Diary of a Haunting

by M. Verano

  This is different.

  And I know Mom keeps saying that I should just accept the spirit activity in our house and view it as playful or mischievous, but this is giving me a really bad feeling. I can’t help thinking that our little household ghosts don’t seem to be all that friendly.

  Okay, this is what happened. So I woke up in the middle of the night and Logan was sitting in my room again. On the edge of my bed. Why does he keep doing this? You’d think I would be used to it by now, but it sure as hell made me jump. Six months ago, back in Cali, Logan *never* came into my room. Definitely not while I was sleeping. But now . . . I don’t know. Maybe this is the new normal.

  In any case, I didn’t want to overreact or worry Mom or whatever, so I was just like . . . Logan? What’s up? Are you okay?

  And he gives me a big sunshiny smile, and he’s like, yeah, I’m great. I wrote Dad another letter last night. So I’m like, okay . . . And he’s like, “We’re out of stamps. Can you take it to the post office in the morning and mail it for me?”

  Okay, no big deal. So I bring the letter to school with me, planning to mail it at lunchtime. And in history class I get so bored that I’m like . . . I wonder what he wrote. I don’t know, it was just such a sweet letter last time, and I really don’t think he would care. Well, actually, now . . .

  There’s something very wrong about this letter. I’m racking my brain for a reasonable explanation, but . . . it just doesn’t make sense. I need to talk to Logan.

  TUESDAY, MAY 5, 4:03 A.M.

  I tried to talk to Logan when he got home from school, but Mom was around and in one of her busybody moods, and I just couldn’t get to him. He was working on a project for school and she didn’t want me distracting him. I had a feeling about when I’d be able to get to him, though . . . so I went to bed early and set the alarm on my phone for 3 a.m. I left it under my pillow so it wouldn’t wake Mom when it went off.

  Sure enough, when I got up in the middle of the night and carefully opened my bedroom door to avoid any creaking, I could see a bluish glow from down in the living room. I grabbed Logan’s letter from my desk and made my careful way down the stairs, not wanting to wake Mom or startle Logan. He was parked in his usual place, in front of the TV with a game controller under his busy fingers.

  “Logan,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “What’s up?” he said, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. It was comforting to hear him say something so normal. I held out the letter.

  “Can you explain this?”

  He glanced at it briefly, not wanting to let his eyes stray from the screen for too long.

  “Is that my letter to Dad? I thought I asked you to mail that this morning.”

  “You did. And I was going to, but—” I hesitated. I didn’t want to admit what I had done, but there didn’t seem to be any option. My nosiness was not this family’s biggest issue at the moment. “Logan, I read it.”

  His shoulders shifted slightly—an annoyed little ripple—but he didn’t take his eyes from the screen. “Rude,” he said. “But so what? Were you scandalized by me telling him about my science fair project, and asking him to forward me my gaming magazines?”

  I hesitated again. “No,” I said. “That’s fine, I just . . .” I took a breath. “Logan, when did you write that letter?”

  “Last night. Why? You know that, I told you.”

  “Yeah, but . . . look, I read your other letter too. The one you sent last week.”

  “Seriously, Paige? I think you might have a problem. You’re weirdly interested in the correspondence of 12-year-old little brothers.”

  “Logan, they’re the same.”

  “What?”

  “The two letters. I—I don’t have the first one anymore, so I can’t show anyone, but I remember it. I read them both, and they’re the same letter.”

  Logan shrugged. “It’s only been a week, my life hasn’t changed that much. So what if I mentioned some of the same stuff?”

  “Not some. All of it. Every word, every comma. At first I thought you were just talking about some of the same stuff, but there were turns of phrase, spelling mistakes—I remembered it all.” Logan didn’t say anything. “How did you do it? Did you write two last week, and save one? But why? Why would you do this?”

  Logan shrugged again, but this time more uneasily. “I don’t know,” he said, his eyes still on the screen.

  “For God’s sake, Logan, this is important. Can you look at me? Can you just put that game down and talk to me?”

  “In a minute,” he said. “I’m almost done with this level.”

  “You know, you’re not even supposed to be playing anymore. I could tell Mom. Besides, it’s bad for you. Do you want to have another seizure?”

  “Give me a break,” he said. “I’ll quit in a minute.”

  “Logan, I really think you need to . . .” But my voice died in my throat. For the first time during this conversation, I looked up at the TV, where Logan had had his eyes fixed the whole time.

  There was no game. It was just static—bluish white fuzzy snow, pulsing infinitely. The letter fell from my hands.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you, Paige, I’ll stop in a minute. I just really want to beat this one boss, okay?”

  “There’s nothing there. Jesus, Logan, can’t you see? There’s nothing . . .”

  But it didn’t seem to register with him. I backed away slowly and crept up the stairs to my room, too freaked out to do anything but update my journal.

  TUESDAY, MAY 5, 6:33 P.M.

  After school today I didn’t even bother going home to drop off my books. I was too creeped out by the idea of seeing Logan again, and not being sure which Logan it would be: my bratty but lovable little brother, or this weird, incomprehensible zombie who seemed to understand his own actions barely better than I did. And what was maybe the scariest of all was that I wasn’t even sure how to tell which was which anymore.

