Light as a Feather

by Zoe Aarsen

  In, out.

  I dug my fingernails into Trey’s arm and whispered hoarsely, “Do you hear that?”

  His eyes were huge, staring straight into my own. “I don’t hear anything, but I feel it.”

  He pulled me closer to him. We both lay in silence for a moment before I asked, “What should we do?”

  Trey shook his head very slowly, almost too slowly to notice. “Nothing. Let’s see what happens.”

  The room, as it had the night before, became bone-chillingly cold. I felt the tip of my nose turn to ice, and could see steam escaping from Trey’s nostrils in tiny puffs. The breathing sensation in the room was growing stronger, and I gripped Trey’s arm more tightly. It felt as if the energy was being sucked out of my body as the presence pulled me toward the ceiling lightly, and then released, again with the steady rhythm of . . . Inhale. Exhale. I was paralyzed with fear, thoroughly expecting to feel the same fingertip that had pressed against my arm making an indentation again that night. Why had I been so stupid as to think I’d be safer with Trey? He was as defenseless as I was against this thing, whatever it was, that presumably Violet had unleashed upon me. My stomach tied itself in knots and I knew the window of time during which I might have found the courage to make a dash for the light switch had already passed. There was nothing to do but wait for this terror to run its course.

  I heard a low rattling. Trey dared to sit up slightly to look across my room, and a moment later, I did too. The shelf over my desk was vibrating. It was barely noticeable at first, but in less than a minute it was shaking so much that I feared it would fall from the wall at any second, clatter down to my desk, and wake up my mom. It was the shelf where I kept my CDs, most of which had been given to me by my dad when I was still in middle school. I rarely listened to any of them, since I downloaded all the music that I kept on my phone. Trey and I both watched the shelf thrashing against the wall; we could see the screws holding it in place against the drywall visibly being pulled out from the force. Suddenly, one CD in a plastic jewel case fell from the shelf and landed on top of my desk. The shelf ceased moving immediately, and the coldness that had just filled my room disappeared. If it weren’t for that single misplaced CD, it would have been easy to think that perhaps we had just imagined the past few minutes of strange phenomena in my bedroom. Trey and I sat, frozen in fear, for a long, gut-wrenching moment before either of us dared to move. I was sure that at any second my mother would come knocking on my door, demanding to know why such a racket was coming from my room at such an odd hour. But as my ears strained to hear what was happening in the house beyond the four walls of my bedroom, I was surprised to hear nothing at all but the clock ticking on the mantelpiece over the fireplace in the living room. The house was at peace.

  “What the hell was that?” Trey asked me.

  I released my grip on his arm and realized that my fingernails had broken the skin. Red semicircles were left behind where my nails had dug in. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what that is. But it’s the reason why I was going to sleep with the lights on tonight.”

  “That’s what happened in here the other night?” Trey asked me, shaken by the event.

  “Not exactly like that, but yeah.”

  Trey pushed back my comforter and walked over to my desk. He flipped on the small desk lamp and held up the CD that had been dislodged from its place on the shelf. “Death Cab for Cutie,” he read off its cover, holding it up for me to see. “So the ghost haunting you has crappy taste in music.”

  “Watch it, now,” I warned. I knew without budging from my bed exactly which CD it was: a single of “Soul Meets Body” that my dad had sent to me from Florida after I’d heard a snippet of the song playing at a restaurant while I was visiting him. He’d used the Shazam app to find the name of the song, armed only with the handful of lyrics that I could remember. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d listened to the song, and was at a loss if whatever kept entering my room at night intended for me to find any significance in it. Trey lifted the CD as if to place it back on the shelf, and I immediately said, “No!” I feared that restoring it to its position might be ample reason for whatever spirit had just visited us to return. Trey set the CD back down on my desk.

  “The lamp stays on,” he stated before climbing back into my bed with me. This time, when he wrapped his arm around me, I felt sure that we wouldn’t be visited again that night. I noticed that his feet were bare and freezing cold when mine tangled with his at the bottom of my bed. “So, whatever that just was, it’s done this before?” he asked.

