You Did Good

Fourteen

It's the next day, but none of them have allowed themselves to sleep into wink. They sit on the singular bed in the crappy motel room they found, their bodies still shake from what happened mere hours ago, their brains unable to wrap around it.

"I still think you two are full of shit," Benji says, pouting in the rocking chair he had claimed as his own. "I didn't see anything last night."

"Would you like to see my back again?" Renata bites. "Believe me, whatever that was, it was real."

"You're the ghost guy. How do you not believe us?" Seth asks.

"I got nothing but the Ouija board," he says. "I didn't even get anything on the spirit box. That was all you, Renata."

"So do you believe, or do you not believe? Because this is absolutely ridiculous." She crosses her arms across her chest. "I think you're just butt hurt."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Both of you are acting like children." Seth silences them by holding his hands out between them, his hand encompassing Renata's face while the other points a waening at Benji. "We are tired and obviously not equipped to mentally deal with whatever it is that we experienced."

"Or the lack thereof."

"Benji..."

"Fine, fine." He shakes his head. "How about we try to get some sleep, and then call the housekeeper in the morning? She'll want to know whatever it is that you two saw."

After agreeing, they all decide to try and get a few hours of sleep. They take turns dozing off, none too safe enough yet to allow themselves to be completely invulnerable. Even Benji, who saw nothing, has trouble finding peace, tossing and turning on the palate he makes himself at the foot of the bed. They take turns whispering conversations in the middle of the night, simply passing the time until the sun rises.

When it does, it is actually the housekeeper who calls them first.

Benji's phone ringing makes Seth jump in his dream-like state, and he frowns. "What time is it?"

"Morning, sunshines." The groundskeeper calls through the speakers of his phone. "Anything you would like to tell me last night? Maybe why there is glass everywhere in the dining room?"

"Right..." Renata drawls. "That."

"You used a mirror, didn't you?" She asks.

"Yes. I was trying to see the scratches on my back."

"You know you aren't supposed to use mirrors in the house." She scolds. "It's honestly a miracle that the one on the wall isn't broken yet. You said something scratched you?"

"It got her pretty good," Seth says.

"I thought it might have been Lorraine, but she swears up and down that she didn't." Renata adds. Subconsciously, she reaches towards her back. All night long, she had been running her fingers along the raised ridges, remember the pure terror she had felt at the house. Doing so reminds her that she isn't crazy, that everything that happened last night, as asinine as it seems to her rational brain, it's real. All of it.

As she reaches back, her fingers don't come in contact with the familiar ridges. In fact, there's nothing at all.

She opens her mouth to tell someone about her new unnerving discovery, only to be cut off by the housekeeper.

"Wait." She interrupts. "Lorraine?"

"Yeah." Benji nods, though she can't see. "The other groundskeeper you warned would come by to check on us. She stayed around for a while, helped a little."

"Until she abandoned me alone." Renata scowls.

Static crackles over the receiver. "Our other groundskeeper is named Dianne."

The group shares a look.

"Then who the hell was Lorraine?" Seth asks. "I mean, I was fine with her. She was a little creepy, but fine."

"Maybe we could find her for you?" Benji offers. "She knew what she was talking about. She made our night interesting."

"She should know what she's talking about." The lady snorts.

"Why's that?"

"I don't want to freak you out by no means, no more than you clearly already are..." She drawls. "But one of the girls? The one who died with Phoebe?

Her name was Elise Lorraine Mortley."