adam teased as he drank more of his mixed drink. He’d lost count of how many he’d consumed since he’d gotten up. But the world was comfortably buzzing and he wasn’t thinking about dead bodies anymore. It was exactly where he wanted to be at the moment.
“No, but I’m surprised you can feel yours,” Will retorted, finding his voice again. “How many have you had?”
“That’s none of your never mind, William. I’m still standing on my own two feet so I’m doing just fine,” Adam said in a superior voice. He had a habit of becoming more superior than usual when he drank. “The real question is, why aren’t you drinking?”
“Maybe I’m trying to pace my way through the week rather than get smashed the first two days and be sick for the rest,” Will sassed and had Miriam and Sophia giggling.
“I’ll be just fine,” Adam grumbled.
But they all knew his track record when it came to liquor. He drank hard and heavy, when he drank at all. They would be impressed if he made it through the week without being a sad ball curled up in the corner praying for it to end.
Miriam, who was working her way through a sandwich that Sophia had made, grinned. “Why don’t we actually do something together? And I don’t mean watch a movie,” she added before Jeremy could suggest one. “We’ve been doing that all day.”
“There has to be a deck of cards around here somewhere. We could get a decent game of poker going.” Sophia smiled. “It’s been a long time since I beat you all at poker.”
Haunted Happenings Page 7