Flipping Fates

by A. C. Williams

  “Keith’s truck isn’t here.” Aaron says. “And he’s never picked up?”

  “No, and his voicemail isn’t set up either.”

  I’ve been calling Keith since we pulled out of the driveway at home, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he’s ignoring calls tonight. Maybe he’s down in the basement with no signal. Maybe he’s hurt. Maybe—

  So many maybes, and none of them are helping.

  If his truck isn’t here, then maybe he hasn’t arrived yet. Or maybe he’s already come and gone.

  I slide to the sidewalk and slam my door shut, moving toward the house. The dark windows on the second story stare at me as though they’re watching me.

  “Why is this house so creepy, Aaron?” I mutter, jogging up the steps.

  He doesn’t answer.

  The front door is locked, so that’s a good sign that Keith has either not been to the house yet or that he already got what he needed.

  I unlock the door and push it open. The door creaks unhappily, and so do the floorboards as we step into the front room and grope for a light on the wall. Aaron finds the switch, and soft amber light floods over the first floor.

  “I don’t think he’s here,” Aaron says.

  “Me neither.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Basement.” I point to the dining room where the door to the basement is open slightly. “Let’s check to make sure he isn’t down there, and then we’ll lock it up. I just—I don’t want to take the risk of anyone upsetting anything else that’s down there.”

  Aaron nods. “Once the police have checked the place over, we can go back to work down there.”

  A loud thump upstairs shakes the house.

  It’s so loud that even Aaron jumps. His hands find my waist, his fingers tense against my blouse.

  “What was that?” I whisper.

  We fall silent.

  Voices.

  Dragging sounds.

  More voices.

  My heart is in my throat. A chill creeps down my arms.

  The next loud thump sounds distinctly like a heavy box dropping on the second floor.

  “What on earth?” Aaron mutters.

  “Aaron, what is it?”

  “I—I don’t know.” He glances at the door to the upstairs.

  “Rats?” I gasp.

  “Big rats.”

  Another thump makes the ceiling rattle.

  Aaron’s eyebrows lever down over his eyes. “Trisha, have you been upstairs? Because I haven’t.”

  “This morning.” I say, mouth dry. “I went upstairs this morning.”

  “And?”

  “And Keith had been working up there.”

  More disembodied voices echo around us.

  “He said there was nothing but trash.” My heart flutters in fear. “That the whole upstairs could be trashed.”

  Aaron is scowling now. Deeply.

  He moves past me and opens the door to the second floor. The door releases a loud groaning sound as though its hinges hadn’t been oiled for years. A final banging sound reverberates on the second floor just before the eerie voices fade to a whisper and then disappear altogether.

  “Aaron.” I clutch at his arm.

  “We need to check it out.”

  “Aaron, I don’t like it.”

  Slowly, Aaron walks up the steps. With each one of his big feet, the steps creak and complain. Trembling, I follow him, fingers wound so tightly in the back of his shirt I’ll probably leave permanent wrinkles.

  The upstairs is as stiflingly hot as it had been in the morning, and it smelled of dust and plastic. If the yellowed areas of an antique photograph had a scent, that’s what the upstairs of the orange house smells like.

  After the flurry of noise from earlier, the upstairs has suddenly become more silent than a graveyard.

  Not even crickets.

  I don’t like it.

  I don’t like it at all.

  Aaron reaches for a light switch, but the lights on the landing don’t turn on. The only light comes from the moon spilling across the carpet—and beneath the door at the far end of the hallway. Tawny light shimmers between the old wooden door and the threshold.

  “Aaron.” I can’t breathe.

  He walks toward it.

  What if after all my denial and all my mocking, the house is actually haunted? What if I’ve been wrong? What if everything I knew about spirits and ghosts was false?

  The house has been off from the moment we stepped inside weeks ago. I’ve heard voices here every day. I’ve felt eyes watching me, phantom fingers along my skin.

  Have I been pretending? Have I known the truth and refused to accept it?

