I don’t want to be out here alone. I’ll admit it. I’m terrified. Anything could just show up and murder me. Anything! And no one would know until they found my mangled body inside the van. If they found my body. Ghosts are notorious for making people disappear, you know. Normally, I wouldn’t mind that much, but after seeing that freaky thing in the woods today, and then being thrown around by a dead person, I’m not excited to be left all alone. And Toby, the jerk, he knows it. While Hazel can feel my emotions, Toby and see them if he wants to. It sucks living with two people who can know how you’re feeling at any given moment. Especially when one of them is a douche bag who will use it against you.
Hazel, I don’t mind so much. I’ve known her since we were kids. We grew up together… In a mental hospital. That was super fun. You know what kind of ghosts are in a mental hospital? The sucky kind. The kind that want to torture you because they were tortured all their lives. I swear, when I die, I’m gonna hunt down my dick head parents and haunt them for putting me in that place, and then I’ll do the same to Hazel’s parents.
I watch the others disappear inside the house and wait for one of them to let me know that they’re fine, that they didn’t slip into a hallucination again. My walkie talkie buzzes and I hear a distorted version of Hazel’s voice. “We’re fine, Jude. You can stop stressing now. Seriously, I can feel it all the way from here.” I feel my body relax. But only a little, because I’m still all alone out here.
“Well, now that I know you’re not being blissfully murdered, I’m gonna see if these people have Wi-Fi and watch some Netflix and drink beer.” I climb into the back of the van where we have an extra bed (because sometimes we don’t have a place to sleep while on the job) and pull out the laptop.
“Jude, what did I say about drinking on the job?” Maria says. Of course, Ms. Former Cop has a problem with it.
“Well, smartassImeanMaria, I’m not technically on the job. I’m stuck out here in a van not doing anything. Therefore, I will do as I please.”
“Well, shitheadIdont’tmeanJude, what if something goes wrong and we end up needing your help?”
“I don’t feel like being murdered by a little girl, so if something goes wrong, you’re just gonna have to deal with it yourself.” I don’t mean that. I’ll only have one beer and that won’t get me so drunk that I can’t do anything. I won’t tell them that though. Let them worry.
Toby’s voice comes in over the walkie talkie. “I hope you get eaten by that freaky thing that you drew earlier.”
“Since you can’t see it, I’d like you to know that I am flipping you off. Now I’m turning off my walkie talkie. Good luck, have fun!” I don’t actually turn it off, I just don’t answer any more of their comments.
“Did you seriously turn it off? Jude?!” Maria screeches. “I think he really turned it off!”
“Good riddance,” Toby says. Since they are all communicating over the radios, they must have split up into different rooms to set things up. Microphones, video cameras with motion detection, thermometers with alarms that go off when there’s a drastic drop or rise in temperature, the usual ghost hunting stuff. We don’t actually need any of this stuff, but if we need to prove that there’s a ghost present, it helpful to have evidence. Our real goal for staying overnight is to determine the cause and extent of the haunting. Obviously, we know the cause is a ghost, but I mean what is causing the ghost to stay in the house and how many ghosts there are.
We already know there’s at least one, and she’s been around long enough to not only throw me across the room, but to cause hallucinations in three other people at the same time. Unless! She was throwing me around, and there was another ghost causing the hallucinations. We don’t usually encounter more than one ghost at a time, and they have never been strong enough to throw me across the room or cause hallucinations. In fact, I’ve never heard of a ghost causing hallucinations. Likewise, I have never seen a freaky inhuman spirit that no one else could sense.
I open my laptop and search for open Wi-Fi networks. Bingo! Now I just need a password. I grab my walkie talkie. “One of you find me the Wi-Fi password for this place.”
“Oh, you’re back? Did you get too scared being alone for two full minutes?” Toby says in a patronizing tone.
“Uh, no, I just said I need the Wi-Fi password. Were you not listening?” I roll my eyes. I just want to punch him sometimes. Actually, all the time. If you haven’t figured it out by now, we pretty much hate each other, but in a brotherly way. I’ve known Toby almost as long as I’ve known Hazel. I hear Toby sigh in an overexaggerated way. A few minutes later he’s back.
“Mmk, it’s… oh, you’re gonna love this,” he says laughing. “It’s ‘whosyourdaddy69’!” He barely gets it out because he’s laughing so hard. I snort.
“Wait, these people have a kid? And that’s their Wi-Fi password?” I roll my eyes, but it is funny. “I guess that’s one way to keep your kid off the internet.” I type in the password, snorting again when it actually works. “Thanks,” I say over the radio. I wait for some snarky response, like ‘go fuck yourself’ or something, but it doesn’t come. My heart pounds with sudden anxiety that maybe something happened.