  Instead I went straight to the basement door and knocked.

  “Who’s there?” came Raph’s voice from inside.

  “It’s Paige. Can we talk?” He didn’t answer right away, but I could hear movement from behind the door. “Are you busy?”

  “No, I . . .” There were more sounds of rustling from behind the door. “Look, it’s not the best time. Can you—”

  “Raph, it’s important. I really need to talk to someone.” Again, there was no answer. But after a minute or so, the door opened. Raph stood in the doorway looking even paler than usual, with dark shadows under his eyes and his curls a mess. He looked like he hadn’t seen the inside of a shower in at least a few days. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “No, I . . .” He cast a look over his shoulder. “I’ve had better weeks.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Nothing. It’s nothing, just . . . haven’t been sleeping well. One of the perils of being underemployed, it turns out.”

  I nodded, nevertheless feeling uncertain. Was Raph in his current state going to be any easier to deal with than Logan? What was going on with the two of them, anyway? But at length I decided I needed to consult with someone, and I wasn’t leaving until someone heard me out. “Can I come in?”

  Again, Raph hesitated, but after a moment he sighed and stepped aside.

  The apartment looked very different from how I had seen it last. For one thing, it was dark, even though outside it was still a bright, sunny day. Basement apartments always suffer from a lack of natural light, but Raph wasn’t helping matters by having his shades down over most of the windows. There were also cardboard boxes piled up all over, in some cases teetering precariously, and also blocking out what remained of the light.

  “What’s going on?” I said as I passed into the kitchen. “Are you moving?”

  Raph remained in the doorway, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, rocking on the balls of his feet. “No,” he said. “Those are . . .” His eyes searc
hed around the room, as if he were hoping to find a reasonable explanation. Eventually he returned them to my face. “Research,” he said at last.

  “What are you researching? And Raph, don’t just change the subject this time. I’m not just being nosy, I’m concerned. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing. Someone asked for my help. I probably should have said no, but . . .” He looked away again. “I’m not always so good at that.”

  If I had thought his answer would make anything clearer, I was sorely mistaken. All I got was a dosing of guilt—after all, wasn’t that exactly what I was doing? Asking for help, putting Raph in a position he would rather avoid, but felt compelled to accept?

  “Maybe I should go,” I said.

  “You came here for something. You said it was important.”

  I deliberated a moment longer, then decided to accept his offer, such as it was. I moved a box and sat down on a stool in his kitchen. “It’s my brother.”

  “Logan, right?”

  “Yeah. He’s . . . acting strange. And I don’t know if it’s a neurological problem or a sleep disorder or just residual trauma from the divorce, but—”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “What?”

  “Okay, so your brother has some kind of medical issue, it sounds like. Why would you come to me about it? I’m not a doctor. I’m not even premed.”

  “Right. I know.” It was a good question. Why had it occurred to me to turn to Raph? Maybe just because I don’t know many people in town. I had already tried to talk to Mom, but she never seemed to take Logan’s symptoms as seriously as I did, perhaps because she didn’t experience them firsthand. And from what I could tell, Dr. Clyde was doing little more than taking her money and filling her with false hope. I could talk to Chloe, but she’s just a kid like me. Then again, Raph wasn’t all that much older. So what did Raph have that made me instinctively feel like he would be able to shed some light on the situation?

  “You know this house,” I said at last.

  Raph pulled a box off the table in front of him and began going through the papers and envelopes inside one by one, methodically. Something about the way his thin, nervous fingers flipped through the various documents gave me the impression that he had done this dozens of times before. That these were movements performed out of habit, rather than with any real hope of finding something in particular. His eyes still focused on the box in front of him, he said at last, “What’s any of this got to do with the house?” But there was no cadence of a question in the phrase, and I got the feeling that he knew very well what this had to do with the house . . . maybe better than I did.

  In any case, I didn’t answer him. I just waited. And after a minute or two, he put the box back on the table and looked at me.

  “You’re starting to believe the house might be haunted,” he said, and this time it was even clearer that this was not a question, but I did my best to answer it anyway.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Chloe has all these theories about the morgue, and I know you said that morgues aren’t haunted, but there’s got to be some explanation, and—”

  Raph interrupted me with a mirthless laugh. “This has nothing to do with the morgue.”

  “Okay,” I said, getting frustrated. “But then what does—”

  “Nothing, okay? It’s nothing. Or . . .” An idea seemed to catch fire behind his eyes. “Or, sure, maybe it is the morgue. Let’s call it the morgue. If your kid brother thinks morgues are spooky, and now he’s got insomnia, then sure, maybe he’s scared of—”

  “It’s not just insomnia.”

  Raph turned a steady gaze on me. “The seizure,” he said.

  “Not that, either.”

