by Matt A Byron
The first street she made a right and then a left at the next street. She came to a red stop light and made a quick right, nearly sideswiping a late model Nissan Sentra that blared its horn as it swerved to avoid her. She kept her eyes in front, not wanting to look in the mirror. She wasn’t afraid of finding a face looking back at her as much as focusing on the road ahead of her. She needed to get home, a need more than a want she realized but she didn’t know why.
She glanced at the passenger seat where it remained empty. Her sister was still somewhere else. She didn’t know why her sister disappeared again or what that thing inside Renna wanted. She felt that time was running out, that if she didn’t do something soon her sister would be trapped as an empty spirit or the thing inside Renna would be free to roam this world expressing less than best intentions on whoever would end up crossing paths with.
The sun had surrendered to the western horizon, setting past the mountain ridge just over an hour ago. The night was clear and the stars were bright. The moon, in the three-quarter phase, illuminated the sky.
Any other time, she would have thought the night was tranquil, peaceful, and beautiful. Not tonight. The darkness seemed more ominous; the shadows concealed creatures of the night as their preying eyes looked upon her as she drove by, she thought.
She turned down a small street and then realized in her haste it was the wrong street. She stopped and looked behind her shoulder to back up when she thought she saw something dart past the rear of her car. She didn’t see anything except a shadow of movement. She surveyed the area but saw nothing from the side mirror or out the side window.
Houses lined the street on either side; most of them with glowing windows and a man walked his dog on the farther end of the street moving away from her.
She took a breath and exhaled. She let her foot off the brake, shifted into reverse and backed out of the street. Before shifting the car into the drive, she looked at the street, the houses, and the shadows that lingered just beyond the street lamps reach. She didn’t feel as if anything hid in the shadows seeking the cloak of darkness to conceal them from her as much as the shadow themselves were looking back at her in plain view, taunting her.
She turned the wheel to the left, switched the gear to drive and jumped on the accelerator. She felt a chill go down her spine as she tried to push back the events of the past couple of hours out of her mind. The passenger seat remained as empty as the hope chest she held in her heart.
She fished out her cell phone from her purse and saw that she had six missed calls and three new voicemails. Four of the calls were from Trevor, and two were from an unknown number.
She looked back at the road and tried to navigate her phone to dial her voicemail. The first message was from Trevor at seven thirty-two in the evening, about an hour and a half ago. It had been only twenty minutes since she left Renna’s, a few blocks from her house now but as she got closer, she grew more apprehensive.
Perhaps Trevor had an important quest waiting for her in the mythical lounge. Trying to retrieve the messages now had become more important than rushing home. The closer she got to her home the less inclined she was to see what was waiting for her.
She pressed the voicemail button as she turned into her driveway. She put the car in park but left the engine running. She listened to the automated voice telling her she had three new messages. She waited a moment and then heard Trevor’s voice.
“Hey, I just saw the news, are you okay? I can’t believe they showed up at your house. Well, call me okay? Talk to you later. Bye.”
The phone beeped and announced the second message. She waited until the voice began.
“Ms. Hallindale, this is Detective Saunders. I wanted to check in with you. We weren’t able to stop the story before it was repeated in a later broadcast, I am sorry. My captain made a call to the network, and they have since pulled the story. I don’t think there is any cause for concern but to be safe if you happen to see anything out of the ordinary or anything suspicious please call me anytime day or night. Take care and again I am sorry this happened.”
The whole day had been filled with things out of the ordinary and suspicious, but she knew Detective Saunders could not help her.
She switched off the ignition and pulled out the keys. She opened the door when the automated voice announced the third message. It was from Trevor again but this time, he sounded panicked. She took a deep breath, pressed the phone tightly against her ear, exhaled and waited.
“Emery, where are you. A detective called me wanting to know if I heard from you. He said you’re not in any danger, but I should get in touch with you and now I am worried,” he paused to take a breath and then continued, “I’m coming over. Why won’t you answer. Anyway call me, I’m on my way, please call me and let me know you’re alright. See you soon.”
She clicked off the phone. She looked around and found Trevor’s car parked at the curb. She didn’t notice it when she pulled in. She engaged the lock, and the lights of her car flashed twice. She walked up the front path and stopped just short of the front door. It was open ajar, and the house was dark except a small light she guessed was coming from her bedroom at the back of the house.
