The Haunted (16 page)

But that list of possibilities was getting shorter by the second.

Because the steam in the bathroom wasn’t dissipating the way it should, wasn’t going away. Instead, it was getting thicker and …
moving
. A long, slender section that resembled an arm moved toward her. She backed against the counter and saw the steam behind the arm thicken and coalesce into something that looked almost like a man’s body.

Almost.

For there was something off about the form, a subtle mistake in proportion that resulted in a too-small head on a too-big body and an arm that resembled an anaconda. She remembered the
tentacle
that had slipped under Zoe’s sheet. This reminded her of that, though the steam figure was smaller and more humanoid than that thing in the night had been.

The arm reached for her, its misty white fingers undulating and wavy, like strands of seaweed in a strong current.

Megan dashed to her left and yanked open the door, although she was wrapped in only a towel, ready to scream for her parents, ready even to accept the humiliation if James came up and saw her. But the instant the door opened, all of the steam in the bathroom shot out into the hall, pushing past her with a whoosh she could both hear and feel, as though a giant fan had turned on and propelled all of the air out of the room. The steam disappeared, evaporating in the dry atmosphere of the hallway. She turned in a circle, searching for the figure she had seen, but it was gone, and when she poked her head into the bathroom, she saw that the mirror was clear, no face.

Feeling braver, no longer needing to call for her parents, she walked back into the bathroom (though she
kept the door open, just in case) and breathed on the mirror. She expected the condensation of her breath to reveal the outline of the face once again, but there were no lines on the glass at all. It was as if none of it had ever happened.

Still, she felt uneasy, and she grabbed her hairbrush and clothes and went into her bedroom, where she closed the door, quickly got dressed, then opened the door again, combing her hair as she hurried downstairs.

She wasn’t sure what she should tell her parents, or whether she should tell them anything, but that problem was solved for her when she found that her mom had already left for work, James was in the garage playing in his stupid clubhouse, and her dad was on the phone, deep in conversation with some computer guy. Megan went into the living room to watch TV, and by the time her dad got off the phone and announced that he was going upstairs to work in his office, the entire experience in the bathroom seemed much less threatening and barely worth mentioning. She had a hard time believing it had happened herself.

But when ten o’clock rolled around and she decided to text Zoe and Kate about their plans for the day, the nervousness returned. Her parents had given her cell phone back a few days ago, but Megan was warier of using it than she had been before and now did so only when other people were around. With her mom at work, she went back upstairs where her dad was. She’d do the actual texting in her room, but he’d be in his office, close enough to save her if she needed help.

She didn’t need help this time, but her muscles were tense when she first turned on the phone and waited to see whether there were any mysterious messages waiting for her. Luckily, there weren’t, and she let out an honest-to-God sigh of relief as she typed out her texts.

As it turned out, neither Zoe nor Kate had any plans, so the three of them decided to go to a movie. Megan suggested they invite Julie to come along as well, but Julie answered neither text nor phone message, so the three of them opted to go it alone. Zoe texted that her mom could drive them, so Megan went across the hall to ask her dad whether it would be okay for her to go. “Zoe’s mom’s driving,” she added quickly.

“When are you going?”

“Now.”

“What about lunch?”

“We’ll have Taco Bell.”

“You have enough money?”

“Of course!”

He smiled at her. “It’s okay with me. But check with your mom before you go. And make sure you’re back before dinner.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Megan called her mom, who of course said it was okay, and she met Zoe’s van out in front of the house some fifteen minutes later. Zoe’s sister, Kristi, was with them, which was kind of annoying, but she remained up front with her mom, and Zoe, Kate and Megan sat in the back and ignored her.

Since the movie didn’t start until two, they had plenty of time to kill, and after they’d eaten lunch and stretched it out with endless soda refills, Zoe’s mom drove them to The Store, where she and Kristi looked for shoes, leaving Megan, Kate and Zoe to wander the aisles. They ended up in the electronics department, browsing through the DVDs and covertly checking out the hot high school guy who worked behind the counter.

