Page 9 of His to Haunt

I slowly step forward to peer over the dark edge into the shadowed room visible around the edges of the platform. A cold draft carries a stench from what must be the basement, and a jolt of alarm rushes my nervous system at the thought of a mechanical hand jumping out, plunging me to a table for embalming.

But, like most irrational thoughts, I blink the vision away, composure regained.

“I…don’t think this makes a good bedroom,” I decide simply. “We should cover that thing with a rug, put a sofa over it, turn this into a sitting room or something.”

“Just tell me where I’m sleeping,” shrugs Mom. “I wanna put my suitcase down.”

“Put it down then. Let’s look around some more and decide.”

“No, I don’t want to lose it,” she whines, clutching the black handle. I can tell by the knit of her brow that she’s not joking, though I wish she were. I’m not about to try to explain why there’s no logic to it. I’m done trying to reason with her when she’s not making sense, especially because it can backfire.

We’ve had some nasty, scary arguments where she throws shit at me and threatens to catch a bus to Hollywood so she can finally pursue a modeling career. Really, Mom?

Who knows what could happen to her if she honestly decided to do that? She’s in the earlier stages of the disease, so she is entirely sane enough to drive a vehicle and book a motel. She has money. She still makes an income producing and selling her nature-themed jewelry on Etsy.

But she has her dark moments where she gets so confused and frustrated that she turns psycho as if it’s my fault she’s feeling out of sorts.

I know she’s capable of hitting me with a giant fucking metal mixing bowl or a harmless-seeming spatula delivered at just the right velocity and angle to my eyeball. I barely dodged the bullet several times and have avoided pissing her off since.

I’ve learned to humor her and lightly reason with her as best I can. She knows she has dementia; she just isn’t always good at recognizing it when she’s having a moment.

I follow her out, and we head to the next room, which has a serious funeral home vibe. Old-school crosses on the walls over alter tables with votive candles and too many brown metal chairs with cracked leather cushions cluttered about.

“That is a lot of crosses,” I mutter.

The wall is covered in a weird variety like someone went a little crazy hitting all the second-hand stores within a five-mile radius. But these are not the ordinary run-of-the-mill kind like you would see at a church. These are more…pagan. The kind of crosses that predate Christianity. Egyptian and Celtic looking.

A couple of circled iron crosses with Celtic knotwork, one that looks like a wheel, one a hammer, and a dozen top-looped ankh-style crosses, some gold, some black, one mimicking Rachel’s little wooden charm that is currently in a box in the hall.

I point to the silver ankh with the blue, eye-of-Horus gemstone in the center of it, but Mom is already wheeling her suitcase into the hall near the stairs, opening the doorway under the stairs.

“What’s in here?” I say, expecting it to be a closet, but the dark space feels drafty, the shadows stacking in the distance. Afraid to enter, I look for a light switch, mainly out of fear of spider webs with spiders on them. I flick my phone light on, scanning the surprisingly large room full of cabinets.

“Weird. Some kind of storage room,” I say, pulling the string dangling ahead with a click, the light flicking on. But it’s only good for shining a few feet in diameter. There’s moonlight trickling in from a window far back in the room.

“I’ll look in here when it’s daylight,” I say, closing the door and following the black suitcase, rising, then clunking on each step until reaching the second floor.

The bathroom is dangerously near the stairs. I imagine one of us slipping in the night, bashing the brains on the ornate banister with the wooden leaves sticking out from it.

“Leena, look!” she squeals past the landing with her hand on her chest. “You could be twins!”

She gawks at a painting on the wall that is obviously Rachel in a red dress, her lengthy dark hair falling down her arms, and a Mona Lisa smile on her face as she sits on a bench with butterflies in the air and a trellis of flowers arching around her.

Mom looks at me, her brows pinched in confusion.

“Where has she gone? She should be here.”

My stomach drops.

“I’m not sure,” I shrug, keeping my cool. I can’t say the word dead. I can’t say the word alive. I can’t say anything definitive.

Continuing, we find relatively normal rooms, two with beds, but strangely, all three rooms are adjoined by pocket doors connecting in a circle, which seems like a master’s suite with an adjoining office and nursery.

I tilt my ear to the sound of a door or window slamming shut downstairs.

“Hello?” rises the tenor of a man’s voice, raising the hair on the back of my neck.

“Who the hell…?”

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