Page 20 of Bewitched By the Phantom
Itry to fact-check myself the moment I get back to my room. Flipping open my laptop, I search for the old chat logs between me and the Phantom, but I open the folders where I kept them to find them empty. I instead log into the chat program and hit the history button only to find nothing there. They’re gone. Not just deleted. It’s like they never existed at all.
“Motherfucker!” I snarl, shoving my laptop away. This has to be some sort of elaborate game, some elaborate ruse to make me think I’m losing my mind.
I hate that it’s fucking working.
Claudia knocks on the door and opens it further. I hadn’t realized I didn’t close it. “We have rehearsal in an hour. You good?”
I press my hand to my forehead. “I think the stress is getting to me.”
“Youhavebeen weird lately,” she nods. “You’re taking the vitamin C?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, mother.”
“Hey, don’t get mad at me. If you’re sick, you can’t sing. Remember what happened last year?”
“Yeah,” I grumble.
She nods. “Good. Make sure you’re not late to rehearsal.”
She turns to leave the room, but I stop her before she can go.
“Hey.” She looks at me. “Do you remember me talking about my mentor?”
“The Phantom guy? What about him?” she asks, her eyes studying me.
I open my mouth to explain my theory, that Erik is actually the Phantom, that he’s haunting me in some form or fashion and I think I’m going insane, but I realize how ridiculous that’ll sound if I speak it out loud. I can’t just drop all that on her. Not while we’re here. Not like this. She’s counting on me. They all are.
“Oh, nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “Just . . . feeling nostalgic, I guess.”
Her brows shoot up. “I’d say so. I figured that’s why you have that old journal out.” She points to a brown leather journal on the bedside table I definitely didn’t leave there. “I haven’t seen that thing in a year.”
My eyes shoot over to it. That wasn’t there a minute ago. I know it wasn’t. “Yep. That’s me. All up in my nostalgia.”
She smiles. “Just don’t go bringing home any furbies. Those things are the devil.”
She finally leaves and I’m left to stare at the leather journal I didn’t bring with me. It might have been in the van somewhere, but I distinctly remember throwing it away at one point in a drunken fury when we didn’t make it into a local competition. And now here it is, sitting on my table.
I reach for it, my brows furrowed, and flip it open. My own handwriting meets my eyes, songs that don’t need to see the light of day, small doodles, and a piece of paper tucked in between the pages where I could find it.
Written on it are the words Erik had whispered to me, the lyrics from the song on the record. Words both familiar and not, like I recognize them from a different lifetime.
An hour later, we’re walking to rehearsal, the song still stuck in my head. As we walk, a new melody slips in, taking over until I can’t help but hum it softly, trying to figure out where I’ve heard it from.
“Dude!” one of the guys from Grave Rave says when he catches me. “You follow the Devilfoot Conspiracies?”
“The what?” I ask, frowning.
“That song you’re humming,” he clarifies. “It’s the cursed Devilfoot song, the one that they released as a demo right before they disappeared.” At my confused expression, he shakes his head. “Devilfoot. You know, the band from the 90’s?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him. “I just needed to sing it.”
The guy takes a step back. “I wouldn’t sing that one, chick. There are all kinds of theories on why it’s cursed, but I wouldn’t play with any of ‘em.”
I hesitate. “Thanks for the heads up.”
Claudia watches the interaction closely, and the moment the guy leaves us, she grabs my arm. “You sure are attracting all the weird lately.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumble. “Seriously. It’s starting to feel like a Tim Burton movie around here.”