“I think he’s looking at us,” Zoe whispered as she picked up an
Avatar
DVD and pretended to read the back cover.

Megan peeked over her shoulder, but he was bending over to take a camera out of the display case for an elderly man to examine. She kept watching, though, and, sure enough, the second after he handed over the camera, he glanced in their direction. She quickly looked away, giggling. “He is!” she whispered.

Kate said nothing, but moved away from the two of them as if they weren’t together. She ended up in the children’s section, looking at little-kid movies, and both Megan and Zoe laughed at her.

Moments later, the old man gone, the clerk walked over. “Can I help you young ladies?”

Mortified, Megan said nothing, but stared unseeingly at the row of DVDs in front of her. She could feel the heat as her face turned red. But Zoe calmly said, “Do you have this in Blu-ray?”

“No. Only the more recent titles or the more popular older titles are in Blu-ray.”

Megan had no idea which movie Zoe was asking about, and she was not brave enough to look, but she was both amazed by and envious of her friend’s composure. Maybe Zoe
would
have talked to Brad if she’d been the one to see him in the restaurant. Megan suddenly felt awkward and backward and far more immature than her friend.

The clerk walked away to help another customer who was standing in front of a locked case holding smart phones, and the two of them motioned to Kate and left the electronics department, walking slowly and casually until they were in sporting goods, hidden behind a tall rack of shelves. Zoe’s eyes were wide. She held a hand dramatically over her heart. “Oh. My. God!”

“I don’t believe it!” Megan said. They were talking low, not wanting anyone else to overhear.

“He was interested, right? He was into us?”

“I was too scared to look!”

“He wasn’t,” Kate said matter-of-factly. “He was just doing his job.”

Zoe ignored her. “I think he thought we were older. Do I look older? Do you think I could pass for sixteen?”

Megan didn’t have a chance to answer, because Zoe’s mom and Kristi suddenly appeared at the end of the aisle. The three of them immediately cut off their conversation.

“We’d better go,” Zoe’s mom said. “I need to make a quick stop at the library first. Then we’ll stop by Circle K and get some candy for you guys to smuggle in. Those prices they charge at the theater are outrageous.”

They were still early for the movie, but the theater showed some cool commercials for new movies and TV shows, so they had something entertaining to watch.

The movie itself was a horror flick, a PG-13 remake of a German art-house hit she’d read about but hadn’t seen. She was the one who’d picked it—Zoe and Kate had wanted to see a romantic comedy that looked bad even in the trailers—and as she watched the film, she realized that it was the type of movie her dad would like, the kind the two of them might watch together on HBO. They were the ones in the family who liked scary things, and when there was a clever visual reference to
Frankenstein
that only she seemed to get, Megan knew she had to tell him about this.

Zoe’s mom had taken Kristi to see a Pixar movie on the next screen over, and that film had ended earlier, so the two of them were sitting on a bench, waiting, when she, Kate and Zoe came out into the lobby.

Megan arrived home after four, Zoe’s mom dropping her off first, before taking Kate to her house. A monsoon had come up while they were in the theater, and thunder pealed loudly as she got out of the van. They’d
missed the rain, although wet streets and a gushing gutter told her that it had really come down, but dark clouds still blocked the sun, and the occasional thunderclaps testified to the intensity of the afternoon storm.

Megan said good-bye to her friends, thanked Zoe’s mom for the ride, ignored Zoe’s sister, then turned toward her house. It looked creepy, she thought as she walked up the driveway toward it, and wondered if maybe they
should
have seen the romantic comedy. She walked slowly up the driveway. The gray clouds and dim light lent the house a gloominess she’d never seen before, and a chill passed through her as she noticed that none of the lights were on. There was a perfectly logical explanation for that—James liked to watch TV in the dark, and her dad’s office faced the rear of the house and was not visible from here—but she could not help thinking that the house was empty, that everyone was gone.

Dead
.

She refused to even go there.

