by K. F. Breene
I curled up a little tighter and closed my eyes, hoping beyond hope that the Old Woman would not come tonight.
My last thought before falling into a fitful sleep: why would anyone in their right mind want to move here?
Chapter Two
The clap of thunder startled me awake.
I blinked my groggy eyes open. Pitch black greeted me, the covers not having been disturbed. That was a good sign, at least. Not that they ever had been disturbed before, but I’d never stopped fearing that the rules would suddenly change.
Hot, dense, suffocating air wrapped around my head. No power had the unfortunate side effect of no air conditioning. I felt like I was roasting slowly in an oven, my shirt stuck to my sweaty back. There was no way I could stay under here all night. I could barely stay under here another minute.
The only problem was: what awaited me in my room?
I lifted the corner of the comforter and peered out through the little opening I’d made. Sweet, (relatively) cool air rushed in and I sucked up a lungful. Then I saw the pale, flickering light against the wall. Someone had lit a candle in my room, and my parents certainly wouldn’t have done so while I was asleep. They liked their house too much to want it to go up in flames.
It was her signature move. Her calling card.
My stomach flip-flopped and I bit my lip, closing up the gap in the comforter.
“She can’t hurt you unless you follow her,” I said softly. “She’s not dangerous unless you follow her. She won’t come in for you. She’ll wait for you. She’ll wait there, forever.”
Those were part of the rumors, too. And so far, they’d been true. So far.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want to get up to blow out the candle. That seemed like a suicide mission. Not to mention the angry door slammer was probably still lording over the room, and the heavy presence upstairs might’ve found its way down. As far as I was concerned, hanging out in my bed and sweating half to death was a better alternative than dealing with the various presences that had overtaken my house.
But if I didn’t do anything, a lit candle would be left unattended.
I took a big, hot breath, steeling my courage, and pushed the comforter down to my waist. My hands flew up in front of my face in a protective maneuver, but silence greeted me—no footsteps above or in my room, no moving doors, and no swiveling chairs. Just quiet.
Like she preferred.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I sat up. Quietly, so as not to disturb anything, I swung my feet to the side of the bed and placed them flat on the floor. Here I paused. Just in case.
Still, nothing moved.
She wanted my full attention.
Both of my candles sat in the center of my desk, side by side, having been moved from their previous locations. One rested on my sheet of homework, and the other sat perched on my open calculus book, tilted on the slope. Wax had run down the side of the shallow candleholder, pooling onto the page.
A horribly familiar feeling gripped me. Pulled at my chest, and clutched my center.
The floor creaked under my lead-filled feet. At the desk, it took all my willpower not to look up and out the window. I ignored the incredible desire to turn and head for the door. To leave the house and run to the spirit that awaited me on the street.
I bent and, with dry lungs that couldn’t seem to get enough air, tried to blow. The flame of the dangerously balanced candle danced. The need to look up blotted out my thoughts. The longing to go outside throbbed through me.
“No.” I gritted my teeth and sucked in more air, cold settling over me, the temperature of the room turning on a dime. I blew with everything I had, my nails digging into the desk. My breath huffed out in a white cloud, and the flame flickered, the wick glowing red. More wax spilled over the side and leaked out onto my book. The flame sputtered back to life.
I licked my fingers with a tongue two sizes too big and stuffed them against the top of the candle. Pain bit my fingertips, but the candle didn’t reignite this time. One down…
Keeping my eyes low, I bent to the other candle. A loud thump from somewhere in the house made me jolt. My desk rammed against the wall, shaking the candles on it. The one on the book fell over, splattering the remaining wax in the container across my desk. The other shook, but the sturdier holder held firm.
I turned back to my door—still shut. The pale light danced around my room. Nothing interrupted the silence.
Whatever had made the sound wasn’t in my room. Thank goodness for small miracles.
