Demon Night
by
Sara Bourgeois
Chapter One
Sammy’s cheeks burned hot as she sat across the desk from Frederick Jones. He was the new nursing supervisor at Carver Mental Health Center, and he hadn’t called Samantha into the office for a friendly chat.
“Sit down, Samantha,” Frederick said sternly.
She did and crossed her ankles in a position that was both ladylike and uncomfortable. Sammy felt like she’d been called to the principle for a lecture.
“It’s come to my attention that you involved a patient in a paranormal investigation.” Frederick spit the words paranormal investigation out as if they left a foul taste in his mouth.
Thirty minutes later, Sammy no longer had a job. She’d also been informed that her nursing license was under review and that it was most likely going to be revoked.
She walked slowly to her car and did her best not to cry. Samantha knew she was on camera until she left the parking lot, and she wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of seeing her tears.
Frederick had looked positively delighted as he let her go, and even her old co-workers smirked as security took her to the locker room to collect her things.
Sammy had tried in vain to express that she hadn’t involved any patients in paranormal investigations and that she’d never actually conducted a paranormal investigation, but to no avail. The truth was she had no explanation for some of her contact with certain patients. It was difficult to justify your behavior when you couldn’t tell anyone what happened.
No one would have believed her about the mirror, and Sammy knew that she’d end up locked up in Carver if she tried to explain the incident, and the patient’s connection to the mirror, to her new boss.
The internet hadn’t helped matters at all. The story of her home had gone viral, and hardly any of what had been circulated on the internet was true. Overwatch House was kind of old and spooky-looking, so people had made up stories about it and asserted them as fact.
Social media ate it up. Pictures of Sam and John’s house were everywhere, and amateur ghost hunters spent the night camped out on their sidewalk, filming the exterior of the house in order to catch something they could post to video sites.
No one had caught anything real yet, that Sammy knew of, but there were several faked videos out there garnering too much attention. John hadn’t taken any of it well.
It seemed to Sammy that he’d used up all of his patience and acceptance after the mirror incident, and she dreaded telling him about being fired. The pit of her stomach felt like a rock, and she wondered if this would be the thing that pushed him away for good.
If only John hadn’t been so unrelentingly devoted to her in the beginning, he might have had some investment left in him for what was to come. Sammy had no idea how someone who had seemed so loyal could become dangerously close to disenchantment when things had gotten hard.
When Sammy got home, the front door was ajar. Panic set in when she didn’t see John’s car in the driveway.
Not sure what to do at first, she sat in her car and watched the house for signs that there was an intruder inside. The only movement she saw was Tut sticking his orange paw out the opening in the front door.
It probably would have been a good idea for her to call the police and have them go through the house before she went in, but Sammy decided to check it out for herself. She wasn’t exactly the police’s favorite person, and she didn’t believe they’d take a call to her house seriously anyway.
Tut meowed as she pushed the door open fully. The floorboard of the porch groaned as Sammy stepped into the house, and the sudden sound made her jump. The cat hissed, but it just made her chuckle.
“Oh, Tut. It’s only me, but you’re right. We do need to get that board looked at,” she said.
Once she’d stepped through the threshold, Sammy stopped and listened carefully. If someone was in the house, she’d given them a heads up that she’d entered. But it still made sense to listen, just in case they were incompetent burglars.
Just then, Oatis the guinea pig squealed and then began running on his wheel. Oatis was the newest addition to the family. Her old guinea pig had passed away, but Sammy decided to get another one.
“Great,” she said to Tut, who was weaving in and out between her legs as Sammy stood by the front door. “So much for audible reconnaissance.”
Samantha took out her phone, dialed 911, and kept her thumb hovered over the send button. She didn’t want to call the police, but if there was someone in the house, it would be smart to be prepared.
She walked through the living room and into the dining room. Sammy’s breath caught in her throat as she peered into the kitchen. The back door was ajar, and all of the kitchen drawers were open.
For a moment, Sammy thought that there was an intruder and that they’d gone through all of the kitchen drawers, but then Tut sauntered over proudly and pulled one of them farther open. Her breathing calmed. It was a habit he’d picked up since she and John had started having issues.
Sammy wasn’t sure why Tut soothed himself by opening drawers. Even though she knew he did it, it still spooked her every time she walked into a room and they were open. It was a pretty good bet that she’d find the bathroom drawers like that as well.
She ventured over to the basement door in the floor of the pantry. The padlock she’d installed was still in place.
Upstairs, Sammy found a few of the bathroom drawers and cabinet doors open too. At least that discovery didn’t frighten her. The padlocks she had on the attic doors were still in place on both sides.
Sammy looked in every room and every closet, and she found no intruder. “It was probably just some weird air pressure thing,” she mumbled to Tut. The cat still faithfully followed her around.
She heard the board outside the front door creak loudly, and Sammy froze at the top of the stairs. Her eyes wanted to drift to the spot where the mirror had hung, as if her mind still craved the dopamine hit she’d gotten from her obsession with it, but she kept her gaze fixed on the door.
