A creeping sense of melancholy came out of nowhere, heavy loneliness threaded with sorrow. Strong anger crashed into it, falling rapidly to grief before she once again felt as lonely as if she were the last survivor of an apocalyptic event struggling to find a reason to keep on living.
Mia recoiled from the crippling sorrow. Her eyes snapped open. All the outside emotions raced away like a tangible mass fleeing into the house. With a gasp, she grabbed her head and shook it hard side to side to clear it.
“Hon?” Adam pulled her close. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just… wow.” She lowered her hands from her face and looked up to make eye contact. “It worked… it really worked.”
“It?”
“The psychic thing. I felt such overwhelming loneliness and anger and grief, but I could tell it wasn’t mine.”
Excitement flashed in his eyes, but his expression remained one of concern. “You turned white as a ghost. If it’s too much for you, we can stop.”
She leaned against him. “First time’s always a little painful and awkward, right?”
He chuckled and continued holding her. “The same thing I said then applies now. We go at your speed.”
“You’re so bad.” She almost managed to laugh, but couldn’t quite get out from under the heavy mood in the air.
“That’s enough for tonight. We should both get some sleep.”
Mia snuggled back under the covers with him. “Yeah.”
9
Princess Rabbit
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Mia fidgeted, unable to get comfortable enough to sleep again.
The clock on Adam’s nightstand read 12:42 a.m. He’d managed to fall asleep in only a few minutes. Perhaps her brain retaliated for being forced ‘empty’ by flooding her with random worries and insecurities. The ghost hadn’t returned to the room as far as she knew.
At 12:56 a.m., and being no closer to sleep, Mia let an exasperated sigh out her nose, got out of bed, and headed for the kitchen to make a cup of chamomile tea. The window at the end of the hall by the top of the stairs let in enough moonlight that she didn’t bother turning on any lights. Her bare feet found the carpeted steps cooler than they ought to be, as though she’d walked into an inches-deep layer of dry ice fog, but nothing looked unusual.
The ghost was here. She padded down to the living room. Or… it’s a draft. When did I start reaching for the paranormal explanation first? “Oh, I dunno,” she whispered. “Probably right around the time I saw footprints appear in pancake mix.”
As soon as she neared the couch, a spike of anger exploded inside her. Quiet, seething anger… fury like she wanted desperately to kill someone, but had to bide her time. Desperate, sorrowful anger, the sort of rage that robbed her of any care what happened to her in the aftermath.
Mia stopped short, staring into space.
The desire to kill seemed directed at a specific person yet simultaneously at no one in particular. She’d happily die if she could only take that bastard with her. What bastard? Who? Mia grasped the couch for support as her knees weakened. She pictured a cop reaching into his jacket.
Again, the external feelings dissipated as abruptly as they’d come on.
“Ugh. I’m probably sleepwalking. Or maybe I’m really asleep and only dreaming that I can’t sleep.”
Grumbling to herself, she trudged down the hall to the kitchen and put on the kettle.
“Little chamomile will relax me.”
She prepared a small mug with half a spoon of loose tea. No sense staying up for an hour sipping or drinking enough that she slept through the alarm. Once the water boiled, she poured it into the mug, set the kettle back on a cold burner, and sat at the kitchen table.
Alas, staring into the steam didn’t help her make sense of her feelings.
A bit of fanning and blowing on the tea cooled it enough for tentative sipping. She rested her elbow on the table, head in her hand, and half-closed her eyes. Plenty of people claimed to be psychic. Adam adored any sort of paranormal investigation show he could find, except the ones which reeked of obvious fakery. Almost all of them occasionally brought in supposedly psychic guests who threw the term around as though the world at large had accepted such things to be real and possible. Up until a year ago, she’d thought them silly. As of tonight, she didn’t know what to think.
Mia swirled the tea around her half-full cup, staring into it. Between the overdose of strong, negative emotions, the shock that she really did have the ‘gift’ Adam had been telling her she had for the past two years, and a clingy sadness at the notion a dead child roamed her house, she wondered if she’d ever have a good night’s sleep again.
Sudden pressure squeezed around her middle in the shape of a small person’s arms.
She froze in shock at being touched, but only for a few seconds before staring at where she expected a child’s head to be. Nothing appeared, though she suspected if there had been pancake mix on the floor, it would show footprints to the right of her chair.
“It’s okay,” whispered Mia. I really hope this isn’t a demon. I’m such a sucker… wait, no. I’d rather it’s a demon than a real kid being dead. “Are you a boy or a girl?”
“Shh,” said a disembodied voice, too whispery to sound like anything other than ‘child.’
Mia glanced down at her nightgown, visibly flattened where she felt the presence of a little arm. The spirit wanted her to be quiet… but why? She sat and listened to the faint whirr of the fridge, debating what a demon could be trying to accomplish by clinging to her. Emotional manipulation? Slow drive to insanity ultimately leading to her death? Could that desire to kill have been ‘future Mia’ and not ‘past unknown woman’?
The silence seemed to swell down on her from the ceiling, the very air thick and suffocating.