“Jude. Watch your damn Netflix and stop worrying,” Hazel says. My heart slows. I really do need to not worry so much. They can take care of themselves. I take her advice (more like orders) and turn on a movie and open a beer. I’m halfway through Pirates of the Caribbean series when I doze off. And then I’m abruptly ripped from my body.
Great. I hate astral projection. I have no control over when it happens and it’s very disrupting to my sleep. Hazel must feel that something is wrong because I hear her voice on the walkie talkie. “Jude? You good?” I turn and look at myself sitting on the inflatable mattress with the laptop on my lap. My head is leaning against the back of the van, and one of my hands hovers above the walkie talkie. I must have dropped it at some point after falling asleep.
Sometimes I can interact with objects during astral projection, but only if I really concentrate. I try to grab my shoulder and shake myself awake. Which sounds completely insane. It also doesn’t work. My hand phases through my body and I growl in frustration. I try a few more times before giving up. I sit next to myself and continue watching the movie for a bit. The movie finally ends and I’m still stuck in this crappy shadow world. I look out the back of the van windows. The world outside looks the same, yet different. Have you ever had a lucid dream and realized that there wasn’t much substance to your dream? It’s kind of like a hazy background— you know that something should be there, but you can’t quite imagine it. So instead, you get this blurry fog of mixed colors in the general shape of what you are imagining. It’s kind of like that. Only creepier because there are things moving around in the fog. Shadows that aren’t quite human.
I’m just about to turn away when I see something dark move past the window. I freeze, not wanting whatever it was to hear me. After about a minute, I think it’s gone. I start to turn away again when it suddenly slams itself against the window. I fall backwards, a silent scream caught in my throat. It’s the same deformed human thing that I saw earlier today. At least, unlike earlier, there’s a barrier between us… I just finish thinking that when it starts to pull at the door. In a panic, I try to lock it, but my hand just slides through it.
The door thunks and groans as it starts to open. I keep grabbing at the door, hoping I’ll catch a hold of it. It’s halfway open when its mutilated hand reaches through and grabs my arm. This shocks me enough that I am yanked back into my body and I wake up. I jump to my feet, dive into the front seat of the van, and sprint toward the house. I’ll take an angry ghost over that thing any day! I glance back and see it striding toward me with its backwards, gangly legs. It’s moving faster than I am, so I put on a burst of speed. I reach the house and practically fall through the door. I kick the door shut behind me and stumble backwards away from it.
I watch the door, panting, expecting it to come in any second. When it doesn’t, I flop down on the floor with a sigh of relief. And then I nearly jump out of my skin because Hazel is standing right behind me, looking down at me, very confused.
“Shit! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” I gasp.
“Uh…. What’s… going on?” she asks. She glances at the door, an amused look on her face. “Nightmare?”
“NO! It was not a nightmare! That… thing showed up again! And it grabbed my arm!” I thrust my arm in her face as though she might be able to see where it grabbed me. She gently pushes my arm down, and her calming emotions flow into me.
“Better? It’s not here now, right?” she asks, looking around the room. I don’t know why, it’s not like she would see it if it was in here.
I shake my head. “No. It didn’t follow me in here.” I do feel better. I wish I had known Hazel before I got put into a mental hospital. Then maybe I never would have ended up there.
Hazel claps her hands together. “Well, now that you’re here and not being attacked, you might as well take a room and help out! We need someone in one of the bedrooms upstairs.”
I nod and start to turn, then jump again. Maria is standing right behind me. “Oh! My gosh! Why does everyone want to give me a heart attack tonight?!”
Maria smirks. “Little jumpy, are we?” I glare and don’t answer. “Anyways, I’m just here to make sure you’re fit to work right now. You know, since you’ve been drinking and all.” She shoves a breathalyzer in my face.
“Seriously?” I raise an eyebrow at her. She shrugs and continues to hold it in front of me. I roll my eyes. “I’m not drunk. I had one beer, that’s all.” I wait for her to move, but she doesn’t. “Wow. Ok. Fine.” I lean forward and blow into the stupid thing.
Maria pulls it away and glances at the digital reader. I can see from here that it reads 0.02, but she makes a big deal out of making sure it actually says that. After a few seconds, she lowers it and moves out of my way. “I’ll let you off with a warning this time, sir. Proceed to your destination.” She gestures for me to go down the hallway.
“You are so ridiculous,” I say, shoving past her. I’m not in the mood for her jokes. I jog up the stairs and make my way toward the empty room. I pass by Toby’s designated room on the way and he flips me off. I return the heartfelt gesture and continue on my way. Everything seems quiet in the house. We don’t usually have to stay overnight in houses. Only when the entity is violent. Shoving open the door at the end of the hallway, I quickly flip on the light and scan the room before entering. It’s empty. Good. The others already set up all the equipment in here and even left a copy of the file sitting on the bed.