  Aaron creeps toward the door, hand outstretched for the knob.

  What if Grant Layton was right?

  What if there’s something evil here? Something dark?

  Human traffickers I can deal with. Gang members I can manage. But a ghost? Or a spirit? Or a devil? That’s over my pay grade. So if there’s something demonic in this room, I can’t let Aaron go inside. I grab his shirt and dig my heels into the carpet as he closes his fingers around the doorknob.

  “Aaron, don’t.”

  He glances back at me.

  “Trisha.” He frowns. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just don’t. Let’s—let’s wait.”

  “For what?”

  “The police. Someone. Let’s—wait.” Wait for daylight. Wait for the sunshine. Wait for someone else to open the door just in case there’s something evil behind it, because if it’s evil it will hurt them. If it’s evil, it will attack them. If it’s evil, it will hurt Aaron because Aaron is good.

  Aaron shakes his head dismissively.

  Oh, great, thanks. Thanks for listening, Aaron.

  Aaron turns the door knob and pushes it open. Warm light spills from inside the room and blinds me for a moment. Aaron isn’t moving. He’s just standing there. So I peer around his shoulder into the room.

  Boxes. Boxes on top of boxes. Tables, neat and orderly.

  If there’s an evil spirit in the room, it’s amazingly organized.

  “Okay,” Aaron starts to say.

  The light flickers out, plunging us into darkness again. I stand in place, blinking at the headache building behind my eyeballs.

  “Aaron,” I whisper.

  Aaron shifts suddenly, gathering me against his back with one arm with a cry of alarm. His weight pins me against the opposite wall.

  That’s when the screaming starts.

  Ghosts Don’t Wear Cologne

  A force bigger and stronger than me rips Aaron away. In the darkness I can’t see where he went, but I can hear the impact of his body on the carpet. I feel it through the floorboards.

  Scrambling, I throw my arms out in the black, flailing for any kind of light switch. The moonlight isn’t enough. I swing my arms to the side, and I strike something solid.

  Solid and warm.

  Solid and warm and—scented?

  Cologne?

  A fist crashes into the side of my head, and the world turns upside down. I slide along the floor, the carpet burning my cheek.

  Do ghosts wear cologne?

  There’s screaming still. Wordless shouts of rage and panic filling the spinning hallway, only interrupted by the sound of Aaron’s grunting as he struggles against the darkness.

  “Aaron!” I claw the carpet to pull myself up, and something hard smashes into my stomach. A boot? My diaphragm seizes, and my breath cuts off with a choking gasp.

  My voice lodges in my throat as I clutch my aching ribs and chest and desperately try to breathe.

  The light in the room flares to life again, blinding in its intensity. I squeak in surprise and pain and choke, hands raising to protect my eyes and face as another blow lands in my stomach, a shadowed figure looming over me.

  Not a ghost.

  A person.

  A real person.

  His boot cracks against my hip this time.

&
nbsp; What is he? A can-can dancer?

  I can’t see details. Everything’s blurry. But I can see when he rears back to kick me again.

  His boot strikes me, but as he’s pulling back, I seize the fabric of his pants and climb his leg like a squirrel intent on shredding him to pieces. He yelps in surprise, flailing, and then his hands are in my hair, ripping and tearing it out by the roots as he pries me off.

  I can’t stop a shriek as he yanks. My eyes tear up, and he peels me off his leg like the rind of an orange and flings me into the wall. If I were a wet noodle, I’d stick.

  A punch comes next, in the stomach.

  Is he going to kill me?

  Who is he? Why?

  Aaron.

  Where is Aaron?

  Oh, God, where is Aaron?

  I can’t hear him. Have they killed him? What if they’ve killed him?

  I collapse on the carpet gasping for breath between panicked sobs, and the murmur of conversation above me is tangled in my ears. I don’t care what they’re saying. I want Aaron’s voice. Where is Aaron’s voice? What have they done to him?

  Two shadows hover over me now.

