Useless Tuesdays
May 30, 2016.
Murder House, Los Angeles
Tuesdays were usually numb in all respect; nothing particular happened at University, at home, nor at work, and usually no good movies were on TV, either. I shouldn't have been surprised to find out that even at the infamous Murder House, Tuesdays were boring and gave me even less reason to understand Garfield's hatred toward Mondays. Mondays at least served a purpose; they were the beginning of the week, but Tuesdays?! Damn!
I spent the whole day skimming through Dad's folder I found yesterday; this time behind closed doors, although Tate offered immediately after I woke up that he'd help me. A refusal was what he got. Violet's warning kept me awake for half of the night, not because I was afraid but because it made me think about the relations between the ghosts around here. She clearly blamed Tate for her death; that sounded a lot like the ghosts we've met on the road. Most spirits stayed not only because they had unfinished business to attend to, but also out of revenge; usually, they were all murdered or killed out of human inadvertency.
Violet, however, didn't seem quite vengeful; the opposite, actually, she seemed to have accepted the fact that Tate was the reason she died, according to her. Of course, I had no idea what she meant, although I had a few guesses; the news could only tell you so much, beyond that, everyone was blind to what happened during the murders. What was different from other murders was, though, that I could ask the victims – and possibly, even the murderers.
And that's exactly what I was going to do.
After I've read every paper once or twice (the notes meant nothing to me, they were like a hasty scrabble of a student, a few words to be highlighted which were incomprehensible for anyone outside the writer – words like "spirit", "ghost", "ley" and "grace" mixed with "conception", "world beyond" and "portal"), I gave up. They meant something, for sure, but I didn't know what, and I didn't have enough time to make up my own research. I was also sure that it was in connection to his agenda – not the immediate case he was working on. I didn't want to have anything to do with his obsession to bring back Mom. She was dead – and he couldn't do anything to reverse it.
I gave a call to Jack and Camille; they were a married pair of hunters whom we met back in Washington, and after their first baby was born, they gave up actual hunting and became informants. Currently, they weren't home as their voicemail answered, so I left them a message to call me back.
Now, that work was done for a while, at least, I could do some research of my own: the house and its ghosts were nudging me more than a nerve-racking eight-years-old boy, and I knew this feeling would continue if I don't try to find the answers. So, after I put everything back to its place, I headed upstairs, to the kitchen, more specifically, as it was past noon already.
Moira was cleaning the living room, and I was glad for it; I still had a hard time trusting her, so I'd rather make my lunch myself. Unfortunately, my determination didn't come with cooking skills, so I settled for a sandwich.
As I sat by the counter, munching, my eyes fell to a notepad and a pen, possibly belonging to Liam. After a short period of thinking, I pulled them closer and started tapping the pen against the page. To understand the house, I should've perhaps known exactly what I stood against, to see the extent of deathly danger I was right in the middle of.
Nora & Charles Montgomery
Year of death: 1926
Cause of death: suicide / murder (Nora)
I didn't write Thaddeus there on purpose – after all, no one really knew if he was alive or dead.
Gladys Salazar & Maria Finkelstein
Year of death: 1968
Cause of death: murder
The pen went down and then I withdrew it, as I wasn't sure – between the Montgomerys and Franklin's murders almost forty years went on without much problem. Maybe someone did die in here, only the newspapers didn't know about it? I couldn't be sure, so there was only one option, really, to call for aid.
"Tate!" I called for him sounding like an idiot in the middle of the kitchen. A small dot of ketchup fell out of my sandwich as I looked up at the ceiling, almost expecting the ghost-boy to melt out of there like Slimer from Ghostbusters. "Tate!"
"I knew you'd need me," he said, walking in from the corridor like a normal person. As soon as I saw the smug grin on his face I regretted not calling for someone else instead. Seeing how I rolled my eyes, he chuckled and sat down next to me. "Why did you call?"
"You know a lot about the house, right?"
"I guess," he mused, shrugging. Tate looked a lot less interested in my question than in the muffins sitting on the counter.
"Can you even eat that?" I asked, a bit surprised, when he took one.
Tate froze mid-bite for a moment before grinning again.
"If you think I'm fat you can just tell me, you know," he said.
A sigh and another eye-roll later, which totally hid my laughter about to burst, I added, "That's not what I meant, and you know it. You don't have any physical cravings… Right? I mean, you're dead, Tate."
