“I’m so glad you finally saw reason and agreed to host the first of many haunting parties,” Glenda winked at me as she surveyed the spiderwebs hanging happily from any surface out of my reach and, honestly, most within my reach as well.
“Me, too! This place is too perfectly spooky to waste,” Rae flicked back a stray lock of jet black hair with a red-tipped nail.
The chandelier flickered as a tentative knock sounded at the door. We exchanged looks and then Glenda and Rae watched me expectantly. I sighed.
“I guess it is my house,” I muttered as I pulled open the door.
The skinny figure on the other side of the door stopped biting her thin lips to flash me a huge smile. I smiled back before turning to look at Glenda who had been nothing but mean to Lacey since they first met.
She shrugged and mouthed, “Later.”
I narrowed my eyes and shook my head at her as Rae stepped forward to grab Lacey’s hand and pull her into the foyer. Lacey seemed unaware of the manhandling as her eyes wandered over every surface with wonder and admiration.
“It’s almost like we’ve stepped back in time,” she murmured breathlessly.
“Or time stands still here for the ghost,” Glenda grinned at her.
Lacey’s eyes went wide and then sought out mine as she released a breathless whisper, “Ghosts?”
“Don’t worry. They only come for the naughty teenagers,” I looked pointedly at Glenda, who responded with rolled eyes and a rude hand gesture.
Then she turned abruptly and headed toward the kitchen, “I hope you have some spooky snacks to fortify us for ghost hunting tonight.”
I sighed and followed with Lacey and Rae so close at my heels that I may not have imagined their anxious breaths on my neck. As my small troop inspected my snack offerings and found them worthy of digging in, the itinerary for the evening got finalized.
“So when we have full tummies from all these yummy snacks, I vote we watch a scary movie,” Rae grinned over a concoction of pretzels coated in chocolate to look like a spider web.
“And then the ghost stories,” Glenda wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at me, “Or tales about the previous owners.”
“Sounds good,” I refused to let her rope me into this argument again.
She grinned and I crushed a sigh deep down inside my chest and grinned back. Rae and Lacey nibbled at some popcorn as they looked between the two of us, no doubt feeling the tension and waiting for the real show to begin.
Hours later, after getting our adrenaline flowing with not one but two scary movies, we opted to save our spooky tales for the following evening. If my guests hadn’t scared themselves out of making a weekend of it. I grinned at their backs as I followed them up the stairs. Another one of my friends volunteered to make a special treat for the next evening’s repast: a “corpse” made of deli meats and cheeses that looks disgustingly realistic.
We muttered our goodnights as Glenda and I slipped into my room and Rae and Lacey took the room down the hall. The house has six bedrooms, but I only have beds in two of them because that was how the house was furnished when I inherited. I tumbled into the queen bed in my room and Glenda sighed a little as she slips under the covers on the opposite side.
“You really need more beds.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Sleeping with you is weird.”
“You can sleep on the floor.”
“You need more beds.”
Now I sighed as I repeated, “No! I don’t!”
“You do if you are going to have friends over.”
“This is my first sleepover in the five years since this became my house. I think I’m good on beds.”
She sniffed derisively and rolled away from me. I rolled my eyes and mirrored her movements, snuggling into my pillow as sleep overwhelmed me.
I woke with a start, sitting up and taking in the sounds around me. Nothing sounded off. Wondering what roused me, I reached out for Glenda and found an empty space where she had been.
“Glenda? Where are you?” I whispered.
Getting no response, I slipped out of bed and padded to the doorway. The door hung slightly open, so I stepped into the hallway. A faint light filtered through a picture window at the end of the hall, revealing that I alone stood on the worn carpet leading off toward the stairs. I shuffled resignedly down the hall, half-expecting to find Glenda sleeping on the couch downstairs.
The couch proved empty, but as I turn the corner toward the kitchen, I heard the fridge dispensing water and shuffled faster. As I rounded the doorframe, Glenda looked up at me with her eyes wide and mouth hanging open. That lasted for the two seconds it took to realize I was just me.
“Thirsty, too?” She asked glibly.
“No. Just wanted to make sure the ghosts didn’t get you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I wish they had. I came here for some excitement.”
I snorted. “I told you the house isn’t haunted. It’s just old.”
“We’ll see,” she offered cryptically before draining her glass and setting it in the sink. “Coming?”
“In a minute. Maybe I will have a glass of water.”
“Ta-ta,” she waved her fingers at me and tiptoed out of the room.
After finishing my own midnight libation, I crept back up the stairs. As I stepped onto the second floor landing, a noise turned my attention away from my own doorway which Glenda had left ajar. I turned toward the shuffling sound and peered into the darkness. In the ethereal light of the picture window, it resembled an unruly sack of laundry. As it shuffled forward, I noted that it was about as tall as Glenda and encased in a skin of rough burlap material.
“Glenda, knock it off,” I muttered waving off her theatrics.
“Huh?” Glenda’s voice filtered sleepily out of my room.
I stared at the creature for a moment. Then the door to my room opened wider and Glenda peered out into the hallway. Seeing the creature, she squealed and slammed the door shut. I glanced at the door of the room where Rae and Lacey presumably slept on but didn’t want to risk finding it locked as the creature shuffled toward me. I pondered my options only briefly before stepping back onto the stairs.
Unbelievably, the creature followed me to the stairs. Without eyes, maybe it didn’t see that the floor drops off, but then how did it know where I was? I paused on the bottom step to stare up at it as it slowly shambled to the edge of the top step. It stopped and I let out a relieved sigh. The sound spurred it forward and it shuffled over the top step.
As it tumbled forward, the burlap tore. I started to laugh but it died halfway up my throat as dozens of glowing orbs poured out of the tear. The burlap collapsed to the stairs but those orbs came right for me. I ducked down and noticed a two by four leaning against the wall from my last redneck repair effort. I grabbed it up and stood up, ready to do battle with whatever horror had been unleashed in my home.
As the first orb neared me, I knocked it out of the park—or at least out of the foyer. It bounced off the nearest wall and fell to the ground. I repeated this maneuver with the next couple of round creatures. Then they caught on that I was not an easy target and began floating upward toward the ceiling. When they reached the solid wooden beams, they shimmered and disappeared. The ones I knocked to the floor came to and followed the others. As my eyes followed their trajectory, I saw my friends leaning over the banister with a eyes filled with a mix of wonder and terror.
“Believe in me,” the last floating orb beseeched before floating up to join its friends in passing through the ceiling.
-
Hopefully, this tale satisfies all those Friday the 13th needs to be disturbed.
