The One Hiding Under Your Bed

“God it’s good to be home!” Kelly groaned, falling onto the grass on her front lawn. She breathed in the smell of our hometown’s not-so-fresh air, which always reeked of pot and gasoline, for we were adjacent to the parkway. She sat up to look up at me on the sidewalk. The back of her jacket was now wet with dew, and the back of her hair had started to curl into it’s natural state. She smiled.

“Yeah,” I moaned, “Just peachy!”

“Oh come on Sakura!” Kelly pleaded, “Don’t be like that! We haven’t seen home in months, because of the gigs upstate and down south.”

“Jersey’s not the south Kells,” I smirked. She glared at me for using her hated pet name, “Besides, I can look at it however the hell I want. You call it home-” I picked up a dead flower with a joint smoking at the petals. I pushed the smoking illegal substance into the storm drawer below. “I call it Hell.”

My band mates all sighed with disappointment. They all thought that maybe a few months away from my family issues with my mom and step dad would be good for me. Oh, but boy, were they wrong. Running away from my problems only made it worse.

“Hey,”Adelë started. I turned to face her, “You know what might cheer you up?”

“A house made of chocolate with an endless supply of Starbucks and a rather specific girl that I want to love me back and I can always use journals on Mibba?” I asked. She gave me an ‘Are you fucking kidding?’ look. “What? That’s what’d make me happy. Or something as bad ass as wee ninja. Whichever you think is better...”

“I don’t think Adelë was talking about something that big,” Emili explained, “Maybe she should continue?”

“Okay. I never stopped her from talking though. She asked.”

Adelë sighed with relief and continued, “What I was saying was I was thinking a visit is in order.”

“To where?” I asked, “Battle of the Bands? Japan? England?” I paused. “Alaska?”

“No,” Adelë stated. I turned away in disappointment, “Frankie.”

I gasped. “You mean Frankie Shaii Matthew Parker?!”

Frankie was a boy I’d met online back two Junes’ ago, and we’d been friends ever since. I couldn’t always relate so much to him, with his family issues, to sexuality, to taste in music. He was the loving brother I’d always wanted, but could never have. He was my everything.

But last October, he had left mysteriously on a, as he called it, “Holiday to Nowhere”. Luckily, he’d managed to walk all the way from his ‘home’ in Pennsylvania, to CI: Central Islip. He happened to stumble into my uncle, who recognized him from the pictures I’d shown him and his girlfriend. He called Jakob, Frankie’s older brother, and got him to come here. They'd moved to Kings Park last spring.

I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten him for that one moment. I felt guilty. I missed my muse.

Adelë nodded at this point. I pulled Kelly up off of the sidewalk and shuffled everyone into our crap ass van. “Then what are we waiting for?! Let’s go bitches!!!” I hoarded them into the back, but before Kelly and I got in, I turned and asked her something that was on my mind.

“What’s today’s date?” I asked. I felt like something was going on.

“Oh,” Kelly paused, and pulled out her phone, “It’s the thirtieth.”

“Of?”

“October.” I thought back, remembering something.

“Frankie’s birthday is tomorrow,” I stated.

“Yes.”

“Hm,” I mulled in the thought. As Kelly got in before me, I mumbled, “Interesting events are about to unfold.”
+++++++++++++++++++++

We arrived at Frankie’s house at promptly four o’ clock. I was the first to leap out of the vehicle and run to the door. I knocked repeatedly, until the doorknob began to jiggle. I stood back on the stoop as the wooden door crept open, like a small child sneaking a cookie at midnight, and came to an amazing site.

My significant other half, standing before me with his dark hazels and natural blonde hair.

“Oh my God!” he shrieked. He pulled me into his warm and loving embrace. “I didn’t know you were coming back this early.”

“Always expect the unexpected,” I told him. I could feel him smiling into my shoulder.

“I missed you,” he told, lightly kissing my cheek. I smirked as my returning gesture.