The way Tate's eyes bore into mine made me become motionless. Once again, it must've had something to do with the fact that his irises resembled black holes, endless pitch-black darkness which held my gaze captive. He was sitting across the windows, so the outside lights lit up his face enough to make me able to see his pupils which only intensified the realization that he was looking at me; into me? I saw something there – someone on the other side of Tate's eyes – what I shouldn't have, not with a ghost. They were supposed to be only a memory of their humanly being.
It was only a moment, but the intensity made it seem much longer. I felt nervous after that.
"I must be, huh?" he asked slowly, his eyebrow knitted and mouth slightly open as he thought hard about something. He stayed like that for a bit before he shrugged and stuffed half of the muffin into his mouth. "Dunno. We still eat and drink sometimes, I guess; I do, anyway."
"That's interesting," I mumbled, stroking my chin, only to leave a trace of ketchup there. I cleaned it off hastily. "Do you, like, digest it as well? Like, you know, do you have to use the bathroom?"
Tate scrunched his nose and shook his head with a little laugh. "Did you call me here to talk about bowel movements?"
"No. I called you here to talk about murders."
"Oh. That's sick, girl," he laughed.
"Are bowel movements better?" I asked with raised brows. "Look, that's not important. I just want to know every ghost in this house; when and how they died, too. Can you do that?"
Tate shrugged before looking at me, a sudden eager hopefulness in his eyes and voice. "Why do you need it? Are you trying to find out why we're here? To help us?"
"Look, dude, I'm just… curious, alright?" I sighed as I rubbed my temple. Taking another bite from my sandwich, I continued on. "So, after the Montgomerys… The first ones to be killed here were Gladys and Maria?" Tate nodded firmly. "Are you sure about that? No one died here between 1926 and 1968?"
He nodded again. "Not enough ghosts around for you already?" he beamed. I ignored Tate's comment.
"Alright. So, after that?"
"The twins," he said, his gaze going up to the ceiling. "Troy and Bryan. Nasty little pre-pubescent bastards. Did they give you your sunglasses back yet?"
My hand slapped on the counter. "That was them?!" Unlike how my eyes went wide, Tate seemed to find that funny as he chuckled. "Those sons of bitches… Just wait until I get them."
"I told them to give it back," Tate said, either to let me see that he did something for my cause or to prevent any rage from my part for not hindering their little prank.
"Whatever." They were dead, anyway; it couldn't get any worse for them, right? I downed the rest of my sandwich and took my pen again. "So, when did they die?"
"I dunno."
"You're so helpful."
Tate shook his head with a small smile. "I don't even know what year is it… I was still very young, around one, I guess."
"1978," I nodded. I already knew when they died, I was merely curious if Tate was going to be honest with answering. He seemed to be, though. "How did they die?"
"Thaddeus got 'em."
I frowned at that, not out of surprise or astonishment, rather to express my empathy toward them; I only saw that monster's claws but that still gave me a good idea about the rest of it. To be killed by that monstrosity, devoured… That was something I wouldn't expose my enemies to, either, not to mention a couple of young boys. This was the part that sucked in being a hunter, well, one of the many – you started to see the world as it was, cruel and full of mud, to the young as well as to the old.
My chest, once again heavy with the thoughts of misery and death, heaved a sigh as I wrote the new information down, too.
Troy & Bryan
Year of death: 1978
Cause of death: murder (Thaddeus)
"When did you move in?"
"Some time after that," Tate said, knocking the ring on his thumb to the counter carelessly. He then grinned suddenly, with obvious bitterness behind it. "The house got cheap because of the twins, and my father bought it… But it'd seem like he didn't like it here, since he left a few years after."
I didn't quite know how I should've reacted to that. Actual desolation dripped from his words, something I wasn't used to. Could it be that a ghost was such good of an actor? Could he have been lying to me?
"I'm sorry," I murmured awkwardly.
"It's all right," the blonde boy shrugged. "The house is cool. It could've been my mother he hated. I get that. Why do you hate your father?"
His question caught me unarmed, so I looked up at him in surprise. "I'm sorry, what?"
"I'm just curious," he said; as it looked like, Tate didn't feel bad about the sudden change of subject. After all, he changed it. "My mom is a bitch, I have a reason to hate her, but what did your father do?"
A sudden wave of anger pulsed through my veins. How could he be so insolent to just ask something like that?! Once again, his otherwise pretty nose (how can a nose be pretty? But Tate's everything was pretty) was poking around stuff he had no authority to. Don't trust them; I heard Violet say, especially not Tate.