When she heard keys rattle, it became evident that John had come home. How long had she been searching the house for an intruder?
She looked at her phone and realized that two hours had gone by. Sammy shook her head. She’d lost time in the past, but that couldn’t have been happening again. That had been because of the entity and not because of some sort of psychological breakdown. Hadn’t it? Her stress levels were high at the moment, but it wasn’t enough to cause a breakdown. It probably had just taken a long time to search every room on both sides of the house. It was a big house. That’s what she’d told herself as she made her way down the stairs.
John came through the door, and started to smile at her before he realized that something was wrong. He’d been surprised to see her, but it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t a happy surprise.
“What happened?” he asked in a voice that Sammy could tell was tinged with weariness.
“I was fired.”
“Oh. Why?” John asked, but it was a formality. He knew. The guys at work took every opportunity available to pester him about the stuff on the internet. He was a construction foreman, so that was as far as it would go unless he lost his temper and got in a fistfight. That was something that had previously been out of the realm of possibility for John, but over the last month, he’d almost punched a guy twice for teasing him about his haunted house and “Spooky Sammy”.
“They said I involved a patient in a paranormal investigation.”
“You did,” John said dryly, and his words stung more than Sammy had expected.
“It wasn’t a paranormal investigation, John. You know why I had to do what I did. I had to.” Sammy
had no fight left in her for this conversation.
“It was an investigation into something paranormal. You involved a patient. Whether you had to do it or not makes no difference to them, Sam. There is no way people are going to understand the things you’ve gone through; the things we’ve gone through.” John said. “Anyway, I don’t want to fight. Let’s make some dinner. I’m exhausted. Besides, there are other jobs.”
“That’s the worst part. My nursing license is going to be reviewed, and it’s probably going to be revoked.”
“Sammy, I’m sorry,” John said softly. He knew how much nursing meant to her. The job at Carver had been her dream, and now it slipped away because of things that were beyond Sammy’s control. “Let’s make dinner. Or, I’ll make us something to eat and you can sit at the kitchen table and watch. I’m starving. There was an incident at work today, and I only got to eat half my lunch.”
“What happened?” Sammy asked as she followed John upstairs. She noticed that his work clothes were dirtier than usual.
“It’s not a big deal. I’ll tell you later. Let’s focus on you right now,” he said.
Sammy wanted to protest. His unwavering devotion to her was what would tear them apart. She knew it was possible. Eventually, John would resent her.
John changed—took off his dirty work clothes, took a quick shower, and got redressed—while Sammy used her laptop in her room to research her chances of keeping her license. It was grim, and she needed a plan.
They went down to the kitchen, and John made macaroni and cheese with chili-spiced beef while Sammy sat at the table. The only help she offered was to chop up peppers, but the rest of the time she spent researching.
When it became apparent that her nursing career was toast, she searched for a lawyer. “What do you think about me hiring a lawyer?” she asked John as he stood at the stove stirring and sautéing. “I don’t have much chance of staying a nurse without one, but even then, the outlook is grim.”
“If you think it might help, then we should do it. Can we afford it?” he asked without turning around.
“I don’t know. I could ask my parents for a loan, but it’s a lot of money that we might just be throwing down the toilet,” she said.
Just then, an ad popped up on the side of the page she was on. It was strange that it had taken so long for an ad to load as she’d been on the page for several minutes, but the Wi-Fi was sketchy around there at times.
She clicked on it. Sammy had been reading a blog entry on a lawyer’s website. That particular lawyer was located a couple of states away, but she’d hoped the blog article would give her some insight into her situation.
As it turned out, there was a bed-and-breakfast in the same town as the attorney. What had gotten Sammy’s attention was that the tiny inn was in an old Victorian home much like hers. It was also advertised as being haunted.
The ad said that ghost hunting teams were welcome, and that weekly séances were held on Saturdays. There were only six rooms available, and the one that had the most reported activity went for $300 a night.
Sammy clicked on the availability calendar, and the whole place was booked up for seven months. She did a quick calculation in her head of what the place brought in for one night. The take was over a thousand dollars every single night for the next seven months. It was more money that she could ever hope to make nursing.
The whole idea seemed hopelessly cheesy, but why not do it? Her house was already internet famous. She had all of the free marketing that someone could ever hope for, but she’d have to get John on board.
He valued his privacy, and turning Overwatch House into a bed-and-breakfast meant opening their home up to strangers. But what else could she do? They needed two incomes, and it wasn’t like she’d ever be happy doing anything else. Sammy figured she might as well make over thirty grand a month not doing what she wanted.
“John, I have an idea. You have to hear me out, though, because I know your initial reaction is going to be outright rejection,” Sammy said with a hopeful smile.
“Oh no,” John responded. “What is it?”
He put the food on plates, and Sammy laid out her idea. At first, Sammy thought he was going to put his fingers in his ears and start saying “la la la. I can’t hear you.”