Right as she started to ask what scared the child, the kitchen floor shook under a punishing of heavy footsteps. Mia jumped with a shriek, reflexively trying to grab the kid in a protective embrace, but hugged only herself. She cringed back, guarding her face with both arms at the sense of a huge man storming closer, every strike of his feet resonating in the chair. The entity thundered past her toward the back door. The footsteps ceased with a tremendous clattering crash as though a giant metal toolbox had been hurled to the floor in anger.
Abject panic seized Mia’s mind. If she didn’t run right now, she’d die. Screaming, she bolted from the chair, knocking it over, and raced out of the kitchen. The downstairs passed in a blur. She scrambled on all fours to get up the carpeted steps. At the top, she pushed off the floor like a sprinter and raced toward the bathroom, intending to hide in the tub. At the last second, that struck her as a stupid idea and she swerved into her bedroom.
Mia dove over the foot of the bed like Supergirl and scrambled under the covers, curling up in a shivering ball.
Someone grasped her arm.
Mia screamed again.
A man spoke indecipherable words in a soothing tone.
The fear she’d felt toward the touch shifted to a need for protection. She clung, shaking.
“Mia? What happened?” asked a man.
“Where’s Princess Rabbit? She’s missing,” whined Mia. “I need her!”
The man kept silent for a moment. “Uhh… What?”
She sniffled.
“Mia, is that you in there?”
She looked up at the man holding her. It took her a second to process his face… Adam, her husband. Fear burst like a soap bubble. The need to flee for her life evaporated. Mia blinked at him, glanced at the door, and exhaled.
“Hon?”
“Damn…” She sat up and breathed into her cupped hands. “That was freaky. It felt like someone was about to kill me.”
Adam squeezed her shoulder and rubbed her back. “Breathe… You’re safe. For what it’s worth, I didn’t hear or see anything.”
“Thanks for not being excited at paranormal stuff… at least obviously.” Mia managed a weak smi
le.
“Are you okay?”
“Rattled, but I’ll be fine. So much for that tea calming me down.”
“What is Princess Rabbit?”
She glanced at him. “Huh? I have no idea. Where’d that come from?”
“You just said it.”
“That’s not funny.” Mia stared at him. “That’s really not funny.”
“No, it isn’t…” He smiled. “It’s amazing.”
“I’m completely lost now.”
“Hon…” Adam took her hand. “I think you might have channeled the spirit. Either she jumped into you or you invited her in… that voice didn’t exactly sound like you. You kinda whined like a child who’d been crying over a lost toy. Going to guess the ghost is a little girl.”
“Because there’s a doll or stuffed animal named Princess Rabbit?” Mia leaned against Adam. “That doesn’t necessarily prove anything.”
“Did Tim have dolls?”
Mia shook her head. “No way would my parents have let that happen. Not even sure he’d have wanted them. Maybe he played with mine when no one was around to see him, but if my parents ever caught him, they’d have had a stroke.” She rubbed her face, then sighed. “I should at least try to get back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
Again, she lay down and cuddled up to him, deliberately refusing to look at the clock. If she saw a number too close to 7:30, that would add to her anxiety, and her need to get to sleep as fast as possible would have the paradoxical effect of keeping her up. She stared at the ceiling, bluish in the moonlight, and tried to let her mind clear of thoughts.
Mia did not attempt to picture an opening hand.
Minutes later, a random notion took root in her head without explanation or cause.
She’s a girl.
10
Entities
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Much to Mia’s surprise, she had little trouble waking up the next morning.
She opened her eyes two minutes before her alarm would’ve gone off, lay there for a bit, and got out of bed in time to reach the clock within seconds of it blaring. Adam walked in from the hall, surrounded by a cloud of shower steam and wearing only a towel draped around his neck.
“Tub’s all yours.”
“Thanks.”
After removing her nightgown, she hung it from a hook on the back of the closet door and headed to the bathroom. Thick, steamy air swirled around her, heavy with the fragrances of soap, antiperspirant, and cologne. Adam had left footprints in the condensation on the dark grey faux-stone tiles, going from the plush bathmat to the door. She stepped into the tub, smiling again at the larger accommodations compared to the dinky bathroom at their old apartment.
The shower proved almost too relaxing, making her want to go straight back to bed. She envied Adam his ability to shower at night and go right to bed if he wanted to. Not only did her long hair take forever to dry, the warm water usually energized her and made sleep impossible for at least a few hours.
Mia washed herself with neither urgency nor a lack thereof, having plenty of time to make it to work. Once finished, she stepped out onto the bathmat and grabbed a towel. A minute or two into drying, the almost inaudible pattering of small feet made her stop and hold perfectly still.
Small, bare footprints appeared one after the next in the condensation, darkening the tiles. The trail entered from the door, heading directly toward her. Mia could only stand there watching in sad awe as an invisible tiny person approached her.
“Hi there. Good morning, sweetie.”
The footprints stopped at the edge of the fuzzy bathmat, and a cloud of chilly air coalesced next to her leg. Mia choked up, near to the point of crying, but couldn’t tell if the sadness came from inside her or from the entity.
“I’m really sorry for what happened to you,” said Mia in a soothing, soft voice. “I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to help, but if there is, I’ll find it. You don’t need to be afraid of me or Adam.”
