Page 16 of His to Haunt

The smell of her hair as she bent, clasping hands with me. Skin to skin, skipping along the sidewalk, chanting, Don’t step on a crack or break your Mama’s back. The sudden memory was overwhelming, and I blinked away tears before finally falling into a restless sleep.

I’m not the kind of person who does well without solid sleep. It wasn’t just because I was in my missing and probably dead sister’s bed, which is bad enough. Adding to it, there was a weird, echoey metallic noise coming from below the house. Asa psychologist in training, naturally, I questioned whether I was really hearing these sounds or my tired mind was imagining them.

But what I heard was too distinct to just be my imagination, and the storm had passed by then, so there wasn’t any wind.

When Mom showed up in my room complaining about the noise, I finally concluded that the sounds were real. We can’t both be hearing things.

But the sounds can be explained, of course.

My theory is that the air vent came on and was rattling a cabinet door or something. I haven’t been down to the basement, so I don’t know what’s down there. But it being used for embalming, I assume there must be supply storage.

But then there is the other thing that happened last night. Topping it all off was the weird delusion I had due to lack of sleep. During that dazed moment, caught between dreaming and reality, just before falling into stage 1 sleep, I heard something—sort of a whooshing sound. I opened my eyes in the darkness, inhaling a spicy pine scent. Pine and…something else that I couldn’t identify. Sulfer-like.

But it wasn’t me opening my eyes. I was Rachel again. Only this time, I wasn’t a little girl. Fuzzy-eyed, I blinked, trying to adjust my focus on a strip of light that seemed to be coming from the wall, where a pale, psychotic eyeball centered on a jagged slit was staring back at me.

What the…fuck?

I knew it wasn’t real because this was Rachel seeing this, dreaming this, not me.

But I lay there feeling awake and watching the eyeball watch me until my tired lids were finally too heavy to hold. When I woke, there was something on my bed, tugging at the sheets. My legs felt cold, exposed by a draft. No, naked. My pants were no longer on.

The muscled weight of a man stretched between my thighs, as large hands pressed upward under my top, finding my breasts with cold hands. Before I could scream, his fully thickened cock tapped against my clit like a night demon waiting to be invited inside.

Terrified, I slapped him in the face, screaming to get off me! I balled my hands in fists, punching him in the side of the head until he vanished in thin air.

A crazy freaking nightmare.

I can’t shake the image of the pale eyeball and the feel of the foreign body against me as I get dressed—leggings, tennies, and a tee—to go to the grocery store. I mean, why the hell am I suddenly dreaming in Rachel-mode? I’ve never had a dream that felt so real before.

Now that I think of it, these weird dreams started happening the day I got the news about the inheritance.

Explaining it all to Mom wasn’t easy, especially since she’s still in denial that Rachel is gone. I think she wanted to remind me of how real Rachel still is by putting Rachel’s old jewelry box in my hands before we moved. One of the few things left behind by Rachel. But now the box is here, of course.

I pulled it out this morning and put it on a shelf in this room; it’s proper place if Rachel hadn’t abandoned it. A tall white box with ballerina slippers and flowers painted all over it, with gold hardware and a turning key on the back to play the music.

When Mom had first given it to me, I was reluctant to open it. But then, one night, I felt compelled. Maybe I just wanted to see if the thing still played.

I opened it, sorting through jewelry and tooth-fairy relics we used to get in a little baggie along with cash under our pillows. Then I became distracted by the wooden object at the back of the blue velvet-lined compartment. Cross-like with a loop at the top and dagger-shaped below, the dark wood Ankh, which Rachelcalled her amulet, had been given to her by her dad when she turned thirteen. A family heirloom. I don’t know why she left it behind.

When I held it in my hand, that’s when I had the weird notion that Rachel was there with me. Then, when I fell asleep, she was with me again in my dream. That was the first time I dreamt in Rachel-mode.

Mourning is a strange, complex thing. I mean, this is how my mind is learning to process the reality that Rachel is gone forever? By feeling her presence so closely that when I dream, it’s like I am her. Not what I was expecting, but I haven’t much control over it. I need time. That’s all.

Maybe when I’m at the office, I can find a book in their legendary library about the mourning process. It’s not something I studied in great depth in college beyond the basic stages. Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

Mom is in stage one: denial. Exacerbated by her dementia. I must be in stage three: bargaining. My dreams are my way of trying to sort out the time and lack thereof I had with Rachel or maybe even to try to negotiate an alternative ending.

If my dad was abusing Rachel, and Mom had known early on and kicked him to the curb, would Rachel have still left home at sixteen? If she hadn’t left, would she still be alive? Bargaining. That’s what I’m doing. Understanding the process doesn’t make me immune.

Sighing, I head off to the local grocery store, trying not to think about Zand or Rachel or Mom or how nervously excited I am that Kimmie is en route to visit.

For the sake of sanity, I promised myself that I would focus on my new opportunity here. The beginning of something great. A future in a chosen career that I was willing to go into college debt for, also in hopes of paying off.

But as I skip the local tiny grocery store for something bigger in neighboring Colma, it seems my mind is as restless awake as it was last night when I was supposed to be sleeping. I still can’t get the creepy image of the eyeball from my head. It seemed real.

I find myself sitting in the grocery cafe on my phone, logged into my go-to psych research database. Rather than reading about the mourning process, I’m reading about anomalistic psychology, which is filled with scientific explanations for the different types of paranormal phenomena that people believe themselves to have experienced.

When people believe in something, they are more suggestible and more likely to experience confirmation bias.

---