Cemetery Tours (9 page)

“I do.
  But I’m busy and you’ve been sick so I figured it was best for everyone involved to just have a low-key kind of night.”

“We have low-key kind of nights every night.
  And weren’t you complaining just the other night about your lack of social life?” 

“I wasn’t complaining, I was commenting.”
  That was bull.  She’d totally been complaining.  But at the time, it seemed justified.  Most of her friends were either engaged or married and the ones who weren’t worked more than she did.  Yeah, she’d had fun at the party last week, but the one guy she’d really looked forward to getting to know had since decided to ignore her.  Well, until today anyway.  

“Right,” Gavin remarked and sat down next to her on the couch.
  “Wait, the TV’s not on?  Are you feeling okay?” he asked and pressed a cold hand against her forehead.  She swatted him away.

“Stop.”
   

“Is something bothering you, Kate?”

“Yeah, you.”

“I’m serious.
  What’s on your mind?”  

Kate hesitated.
  She desperately wanted to talk to someone about her encounter with Elise and what she’d learned about the building’s strange history.  However, knowing how Gavin would react, she may have been better off keeping her thoughts and wonderings to herself.

“It’s nothing really,” she began, choosing her words slowly and carefully.
  “I was just talking to our downstairs neighbor earlier this afternoon.  It turns out that she and a lot of other people who’ve lived here... think that this building is cursed.”  Gavin stared at her for what seemed like a full minute. 
Knew I shouldn’t have told him
.  

“Cursed how?” he finally asked.
  She wished he could ask the question without sounding like he was humoring her. 

“Well, for Elise, it’s mostly been technical stuff and strange noises.
  But a lot of other people have had problems with things going missing, temperature fluctuations, one lady even said that they couldn’t have friends over because every time she had a guest, they’d end up getting sick.  But she never got sick.”

“Kate, you’re not seriously trying to tell me you believe in curses now.”

“Everyone else who’s lived here certainly seems to,” Kate told him.  

“So what, because a few people had problems with their lights, you actually believe there’s a curse on this building?”
 

“I don’t know what to think, Gavin!” Kate snapped, surprised by how irritated she suddenly felt.
  “All I know is that strange things have been happening for months now and I for one would love to know why!  Maybe you don’t care why you’re sick all the time, but I do, and right now, I will take any explanation that I can get!”  Kate closed her eyes and pressed the heel of her palm against her forehead.  

“Kate, I’m sorry.
  Is your head okay?”

“My head is fine.
  I’m just frustrated,” she muttered.  “I want to know why you can’t get better.  I mean, even having a theory would be better than no clue at all.”

“Yeah, but a theory that can’t possibly be proven is just as useless as no clue at all.
  Come on, Kate, you’re smart... ish.  Smart enough to at least know that there is no such thing as curses.”  Kate knew he was trying to lighten things up, but she wasn’t in the mood to joke around.  Instead, she ignored him and resumed her Internet browsing.  Gavin, realizing she wasn’t going to meet him halfway, sighed and said, “I’m going to heat up that leftover Chinese for dinner.  You want any?”  

“No,” Kate replied.
 

“Right, I forgot.
  You don’t eat leftovers.”  Kate glared at him as he stood and made his way into the kitchen.  

An hour later, she was about ready to give up the search.
  She really wasn’t finding anything that she hadn’t already read.  In fact, she was beginning to read the same articles over and over again.  It was interesting, but unfortunately, she hadn’t found any sort of answers or closure.  If anything, she felt more confused.  

As she was about to exit out of the server, however, one of the page’s recommended articles caught her eye.
       

Riverview Spook:
 
Local Woman Reports Encounter With Full Bodied Apparition Residing Inside “Cursed” Apartment.  

She could feel her curiosity spiking as she clicked on the link.
  It opened to reveal a short article a lot like the ones she’d read earlier.         

Mrs. Marjorie Hampton of Dallas didn’t believe in the supernatural before she moved to the Riverview Apartment Complex, located in
North Dallas.  However, a meeting with a ghostly entity quickly changed her mind.

“I was in the kitchen, making dinner for my two boys, when suddenly, I heard a noise, like someone banging on the wall, coming from my bedroom.
  At first, I thought it was the boys, but then I noticed that they were both in the living room, glued to the television.  I heard the noise again, so I grabbed a steak knife from the kitchen and went to investigate.  I flipped on the light in the bedroom and that’s when I saw her.  She was standing in the middle of the room, staring straight at me.  She opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but then she just vanished.”

Mrs.
Hampton moved her family out of the apartment later that week, though she continued to pay rent up until her lease expired.  

“I didn’t want bad credit,” she says.
 

Building 17 of the Riverview Apartment complex is notorious for the “curse” which residents claim is the cause of a variety of technical problems and unexplained illnesses associated with the building.
  However, the current tenants of Mrs. Hampton’s old apartment have reported no such difficulties.    

