Anthony herded me up the stairs and showed me to my room. The guest room had the same dark furniture, and to make it worse, there were bizarre paintings of bloodied animals and gore hidden in the closet. What a pleasant place for house guests to stay.
I was seriously wondering what was up with this place when I looked out the window that night after dinner. I had to pry off the shades, and if I'm completely honest, a bit of the dry wall as well, but looking out the window right as twilight fell was definitely worth it.
A bit of sunlight seemed to be radiating from the leaves of the trees, which surround the house as if they are somehow drawn towards it. Branches press against it as if they were caressing the siding. It is a very strange place; this place Anthony has taken me to.
The graveyard is overgrown with ivy that stretches across both tombstone and gargoyle. Did I mention there were gargoyles? I can hear howls from the forest as the first moonbeams are thrown onto the forest floor.
There in the thickening trees I can just make out a pair of red eyes watching me and I have a very strong and sudden urge to put the shade back on the window.
A crashing noise resounds from somewhere down the narrow hallway which scares me so badly I jump onto my bed and pull the covers up past my chest. What the hell just happened?
A door creaks open. Could it be Anthony? Could it not be Anthony? I almost don't want to know.
I didn't hear any footsteps, but the handle of my door is turned. Is this house haunted?
"Yes," Holy shit. The door is open and I feel cold. All I can do is stare at the doorway with wide eyes.
"H-hello?" There is no answer. I wonder how I am going to get to sleep at night. Then I realize I also left my suitcase in the car. No way in hell am I going back out there.
My only choice is to pull the covers up over my head and hope that everything I have heard in this house will stay out in the hallway. I didn't think about closing the door; I didn't think it would matter.
The rain pounding on the rooftop is what woke me early the next morning. My sheets were stuffed underneath the bed; I must have thrown them off in my sleep or something. What a weird night.
I can smell bacon sizzling downstairs, but it was only five in the morning. Why would I wake up at five in the morning? The only explanation I can find is that I smelt the bacon, but I don't understand why Anthony would be up either.
I decided to go down and investigate the bacon smell.
Walking downstairs was a bit odd. Anthony's door was closed and the lights in the hallway downstairs were off.
Who knows, maybe Anthony likes to cook in the dark.
"Anthony?" The lights are off in the kitchen, too. There is no response.
"Why the hell did I smell bacon...?" I ask myself aloud. A cool breeze pressed my shirt into my skin.
"I don't know. Why are you in my brother's house?" There was a girl standing right in front of me.
"Woah... how did you get here...?" I asked, somewhat freaked out about a girl sneaking up on me in this nearly empty house.
"I live here..." She answered, motioning with her pale hand. I turned around when I heard footsteps on the stairs. There was Anthony, staring with wide eyes at the girl.
"Lilli?" Anthony trembled. I had no idea what was going on as I looked back and forth between the smiling girl and the frightened Anthony.
"Anthony, how nice to see you." She reached out her hand; it went right through my chest. I must have jumped a foot in the air; having a hand go through your chest is not something you want to experience.
"Well that's odd." The girl said, frowning at her hand as she withdrew it from my abdomen.
"I-I'll say." I stuttered, trying to rub the coldness from my chest.
"Lilli, how did you-why are you here?" Anthony asked, staring with huge eyes at the girl.
"I live here, of course. Had you forgotten?"
"Lilli, you've been dead for two years. You used to live here." Anthony articulated carefully.
"That explains why my hand went through him..." She motioned to me carelessly. So this girl... is a ghost?
"Excuse me, if you've been dead for two years, how are you here?" I asked as politely as I could.
"To be honest, I have no idea." Lilli frowned.
"My name is Matt."
"Right, uh, Lilli? This is my friend. He's living here-temporarily."
"Nice to meet you, Matt." She held her hand out as if she expected me to shake it and changed her mind. She lifted one of her muddy boots as if to tap the floor and must have thought better of it, for she stopped in mid-tap.