Tate was… nothing like I've ever met. I couldn't put my hand on what level was he different, exactly, but supposedly multiple, and only one of them was the fact that he was dead and he was a new kind of ghost. I couldn't understand why he was so curious about me, as if he wanted to befriend me. No one ever did that on purpose; not if they knew about my family. What was his game?
"That's none of your business," I frowned, grouchily. Maybe he did not meant any harm by asking about my relation to Dad, but every time someone asked something personal about me, I felt attacked immediately – after all, what other reason could he have to ask such questions if he didn't want to harm me or my family through what he learns?
Tate, however, seemed innocent as ever as he blinked at me with those huge doe eyes of his. I had to tear away my eyes from him before I'd get swallowed by him again; instead, I started to draw doodles on the margin. Although we were silent, my thoughts were roaming with questions, mostly about the blonde ghost boy sitting next to me. I was still swimming deep in a mixture of desperate uncertainty, anger and alarm when a hand reached for mine, cold, slender fingers locking around mine, patting them.
My instinct was to withdraw my hand as fast as I can, but I willed myself and looked at Tate instead.
"I'm sorry, Charlie," he pleaded softly, concern on his face. "I didn't mean to be rude… I was just, you know, trying to get to know you."
Did he really say that?
I think he did.
"No offense. I just don't share my stuff with ghosts, or anyone, as a matter of fact." The meaningful nod Tate gave made me bite into my lips in order to stop words from coming out, but eventually, that wasn't enough. "He was just… never a father to me; not the one I needed, anyway. That's all you should know. He's my father and I can never break that bond, of course I help find him, but I don't want to get involved with any of… this."
How is it, he was just so easy to talk to?
Tate asked, with his head tilted and brows furrowed, "Do you really want to go back to the university?"
And I had no real answer.
"I have to go back," I answered though, quite confidently. It wasn't a lie, at least. "I'm actually supposed to be sick now, or at least that's what I told to my friend, but I can't play that card for forever. I might lose the financial support, if I don't go back soon, and I obviously have no money to pay the tuition fee… I mean, have you seen the piece of crap car I drive?"
"You drive an Audi 100, all the narcissistic, pompous twats used to drive that."
"Yeah, in 1994, Tate," I sighed with a raised eyebrow. "That kind of makes it more than twenty years old, and it's officially older than me. I wasn't even born yet."
"1994 was a long time ago, huh?" Tate asked, looking at me for approval. I wasn't going to lie, it was far back, so I nodded. He gave a snorting sound. "Seems like yesterday."
"From a certain point of view, it was, for you," I raised my shoulders. The situation was almost funny; if Tate hadn't committed what he did, he'd be almost forty years old by now, and yet, here he was, still the mind and body of a teenager. Forever young wasn't as happy and full of sunshine as nowadays' singers sing it, though.
I cleared my throat to chase away the previous thoughts and turned back to the counter as I've faced Tate during our side-wrecked conversation.
"So… Moira went missing in 1983 according to the articles, and seeing how she's still the same age, I suppose she died the same year. Do you know how?"
"Nope. I was only six."
Moira O'Hara
Year of death: 1983 (?)
Cause of death: ?
My pen stopped mid-air before it could've went on writing automatically. According to my research, one of the next deaths was Tate's himself. How was he going to react to that?
"The Harvey's came after that," Tate spoke up, seemingly unbothered. He was talking about accepted facts, like a boring documentary. "Lorraine set herself and her two daughters on fire, because her husband was fucking my mother. She'd have done anything to get back here ever since she lost it," he snickered, humorless. "After that, Constance got Larry to murder my brother, Beau, in the attic, because he didn't fit into her perfect little idealistic family. If SWAT wouldn't have shot me, she might have done it herself after she realized finally, that I'd never be her perfect son."
There was a mixture of bitterness, anger and painful acceptance in his voice as he spoke, picking the skin of his fingers. The amount of information he gave was satisfying but it also left me with the feeling I should say something, after all, Tate looked so miserable and real… But I had no clue what was appropriate or what wouldn't trigger an unwanted emotional outburst of Tate. What can anyone say to that?
"1994 was quite a year, huh?" I said finally with an unsure grimace.
Lorraine, Margaret & Angela Harvey
Year of death: 1994
Cause of death: murder-suicide (Lorraine)
Beau Langdon
Year of death: 1994
Cause of death: murder (Larry Harvey)
Tate Langdon
Year of death: 1994
Cause of death: shot by SWAT
Tate peeked over to my notes with interest flaring in his eyes. "You didn't write murder to my death."
