CREEPER

2.

Vanessa is just standing there, eyeing me. Clearly, she is waiting for me to say something, but I am at a loss for words. This definitely seems like something Mom or Aunt Lydia should have mentioned.

My eyes can't pull away from the house.

"You really don't know?" she asks suspiciously.

"I can promise you I really didn't," I reply.

Vanessa steps closer, breaking my gaze. "Well don't worry too much about it. Despite what you may have heard, it isn't actually haunted."

I almost scoff. Everyone in America seems to think otherwise according to the things I read on the way here. But I guess the girl who lives in there would know best.

The sudden reality that I almost certainly look like a lunatic sets in. This is so embarrassing. I practically face palm.

"I am so, so sorry for scaring you if I did," I say as apologetically as I possibly can. "I haven't slept since yesterday honestly."

"No, no worries," but I can tell it is half genuine. So much for making a friend. "Better safe than sorry though, right? You never know. Have a good night though Eva!"

I make sure to take off before her and run my lame ass back inside the house. With the door locked behind me I could almost collapse to the floor. I am so stupid. So stupid! I haven't slept in so long, of course my head is going to be playing tricks on me.

That poor girl probably just thought I am a true crime junkie trying to find an excuse to get into her house. Oy. I need to get some sleep, but first maybe a nice hot shower to wash the train odor off my body.

Upstairs in the bathroom next to my bedroom, I crank on the hot water, letting the steam envelop me a moment before undressing. The sound of the water hitting the tiles promises relief.

I strip off my clothes, tossing them into a corner. I catch a glimpse of myself in the massive mirror- tired eyes, disheveled hair. But there is something else too. A smirk I can't seem to get rid of.

Sure. I just made an idiot of myself, but I can't deny it is pretty cool that Aunt Lydia lives next door to that house. I still don't understand why or how I didn't know about this until now. Mom never brought me here for that exact reason. You would think she would have warned me before coming here. But I guess after what happened she felt it was the lesser of two evils, truly.

Still, now I can't help myself but want to find out more about that place. About what happened. I can't just spend an entire week here and not know all the lore.

I grab my phone from the counter, the screen fogging from the steam. Quickly, I open up Spotify and search in podcasts for anything about the house.

"Gotcha," I mutter, tapping an episode titled "Haunted Havens: Harbor Hell House Unraveled". A little on the nose, but I will take it.

The narrator's voice fills the room, crisp and engaging, as I set the phone back down and finally get into the shower.

"The year is 1982. All peace and innocence in the town of Concord Harbor, Maine is lost. Rocked by the savage murder of an entire family. At the epicenter of this heinous crime is a house, and a sixteen year-old boy named Grady Riley... we begin."

I close my eyes and lean against the tiled wall, letting the words wash over me as much as the water. The narrator describes the murders in chilling detail.

The Riley family: Brady and Helen Riley. Mom and Dad. Executed point range in bed with a shotgun. Shelly, the youngest child, found hanging in the closet. Todd, the oldest son, recently graduated from high school, gutted in front of the living room tv, all of his insides on the outside.

Even in this heat, I manage to shiver at the thought of it all.

"And what of the middle child?" the narrator continues. "Grady Riley, the lone survivor of this massacre."

If you could even call him a survivor. According to him, he came home from a party at his girlfriend's house to find his family all murdered. But, his girlfriend had come by the next day into the mess and found him in some kind of trance and covered in blood mumbling.

"Now you may be asking, what makes this tragedy so shocking? Why has this gripped the nation for almost forty years? Family annihilators aren't all that uncommon. Just look at Chris Watts.

"There are parts of this that still don't make sense to this day, even with improvements into forensics and crime scene investigation. And if there is one thing we all love, it is an unsolved murder."

No shit sherlock. That is putting it lightly, but I keep listening, taking it all in.

Just about everyone in town believed that Grady butchered his family. The why? They weren't just killed, their bodies were desecrated. Their blood used to draw what everyone assumed was satanic symbols on almost every inch of wall in the house.

"But what would have driven Grady to this madness?"

A sudden noise startles me, and I open my eyes, heart pounding. It's just the pipes, groaning as the water pressure shifts. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself down.

That is enough of that for tonight. I reach out for my phone and pause the podcast. I'm too tired to be rational apparently.

I can't help but think about the article I had read on the way down here, talking about the house in the years after the murders. Flickering lights. Shadows in the windows. Screams in the dead of night.

God, why did I do this to myself. It is going to take my entire jar of melatonin to actually knock out now.

No wonder Mom never came around here. Poor soul.

The water has started to cool. RIP to Aunt Lydia's water bill. Reluctantly, I turn off the shower, grabbing a towel and wrapping it around myself.

Back in my bedroom, I can't help but glance out the window at the house. Silent and dark. I reach for the curtain to pull it closed so it can't watch me sleep. Yet, just as it closes, I see my reflection in the window, but it isn't alone.

I freeze, locked in eye contact with him, right behind me. I can't get myself to turn around and face him.

He shouldn't be here.

He can't be here.

He isn't.

It is him, but it isn't. He is just barely visible. His lips, white, and moving as if talking, but not a sound can be heard except my bated breathing and the loud emptiness of the house.

This can't be real. I am just tired.

"Ben?"

Without a second thought, I whip around. He isn't here though. He never was.

I fall to my knees. I came this far and still can't escape it, him. No. I have just scared myself into this. Gotta get my shit together. I force out a pathetic laugh that only half makes me feel better.

My legs are shakier than ever, but I manage to get myself up off the creaking floor. I dig into my suitcase for the baggiest shirt to throw on and my melatonin, the only thing that has helped me sleep this last little while.

Even for a guest bed this bed is comfier than I could have dreamed, but it could just be the fact I haven't been in a bed in weeks. The couch wasn't as hauntingly lonely. But he's never been in this bed.

With three melatonin down I curl up with music playing softly from my phone. Frank Ocean and these gummies are my formula for the deepest of sleeps. But it isn't Frank I want to hear. Even if it was my imagination, I wish I could hear it...

...what Ben was trying to say.