by Lotta Smith
What if something really creepy, such as human hair, some kind of cursing dolls, or used voodoo stuff with chicken or goat blood was hiding in it? If that were the case, I’d truly appreciate it if I could see the contents without opening it. Then again, no matter how hard I’d tried, I couldn’t get so much as a sneak peek at the contents of the sealed and heavily taped envelope.
So much for being a witch’s successor.
I took a deep breath and reached for a piece of craft tape adhering the envelope to the door. Collecting all of my senses and nerves in my fingertips, I tried to detect anything creepy or gross. I felt nothing, so I kept peeling the tape away until a brown envelope that seemed to have spent many years stuck on the door, like a gecko superglued to the wall, became visible.
Once it was fully visible, I realized it was thicker than I’d expected. Slightly out of breath and shaking from nerves, I opened the envelope. Inside were more envelopes in smaller sizes. I didn’t know how long they’d been behind the sliding door, but each of them had both the sender’s and recipient’s names and addresses on it.
I picked up some of them that looked newer. All the envelopes had stickers with “Wrong address—return to the sender” written on them.
“What’s the matter with these letters?” I frowned for the umpteenth time this night. I could imagine sending a letter to a wrong address—whether out of a simple mistake or if the recipient had moved without forwarding service. Then again, if I sent mail to someone and it turned out to be undeliverable, I’d try to reach the right address or simply give up. “Oh my God—”
The big brown envelope wasn’t the only thing holding undelivered letters. Under that and inside the sliding door were more of the undelivered letters. Some had stickers with “Rejected by the recipient” instead of “Wrong address—undeliverable” on the envelopes.
If I were a minor cast member in a horror flick based on one of those Stephen King novels, I should have been witnessing an example of the extra-scary obsession of the person who kept sending those letters, but I didn’t feel like yelping “Eek!” and doing a full-body shiver. Instead of aggressive obsession and hate-filled feelings, all I could sense was sadness—a deep, persistent, yet loving devastation. Like selfless love gone horribly wrong.
Now that the sobbing ghost had disappeared, I didn’t have the means to confirm if she’d written and sent those letters. Then again, my gut instinct was positive she was the sender. I felt the same sadness and heartache when I touched the returned letters that I felt when I saw the ghost sobbing.
“So, they’re the special something that you wanted me to do something with?” I muttered.
Again, no one answered, but I was sure I was right. When I suggested to the ghost there could be something that I could do for her, she headed to the closet as if she was leading me to the letters.
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to assume that these letters had something to do with the ghost remaining in this apartment for years and years, driving new residents out. When I checked the envelopes, all of them were addressed to Ted Davis in Beverly Hills. As for the sender, the name read Rachel McKenzie.
While inspecting the envelopes, I kept looking around myself. I wasn’t insensitive enough to snoop through a total stranger’s letters—especially without permission. But at the same time, it could be that the ghost had led me to finding the letters and wanted me to read them. Also, it was logical to presume that the ghost was Rachel McKenzie herself. Assuming from the way the letters had been hidden, and the fact that no one before me had managed to find them, Rachel McKenzie, presumably the sender turned ghost, must have concealed them. The only plausible explanation for nobody discovering the letters before me was that the ghost knew where they were hidden and had not wanted anyone except someone who could help her to find the letters.
“So, Rachel. That’s your name, right?” I called out in the room. “Hi there. I’m Fiorentina Valentine. People usually call me Fio. Nice to meet you.”
Rachel didn’t answer me, but the lights stayed on.
“I’m going to open the envelopes. Is that all right with you?” I said. “You know, I’m not sure if I should read those letters. I have no intention to violate your privacy, and if you don’t want me to get nosy, you can just kill the lights again so that I can’t read them. Still, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t make this apartment into a freezer. That was so cold I thought I was going to die from hypothermia.”
I waited for a while, but the lights were on bright and stable, and the room’s temperature didn’t change. So, I took this as a sign of permission—or encouragement—and opened one of the envelopes. Its glue seemed to be degraded, and the envelope opened very easily.
Inside was a sheet of letter paper folded in an impeccable manner. I read the letter out loud.
“My dearest Ted,
“I hope this letter finds you well. I’m writing to you to ask you for a favor. Could you possibly give me a minute to meet you in person and have a little chat—”
Merely reading the beginning of the letter, I was getting overwhelmed by emotion. Something more than words grabbed me in the heart, and my eyes started to well up with tears.
“As your mom, I’ve been always thinking about you and always will be. All I want is for you to know I’d be happy as a clam as long as you’re living a happy life. Still, the separation happened so suddenly, and my heart has been having a hard time catching up with the situation. Ted, please meet with me just once. One minute will be good enough to tell me your farewell for good. I need you to tell me we’re done for good so that I’ll be able to move on. I am absolutely certain that I’ll be able to become your number one cheerleader in the world by learning about your decision to move out to your new life—”
I forced a smile at the midair. “So, Rachel, you had a son. He must have been wonderful.” I was still afraid to the ghost might throw another temper tantrum, and I didn’t have the heart to diss a guy I’d never seen or heard of.
