by Kipjo Ewers
“Who the …?” He was about to ask until he got a better view. “Is … is that a doll?”
“Yeah,” Fred nodded. “It’s a doll.”
He walked into the bedroom past Fred to get a better view. Standing at the foot of the bed with his thick mitts on his hips, Barney tilted his head to give it a good look over, while Fred remained cowering in the hallway.
“Well I feel insulted,” Barney snorted.
“What?” Fred asked while poking his head into the room.
“Dude, it’s not the first time I’ve been blown off for some pussy,” Barney turned glaring at him. “But you’re gonna lie to me over some rubber pussy?”
“It’s not like that …” Fred answered while stepping into the bedroom.
“I mean she looks banging,” Barney gave his approval. “It’s one of those Real Dolls, right? So, did you break her in yet, and if so how many …?”
“I didn’t buy it for that!” Fred furious snapped at him. “I bought it …because I couldn’t sleep.”
Barney shut down his humor as he turned to give his friend his full attention.
“I haven’t had a good night sleep in almost a year,” Fred dropped his gaze to the floor. “Sleeping pills, warm milk, and stupid relaxation music, nothing worked. I even changed the fucking mattress. I saw a video of this guy from Japan, whose wife died. He never got used to sleeping alone, so he bought this life size doll to help. I figured if it worked for him, it could help me. So, I bought it, so I could…”
“So, you could get some sleep,” Barney finished his sentence.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” Barney turned back to it giving it another look over. “Well aside from the whole big eye look, she’s not the worst thing you can curl up next to. So, what’s the problem? It’s not working?”
“I’m sleeping better,” Fred swallowed. “But for the past two days …some weird shit has been happening.”
“Like what?” Barney asked turning back to him.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Fred shook his head.
“Like what, you being haunted?” Barney smirked.
Fred raised his head giving his friend a frightened irritated look, which made Barney choke on his smirk.
“Alright,” Barney motioned. “Let’s go out and talk about this.”
“Barney …”
“Hey!” He held up a stern finger to Fred. “You ain’t welching out of us going out over some alleged spook! If what you’re telling me is true, this is the last place you want to be tonight! We’ll go to the End Zone, you tell me what’s been going down, and we’ll figure this out, alright?”
Fred glanced at the doll, then at his friend imposing his will under his roof. He nodded giving in and walked out of the room with Barney following. As they exited the apartment, a bad feeling washed over Fred as he turned once more looking down the hallway to his bedroom. For some unexplainable reason, there was a tiny part of him that did not want to leave.
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Twenty minutes later, Fred sat in front of Barney with a pitcher of beer, a basket of steak fries, and some burgers spilling his guts. He left nothing out as he broke down the weird events that had taken place at his house since the doll arrived.
Barney sat there absorbing all the info, asking two separate questions for clarification purposes. Fred leaned back in his seat having finished his run down, while Barney folded his arms tucking his chin into his chest to process what he just heard. He then threw out his first question.
“Fred … is it possible that you could be pulling a Tyler Durden?”
“Say what?” Fred asked with a perplexed expression.
“Hear me out,” Barney held up his hand. “You admitted you haven’t been sleeping for the past year. It could be possible that you’re unknowingly doing these things while you are asleep.”
“What about what Ms. Santiago said she saw?”
“You said Ms. Santiago heard someone coming from your apartment, she did not see,” Barney corrected him. “You live in between two tenants on the second and fourth floor; it could have been one of them she heard.”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” Fred lowered his gaze to his mug of beer.
“Brah, I was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana before my parents dragged me to the land of sun tan and Gin and Juice,” Barney glared at him. “Which happens to be the biggest spook state in the entire U.S of A. Not only am I the one person capable of believing you; I can tell you shit that would strip several shades off your black ass.”
Fred answered Barney’s comment with a semi-obnoxious eye roll.
“So, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. What I am saying is it’s better to consider all the scenarios before jumping to the conclusion that you are haunted, that’s what the Ghostbusters would do.”
“Okay Venkman,” Fred leaned forward. “So, by your assessment, my only option is to go home and wait till I’m dragged out of my bed one night and into a closet to have god knows what done to me.”
“Or we could head down to Walmart after this, and get some of those mini surveillance cameras that connect to your phone,” Barney responded before taking a sip of the beer in his mug. “We put one in your bedroom, the living room and the kitchen, and then you can stay at my place tonight.”
“What are you going to tell Cynthia?”
