Chapter 14
“Power bank, power bank…wherefore art thou, power bank?” I nearly trip over my backpack as I walk back through the living room, stopping to look in the drawer of the little table by the door.
But still, no power bank. I swear whenever I’m looking for something, it’s like it just walked the hell away.
Especially lately. First my phone, then my headphones when I was about to stream.
Now my power bank I’m absolutely sure was sitting on my table.
Not that it’s going to help much, even if I do find it. I have a sneaky suspicion that I didn’t plug it in last night before falling asleep after streaming, and the last time I used it to charge my phone on the go, I sucked all the juice right out of it.
Stressful anxiety stirs my stomach. I really can’t have my phone die tonight, and with all the pictures I want to take, along with some video, it’s a real possibility. The battery has definitely seen better days, and my power bank is a necessary lifeline.
“Fuck.” I stand in the middle of my living room and run my fingers through my hair with my eyes closed in frustration.
“Fuck!” This is so frustrating, and I don’t know what else to do or say.
I’m running late, though, and there’s no one to call me on it, given that the Mill House has been abandoned for years and is now owned by some family that took three months to email me back to give me permission to visit.
Still, I don’t want to be there all night if I can help it.
For a moment, I just stand in the living room with my glare fixed on my backpack. I’m going to have to leave, but I decide quickly to do one last walkthrough of my little house. Even if it’s not plugged in, I could get it charged up a few percent on the way if I plug it into my car.
It’s definitely not in my room, I decide after I’ve pawed through my desk drawers and my nightstand. It’s also not in my bathroom, or my living room. I’m about to walk out the door when I turn to circle through the kitchen on a whim, eyes darting to the counters I know won’t hold my—
The rose-gold power bank is sitting neatly on the corner of one cabinet, plugged into the wall, with the lights flashing to show that it’s fully charged. I stare at it, nonplussed, like it’s somehow magically appeared, sent by alien technology to my countertop.
“That’s not…” I reach out for it, my fingers brushing the cord. It’s clearly been plugged in for hours, meaning I must have done it last night. Only, I don’t remember doing that.
At all.
Last I knew, my power bank was in my desk drawer, deader than my love life.
Not out here, fully charged and ready to save me from my phone dying halfway through my little adventure.
“Okay.” I curl my fingers around it and pick it up, my movements automatic, before walking over and dropping it in my backpack beside my flashlights.
This isn’t right. While I’m definitely good at putting things where they shouldn’t go, thinking that later I’ll remember, this doesn’t feel the same. No matter how much I go over the events of last night in my memory, not once do I remember plugging my power bank into the wall.
Especially in the kitchen. How would it end up there, anyway?
My hands feel numb as I slide into the driver’s seat of my car, my backpack on the seat beside me, but for a few seconds I just sit there.
Why would I have plugged my power bank into a wall in the kitchen?
Being that I’m a shitty cook, I never spend a lot of time in my kitchen.
Most of what I eat are things I can just reheat or warm up.
Or food that doesn’t involve being cooked at all.
I’m more likely to find cobwebs in my kitchen than the electrical device I’ve been looking for.
But surely I must’ve done it sometime in the night. Maybe in my sleep, if nothing else.
The alternative, after all, is terrifying.
The idea that someone else did it, someone who knew I’d need it and knew where it was, is something that’s both frightening and impossible.
Even Madison isn’t that aware of where I keep things, and she certainly doesn’t know what I take with me on trips I’m using as blog content.
Besides, she hasn’t been to my house in over a week.
“Stop that,” I whisper to myself as my hands grip the steering wheel. “You’re going to freak yourself out over nothing. Just…stop it.” But it’s not that easy to just stop thinking about the idea of someone being in my house, moving things around while I’m asleep.
Who knows what else they could do while I’m completely unaware?
No. If that were the case, I’d know. There would be other signs.
If someone had broken in, I doubt that all they’d do would be plug in my power bank like a helpful gremlin.
