Chapter 13:
SPENCER'S POV
The silence in the living room was thick and heavy, charged with everything I couldn't say. Megan sat beside me, her warmth a stark contrast to the cold dread seeping into my bones. I could feel Wednesday's presence like a static charge in the air, a gathering storm from the kitchen. I needed a moment, a pretext to get Megan out of the room so I could somehow reason with my spectral negotiator and protector.
"Meg, please," I said, my voice sounding strained. "Can I get a glass of water?"
"Of course," she replied, smiling softly. "Wine too strong for you right now?" She patted my knee and stood, heading back toward the kitchen.
The moment the swinging kitchen door closed behind her, the air in front of me wavered. Wednesday materialized on the couch opposite, tucking her legs beneath her as if she owned the place. A small, supremely smug smile played on her lips.
My patience, already worn to a frayed thread, snapped. "I told you to stay in the car," I whispered, the words a low, furious hiss.
"But it was boring in the car," she pouted, her lower lip jutting out in a theatrical display of hurt. Her eyes, however, sparkled with mischievous delight. "There's nothing to look at, no one to talk to. It's like being in a very expensive, very stationary coffin."
The anger bubbled up inside me, hot and urgent. "I. Told. You. To. Stay. In. The. Car!" I mumbled, grinding my teeth together so hard I felt a jolt of pain in my jaw. The frustration was a physical thing, a cage around me.
"Spencer? Who are you talking to?" Megan's voice came from the kitchen doorway.
I flinched, my head snapping up. She was standing there, holding a bottle of water, her head tilted in confusion.
"No one!" I said, the reply too quick, too sharp. I forced a laugh that came out as a strangled cough. "Just me, myself, and I. Thinking out loud. You know, about... everything. Bad habit." I stretched my lips into what I hoped was a convincing, carefree smile.
She didn't look entirely convinced, but she handed me the water. "Here you go."
"Thanks."I said as she sat back down, I saw Wednesday rise from the opposite couch with unnatural grace. She drifted over to stand directly behind Megan, a phantom sentinel. My heart hammered against my ribs. She looked at me over Megan's shoulder, her expression one of pure, impish challenge. She slowly raised her pale hands, wiggling her fingers mere inches from Megan's temples.
"Don't you dare," I mouthed, the words a silent, desperate snarl. My eyes widened, pleading and threatening all at once.
Wednesday's smirk widened into a full-blown grin. My warning hadn't deterred her; it had given her a brilliant, terrible new idea and slowly, she vanished into thin air. A moment later, a cacophony erupted from the kitchen—a loud, metallic clatter as if a drawer full of utensils had been upended, followed by the distinctive, heart-dropping shatter of glass.
Megan flinched violently, nearly spilling her wine. "What was that?" she asked, standing up, her body tense with alarm.
"Don't worry, I'll go check it out," I said, already on my feet and striding toward the kitchen before she could volunteer. I needed to contain this, now.
I pushed through the swinging door and the scene that greeted me was one of calculated chaotic thought. Every drawer was pulled open. Forks, spoons, whisks, and spatulas were scattered across the tile floor as if a poltergeist had thrown a tantrum. Which, I supposed, wasn't far from the truth. In the center of the maelstrom stood Wednesday, humming a tuneless, vaguely sinister melody while she dragged her butcher's knife tied to a chain back and forth against a sharpening steel. The sound was a harsh, grating shhh-click....,
shhh-click.....
that felt like it was scraping directly against my nerves.
"What are you doing?" I whispered, my voice tight with a mixture of panic and rage.
She looked up, her eyes wide with a feigned innocence that was utterly belied by her actions. "Oh, Spencer! I'm searching for... ummm... this!" She held up the wicked-looking knife, the overhead light glinting off its newly honed edge. "And anyway," she continued, resuming her sharpening with renewed vigor, Shhh-CLICK. Shhh-CLICK. "You said I should not 'dare.' So, I am not 'daring.' I'm just... sharpening. A girl has to keep her tools in order."
I peeked out the kitchen door; Megan was pacing the living room, her arms wrapped around herself. "Why?" I whispered, turning back to the ghost, my voice pleading now. "Why do you ghosts love haunting people and driving them crazy?"
She smiled, a cold, knowing expression. "The same way that you guys, the rich people, oppress the poor." She raised a brow at me, the picture of philosophical condescension. "I'm a ghost. Haunting is a hobby. It's fun for us, and it's part of us. It's something we can't do without, the same way you can't stay without money. It's our nature."
My frustration was a physical pressure in my chest, a boiler about to burst. "When is this going to stop?" I whispered, the question sounding as desperate as I felt.
Shhh-CLICK!
This time, the sound was louder, more piercing, a screech that seemed to tear at the very air in the room.
"Babe? Who are you talking to?" Megan's voice came from right behind me.
I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, her gaze sweeping over the catastrophic mess of her utensils. Wednesday had frozen mid-sharpen, the knife and steel hovering in the air, both of her eyes staring at us.
"Oh, hey, babe," I stammered, my mind frantically scrambling for an anchor. "It's no one. Just... talking to myself. You know, about this mess. Trying to figure out how a... a rat could do all this." I forced a laugh that sounded more like a choke.
Megan's eyes widened in fresh horror. "A rat?" She bent down and began frantically picking up the scattered spoons and whisks, her movements hurried and distressed. "Oh my god, in my kitchen? That's disgusting!"
