by Candis Vargo
Her phone started to vibrate across the nightstand.
“Ugh, are you kidding me?” she groaned.
She reached over to her nightstand, blindly feeling around for the culprit of her misery. Without even looking to see who was calling, she answered.
“Hello.”
“Rise and shine, gorgeous. Get your butt in gear and come open your door,” a male voice ordered.
She dug the back of her head deeper into the pillow and grabbed her forehead. “Pat, are you freaking kidding me? I swear, one of these days…I am going to kill you.”
“No, you won’t, my face is too pretty for that. Plus, who else would wait outside of your door holding a caramel latte with a double-shot of espresso for twenty minutes?”
“You got me a coffee.” Hailey perked up as she leaned on her elbows.
“I know how you roll, girl,” Pat said. “Today is a big day, and you need to be caffeinated. I got you two caramel lattes, to be exact.”
Hailey hung up and climbed out of bed. She ran out of her room all the way to the living room door. She swung it open, not caring that she was in a tank top and her underwear. Pat might be her coworker, but he was the one person she didn’t have to worry about hitting on her. Not because they were best friends, but because he had the same taste in men that she did. He might be gay, but he was particular about his men.
She grabbed one of the lattes he held and took a sip.
“Calm down, Cujo.” Pat walked inside and sat on the couch. “No wonder you don’t have a man. You act and look like a wild animal in the mornings. I’m not sure if you’re actually foaming at the mouth of if it’s the melted whipped cream. Either way, it looks like you have rabies.
Hailey laughed as she sat down beside him. “No, I don’t have one because I don’t need one. What’s your excuse?” She sipped her coffee.
“Please, sweetie. None of the men around here deserve someone as good as me.” Pat pretended to flip invisible hair over his shoulder.
He always sounded narcissistic, but he really wasn’t. He was one of the most down-to-earth people she had ever met, with a touch of a wild side. He had deep brown eyes, which matched his skin. Though he was gay, he didn’t dress as femininely as people might assume. He liked his men’s jeans a little snug on the butt, and his shirts loose.
He was one of the lucky ones. When he’d come out to his parents, they’d still loved and accepted him.
“So, they’re tearing down your old family house today, huh? You okay with all that?” Pat raised a brow.
“More than okay. I say good riddance. I swear, that place was cursed.”
“No, sweetie. You’re the one that’s cursed, being born on Friday the Thirteenth and all. You should have a zillion black cats around here or something.”
Hailey snickered as she stood up. As she walked into her bedroom, she said, “Yeah? Well hopefully my curse doesn’t screw us over today. I heard Tammy put a bid in over there at T&J Designs for the job.”
“Please.” Pat raised his voice so Hailey could hear him as she got dressed. “Tammy doesn’t know taste. We may be expensive, but we’re also the best around.”
A few years back, Pat had come up with the brilliant plan of starting their own interior design business. At first, the jobs were few and far between, but once they were able to showcase what they’d done, they hadn’t had a problem with finding work since. They just had to travel an hour into the city for the majority of their jobs.
Today they would find out if they managed to land their biggest job yet. Multi-millionaire, Sasha Baker, had recently divorced her husband, and with the huge settlement she received she was looking to give her mansion a complete makeover. She didn’t want a single thing that reminded her of her ex-husband in her home. A job like this could secure their business for a lifetime.
Hailey came out of the bedroom, dressed and ready for work.
“I swear, if I was straight I’d be all over you.”
“Not my type.” Hailey laughed.
She was dressed in a pair of black leggings, with knee-high brown boots and a simple blue button-up blouse that hung low enough to cover her backside. A slim belt was wrapped around her blouse, highlighting her small waist.
“Ready for work,” Hailey said as she raised a brow at him.
“Born ready.” Pat smiled. He set his cell phone on the coffee table.
Hailey walked over and sat down next to him. “I still can’t believe I have to get up early just to go to work in my living room.”