His question was evident, and I even surprised myself with the long fumbling seconds I took to find the right words. Somehow I didn't want to offend him.
"That wasn't murder… They didn't want to kill you, Tate, they were only doing their jobs."
"You think they didn't want me dead? After all I've done, set someone on fire and kill fifteen innocent kids in my high school?" The cheery undertone was long gone by now, rather, his voice bore something fierce, and yet something unsure. He wasn't only toying with his question, and it wasn't only meant for me but also himself. Tate looked away from me, staring at his hands; and all I could do was wonder how his sulky behavior and fallen shoulders was enough to make me feel empathic toward him.
"Why did you do it, Tate?" I asked slowly, shaking my head in disbelief. These ghosts awoke an unhealthy curiosity in me, but Tate was even worse, since he made efforts to talk to me and act as if he was still alive. He was something different, something new and odd and bipolar, who didn't cease to surprise me; I had to realize I wanted to understand him.
His voice was barely a whisper. " I don't know," he murmured. "I don't remember. " He sounded genuine, but I wasn't sure if I could trust my ears or feelings. Suddenly he looked up at me, with pleading eyes and a sorrowful frown his face. He reminded me of a frightened child. "Why did I do that?"
I hesitated, not sure if he was actually talking to me. "Tate, I don't…"
"Could've the house done that to me? Can I be cursed?" he kept going on. "Those voices in my head, they told me to do things, that I… "Tate shook his head, staring with wide eyes. He didn't give me details, and perhaps it was for the best. "Is that a thing? Can a cursed house do this?"
"I guess so, yes… Sometimes dark energies get stuck in one place for various reasons, like witches or demons, and fuck people up," I answered, carefully thinking over every little word twice and stuffing as much calmness into my voice as I could muster. Tate's blonde eyebrows knotted together dispiritedly.
"It must have been the house… and the coke. It was stupid, I know that now, and I swear, if I could change the past, I would!" His hands reached out for mine, and this time, I didn't even try to pull my hands away. I was still pretty much in shock, and my mind couldn't decide what I should do with the so suddenly formed situation. "Can a curse like this be lifted, reversed?"
"Perhaps. Maybe… Look, I don't know, Tate." A distressed sigh escaped my lips as I combed my fingers through my dark curls. Anxiety was something I was familiar with, given my borderline paranoia, but this was a different form of it; it didn't derive from fear but rather the fact that Tate seemingly wanted, needed me to help him, to give answer whereas I had none. Just like with my father's disappearance, I had no clue what I was doing, yet everyone expected me to know things, and it strained my body and mind to a limit where I wanted to be mad and to yell, but at the same time I just wanted to cry in a corner and eat ice cream. Why did it have to be so difficult?
"I want to get rid of this," Tate said, his grip on my hands tightening as his dark orbs watered. "I want to be different, but I can't do it alone, Charlie! And I don't even know how, and… I did such horrible things, I can't make up for it, but I want to help you, so maybe through you, we can all be free."
To say I was at a loss of words would be an understatement. Much to my surprise, though, the Universe decided it had dumped enough shit on me already, so I'd be in for a treat – which ultimately meant that my phone started to ring. It startled me and I winced but reached for it instantly as I just about jumped up and made it to the front door. I had to get up and walk, to be away from Tate, because he awoke things in me I wasn't ready to face yet.
"Yes?" I opened the front door hastily, almost ready to talk even to a insurance agent or Jehovah's Witnesses as long as it served as an excuse for me. Tate was about to cry when I left him at the counter, and I was pretty sure I'd have joined him.
"WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!" Reese's voice shrieked into my ears with such volume I almost dropped the phone. I was ready to talk to a phone agent, but wasn't ready for this conversation so I almost did a turn tail until I realized that would take me to another problem, so I started to pace around the pavement.
"Look, Reese, I can explain, alright?"
"You are damn well going to!" he yelled but at a less deafening way before sighing; I could imagine him pinching his nose bridge. "Do you even know what I felt when I called your friend, the, ah, pretty blonde chick…"
"Angela, her name is Angela," I grumbled, and the slight disgust I felt about the fact that my uncle generally found my friend hot almost made me forget about my other problems.
"Yes, her. I called her because you didn't come home yesterday like you said you would, and do you know what she told me? That you were never freaking there in the first place! You lied to me!"
"I know, I'm sorry," I sighed heavily, but Reese wasn't finished yet.