  “It didn’t shake my furniture, but I think it touched me.”

  “Geez. I don’t think that was anyone’s grandmother. I mean, old people don’t listen to Death Cab for Cutie, right?”

  I hesitated before confessing what had been on my mind all week. “It might have been Jennie.”

  “Your sister? Why would your sister be haunting you? And why after all these years?” he asked.

  I wanted to tell him about the day after the fire in the hospital, about how my parents had believed that I’d died in the fire and Jennie had been saved, but couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

  “I think it might be whatever spirit Violet summoned when you guys were playing that game. We need to find out more about that grandmother. If it isn’t her who came after Olivia and is now terrorizing you, then maybe it’s some other spirit that used her to set up a channel with Violet.”

  We both fell quiet for a few minutes, and his breathing steadied. I wondered if perhaps he’d nodded off to sleep. “I’m glad you’re here,” I whispered. “I’m starting to think I’m going crazy.”

  “You’re not going crazy,” he murmured, sounding tired. “Whatever is going on here, it’s very real. I think we need to figure out a way to communicate with that thing, whatever it is, and tell it to get lost.” He kissed me on the forehead. When I woke up in the morning, the sun was up, and the light bulb in my desk lamp had burned out at some point overnight. Trey had already slipped across the lawn back to his own room, and cool morning wind was blowing in through the open window. I thought about the words he had uttered right before we both fell asleep. A shudder rippled my body. Just about the last thing I wanted to do was invite that thing to come back.

  CHAPTER 10

  NO ONE AT SCHOOL WAS surprised that Violet, Michael, Tracy, and I were elected to the junior class Student Government when the winners were announced on Tuesday morning, except, perhaps, me.

  “Congratulations,” Dan Marshall told me at our lockers after school. Dan was friends with Jason, and I genuinely hoped that Jason wasn’t too upset about the news of my victory.

  As I gathered my books, I noticed Trey down the hall, approaching from the other end, where most of the seniors’ lockers were arranged. The sight of him sent an excited shiver up my spine. Feeling his eyes on my body even from so far away made my heart beat faster. He’d never walked right up to my locker before—giving people a reason to gossip. But the day I was named treasurer, he did. He placed his hands on my hips and he planted a soft, slow kiss right on my mouth. The closeness of his body to mine made my head spin. I could taste the wintergreen flavor of his gum on his lips, feel the warmth of his skin through the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Excuse me,” I heard Dan next to me mumble as he stepped out of our way, closed his locker, and left us alone. Dan was a nice guy. When Trey and I parted, I caught a few kids staring at us in surprise.

  “Congratulations, Madame Treasurer,” Trey teased me. “I can’t believe I’m hooking up with a government official.”

  On the walk home, I was elated. My peers—the very same jerks who had called me names not six months earlier—had voted for me. Me. I had actually won what could be considered a popularity contest. The scary spirit that had visited me twice in my bedroom hadn’t made another appearance since the night it knocked the CD off my shelf, which was a huge relief. That afternoon, as Trey and I walked home swinging our arms happily,
we allowed ourselves to believe that the paranormal activity Violet had brought into our lives had passed. The leaves on the trees lining the rural route taking us back to Martha Road had shifted from shades of vibrant green to warm hues of gold and persimmon, and it would only be a few more weeks before the branches were bare and snow would start falling.

  My excitement about my victory was short-lived, however. When Trey and I reached my house, my mom’s car was parked in the driveway, which was a bit curious, since she was typically lecturing on Tuesdays and didn’t get home until late. We found her in my living room, home from the university early, with a little surprise for us. “I know, it’s crazy,” Mom admitted, sitting on the floor with a wiggling black-and-white mutt puppy. The puppy was gnawing on a rawhide bone that was as long as its own body. “The house is just so empty without Moxie. And you’ll be leaving for college before I know it.”

