“A haunted house? Really?”
“Come on, it will be fun!” Her hands clapping in glee, Bobbi was the epitome of a bubbly teen girl. Especially with her bangle bracelets and flashy earrings jingling as she moved. I rolled my eyes at her enthusiasm and checked my phone was fully charged before disconnecting it from the car charger. Stepping out of Betty, my mom’s old minivan, I tossed my wild mane of hair over my shoulder and made a loud groan. I studied the place as I listened to the ticking of the engine cooling. It didn’t look like your typical scary movie’s haunted house.
It was just a house. An old, two-story Victorian thing. Sure, it was obviously abandoned and, yeah, there was some paint peeling here and there and rusty pillars. But it wasn’t scary, not even as the sun was setting and the wind blew dead leaves around in the yard. It was just a house.
“Bobbi, this is so cliché. This is your idea of fun? We could be at a movie or something.”
“As the birthday girl, I get to decide what constitutes fun today. You know how much I love haunted places,” she said. Boy, did I. She watched those fake ghost hunter shows on TV religiously. I had only known her for a few months, but I knew she was obsessed with anything ghost related. I guess having a birthday near Halloween didn’t help. “Seriously, it will be great!”
“Says every girl in every horror movie ever before she is brutally murdered by an axe wielding psycho,” I deadpanned.
She took the first few steps up the porch at a slow pace, giving me raised eyebrows as she locked eyes with me. The boards creaked when she stepped on them, as if the house was also trying to convince me of its spookiness. I gave in with a defeated sigh.
“Okay, fine. But I’m telling you, this is going to be boring.”
“Nuh uh. I heard people died in this house.” Bobbi widened her eyes for effect as she danced the rest of the way up the steps to the front door. I almost opened my mouth to remind her that people died in houses all the time. Like, everywhere. Every day. But I wasn’t about to rain on her little parade and play Debbie-downer tonight. It was her birthday, after all. As her friend, I would play along and let her enjoy herself as we pretended to ghost hunt, even though I wanted nothing more than to go back home and settle down for an invigorating game of Mario Kart.
As Bobbi jimmied the door open with an old credit card, she continued to gush about how much fun we would have. “Just imagine, Kim! Our own little ghost adventure! I have this cool app on my phone with night vision so we can record as we walk. Isn’t this exciting?”
“Yeah,” I tried to sound pleased for her benefit but my eyes were scanning the area for people watching. I didn’t expect to see anyone, since this was what Bobbi called the ‘country’ side of town. The closest neighbor was a few miles away and the few surrounding buildings were old barns and pack houses. Even the driveway was dirt and about a quarter mile from the paved road that brought us here. Still, my neck felt hot at the thought of breaking and entering possibly going on my record at the tender age of eighteen.
“Can’t we get in trouble for this?” I asked.
“No, no way. Timmy’s uncle’s best friend owns the place, I think. He has purposely let it go to crap so we aren’t hurting anything. Besides, no one will ever know we were here.”
I chose to believe her story, though I still didn’t like it. “Let’s just get inside.”
“Sure thing.”
Once unlocked, I half expected the door to swing open slowly, the hinges squealing ominously. But I guess the house was done trying to impress me because when Bobbi pushed it open, the hinges were silent. Two steps in and she handed me her phone.
“Okay, I’m playing host and you’re the camera crew. So just, like, follow me around as I try to call the spirits of the dead, and stuff.”
“Okay.” I pocketed my phone and keys so I could hold her phone sideways with both hands. I actually didn’t mind this role so much, having played cameraman for her before on other occasions. I did love taking pictures and would much rather be on that side of the camera so Bobbi could get the attention she so desperately craved. But that didn’t mean I wanted to be her assistant tonight. A few swipes and taps later and I had the app going on her phone. Oh, this night vision app was crappy, I could tell from the start. Just great. I was going to spend the night staring at a screen as we walked around. I glanced at Bobbi’s smiling face one last time before I closed the door behind us and darkness swallowed her features up. I guess the windows throughout the house had curtains or blinds because it was total darkness. My foot bumped a small table near the door, jostling the lamp sitting on it. Yeah, this was going to be fricking spectacular. I tiny part of me hoped Bobbi would stumble around and constantly run into crap in the dark. Then she would get tired of this game real fast and we could go. But I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple.
She pulled a tiny flashlight from her pocket, turning it on and aiming the beam at the floor. “If I keep it low, it won’t interfere with the night vision but I will be able to see.” Her green face continued to smile at me expectantly from the screen.