“Please,” Barney snorted while rolling his eyes. “Like I need to give her any explanation as to why you are coming over. She either acts like she’s either married or gave birth to you.”
“That’s not something I wanted to hear,” Fred shook his head wearing a disturbed visage.
“Oh, it’s harmless you little bitch,” Barney retorted. “We’ll tell her I had little too much to drink, and so you drove me home, which means you need to stop drinking right now.”
Fred leaned back in his chair and nodded giving into Barney’s plan.
“So how long should we run this experiment?”
“Two, three days tops,” Barney shrugged, “More than enough time to deduce if you got Annabelle sleeping next to you.”
Fred answered Barney’s joke with an ice-cold blank expression.
“A, that’s not even funny …B, don’t ever call it that again.”
Barney sheepishly agreed, before taking another sip from his glass.
“It was a little funny,” he got in before the sip.
CHAPTER 4
Fred only lasted two of the three planned days he was supposed to stay at Barney and Cynthia’s home. It wasn’t the fact that for two straight mornings he woke up to a curious three-year-old little girl who wandered into his temporary room with a bright grin staring at him while he slept, or the million and one questions Cynthia subtly pelted him with that was getting more on Barney’s nerves than his.
He was able to even to withstand his godson innocently asking him if he was still sad and missed Aunty Mary.
What Fred couldn’t take any longer was the fact that he could not sleep. His insomnia had returned with a vengeance granting him less than three hours sleep each night. It was so bad that he had to carpool with Barney just to get a couple more minutes of sleep time before going to the office.
His desire for a decent night’s sleep trumped any fear of an apparition haunting his home, whose only offense was cleaning his house, ordering groceries, and making him lunch.
Not to mention there was zero activity of any kind since he began monitoring the apartment. During the morning in his office, lunch break, and after work, he and Barney would replay the feed running on his tablet to find anything that would qualify as credible haunting only to come up with nothing.
The doll did not move an inch from its spot on the bed, nor did any of the furniture. Part of his exhaustion attributed to analyzing near twenty-four-hour video footage looking for even a light to flicker only to come out with zilch.
Fre
d began to believe that Barney’s over the top assumption was not that far-fetched. Maybe he was sleep walking and cleaning without even knowing it. Maybe he ordered the groceries and did not realize he did it because he was so fatigued, Fred started to see a sliver of possibility that he made his lunch the night before, and forgot that he took it out that morning due to him rushing.
Even though he did get two good night’s sleep before the incidents and staying at Barney’s house, it had been almost a year of back to back sleepless nights.
Externally he appeared to be fine, but internally on a physical and mental level, he was breaking down. He realized he had to repair his ship before Fred crashed and burned with no possibility of recovery; to do that, he had to go home.
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After work, Fred told Barney he was going home. Barney, in turn, both respected and didn’t challenge his decision. They drove back to Barney’s house to collect his car, and for him to both say thank you and goodbye to Cynthia and the kids. She reminded him about Ethan’s birthday in a couple of weeks, and to please keep in touch.
“So, what are you going to do when you get home?” Barney asked while walking him to his car.
“I think I’m going to get rid of the doll.”
“Really?” Barney asked with a raised eyebrow while folding his arms.
“Yeah,” Fred nodded. “It’s probably all in my head, but all the weirdness began to happen when I bought it. I don’t need something to make me more messed up than I already am.”
“You’re going to returning it?”
“Can’t,” Fred shook his head. “They don’t take returns for health reasons, even though I never touched the thing like that, and two, it was custom made from their Hybrid line. I’m going to have to try to get my money back selling it on eBay or something.”
“How much did you drop on that thing?” Barney inquired.
“Around twelve thousand,” Fred calculated off the top of his head.
“Holy shit!” Barney choked while giving him eyes of disbelief. “You seriously spent that much on a damn doll?”
“It’s just money,” Fred shrugged. “You can’t take it with you.”
“Well, throw some this dude’s way the next time you decide to be frivolous!” Barney threw up his hands.
“Yeah …yeah …see you at work tomorrow.”
“You sure you’re going to be alright man?” Barney followed up with sincere concern in his voice.
“I’ll be alright,” Fred reassured him. “I’ll text you when I get home.”
They ended their conversation with a handshake and hug. As Fred hopped into his vehicle backing out of the driveway, the fear he had from three days ago began to set in again.
It started with a tiny part of his mind wondering if he was walking into an ambush when he got home.