But John listened in his quiet way. He didn’t interrupt her, even when he thought she’d lost her mind. By the end of what seemed like a hastily thrown together sales presentation, even John had to admit it wasn’t a terrible idea. He always had his shop in the garage if he needed to get away.
“We’d need to add bathrooms to the house, and also add doorways to the rooms so that they lead into the bathrooms. We’ll have to upgrade the plumbing even more than we already have. We’ll need new hot water heaters. We’d basically be turning every one of the extra bedrooms into a master suite. We’ll also need to upgrade the kitchen if you’re going to be making breakfast for a group of people every day,” he said. “Do you think you’re up for cooking and cleaning a bed-and-breakfast every day?”
“I imagine if I get as booked as the one I saw online, I could afford to hire some part-time help.”
“That’s true, but are up for doing the work yourself until then?”
The next day, Sammy made the trip to her parents’ house to break the news about her job. They knew all about the internet attention her home had been getting, and they’d encouraged her to move away and sell the house.
That she hadn’t and had now lost her job, and probably her nursing license too, was going to be a blow. Then, she had to ask them for money on top of that. It was money she’d use to make a career out of the house they’d wanted her to move away from. They certainly had the money to loan, but would they?
Her parents welcomed her into the house and they all sat in the kitchen around the table. Sam ate a sandwich her mother had made, and her father paced back and forth until Sammy’s mother told him to sit down.
Sammy’s mother cried for a bit after finding out how much trouble her daughter had gotten into. She brightened, though, when Sammy shared the idea for the bed-and-breakfast.
In the end, they gave her a substantial loan. Samantha cheered herself by going to the home improvement store to look at fixtures. She hung out there for a while, writing notes in a notebook she’d brought along just in case her parents said yes. Sammy also took lots of pictures of the stuff she liked for John to look at.
She had to hold back from texting him the pictures at work. It was better not to bother him. He still hadn’t told her what had happened at work, but he’d seemed content to discuss her ideas for the house.
When it got close to being time for John to come home, Sammy went back to the house and cooked taco meat. She heated up some tortillas and filled some little bowls with cheese, black olives, lettuce, and diced tomatoes. She hated tomatoes, but John loved them. The finishing touch was a tub of sour cream with a plastic spoon.
It felt a little like buttering him up. He usually came home from work and made a sandwich or heated up a can of soup, but Sammy wanted him to have a real meal. After all, he’d abandoned his own projects first to remodel the Overwatch House into their dream home, and now he’d do it again to turn the place into a bed and breakfast.
All of it was because there was something wrong with Sammy. She’d invited bad things into the world, and they clung to her like a bad odor. They didn’t talk about it. Sammy and John both secretly hoped that the mirror incident was the last time that the dark side would touch their lives, but neither one of them truly believed that.
John’s face lit up when he saw the spread. “You got the loan,” he said and gave Sammy a tight hug. It was the first time in a long time that his affection hadn’t felt at least partly forced. “You’re parents said yes, and now you’re buttering me up to be your remodeling slave boy.”
“Well, I mean, look at you. There’s no one I’d rather have as my slave boy,” she said and pinched his butt playfully.
“Watch it
now. You’ll end up with a pool in the backyard if you keep those shenanigans up,” he said and sat down to eat.
Sammy sat down too, and she filled her plate. It was the first time in a while that her appetite felt healthy. She’d been so stressed about work and the distance she thought she felt between herself and John that her appetite had taken a dive. She’d lost a lot of weight too.
“It’s good to see you hungry,” John said. “I was starting to think I’d have to tie you down in a stiff wind.” He smiled.
“That’s something we can discuss for our wedding night.” Sammy winked. It had been a long time since they’d even discussed getting married. Samantha felt self-conscious bringing it up.
“About that,” John began, and Sammy felt her heart sink.
“Yeah?”
“If we’re going to turn this place into a bed-and-breakfast, why not get married here? We could fancy up the backyard and have the service out there. Then, we could hold the reception inside. It would be like we were christening the place. And you could use the photos for your advertisements.”
“Are you sure you’re okay with that? I mean, you know we’ll be selling this place as a haunted bed-and-breakfast. You want to have a spooky themed wedding?”
John winced a little at the mention of the word spooky, but he didn’t want to let that get to him. “Yeah, baby. You and I both love Halloween. Let’s not let what happened kill our spirit. We can make it fun. We’ll reclaim our love of all things haunted.”
Sammy didn’t point out that John had never seemed particularly interested in Halloween or scary movies. He was being a good sport, and what more could she ask for?
“So, we’ll figure out when the work to transform this place into a bed-and-breakfast will be done, and we’ll set our wedding date for the weekend after?” she asked hopefully.
“Well, that will certainly keep us on task,” he said with a good-natured chuckle. “Yes, let’s do that. I’ve been waiting too long to make you my wife. Let’s get hitched.”
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