Page 1 of Halloween Haunting
1
“All alone…don’t wanna be…all alone tonight –”
Grace Baker drunkenly slapped her palm against the top of her old radio. It was one of the only prized possessions she managed to slip away with during her testy and volatile divorce. The contraption might’ve been around forty years ago and had a wonky antenna that caught onto people’s bluetooth connections, but Grace wasn’t one to be picky about things anymore. She hadn’t been picky in a long,longtime.
The song stammered before the navy blue radio released an unfortunate hiss, a trail of smoke curling up from the CD player. Grace frowned as the hotel room teetered in and out of her consciousness. Maybe the radio wasn’t smoking at all, and she was too drunk to realize it. But what was the best way to handle a situation like that?
Grace let her empty bottle of red wine roll off the narrow bed before clattering onto the floor. The liquor was replaced in a second, as she reached for the nightstand and retrieved the next bottle she acquired for safe keeping. There was a ribbon tied around the bottle’s neck, a beige note sticking out from it. Grace swayed from her spot against the pile of pillows as she tried to read it, her eyes narrowing without her appropriate glasses.
“To…To Grace Baker,” she murmured, her words slurring. “For h-happy beginnings, new c-chances, and…and…” Grace held the note as close to her face as possible, almost forcing herself to go cross-eyed. “And better sex. Love, Mom.”
Grace laughed to herself while shoving the bottle opener onto the cork, not at all caring if she cut herself or if the wine happened to dribble onto the bed. It wasn’t her bed, but Grace couldn’t imagine anything getting worse, especially if the problem was only a few spots of red along a rented bed. All of her belongings – at least, all the things she wasallowedto call her belongings – surrounded the bed in the small hotel room. She took solace in the first run-down motel she could find, not caring that it was right off the highway and had a few missing lights in its big sign.
In the end, it was all she could afford if she wanted to buy another house one day.
Grace groped around the bed for her laptop. As the music clicked onto another eighties love ballad, she shoved the top open and watched everything she lost appear in front of her eyes.
The laptop’s screensaver was a collage of photographs from Grace’s failed marriage. At the time, of course, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind about her relationship with Chuck. They met during college and had been bound to each other since. Even when they grew older and Grace remained unable to give their family children, she didn’t fear for her future. Chuck was always there, no matter what.
Until he wasn’t.
Grace didn’t bother with glasses as the cork popped off the bottle, flying relentlessly across the room. The sweet smell of red wine filtered through her senses as she took a long swig, ignoring the painful burn as it attacked the back of her raw throat. She spent too long crying already. She spent too long staring at that same collage of pictures, wondering where it all went wrong. Shespent hours imagining being replaced with the twenty-one year old he left her for. She imagined their pictures with Tiffany in them instead of her, and somehow, sadly, Grace realized that the photographs turned out better without her in them. But wallowing was no longer on the forefront of Grace’s mind. As she looked over the photographs another time, spite grew like a blossoming flower in her chest.
She determinedly moved the mouse across the screen, inching toward the internet explorer. She clicked twice and the laptop hummed with energy before pulling a new window up.
Thunder crashed outside the hotel room window. Grace jolted forward in surprise and clutched the bottle to her chest when light flashed across the room, followed by another grumble from the sky. Grace burrowed herself within the thin layers of her cheap bed set, only the laptop’s screen providing any light into the room.
“Alright, Gracie,” she drawled to herself. “We need somewhere to live, don’t we?”
The money she had wasn’t enough to be proud of. It was just the settlement from the divorce. Enough to start over if she found a cheap enough place. She just needed to find it and settle down somewhere. Somewhere better. Which shouldn’t be hard. The only home she had right now was that singular hotel room.
Staring at her screen, she frowned, feeling hopeless. The internet wasn’t doing a good job at showing her options for living. Most places were too far away, buried deep within a bustling city, or way too out of her budget. That being said, Grace’s budget was enough to even make a child laugh.
“What’s this?” she muttered.
There was a link at the bottom of the search engine, talking about fantastical estates for cheap prices in towns across the United States. Grace lazily pulled the mouse to the link and smacked on the pad, watching as the screen changed intoa darker ambiance, with orange hues and crawling shadows. Perhaps it was creepy as a real estate website, but Grace was sick and tired of normal things. She’d take creepy if it led to her finding a house she could actually afford.
With a shake of her head, Grace began to reach for the nightstand again, juggling with her wine bottle as she struggled to change the radio station. The bed creaked underneath her when she went a bit too far, pulling a sore spot in her lower back. Grace groaned and stopped reaching, only to realize that she was already leaning too far to the right, and was beginning to tumble off the side of the bed. Before she could stop herself, Grace rolled and rolled, till her narrow frame smacked into the hard floor below. The wine bottle fell beside her, but surprisingly enough, it landed without spilling a drop.
Laughter spilled out of Grace’s lips as the rain pelted onto the roof. The giggles aching her empty stomach more than she thought. When was the last time she ate? When was the last time she wanted to sit in a restaurant and truly indulge? When was the last time she went out with a friend, without Chuck? Or even on her own? The questions only managed to make her laugh more, revealing the true disappointment her life was really turning out to be.
“I am such a catch,” Grace blurted out as she struggled to climb back onto the bed, arms flailing. Her long brown hair caught into her lips as she flailed, but there was no energy left in her to brush it out the way. “I am a drunken, divorced, broke, homeless, forty-year-oldcatch!”
Grace landed on her stomach on the bed when she realized the bottle was still on the floor. “Honestly,” she murmured into the pillow, her words muffled, “Life hasn’t exactly turned out the way I planned.”
Chime! Chime! Chime!
Grace’s head snapped up, her eyes immediately landing on her cellphone. The screen lit up onto the ceiling from its spot on the bed, a message notification blinking over the lockscreen. It faded back to black after a moment, only for the sounds to come again, the light cascading over the room once more. Grace couldn’t look away, no matter how much the quiet voice in her head told her to ignore it. Ever since the divorce, Grace couldn’t bring herself to block her ex-husband’s phone number. Even when his new girlfriend got a hold of it, finding some sort of humor in rubbing their relationship in Grace’s face, she couldn’t change a damned thing.
As if keeping her life the same as before was enough to bring it all back.
Grace glared as she snatched up the phone. There was a single written message from Tiffany, the twenty-one year old cheater, along with a photo. Grace only stared for a minute, hardly able to see the small picture from her lockscreen, but far too afraid to open it up. The message was haunting enough.
Amazing things come to those who wait!
After a few more minutes, Grace clicked open the picture. It was taken in a bathroom, she guessed from the shower curtain and tile in the background, but that was hardly the thing Grace was focused on. There was a pregnancy test, Tiffany’s neatly manicured nails holding it up. And at the center, where there was a small screen, was a dark black cross.
Pregnant.
