There was still some time before midnight hit, it was time to take inventory. Heather stacked two big canisters of Morton salt on the empty dusty coffee table. These were followed by a handful of matchbooks and a tall white candle stabbed through a styrofoam cup and lined with foil, everything Heather had raided from their hurricane box. Brittany layed down her own ivory colored candle that was sitting in a brass holder Scrooge might have puttered around with. An extra maglight and a crowbar completed the set. Somehow Heather still felt woefully unprepared.
The living room was like she remembered it, with a leather couch, coffee table, plastic plants, radiator, and police tape across the bottom of the stairs. She knew she’d have to cross that tape tonight, but she would put it off as long as possible. Silently, the two walked from the living room through a kind of saloon door into the kitchen. There was a small breakfast table built into the wall with a wooden chair, and then a larger dinner table in the opposite corner. The stove and fridge and appliances were still in place, plugged in, yellowed with age. They seemed like they would have been old even in the 90s. Heather peaked into the sink and saw three plates and a mug sitting there covered in some blobby crusted sludge, forever waiting to be cleaned.
“I think I might hate this moldy food more than the ghosts,” Heather whispered like she was trying not to wake someone. Brittany took the warning and walked to the other end of the kitchen to inspect cupboards that had lost their ability to stay shut. Heather opened a cabinet and found cookbooks, dozens of them, stuffed with bookmarks and notes written in neat cursive. For a moment Heather pictured whoever wrote these, practicing their cursive in grade school, developing recipes with their parents, raising a family, passing it all down. There was a full life here that had ended as suddenly as snipping the wick of a lit candle. She walked on.
Heather ducked under a moth-eaten curtain that was stapled above a doorway and found herself staring down a long straight hallway that faded into the distance. Something in the darkness caught her eye and she walked towards it. She ran her hand along the peeling wallpaper while she moved farther away from the kitchen. Heather gasped, jerking her hand back.
“You okay? Get a splinter?” Brittany asked from the other room.
“Not a splinter, a weird feeling.”
“Find the cold spot already?”
“A vibration...” Heather raised her hand back to the wall. Three distinct scrrch scrrch scrrch sounds came from behind the wallpaper. “Shit shit shit shit!” Heather shouted under her breath and ran back to the kitchen.
“Fuck, what’s going on?” Brit said, shining her light around the room.
“There’s a weird noise in the wall!”
“What kind of weird noise?”
“It felt like…like a fingernail scratching from the other side!”
“Oh yeah I’ve heard that too. This place is lousy with mice. We used to get them at our lake cabin all the time.”
Oh. Duh. Heather felt her cheeks glow and was glad it was too dark for Brittany to notice. “Yeah that tracks. At least something’s alive in here.”
Heather forced herself back to the mouse spot. Brittany moved on, going back to the living room. Still basically in the same room, just beyond a saloon door, but all the same Heather felt very alone.
Heather continued forward and stopped with her heart in her throat. A tall figure had moved at the end of the hall. She was sure of it. Heather stared straight ahead and let her senses expand outward, welcoming in all sounds, all signs that someone else was there with her. Could it actually be another person? Would that be better? A shadow can’t stab you, or call the cops. She slowly backed out of the hall, keeping her eye on the spot, and when she moved, the shadow moved again.
“Idiot” she hissed to herself. A mirror. A fucking mirror. She hadn’t even begun the ritual and she’d lost her nerve over a mirror and some mice. She wasn’t going to be a character in a B movie, or a joke walking through a fun house. She slammed the fleshy part of her fist against the spot on the wall twice hoping to scare the critters back to their hole. Two heavy thuds came back to her from the other side.
“BRITTANY!” Heather screamed in a dead sprint. She collided with Brit in the dark, sneakers sliding on dust, wrapping her arms around Brittany to break her fall. She didn’t let go. “Jesus Christ Heather! Are you alright?”
“No. Kind of,” Heather said. “Fuck.”
“More mice?” Brittany asked, pulling Heather closer.
“Something knocked back inside the wall.” Heather said.
Brittany extended her arms out and looked at Heather’s face. “Oh fuck no it did not. Fuck this house.” She let go of Heather and stomped towards the hallway, her fight or flight had clearly settled on fight.
“Brittany wait, wait!” But she was already gone. Heather felt the darkness closing the farther she got from Brit. She dashed to catch up.