  And so I explained about the letter, feeling foolish the whole time. There was something so not-right about it, so eerie, but it was hard to explain. How can you be scared of a duplicate letter? It’s not going to kill you or eat you or make you spew pea soup everywhere while your head spins around. There’s no threat, it’s just . . . weird. Anyway, I was pretty sure he was going to wave it off, and tell me I must be misremembering, must just be confused. The same way I told Mom she must be losing it for ordering all those taillights. But as I finished, feeling sheepish and bracing myself for him scoffing, he just stared at me with big, worried eyes.

  “Letters,” he said at last, but so softly it seemed more to himself than to me. “That can’t be good.” And as he said this, his eyes slid again toward the cardboard box on the table in front of him.

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “And what’s in all these boxes? These weren’t here last time I was down here.” I stood up and moved toward the box closest to me. The top flaps were folded down, but not taped, and without really thinking, I flipped one back and pulled out the first thing that came into my hand. It was a folded pamphlet, like the kind people hand out on street corners sometimes. Except it was old—the paper had that distinctive stiff feel and yellowed edges of stock that has been around a long time, like old library books. The design of it, too, looked old-fashioned, with fonts and graphics that no one would use today, or any time in the past 20 years, I was pretty sure.

  “Put that back,” said Raph, but I was too engrossed by now to listen to him.

  “This man talked with God! Actually and literally,” I read off the front of the pamphlet, speaking out loud. “You will be fascinated at the power—pulsating—surging—dynamic power that can be yours for the asking.” Despite myself and the nature of our conversation so far, I let out a little giggle. “What is this stuff, Raph? Where did you find this?” I flipped it open and read the text inside to myself. “Man, this is kooky,” I said when I had skimmed through the whole thing. “I hope you’re not planning on joining a cult or something.” I meant it as a lighthearted joke, but as the words escaped my lips, it occurred to me that that was one possible explanation for all of Raph’s strange behavior lately. Plus, he’d already told me about his delicate mental state, and his not really having anything to do with himself . . . he would be a pretty obvious mark, I suddenly realized, for a strong, charismatic leader looking for someone a little lost and easy to manipulate. “Oh jeez,” I said, catching myself. “I didn’t mean—but Raph, if you’re seriously considering—I mean, do you need someone to talk to? Have you talked to your mom?”

  But Raph didn’t answer any of my questions. “You shouldn’t be here,” is all he said.

  I was so surprised by this response that I didn’t say anything, though I didn’t make any move to leave, either.

  “This is . . . this is not good,” he went on. “You shouldn’t be around me, you need to stay away from me.”

  “What? Raph, calm down—”

  “I’m serious, Paige. This is dangerous.”

  I tried a friendly smile, maybe to reassure myself as much as him. “You already told me you were safe. You’re gay, remember? So I have nothing to fear from you.”

  “There are all kinds of reasons to fear people. Good reasons.”

  “Ha. That’s not what my mom says. You’ve heard her. She says we should approach the whole universe with a trusting, open heart. Send out positive energy and you’ll get positive energy back, right?”

  Raph looked away, and I noticed his hands, resting on his knees, clench into tight fists. “Your mom is wrong,” he said.

  At this point, Raph was being almost as creepy as Logan was, and I wasn’t getting anything clear or useful out of him, so I left and came straight upstairs to post this.

  Oh hey—I just realized I never put back that pamphlet I took—I guess I just put it in my pocket without thinking when I left. I wonder if Chloe would be interested in it.

  WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 8:34 P.M.

  Update on the flies: They are refusing all the food options I am giving them. That doesn’t bode well for the experiment, I guess. On the other hand, they are still alive and unchanged, so maybe that doesn’t matter.

  Side note: If you ever want to get
a really weird look, go to your local pet store and ask for fly food.

  THURSDAY, MAY 7, 4:15 P.M.

  So it turns out I was right about the pamphlet being old! I showed it to Chloe today and she realized she had seen something like it before. Apparently it’s an ad for this cult that grew up in this town almost a hundred years ago. Pronoica. Chloe didn’t know much else about it, though, just that a lot of people said the guy who started it was a scam artist and a fraud, and it kind of collapsed after he died.

  Weird. Who knew this town had such strange little secrets? Though none of this explains why Raph was acting so odd the other day, or what’s going on with Logan. Chloe wasn’t any help there.

  You know what’s really weird, though? The other night I was getting all frustrated with my phone again, and how it keeps screwing up all my text messages and stuff. I guess I didn’t mention it, but I rebooted a bunch of times and did a full virus sweep and Mom called the phone company, but I am still having the same problems, with not getting texts for hours at a time, and then getting a huge mess of them when I move into a different room. And also getting and sending double texts and garbled texts and all that.

  Okay, so this is going to sound crazy, but I was falling asleep and sort of idly thinking about this stuff, and it popped into my head: Logan sending the same letter twice is kind of like my phone sending out the same text.

  Except not, obviously. It can’t be, right? Presumably whatever is wrong with my phone has something to do with a glitch in the programming or something. Something technological. And that can’t be true for Logan. He was writing by hand, with just pen and paper. So the two are totally different.

  But . . . what if they aren’t? What if the same weird thing that is making him write the same letter twice is making me . . . send out duplicate text messages? Or making duplicate journal entries? And not even realize I’m doing it.