The fifth door is another bedroom, leaving only one to go. The main one. Aunt Laura’s room.
All the adrenaline I had after my scare vanishes as I approach it. I know it’s in my head, but every step feels like I’m running in a dream. Moving, but making no progress while the hallway extends into miles.
I reach the door after what feels like hours. My gaze travels down to the crack at the bottom and the absence of light.
Had I imagined it? Had it been a trick of my headlights reflecting...?
No. I saw the glow from the highway. I didn’t imagine that.
I swallow and the sound is like a bomb going off between my ears.
Lord,I pray silently,please let it only just be a putrid smell and not Aunt Laura’s ghost...
My eyes snap open as a new fear is unlocked.
Forget axe murderers. What if Aunt Laura is still haunting her old bedroom, waiting for an idiot to stumble in so she can possess them and...?
“Okay, calm down,” I tell myself with zero conviction. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
But I feel if anyone would demand a second chance at life, it would be Aunt Laura.
Biting back a whimper, I reach for the knob, ignore the icy bite of it in my palm and twist.
No smell.
It’s the first thankful thought that passes through my fuzzy brain, followed by a deep and alarming scream when boney, pale fingers tap against the window directly across from me.
My hand flies to the light switch and I smack it on. Light floods the space, chases away the pool of darkness. I am surrounded by a neatly kept room with dark, mahogany furniture, a bed I would have killed for as a child and a wardrobe that definitely leads toNarnia. But I’m sprinting for the window and the escalation of the storm now howling with vengeance and slamming into the side of the house.
A branch sways and smacks into the glass. It shivers and twitches, clawing at the sill as if begging to be let in.
“Holy,” I exhale, gripping my chest and glowering at the offending culprit.
With no ghostly apparition to distract me, I confront the room and stare at the bed with its ornate posts, enormous headboard carved with winding vines and chunky foliage and wide canopy overhead. Sheer drapes the deep purple of ripe grapes are swept and pinned to the posts in dramatic arches.
Across the ocean of mattress, the sheets are crisp. Clean. The covers are a thick velvet pulled back just enough to invite a person to sink into the mountain of pillows.
If this is where Aunt Laura died and rotted, someone definitely changed out the sheets. Possibly the whole mattress. And I doubt it was a homeless person.
Unless Mom got her information wrong and she didn’t die in the house. It’s the only explanation because I’ve been nearly everywhere and there isn’t a single odor.
Feeling less crazy, I return to the hall to find my pen. With it and my pad back in my hands, I go through each room anddocument the items. On my way to the stairs, I add a secondary note under the bed in Aunt Laura’s room — claimed, because that baby is mine now. I will fight whoever I have to for it, and seeing as I’m the only person here, I think I earned it.
I’m making notes of the torn clippings pinned behind sheets of glass along the narrow hallway on the main floor when I notice the clock. I stare a long moment, brain fumbling, trying to fathom how I missed it when it’s directly across from the front door.
It’s beautiful. Tall with ornate craftsmanship across the top and fine, swirling patterns in the glass. It’s a delicately crafted piece of rich, polished oak and gleaming gold hands that extend over the six.
But it’s the face that has me drifting closer.
The open window peeks through into the cogs and wires. The steady flick and tick of shiny pieces that almost look out of sync. Like nothing is moving the way it should. Or maybe it is. I’m not a clock expert.
Below, behind a sheet of pristine glass, two pendulums swing in crisp uniformity. Their methodical precision is almost hypnotic, luring me to simply stand in the hallway and watch time pass.
But I blink and turn my focus to the pad. I jot the existence of the clock down and write my name next to it. Then scribble it out.
Mom would kill me if this thing goes off when she’s sleeping and wakes her up. As a night nurse at the hospital, she doesn’t take it well when she’s woken up for no reason.
I, on the other hand, have no such issue. As a Data Entry Specialist for an e-commerce company, I get to sit at home in my pajamas all day and manage product catalogs and track inventory from my parent’s basement. Not exactly glamorous, but I enjoy it.