“Where was it?” Brittany said with the voice of a mom asking which kid had thrown sand at her baby. Heather silently pointed to the spot, and before Heather could stop her, Brit put her ear directly against it.
“Okay I don’t know who is listening to this,” she shouted, “but fuck your creepy bullshit.” The wall remained silent, and Brittany pulled her ear away. “We’re trying to help you, to figure out what happened to you, okay? So either help us, or stay out of the way, okay? I don’t have to be here. Do you have to be here Heather?”
“Uh,” said Heather, taken aback. “No, I really don’t have to be here.”
“Right.” Brittany resumed. “We are choosing to be here, for you! So are you going to help?” Brittany looked around, waiting. “What do you say to that? Anything?” The only sound was the shifting of Brittany’s boots. “That’s what I thought!” Brittany turned back to Heather and the two just stood there, staring at one another, not saying a word. Brittany cracked a smile. And Heather burst out laughing. Brittany joined and their laughter was the kind that seems endless, one fit triggering another, lack of oxygen making the world feel unreal.
When they finally stopped, Heather could swear the house had changed. The shadows in the corners weren’t as deep. Her twitchy nerves had relaxed a little. Heather put her arm around her friend as they walked back towards the kitchen. “This is ridiculous Brit. This whole fucking thing.”
“Yeah, but hey, at least it's not boring. That’s what we wanted right?”
“That,” Heather said, “and ‘solving the case’.”
“I hear the sarcasm in your air quotes,” Brittany said. “But look what I already got.” Brittany opened her rucksack and it was full of the recipe books Heather had looked at earlier. “I bet there are names or signatures in these. Lots of stuff to go through.”
“And if nothing else,” Heather said, “probably a good chicken alfredo recipe.
“I can’t wait to tell my grandkids how I learned to make their favorite Sunday dinner. Gimme the walkie,” Brittany said. “Serafina, are you there? Over.”
The walkie talkie squawked back. “Yup. Things cool? Over.”
“A brief scare but I think we’re good now. How long until go time? Over.”
“You’ve got 20 more minutes to pick your room, over.”
“Over and out.” Brit pocketed the walkie. “Okay, let’s try this again?”
They split up. The house was less oppressive, but still creepy. One door off the long mirrored hallway was a pantry, another a storage closet, a third was a room buried in scattered folders, printer paper, books, a heavily neglected home office? Heather made a mental note to come back and dig through the filing cabinet there.
Heather went back to the living room, unsure where Brittany had gone. Behind the big couch she noticed a little circular room with another grandfather clock, long since wound down to stillness, its face shone in a glimmer of moonlight. Next to the clock room was a formal looking dining room, the kind that was reserved for special occasions, but never actually used. Something by the china cabinet caught Heather’s eye. At about knee height there was a square door. Heather vaguely remembered seeing doors like these in her grandma’s house once. There they had felt ordinary enough, but in this house the tiny door felt wrong. It felt like opening it was the last thing in the world she should do. She took a deep breath trying to summon up Brittany’s hallway energy, grabbed the cold metal door handle, and yanked it open.
Instead of a dark cavern spiraling into insanity, the small space was packed with bright board game boxes held together with yellowed tape, piles of extra blankets, and sweaters stinking of moth balls. Heather shut it again smiling. Okay, now she was ready.
A moment later Heather was ducking under the police tape and taking her first step onto the groaning wooden stairs. She kept her eyes on her feet, going up another step, and a third. She didn’t dare look up to the second floor landing, but with her head down the back of her neck felt exposed. She took a fourth step, and stopped. If she was going to continue, she had to look up. Slowly, haltingly, she looked up the stairs, ready to see again the thing that had so changed the course of her life.
There was nothing. She let out the breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding. Emulating Brittany again, she called out, “I’m here to help! Please don’t mind me coming up!” But as soon as she said it she knew it had been a mistake. Darkness returned to dampen the room. Her fears were out now, alive on the air and growing. It was palpable. She put all her focus into taking another step forward, ignoring the voice that cried out for her to run and find Brittany.
The steps became easier to climb. They were oddly narrow, she noticed. The heels of her feet hung off the edges as she ascended and there was a groove worn into the middle. Just old wood, in an old house, yet somehow it felt like she was walking on the spine of some unspeakably ancient beast that had been long buried.
