by Lotta Smith
“Don’t panic!” I told myself in a freaky tone. “It’s just a stupid blackout only happening in this unit!”
Who was I kidding? I didn’t know. But I had to put on a bold face with a thick skin and pretend to ignore whatever was going on in this apartment. Perhaps the reason for my tough façade had something to do with me in that I did realize whatever was happening was definitely sinister.
I thought I had been speaking out loud, but that wasn’t the case. For some reason I couldn’t quite fathom, my body was locked, and all the speech was happening in my head. All I could manage to produce were some noises like “Wohhhhh…” and “Ahhhh…” as if I were having a severe episode of speech impairment.
In the meanwhile, my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, and I could see the damage to my phone was minimal. I tried to reach for my phone and its back to reassemble it into one piece, but I couldn’t. My body didn’t follow the commands coming from my brain.
The coldness on the back of my neck didn’t go away. Even worse, the situation seemed to have escalated to a whole new level. What had initially felt like a piece of ice now felt like a cold hand, and it moved from my neck, down to my back, and somewhere even lower.
If it continued down the lower parts of my body, I could have just waited until it was over, but that wasn’t the case. The coldness going down my spine returned the way it came, and then I felt freezing on both of my upper arms.
Yes, you heard me right. It wasn’t a hand but two hands.
Every moment the cold hands moved over my body, I felt my body temperature going down. I was so cold I feared I’d be found dead from hypothermia tomorrow morning. It wasn’t only me getting cold. The room itself was turning into a freezer. I could see my breath turning white as the moon illuminated where I was. I’d seen my breath turning white when we visited Chicago in winter. The temperature had been in the low thirties, and I was fascinated to witness my breath taking on a visible form, but the locals said it was nothing special.
I did a mental full-body shiver. According to one widely believed theory, people tended to see their lives flashing in front of their eyes when they were dying, and I was seeing my childhood trip to Chicago like that had happened only yesterday. One thing I was sure of—it wasn’t a good sign.
I knew what I had to do: call for help and get out of here. Jack Adams said I could call him in case of an emergency, and if this wasn’t one, nothing would qualify.
Again, I tried to reach my phone, but I was getting even colder. With my fingers numb and my knees and shoulders frozen, I couldn’t move. If I could scream, someone might have called the police, but I couldn’t even utter an audible sound. Every time I attempted to produce speech, some kind of a whistle came from the back of my throat, but that was about it. The coldness had escalated into pain. I was seriously afraid of losing my fingers and toes from frostbite. Maybe I should have worried about my life rather than the tips of my body, but sometimes, it’s the details that matter the most.
My teeth chattered from the coldness that was going to kill me, and I got teary.
I was cold, scared, and devastated. On top of all that, I was angry.
I was angry for my stupidity in agreeing to take this crazy test, knowing that I was dealing with a haunted property with paranormal activities. I was so preoccupied with scoring employment, and I made a horribly bad decision. If I could time travel, I’d bitch-slap myself five hours ago and stop myself from participating in this absurd test.
Wait a minute! I thought. Why should I slap myself? That was the stupidest move I could ever make. If I could really travel through time, I’d rather bitch-slap him instead! That crazy Jack Adams!
If I ended up dead during his idiotic test, I was so going to haunt him like hell.
While I fumed, frozen in place, I caught something snapping and cracking nearby.
I was familiar with those sounds. Since I had been a child, I often caught sounds that resembled the noises of dry branches snapping and cracking. One of my classmates said it was a kind of poltergeist called lapping, and my parents said it was the sounds of the wood in our home making noises as the changing humidity made the wood expand and contract.
Back in the old days, I preferred to believe my parents instead of my classmates—mostly because a poltergeist sounded scarier than changes in humidity. Also, I didn’t believe that I was some kind of a medium in spite of being named as the successor of Great Mama Jane. Even when Jack said I had a high potential for such skills, I didn’t fully believe him. Then again, assuming from everything happening tonight, Jack’s comment about me being something like a ghost magnet could have been right.
