"Where's the fridge?!"
Gene was busy searching the kitchen as Millie shined her flashlight at the dusty countertops and an old coal burning stove range. There were lots of shelves and cabinets, some broken, some missing their doors, plenty of hooks dangling from them, and even a blackened fireplace underneath, but no fridge.
"I think this house is too old for refrigerators, Gene." Tina answered.
"Boo," he whined, "I was hoping to find some leftovers in here" Gene slumped. "Maybe there's crackers in the cupboards. They had crackers back then right?"
Millie indulged him by shining her light at the cabinets as he searched. Perhaps these McDowells were dumb enough to hide their fortune with their food.
"So Millie," Tina started, "what's new with you?"
Tina was talking to her? Why?
"Oh nothing much. Just searching some dead person's house for treasure without my best friend," She responded.
"Right," Tina replied. It was clear she was searching for something else to say. "How's school?"
'How's school?' Was Millie talking to her mom? What could Tina possibly want to know? In the few times Millie had come over to their house, Tina had never actually tried to have a conversation with her beyond the usual casual greeting. This was highly irregular.
"School is… School," Millie yawned. "It's okay I guess," she responded curtly, trying to put an end to this pointless conversation.
"Good, good," Tina trailed off. Okay, now things were just getting awkward. Tina was climbing up the wrong tree, but she continued to reach for branches. "You and Louise have become pretty close, huh?"
She found her footing. This wasn't exactly breaking news, but Millie did like the acknowledgment from a third party. "Not close enough apparently, since she would rather go searching with somebody else."
Tina sensed the twinge of hurt in her voice and tried to consol Millie. "Well, I'm sure she had her reasons. She usually does."
The sleepless cogs in Millie's brain began to turn. Was it possible that Louise wanted to separate them on purpose? Why would she want Millie to be with her siblings instead of herself? She always wants to be with her brother and sister.
Gasp.
She wanted to be alone with Rudy!
"AAHHHH!" Gene shrieked from under the cabinet. "Ahhhh-OW!" He banged his head on a shelf when scrambling up from the floor and accidentally stepped on Tina's foot.
"OW! Gene!"
"RAT!" UuAAGGHHHG!" Gene continued to flail around, checking himself to make sure this supposed rat was gone. Mille saw something dark about the size of two thumbs land on the floor. She flashed her light on it to get a better look.
"Aw, it's a spider!" Millie kneeled lower to check it out.
"Ahh! What are you doing? Kill it!" Gene cowered behind Tina.
"Oh it's just a hobo spider. It's mostly harmless." Millie calmly touched the creature and lead it onto her hand. "See?" She held it up to their faces.
Gene squealed. "A squatter!"
Tina watched the spider crawl around Millie's hand. "Aw I guess it is kind of cute. Creepy, but cute."
"Wanna hold it?"
"Eh, I'm good," Tina winced.
As Millie was observing the arachnid she started to hear a faint whirring that steadily turned into a rattled hiss. She stared at the creature in her hand, paralized by the sound. Then a small garbled voice entered her ears, like someone whispering to her.
Alone… They're alone. Without you.
"Millie? You okay?" Tina seemed worried.
Millie stood frozen, her eyes wide and unblinking. Was this spider talking to her?
You know what they're up to… Alone in the dark.
Oh god. The spider was talking to her! And it was absolutely right.
"They're alone. They're alone in the dark!" Millie blurted out loud. She shook the spider off and whipped around to face Tina and Gene. Both of them appeared startled by her suddenness. She seemed to be staring in their direction, but wasn't really. Her eyes gazed through them, past them, into space. Slowly, she lost her grip on the flashlight as it slipped to the floor with a loud clatter.
"What is happening?" Gene's confusion could be heard in the darkness.
Millie had to leave. She had to get to Louise. She had to know what they were doing. Did her best friend really ditch her so she could be alone with Rudy? So they could… ugh she couldn't even bring the thoughts into her mind.
"Millie?" Tina picked up the flashlight and shown it where Millie no longer stood. She flashed it around the kitchen, but the girl was nowhere to be found. "She's gone… uh-oh."
"That was freaky!" Gene was just as perplexed as Tina. "Oh my god. Was she a ghost this whole time?"
Louise and Rudy were upstairs in one of the old chambers. Her tapping on the wall with her hammer and him listening intently to her taps with a stethoscope pressed against the decayed paint.
"Hear anything?" She asked
"Mm, nothing yet."
"Ugh! This is taking too long!" She impatiently tapped the wall again.
Rudy's eyes widen. "Wait!"
She perked up. "Does it sound like something's there? Don't get my hopes up, Rude," she warned.
"No, no… it sounds like…" he moved the stethoscope around a little, "breathing…?"