“I missed you too,” I replied. And with that, he pulled us all inside, and lead us to the main room.

I had never really been in Frankie’s house before, but he’d described it for me on his visits and in his calls. It was just at he’d described. On the outside, it looked like a piece of shit, with its rickety old furniture and cobwebs on the stairs, but on the inside, it was beautiful beyond words, with its charm and warm environment and the people inside.

We all took seats in the dusty old chairs and love seats scattered throughout the living room. Kelly spread herself out on a love seat, Adelë and Emili squished into a chair, and Frankie and I sat across from each other, the coffee table between us. Jakob was at the stores down the street.

We talked the whole afternoon, and Jakob joined us upon his return. As it began to get dark, he had to leave for work, which was the graveyard shift at the 7-ll down the street. He said he needed to pay rent somehow, and Frankie would have worked, but because of his leukemia, he couldn’t.

It got to be almost eight o’clock when I spoke up. “Let’s doing something for your birthday,” I said. He raised a brow at me. He never wanted anything for his birthday, and with his condition now, anything rigorous (such as rock climbing, as the doctor jokingly suggested) was out of the question.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked. I smiled.

“I thought maybe a camp out would be in order this evening,” I stated. Everyone fell into an awkward silence. Camping? Us? Ha, not really. “I thought a proper location would be Kings Park...”

Kings Park wasn’t only the name of the town, but was also the one of the state’s closed down psychiatric wards. It had, at one point, had running parts of it, but this past August while we were in Jersey, it finally closed for good. Now, it was a state park, with various buildings that were off limits, but certainly easy enough to sneak into.

“Really?” Frankie started. He thought for a moment. “Well, a haunted house is always in order on Halloween. I’m certainly healthy enough for the challenge.”

“Anyone else?” I asked. Of course, knowing them, everyone would go.

Not quite though. “That’s crap,” Adelë told me, “It’s dangerous, and there’s no such things as ghosts or poltergeists, or anything of that sort!”

“If you don’t believe Adelë,” Frankie started, “Then why are you so scared?”

Adelë went red with fury, and silently agreed, still muttering to herself. We all laughed at her ways, for we knew that was the only sense she had left in the small piggy bank she called a mind. But was she right? Would we go there, looking for ghosts, but only find poison ivy and broken brick?

We began to prepare, taking three air mattresses and sticking them in a large black duffel bag that we found in the hall closet. Right before we went out the door, I went into Frankie’s room and pulled out my dust hand carved Ouija Board. My mom had bought it for me for Christmas a couple of year back, but now, after defying her and dying my hair black and kissing my girlfriend in my room while she’s at work, she was out to destroy me.

She might as well have disowned me, from trying to burn my songbook, to forcing antidepressants the doctor prescribed down my throat. It was obvious Frankie, Jakob, and Damien were all I had, other than the band. I quickly pulled myself out of that thought, and place one of the mattresses over the black as night letters.

I ran down the stairs with the bag in tow, and we were quickly out the door. We took Frankie’s car, because it would be less suspicious than a van in the parking lot. We drove quietly, humming one of my songs as we sped past the toll. There was no security after ten, which it happened to be half past now.

It took us an hour to find a building and break in. We decided to stay in the tallest one, with most of the broken windows, and, in my opinion, probably the most activity. The morgue happened to be in that building, for I remembered my mom taking picture of it through the broken glass. Technically, we were breaking two laws. Number one: we were off the grounds. And Two: we were doing a B and E: Breaking an Entering.

We settled in a room on the first floor, with easy escape and hardly any light. The first thing we did was unpack and light four unscented candles. We placed them in a square type position. We turned off our cell phones and made sure nothing lit up. We were doing serious shit.

For the first hour, from eleven to twelve, we were simply messing around, not taking anything seriously at all. That was a mistake already. The spirits weren’t going to listen, or take us seriously with our attitudes. Then again, it was for fun. What’s the worst that could happen?

