Story Series | Chapter Nine

 

Chapter Nine | Now 

Audrey’s eyes flash open. All she sees is the intricate floral pattern of her living room rug. Her head is pounding and there’s a searing pain along her left side. 

She doesn’t know how long she’s been out but it’s dark. It all comes back to her in a split-second and her existence pulses with animalistically instinctive fear, as well as confusion and anger. She lifts her head painfully and looks around to see, with a jolt of the heart, her dad’s gramophone broken into multiple pieces across the floor and his favourite record, the Riley Sheppard Band vinyl she’d been listening to, shattered next to her. She must have fallen on it when she fainted. Audrey swallows hard. She doesn’t know what to do, but she knows now is not the time to get sentimental. 

As she rises weakly to her feet, wincing against the pain in her side — she definitely bruised it on the way down — the feeling from before returns, engulfing her like frigid water, and though she can’t see it, she knows that thing, that shadow, is still there in that same spot, still staring. She stares murderously back at the space a few steps ahead of her. Her aching body is still rigid with foreboding, all her senses abuzz, but she’s surprised to find her mind lucid and alert, almost intrigued. She’s briefly, distantly aware that she’s reached a sort of turning point, a milestone on this strange journey of hers — and whether it’s that she’s finally surrendered to complete insanity, or simply offloaded the apprehension that’s plagued her since she arrived, she’s not sure. But she also realizes she doesn’t care either way. 

In the dead silence, her eyes flicker again to Jonah’s gear lying on the floor. Barely thinking, still shaking but feeling more sober than she has in a long time, she bends down and picks up the Safe Range EMF. She turns on the device and slowly raises it in front of her like a wand, pointing it directly at the spot where she’s sure she saw a shadowed figure tilt its head at her right before she passed out. 

The red light illuminates immediately. Audrey stands still for a moment, waiting, listening to the pounding of her own heart, but when nothing changes, she waves the device slowly to the left. The light switches to orange, then to yellow. Keeping her eyes on the space in front of her, she points it as far to the left as she can while still seeing its light in her periphery. It turns green. 

She points it back at the spot. Red. Then she  waves it to the right. Orange… yellow… green. 

“Fuck,” she mutters. She turns off the Safe Range EMF and lets it drop to the carpet, then grabs something else from his pile of tricks: a bundle of sage. With the sensation of those invisible eyes still boring into her, she pulls a lighter out of her pocket, sets the bundle on fire and tosses it into the fireplace, where it begins to smoke. 

She glances behind her at the small antique clock on the mantelpiece. It’s nearly 6:00  in the morning. She rubs her eyes and looks back to the offending space. Then she tiptoes around it, avoiding shards of broken record, headed for the kitchen, stumbling slightly from the persistent dizziness but determined. She arrives at her bar cart and gets to work making a whiskey sour, keeping an eye on the fireplace. The sage smoke is starting to billow out of it and into the room. 

The living room light flickers as she throws ice into a glass. She dumps in the whiskey, squeezes half a lemon and the kitchen light above her flickers too. The door to the main floor bathroom slams shut, making her wince, but she doesn’t scream. She just reaches for her bitters and taps a few drops into her drink. As she stirs the concoction, the front door unlocks and opens on its own, letting in a gust of wind that sends her hair flying, but she just lifts her glass to take a sip, watching the commotion from her perch at the kitchen island. 

Apparently, whatever is in the room with her isn’t happy about the sage. 

She takes another sip and relishes the sweet release of nonchalance in the face of the paranormal — until she notices something moving on the mantelpiece. The framed photo of Jonah is tipping precariously, almost tauntingly, towards the edge. Before she can react, it falls to the floor and smashes unnaturally loudly over the remnants of the gramophone and shattered record. 

The room becomes still and silent again; the lights stop flickering and the doors close abruptly, cutting off the wind, leaving Audrey standing in the kitchen with her hair askance. 

She bites her lip, unable and unwilling to stop the tears from burning the corners of her eyes at the sight of her father’s portrait smashed across two of his most coveted belongings, both broken. 

“Fine.” Glass in hand, she stomps back over to the fireplace, where she rummages in her dad’s collection again to unearth yet another item: a large crystal phial of water, which she promptly uncorks with her mouth, spitting out the stopper, and flings in the direction of that same spot she knows is currently occupied by some aggressive force, some assemblage of energy or — she forces herself to internally acknowledge the word — a ghost. 

It takes a few beats to take effect, but after a moment of complete silence the mayhem returns with a vengeance: doors open and slam shut, letting in an even more powerful gust of wind that scatters the black sage smoke so it permeates the entire room. Audrey can even hear doors and windows going haywire upstairs, and as she winces and coughs against the whirling soot, smoke and wing, she can just make out that same ominous shadow in the middle of it all, the eye of the storm. It’s barely visible, but with a wave of nausea Audrey discerns the undeniable shape of a person, of a man. 

Feeling as though she’s moving in slow-motion, Audrey sinks to her knees and gropes blindly beside her for Jonah’s portrait, hardly aware she’s cutting her hands on shards of broken glass, and when her fingers grasp the picture she lifts it to her chest and hugs it tightly. The shadowy figure in front of her is inching closer to her. She holds the picture even tighter and, after coughing and spluttering in the smoky debris floating around her, she screams the loudest she’s ever screamed in her life over the roar of sound. 

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.”