“Please. Mrs. Money said she’d call with a decision at six-thirty sharp. I could have woken you up at five, like I had to.”
“Not my fault you live with your parents. We both know you have enough cash stored away to get your own place.” Hailey curled her legs up on the couch.
“Ugh, yes it is. I haven’t heard a ‘Hey, Pat. Why don’t we become roomies?’ yet.”
She laughed. “Do I really need to invite you to live with me? That guest room is already decorated with your crap.”
“Excuse me? That is not crap. That is fine décor. But yes, thank you for asking. I’d love to move in. My stuff is already packed and I will be settled by tonight.” Pat proudly pointed his nose in the air.
Hailey held her hands out, confused. “Wha—”
“Listen, my parents are driving me nuts, and I knew you wanted me to live with you anyway.” Pat smiled.
The phone buzzed on the table, and they both sat up straight. Pat held a finger up to Hailey, signaling her to wait. He counted three rings before he answered, putting it on speaker.
“Hello, this is Patrick Vine speaking.”
“Hi, Patrick. This is Pamela, I’m calling for Sasha. Sorry to tell you this, but I’m going to need you to start today. Sasha’s words were, ‘I swear if I have to look at this junk one more day I’m going to burn this house down.’ Which, of course, she wouldn’t actually do. Not like she really does anything…she’d just make me do it. Oh, Lord, she would probably have me arrested too.”
As Pamela kept rambling on, Pat and Hailey stood up and started jumping up and down while trying not to squeal in delight.
Pat fanned himself before speaking again. “Pamela, hi. Yes, I do have an appointment with a client at noon today.” Hailey hit him, but he pushed her away, “But I can move a few things around and be over, say…about ten-ish?”
“Perfect. I’ll see y’all then.” With that, the phone clicked as Pamela hung up.
Pat and Hailey could no longer restrain their squeals of joy.
Chapter 3
It was late by the time they left Sasha’s house. They had spent the day jotting down notes of what Sasha wanted and some ideas of their own. They had taken measurements and pictures of the rooms so they would be able to visualize their ideas even when they were at home.
Hailey rode in the passenger seat of Pat’s Jetta on the ride home. She was singing along to some music when Pat turned the radio down and turned down a dirt road.
It was the road to Hailey’s old house.
“What are you doing?”
“Making a detour to see how much of your old house is torn down.”
Hailey laughed. “Yeah, right. You just want to see if there’s any construction studs left lurking around.”
“And your point is?” Pat admitted.
He slowed the car as they closed in on what was left of the house—a large pile of rubble.
Pat’s mouth gaped open as an eerie silence filled the air.
“Well, they didn’t waste any time, did they?” Pat asked, breaking the silence.
“If you’re talking about the house, I say good riddance. If you’re referring to no men hanging around, well they all had to go home to their women. Because all the good ones are taken.”
“I was talking about the house, hooker.”
Hailey smiled and shook her head. “Can we get home now? I’m beat, and I know you have spare clothes stashed in here somewhere so you don’t have to go
back to your parent’s house tonight.”
“Babe, I always come prepared. You know that.” Pat gently pressed on the gas pedal and pulled away from the house.
As they drove down the road, the dark forest enclosed around them. Hailey looked out the window, into the depth of the woods. For a moment, she thought she saw white figures dancing through the trees, but they disappeared as quickly as she saw them.
She leaned forward to turn the radio back up when Pat slammed on the brakes. Hailey’s seatbelt jerked her to a stop, and kept her head from smashing against the dash. As she looked up, she watched something finish scurrying across the road. It looked like what she had seen in the woods.
“What the hell was that?” Pat screamed.
Hailey’s heart raced. She suddenly released a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Shit! What was it? Some freaking albino wolf?”
“Crap. I don’t know, but it was creepy as hell. It’s these woods at night, I tell you. They could make the Easter Bunny look demonic.”
