Page 94 of Eldritch

“I can’t either.” Maria’s eyes held a haunted quality. “This is so insane. Do you think the weather is causing this?”

“Seems unlikely,” Sybil said as she tore open a box of breakfast bars and grabbed one. “I wouldn’t think it could affect cell phones.”

Letisha stared out the kitchen window at the weather. The wind howled, sending eerie groans throughout the house and blowing snow in every direction. Light barely filtered through the clouds.

“Hard to tell if that’s new snow or the wind is blowing around what’s already fallen,” Letisha said as she snagged a breakfast bar.

Worry gnawed at Sybil, though she tried to convince herself that they’d be all right. “As soon as we pack our suitcases we can head out.”

Maria didn’t look certain. “I don’t know. Maybe I overreacted yesterday thinking we should get out of here. I mean…the snow is still bad.”

Letisha turned to glance out the window again. “The blizzard has slowed. We might be okay.”

Uncertainty threatened to gnaw away Sybil’s stomach lining.

Letisha’s eyes brightened. She reached into her pants pocket and snagged her phone. “I thought of something. We haven’t had an alarm go off on our phones that said there’s been an intruder in the house or even right outside of it.”

“Right,” Sybil said.

“Last night I was thinking of those dreams we’ve had. It makes me curious.” Letisha did something on her phone.

Sybil and Maria came around to Letisha’s side of the table. Letisha pulled up the security system app and scrolled through time stamps.

“Why are we looking at this?” Sybil asked.

“Wait for it,” Letisha said dramatically. She scrolled until she reached the time after they went to their respective bedrooms. “Boom!” She slapped the table with her right hand. “There it is.”

“You’re kidding me.” Sybil didn’t believe her eyes. She should have thought of this before.

Letisha went through the different angles of security cameras and located the one that showed the staircase. Last night, around eleven o’clock, Pauline had walked down the staircase in the dark. Her barely visible form showed in the semi-darkness between the top of the stairs and the bottom. She made her way along the Great Hall, dressed in dark pajamas that featured a skull and crossbones on the long-sleeved top and jogging style pants. There was no doubt about the identity of the person. Within moments, she’d made it to the cellar door. She opened the cellar door with no problem.

And descended into profound darkness.

The door closed behind her.

“What the actual...” Letisha breathed.

“What’s going on?” Pauline’s voice came from behind Sybil.

Pauline moved into the room and looked over Letisha’s shoulder. Panic crossed Pauline’s face.

“You went into the basement last night,” Sybil said. “Did you wake up this morning thinking you dreamed it all?”

Sybil had always thought descriptions in books of people going pale seemed overdone. In this case, the bleached blonde Pauline was paler than usual. Disturbed and bothered.

Pauline’s throat worked as she swallowed hard. Her cheeks went red. “Yeah. I thought it was a dream. I thought none of this dream or sleepwalking stuff rubbed off on me.”

“Well, that means we’ve all had the dream.” Letisha shoved both hands through her hair. “I can’t believe this.”

Pauline put up her hand. “I don’t want to believe any of this, but at this point, I’ve seen the evidence in black and white. I’ve never heard of several people all dreaming the same thing just because they are living in the same house together. It’s not like synchronized swimming or women’s periods matching because they live in the same house.” She cleared her throat. “So yeah…it has to be paranormal.”

Silence dropped down on them, and Sybil almost held her breath. The house felt heavy, and a deep and abiding fear started to percolate inside her.

“One thing the security system has shown us is that Pauline has butt ugly pajamas,” Letisha said with a straight face.

They all cracked up. Pauline added, “And no one is breaking into the house making weird as fuck lizard tracks.”

“There’s a bad thing about that, though,” Maria said as she ran her hands through her hair. “If no one is breaking into the house, then what made the tracks?” When they all exchanged wary glances, she continued. “I guess that’s the least of our worries at this point.”

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