Chapter 4

I don't know whether it was because I was still freaked out by the noise earlier in the afternoon, or if it was due to lingering memories of the previous night, but sleep was hard to come by that night. I had assumed, perhaps a bit naively, that I'd be out as soon as my head hit the pillow, and while that was true in the beginning, it didn't last very long.

The house itself seemed particularly active tonight. I'd long since grown accustomed to the soft groaning and creaking of it settling on its foundation, but tonight the sounds were louder, and there was decidedly more thumping and bumping than I was used to. At one point I got up and parted the blinds, looking out into the backyard. The leaves on the trees and shrubs were still; not even a breeze rustled through them. I frowned. Obviously I couldn't blame it on the wind.

I fell into a fitful sleep after that, once again plagued with strange dreams of people moaning. Teetering on the edge between sleep and wakefulness, I heard a loud crashand sat straight up in bed.

That sounded real. Most of the time I could differentiate between what was real and what I had dreamed, but that noise sounded like it came from downstairs, and it instantly brought chills to my skin despite the warm night air.

I flew out of bed and was halfway down the stairs before I had even considered the source of the sound and the potential consequences associated with it. I stopped at the base of the stairs, my eyes riveted on the kitchen doorway.

I hadn't left a light on. I was sure of it. I had turned everything off right before I went to bed. Surely I would have noticed if I left the kitchen light on. Wouldn't I?

Sinking my teeth into my lower lip, I tiptoed through the front room and peeked around the door frame into the kitchen. Nothing seemed out of place.

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was just a dream.

Just to put any lingering doubts to rest—because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep unless I did—I did a lap around the kitchen to make sure that everything was all right. As I moved around the table, I caught sight of a pile of broken tile on the floor.

So the crash I heard was real. I must have set the tile too close to the edge and it slipped off. It didn't make a lot of sense how the tile would have moved in the first place, but I was more than ready to accept it as a logical explanation and be done with it anyway.

I'd clean up the mess tomorrow when I got home from work, I thought wearily. Turning on my heel, I flipped off the light and headed back to bed. But when I got to the front room I stopped, my feet frozen in place.

There was light coming from my bedroom. It glowed cheerily from the open doorway, illuminating the hallway and the staircase. Such a seemingly innocent, normal light, and yet the sight of it struck an unexplainable fear in my heart.

Now I knew for an absolute fact that I hadn't turned on the bedroom light. I was up and out of bed way too fast to even consider reaching over and switching on the lamp. A cold sweat beaded on my forehead and I swallowed, fighting off the sudden urge to panic. Deep down, my stomach twisted with that sickening gut feeling that whispered that something was very, very wrong.

"Calm down, Christine," I said out loud. "You're reading too much into this. You're stressed. Stress makes you forget things."

Just then, a cool breeze whispered past, brushing against my neck as gently as the air from a moth's wing, and following behind on the tails of its gossamer tendrils I could have sworn I heard my name.

"Christine."

"Jesus Christ!" I squealed.

The clamps on my carefully maintained self-control ruptured, and once the dam had broken, full-blown panic rushed over me. Scrambling as fast as I could into the front room, I switched on all the lamps, followed by every single light in the kitchen, the upstairs hallway, and in my bedroom.

I crawled into bed, pressed my back against the headboard, and pulled my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around my legs in a protective embrace. I was shaking from head to toe, and my heart was beating so fast that I thought it was going to burst out of my chest cavity and take off running down the stairs and out of the house without me.

Every now and then I would pick my head up and survey the room, looking for anything out of place, any kind of sign that I might not be alone. I don't know how long I sat like that, but eventually I realized that I was too wound up to go back to sleep and needed something to distract my frazzled mind.

Slowly uncurling my legs, I reached over to nightstand and picked up my e-reader and turned it on. I was almost finished with The Phantom of the Opera. The Persian and the Vicomte were currently trapped in the torture chamber, while beyond the wall the Phantom, Erik, threatened Christine with blowing the opera house sky high if she didn't agree to be his wife.

I tried to sympathize with the Phantom—really, I did. There were parts in the book that had me silently rooting for him, but then his temper would flare and he would make such unreasonable demands upon Christine that it was a wonder that she felt anything for him at all. By the end of the epilogue my feelings were completely mixed up. Part of me was amazed that she could even stand to kiss him after all he'd put her through, but another part of me was extremely saddened to see her leave him and go off with the Vicomte instead of staying with him. A sign of good writing, indeed, if I wasn't sure how to feel after reading it.