“Yeah, good thinking.” No, it looked like I was going to be the one tripping and running into stuff. I kind of wanted to kill her.
“Okay, let’s get started! Just hit record and we can go back and re-watch if anything happens. We can edit the video later too, to cut out the boring parts.”
I guess we’ll be editing out everything, I thought as we started down the short hallway. A staircase loomed on the wall to our right and Bobbi headed right for it, her ponytail bobbing as she walked.
“Let’s try upstairs first.”
I remained silent, but followed her up the stairs which creaked and groaned from lack of use. Besides our footsteps, the house was so quiet I could hear the wind outside rattling windows and whipping across the roof above. That did actually make it kind of creepy. It was too dark to make out much of the place. I couldn’t tell if there were layers of dust or rats or anything gross lying around.
The dark didn’t bother me, though. I hadn’t been afraid of the dark since I was five. It was around the age of six I decided I no longer needed lamps or nightlights in my room. I have slept in pitch black darkness ever since. Even a tiny stream of light under my door could rouse me from a dead sleep. Night time was my friend.
Unfortunately, as we ascended the stairs and stepped up to a door on our immediate right, I started to get a bad feeling. A creepy feeling. Like I just walked through a spider’s web. My skin startled to crawl and I had this icky feeling in my stomach. Ever the skeptic, I had no idea why I was getting the heebie-jeebies from an ordinary house. It wasn’t like me to get creeped out over nothing. Bobbi grinned back at me as we stood outside the door, then wiped the smile off her face so she could appear serious on camera. Her eyes looked all weird and glowing with the night vision light. That was creepy enough, right there.
Smoothing down her clothes, Bobbi made a big show of opening the door with a sweeping gesture. I knew she would want me to focus on her face here and there, then sweep the room slowly so it would be easy to spot anything ‘amiss’. So after she walked inside, I followed her immediately.
Something dark walked across the room, not three feet from us. I froze. My heartbeat sped up but otherwise I didn’t react in any way. My mind immediately started running through the possibilities. A cat. A bird nesting here. Maybe even a stray dog. Those were the safe assumptions. Then scarier thoughts crowded in. A human. A homeless person crashing here. A druggie. An escaped killer from the prison one county over. All these thoughts flashed through my head in less than a second.
Bobbi moved further into the room, as if she hadn’t seen anything. My muscles still tense but able to move, I quickly scanned the room with the phone’s light. A bed. Dressers. Bobbi. A recliner. A nightstand. That was it. Nothing and no one else was there.
Eyes playing tricks on you, you nut, my brain taunted me. But in my gut, I know I had seen something. I had spotted it through the camera and out of
my peripheral vision. It had been close enough that I had seen the movement, even in the dark. I had heard something too. Not footsteps but a sound like the swishing of clothing. Maybe I was nuts, but I was never the type to make things up or get overexcited about stuff. So I said nothing to Bobbi, since she was oblivious. She placed herself in the center of the room, turning slowly in a circle.
“I call upon the spirits of this house! Oh, restless spirits! I bid you to come out! Come tell us what it is you want.” She raised her arms in the air, her bracelets clinking together.
I couldn’t help rolling my eyes at her dramatic flair. She certainly was a character. Bobbi was totally in her element here. Especially if there actually was something weird going on inside this house. After a minute or two of silence, Bobbi faced the phone and said, in her acting voice, “I feel no ghostly vibes from this room. Let’s continue on.”
Again, I said nothing but damn if I didn’t feel some strange vibes! As Bobbi walked past me, I thought I heard a sound down the hallway. This time it did sound like footsteps but faint ones. “You hear something?” I asked.
She turned and gave me this look, like she was trying to figure out if I was messing with her or not. “Why, did you?”
“I thought I did. Seriously, no joke.”
“Well, let’s check it out!” We were walking again, her moving as if she were taking a leisurely stroll while I was slowly scanning the area. As if everything was hunky-dory. Meanwhile, I was starting to sweat. Something here was making me nervous. Bobbi paused to shine her flashlight on a picture hanging on the wall beside another door. I heard something lightweight hit the floor and roll towards me. Swinging the camera in that direction, I saw a spool of thread on the floor, rolling towards my foot, the thread unraveling as it moved. It slowed to a stop just short of the toe of my boots. I couldn’t help it. I jumped. This weird “Nyah!” sound squeezed out of my throat that had Bobbi whirling around to see what was the matter.
“Hey, what’s up? You hear something again?” She was right in front of me, her face inches from mine. I looked at her in the dark, nodding, but not exactly sure if she could see me. Could she see as well in the dark as I could?