Still, she stood for a moment on the front stoop, listening for sounds. If the house was empty, she was not walking in. Luckily, she heard her dad’s music from upstairs—he liked to crank it up when her mom was out—and, relieved, she went inside. As she’d suspected, James was lying on the couch in the darkened living room, watching cartoons, an open package of Doritos on his chest.

“Is Dad upstairs?” she asked, though she already knew the answer.

“In his office.”

Megan bounded up the steps two at a time, eager to tell him about the movie.

But her father was
not
in his office. The room was empty, and, frowning, she moved past the doorway, walking all the way in, checking to see whether he was in
one of the corners or crouched down behind the desk. In the back of her mind, though she didn’t want to admit it, was the fear that he had collapsed, had a stroke or heart attack or something and was lying on the floor, dead.

There was a strange clicking sound coming from his computer, and she walked around the side of his desk, grateful to see that he was not on the floor. He was probably in the bathroom, she thought reassuringly as she glanced at the monitor.

Hi, Megan!

The words were in the middle of the screen, and she might have thought her dad had typed them if they hadn’t started dancing as she watched: growing, changing colors, bouncing up and down.

The words disappeared.

I saw U
.

She froze, the rhythm of her heart accelerating as the new text emerged, bright red against a light blue background. In her mind, she saw the face in the mirror, the figure in the steam. She thought of the message on her phone:
I C U Megan
.

“Hi.”

She jumped at the sound of her father’s voice, letting out a sharp, startled yelp.

“Whoa.” He was coming through the doorway, but he backed up comically in the face of her reaction. “I guess you saw that horror movie, huh?”

“Actually, we did,” she admitted. “But …”
That’s not what scared me
, she was about to say. And then she looked at the computer screen and saw only a series of free-floating icons that her dad was obviously using for his current job.

“But what?”

She shook her head. “I thought I saw something weird on your computer.”

He grinned. “There’s always something weird on my computer.”

“That’s not what I meant …” she began. She thought about telling him what she’d seen on his screen, thought about describing her experience this morning in the bathroom, but trying to make him believe she’d encountered something spooky right after she’d returned from seeing a horror movie was near impossible, and it was probably better if she brought it up some other time. She’d get only one shot with a story as out-there as this, and if she didn’t convince him the first time, she’d never be able to do it. She didn’t want to ruin her one-and-only chance.

So she smiled at him and changed the subject. “That was a good movie,” she told him. “It was creepy.”

“Did you get scared?” he teased.

“A little.”

He bumped her shoulder. “Think I can convince your mom to see it?”

“Sure,” she said, playing along. “And have her bring James.”

They both laughed.

But she still felt chilled, and even as she was joking around with her dad, she kept her eyes on his computer.

Saturday.

Robbie was late coming over, so James went up to the headquarters by himself. The place was shaping up. The skeletons he’d found had been cleaned up and arranged on a low shelf made from a wood plank balanced atop concrete cinder blocks. The shelf was to the right of the bookcase, which was now filled with unwanted magazines they’d scrounged from their respective houses. Robbie’s dad had given them an old typewriter, which they’d placed on top of the bookcase next to a stack of plain white paper and a toy magnifying glass Robbie had taken from his brother’s room. The exercise bike was next to the window, and the traffic cone sat in front of the secret compartment, marking it and blocking it. Today, Robbie was bringing over his chemistry set, which would help make the headquarters look like a real crime lab.

If he ever got here.

James glanced around. They needed a clock, he decided, so they could tell what time it was.

He sat on the floor for a few minutes, thumbed through an old issue of
People
magazine, read a movie review, found a few pictures of starlets on the beach in bikinis, then stood up, restless. Standing near the
window, he listened for the sound of Robbie’s car, heard nothing, then opened the trapdoor and climbed the ladder downstairs.

He walked into the backyard. His parents had gone to The Store, leaving him in Megan’s hands. Not an ideal situation, although if the two of them stayed out of each other’s way until their mom and dad returned, there shouldn’t be a problem.