Impatient to get back to my protective cocoon, I spun toward the candle, sucking in a breath as I did so. As I blew with everything I had, a healthy concoction of air mixed with spit, my eyes darted up of their own accord. The light blew out. Darkness engulfed me.
The spot on the street directly in front of my house, the one always occupied by the familiar translucent form on the nights when the candles lit themselves, was deserted.
Shock lifted my eyebrows and I paused for a second, staring at the patch of clear cement.
But…I felt her. I felt her waiting, expecting me to come down to her. Expecting to lead me up the street to the mansion, a place no one ever came back from. Except…she wasn’t there.
Blinking in confused relief, I glanced left then right. That was when I noticed light flickering from a different window.
The new guy stood with a candle in hand, staring out. On the sidewalk in front of his house, closer to him than she’d ever waited for me, stood the milky-white form of a woman, her back hunched and her hands outstretched. She gestured down the street. But she wasn’t gesturing toward the mansion this time—she was gesturing away from it. Toward me.
The new guy pushed up closer to the window and shifted, searching for whatever she was motioning at. I braced myself for the moment he would notice me, but my room was completely dark. He wouldn’t be able to see me.
Clearly seeing his confusion, the woman turned and pointed.
At me.
A string of jagged white lightning raced across the sky. The new guy’s face snapped up, and though he was at a distance, I knew he’d caught sight of me.
Standing in my window instead of sitting.
Staring at him.
Again.
Social anxiety overrode the fear and uncertainty of the moment.
I dropped like a stone, hitting the deck. Scarcely able to think, I army-crawled across my floor, slipped off my LA Gears, and hoisted myself into my bed. I pulled up my comforter before pushing off my jeans and shoving them out of the side of the sheets and onto the floor. Once the comforter was safely back over my head, I regrouped.
This had never happened before. Since the disappearances of Janine Roth and then Alex Morgan, three years ago, the only time the Old Woman was seen walking through the town was on the nights she visited me. Never had she messed with my things and moved on. Not once.
In the past, I’d look out the window, and there she’d be, beckoning me out. Imploring me to meet her in the middle of the street. Coercing me with that awful supernatural pull. If I didn’t go, she’d walk up toward the mansion, turning every so often to beckon me to follow. Trying to lead me to slaughter, as she’d led the others before me.
But she wasn’t trying to lead the new guy to McKinley Mansion—she had directed him to me.
What if the pull he felt from her wasn’t to follow her to the mansion, but to force me out of my house and drag me to where I wouldn’t willingly go? From what I’d seen, he easily had the brawn to do it. He could throw me over that wide shoulder and go for a jog, I had no doubt.
Tremors of fear shook my body.
If rumors could be believed, I’d withstood her for longer than any of her previous targets. I was nearly out of this town. I was nearly free.
Did she know that? Was this her last-ditch effort to get me up to the mansion so she could select her next victims?
More questions tumbled through my mind.
Had she
decided to select a helper, unwilling or not? Someone who didn’t know the ways of this town? Why else would she point him back in my direction, after waiting all this time for me in vain?
My heart wouldn’t slow down.
I had to make sure the neighbor knew what he was up against. Regardless of her intentions, I had to make sure he didn’t succumb to her pull. To her induced madness. I had to make sure he didn’t become the next victim—and doubly sure he didn’t unwittingly become the ghost’s accomplice.
Chapter Three
The next morning, I sat in the chair at the kitchen table in front of a bowl of cereal, my eyes sandy and fatigue dragging at me. My dad stood at the open refrigerator door, hunting for food.
“How’d…uhh…” My dad hitched up his slacks as he struggled for words. “How’d things go last night?” He scratched his chin, a sound like moving his finger over sandpaper, before leaning against the open fridge door. “Did the storm wake you?”