“Look!” I pushed the phone at her, turning the screen towards her and the camera at the spool pf thread. It was gone. “What the hell? Dude, I am not playing around. I saw something.”
“Stop the video and rewind!” Bobbi was getting excited now. She must have known from my voice that I was not screwing around with her and she really wanted to see what I had seen. I swiped back through the video as she bounced on the balls of her feet in anticipation.
“This is weird. I don’t see anything going back. Let me just play it from when you stopped to look at the picture.” I tapped the right-facing triangle on the screen and held my breath. The video played, showing her bringing her flashlight up, that part of the screen going white from the light source. Then the video swung downward, though there was nothing to be heard on it. The tiny microphone hadn’t picked up the sound of the spool hitting the floor, the very thing that had alerted me to its presence. When the video moved I held my breath, knowing it was about to come. But the image got all grainy and pixilated. You couldn’t see anything but broken images of the floor until it swung up to Bobbi’s concerned face.
“What the? Bobbi, I know what I saw! It was there! It’s like the camera can’t process the image or something. Like it can’t pick it up!”
“Kim, chill out. What exactly was it that you saw?”
“A spool of thread. It rolled on the floor towards me, right to my shoe, almost.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. Like she was expecting a floating apparition or a bloody knife or something. “Well, it’s definitely gone now. You didn’t kick it or anything when you freaked out, did you?”
“I did not freak out!” My neck was feeling hot from her words. “Let’s just keep going so we can get out of here already. This place sucks.”
“It doesn’t suck. It’s just getting interesting!” She gave me a conspiratorial wink and waved for me to turn the camera back on. “Kim has felt the touch of the paranormal in this house already. Perhaps the spirits are choosing her as the medium for, uh, opening lines of communication. Did that sound right? Maybe I should reword it.”
“No, no, it’s fine.” I was so ready to get out of there and wasn’t feeling her play acting anymore. “Just keep going, we can edit, remember?”
She nodded at the camera and as she did, I saw a figure move behind her. This time I got a clear look at the person. And it was a person. At least, it looked like one. It was a woman, youngish, maybe in her twenties. Her face was so pale it was white. Her hair was pulled up in two ponytails on the side of her head, like you would see on a little girl, the locks boasting huge, bouncy curls that were so dark they looked purple. I looked up from the phone screen and she was still there. And her hair was purple, like those wild colors you can dye yourself. And shiny. She wore a pair of hipster glasses and bright blue lipstick. The woman stepped up behind Bobbi’s shoulder, smiled cheerfully at me, then stepped back into blackness and was gone. I heard the distinct snick of two metal blades meeting.
I was officially freaking out.
“Kim, what the hell? What’s wrong?” Bobbi glanced back over her shoulder where my eyes were locked, then turned back to me. “Are you seriously seeing stuff? If you aren’t please cut it out, I’m just trying to have a good time here.”
My voice came out surprisingly even but really low. “Bobbi. We need to leave this house. Now.” My hands were shaking so hard; I doubt there would be any usable video of the ghost woman even if she did show up on the camera. Which I doubted. Because apparently only I could see or hear her.
“Calm down. Hey, it’s fine.” Bobbi stroked my arm, trying to reassure me. “Let me just look in this other room up here real quick and we’ll go, okay? I promise, really fast.”
I was tempted to slap her in the face, grab her by the collar, and drag her out of that horrorfest right then but I took a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts. She noticed me calming myself and urged me on. “Yeah, just chill. Everything is fine. Maybe you ate something bad at dinner? Maybe it’s messing up your stomach and making you hallucinate?”
“I doubt chicken and mac-n-cheese would make me hallucinate.”
“But who knows what’s really in those boxes of mac-n-cheese? Certain mushrooms can make you trip, who’s to say there wasn’t some kind of screw up at the factory? Or even that some jerk-off intentionally put weird stuff in the food? There are some real sickos out there, Kim. People that get off on that kind of stuff.”
I wanted to believe her. My rational side was coming up with crazy food scenarios too, because that made more sense. More sense than some ghost that only I could see. “Okay, yeah. That could be. My stomach does feel off.” I waved her forward. “Go on, put on your reporter face and let’s check this room out. But then, seriously, I’m out. I need to go home and sleep off whatever this is going on with me.”
“Sure, of course! Hey, you have made this an exciting birthday already, even if it is just from you being sick.”
