I don’t admit to myself that hearing and seeing a cat talk would probably be just as likely to keep me from sleep.
Ghosts notwithstanding.
Sylvie is grinning up at me, that sunshine smile warm despite the frigid air all around.
“Come on then, you two idiots.It’s the salt line that’s the problem, by the way,” the cat says, as if any of that makes any sense at all.
“Shit,” Sylvie says.“We must have messed it up when we came inside.”
I suppose it makes sense to her.
“Hold hands,” the cat instructs, and Sylvie and I obey, as if we’ve been taking orders from talking animals our whole lives.“And Aiden,” the cat fixes me with its green, otherworldly eyes.“Seeing is believing, but trust nothing you’re shown.”
With that, the cat bounds down the stairs and Sylvie gives my hand a squeeze.
“If it helps, I’m new to this, too.”
I grimace, and hand in hand, we follow the cat to the second story living area—which looks nothing like I remember it.
19
Sylvie
My teeth are chattering, clacking against each other in some weird combination of cold and too much adrenaline.
I’m scared.
Tonight is different—this isn’t anything like seeing some spectral figure at the top of the stairs.
There is nothing spectral about it.
My living room and kitchen are completely different, from the moment they appear at the bottom of the stairs.Gone are my familiar couch and the ugly ceramic vase I made in high school, the prints I haphazardly hung with Velcro strips nowhere to be seen.
A buttery yellow and green floral striped wallpaper hangs from ceiling to rough wood floors.The kitchen, once modern, now boasts what appears to be a cast-iron stove, a fire crackling merrily inside.
The fire does nothing to dissipate the cold, and I press myself closer to Aiden’s warm body.
“It’s not real,” Prudence yells, growling low in her throat.She’s wriggling between the feet of the half-dozen or so people crowded in the room.The polite conversations they seem to be having sound discordant and strained, too loud in the small space.
Vertigo seizes me, motion-sickness-like, because what my eyes and ears are reporting are totally at odds with what I know to be reality.
“What the fuck,” Aiden mutters, and a sidelong glance shows him wild-eyed as he takes it all in.
“Ghosts?”I offer, feigning a tentative smile as I tug him along behind me.“We have to keep moving.We need to seal the entrance.”
The ghosts mill around, and the sound of eerie laughter echoes off the old-fashioned décor.
I don’t feel certain at all.In fact, I feel about one second away from losing my cool completely.
Everything about this screams that it’s very, very wrong.
My skin crawls as one of the ghosts walksthroughme, the feeling akin to being plunged into an ice bath.Her long dress, one that went out of style over a hundred years ago, swishes against the floor.A creaky gramophone in the corner begins playing as she glides over to a velvet chaise lounge, her grey-streaked hair pulled back in a loose bun.
The scratchy-sounding orchestral arrangement is just out of tune enough to make, unbelievably, everything even eerier.
“That’s so much worse,” I say, exasperated.“It’s almost as bad as one of those creepy-ass ballerina jewelry box things.”
“At this point, that’s really saying something,” Aiden agrees.