  Backlit from the bedroom, I still can’t make out details. They’re just—big. Between their legs, I can see into the room where another figure I can’t make out is dumping small baggies of white powder into boxes.

  More drugs?

  Is that what this about?

  How? How can that be?

  What is going on?

  Where’s Aaron?

  The two figures over me turn away. Slowly, I press my hands into the carpet and push myself up. Everything hurts. I can hardly see for the pain, and my lungs aren’t working.

  A sharp laugh.

  Another blow to my lower back knocks me down again, and my nose strikes the floor.

  But I still don’t hear Aaron.

  My lips form his name, but no sound comes out.

  The second figure walks away from where I’m balled up on the floor, and the first one—Kicky McKicks-a-Lot—kneels down to pat my head. He’s saying something, but I can’t make it out. My ears are ringing and full of painful cotton.

  Behind him, three shadowed figures file out of the room, each one carrying boxes and bags. I think. It’s hard to see. They walk down the hallway to the stairwell door and disappear into the darkness.

  With another laugh, Kicky stands and leaves me on the floor. He steps into the room.

  This is my chance.

  It’s the only chance I’ll have.

  I’ve seen them. Maybe not their faces, but I’ve seen them. And they’ve probably already killed Aaron, so they’re going to kill me too.

  No.

  I get the carpet under my fingers again and struggle to my knees. I can’t breathe. I can’t see. But I crawl anyway, one tuft of stained carpet at a time, until I can see the stairwell door, the stairs disappearing into darkness below.

  A bark of laughter behind me.

  Kicky’s back.

  So much for a quick escape.

  I scramble for the steps—like that will do any good—but he’s too fast, and he has me by the hair again. I’m flying. That’s what it feels like for a split second before the side of my head crashes into the glass of the hallway window, sending a spiderweb of breaks through it.

  Now the room is really spinning.

  Like it hadn’t already been going like the Tilt-a-Whirl at Joyland.

  He’s laughing again, picking up the bag he dropped so he could throw me like a frisbee, and he starts for the steps.

  I’m not thinking.

  Because this is a bad idea.

  I know it even before I do it, but I don’t care.

  They’ve killed Aaron. I know they have.

  Oh, this is going to hurt.

  I lunge for Kicky’s leg just as he steps down on the stairs. He yelps in surprise and tilts forward, balance gone, and then the floor is gone too. He roars in pain as he pitches headfirst down the stairs, dragging me with him in a tangle of arms and legs and dime-bags of cocaine.

  Somersaulting out of control, we crash into the dining room floor, and I land on top of him in an unseemly pile of crazy hair and aching limbs. I hear a loud pop. Kicky thrashes once under me, choking, gurgling, and going limp.

  Then more screams. More shouts. More hands, grabbing me, throwing me into the wall, kicking me. Another fist strikes my face, and my eye begins to swell. A hand pins me to the wall. I can only see a tuft of brown hair that belongs to the hand clasped over my eyes.

  Voices.

  Overlapping voices.

  A growl of rage.

  The next blow is harder than all the others. My head bounces off the wood floor like a basketball.

  Dragging. Rustling. The shadowed figures in my swimming vision haul Kicky’s heavy body out of the room by his arms because he’s not moving anymore.

  The lights shut off.

  The front door slams shut.

  They’re gone.

  No Aaron in sight.

  I let the darkness take me.

  Neck Braces and Ninjas

  Of course, I’d say yes. How could I not say yes? He was all I’ve wanted for longer than I can remember, since together we’d caught our very first firefly by the lake cabins in our childhood.

  I’ve loved him all my life.

  And his hands are in my hair now, calloused fingers pressing against my scalp with wiry strength, guiding me closer and closer until he can capture my lips with his own. One hand in my hair. One hand against my lower back, pulling me into him.

  He smells like sawdust and spearmint. The stubble on his jaw scratches and prickles, and his breath is warm across my skin when he pulls back to breathe. But he doesn’t linger long before he’s kissing me again.