An outsider might’ve wondered how my parents hadn’t heard my skirmish with Mr. Angry Door Slammer, a.k.a. my roommate. The thing was, they probably had heard it. But this was a town where there were a lot of randomly slammed doors, howls, and angry shouts no one could explain. In as much as they were willing to admit that things did go bump in the night in Larkin, they probably thought I’d be plenty safe hiding under my covers.
I leaned back in my seat at the round table, my breakfast momentarily forgotten. “I saw the Old Woman. She—” I stopped when my dad pursed his lips and his eyes tightened. Here come the stories, he was probably thinking.
I shrugged, swallowing the rest of the words. I’d learned over the years that it didn’t matter how much I pushed, explained, or attempted to prove what happened the nights when the Old Woman walked the streets, my parents weren’t believers. They’d never seen her with their own eyes, and therefore assumed her story was like all the other rumors and urban legends steeped in the town’s roots—fabricated and blown way out of proportion. That I believed was not surprising to them—I’d had a plethora of invisible friends growing up, after all. In their opinion, I had a hyperactive imagination.
I pointed at the refrigerator door, heading back into safer ground. “You’re wasting electricity.”
He grunted and bent to the fridge.
After a last bite, I deposited my bowl in the sink. “See ya,” I said to my dad, and left the kitchen.
My backpack lay where I’d dropped it earlier, in a lumpy heap on the floor. I scooped it up as feet pounded down the stairs.
“Ah, Ella. Headed out?” my mother said.
A breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding tumbled out. “Hey, Mom,” I said, finally turning.
She wore light green scrubs and scuffed white sneakers. Her hair, tightly curled in a new perm, dusted her shoulders. She paused at the bottom of the stairs, her hand still on the banister. “How was last night? Did you finish your homework?”
“Almost. A slamming door and some tug-of-war with my favorite poltergeist, who’s still pissed I’m in his room after all these years, cut my time short.”
She huffed out a laugh and rolled her eyes. “Funny. Well use your break or lunch to finish up, okay? You don’t want your grades to slip, or you won’t get into college.”
I didn’t want to succumb to the Old Woman and be killed before my grades could slip, but sure.
“And Ella?” She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and pointed at the side table by the door. “Don’t forget your lunch. The food in that school is the nutritional equivalent of cardboard. You don’t want your teeth to rot out of your head.”
I rolled my eyes at her and snatched the brown paper bag off the small table. “Anything else?”
She took quick steps forward and grabbed my head before laying a kiss to my temple. “Have a good day. Go, Bears!” She pumped her fist and disappeared into the kitchen.
My parents had had very different high school situations than I had.
I checked the tape inside my Walkman for my latest mixtape.
After clicking it shut, I patted the pockets of my stonewashed jeans, making sure my pager was still tucked snugly inside. After positioning the headphones, I swung open the door and stepped out into the brisk fall air.
Clouds rolled and boiled above me. The moisture from last night merged with the dwindling heat of late summer and wrapped around me like a suffocating blanket. I glanced off to the left at the new guy’s house. A sleek sports car sat in the opened garage, cherry red and probably lightning fast. In the living room windows were the shades from the Johnson family, left behind when they moved five years ago, still hanging in limp sheets. Those in the new guy’s window had also been closed, shutting out the outside.
My gaze traveled beyond, to the empty space at the end of the court, the spacious grounds that housed the new guy’s visitor from the night before. I couldn’t see the mansion from my position, but that didn’t matter. Even in full light and surrounded by life and activity, I could feel the animosity leaking from the massive structure. It seeped into the world around me, ensuring I felt its effects and noticed its influence. The pull to drift closer and check it out, even when I knew what lived in its depths, nagged at me.
I hit the triangle on my Walkman. “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice filled my world as I forced myself to turn and start down the street to the bus stop. Up ahead, my freckle-faced, red-haired nemesis stepped out of his house, staring down at something in his hands. Dirk laughed, a booming, annoyingly loud affair, before his hand moved to his side and he clipped something onto the outside of his pocket. His lime-green pager, no doubt, the color as obnoxious as his personality. Someone had probably sent him “8008.” Boob. So immature.