The house was a three bedroom single story, approximately 1800 square feet. They had converted the third bedroom into an office since Emery and Melissa had done a lot of work from home. The house also had an attached garage that they had used for storage.
She pushed open the door enough to let in the light from the outside porch, but it seemed like the pale yellow glow did very little to penetrate the darkness inside. She stood on the front porch and listened for a moment. If Trevor was inside, she should have heard him. She thought of calling out to him, but she had seen too many movies where the girl called out just in time to find a machete slicing through her abdomen. She had wanted to keep her abdomen together and based on the day’s events, a quiet approach seemed to be the safest way in keeping all her body parts unsliced.
She entered the living room and stopped after taking a few steps. She knew she wasn’t alone and she wasn’t meaning Trevor, something else waited for her. She had always seen spirits, but now she had uncovered a new talent, sensing them. Perhaps she always had this talent, but it was a subtle hair raised on the back of the neck type of feeling. This new feeling was an intense in your face, heart racing, cold to the bone chill that screamed, “We’re here!”
If spirits were in the home and they most certainly were, walking around in the dark only put the burden on her as she was sure the dead didn’t have problems seeing in the dark. She snapped on the lamp closest to the front window and was surprised that the light wasn’t as bright as it should have been.
The light appeared bright when met directly, but as she followed its path out into the room, it seemed to dim quickly and almost completely fade before it crossed the middle of the room. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
Moving across the room, she switched on another lamp that sat directly diagonal to the one she had just turned on and the light splashed outward chasing the darkness from the far wall out towards the hallway and kitchen area, but it dimmed as it reached the middle of the room which made no sense to her. The light on one side of the room and the light on the opposite side lit up almost all the areas but left a darkness in the center, almost a complete circle of blackness that seemed as thick as fog but as dark as night.
She walked around the couch, back towards the front door as the ball of darkness remained in the center of the living room. The darkness didn’t quite reach the floor but hovered just above it and seemed almost as round as a circle, not huge but not small either. She had walked entirely around it and couldn’t determine how deep it was. From any angle, it seemed as if she were looking directly at it.
The more she stared at it, the more it baffled her. She found herself inches away from it without any memory of walking towards it. It seemed to have a shimm
er to it, a wave of motion that she didn’t detect before. The light that cast from the lamp behind her did nothing to penetrate the darkness before her. The more she looked at it, the more at peace she felt.
She raised her hand keeping it a few inches from the dark mass. It didn’t let off any heat, and it made no sound to identify what she was looking at. Somehow she sensed that it saw her, it yearned for her, and it needed her. She realized she was referring to the mass as a living thing but as bizarre as it was to her, it also seemed right.
This was not what waited for her, this felt more comforting, safe. Whatever the cause of it, she felt glad to be in its presence. She wondered if she could walk through it if it would take her somewhere overwhelmingly peaceful.
She could no less look away from the mass than look through it. She leaned closer; her nose was only an inch or two from the mass as a ripple began from the top and quickly rolled down. The room began to grow darker; she could see nothing more than the complete blackness before her, around her. She felt neither warm nor cold, and the utter silence was soothing.
Movement of something caught her attention. She didn’t see it nor did she hear it but more sensed it. The entire room was dark, but as she gazed deeper in front of her, she could see a small dot of white, a light perhaps growing in the distance. She wasn’t sure if she was reaching out in front of her but she felt that she should be as the light either moved towards her or grew larger from a stationary location.
As the light grew so did the realization that she was no longer in her living room, the room had vanished, and she saw darkness all around her. She took a breath but couldn’t feel it, couldn’t sigh or stutter, or scream. She tried to scream, but the saturation of complete silence overwhelmed any sound she tried to make.
She couldn’t tell if she was standing still or moving in circles. She looked towards the light, no heat radiated from it, but it scared her. Shadows crossed the path of the light as it moved towards her, she couldn’t make out any shapes, but she heard them, voices, whispers, faint cry’s echoed around her. The voices spoke in a murmur, so faint she couldn’t make out any words, so quick she felt like a timer was counting down to zero, an anticipation of nothing good. The peacefulness that once brushed alongside her quickly turned into a blind panic the more she watched the light. Closing her eyes, wishing she was anywhere else, a voice, a single word erupted out of the darkness, echoed through her ears, loud and clear, her name.