"And do you know whom else you've lied to? Angela, saying you were sick or something and that's the reason you weren't at the university, either!" I felt multiple pairs of eyes on me, both from the house behind me, and also from the neighbor. I didn't pay attention to the first one, but the second one I found more of a problem so I pretended to be a good suburban girl, not some almost teenaged runaway, and started walking toward the mailbox. "You know what, Lotte? I get it, you're nineteen and you have your own secrets, really, I get it, but if it was some boy you're leaving all of us so suddenly, I'd get that, I did stupid things, too, when I was younger, and - oh, who am I kidding, I still do them, but it's not like that, is it? Why did you lie to us and leave? Where are you?"
Reese was rambling and jabbering like an idiot whenever he was worked up, and it'd seem he was really worked up. Truth to be told, I did not expect to be here more than a day or two, and I hoped I'd be able to come up with some explanation by then but it slipped my mind, I guess. Now, I had to think quickly; I couldn't tell him the truth, I was sure about that, because I had no idea what would happen if he'd find out that Dad's missing, and this whole house…
My uncle always had a strained relationship with Dad, they didn't get along well, not since Mom, his older sister died; Reese said what Dad gave us was never Mom's intention, and that both him and Mom despised hunters' life. That was the main reason he didn't even think twice about taking me in when I appeared in front of his door one day almost four years ago. I owed him a lot. And if I'd have told him where I was and what I was doing there, he'd have come.
"I can't tell you," I said finally.
Silence.
"It's just… something I have to do on my own." Only minutes ago I was mentally hissing and fussing about having everything laid upon me, but now that I actually had a chance of requiring real help from my uncle, I backed out. Not even backed, more like chickened, because I was afraid of what would happen if he'd come to the Murder House. "Family stuff… Liam needs me."
Another, seemingly lifetime spanned silence later, Reese took a deep breath. "Are you safe?"
Nothing was ever safe; even less when you were staying at a place like the Murder House.
"Yes. I'm not doing anything dangerous, I swear." Well, I wasn't doing anything yet.
"Why couldn't you just tell me?" This time I was the one sighing; Reese's voice was considerably lighter, and I felt a rush of relief.
"Would you have let me go without joining me?" I asked, opening the mailbox and taking out a few letters.
"Well… does following you count?"
"Nope."
"Than no."
"That's why I couldn't tell you," I said, almost laughing.
That's when I actually made the effort to look up, at the next house, only to find Constance in all her Southern Wife glory, laughing – actually laughing – with a little boy who seemed to be around four years old, hair so light blonde it almost seemed white. He was petting a little dog – one of those terrible terriers with the little bow in their fur – and running after it; the dog frisked its tail and barked happily. I frowned. It wasn't the scene itself that filled me with a strange feeling; rather, the boy had something radiating from him, something I've never seen before; he didn't have a colorful aura-like thing, like living people, but it wasn't grey or black, either, like ghosts and demons and other supernatural creatures. His was the same color as his hair, almost white. I've never seen anything like it. What the hell…?
"… Charlie?" I heard Reese call my name urgently, and I was sure I must've blacked out while I was watching and I didn't hear anything my uncle said.
"Yeah, sorry, I'm here… What was that?"
Reese laughed, but I knew his question was serious. "You know you can call me any time, right? If you were to do anything crazy, may you remember that your good ol' uncle is me, and whatever you may do, I've done worse. Much worse."
"I know that, and I'm not planning to do anything stupid or unnecessarily brave, I swear."
"So, how's Liam? Is he alright?"
"Yeah, of course. He's actually in school now, and I guess he's about to have a girlfriend."
"That's great! I knew he'd take after me. Your Dad was never a charmer, I never quite got what your Mom saw in him… But that may be because at the time I was only twelve. What's he doing now?"
That was the question I feared. "Difficult," I said diplomatically. It wasn't a lie, after all, and Reese knew I had a mismatch with him about his obsession about bringing Mom back. I talked to Reese for a few more minutes, swearing again and again that I'm good and that I'll call him soon.
By the time I slid my phone back into my pocket, I was standing at the porch, and with a sigh, I looked to the side only to realize I was being watched. The little boy Constance was playing with stared at me with his huge, unrealistically blue eyes, hugging the dog who was quite happy for the closeness. For a long moment, we just looked at each other; then, suddenly, he smiled and waved with his free hand. By instinct, I waved back but couldn't suppress the shiver that ran down my spine. This kid was odd. And where did Constance get him, anyway?
What I did not see or hear, though, was how in the exact moment I closed the door, the dog's neck broke with a sickening crack.