As I reached something like a conclusion, I noticed I was breathing more easily than a moment ago. I wondered if I could communicate with whatever was making this room super cold.
“Hello? What do you want?” I called to the coldness. I couldn’t talk yet, so I decided to use my mind. Of course, I was still unhappy about the situation, so I added, “Why don’t you stop making a freezer out of this apartment? In case you haven’t noticed, you won’t get anything by making me uncomfortable. If there’s something, anything, you want me to do, you can just tell me.”
I didn’t mention the part about me having limitations, but my goal was to survive this mess. Anyway, my tactics seemed to have worked. The ice-cold air that had been depriving me of mobility seemed to have loosened up a little.
Before I knew it, the coldness evaporated into something like a fog. The unbearable coldness I’d been forced to endure had disappeared, and I felt my body temperature returning to normal. Still, that didn’t mean the paranormal activities were over.
What seemed like a fog accumulated into something like a human-shaped shadow. Even though it was blurry and shadowy, I knew something was standing in front of me. The being standing in front of me was a woman. Thanks to having accepted my skill to see things invisible for most people, I didn’t worry or wonder why I could see the colorless shadow and why I knew it was a woman.
Anyway, I had something way more critical and worrisome to deal with. I wasn’t alone, and whoever was with me was some type of ghost. To make the situation even more complicated, she came close to me without making a sound.
I jumped up, taking a step backward out of instinct, and she came after me. As if just coming close to me wasn’t good enough, she looked into my face with the intensity of a scientist examining a specimen under the microscope. No matter how hard I tried to keep distance between us, she kept chasing me. The distance between our faces was less than an inch.
“Nooo!” I screamed, and I was both frightened and surprised by my own voice. I was frightened by the loudness of my own voice, and at the same time, I was astonished that I was able to produce sound now. It was a pleasant surprise.
I realized I’d regained the ability to move in the past few moments. If I recalled it right, my muscles had been locked and I couldn’t move. In retrospect, I wasn’t even breathing normally. But the suffocating feelings and shortness of breath were gone, and I was breathing normally.
I reached for my phone and the back to it and started to run. Those reactions weren’t based on deep thinking and were more like a reflex. I didn’t care about passing the test or getting hired anymore. I knew one thing; if I stayed in this crazy, haunted apartment, I’d end up dead. According to the scary movies I’d watched so far, the stupid character who failed to run away always ended up suffering from a tragic death, and I wasn’t planning to become another dumb blonde.
I ran and ran really fast. If I were running the women’s three-meter sprint at the Olympics, I’d have definitely brought home a gold medal for the US.
The moment I reached the door, I grabbed the doorknob and turned it like crazy. I was ready for another sprint, but the door didn’t budge, much less open. I fumbled with the lock, attempting to unlock it, but it was already unlocked. So, I decided to go with my last resort—body-slamming the door with all my weight. The door should hav
e squeaked or something, but it was like I was attempting to break the wall of a fortress.
“Why? Why aren’t you moving? Don’t tell me you’re broken!” I demanded, fully aware the door wouldn’t be answering me. “Seriously! You’ve got to open and let me go—” I felt like I could go on forever with my whining, but I knew I had to stop.
I wasn’t complaining anymore. More precisely, I wasn’t even breathing now.
Footsteps came from behind me.
All the hairs on the back of my neck stood—as if they had their own wills and intentions and were getting ready to flee from the hellhole of this unit. Someone—or rather, something—was approaching me. Whoever came toward me was wearing no shoes as I caught the slapping sound bare feet typically made on a floor.
“No shoes! No service!” I declared, recalling the sign I’d seen in stores. Not that I was doing business here, but maybe whoever approached me might have turned back to put on shoes.
Then again, that was only wishful thinking, and the reality was slightly different. Following my declaration, the footsteps stopped for a moment but resumed almost immediately.