She kept her eyes closed, letting out a breath, she felt her hands over her face. She opened her eyes and peeked through her fingers to find her living room once more. The blackness was gone, no longer hovering in the center of the room. Unsure if she felt safe enough to lower her defenses, she kept her hands over her face when she heard her name once more. Lowering her hands, she turned around and found her sister standing a few feet in front of her, tears in her eyes.
Tears streaked down her sister's cheeks, the woeful look in her eyes almost brought her to tears. She walked over to her sister who stood by the front door. She wanted to reach out and hug her sister and although she appeared as solid as anything else in the room, she knew she couldn’t.
“What were you thinking? Don’t do that, ever. You hear me?”
Her sister’s words seemed to swell up in her ears, echoing each syllable into a steady ring. She clasped her hands over her ears to ward of the ringing. It was as if she were in a tunnel and the lasting echo bouncing off concrete walls lingered until the words slowly faded. She lowered her hands as the last remnants shrank to a whisper.
She never knew a spirit could cause a physical reaction; furthermore, she had no idea what she did to cause such a reaction from her sister. Looking up at her sister, she seemed to be just as shocked as her wide open eyes and hanging mouth suggested.
“What the hell?” Emery shot out, still puzzled over her sister's actions. Melissa stood quiet, her eyes glared at her. Melissa seemed to be sneering at her which made no sense. What was going on? When a crash erupted from behind her, she realized that Melissa wasn’t looking at her but behind her.
Turning around, no one loomed behind her. The crash which sounded like a dozen of books falling to the floor came from an open door at the end of the hall, her room.
She took a step towards the room when her sister said, “Someone is here.”
She had forgotten about Trevor, with everything that had happened in the last few minutes, she realized that Trevor must be in her room. She was going to kill him if he messed up her room. Leaving her sister behind, she marched down the hall.
“Relax sis, it’s only my soon to be dead best friend.”
She stopped just before the open door when her sister appeared in front of her. She had almost walked right through her. The sight of seeing her sister appear and disappear still unnerved her.
She could have easily walked through her, but she felt that would have been a type of disrespect and the last thing she wanted to do was disrespect a spirit, especially if the spirit was her sister.
“It’s not safe here.”
She wished her sister could just spit it out if she had something to say. She was still in befuddlement over the episode in the living room now with her cryptic warning, her patience was drawing thin.
“If you want to tell me something then say it. I don’t have time for this, and don’t think I have forgotten about you leaving me at Renna’s because I haven’t. And back there in the living room, you better tell me what is going on.”
Melissa stood looking back at her. She could see her sister wanted to say something, her mouth opened partially and then closed. Her eyes looked away, and Emery walked through her sister.
When she entered her bedroom, the first thing she noticed was that the dresser had toppled over. Contents that once sat on top of the dresser, candles, and books, were spewed across the floor. Her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach when she saw legs protruding from beneath the dresser. The dresser had fallen face first and now rested directly on top of the upper body, while legs extended back towards the bed.
She yelled Trevor’s name as she tried to move the dresser off of him. The dresser was solid oak, with the drawers full, this only added to the weight as she attempted to push it up. Her fingers found a hold on each side but then slipped off as she tried to lift it. She didn’t want to it to fall back on top of him if she lost her grip so she tried to tilt it to one side, away from the bed but the bottom corner of the dresser was nudged up against the wall which made it difficult to maneuver.
She called out to him again, but he remained motionless. She bent down at the knees; using both her hands gripping on one side she pulled the dresser from the wall and then lifted the dresser a little while the drawers and all their contents spilled onto the floor and over Trevor. Void of the drawers, the dresser, was easier to move, and she heaved it away from him and landed on its back towards the closet.
She looked down at Trevor and then stopped. The closet door was open. Her heart began a cadence in her chest as she looked back towards the closet. She saw the shoes, black smudged boots that were as foreign to her closet as a yellow sundress. The boots took a step forward and then a barrel of a shotgun raised to greet her.
Chapter Eight