"So, what's up with that kid?" I asked Tate. It was already past 10PM, and we were sitting on the floor of my bedroom floor, looking through my CDs. Apparently, Tate liked My Chemical Romance and asked if I have anything alike; and given how being on the better side of him could be beneficial, I've realized, I agreed to give him some more. It must've sucked to be in a house for twenty years with nothing to do all day, but hey, it's not called being cursed for nothing.
"What kid?" he asked with a frown, which could have been a sign of general incomprehension as well as not liking Panic!At The Disco whose CD's back he was currently eyeing.
"Well, you know… The one with Constance. Around this high, three-to-five years old, blonde and blue eyes?"
It was impossible to ignore the way Tate flinched upon hearing this, almost as if he wasn't expecting me to meet the boy; or at least hoping.
"Dunno," he shrugged finally. "I guess she was feeling lonely… After my sister died a few years ago, she's had no one. Another child to fuck up big time."
"Crazy how the adoption system works these days, right?" I asked with a raised eyebrow, seemingly not really caring about the topic; I guess I did a good job pretending I had no interest, since Tate loosened up a bit. "I mean, she must be over sixty… A pair may not get a child because they're gay, but someone on the verge of death can. I mean, we're all destined to die in one form or another, but the older you get, the more risks you have. It's stupid."
Tate put down the CD and reached for a Green Day one. "Do you often talk about death?", he asked nonchalantly.
"With someone who is dead? No. Ghosts don't usually talk, you know; they more like… Rawr, rawr, rawr, "I said, mimicking something resembling a wild animal attacking and roaring. Tate laughed, his dimples deep and cute, in a way ghosts shouldn't be allowed to. "And shriek. They do a lot of shrieking."
"You know a lot about supernatural," he said, and I shrugged.
"Just enough to survive."
A noise came from a level up, the attic; a heavy object was rolled from the sound of it.
"I promised Beau I'd play with him," Tate said, looking up at the ceiling and standing up before turning to me. He offered his hand to me and I accepted it, letting him to pull me up to my feet. "Would you like to come? I'm sure he'd like some company."
"Maybe another time, I'll get some sleep," I shook my head, delicately pushing the CD-pile closer to the wall with my feet. "I have some things to settle tomorrow."
I waited for Tate to disappear until I picked up the sack of salt I had under my bed to start making my salt-circle. I wasn't finished yet when I got company again.
"You didn't listen," Violet pronounced coolly, her arms folded.
"You said you don't care if I listen," I shrugged, straightening up since she was standing just in the way.
"Don't trust Tate."
"I don't."
"He was just in your room."
"You're in my room, too."
"I wasn't invited in."
"Do you want me to invite you?"
Violet smiled. It was hard to decide whether she found me funny – of course she did, I was naturally hilarious – or she was being sarcastic due to her lack of expressing emotions.
"Don't trust him," she insisted. " Don't get close to him, because he will kill you, one way or another. I'm not warning you because I'm being nice; I need you and your family alive so you can help us."
I looked at the ceiling upon hearing her reasoning, partly because I had to force back an eyeroll, and partly because a part of me knew Tate was up there with his brother. I should've gone with him instead.
"I won't be the one to help," I said, feeling like I was repeating myself over and over again every goddamn time. "I'll find my dad, bring him back and then I'm gone."
All of a sudden, Violet broke into a wide smile and chuckled, but this time I knew for sure that there was no happiness in it.
"Yes, you will. You're one of those people." And with that, she was gone, leaving me no time to react or to ask what she meant exactly by 'those', but if I wanted to be honest, I knew the reason, and that's what frustrated me the most, among other things.
At the end of the day, Tuesday, once again, proved to be one of the most useless and thus hateful days ever, since I've achieved nothing but gained a headache, and probably some kind of forming mental illness. After I've settled into my bed following the completion of the salt circle, I fell to the border of sleep easily. But if someone is staying in a haunted house, it becomes hard to decide if a ghost is roaming the halls, or sleep is starting to seep into reality.
I haven't had a good sleep for a while, so I didn't pay attention to the gurgling laughing of a little boy echoing through the halls. I do faintly remember waking up to someone standing next to my bed, though; my vision was blurred and the room dark, but a really light mop of hair was visible. A child's giggling, again, and a tiny hand reaching out toward me. It seemed like a dream; and before the hand could reach me, another blonde head appeared, herding the first one somewhere I couldn't see. Something happened, and I fell back into sleep again.