The next few seconds seem to pass as full minutes: the very structure of the house vibrates with the echo of Audrey’s furious command and the wind doesn’t stop, but its volume lowers to a mute, causing her ears to ring loudly; all around, shards of glass, small pieces of furniture and trinkets are lifted into the air to levitate a few feet off the ground, creaking and twinkling in the extraordinary silence; and the figure, while still a pale shadow, stands still, and Audrey stares back at it with abhorrence, clutching her portrait, blood spilling from her hands down her shirt. 

And then it all stops. The doors all shut, extinguishing the wind. The items floating idly in the air drop back into their places with varying notes of impact, and Audrey shuts her eyes against the glass falling all around her. When she opens them a half-second later, the shadow has disappeared, and she’s alone again in the main room, kneeling next to the now smouldering fireplace, her heart beating so fast she wonders weakly if she’s entering cardiac arrest. 

A bar of pink sunlight falls over her face and she turns her head slowly to the window, squinting. The sun is rising. She then scans the room, blinking in fascination at the utter mess. She looks down and releases Jonah’s photo. It floats to the ground, where his cheeky face beams up at her. Her right hand is oozing blood and her clothes are splattered with it; her body is aching from her fall, and her eyes are stinging from the soot and lack of sleep. 

Finally, she looks to her left. Her whiskey sour is still sitting there. She lifts her brow, impressed, and holds it up to the light. When she detects no shards of glass, holy water or other debris, she takes a generous gulp and leans back against the side of the fireplace. 

After a few moments of serene silence wherein the sun brightens on her face and kisses her wounds, she heaves a sigh and looks back down at Jonah’s picture. 

If only he could see her now.  

***

After sitting still and staring blankly into space for about ten minutes, Audrey finally gets to her feet and places her dad’s now frameless portrait back on the mantel. Then, stepping around the debris littering the floor, she walks to the kitchen, cleans out her whiskey glass and returns it carefully to the bar cart. 

She needs to brush her teeth. She needs to shower. She needs to find some band-aids to cover up the cuts on her hands, which thankfully don’t look too deep but are still bleeding. She blinks around the bright space, which would exude warmth and cheerfulness in its freshly decorated splendour if last night and this morning hadn’t happened, and wonders what she should do next. She no longer feels a pair of eyes watching her. In fact, she can’t really feel anything, mentally or physically. She surmises this is all part of the shock and that she’ll likely run screaming from the house when she snaps back to her senses, but in the meantime she decides to take advantage of this complete lack of fear and take a shower. 

Numbly, as though on auto-pilot, she climbs the stairs and enters her bedroom, barely noticing the normalcy of her surroundings. She turns on the tap, strips off her bloodsoaked clothes and steps into the claw-foot tub. The icy stream has an instant refreshing effect. She sinks to her knees and sits there for she’s not sure how long, visualising the trauma dripping off her and disappearing down the drain with the rest of the bloody water. 

When she feels ready, she emerges from the tub feeling new, more calm than numb now. She bandages her hands, brushes her teeth and pulls on some clothes without interruption. Then she returns to the main floor and sits down on her living room chair to survey the mess of her house and her life, utterly unsure of what the hell she’s supposed to do next. 

Dad was right. And he didn’t even know it.

I can’t believe I brought Jay here the other night. I’m so lucky nothing like that happened while he was here. 

Or maybe I’m insane. Maybe it’s time to look for a psychiatrist. 

How could Dad have left me with a place like this?

Did he know?

Did he think I could handle this?

I can do anything I want to do. 

She takes a deep, meditative breath. “And I want to do this.”

Opening her eyes, Audrey peers around the half-destroyed room. She’s felt more at home pulling this place together these last few days than she did at the cottage after Jonah died. This house was supposed to be the fresh start she so desperately needed, and so doubtlessly deserves.

“I want to do this.” 

Standing up somewhat shakily, she wanders over to the kitchen and gathers some packing paper, garbage bags, rubber gloves and a broom, and starts reversing last night’s damage. She’s still not sure how she feels, but she knows she’s not afraid. Jonah certainly wasn’t afraid of spectres; they were his job. And now, it seems, if she decides to stay in this foul funhouse, it’s hers, too. And that’s just fine, she thinks as she sweeps up one last pile of glass and dumps it into the bin; she has nothing to lose. Nothing except for perhaps what remains of her sanity. And perhaps her life. 

Smirking in spite of the situation, she crosses her arms and scans the room for any missed debris, but the space is almost back to normal. Her heart aches for the lost possessions, the gramophone, her dad’s portrait, a few other treasures she’s picked up recently and over the years, and realizes she cherished those things more than she does her own life, anyway. 

The feeling is back. She knows she’s not alone in the room, knows that by cleaning the floors she didn’t erase her new surreal reality, but she doesn’t care. She walks over to the fireplace where she’s already neatly re-piled her father’s equipment. He always kept this crap in a padlocked case. She never thought it necessitated such esteemed storage, but she thinks differently now. Still feeling those invisible eyes burning into the back of her head, she picks up the entire pile and carefully places each item on the now vacant mantelpiece. 

Her skin prickles wretchedly and her insides clench with an instinctive foreboding, but these are physical sensations she’ll simply have to master in the coming days, weeks, maybe even months, if she makes it that long. 

Audrey crosses to the front door, where she snatches her heart-shaped sunglasses and swings her purse over her shoulder. The lights begin to flicker, but she ignores this, instead wrenching the door open and marching dauntlessly out into the fresh, life-giving Parisian air. 

As she slides her sunglasses over her eyes, she finally realizes how she feels. She feels angry. And, if she’s being unabashedly honest with herself, she’s feeling exhilarated.