Chapter Three Fright Night
“It wasn’t a ghost. It was perfectly logical. There are some strong breezes up here in the fall. I’m watching one right now,” I tell Honey, after I previously made the mistake of telling her about the popcorn incident.
“So, a breeze slammed the closet door?”
“I did have the window open.”
“Okay, okay. I see the logic. And it startled you.”
“It was way louder than I thought it would be, but hey, this is a pretty empty house. You imagine living in a 500-square-foot studio apartment and then going into a three-bedroom rancher. Sometimes when I’m singing in the kitchen, it echoes.”
“Girl, I’m imagining every day. I’m so jealous of your busted ass.”
“Busted is right. I choked, panicked, and had a flashback to the accident. The way the seatbelt wrapped around me and the car crushed and pinned me.” I close my eyes, barely able to breathe—but at least this time my mouth is empty. No popcorn dives into my throat.
I swallow, mouth dry. The panic of choking while alone floods me. New fear unlocked.
The flashback and the accompanying physical sensation weren’t real, though. It would have been all in my mind. So...
So what hit me in the back? It felt like an actual object, and it reminded me... Oddly enough, it reminded me of when I used to stay with my Uncle D, and he had a waterbed. I’d run and flop down on it, and giggle as the bed shifted and swayed under me, warm and almost living.
Warm.
Almost living.
If I close my eyes hard and just tune out everything, I feel...
The weight against my back. Lukewarm. Not entirely solid.
And then—not the seat belt across my chest. Arms. Around my middle. Pulling in tight and up.
The Heimlich.
My skin goes clammy, and Honey’s words fade in and out as I force myself to push the thoughts away and listen to her complaining about her boss and how she’s going to leave Javon if he doesn’t propose this winter.
I make noises in the right places, but even as I sit, kind of numb, kind of spaced out, I start to notice a whole lot of little things.
The kitchen lights are buzzing again.
Old house, Amber. They do that.
The closet door’s screw is on the table in front of me. Gotta get a screwdriver. I have a set, but I also found a well-kept, dust-free metal toolbox, the kind with fold-out shelves and a painted metal lid, under the sink.
Old. The tools in it were old. Meticulously clean, but nothing there was modern. No power tools, no rubber, no plastic. All metal and wood.
“You have a headache, girl?”
“Yes,” I answer automatically, because I want to get off the phone, and because I’m so used to it being the truth. I want to call Mr. Nigel Salvin of Promises Kept. Maybe it’s his. Or Hugo’s.
“Okay, well, take it easy. Keep your feet tucked in at night.”
I roll my eyes—then stop, staring heavenward. There was a shadow on the ceiling. One that shouldn’t be there. “That’s an old wives’ tale,” I mutter. The shadow leaves. I follow it with my eyes, down the wall, and out the open window, nausea and real, palm-soaking fear covering me.
It’s nothing. It’s symptoms of post-concussion syndrome. It’s signs of swelling in the brain. Optic nerve damage. Probably reinjured myself when I fell during the Great Popcorn Incident of 2026.
“Hey, those Old Wives didn’t get to be old for no reason. Keep your feet tucked in so the ghosts don’t grab you. I don’t want to come up for Halloween and find you with cloudy white eyes and your head on sideways.”
“Stop,” I try to laugh, but I just shiver. “This place isn’t creepy.”
I look around. It’s really nice. I like the way the light streams in the kitchen.
I like the way you can open the windows, and your teeth don’t rattle from the rush of the traffic and the pulsating rush of the Green Line trains whooshing.
I like the way I have big, sprawling old trees in the yard instead of little saplings in iron cages on the sidewalk.
I like the way these big, beautiful trees are turning gold and red.
I love the feeling of being safely, quietly alone, with no demands, no unavoidable interruptions from neighbors, sirens, and calls from lawyers and insurance people.
That’s behind me. Now, I have a total break from the rat race, the scary, hectic pace, and even the endless physical therapy that was supposed to help me heal.
It did. I’m so much better than I was. I have a ways to go, but I’m in a good place. This is a good place.
But when I think about the feeling of something grabbing me, the slamming door, the hanging hinge, and the shadow that I literally could watch move and curl like smoke until it crept through the window?
It’s creepy. And I don’t like that.
After the hellish year I’ve had? Ghost Bitch, no. You’re not gonna eff with my piece. Not without getting an exorcism in your face.
I make my farewells to Honey and call Nigel.
His gruff, and what I’ve now learned is called “Geordie” accent, grunts a greeting.
“Did you leave an old metal toolbox here? Under the sink?” I ask.
“No.”
“Did Hugo?”
“No.”
