Home > This Is Not a Ghost Story(6)

This Is Not a Ghost Story(6)
Author: Andrea Portes

It is dark. And it is focused. Fixed, somehow, on me.

It is coming from inside the house. I know this even though I can’t see anything you would describe as eyes, mouth, or a face. It is trained on me. It is there, focused. Impossible to see. Impossible not to feel.

I am not welcome. Somehow I know that. In a sixth sense we must have unlearned as a human species. It doesn’t want me here. It is angry with me, or maybe anyone, being here. In this place. On its territory. All of that, those facts, in a great sudden sweep across the yard from the house. How do I know that—in an instant—in a way you never could know, really?

It’s impossible. But there they are. Clear as a bell.

Whatever that being is in there, it wants me out.

What will happen when I go back in?

Because I will go back in.

I, quite literally, can’t afford not to go back in.

I want to close my eyes. I want to close my eyes and open them again and have whatever that thing is be gone. But I can’t. Because I’m suddenly filled with a cold fear that causes goose bumps to rise in a wave over my body—a fear that when I close my eyes and then open them again, that thing will be closer. Right upon me, just next to me.

A deep shiver racks my body.

Yes, I know, all of this cannot be happening.

Is this a hundred years we are standing here? A month? A week? A day? Or is it just a second, a momentary flash? Is time stopped in this endless moment?

Is this a standoff?

A confrontation on a kind of pause?

I tell myself, firmly this time, that if I close my eyes, if I just close them, I will then open them again and it will be gone. Because the thing is not real. It will not be closer. It will not be right next to me. It will not be in me. (This last thought comes from some unexpected place and makes my stomach roll.)

This is a kind of prayer I’m saying to myself, so loud in my head but not out loud. Please be gone please be gone please be gone. . . .

And I close my eyes.

Then snap them open.

 

 

Chapter 8


Have you ever been in a car accident? Do you know that feeling, that feeling of time slowing down even though time has not slowed down but you could just swear it had, it had to, because every moment seemed like a minute?

That is the time it takes for me to close my eyes and open them again.

A century.

Decades. Whole lifetimes come and go in the time it takes me to shut my eyes and then open them again.

And when I open my eyes again it is . . .

gone.

No feeling. No presence. No malevolence. No form.

As if it had never been.

As if maybe I were dreaming.

And isn’t that, honestly, the most possible thing?

I glance down at my watch. 3:23 a.m.

Let’s just think about Occam’s razor for a second here. Is it more likely that a noncorporeal malevolent spirit fixated on me from inside the house? Or that in my current wretched state I thought I felt something there that clearly wasn’t?

Occam’s razor says the latter.

What happened was something from my imagination.

A daydream.

A thing that could never actually exist.

This is what you would tell yourself if you had a job that you couldn’t leave and had to be here, in this place, by yourself, for the rest of the summer.

This is what you would have to tell yourself.

And if you were reeeeeeeally good at fooling yourself . . . say, if you were the kind of person who could spend her life not thinking about certain things . . . it would work.

So, this is when you would sigh, put that moment in a box, shut it tight, tell yourself none of it really happened, turn, and walk back inside.

Quickly, up the stairs, to your attic bedroom, under the sheets—and back to sleep without a care in the world.

And it would almost work.

 

 

Chapter 9


This morning I have an important meeting. I have to come across as entirely professional. No fidgeting. No awkward silences. I am a professional girl in full control of her faculties who is here to organize things. A pragmatic girl. A logical girl.

After all, this is what I’m here for. This is the job. Or part of it anyway. The note in the kitchen explains the timeline of construction, the first set of meetings, and a basic outline of the project. It occurs to me that they’ve really entrusted me with quite a lot. They have confidence in me! (I’m not sure why.)

Nevertheless, I am here to organize the entire thing.

The grand renovation.

Yes, the kindly professor and his wife had in mind that whoever would stay here, in this exquisite place, would also oversee the extensive renovation of said place. This is what they are paying the big bucks for.

Oh, you thought they just wanted me to exist here in this clearly not haunted place? No, no. I am here to work. Or to oversee the work. Which is also work.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I am awkward with guys. Not any guys. Not older guys, like the professor. And not guys my age or younger than me. They are fine. No problem there. No. I am awkward with guys who fall between the ages of, say, twenty-five to fifty. Guys in baseball caps. Guys who watch sports. Guys who high-five each other.

It’s not that I don’t like them, exactly. Or that I feel superior to them in some way. It’s that they make me nervous. Like they are just about to snicker behind my back and tell a lewd joke about my body. Like they are secretly all part of some bro club where whenever a girl walks out of the room, they all look at each other and share a laugh of some kind at her expense. Yes, I know I sound paranoid. Or weird. And that, statistically, this would be impossible for all guys between twenty-five to fifty to be that way.

But I am not some bastion of great humanity like Mother Teresa or Desmond Tutu over here. I am just a person with my own foibles and idiosyncrasies and this happens to be one of them: a discomfort with all men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty who might watch sports.

So sue me.

The funny thing about this highly compensated job here (and this is something you would think I would have considered beforehand) is that this kind of man is the only kind of man I will be dealing with.

I should have thought of this. To not think about this was ridiculous. Or absentminded.

Or, perhaps, purposefully painful. Masochistic. As if I am punishing myself for a behavior I know, fundamentally, is wrong.

It’s impossible to really know what I was thinking.

In fact, now that I think about it, it seems odd to me that I would just randomly get off the train when I did. But somehow it was like I was simply compelled, compelled and then propelled. Like a decision made and not made. A fugue state. A sleepwalk.

A dream.

It’s like this: There are some people who really think things through. They analyze an idea, weigh it, turn it over in their hands, wiggling it back and forth like a prism, peering at every facet, every multitude of possibility. I am not one of those people.

Now, some would call me rash. I would say that I am a participant in life. I make a strange decision and act on said strange decision. Of course, it is not always the best decision.

Like now, for instance.

All of this is dawning on me as I am woken up by the sound of someone pounding on the front door, rather forcefully, before I open the door and am met with what appears to be the head bro, or the “guy in charge,” and four of his bro compatriots. All in jeans. Two in baseball caps. One in a ripped, sleeveless T-shirt. The “guy in charge” has strawberry blond hair, short, and looks like he could coach Little League. Totally Mr. Normal. Basic model. Straight off the conveyor belt.

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