"My bad," I said, crouching to help her. "That was me trying to catch the crooked rat. It must've been what was doing the bang-bang stuff. Don't worry, I'll pick everything up myself." My words tumbled out in a rushed, unconvincing stream.
"You called me a rat," Wednesday said, her voice suddenly laced with a cold, quiet fury that only I could hear. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
"No, I didn't," I grunted through gritted teeth, my back to Megan as I picked up a ladle.
Megan looked up at me. "What?"
"Nothing!" I said, my pretend smile feeling like it was cracking my face. "Just... grunting as I bend down. Still sore from... everything."
Wednesday scoffed, a sound of pure indignation. The sound of the sharpening stopped, but then she did something worse. She floated the butcher's knife and the sharpening wicked knife into the air and scraped them together violently.
SCREEEEEECH!
The noise was a physical assault, a nail dragged across the universe's chalkboard. It was impossibly loud, echoing off the tiled walls and stainless-steel appliances. Megan cried out, a short, sharp sound of pure pain as she clamped her hands over her ears and stumbled to her feet.
"What was that?!" she yelled, her voice trembling with fear and confusion. Her eyes darted around the kitchen, wide and uncomprehending, on the verge of seeing the floating knives that were the source of her torment.
"Hey, babe!" I said, my voice too loud, too bright. I stepped between her and the source of the sound, placing my hands on her shoulders, trying to physically block the horror of the floating knives from her view. "I think it must have been a cat scratching off a glass or a window next door! The sound carries weirdly in these buildings, I've heard it before." I guided her firmly, but gently, out of the kitchen. "Come on, leave all these things. I will help you clear them later. Go take a shower." I leaned in, injecting a note of pleading into my voice. "I'm stressed up from the day and will need to... clear my head on your cleavages." I winked, biting my lower lip in what I hoped was a convincing, flirtatious display.
It worked. The sheer absurdity and familiarity of the advance cut through her fear. The terror in her eyes was momentarily replaced by a flicker of amusement and affection. "Okay," she said, a small, genuine grin returning to her face. She pecked my cheek, her touch a brief salvation. "Don't be too long." Then she turned and headed down the hall toward her bedroom and bathroom.
The moment the bedroom door clicked shut down the hall, I whirled around. Wednesday was now leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, a picture of indignation.
"He called me a rat," she said to no one in particular, and then let out a low, chilling laugh that held no warmth. "No, I didn't," I said specifically, my patience worn to a single, frayed thread.
We stood in a tense, suffocating silence, listening to the distant, comforting sound of Megan's shower running. The water drummed a rhythm of normalcy, a promise of a world that still made sense. I began to hope, foolishly, that the worst was over. That Wednesday had gotten her petty revenge for the unintended insult and would now fade back into the background, her itchy haunting needs now satisfied.
That fragile hope was annihilated by a blood-curdling scream from the bedroom.
It was a sound of pure, unadulterated terror, followed by the frantic, slapping sound of bare feet on hardwood. The bedroom door flew open, and Megan ran into the kitchen, her skin glistening and wet, her body completely naked and trembling from head to toe. Panic was etched into every line of her beautiful face, her eyes wide with a horror I had only seen in my own reflection hours before.
"What's wrong?" I asked, my own fear spiking, a cold dread washing over me.
"My room!" she gasped, her chest heaving as she struggled to draw breath. "It's a war zone! Ammo tanks—big ones! Military jets and helicopters firing fiercely at me!" She was sobbing now, tears of pain and terror mixing with the shower water on her cheeks. "I think I got my ass struck by a piece of my lamp's glass!" She turned, and my stomach lurched. A shard of the beautiful crystal lamp from her bedside table was embedded in the soft flesh of her buttock, a small, cruel wound from a phantom war. A thin trail of blood trickled down her thigh. "It hurts so badly!" she cried.
"Calm down," I said, my voice low and steady, though my mind was screaming. I looked over her shoulder at Wednesday, who was observing the scene with the detached, curious interest of a scientist studying a lab rat. A small, unsatisfied smile played on her lips.
"He called me a rat", her voice whispered, a toxic little seed planted directly in my mind.
Suddenly, Megan's eyes fixed on a point past my shoulder, widening in fresh, abject horror. "OH MY GOD, THERE IS AN AMMO TANK! IT'S APPROACHING ME!" she screamed, blind to the fact she was staring at her own pristine refrigerator. In her panicked flight from the non-existent threat, she turned around hard, smashing the front of her head,her temple against the solid wooden doorframe with a sickening, hollow thud.
Her eyes rolled back into her head, the terror in them extinguished in an instant. Her body went limp, a marionette with its strings cut, and she slumped to the cold kitchen tiles, completely unconscious.
"Damn it, Megan!" I yelped, dropping to my knees beside her, my hands shaking as I reached for her.
A soft, mocking satisfying laugh echoed in the sudden, terrible silence of the kitchen.
"Now who's the rat now?" Wednesday muttered.
The words hung in the air, a final, cruel punctuation to the chaos. And as I cradled Megan's head, feeling the terrifying stillness of her body and the warm stickiness of the blood from her new wound, I knew the line had been crossed,I looked at Wednesday who seems to care less, undisturbed by Megan's state.
This girl is going to get me killed....sooner or later.....
To be continued....