another word, Bianca wraps her tiny arms around her mother's waist in search for comfort.
"Sweetie, what happened? Who were you talking to?" Michelle kneels in front of her daughter to get a better view of her face.
"Emily... she wants me to go into the basement. I told her you don't want me down there and she said..." Bianca wipes her eye to prevent a tear from fully forming.
Michelle grabs her daughter's hands tightly in a supportive manner. "What did she say?" Michelle has never been so entranced and interested in anything like she is with this Emily.
"She said that I didn't have to listen to you. And that she'd make you go away..." Michelle doesn't need to hear another word from her daughter. She had already made her mind up. Emily was nothing but trouble and she was going to make sure that Ben knew this first hand. Holding Bianca's hand tightly Michelle guides Bianca back up the stairs to where Ben was asleep. Michelle turns the lights on causing Ben to stir from his sleep grumpily.
"What are you doing? Turn that light off." He covers his face with his hand trying to shield his eyes from the blinding light.
"Bianca, tell Daddy what Emily said to you." Bianca stands in the door way shyly. Ben rolls his eyes in annoyance.
"Not this again. I told you..."
"Just listen to her." Michelle replies sternly. Bianca stares down at her own feet.
"Emily wants me to go in the basement and I told her I couldn't because Mom didn't want me to. And Emily said that I don't have to listen to my mom and that she'd make Mommy go away." Tears start flowing and Michelle takes her daughter into a snug hug once more.
"What did I tell you, Michelle? You're getting her all wound up and scared of nothing. There is no such thing as ghosts. Now, put Bianca to bed and try not to scare her some more." Ben rolls over pulling the blankets up over his head signaling that this conversation was over. Michelle could tell from his infliction that he was tired of this conversation. Ben always seemed to raise the hue in his voice anytime he was getting annoyed. Wanting to avoid an argument she decided to just send Bianca to bed and leave it at that. Michelle's plan to make Ben listen had failed. She'd hoped that hearing it straight from Bianca would make Ben get it. But he was too thick-headed to listen to either of them.
Banging in the kitchen wakes Ben up from sleep. He finally had a day off of work and wanted to spend the afternoon sleeping in. Seeing how the pounding just continued he had no choice. He rolled his lazy legs off the bed and made his way down stairs with his eyes half closed. He stumbles into the kitchen wearing nothing but his boxer briefs.
He sighs in angst the second he sees what was causing all the racket. "God damn it, Michelle. What are you doing?" He rubs his weary eyes. Michelle turns around with a hammer and nail in her hands. It takes just a second longer for her husband to answer his own question. A padlock at the top of the basement door seals the lower level off.
"Are you fucking kidding me? What is this?" He throws his hand towards the door too hazy to even point correctly. Michelle gawks back at her grumpy husband in shock. He never used profanity in such a situation. She can't recall the last time he's cussed at her. She opens her mouth to respond but nothing comes out.
"Why are you doing this? Because some 'ghost' is supposedly haunting us? You're a grown woman. Act your age not your shoe size. Because of you our daughter is afraid to sleep in her own room. She's 8 years old. I'll be damned if I'm gonna let her start sleeping in our bed again. This is it. No more of this spirit bullshit, got it?" He points at her with a stern look before turning to head back into the living room and upstairs.
'I know what's going on. I'm not an idiot.' She thought to herself with resentment towards Ben. He never believed her when she told him things. 'This is just like that time I saw Bigfoot when we went camping last summer.' She bangs the final nail into the hinge of the lock. 'Granted, it wasn't Bigfoot but dammit that orangutan escaped from the zoo. Ben didn't think I saw anything but I saw something. Not Bigfoot but it was still something. I was still right...' Her thoughts are interrupted by a crashing noise behind her. She jumps in a panic as she spins around.
A plate is lying in the middle of the floor completely shattered into unidentifiable pieces. Her eyes are immediately drawn to the wall above the scene. In bold red paint are the words "Get Out." Paint drips from the freshly marked wall.
"AHHH!" Michelle's screams echo off the walls. Ben hears her yells and scrambles back into the kitchen in a fit of worry.