I finally drifted off sometime just before dawn. All too soon the buzzer to my alarm sounded, dragging me kicking and screaming into another work day. Groaning, I clambered out of bed and scrubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms. At least this time I had remembered to set the automatic timer on the coffee maker, and with the heavenly smell of brewing coffee acting as my guide, I begrudgingly left my room.

It wasn't until I reached the kitchen that I realized the whole house was dark. Not a single light was on. Had I dreamed the entire thing? It felt too real to be a dream. But then again, the episode with my jewelry box had left me pretty rattled. It would have been very easy for me to transfer that fear and anxiety into the dream world. And I'd been really emotional the past few days, anyway. Maybe what I needed was to get through the work week and then take the weekend off; no working on the house, no going out, just relaxing.

My spirits had already lifted somewhat by the time I grabbed my coffee mug and started filling it with coffee. Pivoting on my heel I turned to get the sugar off the kitchen table, and that's when my heart slid into my stomach. There was still tile all over the floor next to the dishwasher. Half a box from the looks of it. My fingers tightened reflexively around the mug.

So, it hadn't been a dream after all….

That meant….

That meant that someone—or something—had turned off all the lights after I'd fallen asleep.

Jesus. What the hell was going on?

XXX

This was going to be too easy. A day and a half of small annoyances, and I already had her questioning her sanity. I hadn't even been trying that hard.

She had a penchant for talking to herself. Normally such a habit would grate on my nerves, but this time I actually found it quite useful. It had taken me a moment to mentally switch from French to English, but once I had, listening to her try to explain away all the strange occurrences gave me ample insight as to just how my antics were affecting her.

I had been overcome with fury when I discovered that she shared a name with my beloved Christine. This woman did not deserve such an appellation. No doubt it was yet another one of God's devices, a way to twist the knife and remind me both of my transgressions and what I had lost. But after the initial shock had dissipated, I was able to use the anger hearing those syllables stirred in me to my advantage. With one more thing on a growing list of reasons to dislike this woman, it became easier to channel my frustration into my work. Over the course of the next day or so I would slowly increase the intensity, until she had no choice but to comply with my demands.

XXX

If I had any lingering doubts that what I was experiencing was just a side effect of jetlag and a lack of good sleep, they were soon blown completely out of the water when I came home from work that evening.

Every single cupboard and drawer in the kitchen was wide open. Once I'd finished putting the kitchen back together, I walked out into the front room to discover that my purse—which I had dropped on the end table nearest to the door when I got home—had been relocated to the rocking chair on the far side of the room. The shower curtain had been plucked off the rail, and I found my hairbrush tossed in with my shoes in the closet.

As the sun went down the shadows inside grew longer, some seemingly moving of their own accord, without any corresponding cause coming from outside. By nightfall I was a shaking wreck, and I spent another sleepless night keeping watch with my back pressed against the headboard.

I woke up in a sitting position the next morning. My eyes felt like sandpaper. A quick glance in the bathroom mirror showed me they were bloodshot and angry looking. My complexion bordered on sickly, which only served to make the dark circles beginning to manifest under my eyes that much more obvious. Fatigue made my arms and legs feel heavy, as though I had spent the night running up and down the stairs. Dismissing my reflection with a tired moan, I lumbered back to the bed and fell back to the mattress. After another few moments of deliberation, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and dialed the office.

"Dr. Stevenson's office," Alejandra announced after the second ring.

"Wow, you're there early," I said, stunned to be talking to her instead of the machine.

"Is that you, Chris? Where've you been? It's 9:30."

"It's what?" My eyes flew open and darted to the alarm clock. Sure enough, the green digital letters read 9:32 a.m. "Oh my god."

"Are you okay?"

"No." I paused to push a hand through my messy hair. "That's why I'm calling. I must've caught something on the flight home. I feel terrible." It wasn't a total lie. But then again, I wasn't sure how she'd react to I've been up for two nights straight because I think I'm being terrorized by a ghost. If I didn't already think I was going crazy, Dr. Stevenson certainly would. And then he would try to fix me, and that was the last thing I wanted.

Telling your psychologist boss that you're experiencing hallucinations. Yeah, right. Thanks, but I'll pass.

"I wondered. You haven't looked so well the past couple of days," Alejandra said. "Do you want me to tell Dr. Stevenson that you won't be in today?"

"Please."

"Okay. Get feeling better."

"Thanks," I replied.

Hanging up the phone, I pushed it back onto the nightstand and then turned and buried my face in my pillows.

I woke up a few hours later to a dark room. My first thought was that I had slept the whole day away and now it was nighttime again. But as my eyes adjusted I noticed that gray clouds streaked across the sky outside. The air through the open window was cooler, and the wind had picked up with the promise of an impending storm.