How sweet of her to find my hallucinations and queasy stomach a source of amusement. Remind me to kick her later, when my eyes aren’t playing tricks on me and I’m not sweating like I’m in a sauna. I followed her into the next room, her going straight back into investigator mode without blinking an eye. I recorded as she called the spirits again.
“Kim.”
A voice whispered in my ear. Not Bobbi’s voice. I turned my head, keeping the camera on Bobbi this time, and saw the woman standing right beside me. This time I noticed her clothing. She wore a really cute Lolita style dress that was layers of dark purple fabric falling just above her knees and frills around the collar. She looked like some kind of cosplay character with that wild dress, purple hair, and blue-and-white striped stockings. Spools of thread were tucked into the neck of her dress and spilling out of tiny
pockets on the sides. A few of the threads were glowing white. She cocked her head at me, studying my face as my jaw dropped. That’s when I saw the scissors in her hands.
“It’s almost time,” she said, snipping the scissors at the air.
I bolted from the room.
I heard Bobbi call my name but I was beyond caring about her little ghost hunt. I certainly didn’t need to hunt any ghosts in this house. They were hunting me. I tore down the hall, smacking my knee into the wooden rail at the top of staircase so hard that I fell on my butt. The phone’s video was still going and I lifted the camera to look behind me. The purple woman stood there in all her cutesy-wutesy glory.
“Getting closer!” She sing-songed, her voice as child-like as her attire. I had the urge to yell at her to act her damn age but how was I to know how old she really was anyway. She could have died here centuries ago. Or maybe last week. My mind was a whirlwind of random thoughts as I gripped my throbbing knee and stood. Maybe she was murdered here by some killer with a sick fetish for cosplay girls.
I kept the camera trained on the purple woman but she drifted back into darkness again and Bobbi’s running form took her place. “I’m leaving!” I called at her, before turning and stomping down the stairs as fast as my jacked-up knee would let me. As I dashed down, I saw those spools of thread dropping down the steps beside me, rolling down, glowing with some other-worldly light. Lighting my path or trying to hinder me? I never tripped on them but they looked like that LED rope lighting that was so popular in clubs and bars.
I’m going mad. I have completely lost my shit. What will my mom say? Will they have me committed? I’ll just pretend like it never happened. I just have to get out of here! It will all just be a bad dream once I get back inside Betty and get out of here!
Cardboard spools beat me to the first floor and rolled in all directions. The purple lady was there waiting for me. She said nothing this time, just looked at me with a sweet smile, holding one of those thick luminescent threads up between both hands, her scissors poised on two fingers, ready to cut. Like she was showing it to me, putting on a display. Like I had any clue what it meant. I hurried past her, willing myself not to look at her.
I threw open the front door but Bobbi grabbed my arm. I hadn’t even realized that she caught up with me. “Wait! You dropped the keys to Betty!”
Staggering backwards, I turned and rushed back behind her, using the phone to scan the floor. That’s when I felt the blow to my head. An instant of intense pain and then I was falling. My body crumpled to the floor, my vision blurring before going out completely. The snick, snick of the scissors echoed around in my head.
I stood outside myself, looking down at my body as blood gushed from my caved-in skull. Bobbi stood above me, a pear-shaped table lamp in her hand. Her expression was blank, her face devoid of any emotion. Quickly wiping the lamp on her shirt, she placed it back on the table near the door and moved around my body to where her phone was still on, the camera side pointing up at the ceiling. “Kim?” She called, her voice high pitched. “KIM!” She started screaming, those blood curdling screams that you hear in horror movies. She fell to her knees beside my body, positioned so the phone could see most of her form hovering over me.
Out of the corner of my eyes I saw the purple woman standing there. One hand held the scissors and half of the glowing white thread. The other held the other half of the thread and as I watched, it disintegrated. That’s when I finally understood that she wasn’t a ghost. The purple woman wasn’t out to kill me. She was death.
Bobbi was making these loud sobbing sounds now, her body shaking with the force of them, even as her face remained passive and blank. She was a better actress than I had thought. Then she stopped and turned off the video, sitting down on her knees and humming as she went back through what was recorded, apparently editing out what she didn’t want the cops to see.
I had to hand it to her; it was clever. I had never suspected. She had even lucked out when Death showed up and had me freaking out all on my own. Those parts would make it seem even more realistic. “I guess you get your face on TV after all. ‘My best friend was killed by a ghost in the haunted house!’ will certainly draw the attention you’ve always wanted. Happy birthday, bitch.”
The Beneficiaries of Secret Cottage
Jane Risdon