I'm sorry to say that now that school's going on again I can't update every few days like I could in the summer. So FYI, now I'm going to try to update once a week. Sorry about the delay! Keep reviewing, I read all the reviews! I love you guys!
Chapter 5: Really, Really Haunted
Day Two at the Haunted House (3 AM)
Rey awoke in the middle of the night and blinked sleepily. It felt similar to when his children had been younger and woke him up because they'd had a nightmare.
They always went right to their Papi when he was home because he wasn't as stressed as Angie and could afford to lose a little more sleep. She would roll her eyes at him if he was sleep-deprived in the morning, but he couldn't help himself, it meant a lot to him to go and sit with his children, sing to them, and make them feel better. It made them feel safe, but Rey always felt he might have been even more comforted by this interaction. It was confirmation that his kids loved him and trusted him. They were admitting that they felt their father could protect them and to Rey, that was the greatest compliment he could ever receive.
All those pleasant thoughts associated with being woken up fell away when he saw a pair of pale feet skitter away from the doorframe.
Rey froze, and a shudder coursed through him from the tip of his spine down to his toes. He'd never seen anything so blatantly creepy in his life.
"Oh, God, I hope I didn't see what I think I just saw…" he told himself.
He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and knew that the more he sat there and thought about it, the more he realized that those two feet were about the same size as Aalyah's except they had kind of glowed.
Maybe you were having a hallucination; your vision was kind of blurry at first.
"I'm going crazy, I just know it," he whispered, and got up, digging around as quietly as possible to find a flashlight. Rey was being quiet lest he incur the wrath of Batista, who was literally the worst person on the face of the earth to deprive of any sleep whatsoever. Once he was out you had better just assume he was the same as a bear in hibernation; only wake him up if you want your head to get knocked off.
"We just had to go to Massachusetts," Rey murmured to himself as he stepped out into the hall's cold, cold floorboards in his bare feet.
He felt reassured if he could at least hear the sound of his own voice. There was no logic to it at all; it's just that when he was silent, he heard nothing but the creaks and groans of the ancient house beneath, around, above him. And he felt like he was as good as stranded on the surface of the moon.
He clicked on the flashlight and raised it up to his waist level. He turned one way down the long hallway and saw nothing.
"Which way did those footsteps go again?" Rey asked himself.
He closed his eyes and tried to replay the moment in his mind.
"Ah…right. They went right, I think."
He turned right in his own doorway. He hoped he could find his way back, the house was so big.
God, that was a scary thought.
Have you ever had thoughts this weird and sick before you came here? You sound like a paranoid schizophrenic or something; you just keep imagining worse and worse things happening to yourself. What the hell is wrong with you?
Rey exhaled to calm himself and because he couldn't see any ghosts just yet, he started observing his surroundings. The house was beautiful in a decaying old-fashioned way.
The wallpaper was peeling at the top of some of the walls, and was an ornate, purpled, blue, gray, and forest green pattern. In its day, it must have been gorgeous. The wall lamps didn't function any more, because the house's electricity was cut out when its town was destroyed during the bulldozing (or horse-and-carriaging to death) so long ago.
They were curved in an eerily perfect way, full and round glass at the base and then flowing up into edges like wine glasses.
Rey sighed.
"This isn't so bad, you know, it's a nice place. It's too bad nobody's willing to come out and preserve it because half the people who come here get pushed down the stairs."
After walking quite a distance Rey came across a painting on the wall. He stopped and looked at it.
It was a family portrait.
Rey gasped.
There was the mother, looking so kind and genteel. The husband was plain-looking but had a wild look in his eyes. In between them was an angelic little girl with a soft smile and a white dress with blonde hair. She looked like a little lily.
Entranced, Rey reached up to touch the picture of the girl, but he pulled his fingertip away just in time.
They don't let you touch old stuff at museums, either, estupido, there's a reason for that. You'll hurt it.
He fingered his lips thoughtfully. He felt something unusual and looked down to see the band aid. He'd forgotten it was there.
He frowned. "I should go back, if I…if I get lost or even if I get what I want and find a ghost, I…"
He shook his head.
"This isn't worth risking my life for."
He closed his hand. Dave would hate him if he ended up dead while wandering around the house without telling him he was gone.
He looked mournfully back up at the painting of the family.
"Sylvia," Rey whispered, looking at the image of the girl.
"'Little Sylvia was found murdered in her bedroom here,'" he said, quoting the pamphlet.
He dropped his eyes and turned around. "I'm going back to bed."
His flashlight went out just then. He stopped.
Ghosts can drain energy from batteries in order to…manifest.
Rey swallowed and turned around hesitantly, shaking a little.
He froze. A few yards beyond the portrait on the wall was a small child, a little girl about ten years old and bare-footed in an old-timey dress and long, curly, blonde hair and shockingly clear blue eyes. She was so pretty for someone so young. But she was too pale to be alive. And she glowed slightly.
Rey's mouth fell slightly open in shock.
He couldn't move; he was rooted to the spot in fear, fascination, awe and curiosity. It was a potent mixture of emotions. His heartbeat nearly burst out of his chest.
The girl stared at him blankly. Then she slowly took a step forward.
When he didn't run she kept coming.
He didn't sense any harmful intentions from her and he wouldn't know how to escape a ghost if he did, so he just stood there.
She halted within a foot or so of him.
He didn't know why, but he knelt down and watched her. He didn't want to scare her off. Something about this girl…he felt like he was supposed to talk to her.
She gazed up at him, holding her arm with her hand a little shyly.
His voice came back to him.
"Were you the one who woke me?"
She nodded almost apologetically.
"Is this your home?"
She nodded.
"Oh. I…my friends and I will be staying here for a week. Is that all right?"
The girl nodded permissively.