Flinging the covers back, I got out of bed, grabbed my phone, and headed downstairs to make coffee. While I waited for it to brew I searched my contact list for my landlord's number and hit 'send.'

"This is Kathy."

"Hey Kathy, it's Chris."

The line was silent.

"Christine Davies," I clarified.

"Oh! Hi, Christine. How are things going on your kitchen project?"

"Things are good. It's really coming along. But hey, I've got a question to ask you. It's kinda weird."

"Okay, shoot."

"Well…," here I hesitated. "Has anyone ever…um…mentioned seeing things…you know, around the house?"

Again, she was quiet. Then, "I'm not sure I follow…."

I bit my bottom lip. "Like, has anyone complained that the house is haunted?"

"Haunted?" she repeated. I imagined her shaking her head on the other side of the phone. "No. No one's ever said anything about that house being haunted."

"No one?" I said, not at all liking the desperate tone that had crept into my voice. "Nothing weird or out of the ordinary?"

"I'm sorry, no." There was a muffled sound, like she was moving the phone from one ear to other, and then she added, "But I do feel the need to remind you that you did sign a lease-option to buy, and to leave now would mean a breach of contract."

"I'm not leaving," I snapped. The combination of little sleep and feeling like an idiot was making me cross. I took a deep breath in an effort to calm down. "I was just curious. An old house like this, there's bound to be some history."

Kathy let out a brittle laugh. "No doubt."

"Okay, well, I'll talk to you later."

After disconnecting the call I took my coffee and went out to the front room. The absence of sun had swathed the room in shadows. The threat of a looming storm had forced people inside, and so the house was unnaturally quiet without the usual sounds of neighborhood life going on outside. From out of nowhere I thought I heard a low whisper, but I couldn't make out the words.

A chill worked its way up my spine, and the small hairs on the back of my neck rose with the feeling that someone was standing right behind me. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and turned around. No one was there. Of course, that did little to comfort me. If I were indeed being haunted by a ghost, it's not like I would be able to see them, anyway.

A particularly strong gust of wind rattled the windows in their casements, causing me to unleash an ungodly yelp that reverberated around the empty house.

This was getting ridiculous! I couldn't continue second-guessing myself, losing sleep, and living in fear of the unknown lurking in every dark corner. If there was suddenly a ghost haunting my house, I was going to find out why.

I checked the clock, and then unlocked my phone and sent a group text to Maddie and Rochelle.

C: Are you guys busy tonight?

Maddie responded a few moments later.

M: Hot yoga. Why?

C: There's been some weird stuff happening here lately. I think my house may be haunted.

There was a long lull in the conversation. Suddenly, I felt extremely foolish for even bringing it up. Maybe I should have just kept it to myself and figured it out on my own.

Finally, Maddie responded.

M: So, what are you going to do?

Before I could answer, Rochelle's text message came through.

R: Sorry, ladies. We just contracted with a new artist and plans to reveal their exhibit has had me swamped. So, you think your house is haunted, Chris?

Rochelle worked as an event coordinator at the Museum of Fine Arts. It had been her dream to work in the arts and she had landed the job right out of college. At least she was going places, I thought sourly. Hell, even Maddie's position as the payroll supervisor at a high-end clothing retailer sounded glamorous compared to my job. Especially since she got a discount that gave her the opportunity to buy really cute clothes.

Dropping my attention back to my phone, I typed out my reply.

C: I don't know. I was thinking of maybe having a séance or something. See if I can figure out why this is happening all of a sudden.

R: Ooh, a séance. Spooky. I'm in.

M: So, let me get this straight. You want me to give up a night of cleansing relaxation and staring at sweaty, good-looking guys to come over and help you communicate with the dead?

C: Yes? I know. It sounds crazy, right?

R: C'mon, Maddie! It'll be fun!

C: Pleeeeeeaaaase?

M: Ugh. Fine. What time?

C: Does 6:30 work for everyone?

M: Yes.

R: I'll be there.

C: Okay, see you in a bit.

Great. That would give me enough time to run out and grab the supplies I needed and still be able to spruce up the place a bit before they got there.

XXX

Two hours later I shuffled through the front door, my arms laden with everything we would need for tonight. There was one of those new age stores a few miles into town that sold items related to the occult and other metaphysical supplies. I spared no expense; I had purchased candles, incense, a pentagram, and a Ouija board. I wasn't entirely sure any of this stuff was going to work, but it was worth a try.

