She needed the extra protection. That thing she’d seen the night her friends had come over, the formless camouflaged shape that had detached itself from the wall to examine and assault the other girls, had never been far from her mind.
Take off your pants.
Nor had the text message that had been sent to her and James.
I will kill you both.
Her life was a nightmare of fear and worry, and the worst part of it was that her options for dealing with the situation were so constricted. She could not tell her parents. She could not tell her friends. There was no one she could go to for help, and the creature that lived in this house could be anywhere, watching her at any time.
She had to go to the bathroom, and it was with a feeling of dread that Megan went into the one on the other side of James’s bedroom. She would have preferred to use the one by her parents’ room, but for some reason her mom had put that off-limits. As always, she closed and locked the door behind her, then took a towel from the rack and held it in front of her with one hand while, with the other, she pulled her pants down the bare minimum. She placed the towel on her lap while she used the toilet, so nothing could see her, then quickly pulled her pants back up when she was finished and sped downstairs, washing her hands in the kitchen.
She had never felt so much stress in her life as she had the past two weeks, and it was a wonder she hadn’t snapped. This was what they never showed in movies, the contorted and convoluted rituals that had to be instituted in order to deal with everyday life in a haunted house.
After breakfast, after everyone was up and there was noise in the house, after the sun was high and night was truly vanquished, after the house was as safe as it could possibly be, it was time for Megan to take a quick sponge bath and get dressed. Six days a week, she took only sponge baths, not wanting to use the tub or shower, not wanting the glass in the bathroom to become fogged up. She was down to a single hot shower a week, and that one she took on Sunday afternoon, in the warmest, brightest part of the day. Her mom thought that was strange and had asked her about it, but her questioning had seemed more nervous than concerned, the queries of someone worried not because she didn’t understand but because she did. Megan had almost broken down and told her mom everything. But she’d flashed on that message—
I will kill you both.
—and saw in her mind’s eye an amorphous shape disengaging itself from the wall and killing both her mother and herself, and had purposefully thought up a lie, saying that she’d read that Sunday afternoon was the best time to take a shower because it required less energy to heat the water and was good for the environment.
Now she went back up to her bedroom, picked out a new T-shirt and underwear (she was planning to wear the same jeans) and carried her clothes into the bathroom. She let the tap run until the water was warm, then stopped up the sink, filled it, and tossed in a washcloth, getting everything ready so she could take her sponge bath as quickly as possible. She always bathed in shifts—bottom half, then top half—so that a portion of her body was always covered and she was never completely naked.
She did her usual swift survey, making sure nothing was out of place, confirming that there was nothing creepy or unusual within sight distance, before deciding to work today from the bottom up. Pulling down her pants, she was shocked to see cuts on her legs, long red slashes that she had not noticed earlier. Where had they come from? Had they been there while she was going to the bathroom? If so, she hadn’t seen them. Her legs suddenly hurt, though they hadn’t only seconds before. Seeing the wounds had made her aware of them, and she felt the pain, though the cuts were not deep and there was virtually no blood, only a thin dried line over each slash.
Using the washcloth but not using soap, she gently dabbed at the cuts with warm water before patting her legs dry with a towel. She found some Neosporin in the drawer and, using her finger, carefully smeared the medicine on the wounds. After changing her underwear and putting her pants back on, she took off her old T-shirt, washed the top half of her body, put on deodorant and quickly slipped into her new T-shirt.
The cuts bothered her.
And scared her.
Her first thought was that she was being punished, that, even though she’d obeyed orders and done nothing, the thing in the house knew what she’d been thinking and wanted to prove that it could get to her whenever it wanted, despite all her precautions. If true, what would happen to her if she dared to tell her parents about the slashes on her legs? What would happen to them if they knew? The safest thing would be to maintain her silence and suffer.
There was a nagging notion in the back of her mind, however, that the cuts had not been inflicted on her by some outside force but that she had made the cuts herself. In a way, this idea was even scarier. Because, try as she might, Megan could not remember doing such a thing and could think of no reason why she would.
Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe none of the things she thought were going on were really going on. Maybe she hadn’t received any of those weird texts. Maybe there’d been no camouflaged monster at her sleepover. Maybe …
No. Her mom had seen one of the texts—
Take off your pants.
—as had James—
I will kill you both.
—and her friends had all gotten spooked by that out-of-control Ouija board even before they’d fallen asleep. These things were real.
Megan leaned forward, looking at herself in the mirror. She wasn’t crazy. She was just caught up in a crazy situation.
But what could she do about it?
She went downstairs, where her mom was already waiting for her. “Are you ready?” her mom asked.
“Yeah,” Megan said.
The two of them were planning to walk downtown together, her mom to go to work, she to go to the library. She’d finished another book, and was due a prize from the summer reading program. The program was nearly over, so prizes were getting down to the bottom of the barrel, and she wanted to make sure she got something decent. Of course, the library wouldn’t be open for another hour, but she could hang out at her mom’s office and the two of them could get in some mother-daughter bonding time. They could talk, and maybe she could even …
Megan thought of the cuts on her legs.
No.
They were already out the door when her mom realized at the last minute that she’d forgotten to bring along her flash drive, so Megan waited outside, standing in the front yard while her mother went back into the house. She pushed at the tire swing, wondering why her dad hadn’t taken it down, since neither she nor James used it. Then she wondered why James didn’t use it. The swing was something he should have loved.
A man walked slowly past on the sidewalk, making an almost comically obvious effort not to glance at their house or yard. Megan frowned. There was something familiar about him, and she tried to remember where she’d seen him before. He was an older guy, wearing a backward yellow baseball cap, and though she was almost certain he did not live on this street, and he did not seem to have any reason to be here, he walked by, then crossed the street and walked by in the opposite direction, the way he had come, still not looking at their yard.
That was weird. But then her mom came out, and she forgot all about the man.
“Let’s go,” her mom said.
Away from the house, Megan felt better. The fear was still there—it was always there these days—but she felt lighter, physically as well as mentally. She noticed the difference only when she left, but at home there was a heaviness to everything she did. Her thoughts were slower, her movements more sluggish. It felt completely normal to her while there, but the minute she was off the premises, it was as if she’d lost twenty pounds and gained twenty IQ points.