Page 47 of Shake the Habit

“No, that’s ok, it probably just has more old receipts inside. It looks like she saved everything.”

“I’ll bring out a garbage bag and we can toss stuff,” he said, picking up a faded paper and peering at it. “This is from the previous century. This gas company doesn’t even exist anymore.”

“We don’t have to do it right now. Let me help you with your computer.” The sooner we did that, the sooner we could go.

Sir took the opportunity to walk tightly at my side as we entered the house, bumping against my knee down a hallway that wasn’t that wide to begin with and making it much more difficult to move. I didn’t mind feeling him there, though. With Caleb’s office now mostly empty, the house was even darker and more of a creepy time capsule.

“If you can go behind the desk and hold the monitor so that it doesn’t fall, I’ll get underneath and loosen the clamp,” Caleb directed, and I squeezed myself back there and carefully held the screen as he crawled somewhere around my feet to unscrew where the arm held it steady. “Ok…no, Sir, you can’t help with this. You’re a good friend.” I heard his muffled laugh. “He put his head on my chest,” he called up to me.

“Silly guy.” A piece of my hair had drifted and was brushing against my neck, so I blew at it from the side of my mouth. “Are you pinned?” I asked.

“Almost. His head must weigh thirty pounds. Ok, I’m going to loosen up the clamp.” The monitor rocked. I held it carefully and also tried to wipe off the tickle on my neck against my shirt. When we were done here, I would go with Caleb back into town and help him set up the office he’d rented in the old bank building that I’d told him about. He’d gone to check it out and had decided that yes, he would be more comfortable in a place with adequate lighting, heat and air, and no terrible memories.

“I don’t know why I didn’t leave here before,” he mentioned, his voice a little muffled by the desk and by Sir. I shrugged but kept hold of the screen.

“Sometimes I get stuck in ideas,” I answered. “As soon as I moved to your house up on Signal, I realized that I’d believed that I had to live close to my family because they would worry if I was farther away. But now, I think they’re ok with the distance. I could move back to Chattanooga, where I used to have an apartment or I could be on Lookout Mountain, near Cassidy. Why not?”

“Why not?” he echoed. “But you like where you are, don’t you?”

“I definitely do,” I assured him. “But I could go somewhere else! And I was just telling Marc that I’d also enjoy going to Cuzco, like we saw in the video.”

“Just you, by yourself?” he asked.

“Well, I couldn’t take Sir out of the country, and I think he would be miserable on those long flights.”

“As would everyone else in the entire air…hell.” There were a few thumps and Caleb crawled back out. “I have to go get some pliers. It’s a little loose, though, so you can’t let go.” He looked at my arms. “Are you all right there, holding it?”

“There’s no weight, and I’m only keeping it from crashing forward. I’m good,” I assured him. “Wait, take it for a second.” He leaned over the desk to steady the monitor, his chest in my face, and I was finally able to rub away the tickle on my neck that had been driving me nuts. “Ok, now I’m really good.”

I hummed a little under my breath as he walked out. “I think I’ll sing,” I told Sir. His beard brushed lightly against my leg beneath the desk. “How about a little Loretta Lynn, my namesake?” I looked around at the dark corners of the room. It was like a cave in here now that Caleb had removed all his extra lighting, and I couldn’t hear anything of the construction even though the barn really wasn’t that far away. I couldn’t hear Caleb, either, wherever he’d gone in the house.

“You know what? I think that I’ll sing ‘Keep on the Sunny Side.’ Cass, Aria, Amory, Aubree, and I used to perform it as a quintet for our Grandma McCourt. There’s a lot of good advice in this song.”

I felt his whiskers again and I bit my lip and looked at the door. Why was it taking Caleb so long to find a damn tool? I cleared my throat and started off. “There’s a dark and a troubled side of life, there’s a bright and a sunny side, too.”

My voice had cracked and I stopped. “What do you think, Sir? Do you like that one so far?”

He never talked back, which was a bit of a letdown. But he usually made some kind of noise, like a huff or a snort.

“Sir?” I cleared my throat again. “Caleb?” I called. “Caleb!”

It was so quiet.

I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t let go of his nice monitor. Marc, who admired expensive computer things, had told me that he bet it went for more than a thousand bucks, just this one piece of glass and plastic! If I let go, it might fall and break. I heard myself breathing faster, like I was running. “Sir?”

Something brushed against my leg again and I froze. “Sir?” I repeated, but he still didn’t make any sound. And then the idea entered my mind that it wasn’t my dog touching me. It wasn’t my dog touching me…what was it? What—who was under the desk?

“Sir? Caleb? Caleb! Caleb!” I screamed his name and then I did hear the front door open, and feet running—human and dog. The two of them burst into this dark tomb.

“Kayleigh? What’s the matter?”

“Something’s touching me! Something’s touching me!” I kept yelling. He reached over and took his screen and I rushed out from behind that stupid desk so that I could see underneath.

There was nothing there. I shivered and ran my hands up and down my bare legs, because I had felt it. “There was something touching me and at first, I thought it was Sir, but he wasn’t even in here,” I said.

“He left before I did, when I was holding this for you. I heard Marc calling me and we went outside, and the front door must have blown shut.”

But there wasn’t any wind today. “There was something touching me,” I echoed. “It was so quiet and I felt it.”

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