This must be the daughters room. The ugly pink walls are plastered in the stereotypical boyband posters. Why do teenaged girls like the color pink so freaking much? I swear, it’s giving me a headache just looking at it. I walk around the room, casually looking at all her stuff. You can usually get a good idea of what kind of person someone is based on the shit they keep in their room.
The room seems way too clean for a 15-year-old girl. The top of the dresser is spotless, other than a picture of a boy. His hair is combed perfectly to the side, and his teeth look unrealistically white. Based on his build, I’m guessing he’s probably a high school athlete. Must be her boyfriend. What was her name again? I grab the sheaf of paper off the bed and shuffle through until I find the family’s names. Sarah Harrisburg. Ha. What a stupid last name.
I toss the papers back on the bed and continue my snooping. So far, I know that Sarah likes One Direction, Justin Bieber, The Jonas Brothers, and some band called 5SOS. Gag. There’s a pc on the desk in the corner. What are the chances of it being on and not password protected? Pretty high. You would be amazed at how often people just leave their computer on and unlocked. I wiggle the absurdly pink mouse and grin as the screen comes to life. Like everything else in her room, the computer background is also pink. I don’t think this is a normal amount of pink for a girl. Sarah Harrisburg has taken the color pink to a new, obnoxious level.
I click on the Chrome icon and open up her recent history. And here I find out what Sarah is really like. It only takes me a moment to realize that the massive amounts of pink in her room are a cover. Probably so that her parents don’t catch on to the fact that she is actually emo. She has been researching different ways to hide piercings, how much they cost, emo haircuts, etc. She also is not interested in boybands at all. Her Pandora history shows all kinds of freaky metal bands, ones that have unpronounceable names.
That begs the question, though; why would she hide it from her parents? Why not just be a typical, disobedient teenager and shove your moodiness in their faces? I grab the stack of papers off the bed again and search through the different events that the family recorded. Most of them involve Sarah. They start with her sleepwalking and saying strange things in her sleep. The family didn’t specify what exactly she said that was strange, just that it was strange. So helpful. It progressed from there, ending with Sarah waking up with deep scratches all over her body, and the mom being pushed down the stairs by an invisible force.
I put down the papers, deep in thought. When I look up, I freeze. Olivia Colton is standing in the corner of the room staring at me. She looks about ten years old, and is wearing a pastel pink nightgown. Her brown hair is tied with ribbons in long braids. She doesn’t move, but the door slowly creaks closed.
We both stay frozen, staring at one another. Just when I think she might decide to leave, the radio squawks. Hazel is downstairs with the security monitor and can see what’s happening in every room. She must have noticed that I wasn’t moving. “Jude? Did you find something?” I don’t move but I glance in the direction of the camera. Its set up facing into the room, rather than out, so she probably doesn’t know that the door closed all by itself.
“Jude?” the Olivia says in a hollow voice. Ghosts tend to repeat things that they hear. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s their way of trying to grasp on to something living. “Find something?” She starts to move toward me, staring at the radio next to me. I bat it away from me and it clatters off the bed. I do this in the hopes that she will go after it, but she continues toward me. Shit. She stands between me and the door. I jump off the bed and head for the window. Then I remember the thing that chased me. I’ll take my chances with the ghost. She walks through the bed and is only a few feet away when the door flings open. Toby stands in the doorway, a smug look on his face.
“Scared of a little girl?” he asks. The girl looks back at him, then vanishes.
“Shut up. You would be too if she tried to kill you.” I hate my job.
“What did you find?” he asks, looking around the room. His eyes land on the lit-up screen on the computer. “Wow, snooping around in a teenaged girls’ computer? Dude, that’s pretty creepy.” Despite saying that, he jumps into the chair and start perusing her personal files. After a few seconds, he seems to realize what I did. “This is a very pink room for such an emo girl…”
“You think?” I say sarcastically. I grab the papers off the bed and show him what else I found.
“Okay, so you think she’s, like, possessed or something?” Toby asks.
“I don’t know. We haven’t even met them yet. Which also seems odd. They didn’t want to meet us and give us the house keys, but instead sent a key? Something seems… off.” I look through the papers one more time, hoping to find other clues. None. “Can’t we just stay at a hotel? This place creeps me out.”
“You say that about every house we go to.”
“Maybe that’s because all the houses we go to are creepy and haunted.”