Great. Not a man of many words, that’s for sure. “Did you ever hear that this place is haunted?”
“No. I would know.”
“You would?” My eyebrows arch.
“Yes.”
“Uh... How?”
“There are ways of knowing, usually. I’m one of the ones who knows. I’ve never heard it’s haunted. When I was there, I didn’t see a ghost.”
I blink. “You believe in ghosts?”
“Yes.”
I blink a little longer, eyes struggling to open back up. Sometimes an economy of words is just as bad for my headache as too many. “I see. Well, I don’t.”
“Then why did you ask if the place was haunted?”
“Um. Well. Some odd things happened. The lights have been buzzing and flickering.” I tick it off on my hand.
“That house was built in April of 1954. The wiring might be original. Would you like us to take a look?”
“Possibly. And a door slammed out of nowhere—”
“The wind? Was your window open?”
I bite my tongue. It’s irritating as sin to hear my own rational explanations repeated back to me. “It was, but the door slammed so hard a hinge fell out.”
“Are you new to the mountains? We get some big gusts. And you’re in a hilly section there.”
With a sigh, I resign myself to sanity. “I’m sure you’re right.
Sometimes I have an overactive imagination.
I also have post-concussion syndrome, and the symptoms do what they want, when they want.
Maybe this shadowy mist crawling in the corners is a sign of belated optic nerve damage or something. ”
Mr. Salvin is silent. For all I know, he’s used up his words for the day. “A shadowy mist is crawling in the corners?”
I carefully scan the room, afraid of what I might see. “No. No, not right now.”
“Could it have been a cloud obscuring the sun and casting a shadow in the room, and then, as the cloud lifted, the shadows seemed to leave?” he suggests.
“That’s very probable. Okay, well, if it’s not your toolbox, do you know whose it might be?”
“The owners must have left it behind.”
“Do you know the owners? I mean, did you?”
“No. I haven’t lived here for too long, but I think I heard it was only used as a summer place, a mountain getaway for people who lived in the city. Brooklyn, maybe.”
“Oh, that’s right. You told me that.” I chew my lip. There’s nothing inherently spooky about that, or about a gust of wind, a cloudy day, or even old wiring. I’m being silly.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Salvin. I’ll call you to set up a time to look at the wiring,” I say with forced cheer.
Nothing sinister at all.
“I’m way too in my head. Gonna give myself a damn migraine,” I scold, and pace.
Coping mechanisms.
Relax. Shift focus. Give your brain a break. Do something that will refresh the body and soul. And brain.
Cue for a garishly colored rom-com paperback in the bathtub, with the new over-the-tub wooden rack Honey gave me as a moving present? Hell, yes.
I decide that I can take a hot bath with a cup of hot cocoa or a glass of wine, or both if I want.
I can do it right now. No more studio apartment stall shower.
No more waiting until after work—and then getting interrupted by someone’s frantic phone call or a staff meeting that could have been an email.
And no peeping toms, like that creep in the apartment across from me.
Hmm. With a defiant little twist of the wrist, I throw my robe off and leave it on the kitchen floor. I need to wash it anyway. I’ve practically been living in it for days.
My nearest neighbor is like half a mile away... And the other neighbors? Well, let’s just say they’re dead to the world. Ain’t no one gonna see this body from here.
“We’re riching it up these days,” I say to my reflection in the new stainless steel fridge, deciding that this body would be worth looking at, y’know, if I wanted to show it off.
I take my bottle of wine, flip on my coffee maker, and put in a cocoa pod. I put my “Witch, Please...” mug under it. It’s shaped like a pumpkin and has a curvy witch silhouette on it.
Oh, and I grab my wine glass, even though I’m tempted to drink straight out of the bottle for a second.
Yep. Cocoa and red wine. At ten in the morning.
Nothing is going to make me give up this peace. I can ignore shadows and shit for a slice of heaven like this.
I’m dead, but I’m not that dead.
This girl is built different. Wildly different than the girls I used to know.
She’s an hourglass that moves like she’s set to seduce, and for a couple of weak moments, I decide driving her away can wait.
See, I went out of the house, down to sit on my headstone and think a while.
When I came back, there she was, naked as a jaybird, walking through the kitchen with a wine glass in one hand and some hot cocoa in the other.
“What in the luxury?” I muttered to myself. Of course to myself, because my very unwanted houseguest can’t hear me. Can’t see me.
But I’m sure as hell getting an eyeful.
She leaves the bathroom door open. And hey, I made my presence known with the lights, the closet, and I know she saw me trailing out the window at least once—not that she knew it was me.
I’m trying, okay?
Shit.