Page 8 of Some Kind of Haunted

“There are two beds,” Logan points out. “They are literally called twin beds, Lex.”

I shrug. “Tough luck for you, twin brother. I was willing to let you handle this alone. You insisted I come. Which means I get the beds and the bedroom, and you get the couch.”

“I’m twice the size of the couch.”

“You can sleep anywhere. You are forever bragging about it.”

I get my suitcase from the front door, all of three steps away, and roll it into the corner of the small room. Then, despite my trepidation about what might be lurking under the bed, I sprawl myself across it.

Logan surveys me with that narrow lawyer look of his. “Watch out for mice,” he says, and saunters out of the room.

Chapter Four

I don’t move until I know Logan’s back in the living room. I can hear the couch sigh a little when he sits on it. Only then do I leap up from the bed and strip off the blankets. I don’t want to find evidence of mice, but I have to know.

Once I’m sure the bed is clear—it even smells clean, which feels like an actual miracle right now—I open my suitcase and begin to pull out everything required for my nighttime ritual.

My skincare routine, which I unpack in the bathroom I can barely squeeze into. The vanity, toilet, and bath are so crowded together, it’s a wonder anyone could use any of them. I go through the calming twelve steps my therapist and I devised for centering purposes as well as beauty routine—because a girl has layers even when she’s not right in the head—then consider myself in the dusty mirror.

“I am calm. I am peaceful. I will sleep calm and peacefully.” It’s my bedtime mantra, and it serves me well. Some people have emotional support animals. Mantras are more versatile and don’t require care and feeding. I repeat it silently in my head as I go back out to the bedroom. I replace the pillowcases on the bed with my lavender-scented ones.

I am calm. I am peaceful. I will sleep calm and peacefully.

I consider a sleeping pill, the last step in the ritual. Normally, it would be a no-brainer, but I don’t like the idea of being at all fuzzy in this strange, new place. With danger lurking in every shadow and that choking darkness outside, complete with a sinister clock tower.

Maybe it’s not real danger—maybe it’s all in my head like it always is—but I’ve never been able to convince myself of things I know are real when I’m feeling like this.

I remake the bed and climb into it, the scratchy blankets surprisingly warm with a pleasant weight. My nose is cold, but I am exhausted—

And I must fall asleep quickly, because the next thing I know I’m awake.

But not in the house.

A dream. It’s a dream.

I’m walking up a street—and it looks just like the street we drove down tonight with the narrow, watching houses and the suffocating dark—toward the clock tower.

The clock beams like a beacon and I am helpless to do anything but walk toward it. Barefoot and cold.

So cold.

I can’t tear my eyes away from the clock tower, and sure enough, with a terrible sense of inevitability and horror, the first crack appears in the smooth side of the tall column.

Followed by a quiet snick that has me flinching, even as I walk.

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I’m trying to say it out loud, but I can’t. I can only walk on toward my doom.

And I know that’s what’s waiting for me, because I have had this dream before.

This is the same dream that plagued me as a child, night after night, until my father got me professional help. Until I developed the routine.

There’s another crack, a louder noise. The tower is crumbling from the middle out, and I feel frozen solid—though still compelled to keep walking—as the first wisp of a glossy, sickening blackness slithers out into the night.

One-two-three, everything is fine. One-two-three, your imagination can’t hurt you.

My throat aches with all the screams I can’t get out.

My chest hurts from all the sobs trapped inside.