She made it to the second floor landing. Down a short hallway were two bedrooms, doors hanging open. Peeking inside she blushed as her light revealed the contents of very personal time capsules. In one she saw posters for Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, Weezer, and more stretching back into the shadows. There was a guitar, a bass, and a ukelele on stands in the corner. The bed was half made and there was dirty laundry full of holes on the floor. The other bedroom was filled with awards. Colorful ribbons for track, field hockey, horse riding, dance, show choir, colorguard. It was dizzying. There were scholarship medals and plaques, and little statues of ballerinas. There was a desk under a tiny circular window, not too unlike Heather’s. It was neatly organized and piled high with books, both novels and textbooks. And Heather had thought she was an overachiever. Had this person been able to go on and do the great things they’d dreamed of? Or had tragedy derailed their careful plans? Did they even make it out?
Just one more floor to go, Heather thought. She climbed quickly this time, outrunning the warnings that sprang up in her heart. She was about halfway up the final set of stairs before she stopped short, feeling like she’d run into a wall. Hatred. Pure dripping malice. Her hands went cold on the banister. She could see a single door off the third landing. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with that room, that door, this landing. She shut her eyes and took another step.
GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT!
When Heather opened her eyes she could see her breath. She tried to be Brittany again, “Ff-fuck-f” but her voice was soft and her teeth were chattering. She couldn’t move forward. She couldn’t move backward.
GET OUT -“Heather!” Oh. God. The soul sundering hatred knew her name. She felt her skin blistering with the power of it, even as she shook with cold. “HEATHER!” The shout had come from downstairs. Brittany. Heather could move again. She flew down the stairs in almost a controlled scrambling fall. She ducked under the tape and was back in the living room when she heard her name again and realized Brittany wasn’t just calling Heather, she was calling for help.
“Brittany! Where are you?” Heather tore through the house in the dark, flashlight creating shakey images as it bounced in her still numb hands. She heard thundering footsteps on the stairs, something in pursuit. She spun with her flashlight to the landing and stopped.
She saw it again, the figure glaring down at her. Fury and hatred pulsing out from its formlessness. Heather felt hands clutch at her and she screamed until she saw Brittany’s blazing red hair caught in the flashlight beam. “Thank fucking God I found you,” she said. Heather shook and looked from Brit to the stairs. The presence was gone. She sat down directly on the dusty wooden floor, covered her eyes and tried to keep from crying.
“There is something seriously not right with this place,” Brittany said, crouching down with Heather. “I lost it. The basement is just...awful. I’ve never felt that bad in my life. But it’s loaded with stuff that may be useful to bring back with us. I don’t think anyone’s touched it since before the family left, not even the police.”
“Why do you say that?” Heather asked, almost automatically. She still felt scrambled.
“If the police had seen it, they’d definitely have taken it as part of an investigation. There are like, metal hooks and jars of stuff totally webbed over. Weird tools, some books too.”
“So we have to go down there?”
“I’m hoping midnight hits, some Casper guy pops up and answers all our questions, and we can leave without ever having to go down there again. That place was bad vibes city. But underneath all of it, I don’t know. I felt like something wanted me to go there, there was something I needed to see. Did you have any luck?”
“Something really didn’t want me upstairs, I got that message loud and clear with no conflicting information. But we’ll see where the ritual takes us I guess.”
Brittany nodded gravely. Heather did her best to remember the safe feeling from the kitchen. If she stuck with Brittany she’d be okay. And hey, the basement was about as far as she could get from the third floor.
Brittany lifted her walkie. “Hey Serafina, are we good to go? Over.”
“Two minutes. Time for you girls to get to a threshold and take the candles out.”
...
They stood in the kitchen holding their candles, wax slowly dripping down to the holders. Their names were scrawled on pieces of scrap paper which rested on the floor just inches from their feet. There was no physical door between the kitchen and the dining room, but Heather could feel one, the threshold. A feeling of inevitability, of transformation, of destiny, all swarmed around her like a tempest. She expected to see her candle flame flickering, but nothing moved.
“Okay.” Serafina’s lo-fi voice squawked from the walkie. “This mostly drives itself from here. Remember the rules. Don’t hang out too long in the same place. Stay on your guard. Always have salt ready. Radio if you need help. Good luck. Over and out.”
At the stroke of midnight, Heather and Brittany blew out the candles and were plunged into darkness. They crossed the threshold, and all was silent.