"Can you speak?" Rey asked, perplexed at why she was answering all of his questions, but not verbally.
The girl shook her head sadly.
"Why…why can't you?"
The girl opened her mouth.
Rey started, horrified at what he saw.
The little girl was missing her tongue. No wonder she couldn't speak.
Rey was about to back away when he saw the girl close her mouth quickly and look down at the ground and then up at him with big, sad eyes.
Rey recognized that expression from his daughter Aalyah. When she felt guilty if he'd scolded her for drawing on the walls of the house or some other misbehavior, she'd lower her chin regretfully and move her eyes up towards him.
Rey exhaled and smiled reassuringly.
"I'm sorry, baby girl; you just startled me for a second. It's fine."
She blinked at him.
"It's okay," he said carefully, reaching out to pat her head. She let him.
He could feel her hair; it was exceedingly soft. He decided not to question how the hell he could feel a ghost. He took his hand away.
He felt sorry for her.
"Does it...does it hurt?"
The girl shook her head.
"I'm glad," Rey said, smiling sadly.
The girl just nodded.
She looked behind her down the hallway, her brow furrowing slightly.
"I'm Rey," Rey said, putting a hand on his chest demonstratively. As though there was anybody else there to confuse him with.
She looked back at him blankly.
"My name is Rey," he repeated.
She opened her mouth as if to try and repeat his name and closed it again quickly. Maybe she forgot at times that she couldn't speak.
"Is your name…are you Sylvia?" he asked carefully.
She looked up at him, straight into his eyes.
He blinked innocently.
She nodded at him.
"Oh," was all he could say at first.
He swallowed. "Ah, um…hello."
She mouthed the word "hello" in return and curtsied.
Rey smiled. "Nice to meet you, too," he said, bowing slightly in return.
She giggled.
He looked funny because he was already on his knees and there he was, bowing to mimic some semblance of an old fashioned introduction.
"Why did you wake me?" he asked her gently.
Sylvia looked at him with a deep melancholy that Rey hadn't encountered before.
"Did you just want to meet me?" he guessed.
She smiled suddenly, excited that he guessed correctly. It was difficult for the poor thing to communicate ideas any more complex than answers to yes or no questions when she couldn't speak. So he'd have to do a lot of the talking.
"Oh. All right. Um…why did you have to wake me up in the middle of the night, sweetheart?"
Sylvia stuck out her lower lip.
"No, no, I'm not mad at you, baby girl, I'm just curious."
She stopped pouting and looked up at him questioningly.
"Why at night? Why didn't you meet me during the day?"
She thought for a minute and held up one finger.
"Oh, I see. You wanted to talk to someone alone."
Sylvia shook her head and pointed to him.
"Just me?"
She nodded frantically.
"You only wanted to talk to me when you could be sure I was by myself?"
She smiled. He'd gotten it right.
"Why me?"
Her blonde eyebrows came together sternly.
He suppressed a laugh at her trying so hard to look serious.
Was that a compliment to be sought out by a ghost?
"Uh, well…why not my friends?"
She shook her head hard to signal that she disliked them.
Rey chuckled. "Well, they are kind of big and scary, aren't they?"
Sylvia nodded, glad he understood.
He smiled reassuringly. "Yeah, my friends may look scary to you, but they're nice."
She tilted her head to the side to show that she didn't know if she believed him.
"They're nice people, Sylvia. We're not here to hurt you. We're good."
She believed him.
Rey yawned. He was tired after traveling and all this being haunted was taking a lot out of him. Sylvia watched him and saw how sleepy he was.
She came very close to him.
When he was done rubbing his eyes to keep himself awake he looked at her.
She reached up and touched his cheek, holding his eyes in hers. Rey could feel her fingers and they felt so cold that they might actually have been burning him. They felt like dry ice and they stung with a dull pain. But he didn't pull away because he could tell she needed him.
She gazed urgently into his eyes, with sorrow and helplessness.
Don't leave me.
"Sylvia, I'm not going to leave you. You need my help, don't you?"
She nodded sadly and bit her lip.
Please don't go.
That broke his heart. He touched the fingers that she was holding against his cheek.
"Sylvia, I need to get some sleep. I have to leave you for tonight, but I will be here all week. You can come see me in the morning and any time during the day."
She frowned at that. She didn't want to meet anyone else but Rey, and during the day they would all be awake and it would be difficult to talk to him alone.
He saw her reluctance.
"If we meet at night could you wake me a little earlier? How about midnight tomorrow?"
She nodded, liking the idea of meeting at night.
He sighed. "Okay, you have to let me go now. I need to go back to sleep, all right?"
She started to cry with little gasps and lowered her hand from his face. A small burn faded away from his skin where her hand had been.
His brow came together. "Sylvia, look at me."
She sniffed and looked up at Rey.
"I promise you I will meet you here, just beyond this portrait, at midnight tomorrow night. Is that good for you?"
She nodded. But she still looked unsure. Maybe she had tried to get help from a living person before but they had run away on her.
Rey not only wouldn't do that, he literally couldn't. There was no way to leave this house until the week was up.
Rey sighed. "Sylvia, I promise you." He dragged the tip of his index finger over his chest, making an x.
She stared at him in awe.
"I crossed my heart. That means I have to keep my promise to you. Right?"
Sylvia smiled gratefully and crossed her heart, too.
He chuckled. "You promise to meet me here? Thank you."
Sylvia wiped her eyes.
"I will see you tomorrow night, baby girl. Goodbye for now." Rey smiled tiredly and stood up, picking up his useless flashlight.
The little ghost girl waved at him as he turned to go. He walked a little ways away and then turned around again when he was halfway down the hall.
The ghost had vanished as quickly as she'd come.
He frowned and wondered if he had imagined or dreamt the whole encounter.
He found his way back to his bedroom and fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.