"Lilli, could you leave Matt and I to talk for a bit?" Anthony looked at her carefully.
"I suppose I could." Lilli retreated to the kitchen, shutting the door behind her.
"Matt, I don't understand this any more than you do." Anthony explained to me.
"Well you sure as hell don't understand a lot, do you?" I retorted, throwing my hands up in the air.
"I mean, Lilli and I were practically best friends a few years back. She was my cousin, my favorite cousin. The problem was her brother is this maniac who can never make up his mind. He practically raised her and she was always trying to please him. Again, he could never approve or disapprove of anything she did, so she was never pleased with herself.
"I hated her brother for not being decisive; making her unsure of herself. He never gave praise and never reprimanded. Their parents died just after Lilli was born, so he was the only one around to raise her." Anthony explained somewhat rapidly.
"So, what happened to her?" I asked, curious about how Lilli died.
"She... well no one really knows all the reasons... but we found her hanging in the same room you slept in last night. It was very sudden. A tragic loss for my family."
"Woah, I'm really sorry. That must have been awful." I murmured, wanting to comfort Anthony. The cut from the death of Lilli still seemed to be open.
"I had lost... a very good friend. And now she's here. I just don't understand why." Anthony was staring hard at the floorboards. The first light of the day was starting to try and break through those annoying shades.
"We should go talk to her, then." I announced, opening the door to the kitchen eagerly.
I stepped into the kitchen and saw bacon lying on a pan. That would have explained the smell to me, but the stove was turned off and the bacon was still left uncooked.
"Lilli," I walked towards her silhouette. Anthony was standing in the doorway, uncertain.
"Matt, I want to tell you something." She reached for my hand and brushed it just slightly, so I could feel her. She felt horribly cold.
"Alright, speak up." I encouraged her.
"My brother... I feel he is the source of your problems. I think that is why I have appeared here again." She glanced at the shaded window over her shoulder and sighed.
"What do you mean?" Anthony asked abruptly.
"I mean that I think my brother had something to do with the death of that boy. What was his name again?" Lilli looked to me for clarification.
"The boy? Wait, do you mean Caleb?" As I spoke, her eyes twinkled slightly.
"Ah, yes. That was his name." Lilli declared.
"But why would your brother have anything to do with his dead teammate?" Anthony demanded, moving further into the lonely kitchen.
"I don't know. I just have a feeling that this is why I have been called back here. To help solve a mystery." Her eyes sparkled with the idea.
"There is no mystery, I killed Caleb. If indirectly." Then I realized I was talking to a ghost. This is crazy.
"Do you know that for sure, Matt?" Lilli pressed, a hint of excitement in her voice.
"Well... no." She seemed satisfied with my answer; turning the heat of the stove up to cook the bacon.
"Lilli, I'm not sure that I want you involved in this." Anthony blurted. Lilli looked sharply at Anthony.
"Don't ever, ever, say you aren't sure. I think I could scream at uncertainty!" She prodded at the bacon with a spatula and pointed it at Anthony's chest as if it would intimidate him.
"I'm sorry, Lilli." He groaned. She glared silently at the covered windows.
"I hate how he covered up the windows in this house after I died!" She suddenly yelled. Lilli threw down the spatula, startling me, and ripped the shades off to let the light from outside into the lonely house.
"It rained... it rained so much that month." Lilli sighed, stroking the cool glass of the now uncovered window.
Anthony and I both looked at each other, wondering what she was talking about. I thought she might be talking about the month of her death, but who knows?
"What day is it?" She asked us suddenly.
"Ummm... the twenty fourth of April." I answered slowly.
"So, the anniversary of my death has come and passed. How depressing." She picked the spatula back up and flipped the bacon over.
"Yes, three months ago." Anthony voice sounded constricted.
"Right, it was in January... I always hated that month." Lilli said absentmindedly.
Her musing was interrupted by shrill ringing from my phone upstairs. I ran to get it. It was Michelle.