  “But, Mom . . .” I trailed off. The beautiful little dog, with her liquid cocoa eyes and her salty puppy smell, overwhelmed me with sadness. All I could think about was how Violet had known about Moxie without ever having seen her. My mom had the best intentions having brought an innocent little animal into our home to keep her company, but she had absolutely no idea the danger into which she might have just put this dog. She had named the puppy Maude. I didn’t want to fall in love with Maude, didn’t want to feel her cold, wet nose against my hand, didn’t want to care about her in the least, or I feared the second I did, she’d be vulnerable to Violet’s game.

  “Do me a favor, hon, and go get Moxie’s food and water bowls and leash from the garage,” Mom requested of me.

  I sighed and stepped through the door off the kitchen. We primarily used our attached garage for storage. Mom only parked the car in there in the winter, and inevitably the first frost required her to spend an entire Saturday reorganizing boxes to make space for it. Trey followed me, and I looked around for a moment, clueless, not having any recollection of which box I’d tossed Moxie’s food and water bowls into the morning after she died.

  “Maybe . . .” I lifted one box off my father’s giant old workbench and peered inside. It contained nothing but Christmas decorations. I then recalled putting the bowls into one of the boxes on the low shelf near the lawn mower. When I lifted a box that had its top cardboard flaps already half-opened, intending to set it down on the floor so that I could see its contents, the bottom flaps of the box gave way and everything packed inside of it came clattering out to the floor.

  Before I even realized what I was looking at, I gasped.

  What had hit me directly on the foot was one of the Lite-Brite toys that Jennie and I had fought over so many years ago. Plastic colored light bulbs rained down upon the cement floor around my feet. I remembered that the Lite-Brites were some of the few toys that had survived the fire, boxed up by the volunteers for the Red Cross who had picked through the charred remains of our old house. But the sight of the toy wasn’t what startled me.

  It was that the colored plastic light bulbs pressed into the black screen had been arranged, unmistakably, to form the letter V.

  “Holy crap,” Trey whispered, looking over my shoulder and instantly understanding why I was freaking out.

  “It’s a sign, Trey,” I babbled, on the brink of tears. “It has to be. This box has been in here for years, at least. I don’t even remember playing with this toy since the fire. It may have even been Jennie who played with it last. I can’t think of any reason why either of us would have designed a letter like this back when we were eight years old.”

  “Okay, so maybe it’s a sign. But a sign from who?” Trey asked. “Obviously it’s a V. V for Violet. You know, since last week we’ve both been thinking that whatever came into your room was coming after you. But what if whatever it was . . . was trying to warn you? Or protect you?”

  “That doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense! Why did Olivia die? Why did Moxie die? Why did that CD fall off my shelf? It’s too disconnected,” I rambled.

  “Well, maybe it’s not all connected,” Trey reasoned. “No one ever said that paranormal spirits had to be good project managers. Maybe Moxie just died of natural causes because it was her time. Maybe Death Cab for Cutie fell off the shelf because it was already closest to the edge.”

  I tried to catch my breath and calm down, not wanting to alarm my mom if she could hear us talking in raised voices from where she was cooing at the puppy in the living room. “I can’t take this anymore,” I exclaimed hoarsely. “Every time I think this is over, something even weirder happens.”

  Trey leaned against my dad’s workbench and ran his hands through his dark hair. “I think we have to turn the tables on this thing, McKenna. I’m not happy about it because I’m not particularly enthusiastic about getting into this any deeper than we already are. But like it or not, we’re in it.”

  “I’m in it,” I clarified. “I’m playing the game. I’m the one trying to get into Violet’s head.”

  “I’m the one who was in the car with Olivia,” Trey reminded me. “She knew this was real. In the last moments of her life, she knew that this was real and that something was coming for her, and I chose not to believe her. I need to know why it took her and not me, too. I’m in this as much as you are.”