“I think it was a wolf.” Hailey laughed. “I think I saw a bunch of them in the woods before that one decided it wanted to try and become road kill.”
Pat let out a sigh of relief when they reached the end of the road. “I don’t care. Woods plus dark equals creep factor.”
“Pat, you do realize it was your idea to even come out here…right?”
“Let’s not go there…”
For the rest of the drive back to her apartment, Pat kept looking in the rearview mirror more than usual. He seemed pretty determined to get back home quickly, since he sped the entire drive. He kept insisting he wouldn’t feel safe until they were inside.
When they finally arrived, Pat jumped out of the car and didn’t wait for Hailey to shut her door before he locked it. He ran into the apartment building, and Hailey had to run to catch up to him.
“I’m totally going to have nightmares tonight, but I’m passing out. Way too much for one day,” Pat said as he walked to his bedroom door.
“Hey,” Hailey called after him, “are you still going to wake me up with coffee in the morning?”
“Hooker, we live together now. You can get your own coffee.” Laughing, Pat closed the door to his room.
Hailey grabbed a bottle of water out of the refrigerator before going to bed herself. As she got comfortable in bed, she grabbed the TV remote off of her nightstand and turned on some TiVo. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep.
***
Hailey’s eyes jerked open. The sound of a thousand rats running across the wooden floor surrounded her. She sat up, wrapping her ivory comforter around her as she looked for the source of the noise. The dim light from the TV made shadows dance around the bedroom and onto the hardwood floor. The sounds stopped, and Hailey looked straight in front of her. Her heart skipped several beats before it sped up as her bedroom door slowly slid open.
Every muscle inside of her froze. A pale, emaciated woman crawled inside her room. From what Hailey could see, she was nothing but skin and bones. She looked like a body that had been decaying in a casket for years.
Her cheeks and eyes were caved in. Her head was slightly crooked, crowned with hair that was long and black, and looked like chunks of it were missing. The woman twitched her head to the side as her torso entered the dim light, her deep, white eyes narrowing in on Hailey. As the woman continued to crawled closer, Hailey saw that she wasn’t exactly a whole woman—she had a torso, but that was it. The rest of her body was nothing but a dark mass. It seemed to be a part of her. As the woman moved, the darkness floated along the floor, moving like fire.
She felt pressure on the foot of her mattress. Though she didn’t want to take her eyes away from the woman slithering toward her, whatever had caused the mattress to move was significantly closer. She looked at the foot of her bed and saw another woman.
Her heart seized.
Black, stringy hair wrapped around the woman’s face. Her head was tilted, her eyes white.
A shake from the other side of the bed.
Her body went cold as every hair stood on end. Hailey’s fear kept her from being able to move. She was frozen in place, only able to jerk her eyes to the side to see.
Another woman.
Gathering her strength, Hailey somehow managed to push her back up against her headboard and bring her knees to her chest.
She couldn’t find her voice.
Fear had replaced any logical thinking. She did her best to stay as still as possible, and held her breath.
Another woman crawled out from underneath her mattress.
They were everywhere, all looking exactly the same.
The first one that snuck on her bed crawled up to her. Unable to remove her eyes from the creature, Hailey, sent up a silent prayer, wishing that the women would disappear.
Hailey felt hands grab her knees.
The woman twitched her head to the side, and leaned in until she was inches from Hailey’s face.
She could hear the raspy breathing as she felt the creature’s cold breath bathed her face.
From the corner of her eye, Hailey was able to see her reflection in the mirror across from her. A dark mass formed on the wall behind her—gradually getting bigger.
Out of the darkness, two hands reached out. Slowly, they stretched closer to Hailey’s head, revealing their abnormal length. One arm stretched each side of her head, and they gave one last stretch before instantly wrapping around her face.
Panic rose as her heart raced, trying to escape from her chest.
Hailey jerked her eyes open as a tear of fear fell onto the hand.