With that thought, I throw my car into reverse before checking my mirror to make sure Mrs. Elmore isn’t in the street like an unfortunate bowling pin.
Thankfully, she hasn’t chosen today to wander around, doing her best impression of the unfriendly neighborhood poltergeist. I pull out slowly anyway, just in case, and glance at her window to do my usual proof-of-life check.
Sure enough she’s there, facing the road, as if we get enough cars for it to be interesting.
She waves at me and I wave back, a false smile on my face while I fumble to get my car into drive as if this is the first time I’ve ever driven.
I have to get it together, I chastise myself silently while driving down our back road. I can’t go the rest of tonight thinking about a made up scenario that I’m freaking myself out with.
The drive to Mill House isn’t really that long, though I make it longer by going out of my way for coffee that I deserve in these trying times.
Once I’m armed with a large pumpkin spice iced latte with two extra shots and a breakfast wrap, I switch from my lofi music to the podcast I downloaded, even though I know the story of Mill House by heart.
If anything, the podcast only reenforces just how well I know the story. The girl who does it is fun to listen to, though, and recounts the facts about it, or her interpretation of them, in her rich, animated tone which make it seem like the listener is part of the conversation.
“So, as I was saying. Jeremy Lane bought the house in the seventies, right? And honestly, it feels like a bit of an Amityville situation. After the last family disappeared, he got the house at a crazy low price, which is saying something since the place is in Illinois and they’ve basically been giving houses away to try to improve their economy for a while now. ”
She’s not wrong, but I snort at the brutal honesty anyway. Too bad their property tax rates are quite literally disgusting as hell, or I would’ve looked into buying a house there instead of in one of the smallest towns in Indiana.
The sun sets as I drive, dipping more quickly now than it would’ve a few weeks ago.
The light is just barely peeking over the trees by the time I turn onto the gravel road that will take me back to the rear of the vast property.
I’m not worried tonight, and the lack of anxiety is a weight off my shoulders.
There’s no way for my stalker to show up here, not when I haven’t posted on my blog about where I’ll be going.
Sometimes, I like to keep my content a surprise, so my followers wake up to something new.
Mill House had been a last minute decision, sure, but one I don’t regret making. Without the crowds of normal haunts, the expectations, the other people, and people asking me about other haunts, I get to focus on the part of my job that is lower stress than the rest.
Besides, I like adventure, and walking around a place that supposedly claimed three families thanks to the ‘demons’ feels like it could be interesting content to break up my more traditional autumn posts stuff.
“Anyway, Jeremy and his family lasted about three months, but those three months were literal hell for them. Jeremy slowly went mad, started talking about the voices in the walls and the woods. Said that they were making him crazy and he couldn’t get them to leave him alone.”
“And then he cut off his own ears,” I mutter with a sigh, just before she says it. It didn’t help, of course. Neither had shoving ice picks into his ear dreams.
“After a few weeks, when no one had heard from them, the cops finally decided to, you know, do their jobs. It only took nine people calling them.” The podcaster’s voice is dry and unamused, but mine would be too if I were talking about Mill House.
Maybe if the cops had gotten there sooner, if they checked after the first two or three calls instead of waiting weeks, Jeremy’s family would’ve still been alive.
At the very least, they might’ve been able to catch Jeremy before he walked out of the house and disappeared into the woods, never to be seen or heard from again.
I swipe my backpack from the passenger seat along with my phone, which I shove into my pocket.
Once I’ve checked to make sure I have everything, it only takes me a few seconds to get out and settle my backpack over my shoulders.
Glancing up, I’m glad to see that next week’s rain is still far enough away that I don’t have to worry about it ruining any of the shots I want to get while I’m here.
Really, if I can get a few now, they don’t all have to be terrifying.
With the way the sunlight is peeking through the trees to shine on the barn and the house, I immediately wrestle my phone out of my pocket to take a few pictures.