The Glaring Chapter Six

I tried to push aside my emotions—to look at the photo objectively and see what was really there not what I was afraid was there.  I wouldn’t let my mind play tricks on me.  I took a deep breath and squinted at the photo in Chris’s hand.  To the right of the trunk, Chris and Andi, dressed bunched in their arms, were doubled over, laughing.  To the left, Becca posed behind the pink meringue, lips pursed like a fashion model.  I leaned toward her, grinning, the slinky, green dress held up to my shoulders and my left leg kicking wonkily out to one side.  All that was perfectly normal.

Behind the trunk…someone… peeked over the open lid.  The pattern fabric covering the inside of the top almost looked like a dress she wore.  

I blinked.  “Is it just a smudge?  Or a fingerprint?”

Andi shook her head.  “I see a face.  Eyes and a nose.  Hair even.  I think she’s…smiling.”

Chris studied the picture then looked over it and across the room.  “Could it be Ellen’s reflection in the window?”

Andi sniffed and rubbed a finger under her nose.  She pointed at the face.  “The girl in the photo isn’t holding a camera.”

“Not one we can make out.” Chris shrugged.  “My money’s on a reflection.”

The thing in the picture looked like a human person and not a weird black shadow.  That fact made the clammy hand on my neck lighten somewhat.  And then tighten again.  Did two separate somethings live up here?

Next to me, Becca was silent.  Her breath was shallow and quick.  I shot a glance at her.  She looked super pale and like maybe she needed to lie down.  

“It’s probably just some weird thing in the film,” I said, bumping her shoulder with mine.  “That camera is old, right?”

Becca nodded and crossed her arms tight across her middle like she was trying to shield it from something.

Then Ellen said the thing we were all thinking but no one wanted to say.

“Unless it’s a ghost.”  Seemingly not in the least bit scared, she circled the trunk.  “Floor’s dry.  No ectoplasm.”

Chris laughed and started folding up dresses and laying them back in the trunk.  “Ectoplasm?  Not a thing.”

“I bet Sam’s right.”  Andi set down the weird photo and took up the others.  “It’s probably just a flaw in the film.  The tendency for humans to see faces in everything is well documented.  It’s called face pareidolia.  We look for ourselves in animals and objects all the time.”

Andi’s explanation made sense, and Becca looked freaked out enough that, honestly, it would have been best to drop the subject and move on—after all she actually had to live in this house.  But that clammy hand still had a gentle hold on me.  Before I could stop myself, I said, “What about the beets and the footsteps?  And the doll?”  And the shadow and the skirt…

Andi shrugged and turned to the tray of underthings.  “Likely unconnected.  I’m sure there’s a rational explanation.”  

Becca just sat there still wearing one satiny glove, chewing on the inside of her cheek and staring at the photo on the floor.  She looked unconvinced.

“Thanks for waiting for us to open the trunk.”  Chris laid the pink dress on top of the pile.  “That was really cool.”

Becca gave a weak smile. “I wasn’t sure if you’d think it was weird or whatever.” 

The doorbell rang, and I am not exaggerating when I say all five of us jumped.  Who knows?  Maybe all six of us jumped?  At that moment, I would have believed anything.  

“Girls!  Pizza!” Becca’s mom called up the stairs.

We tromped downstairs to where life felt blessedly ordinary.  A sitcom was playing on TV, and something about canned laughter is so relentlessly normal that creepy stuff just can’t exist in the same room.  The kitchen still looked like a war zone—sheets of thick plastic draped jagged holes in the walls, so we plopped down around the living room coffee table and ate there.  As if by unspoken agreement, we shifted into regular sleepover mode.  We watched stupid television and talked about boys. Andi made a strong argument that Ross is the hottest guy on Friends purely based on his job as a paleontologist, but Chris refused to concede Chandler’s wittiness as both superior in intellect and hotness.  Ellen got dibs on Joey, and when Becca admitted she’d somehow never seen an episode of Friends, we immediately searched the TV for reruns.  To me, Daniel Radcliffe’s accent trumps all “Friends” any day of the week, but my devotion to Harry Potter has become a bit of a punchline even among The Glaring, so I kept my opinion to myself.  