Since my kitchen table was actively functioning as my countertop, I went into the dining-room-slash-junk-room and pulled out an old folding card table that had once belonged to my parents. I dusted it off and then moved the coffee table and set it up right in the middle of the front room. Then I retrieved three chairs from the kitchen and put them around the table. Next, I positioned the Ouija board in the center and surrounded it with candles. For lack of a better option, I set the pentagram down next to where I would be sitting. I could figure out what to do with it once we got started. I was just lighting the incense I'd placed on the two end tables when the doorbell rang.

"Holy crap!" Rochelle exclaimed, shaking off her umbrella as she stepped through the door. Her short brown hair was plastered to her forehead. "It's really coming down out there! You sure picked a good night to do this."

The ominous clouds had finally given way to a violent thunderstorm. Heavy rain sliced down from the heavens, the droplets made thin and knife-like by the howling wind, flooding the streets and gutters with torrents of water. Every so often, lightning lit up the evening sky in hues of pinks and hot white, followed soon after by the low rolling sound of thunder.

The house was almost as dark inside as it normally would be at midnight. To amplify the effect, I had systematically gone around to each room and closed all the blinds. Now, the only light came from the flickering candles on the card table.

Rochelle set her purse down on the couch and took a seat at the table to the left of my chair. I remained standing by the door, opening it a crack so I could be ready to fling it open when Maddie ran from her car to the porch. It wasn't too much longer before I saw her car pull in.

"Where did this come from?" she asked breathlessly.

I shrugged and took her raincoat and hung it on a hook next to the door. "Beats me."

She finished straightening her collar and shook out her hair. Then her eyes centered on the card table. Rochelle waved.

"Wow, Chris. It looks kind of scary in here."

"Try living here," I quipped.

Maddie pegged me with a questioning look as she slowly settled into the seat on my right. "You didn't elaborate in your text. What's going on?"

I plopped down in my chair with a loud sigh and pushed my hand through my hair. "Strange things. The other day my jewelry box flew off my dresser and broke, the lights turn on and off by themselves, some of my stuff has been moved around. And it's just been the past few days."

"Hmm," Rochelle mused. "Maybe the original owners of the house don't like what you're doing to the place and now they're trying to tell you."

I started to protest and then stopped. Could that be it? It would make sense why none of the previous tenants had seen or experienced anything like this. Then again. "Outdated Formica countertops that belong in the eighties? Please," I laughed. "I'm doing them a favor."

Rochelle snickered. Maddie just shook her head.

"Well, I suppose we should give this a shot. Do you know what you're doing?" Maddie asked.

"Not a clue," I revealed. "I guess we should hold hands or something."

"But if we hold hands, then how are we going to use the Ouija board?" Rochelle pointed out.

Gnawing on my bottom lip, I said, "Huh. Good point. Maybe we begin by holding hands and beckoning to the spirits, and then try to communicate with them by using the Ouija board."

Now it was Maddie's turn to snicker. "I guess. Go for it, Chris."

The three of us joined hands, making a triangle around the candlelit table. I didn't know if it was the fact that we were actually attempting this, or if it was just the anticipation of it all, but the air seemed to thicken around us.

I cleared my throat. "We are gathered here tonight—"

"Sounds like a wedding," Rochelle murmured.

"Shh!" I snapped, trying not to giggle myself. "You're breaking my concentration. We are attempting to communicate with any spirits that may be in this house. Tell us who you are. What do you want? Why are you haunting my house?"

We waited, each of us alternating between looking at each other and around the room. After a minute, I motioned to the Ouija board. Without saying anything, we let go and brought both our hands to the small plastic piece that was supposed to slide around the board and spell out the spirit's answers.

"Maybe you're overwhelming them with too many questions," Maddie said when it had yet to move. "Try asking one at a time."

"Okay. Is there someone else besides the three of us here?"

I held my breath, waiting for the answer, for the confirmation that I wasn't going crazy. But after about a minute of staring at the pointer, it still hadn't moved.

I tried again. "Who are you?"

Again, we waited. And again, the planchette remained motionless.

"Is that the ring you were telling me about?" Maddie asked out of the blue.

My eyes shifted to my left hand, where the gold band sparkled in the dancing candlelight. "Yeah."

Rochelle perked up. "What's this now?"

Sighing, I related the fabricated story I had told Maddie about finding my grandmother's ring and putting it on, only to get it stuck. I couldn't very well tell either of them that I had accidentally absconded with a ring that wasn't mine and had put it on my finger during a drunken pity party over Ben. They had both been with me during the lowest points of my divorce, and I doubted either of them were eager to revisit those days. Plus, they would be absolutely furious with me if they knew I had even entertained the thought of reconciling with him—however far-fetched that actually turned out to be.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Keep trying to get it off, I guess. I really don't want to cut—" The rest of my sentence froze on my tongue as a pocket of cold air swept over my left hand. "Do you guys feel that?"