No reply, but I was getting used to that. With all the letters returned unopened, I imagined she and her son were separated for some reason. I had a feeling that the separation didn’t happen amicably, and it was the reason for her to remain in this apartment for such a long time after her death.
In this letter, a time and place for a rendezvous was offered. But as the letter had never been read in the first place, I knew the meeting didn’t happen. I sighed and continued reading the letter.
“I’m always thinking about you. No matter what happens, I love you more than life itself—because I’m your mom.”
After reading the ending of the letter, a big, fat tear trickled down my cheek, and my subtle sniffing had escalated into full-blown sobbing with hiccups and everything.
Rachel the ghost had been scaring the bejesus out of me until a while ago, but the letter’s content was beyond sad. For me, every character of the letter was loaded with emotion, and my heart ached as I read the letter repeatedly.
On top of all that, I was looking at a lot of other letters, and the number of them was so large that I couldn’t hold all the letters using both arms. If others were loaded with as much emotion as the one I’d read, I couldn’t scale the size of the sadness Rachel had been going through all those years.
“Oh my God… This is so sad—” I muttered between hiccups, weeping, and full-blown sobbing. I felt something behind me.
Something soft and fluffy wrapped around my shoulders and back, and I was familiar with that. The feeling was devoid of any warmth of a living person, and I was familiar with the coldness. The ghost was close to me. For a moment, I felt my shoulder muscles tighten, but I relaxed soon. It seemed like the initial fear that had put me into fight-or-flight status had slipped out of me.
“It’s you, Rachel.” I talked to her, but, of course, she didn’t answer. Maybe the ghost wasn’t capable of talking, and maybe I wasn’t sharp enough to catch her words, but she was definitely there with me.
The g
host seemed to be floating behind me and reading the letter with me. The initial aggressiveness and desperation were gone. Her grief was calm but deep and palpably painful.
“So, you wanted to see him—” I didn’t know what to say, but when I started talking, I choked with tears.
The cold air vibrated behind me, and I got a vision of an older, beautiful lady with sad eyes.
“It must have been very difficult, you know. You’ve written so many letters, and—” I stopped short, partly because I was overwhelmed by emotion and partly because I felt the ghost gently stroking my back—as if, she was saying, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Patting the tears off my face with a handkerchief, I imagined what I would do if I were suddenly torn from my family, and I felt my heart aching like it was being clenched in a vice.
At the same time, there was nothing I could do for Rachel. She was dead. Judging by the aged-looking paper of the letter and envelopes, she could have been so for decades.
My tears wouldn’t stop, and it was as if my lacrimal gland had been having a terrible glitch and the overproduced tears kept on flowing outside so as not to lose my head due to a tear-induced explosion.
Rachel cupped my face with her cold palms, like she was trying to comfort me.
“Thanks,” I mumbled between hiccups and sobbing. “I’m really sorry for not being able to help you. Oh, no… I’m so worthless.”
The ghost swayed a little behind me, and I felt her shake her head to deny the latter parts of my comments.
For how long we’d been standing like that I didn’t know, but I caught a lighter shade of indigo in the dark sky. I squinted. Having grown used to seeing the darkness of the night outside, even the slightest hint of welcoming a new day looked too stimulating and bright for me.
At the same time, the coldness on my back went less cold gradually until I felt somewhat hot, and my back started to sweat. I was beginning to feel hot all over my body, and I knew it was the right temperature I was supposed to feel in early September.
I took in the air getting hotter, and I realized Rachel looked clearer than ever. She smiled at me, held my hands, and then she disappeared. “Thank you—”
The voice was extremely calm and faint. I wasn’t sure if I had heard Rachel talking for the first time or if it had been my imagination.
I didn’t dare to dig deeper and figure out if the voice was real or in my imagination—mostly because I was both physically and emotionally exhausted. After everything that had happened during the night of horror and panic, I felt comfortable falling asleep on the hard, wooden floor. Before I could give anything more thought, I had passed out.
CHAPTER 9
When I woke up, the sun was high in the sky, brightly shining while toasting the air, ground, and the apartment unit I was sleeping in.
Still lying on the hard floor in the room devoid of furniture, I wiped my forehead with my hand. I was literally drenched in sweat.
“Come on, what’s happened to the air conditioner?” I groaned, opening an eye. “Oh—” I muttered, not quite grasping the situation.
The first thing that caught my attention was the fluorescent lights that were still on. As I looked around, I saw one of the sliding closet doors with a large hole in it, several envelopes, and the cards with Chinese characters on them that Jack had used to make an energy barrier.
Extra sweaty, I grimaced and stood up. The heat was now the most disturbing thing about this situation. “Seriously, I could die of heat stroke.” I collected the letters and the cards scattered in the room and put them all together in neat stacks. I opened all the windows I could access. In retrospect, I could have switched on the AC, but I was seriously craving some fresh air.
Unlike the SoCal reputed for wonderful weather, it was not just hot but uncharacteristically humid—prompting all my sweat glands to go hyperactive.
