7. LO #3
I look at the room through partially shut eyes. The light glides smoothly over the surfaces of my room. Other than the music, nothing else is out of place or weird.
“Alright, let’s get this turned off,” Stevie shouts.
She shakes her head like this whole thing has been an annoyance as opposed to the scariest thing that has ever happened to her.
But then again, that’s the whole point of her job.
She’s supposed to be able to handle this stuff; it’s probably old news to her.
We cut across the bedroom, our steps quick this time instead of cautious, and Stevie points her flashlight at the record to figure out how to turn it off.
When she finally manages to get it off, the silence that replaces Songbird is somehow even scarier than music unexpectedly blasting through the house.
“Weird,” Stevie says.
“Very,” I agree. “Can we get out of here now? I can hear my blood rushing in my ears, and it’s making me uneasy.”
Stevie chuckles. “Yeah, that’s fine,” she says. “We just need to pack up the rest of the stuff quickly.”
“You can just leave it here overnight. It’s fine,” I say.
Even in the dark, I can see Stevie’s amused smile. “Are you scared?”
“Of course I am!” I say. “What kind of question even is that?”
“But you’ve been living here for so long without a problem.”
“This is…new for me.”
Stevie waves it off. “It’s fine. It’s just something weird with the power.”“And the stuff downstairs?”
“Not saying you should blame the idiots, but they are idiots. It’s not like there’s zero possibility it wasn’t one of them. Or it could’ve been like, an earthquake or unsteady shelves or something.”“I don’t know. This feels really weird,” I say. “Weirder than what I’m used to.”
“You’ll be alright,” Stevie says. She lets go of my hand and I realize then that we’d been holding onto each other for that entire time. But as soon as she lets go, I want her to immediately come back.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Trying the lights again,” she says. “Andrew’s an idiot.
For all we know, he managed to use the light switch wrong.
” She’s quiet for a beat, the clicking sound of my light switch sounding out.
“Okay, Andrew was right about that. But no big deal. I’ve been saying something is weird with your wiring, anyway. ”
“Right,” I say, even though I’m not totally sure the answer is that simple. As much as I want to believe Stevie—really, really want to believe Stevie—it’s becoming harder to think logically.
Stevie walks back over to me, standing only a few inches away from me. I can’t really see her, but I can definitely feel her presence. Heat radiates off her body, and I’m desperate to touch her again and not out of fear this time.
The obvious then hits me like a punch to the gut. “Wait, if the power isn’t on, how was the record player working?” The realization makes my stomach sink and my blood run cold.
I’ve been navigating the complexities of thinking there’s a ghost in the house for months.
And despite a million reasons to believe there’s something weird going on, there’s always a tiny part of me that refuses to believe it’s really, actually happening.
I’m not a full skeptic, but I’m cautious to go all-in on my ghost theory, and have been sitting at a steady ninety-percent certainty.
But this is the confirmation I’d needed.
All of that time spent telling everyone about my haunted house, all of the stories and locking my bedroom door at night, and the weird feeling I get when I’m here—it all means something.
The abnormal, crazy, unbelievable thing is exactly what’s happening to me.
“Stevie, we need to get out of here,” I say.
“It could just be some of the outlets in the house, random wiring—”
“ Stevie ,” I plead, my voice carrying through the dark. I’m breathing like I just ran a mile.
She’s quiet for a beat. “You really think something is going on?”
“I’ve never been so certain,” I say. “I want to get out of here.”
I wait for Stevie to argue or tell me that I’m being overdramatic. But instead, she just says in the softest voice I’ve heard from her, “Okay.”
“Okay,” I say, nearly letting out a sigh of relief.
Stevie directs her flashlight back toward my door, our lights joining together. We can make out most of the room now, but the limited light is making the world’s scariest shadows bounce around us.
“My bedroom has always been the one room in the house where I wasn’t scared, but not anymore,” I admit.
“Do you want to go back with us?” Stevie asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, not stay here tonight?”
“Oh, no. It’s fine,” I say, my immediate impulse. And then after thinking about it a beat, I realize there’s no way in hell I’m staying here alone tonight. “I’ll just go to a hotel or something.”
“That’s where we’re going, anyway,” Stevie says. I’m quiet for a beat, and Stevie quickly manages to put together why. “Staying in hotels keeps us in the headspace of working, even if it’s only a little bit of a drive away from our apartments. And it’s tax deductible.”
There’s a part of me that wants to protest for some reason, but I know how stupid that is. I also can’t think of anything worse than going somewhere by myself right now. I need people to decompress with after everything that’s happened today.
And I also want just a little more time with Stevie.
“Okay,” I say.
“Alright. Let’s get you out of here.” She nods her head toward the door and I follow her, our hands finding each other again. I’m squeezing tightly, using her like a human stress ball, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
By the time the front door is in sight, I’m practically running to finally get outside.
“Dude, we thought you guys died,” Andrew says as soon as we fly through the front door. Andrew and the twins have all settled into spots on my front stoop, sitting on their phones like nothing at all had just happened. “Can we get the hell out of here now, please?”
“Let’s go,” Stevie says, twirling her finger in the air to say wrap it up .