“Oh no, is little Jude afraid?” Toby says in a mocking voice. He’s been being extra douche-y today, so I don’t feel bad when my fist acts of its own accord and rams into his stomach. He doubles over, gasping. “W-what… the hell…. Asshole!” he wheezes.
“Oh no, is little Toby hurt? Too bad I don’t care,” I say as I leave the room. Downstairs, I flop down in a chair next to Hazel. She’s looking at me like she wants to say something. “What?” I snap.
“He totally did deserve that, but…” she said quietly.
“But what? But what, Hazel?! But he’s my friend? But we grew up together? NO. He deserved it, so I did it. End of story.” I cross my arms and look away from her.
“Maybe we should go to a hotel for the night…” I glance at her and see her hand reaching for my arm and jerk away from her.
“Don’t touch me! You can’t just decide to make me feel better whenever you want!” She pulls her hand back, a hurt look on her face. I almost feel bad. Almost.
We both sit silently. The house is so quiet that I can hear the clock ticking. I can hear Hazel’s quiet breathing, and my own heart thudding against my chest. My own breathing is loud and ragged compared to Hazel’s, and I try to calm down. Sometimes I rely too heavily on Hazel’s ability to calm me down, and I forget how to calm myself down.
Breathe in, breathe out. I close my eyes and breathe for a few minutes, until I calm down. Now I do feel bad for yelling at Hazel. And I kinda feel bad for punching Toby. But only a little.
I sigh and shake my head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
Hazel swallows, and doesn’t look at me. Her voice comes out too calm, and I know that she was trying hard not to cry. “It’s fine. I understand.” If anyone else in the world tried to tell me that they understood, I would never talk to them again. No one in this world understands; no one but Hazel. Embarrassed, I don’t say anything else, and we sit in awkward silence. Until Toby comes staggering down the stairs.
“Did you think I would just let you get away with that?” he shouts. He stalks toward me and I stand up quickly, prepared for a fight. Hazel gets between us.
“Alright, enough! If you two start fighting, you’re both going back home and me and Maria will finish this job alone. No pay for either of you!” Toby clenches his fists, glaring at me past Hazel.
“Don’t protect him! He punched me! I know you saw it!”
“I’m not protecting him, idiot. I’m protecting you!” Toby looks surprised and he unclenches his fists for a second. Then he gets even angrier.
“What, you don’t think I could take him?! You think I’m weak?!”
Me and Toby fighting isn’t unusual. We fight a lot. But it never becomes physical. I don’t know why I punched him. I haven’t been in a fight since I left the mental hospital. It’s also not normal for Toby to be getting angry at Hazel.
“No, of course I don’t think you’re weak,” she replies gently. “Look, I just don’t want either of you to get hurt, okay? Can you just calm down?” She reaches toward him, like she did to me only moments ago. I can tell that both of our outbursts gave her a massive headache. I don’t blame her for wanting him to calm down. She’s probably having trouble blocking out his emotions.
Toby glances down at her hand and smacks it away. Anger flares up in me again, only this time it’s completely justified. Toby must see the change in my aura, because he grins wickedly. “Oh, ready for a fight now? No?” His hand shoot out and shove Hazel against the table. “How about n…” He doesn’t get to finish his sentence before I tackle him to the ground.
I don’t remember the next few minutes. The next thing I know, Maria is handcuffing me and pulling me off of a badly beaten Toby. She kicks me in the back of the legs, forcing me to kneel, and Hazel grabs my shoulder, forcing me to calm down. The anger fades and I spit out a wad of blood. Toby must have gotten a punch or two in, then.
“Does anyone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” Maria demands. I’m still gasping for breath and Toby is nearly unconscious, so I let Hazel do the explaining. Toby groans and tries to sit up. I vaguely hear Hazel explaining things to Maria, as I try to figure out why Toby would have shoved Hazel.
Neither of us are violent. Maybe something in the house caused it? But Hazel and Maria are fine. Maybe it was Sarah’s room? But we all would have been in there at some point. There are a few things it could have been; both me and Toby touched the computer and we both questioned the pink room vs. the girl’s secret emo identity. Or it could be that I got pissed off and something in the house boosted that anger, and then after I hit Toby, he also got pissed and so on and so forth.
I interrupt Hazel and Maria. “Can you take these off of me now?” I lift my hands behind my back and nod toward them. Maria hesitates, but Hazel nods and she frees my hands. Exhausted from my outburst, I flop down on the floor and close my eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Hazel,” Toby moans. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“Let’s just all get out of here,” Hazel says. “Something isn’t quite right in here, and we can’t afford to be trying to kill each other.” Maria and Hazel help Toby to his feet and out the door. I drag myself up and follow them, very confused about everything that has happened today.
ns 15.158.61.20da2