Nothing touched her, though the chill remained.
“I don’t have the little recorder thing so I can’t hear you if you’re trying to talk to me. What’s your name?”
She waited a moment.
“My parents were mean, too. I know what it’s like to be scared of your own parents.” Mia bit her lip. Never would she have imagined her parents killing her—or even Timothy—but she still sometimes had a flinch response whenever an angry man moved too rapidly toward her. Dad loved taking his belt to her bare backside, though he never walloped her anywhere near as hard as he did her brother… girls being ‘delicate’ and all.
“If you know what I can do to help, please tell me.”
Still, nothing happened.
Mia resumed drying herself off, unsure if she should feel embarrassed at ‘not being alone’ while naked in the bathroom. Then again, if ghosts—as they appeared to be—were real, then most of the people in the world likely had unseen eyes watching them all the time. If indeed she stood beside an actual spirit and not some malign entity seeking to trick her, that poor girl had experienced far worse than watching her shower.
“I’m sorry… you didn’t deserve whatever happened to you.” When she tried to pat the invisible child on the head, her hand found no trace of the chilly cloud. “Are you still—?”
The bathmat jerked backward and to the left, ripping her feet out from under her. She went down in a twisting motion, but reflexively brought her arms up before her chin crashed into the edge of the tub as she fell flat to the floor like a bundle of broom handles, elbows and knees banging on hard tile.
“Ow…” She lay draped off the tub, in too much pain to move. “What was that for?”
A few minutes later, she shifted to sit and scowled at the fuzzy black bathmat squished into the wall by the door. No way could a small girl have had the strength to do that. She hated the idea that what she thought of as an innocent child might be a far more malignant entity.
No. That can’t be true. There’s more than one ghost here.
A few minutes later, Mia—dried, dressed, and ready for work—walked into the kitchen, trying not to limp too obviously.
Adam smiled at her and gestured at the plate of pancakes he’d just set on the table.
“Seriously?” asked Mia. “We’re getting too old to eat like that. We’ll become enormous.”
“Old? Neither one of us is thirty yet. The occasional sugar bomb breakfast is a guilty pleasure.” He winked and poured more batter into the pan. “Never too old for pancakes. It’s like anything else. Taken in moderation, everything is fine.”
Mia sat. “Does that include crystal meth?”
“I stand corrected.” He shook his head. “I was talking about normal guilty pleasures, not toxic crap.”
“Had another visit. Oh, and the bathmat tried to break my neck.”
Adam whirled, spatula involuntarily raised as if about to smack a fly with it. “Oh?”
“At first, little footprints in the condensation. Felt like the ghostly kid was standing next to me. Minute or so later, she’s gone and I got a rather close look at the floor. You know, those tiles are really nice. Bet they were expensive. I doubt they’re original to the house. Wonder who paid for them only to move out in a few months?”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. Go back to the almost breaking your neck thing.” He wagged the spatula at her.
“I was trying to talk to the kid, but didn’t get a response. Next thing I know, the bathmat goes flying out from under me like that stupid magician’s trick with the tablecloth. Only, I didn’t stay there undisturbed like the dishes. Went down pretty hard, but I’m okay.”
Adam shot her a worried stare, then turned back to the stove and prodded his pancake. “You’re sure?”
“Fine. I still feel bad for whoever spent all that money redoing the bathroom only to up and leave.”
“Yeah. Which makes me wonder exactly what happened that drove them to that point. They had to lose a
lot selling so soon after moving in.”
Mia poured a conservative amount of syrup on her pancakes and cut them. “By the way, I think the ghost is a child.”
“Didn’t we establish that already?”
“No, I mean an actual child. A little girl. Not a demon or something pretending to be one. And I also don’t think she made those thuds. There’s something else here.”
“Which thuds?” Adam twisted to look at her. “No butter?”
“Nope. For whatever reason, I never cared for it on pancakes.” She impaled a few slices on her fork and told him about the heavy footsteps when she’d had tea.
Adam shoved his pancake out of the skillet onto the stack he’d started, then poured the last of the batter in to cook. “Either there are multiple entities here, or it’s one pretending to be a kid part time.”
“No, Adam. It’s not. She’s really a small girl. I’m sure of it. It has to be multiple entities.”
“Okay. I’ll trust your feelings then.” He fussed at the cooking pancake. “Tonight when I get home, I’ll set up some equipment in the kitchen. Maybe scatter some more pancake powder on the floor.”
“Don’t waste it. Use baking soda, or better yet, talc.”
He grinned back at her. “That’s not a ‘don’t mess up my floor, you idiot.’”
“I’m not quite the same skeptic I was a year ago.”
“Oh, great. Maybe we’ll invite Pastor Weston over.”
She pointed her fork at him. “There are some things you shouldn’t joke about with a woman holding sharp objects.”
“Oh, he’s harmless. Little off base, but harmless.”
Mia ate two more forkfuls. “Mmm. I haven’t had pancakes in years. Not since I lived with my parents.”
“You poor deprived woman. My… sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I know your parents are normal. Don’t feel guilty.”
The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run Page 7