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But then he began neglecting to call. Neglecting to tell me he had travel coming up. Neglecting me.
And I was too blind to see or too stupid to accept that his life had somehow gone on without me, that I had been relegated to the dark corners of our life like his old practice violin—the one he kept for sentimental reasons, but which he’d said held no real value. Not in comparison to its shiny expensive replacement.
I drifted to sleep before the credits rolled on the movie, and it wasn’t until much, much later that I awoke to the sounds of people walking the floors of the attic overhead. At first I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, but as I awoke, I realized something was terribly wrong.
Darkness had enveloped the room, and it took me a moment to realize I was still in Michael’s room. Who was upstairs? Had Daniel and Michael gone up there? But no. There were two sets of steady breaths coming from nearby.
My groggy mind tried to remember how I’d come to sleep here, when I had fully intended to move back down the hall. What would Daniel think, after all?
But I was grateful to Michael for letting me sleep, for leaving me be. He undoubtedly suspected I would be afraid to go back to sleeping in that room alone—even if my reasons were inherently crazy.
Now though, I thought they weren’t crazy. I sat up, squinting my eyes as if it would help my ears better decode what I was hearing. A scuffling noise, followed by silence. Footsteps racing across the floor. More silence. A crash!
A yelp flew from my mouth as I clutched the covers to my chin.
“What was that?” A sleepy voice came from the darkness at my side. Daniel.
“Not sure,” I admitted, trying to sound brave, adultly.
He sat up then—I couldn’t see him clearly but could feel another wakeful presence in the room. The noises overhead continued.
“Ghosts,” he said, and his voice held an edge of fear but also one of awe. “Dad, wake up.”
He must have poked Michael because the next sound was a startled and sleepy, “Ow. What?”
“The ghosts,” Daniel said, as if this explained things.
“There’s no such thing,” Michael said, and I heard him roll over. “Go back to sleep.”
“Let’s go look,” Daniel said, his voice holding equal parts fear and excitement. “I can’t sleep now.” Oh no. I couldn’t let him go look alone and Michael did not sound like he was up for attic exploration.
“No.” Michael said.
I, for one, did not need to go look. Despite my hesitation to believe there was any such thing as ghosts, the point was that I didn’t NOT believe it. And that little edge of possibility was where terror lay.
“I’m going,” Daniel said, and I heard him getting out of his sleeping bag.
“Dan,” Michael moaned. “No.”
“Come on.” At this point, Daniel’s voice was at the door, and it was clear he was not in the mood to be the obedient son tonight.
“I’ll go,” I said, slipping out from beneath the blanket I’d snuggled under as we’d watched the movie. Dread filled my chest and I moved slowly toward the door.
Michael made some kind of grumbling noise and shuffled out of his sleeping bag, lighting our way with the flashlight from his phone. In the tiny arc of light, I noticed he was again shirtless, and again wearing the low-slung PJ pants that sent an unfamiliar wave of lust through me. The fear still bolting around inside me banished it easily enough, though. Lust was not the appropriate feeling for a ghost-hunting expedition.
The attic stairs looked especially creepy in the glare of the phone light, the darkness at the top looming as Michael led us forward. Scarier still, the noises continued as we approached in our socked feet.
At the top, Michael made a motion for us to stop, and I waited just behind Daniel, who seemed to have finally gained an appropriate level of fear about the fact that we were about to confront whatever was making all the noise up here. Michael swung his light around, and I heard him sigh heavily.
“Holy cow,” he said. “No ghosts, I don’t think. They’re gone, if they were here. And they must have been really mad. Or maybe they’re the spirits of messy toddlers. Come look.”
The attic, illuminated in the light of Michael’s phone, was a disaster. The boxes that had been stacked into the bookshelf had been pulled out, their contents flung wildly around the space. The dressmaker’s form, which had stood eerily in one corner, had been knocked over, and a jagged slash now ran the length of its torso.
What was all this? These ghosts weren’t just angry—they were furious! Was the dress form supposed to represent me? My blood iced and my breathing became shallow.
“Creepy,” Daniel said, his voice full of awe.
There was also a smell that permeated the space, something that reminded me of wet dog. I tried to slow my breathing. Hyperventilating would only let me smell more of the fetid perfume the ghosts had left.
