3 is a Crowd

* * *

I saw the deserted playground. I saw them together, unaware of the world around them. I felt my hands clench into fists, and burning tears running down my face.

Then a whisper, “Chasey.” I winced, wanting to be left alone.

I jumped as I awoke fully, and quickly rubbed my eyes in an effort to wipe my tears, unnoticed. I looked around.

To our right, there was an impenetrable forest of pine and oak trees laced with poison ivy and the like. To our left, there was a high cement wall covered with vines and overgrown rose hedges which broke only in the centre to give way to a black wrought iron gate. It all seemed like straight out of “The Grudge” or something. But I was not really disappointed. On the contrary, I hadn’t thought that I’d be lucky enough to end up in a haunted neighborhood. Still, it seemed unlikely that things were going as planned. For one thing, I doubted that Tory would arrange a place like this for us to stay in, her being a die-hard complainer, not unlike me, and spoilt rotten.

“Reached where?” I croaked my voice still rusty from sleep, “To an episode of ‘America’s Most Haunted’?”

Alex gave Tory a look that I couldn’t decipher, and then Tory cleared her throat and said, “Yeah, well, look- It’s like, uh…”

Seeing that this was obviously going nowhere, Alex interrupted, “Tory had asked her cousins to arrange-“

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. I was aware that Tory’s cousins, who lived in the town we were headed to-or had apparently reached-had offered to get us a place to stay, promising not to tell a soul of anything about our whereabouts. ”Get to the point.”

“This is the address they gave us.”

I chuckled. “This?”

When neither of my comrades did anything but look uncomfortable, I sat up a bit straighter. “You guys are not kidding, are you?”

“I’m gonna kill Tory, too,” Alex stated, deadpan, “Right after I’ve got into her pants.”

That earned him a punch from his girlfriend, which resulted in one of those puppy-love fights those two kept having. I suddenly felt out of place. Sure, Alex and Tory were my best friends, but they were a couple, and right now I was just a single girl in the back seat who was poising as a problem to their privacy.

I shook aside those thoughts and called out, “Hey, Lovebirds! Can this wait till you’re alone in a room?”

Tory glared at me, which made me laugh for some bizarre reason. Tory always had this weird behavior when conversations came to her relationship with Alex. While she tried to act like she couldn’t care less about the thing, the truth was that she was absolutely crazy about Alex. And the feeling was visibly-sickeningly-mutual.

Tory suggested taking our belongings and going in-just a way of changing the subject-and so we did.

The keys that Tory’s cousins, Natasha and Zack Foster, had sent to us fit perfectly into the rusty lock on the gate, and I heard the mechanism work with a satisfying ‘click’. The gate squeaked when I pushed it open, it sounded almost as if the hinges were wailing threateningly at me for moving them. The house was big, almost like a miniature mansion surrounded by a garden overgrown with cherry trees, rosebushes and weeds. The walls looked like they had last been whitewashed when California had been under the Spanish rule, but the windows and the wooden panes were surprisingly intact. Overall, the place was creepy-just how I liked it! I had always been drawn to the mysterious and unknown. Till now-my old life-I had never got a chance to explore it, but this was my new life. And it seemed to be very promising.

“Oh my god!” Tory breathed, carefully dodging particular weeds, “Chase, I think we’ve found your palace!”

“It’s awesome, isn’t it?” I asked, almost expecting a sarcastic reply from Alex. But he proved me wrong. Hauling one of Tory’s jan-sport bags over his shoulder, he said enthusiastically, “You bet!”

This was unexpectedly great! Both of them actually approved of it! Usually, Alex would have said something about my eccentric nature and Tory’d have complained about having to share a house with spiders. Well, maybe our new life came with new interests and tolerances.

The heavy mahogany door swung open with ease, much to our surprise. I, having thought that the door was at least remotely related to the gate, had actually pushed the door open with all my might. As a result, I had stumbled into the house and landed on a dusty carpet. As I moaned, I heard Alex and Tory laughing. Then, the laughter stopped abruptly. I saw why, five seconds later. I pushed myself up and rubbed my elbow, facing my friends. I was about to ask them why they had got so uncharacteristically quiet, but I decided to follow their gaze instead. I turned around and I felt my jaw drop.