"What? Lemme listen." Louise inserted the apparatus into her ears. She could hear the faint sound of inhalation.
"You wanna check it out?" He asked her.
Louise gripped her hammer in one hand and her flashlight in the other. She stepped through the doorway heading into the hall. She searched left, then right, then left again. Empty. Nothing there except more broken wood and uprooted carpeting. She crossed back through the threshold and into the room where she left Rudy. But he wasn't there.
"Rudy?" She called out to him.
Silence.
"RAHHH!"
He popped out suddenly from behind the doorway, crouching and making claws with his hands. Louise stared at him blankly before reacting.
"Oh, my god! You scared me!" She brought her hands to her face in exaggeration.
"Aw man, I didn't get you?" He whined.
"No, you totally got me. Super spooky. Ten out of ten, almost an eleven."
"Okay, okay, you don't have to rub it in." He stood up and gestured to the hallway. "You wanna search another room?"
All of a sudden, a sound echoed from the corridor, like something hard hit the floor. The duo rushed to investigate the source in another bedchamber. The adjacent room had a rather large hole in the wall that had been clearly smashed in post-habitation, revealing a study room through the other side. It seemed the noise came from a bookshelf that tipped over. Louise approached the gaping hole. "It was probably just rats." Rudy's light was fixed on her. She turned to look at him. He was staring at her—no, past her.
"What?" She jerked her head back and forth between him and what he was staring at.
"What was that?" His voice shook slightly.
"What was what?" She locked her gaze through the hole. She didn't see anything.
"I saw something move. Back there. Behind you."
Was he trying to scare her again? She could at least say this about him, that boy was not a quitter. "Look, Rudy, I see what you're doing, and it's cute. But it's just not going to work."
Rudy remained adamant. "No, really! I saw something."
"Yeah, yeah." Louise pressed on through the hole in the wall, skepticism plastered across her face. "Even if you DID see something, like I said, it's probably rats."
"Well that must've been a big rat…" He replied.
"Yeah, they can get pretty big." She enters the study. "Damn, I bet someone else smashed the wall in looking for the fortune!" She began to search the debris inside the wall, then noticed Rudy still standing around in the previous room, not helping.
"Rudy, get over here."
He turns and heads toward her. Then suddenly, he whips back around. Good God, what was he doing?
"Why are you still looking for that rat when you could be looking for riches?"
"I keep hearing footsteps."
"Yeah, okay." She replied sarcastically. He was really determined to get a scare out of her. "Well tell whoever it is to get over here and help make me rich. Better yet, ask 'em if they know where the treasure is. Then tell 'em I'll give a generous two percent cut—wait no, one point seven."
Just then Louise heard the sound of shuffling and a plank of wood hit the floor near the opposite end of the room. Rudy heard it too. She rotated her head to see the cause. Curious, she decided to check it out. "Okay, rat…" Her light cast brightness upon an alcove, with some old shelves up above that were barely hanging on. She didn't see anything. Louise spun herself around in Rudy's direction. "Nothing."
CRASH
"AHH!" She jumped at the sound behind her. The shelves cracked and gave way, plummeting to the floor along with dusty debris, and…
"Millie!?"
Both Louise and Rudy peered down at her, aghast.
"What the hell are you doing up here?! Why aren't you with Tina and Gene?" Louise asked.
Millie sat up slowly in the pile of broken wood, covered in dust. She composed herself. "I was just looking for a nice place to take a nap."
Louise stared at her bizarre friend, incredulous. "Oh my god," she rolled her eyes. "You left them down there?"
Millie paused before deciding to answer simply, "Yes."
Louise let out an exasperated sigh.
"So I left and came up here. What's the big deal?" Millie asked nonchalantly.
"I asked you to stay with Gene and Tina so you could keep them focused on finding the money." She explained. "They're like Alice in Wonderland."
"Because they followed a rabbit through a dark hole?" Millie guessed.
"Hah, I get it," Rudy mumbled.
"No," Louise continued, "they're easily distracted and will probably get lost."
Millie got up from the pile of wood. "Well then why didn't you stay with them?"
"Yeah right, like I'm gonna leave you and Rudy here to search by yourselves."
Her comment cast silence over the three of them. Millie looked at Rudy for half a second, then back at Louise. "What do you mean by that?" She questioned.
Speaking of rabbit holes, Louise just determined that it probably wasn't a good idea to bring that subject up right now. She decided to change the topic. "Look, forget it." She pulled out her old phone. "I'll just tell them to text me if they find anything." She flipped open the device and noticed she had three messages. One from Gene saying how he couldn't find a bathroom, and the other two were from Tina, the first one time-stamped fifteen minutes ago:
Couldnt get much from Millie. Talk L8r. Luv Tina.