“I thought this neighborhood had better weather. Maybe residents would run away without the ghosts in this apartment. Seriously, this building needs some serious work with the humidity.” Shaking my head, astonished by the uncomfortableness of the place, I headed for the bathroom. In spite of all the spooks and everything, I’d slept well, and my mouth felt sticky and nasty with morning breath. On top of all that, I was having a major emergency with my urinary tract after going through the whole night without a trip to the lady’s room. I felt like my bladder was about to explode.
After relieving myself, I took a moment to groom myself. I went so far as to look into the mirror. I looked deceptively refreshed, and I was the only person in the mirror. Even at home, I often found myself making every effort to avoid looking into the mirror. Not that my face was so ugly that I constantly considered having cosmetic procedures, but I wasn’t thrilled about the possibilities of finding somebody else sporting a wicked and evil grin from inside the mirror. Not that I expected to find a stranger in the mirror all that often, but I tended to be obsessed with that fear whenever I was reading something with horror elements. Maybe I should cut back on reading scary books.
I looked at my phone to check the time, and the display showed 8:28 a.m. “Wow, it’s only eight in the morning, and it’s already feeling like it is in the high eighties. What a day. The temperature could go above a hundred.” As I muttered to myself, my eyes widened in the mirror. “Wait a minute! Eight o’clock? I mean, eight twenty-eight? The test thingy is so over, isn’t it?”
For someone washing her face all alone, I was talking a lot, but according to Mom, when I was a little girl, she often heard me talking, laughing, and singing for hours and hours in the total darkness—as if I had company invisible to others.
At the moment, nobody replied to me.
“So, what’s next?” I tilted my head. If I recalled, Jack Adams didn’t tell me what to expect following eight in the morning. “Give him a call, maybe?” I muttered, thinking I really wanted to punch him in the nose—especially if he was still in bed and possibly not alone. I had no idea or interest in his dating habits, but I felt a little annoyed that he might have had a fun and sexy night while I was on the verge of death from hypothermia topped with an extreme fear as I was being assaulted by the aggressive ghost.
“No, she’s not just a ghost. Her name was Rachel,” I corrected myself, patting my cheeks with both palms.
I was going to give Jack a call, but it was getting unbearably hot, so I moved to open the main door for some more fresh air up to the top of the priority list.
“La-li lali-lula!” Singing to myself, I migrated to the entrance. In retrospect, I was slightly high after surviving the night all on my own, and I opened the door with force and said, “Ta-da!” The door banged into something.
“Ouch!” someone yelled.
“Oh my God!” I shrieked. “Did I just hit another ghost? Jeez, who could imagine meeting not just one but two ghosts in twenty-four hours?” Sweating profusely, I offered an apology.” My apologies, please don’t haunt me!”
“Holy crap, that really hurt—” a man groaned and stepped into sight. “Do you always open the door like you’re busting on a drug cartel?”
“Oh—” It wasn’t a ghost. It was Jack Adams, and he was dressed in a suit. “Usually, people aren’t squatting in front of an opening door.”
I noticed he had a lot of stuff with him: a small monitor, a few bags with the 7-Eleven logo, a half-empty water bottle, and two empty water bottles. Those items were enough to assume that he’d spent quite a long while here. In addition, I noticed the monitor was showing the room he’d set up the energy barrier in and the other room in four sections of its screen.
“Have you been snooping on me all night?” I asked, amused.
“Hey, don’t look at me like a creep.” He dismissed my question with a brush of his hand. “I was just recording a new case.”
“Wow, so, you were worried about me.” I perked up. Had I known he was sticking around in front of the door, the previous night must have been way less scary.
“Hello? Hav
e you been listening to me?” He furrowed his eyebrows, but I didn’t care. I was deliriously happy and somewhat high after surviving the night all on my own.
And the next thing I knew, I was giggling like a total idiot. The funny thing was, I was extremely delighted to find out that he’d been there, closely watching over me. I thought I was abandoned in a haunted apartment all on my own, and this new discovery made me feel like he cared about me. After the long night, a simple reminder of someone caring about me furthered the sense that I was alive.
“So, did you find anything? Any reason for the phenomenon?” Jack cleared his throat.
“Reason?” I parroted his words like a total idiot.
Cocking his head, he fell silent for a moment. “You came all the way from Napa Valley to investigate this property, am I correct?”
“Oh, yes! Absolutely!” I nodded many times, recalling the initial purpose of my visit here. “I need you to take a look at my discovery. You can come in.”
“If I recalled that right, this unit is under management of Quest Realty,” he mumbled, raising an eyebrow, but finally nodded. “Thanks for the invitation.”
“My pleasure. As they say, mi casa es su casa.”
“It was supposed to be a sarcasm,” he pointed out, but he came inside, following me.
I led him to the piles of letters and envelopes in the room where I’d spent most of the previous night. “You see them on the floor? Those letters had been hidden in the closet’s door.” I indicated my discovery on the floor. I wasn’t a barbarian, and under normal circumstances, I’d have placed them on the table or top of the cupboard, but the room was missing furniture, and I had no choice. “I read a few of them, and they were all written by Rachel, the mom of Ted. Rachel missed her son badly, but somehow, the letters were rejected. Anyway, I felt very strong emotions from these letters. The reason Ted had left his mom wasn’t mentioned, but Rachel cared for him very much, and she was so loving.”