  Desperation surges beneath my skin. Frantic need to be close to him, to feel him, to know he’s there. But he’ll always be there, won’t he?

  Aaron Guinness.

  “Trisha.”

  His voice is a low, rumbly thing against the skin of my neck. His searing kisses drop down my jaw, burning my neck, my collarbone—

  “Trisha.”

  Pain jolts me. The dull ache of bruises and cracked ribs a siren call that deafens me to the warmth of Aaron’s lips on my skin.

  “Trisha!”

  Aaron loves me. He has to. Because I love him. Isn’t that enough?

  Agony ripples down my spine, and a gasp of pain escapes me as my eyes snap open. A blinding column of light is shining in my face, and the world is spinning. Hands pin me down, and voices echo in my ears.

  “Trisha.”

  A voice speaks clearer than the others, and the blur of my vision settles on a face hovering over me. Upside down? No. I’m on the floor. She’s kneeling over me.

  “Trisha?”

  I try to answer, but my voice is still trapped in my throat.

  “Don’t try to speak,” the unfamiliar woman says. Her brown hair is curly and in a messy bun. She’s wearing a bright white shirt. “Don’t move.”

  My mouth tastes like blood. My face feels stiff, and everything hurts.

  The room glows with red-blue-red-blue light, and the garbled chatter of radio speakers echoes off the wooden floors. The woman’s hand rests against my chest, and that’s when I realize my shirt is gone. I’m laying on my back in front of a strange woman with practically nothing on.

  And I can’t move my neck.

  Why can’t I move?

  Where is Aaron?

  With a clattering sound, several more people enter the house and lower a red board to the floor.

  “All right, Trisha. We’re going to move you. Okay, don’t worry.”

  Too late.

  I’m worrying.

  Unfamiliar hands tilt me over and push the board under me, letting me fall back on it before they start strapping me onto it.

  “There you are.” The strange woman said. “You’re all right. You’re all right.” The woman leans closer. “Don’t be scared, o
kay? We just need to check you out. Looks like you fell down the stairs.”

  Yes, yes, I fell down the stairs. After I got the wind knocked out of me by a shadow-faced kick-boxer wearing cologne. Did you happen to see him? You can’t miss him. He stinks.

  I want to say it out loud, but nothing comes out.

  My body jolts as the paramedics—I’m assuming they’re paramedics with the uniforms, the lights, and the backboard—lift me and start carrying me out of the orange monstrosity.

  Aaron.

  I try to say his name.

  My voice won’t work.

  Where is Aaron? What happened to Aaron? Why isn’t he here?

  They’re talking. They’re saying something about BP. Some kind of medical jargon. Words. Just so many words and voices that I don’t recognize.

  “Trisha, we’re going to give you some fluids, all right?”

  A pinch. Burning on my hand.

  “You’re going into shock.” The voice continues. “Don’t be scared. We’re going to take care of you.”

  Something cold and plastic-smelling covers my mouth and nose.

  “Just breathe,” the voice coos. “You’re all right. This is oxygen. Just breathe. In and out. Like that. Good girl.”

  My vision clears just enough to make out the walls of an ambulance, clinical and sterile and packed to the gills with medical supplies. I’m in an ambulance?

  I turn my eyes to the paramedic who’s still making soothing sounds.

  Please, look at me.

  She is focused on something else.

  Please, please, look at me.

  Finally, the woman glances up. She has brown eyes that crinkle when she smiles. Freckles across the bridge of her nose. She’s probably ten years younger than me.

  My mouth won’t make words.

  “It’s okay.” The woman sets a gentle hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  The woman watches me for a moment before she offers me a smile. “Are you worried about the man?”

  My eyes burn. Hot tears slip down my face.

  “Shh, it’s okay.” The woman takes my hand, the one now sporting a line for the IV. “It’s okay, we sent him ahead. He’s already at the hospital.”

  My heart skips and stutters, and the tears come faster.

  “He got banged up pretty bad,” the paramedic says, “but he’ll be okay. Just like you. You’ll both be okay.”