There was a yelp from Kiff's room. I sprung up and floated through the wall, directly into the teenager's room. He was up, standing in the corner of the room, on his bed, white as a sheet.
The rest of the family followed in afterwards. "Kiff, honey, what happened?"
The boy was nearly hysterical. "There! Something – THERE!" he was pointing towards the closet.
Kirk walked over to the double doors and slid the closet open. "See? Nothing."
I frowned. That wasn't entirely correct. There was something unusual about the interior of the closet. Something had moved, like a deer darting out of a meadow after the first report ofa hunter's gun, only our deer was transparent.
My core-felt sickness grew deeper, if possible, even as I put Kiff to sleep the same way I had Mizzie.
"These kids are going to be a handful in their own," I heard. "Even compared to little Membrane.
"I hope not," I said out loud. "I pray that I never have another case even close to my Dib."
"Oh, don't say that. Sure, it was unfortunate, but wasn't it a nice change from being a wallflower?
"I choose not to answer that."
"Suit yourself." The voice said, indifferently.
I stayed the better part of the night in Kiff's room, half hoping for there to be no more problem, half hoping for there to be some other incidence of abnormal activity in the room. However, I decided that my presence was much better utilized in Mizzie and Louie's room.
No more ruckus that night.
The kids got up the next morning around 9 AM (they were out of skool for the moment, seeing as how it was the middle of summer.) and filed downstairs.
Mae was up, and Kirk had already left for work. What exactly the husband did for a living, I am still unsure.
"Morning, kids. Mail's here." Mae reported. One the kitchen counter were three postcards addressed from the skool system, each indicating the corresponding child's new teacher.
"Who'd you get?" Louie peeked over his sister's card. "Mrs. Rodriguez? Lucky. I got Mr. Welson. What about you, Kiff?" Even though Kiff was a full four years ahead of his siblings, they seemed to take a genuine interest in who he got as a teacher for the skoolyear. However, the older boy hadn't yet bothered to look at the postcard that was addressed to him. Realizing this, he picked up the card and read it aloud.
"Mr. Sherwood." He wrinkled his nose. Obviously, Mr. Sherwood was not one of the favorable 6th grade teachers.
"I was thinking about going downtown today, what do you guys think?" Mae asked her children as she stirred a cup of coffee.
Mizzie's eyes sparkled. "We're going into the city?" she gasped before darting up the stairs singing 'city ride, city time.' After all, she was only six. To a six year old girl, the city is a magical place of steel mountains and high overpasses. Ah, paradise.
The other two followed, though not as enthusiastically.
Mae sat in the livingroom and clicked on the morning news. The reporter was a young woman with a perpetual plastic surgery smile. "Also, the FOURTH serpent sighting this month up by lake Michigan." She said, melodramatically.
"Rubbish," the mother retorted, clicking off the channel.
So, Mae obviously didn't accredit much to the paranormal. Good. Perhaps, I thought, she instilled the same idea into her children, which meant that even if they did catch wind of my presence, that they would scarcely believe it.
I smiled as I went upstairs to join the children. Even though I was really Mizzie's angel, I took a liking to all three kids, as usually happens where there are multiple children in the household.
I checked for the kids in both bedrooms – no one to be found in either. My heart sank as I approached the only other room on the second floor: the bathroom. As I moved forward, Miz turned around and exited, leaving her two brothers to finish, and walking right through me. I watched the little girl continue to her and Louie's room without so much as flinching.
I turned back to the two boys still in the bathroom after she'd disappeared behind the doorframe. I swallowed hard and took a step forward, onto the cold tiled floor.
Memories flooded back to me as I entered the room, after the mental dam broke away, though it was not what I was expecting. As I stood at the door, I suddenly had an image of a young boy in blue pajamas kneeling on the floor, gripping the porcelain rim of the toilet, his head half ducked. His hands seemed clammy, and when he sat back, I could see a shining layer of perspiration on his deathly pale face.
That was the two weeks that Dib had had the stomach flu. The poor child was left at home daily, spent most of his time either in the bed or in the spot I saw him then.
I remembered the sleepless nights that we'd spent up together, his pain subdued, if only fractionally, by the effects of the halo. He was only eight at the time, and I'd only known him for two year, but never had I felt more maternally towards the child. I missed those times, when he and I had been the best of friends. He was so little, and without anything even vaguely resembling a real family. I moved forward, kneeling by him, taking care not to touch the apparition.