  We both fell quiet for a moment, and I knew without even asking him that we were both doing the same thing: listening, waiting, determining whether or not we were really alone. This had become our shared habit over the last few days. Barely breathing, afraid to even look too closely at shadows, knowing that at any second, it might be back.

  “So . . . how does your boy James W. Listerman think we should reach out to it?” I asked.

  * * *

  After Trey declined my mom’s offer for dinner that night and walked across our yard back to his own house, Mom asked me, “When was the last time you called your father?”

  I groaned and slumped in my chair. I hated when she nagged me about keeping in touch with my dad. We texted all the time, and he called me on weekends, but for one reason or another, Mom liked to micromanage my relationship with him. “I don’t know! I texted him and told him that I won the election this morning. Does that count?”

  My mother lifted the pot of pasta boiling on the stovetop and carefully shifted it over to the kitchen sink, where she poured out the hot water into a colander. A puff of steam formed over her head and clouded the window over the sink. “You’ve had a stressful couple of weeks. It wouldn’t kill him to have some idea of what’s going on in your life these days. He’s expecting a call from you after dinner.”

  I ate my spaghetti in silence, fuming about having to talk to my dad, and about my mom bringing a defenseless puppy into the house.

  “Your mother tells me you have a boyfriend,” my father greeted me when he answered the phone, without even saying “hello.”

  “She exaggerates,” I informed him. “I’m just going to the homecoming dance with Trey Emory from next door. Remember him?”

  My father claimed to remember, but he was probably lying. I didn’t think he made much of an effort to remember the life he left behind in Willow.

  “In all seriousness, McKenna, your mom called me today to tell me you’ve been having a rocky junior year so far. It sounds like you’ve been going through some pretty heavy stuff.”

  I hesitated before replying. My dad was a pretty knowledgeable guy, so there was a strong likelihood that he might have been able to provide some valuable insight about the game we’d played at Olivia’s party, and the possibility of another explanation for Violet’s seemingly paranormal abilities. “Actually, do you remember when you taught me about group hypnosis, Dad? Like about how the military makes soldiers chant to get them psyched up for combat?”

  My father remembered.

  “Well, what about in cases when the chanting makes something happen?” I suggested. “Like, do you know that game Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board? When a girl tells a story about one girl dying, and everyone
else lifts her up with their fingertips?”

  “McKenna, do you mean to tell me that instead of underage drinking and experimenting with drugs, you and your friends have been playing silly horror games?” my father asked with a heartfelt laugh.

  “Dad! This is not funny. One of my friends is dead ! Mom told you that, right?”

  The line went silent as my father considered my outburst. “You’re right, McKenna. I am truly sorry for being insensitive; that’s a terrible loss for someone your age to suffer. Games like the one you mentioned can be explained a variety of ways. The simplest explanation is that a young woman your age—when her weight is evenly distributed and lifted from several points—may not seem so heavy. That effect combined with the distraction of chanting, or even the possible light hypnosis of the game’s participants from the chanting, can make the body seem weightless. You have to let go of the idea that some kind of . . . supernatural power had anything to do with your friend’s death. I don’t know how to put it more plainly. People die in car crashes all the time. If you’re having difficulty with grief, I’d be more than happy to arrange to have you talk with someone at the university.”

  All of my dad’s former colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Sheboygan, were the kind of psychiatrists who treated the criminally insane and researched new medications to control schizophrenia.

  “No thanks, Dad,” I declined. But then I had an idea. If group hypnosis was what my dad claimed was responsible for our belief that we had levitated one another, then maybe hypnosis was responsible for all the weird stuff I was still experiencing. Maybe I was still hypnotized! Maybe we all were, and that was why Candace had gone so far off the deep end. Thoughts assembled in my head with the rapidity of machine gunfire. Was there a possibility that Trey and I were wrong about Violet, that there was an alternate explanation? “But actually, my friend Candace is having a very hard time dealing with Olivia’s death. She might need to talk to someone.”