Maddie shook her head, her long loose curls swaying with the motion. "Uh-uh. What?"

"You seriously don't feel that?" How could they not feel it? My hand felt like I had dunked it in ice water.

"No." She angled her head over to Rochelle. "Do you feel anything?"

"Nothing." Rochelle looked at me apologetically. "Sorry, Chris. I don't think this is working."

I sat back against the chair and crossed my arms over my chest with a disgusted groan. "I feel like I'm going crazy."

"Look," Maddie's tone was placating. "You've had a busy couple of weeks. Has anything upset you recently, stressed you out to the point where you've been losing sleep?"

My gaze fell to my hands, which were now folded in my lap, and I worried the inside of my lip as I debated whether or not to tell them about Ben's visit. Unfortunately, Maddie was perceptive and immediately picked up on my hesitation.

"Something did happen. What was it?"

I squeezed my eyes shut and blurted, "Ben called on Sunday and wanted to come over."

"Oh, Chris," Rochelle moaned, her voice dripping with disappointment. "You didn't."

"No!" I exclaimed. Hurt and indignation chased away the embarrassment on my face. "No, I wouldn't— He wanted some stupid necklace of his grandmother's so he could give it to Carly on her birthday," I sneered, altering my voice into a mocking tone at the end. Fucking asshole."

I couldn't quite tell, but I thought I heard both my friends sigh in relief.

"I bet that's all this is," Maddie said, patting my hand now that it was back on the tabletop. "He's gotten you all worked up again, which is being made worse by the fact that you're tired from the trip and then having to go straight back to work. You know how you get when you're stressed."

"I suppose."

In all reality what she was saying was mostly true. I did tend to get overwhelmed and forget things when I got stressed. But I couldn't also help the feeling that I was experiencing something otherworldly. It just felt too real. Could my mind really play tricks on me like that?

"Let's clean this up so you can go to bed early and get some decent sleep," she continued.

"Okay."

Pushing away from the table I moved around the front room and turned on the lights while Rochelle blew out the candles. Maddie gathered up the Ouija board and put it, the planchette, and the pentagram back in the box. After helping me fold down the card table and put it and the chairs back in their respective places, they said goodnight and left me standing alone in the doorway.

As soon as their taillights disappeared from view I slammed the door and whirled back into the front room. I was furious.

"That's just great!" I seethed. "You've been scaring the shit out of me for days, and now that I've finally admitted that there is something is going on and tried to communicate with you, you decide to shut up! What the hell?" The irritation I felt over failing to rouse whatever was tormenting me was making me reckless, but I didn't care. "I'm tired of these childish pranks! Either tell me what you want, or move the fuck on!"

My chest was heaving by the time my diatribe ended, but I felt good. It didn't matter that I had just directly challenged the ghost. Who knew what sort of evil things I had just called down upon myself? At that moment, as I stomped upstairs to take a shower, all I felt was the intense satisfaction that now he or she knew that I was done playing games.

XXX

Childish?

She had the audacity to call me childish? If only she knew who she was dealing with—that men had died by my hand for far less than the insults she now flung at me.

I had lingered at the edge of the living room, watching their absurd attempts to "contact" me. I had had no intention of revealing myself, especially with others present, but I had been truly surprised when she spun around and slammed the door behind her. A wry smile slowly crept over my disfigured features. At least now I had her attention.

She wanted me to drop the pretense and communicate with her. I could concede she had a point; these games were growing tiresome. The fact that she had directly acknowledged my presence instead of trying to dismiss it as something else told me that perhaps she was finally ready to listen to what I wanted.

The steady, scalding hot stream of water felt good on my weary muscles, the pulsating jets of the showerhead working to ease the tension in my neck and shoulders. As I stood under the water, I thought about everything that had happened. Considering the outcome of the séance—not to mention all the money I had wasted on it—I should have still been in a foul mood. But I wasn't. Popping off like that had lifted a huge weight from my chest, even if it had really accomplished nothing more than allowing me to vent. For the first time in days I felt like I could breathe.

I pulled a deep, soul-cleansing breath into my lungs and turned off the shower. Grabbing the towel I had thrown over the rail, I wrapped it around my body and pushed the curtain back. But as I stepped out of the tub and into the steam-filled area in front of the sink, my good mood evaporated as quickly as drops of water on the sidewalk on a hot summer day.

There, written as plain as day in the condensation on the bathroom mirror, was the answer that I had so heedlessly demanded.

Give it back.

A/N: I think this has been my favorite chapter to write so far. I was honestly surprised that it turned out so long. Please let me know how you think I'm doing!