The boy's image disappeared as Mizzie's piercing scream cut through the air from the next room. I tore away, however reluctantly, from the bathroom to see her bounding down the steps to meet her mother, who was at the bottom. "There's someone up there!" she cried, nearly hysterical and wide-eyed. "Mommy, there's someone up in my room!"
The woman reached for her keys, which facilitated a small bottle of mace, before stating up the stairs.
I myself went into the room before hand, but was quite shocked to find absolutely nothing. Not a book or paper out of place from the way the kids had left it. Furthermore, the window was locked securely. I checked the closet to find the same order. Mae eventually made it onto the landing outside of the door to the little girl's room. Her voice boomed as she spoke to the intruder. "Whoever you are, I'll give you thirty seconds to get out of my kids' bedroom. I'm warning you, I'm armed." And it's no joke for those who laugh. Mace is a completely different substance form pepper spray – much more potent and it burns your very skin if you're unlucky enough to come in contact with it.
When she received no reply, Mae entered the bedroom to find everything accordingly.
"Are you sure you weren't just seeing things, Miz?" Louie asked as he and Kiff entered the room, the latter's red and black hair half damp with gel.
"Yes, I'm sure!" she assured him. "I saw him! I was looking in the mirror and he was standing right behind me!"
"Well, whoever it was, they're gone." Mae said, though I could tell she was just as concerned about the locked windows as I was.
She and Louie went downstairs, leaving Kiff, Mizzie and myself alone in the bright green room.
"I know I wasn't seeing things," she protested quietly. "He was right there." She pointed halfheartedly to a spot opposite the mirror.
"What'd he look like?" Kiff asked casually, sitting himself on Louie's bed. Perhaps he thought that the intruder was nothing more than one of his friends come to pull a prank on him, but simply getting the wrong room and panicking.
"He was older than you," she said, "and he had on a blue shirt, with ketchup all over it. And it was all over his hands and face, too."
"If it was all over his hands, he would've left a mark somewhere." Kiff said, nonchalantly. "Anything else?"
"He was wearing glasses…and his hair was weird. Not weird like yours. It looked like a pointy number seven."
My jaw dropped, my stomach taking on that nauseous feeling again.
"And he looked kinda sad," she finished her description.
Something seemed to register with Kiff, because his eyes widened and he bolted out of the room and flew down the stairs. "Mom!" he called.
Mae turned around in time to stop her son from careening into the table. "What?"
"Miz saw Uncle Dib!" he shouted.
The woman frowned and stared at her son for a long time. "Excuse me?"
"Nana Gaz told us that she had a brother, right? And he was in some of those old photos she showed us, and Miz just described him perfectly." He argued.
"Mizzie, is that true? Are you sure that's what you saw?" She asked the little girl, who was having to reach above her head to hold onto the banister as she descended the stairs.
"I…think so." Miz said quietly, once she had reached the bottom. "I might be wrong. I didn't really… get a good look at him."
Kiff gaped at his sister. "You're kidding right? You just described him perfectly!" he repeated. "It matches exactly what Uncle Dib looked like before he died! Tell her the truth, Miz. It was Uncle Dib's ghost! Nana Gaz even said it herself, he'd died here!"
"Kiff, enough! You're scaring your sister, and frankly, me too! Now, I want you three back upstairs and ready in 15 minutes. Go ahead!"
Sullenly, the teenager followed his siblings up the steps. Leave it to Gaz to tell her grandkids that their late uncle had killed himself in the house they were living in. If only Kiff had taken a moment to consider that the 'ketchup' on the apparition might not have been as innocent as his little sister believed it to be. Thank goodness he didn't, or else he and Mizzie might have thrown themselves into a tizzy over it.
"Oh, dear. It seems there's still a bit of trouble buzzing around in your head."
"My child just had a vision of her deceased 15-year-old great-uncle covered in blood. Of course my mind is going to be troubled." I answered aloud.
"Even with the Halo? Hmm… sometimes I wonder how effective those things really are… Then again, you always have been dreadfully worrisome." The voice laughed.
I moaned. So now, I had to keep those three out of trouble, and worry about Dib trying to contact his family.