As the hour grew late, I noticed Becca glance toward the dark stairway more than once.  Whatever lurked in the corners of the Fogg house, I realized, bore little resemblance to the loveable specters haunting Hogwarts.  This thing…if it even was a thing…was elusive and strange—like something seen out of the corner of your eye, but when you look right at it, you discover that what you thought was something odd might just be a water stain or a coatrack.  Or it might not. 

Reliably, a moment comes in any good slumber party where everyone wilts all at once.  One second you are laughing so hard Dr. Pepper squirts out your nose, and the next, the night sort of sags like the old sofa in the basement.  Quiet settled over us, and though I honestly wouldn’t have minded sleeping right there in front of the TV, we climbed back upstairs and without brushing our teeth, unrolled our sleeping bags.  With some clever maneuvering and sticking of feet under the bed and desk, we were able to arrange ourselves so all of our heads were together.  I found myself between Becca and Chris, mostly glad that I couldn’t see out into the guest bedroom from where I lay.  I didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and catch sight of someone pawing through the trunk.

Ellen fell asleep first, as per usual.  Ellen could fall asleep at a fireworks show.  In the glow of a nightlight made from a seashell, I saw her face slacken and a trickle of drool slide down one cheek.  Chris and Andi soon followed, fidgeting and giggling giving way to heavy stillness.  Rolling onto one side, I breathed in the scent of Mom’s dryer sheets, glad for the smell of home.  

Next to me, Becca lay flat on her back, staring wide-eyed at little glow-in-the-dark stars glued to the ceiling.  

“Are you awake?” I whispered.

She nodded.

“Thanks for having us over.  I was really sad when I thought we might have to cancel.”

Becca tucked the sleeping bag under her chin.  “I hope people aren’t sorry they came.  I mean…that was kind of weird.”

I wanted to reassure her.  I wanted to say, “oh no not one teeny-tiny, itty-bitty bit weird.”  But I couldn’t. Not after what I’d seen and heard.  “Maybe it’s good we left the doll in the cemetery.”

“Yeah.”

“The face in the picture is probably just from old film.”

“Yeah.”  Becca nodded but didn’t look convinced

 “I mean, it’s not like you’ve ever seen anything weird up here…right?”

Becca was silent.  She shot me a quick glance and then scrunched her lips.  “I didn’t want to say anything…because I’m new, and I didn’t want you guys to think I’m crazier than you already do.”

A chill shook me.  Right there in my Hello Kitty sleeping bag.  I glanced at the others to make sure they were still asleep and whispered even quieter.  “I thought you said this house wasn’t haunted.”

She pulled a stuffed armadillo looking thing out of her sleeping bag and clutched it to her chest.  “This happened before.  Once.  When Mama flipped a house in New Orleans.  I was really small, but I remember a lady in a long white dress coming into my bedroom sometimes.  She just sat there on the edge of my bed, looking out the window with these sad dark holes for eyes.  I never told Mama, but Granddaddy said when you start renovating, the former occupants of a place don’t always like it.  I was so sure this house was quiet, but then the beets kept showing up and I felt like something was following me around and then…” She let out a big sigh.  “You’re gonna think I’m bonkers.”

I caterpillared my sleeping bag closer.  “I won’t.  I promise.”

She rolled to face me, and I could smell pepperoni on her breath.  “Two days ago, I saw a shadow up here.  Like a little person, but just black with no face or features or anything.  I came out of the bathroom after brushing my teeth and caught it in the spare room out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned and looked right at it, it was gone.”

Until that very moment. I never understood what it meant to have your blood run cold.  Every ounce of fluid in my body turned into a slushy.  My heart pounded, trying to force that blue ice through my veins, but it clogged, freezing me from inside.  “Becca.”  I swallowed hard and tasted pepperoni on my own spit.  “I saw it, too.”