“Oh my God! Holy Mary! God help me!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs, but nothing came to my rescue. I’d never regretted my infrequent visits to church so strongly. If only I’d visited God more frequently, the chances of him remembering me and giving me some helping hands could have been bigger, but—
It was coming closer to me.
“Director Adams!” I shouted, hoping to be heard. “Jack Adams! You’ve got to come! This test thingy isn’t working! Mr. Adams, please help me for crissake!” I banged the door while screaming like crazy, but no one came to help me. It was like I’d stumbled into some kind of a gap between this world and a parallel world, and I was invisible and inaudible to other people.
While I kept myself busy with futile attempts to escape from this mess, the footsteps came even closer to me. I felt whatever it was coming to get me. If I were a stronger and smarter woman, I’d have come here with something like a massive gun with purifying bullets, and I’d have brought the situation under control in a moment or two.
But I was no ghostbuster. I didn’t have the guts to turn back and confront whatever was approaching.
I was holding my phone and its back in a death grip. With the speed of light, I put the back on the phone. That should have been good enough to revive it, but it wasn’t. When I pressed the power button, the screen flashed at me and went dead.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I exclaimed, keeping my mouth wide open.
The sound of shoeless footsteps stopped—right behind me.
The coldness was definitely, absolutely unmistakable. I could feel the ghost’s ice-cold breath over the back of my neck. It was so close to me that I suspected it was already overlapping my body.
“Ahhhhh!” I heard an earsplitting scream. It took me some time to realize I was screaming.
CHAPTER 7
“Ahhhhhhh! Oh my God! Oh my God! OhmiGod!” Shrieking like a banshee, I turned on my heels and ran for my life. Technically, I didn’t know if the direction I was headed for was good or bad, but I wanted some space between the ghost and myself.
I went back to the room I had been staying in for the past several hours. What was I thinking? I didn’t know. But when I jumped inside, I caught the energy barrier Jack Adams had previously created for me illuminated by the street lamp outside the windows. I also saw my breath turning white each time I panted. It was like I was staying in an unoccupied cabin in Alaska in the middle of winter.
Okay, so when I saw him arranging the cards in a circle, eighty percent of me had wondered if he was serious, but I had no other option for the time being, so I hopped into the center of the barrier.
The unbearable coldness that used to surround me seemed to have faded away. My eyes widened. Inside the energy barrier was a lot warmer than the rest of the unit. When I hopped inside the circle, I felt nothing like physical walls, but something was definitely separating the loop from the outside of it.
Still breathing heavily, I knitted my eyebrows, wondering who Jack Adams was.
He’d been operating H&H Management all on his own, and this particular section required the sixth sense. Then again, I’d never met anyone capable of creating energy barriers. Not even Great Mama Jane. She’d named me her successor, but I didn’t know her very well. She’d passed away just a few months later after naming me her successor, but if she could have made barriers, my parents and other relatives should have mentioned something about her homemade barriers.
Whoever Jack was, I was being protected in the barrier he’d created for me, and that was what mattered the most to me right now. Inside the barrier circle, I sat, holding my knees. Breathing as calmly as possible, I observed my surroundings.
I caught the footsteps coming from the entrance. They were the same shoeless footsteps that had chased me, and they were heading for me.
In the deafening silence, my heart started to thump in coordination with the footsteps despite my brain playing “Save Me, Napa Valley” in the tune of “Save Me, San Francisco.”
For the first time in my life, I realized listening to the approaching footsteps of someone who shouldn’t be staying with me was the scariest thing that could happen to someone. In addition, I understood why the tenants in this unit moved out like people going through a revolving door. The footsteps were subtle but real, and they kept coming closer to me.
Seriously, no one with a sprinkle of sanity would want to stay here for long. Under normal circumstances, I’d have started to hyperventilate, but I was too afraid of being caught by the owner of the footsteps. So, I kept my mouth shut and sat still, pretending to be a chunk of rock. Pushing my nose between my knees, I wondered if such a position with a name like “exhausted caterpillar” existed.
