Bentley Little: The Burning

Winston pushed him. "Infidel."

It was time to change the subject.

"So," Angela said, "tell me about the ghost."

Winston and Brock looked at each other.

"Come on! Chrissie told me this house was haunted, and she said you guys're the experts. You're the ones who've had a close encounter."

"Encounters," Brock said quietly.

Winston sighed. "I know this sounds ridiculous. Believe me, I'm not some hippie-dippie, fuzzy-headed New Age touchy-feely guy-"

Brock raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, I am. But I never believed in ghosts before moving here. Didn't even have an open mind. As far as I was concerned, they were figments of gullible, overactive imaginations."

"But you believe now," Chrissie said in a low spooky voice.

"Laugh all you want, but yes, I do." He glanced at Brock. "We both do."

Brock nodded.

"The first time we heard it, we were sitting right here, in this room. Dan Hamlyn, who used to live in Kelli and Yurica's place a few semesters back, was with us. We'd just finished watching a movie. And, no, not a scary one. A comedy. Mother, I think, the Albert Brooks movie. I was gathering up the glasses and the popcorn bowls, Dan was getting ready to leave, and we heard moaning from the kitchen."

Brock's nodding became more emphatic. "Like someone was in pain, like he'd been hit in the head or something."

"Although we weren't sure it was a he. It could've been a she. It was impossible to tell."

"Scared the hell out of us, though, and all three of us hurried into the kitchen to see what it was."

Angela glanced toward the closed kitchen door. She wanted to feel frightened, but she didn't. She liked a good ghost story as well as the next person, but there was something about the telling of this tale that was too pat, that made her think it had been concocted for her benefit.

"Of course there was nothing there," Winston said. "The room was empty, and the window was closed. We searched the whole apartment, but there was no one here except us.

"The next time it happened was morning, I believe. Last winter. It was still dark out, but it wasn't that early. Six o'clock or something. I remember I was already up and eating a bagel because I had an early class."

"This time it came from the linen closet," Brock said. "And we knew no one could be hiding in there because it's barely big enough for a couple of sheets and our towels."

Winston chimed in. "It was like mumbling or muttering but really fast and really high-pitched. Gibberish. We couldn't make out a word of it. The creepy thing was that it didn't stop. We opened the closet door, tossed everything out on the floor, and it was still there. It wasn't coming from behind the closet, or above it or below it or anything. It was right there in front of us, like the ghost who was doing it was right in front of us and we couldn't see it. Scared the hell out of me, let me tell you."

"And that's it?" Angela asked.

"It's happened a couple of times since, but, yeah, that's pretty much it. I know it doesn't sound like much, and you probably think it's sound seeping in from another apartment or something, but I'm telling you, it's eerie. You can feel it. We hadn't even heard anything about this, but I started doing a little research and found out that this house is listed on a national registry of haunted places. Supposedly, it's the reason no one would buy the place and why they had to subdivide it into apartments. After I approached the owners with this news, the rent was dropped-on the condition that we keep our mouths shut about it. We have, pretty much, but word still leaked out, and one girl even moved because of it."

"Jen," Chrissie said.

"Yeah. Jen. She said she saw something in her bedroom, though I'm not sure she did. I'm pretty sure she just imagined it."

Angela smiled. "Her ghost is imagination. Yours is real, though."

"That's about the size of it."

"Well, call me the next time he-or she -shows up. I want to hear it."

"You don't," Winston said. "But I will."

The opportunity to do so came more quickly than any of them expected.

Angela and Chrissie returned to their own apartment soon after. It was getting late, so they flipped a coin for first shower. Angela won, and she quickly washed and changed into her pajamas. After saying good night to Chrissie, she went to bed and was asleep in a matter of minutes.

She was awakened by a knock on the bedroom door, and she had time to glance groggily at the clock on her nightstand and see that it was two fifteen before the knock came again, louder this time. She got up, pulled on her robe and opened the door a crack. Chrissie stood in the short hallway, holding her own robe closed, looking half-asleep. Behind her, through the living room, Angela could see that the front door of the apartment was open. Winston was standing in the outer hall, hair disheveled, wearing only light green drawstring pants. He saw her, and the expression on his face caused her heart to skip a beat, sent a bolt of fear through her body. She knew what he was going to say even before he said it.

"The ghost. It's down there right now. You want to hear it?"

She didn't. Not at this time of night. Despite her skepticism and the lightheartedness of their previous conversation, the idea of encountering a ghost was given weight and gravity by the hour, a seriousness it did not possess in the daytime or early evening. She was frightened, but she was the one who'd brought it up, she was the one who'd made the request, and she swallowed hard, nodded.

"Are you coming?" she asked Chrissie. The other girl shook her head, and Angela could tell that despite her professions of disbelief, her friend was frightened as well.

Angela followed Winston downstairs, where several other residents were already gathered around his apartment's open front door. Most were in their sleepwear, but despite the potential for casual camaraderie, no one was talking or visiting and the expression on each face was the same. Everyone was silent, expectant, on edge.

She heard it.

The sound was muffled from here in the hallway, but it was still audible, and it was definitely coming from somewhere inside. Goose bumps popped up on her arms and legs; peach-fuzz hair on the back of her neck bristled. An unintelligible babbling, an incomprehensible alien jabber, issued from the apartment behind the open door. Winston led her past Randy, Kelli and Yurica, into the living room, into the kitchen. "Come in, everyone!" he announced. "Catch it quick before it stops!"

He was trying for a party atmosphere, attempting to keep things light and fun, but Angela could see that he was scared, and by the tense clinging way Brock held his hand, she knew that Brock felt the same. Everyone else was silent, listening, afraid to speak.

The ghost's voice was as flat as ordinary conversation yet at the same time as sharp as an audiophile CD. It was high-pitched, sounding either angry or excited, and Winston and Brock were right: it was impossible to tell if it was male or female. It seemed to be coming from the oven, and while that should have been funny, it wasn't. Although ghosts were supposed to be ephemeral, Angela had the sense that the owner of the voice had been here forever, that although the house had been built around it and furniture brought in, these were the things that were transitory, and the voice would remain long after the oven had been removed and the house torn down.

All of a sudden it stopped.

No one knew what, if anything, was being said, but the voice seemed to cut off in midsentence, and after such hyperactive gibbering the silence seemed heavy and ringing in Angela's ears.

"Show's over, folks!" Winston announced, still trying to keep the tone light. But no one was having any of it, and the residents drifted away, back to their rooms, quiet and subdued. Winston caught Angela's eye, and she understood now how shallow and cavalier she'd been earlier in the evening, how she'd completely misread the situation. She wished she'd stayed upstairs with Chrissie, that she'd immediately gone back to sleep and experienced none of this. But she had experienced it, and now she was afraid to even walk back up to their apartment, afraid of what she might hear in the walls on the way, afraid of what she might see in the shadows darkening the top of the steps.