Pronouncing my hunch and pulling my Jansport strap a little higher on my overburdened shoulder, I slowed my step, hoping he didn’t look down the street and notice me. A moment later, he sauntered toward the sidewalk, popping the collar on his St. Louis Cardinals Starter jacket.
He swung his backpack onto his shoulder as he reached the sidewalk, then glanced in my direction. A wicked smirk curled his lips and he stalled.
Dang it. Why was he out early?
“Well, look who it is,” I heard over my music. “Heya, Fella.”
I gritted my teeth. Fella was a nickname I’d picked up in the second grade when it was widely acknowledged that my bowl haircut made me look like a boy. Growing up and filling out had had no effect on the name calling. Dirk and his friends still taunted me like we were eight-year-olds.
He stayed rooted in the middle of the sidewalk. “Headed to the bus stop, I see?”
I made a show of turning up the music on my Walkman. His eyes caught the movement, but instead of taking the hint, he found something new to mock.
“Holy smokes. Nineteen-eighty called—they want their music player back.” He laughed heartily. If Mr. Varsity Football hadn’t been a solid block of muscle, and therefore certain to hurt my fist, I would have decked him.
He tsked as I neared him, shaking his head sadly and pulling keys from his pocket. “Such a shame. Your parents won’t get you a car. Are they stingy, or just poor?”
“I live in the same neighborhood as you, dickweed,” I said through my teeth.
“Stingy, then. Too bad. Guess you’ll be a nerd forever.”
I tried to focus on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but his laugh cut through the music.
“The offer stands, Fella. I got a car if you want a ride.”
There was no missing the ham-handed double entendre.
“No.”
He made a show of stepping to the side and giving me an olé motion. “Off you go. I wouldn’t want to keep you from a date with the bus,” he yelled, making sure I could hear him.
I glanced at his beat-up old Honda parked by the curb, and bit my tongue to keep from commenting that his parents weren’t all that generous themselves. But he had a car, and I did not, and he’d win that bout of verbal sparring. And if he
didn’t, he’d give me a charley horse, a relic from our unfortunately shared childhood.
At the bus stop, I found Matt and Stan, two geeky freshman who were comparing pogs, and Carla, a sophomore whose eyes were glued to her pager. I took my place, a little removed from the others. Despite seeing one another five days a week, we rarely spoke. They looked at me like I had a contagious, incurable disease.
Maybe I did. It was called senior who rides the bus. And it seemed like something no one wanted to catch.
As the song in my Walkman switched, I heard, “Losers!”
Dirk’s beat-up Honda clunked by. He leaned out the window, making an “L” shape across his forehead with his fingers.
Carla huffed and flicked her crimped hair before looking down at her nails, and Matt and Stan hunched down a little lower. I ignored Dirk completely. At least, it looked like I did. He made me so angry that it was hard to block him out entirely.
The bus lumbered toward us a moment later, throwing up occasional splashes as the tires rolled through leftover water from the night before. The brakes squealed as the yellow beast stopped and the door clattered open.
Carla sashayed forward like a movie star toward her limo. It took more than a lack of a car to derail her ego. Matt and Stan followed her, still hunched over, heads bowed low and pogs held tightly against their chests. I climbed up last, nodded to the driver, who stared back without expression, and swung into the empty first seat.
Yup, the first seat.
Only nerds sat in the first couple rows, I knew, and usually only because they were relocated from the back by a cooler (and much larger) kid who wanted their seat. In an early move of social suicide, however, I’d relocated myself.
My motion sickness in the back of a bus was extreme. Any time I tried to ignore the queasiness of my belly, I ended up blowing chunks. The last time, in my sophomore year, it had taken just twelve minutes for the volcano to erupt. The effects of those twelve minutes had been far-reaching, and they’d ensured Dirk and I would remain enemies forever.