Stretched out in front of us was the most lavishly furnished lobby we’d ever layed our eyes on. A black chandelier hovered above me, suspended from the ceiling with a questionable chain link, and matching lamps adorned the walls. Massive granite staircases led to the first floor on either side of the room, and there were doors on the far end as well. The carpet beneath my feet, though threadbare and drowned by a layer of dust and blue moonlight like the rest of the room, was deep magenta and intricately woven.

“Whoa…” Tory finally broke the silence.

“Some arrangements your cousins have made.” Alex whispered.

“What’d you promise them in return,” I inquired, “Our kidneys?”

“Shut up.” Both Tory and Alex breathed, I guessed mainly because our voices, no matter how soft, were being carried through the building, stirring its earlier eeriness. It felt as if speaking would awaken an unwanted disturbance. I suddenly felt a chill run through me, but it was not due to the rush of cold air coming in through the open door. I pushed it gently until I heard the lock click. Tory started looking around. I guessed she was searching for switches to turn on some or the other lights. When we found the switches at the end of the left wall and tried them, there was no result. Everything remained as still as before, with the exception of the occasional “click” and the echoes of our hushed voices.

“Why is there no electricity?” Tory huffed. Okay, so maybe the new life hadn’t changed old habits.

“Look,” I told her, “It’s fine. There’s enough light from outside for us to see.”

“And if that’s not enough, not to fret; we have our flashlights.” Alex announced, brandishing his own like a sword. But little did we know that flashlights weren’t going to save us from what awaited us in this new life. Not even close…

* * *

I had somehow managed to bail myself out of sharing the room I’d chosen for myself with Tory. It had taken Alex and me at least half an hour to explain to her that the likeliness of our new home being haunted was very less. She still hadn’t bought it, though. She had insisted on sleeping in one room with me-much to my chagrin. It wasn’t like I’d usually miss an opportunity to have a sleepover with Tory, but there were three facts that led to me not wanting one this time:

1) From now on, we could have as many sleepovers as we wanted, when we wanted.

2) I needed some alone time to sort my thoughts out into my diary. Yes, I’d been writing in a diary ever since I was eleven.

3) No way in hell was I going to share my second floor/attic makeshift bedroom –which had come complete with furnishing, magenta curtains, a matching canopy the topmost window and a big window overlooking the backyard- with anyone! I mean, there were enough other rooms in the house/mansion.

So basically, I had played heart of stone to Tory’s puddle of tears. She hadn’t taken it personally, though. She went and stayed with Alex, threatening him, saying that if he “tried anything” he’d find her jimmy-choos halfway down his throat. I pretended to buy her act.

It hadn’t been too long. I had barely signed at the bottom of the page in my “save the tigers” diary when I heard Tory scream. I chuckled to myself. Alex had either “tried something”, or she’d mistaken a breeze for the breath of a Godzilla sized spider. I fluffed up my sleeping bag. I didn’t want to risk a bed bug situation with the bed already in the room, even though the soft mattress and satin –yes, satin- sheets looked very tempting. But then I heard more screams. And this time, it wasn’t just Tory.

I had definitely heard Alex shout, too. And what’s worse, I had definitely heard a third voice. A male voice, shouting out something I couldn’t understand. I was running down the flight of stairs, flashlight in hand, before I even knew what I was doing. Shit, we’d been caught! Was somebody actually living here? Or was someone else using this house just as we had planned to?

My thoughts stopped abruptly as I stumbled to a halt in front of one of the doors. I could still hear three voices. Four, actually, if you counted the one of my heart throbbing loudly, seemingly in my throat. I cursed the knot in my stomach and threw the door open. Huddled in the left corner of the room, adjacent to the door, were Tory and Alex. Not very far to my right, was a six foot something inch tall man. The one who’d been shouting, apparently, at my best friends. But the room had gone very quiet now. I tried to frame a question that would give me the answers I really needed right now. Not really succeeding, I settled for letting someone else start a conversation. But a deafening silence continued to reign. Then suddenly a new voice was heard.

“It’s her…” The voice, no, sound sent chills down my spine. It didn’t even seem as if the silence had been broken, yet the vibrations were still going up and down my entire nervous system. Getting over the weird sensation, I turned to where the voice had come from-the far right corner. The two windows were on the other side of the room, leaving the right side completely dark. Then the first guy spoke again, “Yeah, I know.”