She checked the other message, sent in the last two minutes:
Also we lost her. Sry
A little late, but Louise responded anyway, letting her know Millie was no longer lost. When she finished sending her texts, she couldn't help but notice Millie's wandering eyes darting swiftly away from her phone.
"Everything good?" Millie asked innocently.
"Yeah." Louise assessed her. She placed her phone back in her pocket. "Everything good?" She asked her friend in return.
"Yeah." Millie smiled back at her. She continued to stare at Louise, as if she were waiting for something. Louise did the same.
"I'm good too…," Rudy interjected cheerfully. "No need to ask."
"Great." Louise broke eye contact with Millie and turned to her other friend. "The search continues." She marched past her companions and over to one of the bookshelves, which unsurprisingly still had some reading material scattered about. People damn sure didn't come here to steal the books. There was an eerie little statue on a pedestal that barely missed the path of the fallen bookshelf. She stepped over the face-down bookcase to check behind the rest, looking for any signs of a hidden doorway or safe. There were no clues for either of those, but instead she did notice something strange about the shelf. There seemed to be no space between the back of the shelf and the wall.
"You guys, come check this out."
Rudy appeared beside her, but didn't quite understand what she was looking at. Louise turned her head around to find Millie. She was still standing over by the alcove. "Millie, get over here." She didn't step forward. Instead she stood hunched over and flinching, the faint sound of mumbled whispers coming from her direction. Louise illuminated her silhouette, revealing her wide staring eyes darting back and forth towards the floor.
"No… I can't… I won't…"
Louise could barely make out what the girl was saying. She left Rudy by the bookshelf to check on Millie. "Don't tell me you're scared of this place—"
"STOP." Millie barked suddenly, holding her hands out at Louise. "Don't." Her breathing became erratic, like she was spiraling into a panic. Her outburst alerted Rudy who was looking in their direction.
"What the hell?" Louise had seen Millie frantic in the past, most notably when she lost something or when having a cleithrophobic fit. But Louise had never seen her quite like this before. "Are you okay?"
Millie's shallow breathing turned into a chuckle that escalated into laughter. She picked up one of the shelves and swung wildly at nothing as she cried out, "get away!" Louise backed up and almost tripped over the fallen bookshelf.
"Whoa, what's happening?" Rudy stammered.
Louise watched as Millie whaled and waved the plank of wood around like she was fighting for her life. It just occurred to Louise that Millie was running on negative zero. She lunged forward and took hold of Millie, trying to calm her down, but Millie would not quit. "Millie! Stop it! Whatever's there isn't real! You're just tired!"
"Oh no, oh no!" Rudy was backed up against the standing bookshelf, trying to stay out of the way. "She's possessed!"
Their tussle led them to the bookcase where Rudy was cowering. He dodged them as Louise braced the shelf in Millie's hands. She managed to pull it from her, but the force of her yanking threw the shelf into the small statue next to the bookshelf, breaking it. Before they knew what was happening, there was the sound of wood grinding against the floor as all three of them were pushed by the bookshelf into a dark space. The trio landed on the pitch black dirty floor. Louise shuffled around looking for her flashlight, but she couldn't find it.
"Shit! I think I dropped my flashlight." She couldn't see, but Louise could tell how small the room was based on how very little her voice carried.
"Where are we?" Millie asked.
"Well look who it is, Little Miss sleep deprived, come to join the expedition!" Louise was practically hysterical. "I hope you left your imaginary friends in the other room 'cause there is not enough space in here for you to start flippin' out." Millie could be super useful, even entertaining and, dare as she might say, enjoyable at times, as much as she hated to admit, but right now Louise was starting to doubt having brought her along. Then again, she supposed they might not have found this secret room without her. So there was that. Best not to give the girl too much credit, though. Give her and inch and she'll take a mile.
"I think the bookshelf rotated when Louise hit that statue." Rudy answered. A small dim light was coming from under his leg. He moved his leg, but the light didn't get much brighter. "Uh-oh. My flashlight is dying. I forgot I switched these batteries for my TV remote."
"Lemme see that." Louise commanded. She took the flashlight from him, stood up and waved the light around the area, checking the ceiling and the floor. The room was indeed small and sadly empty. No floor hatch or wall safe or anything! Nothing to speak of but a couple of dead cockroaches in the corner. How depressing. What the hell was the point of a secret room if there were no secrets in it? She hoped that perhaps there was another secret spot, and that this one was a fake-out filled with lame treasure that some idiots who came before them mistook for the real thing.
The flashlight's brightness was failing with every second. She figured she had better find a way out of there before the three of them wound up like those roaches. Just as the thought crossed her mind, their source of light gave two last flickers of life. Then suddenly died.
"No! Ugh!" Louise toggled the switch back and forth rapidly to no avail. "Rudy!"