Kate’s mind was reeling.
  “I knew it,” she spoke mostly to herself.  

“Knew what?” Gavin asked, sounding remarkably disinterested.

“This!  This article!  Look.  This lady said she saw an apparition here in this building.”  Kate leapt up off the couch and carried her laptop over to the kitchen table, where Gavin sat with his own computer.  

“A what?”

“You were right.  It’s not a curse.  It’s a haunting!  I
told
you!”

“Kate, are you
serious
?” Gavin groaned.  “I thought we talked about this.”       

“But it makes sense!
  On
Cemetery Tours
, they always talk about - ”

“Please, do
not
start quoting that crap to me.  If you want to convince me of anything, those clowns are the last people you should be referencing.”

“But they talk about how ghosts use energy in order to manifest and to make noises and stuff.
  That would explain everything!  It would even explain why you’ve been sick for so long.”

“You think a ghost is making me sick?” Gavin deadpanned.
 

“Well, the doctors can’t seem to come up with anything else.”
 

“Kate.
  This is the last time I am going to have this conversation with you.  There are no ghosts.  There are no curses.”

“You don’t know that!”

“
Everyone
knows that!”

“Why are you getting so defensive?” Kate demanded.
  “You never used to get this upset before.  And I came to you with some pretty ridiculous stuff.”

“Because the last time you were this fixated on something, you were nine years old!
  You’re an adult now, Kate.”  

“I know that.”

“Well you sure as hell don’t act like it.”  For a split second, Kate wanted to hit him, but she knew that wouldn’t do either of them any good.  Gavin must have seen how angry he’d made her because he sighed and held his hands up in mock defense.  “Okay, you want to settle this?”  He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out in a loud voice, “If there are any ghosts in this apartment, we are asking you to show yourself.  Give us some sort of sign.  Rattle the windows.  Open the cupboards.  Anything will do.”  They stood in silence for a few seconds.  Kate strained her ears for a creak, a footstep, anything.  But there was nothing.  Gavin rested his hands on his hips.  “Well, look at that.  Guess there’s no one here after all.”  

Unable to stomach the condescending smirk on her brother’s face, Kate closed her laptop and retreated into the bathroom for a long, hot shower.
  Maybe if she was lucky, Gavin would get abducted by aliens before she finished drying her hair.

The next week was the Fourth of July.  It fell on a Thursday, so Michael decided to take
Wednesday
and
Friday
off as well so he could spend the Fourth with his family.  Every year, his mother and all his aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered at his grandmother’s lake house up at Lake Texoma.  His grandmother had passed away nearly ten years earlier, but per her request, they’d kept the lake house in the family.  She’d told Michael about a year or so after her death it was because she couldn’t stand the thought of someone else living there.  

Wednesday
morning, he woke up early, packed a small suitcase that would last him two nights, and then, after locking his apartment, made his way down the stairs.  He tried not to look at Kate’s door as he passed, but he still saw it out of the corner of his eye.  He hadn’t seen nor heard from her since he’d tried to ask her to dinner the week before.  Brink had offered to spy on her again, but Michael had told him not to.  Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that it hadn’t happened.  

As he loaded his bag into the back seat of his car, he heard a door slam from up above.
  He glanced around and was stunned to see Kate, capering down the stairs, wearing a yellow swimsuit coverup and carrying a towel, a bottle of water, and a book.  She had her hair tied up in a ponytail that bounced against the back of her neck as she descended.

Before Michael had the chance to duck inside his car, she looked up and stopped dead in her tracks.
 

“Hey,” Michael offered tentatively.
 

“Hey,” she echoed and tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear.
  “How are you?”

“Not bad.”

“Are things at the library still hectic?” she grinned.  Michael smiled too.  He was glad to have her teasing him again.  

“Yeah, sort of,” he replied.
  “How about you?  How’s your job?”

“As of right now, I don’t really have one.
  The lady who had hired us for the next week decided
on Monday
that we were incompetent and we didn’t have enough respect for her vision, so she let us go.”

“She sounds like fun.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Kate told him.  “I guess it all worked out for the best.  If she’d kept us, I would have had to work today and
Friday
.  Now, I get the whole week off.”  

“Do you have any plans for the Fourth?”

“Just watching fireworks.  We’ll probably have hamburgers or something beforehand.”

“Sounds good.”

“How about you?”

“My family has a lake house up on
Lake Texoma, so I’m going to spend today and tomorrow there.  But I’ll be home
on Friday
morning.”  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized it sounded like he was assuring her that he’d be home soon, as though she were concerned that he wouldn’t be.  Why did he always have to sound like such an idiot?  Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice, or if she had, she politely overlooked it.