Cold hands covered her mouth and one eye, the boney fingers tightening on her. Her skin burned from the limbs’ cold.
Hailey saw a woman’s head emerge from the corner of her eye. The face pressed next to hers.
She began to shake as she sobbed into the woman’s hands.
A chill shivered down her spine as the sound of her pounding heart was replaced by the woman wheezing in her ear. Her cold breath blew through Hailey’s hair as the woman began to speak, her voice hoarse.
“Three days. Remember. Three…days.”
Chapter 4
Hailey woke with a pounding headache. She crawled out of bed, threw on her black housecoat and matching slippers, and shuffled into the kitchen.
“Holy hell, Batman. You look like you have one hell of a hangover,” Pat bellowed from the kitchen table.
“Coffee,” Hailey said as she poured a cup, grateful that Pat had woken up in time to make some so she didn’t have to do it herself. She leaned on the counter as she dumped in her sugar and creamer. After taking a sip, she went over and sat down across from Pat.
“Ugh. I feel like I have one hell of a hangover.” She took another sip of her coffee. “I had a crazy-ass dream last night. It felt so…real. I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”
Pat snorted. “That’s probably because it was real. You kept me up half of the night with all of the scuffing around you were doing. Hard to sleep when it sounded like you were out here, doing air guitar across the floor all night.”
Hailey rested her elbows on the table, and held her cup in front of her mouth.
“Weird,” she said, her brows knitting together. “Noises like that were in my dream. What, am I sleepwalking now?”
“Yeah, well you were completely acting out your dream, sweet cheeks. Which leads me to assume you were dreaming about being at a rock concert.”
“Ha, I wish. I don’t quite remember all of it. I just know it was freaky as hell. You ever wake up and have that…weird feeling, like you don’t remember exactly what you dreamed about, but whatever it was it left you with an uneasy feeling? I remember the scuffing noise and some words. ‘Remember,’ and ‘three days’ I think. Or something like that.”
Pat slapped the table. “Oh, you know what this means, don’t you?”
“Oh shit, Pat. I haven’t had enough coffee to listen to this yet.�
��
“No, listen. It’s totally because of your house getting torn down. In three days, you’re turning twenty-five. That’s practically a mid-life crisis. And with your old house getting torn down, your subconscious is telling you to figure out all, or just some, of the crap you blocked out from your life. Or it could be because your birthday falls on a Friday this year, and you’re cursed. Either way, I say we figure it out.” Pat’s smile was abnormally large.
“Pat, you are not going to try to hypnotize me. Are you watching Charmed again?”
“What? No. Meditation, hooker. That can open you up to a whole new level of understanding.”
Hailey took another sip of her coffee and stood up. “Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m going to shower. We need to get to work. No time for meditation. But I do have time for medication.” She popped some ibuprofen in her mouth and winked at her new roommate before leaving the kitchen.
Chapter 5
On the way to Sasha’s house, Pat was trying to convince Hailey to try and get her memories back. He kept rambling on about her subconscious and the house getting torn down, but Hailey just tuned him out. Their conversation consisted of him talking nonstop, and her nodding or saying, “uh-huh” in agreement, just to keep him thinking she was listening.
Relieved when they arrived at Sasha’s, Hailey focused on work. The day was full of removing old stuff before they could start to bring in the new. Several moving trucks lined the circle drive in front of the abnormally large, stone house. Sasha insisted on just donating all of the old stuff to Pat and Hailey’s business, and what they didn’t want they could donate. She didn’t want a penny from those “wrenched items,” as she put it.
Hailey had hired a few helping hands to get the old items out as soon as possible. She guessed the house was close to ten-thousand square feet, and each individual room was bigger than her apartment.
The less time they took on a job, especially a job that big, the better for the business. Pat walked around with a sketchpad and pencil, drawing down any ideas that he had while Hailey directed the extra hands and ensured nothing got broken.