A disgusted Fred cursed and admonished himself for having such thoughts, forcefully reminding himself that everything he had been experiencing was all in his head, a mental break due to lack of sleep.
As he did so, he took his time getting home.
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Forty minutes later, a worn-out Fred made it into his apartment. His vision became fuzzy the last ten minutes on the road. He shook out the cobwebs and picked up the speed to make it onto his block safely.
Now in his apartment without getting into a long conversation with Ms. Santiago, Fred wanted nothing more than to collapse face first into his bed and go comatose.
There was just one big problem.
The crushing feeling, he felt the morning before the lunch box incident was back, and it was rattling his bones.
However, a tired Fred wasn’t terrified Fred, but a severely pissed off Fred.
“No! No!” He roared. “This is all in your head! All in your friggin head! Enough!”
He stomped with purpose heading to reclaim his bedroom. Seeing it sitting on his bed as if it was the Queen of Sheba only made his blood boil. Fred stormed over to its side of the bed, set it up lifting it into single shoulder fireman’s carry, and hauled it back into the living room. Remembering it was still an over twelve-thousand-dollar item he had to resell, he dropped it as carefully as possible into the box it came in.
He stood there looking down at it with a foul, hateful glare.
“Worst fucking thing I ever bought. Your ass has got to go.”
For the rest of the night, Fred was determined to get back into his routine.
Finally giving into fatigue, Fred shut off all the lights in the apartment before heading into the back. He didn’t even give the doll a second look as he trudged to his room. Fred stripped out of his work clothes and was about to head over to the hamper to drop them in. With a snarl, he defiantly slammed them down onto the floor in front of the bed.
After brushing, gargling, and spitting, he shut off all the lights in his bedroom and slid underneath his sheets.
“I ain’t afraid of no damn ghosts,” he muttered to himself, “Because they don’t exist.”
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That night, Fred both exhausted and frustrated lay in his bed unable to sleep again. He was unclear whether it was due to fear he was fighting desperately to suppress, or the fact that he was alone again. For about the umpteenth time he turned over glancing at the Sterling clock on her side of the bed. It ticked away as it read 12:15 in the morning. A small part of him was tempted to go outside for it. What little sense he had left smacked him across the face. Too much weird stuff had gone on since he brought it home. In the morning, he had to get rid of it. It may cost him sleep again, but that was what medication was for even though he did not want to go that route.
Fred huffed in frustration as he rolled back over facing his side of the room staring at the wall. He slammed his eyelids shut fighting to go to sleep.
What he got was something far more terrifying.
Sleep paralysis.
Or in his case awake paralysis.
The atmosphere in the room became weighty again, as his entire body locked up. The only movement available to him was his eyeballs, which flailed around wildly while he screamed within his skull. It was not the first time he had sleep paralysis, his constant lack of decent sleep brought it on. After the first three instances, he learned to cope and ride it out until he eventually came out of it.
This was different.
This time it felt as if he was being crushed and suffocated.
Fred closed his eyes and concentrated on calming himself down. He still had control of his lungs and breathing, so he took steps to slow it down. It would be over soon, Fred thought to himself. He just had to endure it for a bit longer, and it would be over.
He could feel himself feeling a bit better despite his predicament.
Until he heard it.
His ears picked up a loud rustling commotion from the living room followed by a hefty thud.
The first thing he lost control of was his heart beat.
Next to follow was some considerable shuffling and then …footsteps.
Or what he believed to be footsteps.
Steps that were moving from the living room and making their way down the hallway, he did not need to guess their final destination as he once again fought to go to the point of giving every functioning muscle in his body a severe case of spasms.
Words like terrified and horrified were childish adjectives to how he felt at that moment. There wasn’t a word in any language that could describe how he felt as time stood still trapping him with just that sound getting louder and closer to his ear.
It had the sound of something slapping against the hardwood floor, like bare skin. It was slow and clumsy, but not heavy. It was also taking its time, which made Fred’s ordeal all the more torturous.
Fred became a littl
e boy again, abandoning the futile attempt to move, he closed his eyes wishing for the bad thing getting closer to go away.
The sound finally stopped when it reached his doorway.
The next thing he heard was the clicking his door made when it unlocked, and the groaning of the door hinges he kept forgetting to oil. He did not need to look up as he felt the presence of something standing in the doorway.
Within his head, he whimpered, as he could not even pull the bed sheet over his head for some imaginary comfort or protection.