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I took a step back from the door. Now was my chance to get out of this stupid dare, and it was, in fact, a dare… even a triple-dog-dare.
Still, I sucked it up and stuck a hand on my hip, trying to look as badass as I could drum up through my own terrifying fear. “No. Guys. I’m just as scared as you are. We were kids when we saw Carrie’s bloody ghost or at least we think we saw it. It’s time to put that story to rest. Besides, none of the ghostbusters who’ve been in this room have ever seen anything. Isn’t that what you told us, Vince?”
All eyes fell on Vince.
He hesitated, gazed down at the floor, then back up for a moment. I instantly knew something was up.
“That’s not entirely true,” he explained as he fumbled with the key, as if he couldn’t quite find the hole. He chose to keep old-fashioned locks on the doors that required a classic skeleton key. Granted the hallway was low light, but not that low that he couldn’t see where to insert the key.
The room was separated from the rest of the house. It was the largest room on the second floor with the best view of the town. According to what we knew about the various rooms in the house, it had been Carrie Ann’s playroom. Then after her parents, Boris and Carmen, decided she was a witch in her teen years, they locked her inside this room and kept her here until they poisoned her.
Vince had told us that with the door closed and the windows boarded up, no one could hear her screams. Not even her parents. Those boards on the windows were some of the first things that Vince tore down when he first took over the house.
“But you said…” I hated when Vince wasn’t upfront about shit… something he did often enough to keep us always guessing. Vince liked to either embellish a story or ignore some of the details, depending on his audience.
“I said that no one ever saw what we saw. I never said that some spooky things didn’t happen while ghostbusters were inside the room.” Vince finally inserted the key and turned it in the lock. He went to pull the door open with the antique doorknob when Bram put his hand on the door to stop him.
The weird thing about this door… it opened out, unlike the other doors in this house, at least according to Freddie. Probably so Carrie Ann couldn’t put anything up against the door to keep her killer parents out, giving them complete control.
“Let’s think this thing through,” Bram said. “We’re breaking our pact because we want Luna to ride inside the coffin for the race, which she’s afraid of because every year during the race, at least one coffin ends up in pieces when it hits the tree. Does that about cover your reason, Luna?”
He stared down at me as he held the door shut.
“Yes, and no,” I mumbled, refusing to walk away from this horror when we were so close to conquering it. “I think it’s time we confront one of our biggest fears. We’re all grown up now,and what we saw or didn’t see, happened when we were young and impressionable. Hell, for all we know, someone could’ve pranked us, and Vince has been losing money on opening this place because of this stupid scary room. Plus, we’ve always helped each other to face our fears and do it anyway. Well, this is one of those ‘do it anyway’ times.”
“That’s fine for trying new foods or riding a horse or learning how to tango, all of which we’ve done, but this is facing a fear on an entirely different level,” Freddie offered. “We have no idea what waits for us on the other side of this door. I’m warning you guys, this room is creepy. I’ve been in it, and something unsettling lives in this room. The rest of the house seems normal, but this room… something is way off.”
His words sent a shiver down my spine.
“Look, the way I see it, this whole thing is tied to your stupid sex-free pact,” I told them right as the thought raced through my mind. I hadn’t even dwelled on this premise until that very moment. “Like why are you guys so afraid of letting your emotions out? Why are you holding back? Just because we’ve all been torched a few times, doesn’t mean our true love isn’t out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. So yeah, I made a mistake with Gary, but at least I’m still in the game. You guys have given up even trying.”
“I don’t see how sex has anything to do with entering this stupid room,” Bram countered, while still pressing on the door. “Having sex with a woman, at least for me, taps into shit I might not be ready to deal with, especially if that woman isn’t in the same space as I am. Which has been the fucking case every single time. Granted, I like a lot of sex in a relationship, maybe too much, but I’m working on that. Still, I kept dating women who don’t want a deep relationship. They want everything on the surface. Impossible if you’re having sex a few times a day. Emotions can’t help but get stronger and stronger. I’m not intosuperficial bullshit, at least not since I hit my thirties.” He dropped his hand from the door. “Fucking fine. Let’s just go inside and set the room on fire with our PJ party. Carrie Ann might like the visitors in her playpen. Let’s get it over with so we can get on with our fucking lives. You’re right, Luna. This room has been haunting us since we were kids. Time to put our fucking toys away and grow the hell up.”
We were all silent for a moment.
Like Bram had sucked the air out of our space.
Like he was angry about it, about that night. He just admitted things about himself he hadn’t ever said before.
“You like to have sex several times a day?” I asked. “And when you say several, what number do you attach to that?”
“I don’t know, three or four times, maybe, but that’s on the low end.”
“The fucking low end?” Vince asked, appearing a bit stunned. “What are you, some kind of sex machine? Are you even human?”
I had a feeling this information took Vince and Freddie by surprise as well. Like they never talked about this stuff with each other. I always assumed they shared everything, even their sex lives.
“Look, it’s what I like, all right? You know I like a lot of sex,” Bram told them, trying to dismiss their inquisition.
“And do you get off that many times?” Vince wanted to know.
“What’s with all the fucking questions? Yeah, I get off, so what?”
“I just don’t understand where you get the time?” Freddie asked, as if the answer was somehow important.
“I didn’t think a guy could come that many times,” I said, thinking aloud. “I mean, doesn’t it take time to build up steam again?”
“Sperm? Yeah, but if you practice a few things like Kegels or stopping yourself from coming the first time you feel like it, you can come more often.” Bram was into it now, like he was giving a talk on the subject. Like he was teaching one of his Zoom classes on photography. Not only was Bram a fabulous nature photographer, he also did weddings, parties, events, and taught photography with online classes.