At this point, I was prepared to spend the rest of the night in the barrier. I felt safer inside the weird circle made of cards with unreadable letters. A part of me wished I could sleep away the scary night in the barrier, and other parts of me warned it wasn’t safe to do so as I might fall out of the secure area in my sleep.
Ten seconds or so later, the footsteps were very close to me—so close that I could have touched the coldness if I reached for the ghost. Of course, I didn’t do that. I wasn’t a genius, but I wasn’t stupid enough to deliberately expose myself to an apparent danger.
In retrospect, my freak-o-meter was indicating a low level, and that was why I was capable of amusing myself with such silly imaginings.
The slowly approaching footsteps made a stop in front of the barrier. For a moment, it became quiet, like the ghost decided to forget about me. I was dead wrong.
The footsteps gained speed.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta—
What used to be a walk had turned into a jog, and before I grasped the situation, it had turned into a full-blown sprint. Not that I was certain if using “blown” to modify sprint was appropriate, but the footsteps trotted so fast, prompting my heart to beat faster and faster.
I didn’t need to wonder what the ghost wanted. I knew the spirit was searching for me. For what purpose, I didn’t know, but I knew the spirit was somewhat desperate. The footsteps were now doing a fast and furious dance that made me cover my ears with my hands.
Still pressing my nose between my knees, I felt like I was about to go crazy. I couldn’t take the horror and fear anymore.
Help! Someone, anyone, help me! I pleaded without uttering those words aloud. Thanks to having regained control over my body, I was able to talk. Then again, it didn’t mean I’d forgotten my fear over the source of all the paranormal activities that drove the previous residents like a rat repellent that got rid of the rodents.
I didn’t intend to let the ghost know about my whereabouts. She might not be able to see me for the time being, but that didn’t mean she was devoid of power to come and get me by destroying the energy barrier.
Seriou
sly, I’d be able to welcome Jack Adams as far as he’s gonna rescue me from this hellhole. I bit my lower lip when I realized I was thinking about him. I recalled his rather cold demeanor and “Huh? Who cares? I don’t care about you” attitude, and I felt my blood pressure and body temperature skyrocket. I was determined to file a formal complaint about him if I managed to leave this apartment from hell.
So far, all he’d done was throw me into a spooky apartment with a serious haunting which made The Blair Witch Project a child’s play. I was completely, absolutely infuriated when I recalled the way he had arched one eyebrow oh so breezily, but at the same time, my anger helped me forget about all the horror for a moment.
What’s this aptitude test? Does he really do this kind of work for a living? I clenched my teeth and balled my hands into fists. Then again, does that mean I’ll be stuck with this kind of work if I am hired?
I blanched the moment I realized the meaning of the worst-case scenario. Oh my God! I couldn’t do that. I was just an ordinary girl from Napa Valley. I just happened to have some bad luck in keeping my employment and a crazy great-grandma who believed she was a witch. And, just because she’d named me as her successor witch, it wouldn’t make me a witch, would it?
After all, it was just her alleged words, but my relatives seemed to take her seriously. If I were indeed a witch, I would have been able to cast a spell and fly with a broom. But, no. I used to try riding a broom when I was a third grader, but the broom never floated, let alone flew. As for casting spells, the ghost I’d encountered after the previous final interview proved my inability to use magic. If I were a decent witch, I’d have fended him off without breaking a sweat, and I wouldn’t be squashed in the energy barrier Jack had created.
It was clear now that I wasn’t cut out for working for H&H Management Department at Quest Realty. I’d never really thought about a life involving a lot of paranormal activities, but in my opinion, that just meant I was an ordinary person. After all, most people spent their lives never encountering haunted properties. I was seriously freaking out because of the footsteps of a ghost. I didn’t feel like I’d be able to make a living by being deeply involved with such properties for a long time. Of course, I could consider a career with Quest Realty merely a small step for my next career, but I wasn’t naïve enough to expect a ton of companies would be seeking a young professional with a brief experience in investigating hexed properties—that’s if I would even be hired for this job.