When midnight struck and all was perfectly black, we knew the Witching Hour had begun. One sentence: Time for fun. We were about to put our hands on the Ouija board when something happened that made us jerk back. The Ouija was moving, fast, on its own. This went on for several minutes, and suddenly, it stopped at the letter “U”. We all stopped to stare, and then, at that moment, almost stopped breathing.

Everyone was staring behind me, shallowly breathing. I could feel something staring at the side of my head, but whatever it was, it was in my blind spot, out of my peripheral vision. I felt it touch my cheek. It was cold, so I assumed it was the wind. One thing that I always taught myself was to Never Assume. I realized then it couldn’t be the wind. The cold was still, and only moved from the front of my cheek to the beginning of my jaw. Then, before I knew it, it was gone.

We didn’t move. We didn’t breath. It was the Witching Hour, and all paranormal activity had taken place. It really was “Time to play.” But not for us. For the souls dwelling on Earth.

Kelly gasped somewhat quietly as she stared at the wall behind me. “What?” I mouthed. She did one of those shaky ‘Don’t look behind you it’s there!’ kind of point to the wall. I slowly, and somewhat bravely, turned to see what it was. low and behold, there it was. A silvery figure, standing right there. I stared at it for a moment, afraid to blink. When I did give my eyes a break, it was gone.

And at that moment, A black mass moved over the window, our only supply of light. We all froze. None of us tried to breathe, but Frankie was shaking in fear, and started to breath a little heavily. I wanted so much just to hold him, but alas, I could not. I could not move. I could not breathe.

Suddenly, a silver figure came running past. It was fast. So fast, that if you had blinked, you would have missed it. We were freaking out now. Even Adelë, who didn’t believe, was pissing herself in fear.

Then, I heard it. A crash, a grunt, a psychotic child’s laugh, a thunk, and finally a scream. The mass then moved away from the window, giving me enough light to see Frankie, on the floor, clutching his shoulder.

“Oh my God!” I exhaled, “Oh my GOD!!!” I quickly ran over to Frankie, and tried to help him up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he told me. I propped himself up on his elbow.

“What the fuck happened?!” i asked, scared shitless. At that moment, I could just make out distorted laughter ringing through the walls.

“I don’t know,” he told me, “I was sitting there, and suddenly, I felt someone, or something, push me down. Hard. Ugh.” He keeled over a bit. “I feel like I was punched in the gut.” He put his head in his hands, to get his act together. He tried to catch his breath, for you could tell he had just had the wind knocked right out of him.

I lay a hand on his shoulder, and rubbed his back consolingly. I looked over to my friends and band mates, who were all freaking out. Emili was clutching Adelë, who was about to have a nervous breakdown. Kelly had her eyeliner smeared on her cheeks from the tears for fears. Even I, who has gone through so much and fears nothing, was scared. My other half was hurt, and so were my sisters. God, we should get out.

It was twelve forty-five now, and there was still activity. I suddenly felt like someone was slapping or punching my back repeatedly. I cringed in pain, and helped Frankie up. I swung my arm back to shoo away the angered spirit, but it was already gone. Shit, this place is scarier than I ever imagined. We gotta get out.

Just as we packed up the mattresses, we heard the psychotic laughter again. It was getting loud now, and we all started screaming. I felt something grab me from behind, like a rapist would, and I started to smell blood from the morgue. It smelled fresh, though I knew it wasn’t. We heard screams that weren’t our own. Blood curdling screams of pain.

At that moment, we all bolted out of that building and into the streets. We didn’t even grab the car in the lot down the other way. We just ran straight for Frankie’s house, which wasn’t that far at all.

When we got back, we had realized we forgotten the car, but waited until Jakob arrived to explain. When we told the story, he sighed, and took us to get the car. De drove it back, and Frankie took his brother’s, for he was scared a spirit would come and get him if we got out.

As we drove back, I sighed in the passenger seat. I turned to Frankie, and said:

“Happy Birthday, right?”