“Did you deposit the rental check?” Dad asks, drawing me out of
my melancholy mood.
“Yep.”
“Tomorrow, not tonight, as you need to get some sleep, can you
set up all the new spreadsheets for these tenants?”
I’ve already started them. Rent, utilities, incidentals . . . “Yep.”
“Have you turned on the alarm?”
“Yep. I’m home safe, Dad, and I’m okay.”
There’s silence on his end, and I allow it. He eventually clears
his throat, but his voice is gruffer than normal. “I love you, peanut.”
My heart warms. “I love you, too.”
He hangs up, and I relax back in the comfy rolling chair that is
pleather and has a high back. There’s a lot of people my age who
would be freaked out to be alone at night, but except when I was
eleven and we first moved here, the dark doesn’t scare me. In fact,
there’s a comfort in the blackness of night. A lot like a soft, heavy
blanket. A lot like my mother’s hugs.
Searching for a solution to my problems, I swivel in the chair.
I need to find someone else to work with on my English project.
Someone who has a car, someone who will be easy to meet with,
someone who will willingly work with me and someone who is
absolutely on board with what I want to research. This topic means
the world to me— literally life and death.
My cell pings and I glance down at the text. Glory: You need to
contact me. I’m seeing things in your future that concern me.
There are things that concern me about my future, too.
Out of the corner of my eye, there’s movement. A shadow.
I barely see the blur, and it darts from the living room toward the
stairs that lead to the foyer on the first floor. My heart picks up speed.
It’s past midnight. The time when this house comes alive.
Beyond shadows, I haven’t seen the children since I was a child, and
I’m hungry to see them again.
I’m up, out of my seat and I follow. A push of a few buttons, the
alarm is disarmed and I open the heavy wooden door that separates
me from the rest of house. At the top of the stairs, I strain to look
down into the darkness. A faint light pushes through the thick
stained glass over the main front door, creating shadows in the corner.
There’s silence. So loud that it almost hurts my ears.
The children frighten easily so I creep down the stairs, working
hard to distribute my weight to keep the old steps from creaking
and moaning.
What do the children see when they frolic around this old
house? Do they see their own home, in their own time, back when
they were alive? Are they lost in their happy memories? Because
that’s what I hope for death to be, lost in a dream of joy.
I lean my back against the wall, close my eyes and listen. At
this time of night, at exactly this time, I hear their light footsteps
tapping against the hardwood. Some nights, I’m lucky and can hear
their giggles, and on rare nights, back when I was younger, I was
offered the rare jewel of catching sight of more than just the hem of a dress.
I breathe in. I breathe out. The energy of the house surrounds me, and a child’s high- pitched scream pierces the night.