"Sorry." He replied.
Louise sighed and softened her tone. "No no. It's not your fault." She directed her voice towards where Millie was perched. "It's yours ."
"My fault?" Millie paused then asked genuinely, "You're talking to me, right?"
"Yes!"
Millie scoffed, "That's not fair! We wouldn't have even found this room if it wasn't for me."
There she goes. "Oh, you mean this room that has nothing in it?"
"Well what if it did? You'd be kissing my feet."
She could practically hear Millie crossing her arms. Louise spat out a haughty laugh at her comment. "No, I wouldn't."
"Yes you would."
"no, I wouldn't."
"yes, you would."
"I would never kiss your feet."
"Why not?"
"I— what? "
"Hey! Stop fighting!" Rudy intervened, "Can't you see what this house is doing to us? It's turning us against each other, like the two brothers that went insane and killed one another."
"We are not siblings," Millie shot back, without skipping a beat.
"That's for sure," Louise remarked. Just then, she got an idea. "Speaking of siblings…" She pulled out her phone and began to text Tina and Gene furiously about their predicament. Noting that her battery was closer to the empty side of things, she decided to make her contact quick and then close the phone.
"Do you guys hear that?" Millie addressed the both of them.
"Hear what?" Rudy asked
"You're probably just hallucinating again." Louise said mindlessly, still texting.
"Well that's why I asked ." Millie retorted.
"Wait," Rudy added. "I do hear something."
Louise finished her text and put her phone away. "Great, you guys are both hallucinating."
Suddenly, a loud rumble came from above them, like moving furniture. "Okay, I heard that. Is that the sound you guys were talking about?"
The grinding got louder and seemed to be coming from above them.
"This house is haunted, I know it." Rudy blurted out.
Louise knew there had to be a rational explanation for what they were hearing. "It's not haunted. It's probably just Gene and Tina trying to find us."
Millie thought about her comment. "Would they find us that fast? You were still texting them when we first heard the sound."
"Yeah, and besides," Rudy added. "Millie, didn't you leave them on the first floor?"
"That is where I last saw them, yes."
Louise couldn't believe the both of them. "I'm starting to think you guys just want this house to be haunted—"
BANG
The grinding sound had escalated now into a loud pounding, which caused Louise to flinch. She could hear Rudy's breathing becoming more and more shallow.
"Tina! Gene!" Louise cried out. She got no response but the incessant pounding.
BANG… BANG
"Okay, I am not liking this." Louise admitted. "I swear to god, if it's them…" she couldn't even finish her sentence thanks to the banging.
"It's the brothers! They're mad! Mad that we're trespassing, trying to take their money!" Rudy began to hyperventilate.
Even Millie was starting to crack. Again. Her cleithrophobia kicking in. "Oh my god. Are we going to die here?" Millie asked, in a quiet rushed panic.
They were both losing their shit. Louise couldn't take it anymore. She turned towards where the book shelf was and started feeling around in the dark for anything that might flip it around. There had to be a switch or something. There is no way someone would make a secret room without also providing a way out.
BANG… BANG
Shit! There had to be a special book on the shelf or something that flipped the damn thing around. Between Millie and Rudy's whimpers and the eerie pounding and scraping, she couldn't think! Desperate, she reached for her hammer to start smashing her way to freedom. Suddenly, she felt a grip on her shoulders, her whole body turned. Something wet and soft pressed against her lips. Louise pulled away and swung wildly in the dark. "Aauughh! What the FUCK?"
BANG
She backed into something protruding from the shelf. Her spine connected with one of the books that had been tipped over, pushing it back into an upright position. In an instant, light flooded back into view as they were pushed by the book shelf once more, landing back into the study. The banging stopped.
Rudy immediately took a hit from his inhaler, relieved to be out of there. Louise had fallen on the floor, along with Millie, who seemed in no hurry to get up. Louise grabbed her abandoned flashlight and furiously jumped to her feet.
"Rudy! Did you grab me?" She had her light flashed in his direction as if she were a cop asking for his license and registration.
"Wha—no I didn't, I couldn't see anything."
Louise brushed herself off. "I know you were scared and all, but that was NOT the time."
"I didn't!" He cried.
"Well someone grabbed me and kissed me!"
Millie sat up, "Kissed you?" she repeated.
"Yeah, that's what I said." She passed her gaze to Millie, "Was it you?" She shined her flashlight in Millies face.
Millie squinted and raised her hand to her eyes, blocking the light, "Louise, I'm so tired I can barely stand right now. Even if I wanted to, I don't have to energy to kiss you. Sorry to disappoint."
"You don't think it was … the ghost… do you?" Rudy seemed rather spooked.
Louise held her gaze at Millie for a second longer before turning away.
"Great. I've got a horny ghost after me."