"What?" He pants out. Michelle points at the wall with a trembling finger. Ben follows her stare and his face immediately twists into anger.
"What the fuck are you trying to pull?" Michelle's jaw drops at his words. " You think doing stuff like this is going to get me to believe you?" He brutes towards her in a demeanor she's never witnessed before.
"There are no such things as witches or zombies or the Loch Ness Monster or vampires or Bigfoot or aliens or werewolves or fucking ghosts.” He names one after another in an exacerbated tone. “Stop believing in these idiotic things. You went to college. Start acting like an educated woman and not some fucking child in a bad dream. Stop telling me you're seeing these things. You're not seeing anything..."
"But I am. They..." He raises his hand to stop her from talking back to him.
"You need help. Mental help. You're not healthy. I'm not going to stand here and let you brainwash my daughter. You better get your act together and fast." He glances around the kitchen at the mess he's accused of her causing. "Now clean this mess up." He takes one last look at her with disgust written all over his mug. He turns his back to her without another word.
She stares at her feet in shock. Was he right? Was she ill? Were all these occurrences just her mind deceiving her? It didn't feel like it. They all felt so real. She knew she didn't break the plate or paint on the wall. Bianca was at school and Ben was in the other room. No one else could have done it. She wouldn't let Ben try and bring her down. He didn't believe in anything that he couldn't see with his own eyes. But Michelle knew that these things existed. She saw them herself. She studied about mental illness in college. If she was sick, then so was Bianca. Hallucinations aren't contagious. Ben tried to explain everything with logic but sometimes things just don't add up. And this was one of those times.
She knew of the rituals that many women practice in the Caribbean Islands. They liked voodoo and spells. This was witchcraft. Zombies could easily be made through the voodoo spells and diseases like Mad Cow. Vampires were real but not in the sense people thought of them as. There have been many accounts of humans drinking and sucking other people's blood. This was the dead giveaway for a vampire. The Loch Ness Monster could be some kind of undiscovered sea animal yet to be discovered. After all, there were caves in the Loch that led out to the ocean. Anything could swim in and cause the myth of the Loch Ness Monster.
Bigfoot could be an extinct species of ape that is not-so-extinct. Gigantopithecus matches the description of all the Bigfoot sightings. It's quite possible that it never actually went extinct and that it's just a really rare animal. People spot it and claim it as Bigfoot. And werewolves, well, feral children have been raised by wild animals, wolves included, before. A human who thinks they are a wolf would be a werewolf in a sense. The universe goes on forever so there was no way anyone could completely discredit the existence of aliens. If Earth is able to support life then so are other planets.
And ghosts, forget about it. Michelle knew they were real and nothing would tell her differently. People have footage, pictures, EVPs, and countless eye-witness accounts. It's hard to discredit all of that so easily. She's watched plenty of shows that had eye-witness accounts of hauntings. All cultures through out all of history have believed in ghosts. For something to be so widely believed in it had to be true. Millions of people couldn't all be wrong, could they?
She knew what she was talking about. She's done all kinds of research on cryptic animals and possible explanations. She wasn't going to let B
en prove her otherwise. He never picked up a book in his life. He never watched any documentaries. As far as Michelle was concerned, Ben had no idea what he was talking about. Just because he never saw something didn't mean that it wasn't real. They discover new animals all the time. Anything is possible. If he can believe in God without definitive proof then there was no good reason why he couldn't believe in something as simple as a ghost.
As her mind wonders and contemplates Michelle glances at the basement door. The root of this argument. For some reason Emily wanted Bianca to go down there and disobey her mother. There was no way in Hell that Michelle was going to allow that. That basement door will remained shut for eternity. Michelle would make sure to it. By dropping the only copy of the key to the padlock into the toilet, the mystery of the basement would always remain.
Later that night Ben was fast asleep. Michelle tossed and turned trying to find a comfortable position. No matter what she tried she just couldn't feel right. She felt strange. Like someone was watching her. She peered around the room to make sure that Bianca hadn't wondered in. It's only been a few weeks since Ben and Michelle finally got her to sleep in her own bed. Every now and then Bianca would come in and try to climb