Fading Out

Chapter 6

Nick’s POV

It hurts the most when something you were about to attain is snatched away from you. I never really understood how one would let this happen to themselves. But as I stared at the door that stopped me from leaving, I finally understood. In one moment, I had lost my freedom. There were sounds all around me and I saw Daisy move her mouth and try to speak something but nothing penetrated. All I could see was the now closed door in front of me that had denied me my whole life just because I delayed a few moments.

Like all things, the shock went away but it left behind guilt and anger. Directed at who? I have no idea. Maybe at myself. For delaying. For caring about her to make that delay. Maybe at her. For choosing this punishment. For not warning me properly. For letting me get stuck in here. Yes, that was it. I wasn’t angry at her or myself. I was angry at both of us. The guilt needed no target. Every wrong act I had done today was more than enough to make me an unescapable mark.

I turned to look at Daisy and she looked sad as she stared at me. At her pity, anger rose within me. “You look so sad. If you are done faking it, would you mind getting back to your celebratory mood? If I have to stay here for fifty years, then I might as well know the true colours of my house-mate.” She flinched, in pain and shock, as my words hit her but I didn’t care. So I offered her a choice. “Open the door, Daisy.” I growled at her. “LET. ME. GO! I WANT TO GO!”

She paled in my anger and opened her mouth to speak. She didn’t even need to speak. I saw her entire posture radiate her helplessness. Still, I gave her a chance to try to make amends. “I get what you are feeling. I understand it. But that act took a lot of my power. I can’t even control my form now. I really didn’t want you to be stuck here. Nick! Where are you going? Nick!” She screamed at my back as I walked away from her.

“Don’t follow me!” I screamed back at her and kept moving. A loud annoyed huff escaped me and I wished the ghost wasn’t a girl or that I wasn’t beginning to like her because I wanted to beat someone up really badly. But I never could raise my hand on a ghost. So I chose to walk away and heard the angry noises my shoes made as I tried to let the old manor have my anger. If I was thinking, I would have been careful. One of my angry hard step fell on a rotten floorboard and I heard Daisy scream as I fell down into the darkness.

For a moment, I assumed the idea that maybe Daisy had created the rotten floorboard in anger but when it didn’t repair itself, I realized that this was my fault. And as I looked around the almost dark basement around me, a strange fear began to fill me. Fear of the unknown. And then I heard it. A sound that made my blood freeze in the veins. And then, to my horror, the sounds began to multiply. Double. Triple. Thirty times. A hundred times. Then I saw one come into my visibility.

A rat. I jumped back. One rat wasn’t scary. One hungry rat wasn’t scary either. But one hungry rat along with hundreds of its relatives in a haunted house where there was no food so they likely ate meat? That was very scary. These rats could be carnivorous. So I did the only sensible thing I could do. I screamed. “Daisy! Help!” I really should have thought this through.

Before I was done screaming, she came in front of me. Her ‘glad-you-are-okay-after-that-idiotic-move’ face immediately changed into a horrified one as she saw the rats and screamed. “Rats!” And very helpfully, she disappeared. That wasn’t sarcasm. She disappeared and the spooked rats ran away in fear of what they couldn’t understand. Um. Awkward. And then my mind finally cracked. It began with snort and then turned into a full-blown laughter as I realized what had just happened. Oh God, it was the stuff of cartoons. A woman scaring away rats with her scream.

The small light coming from above dimmed a little as a translucent head peeked in. “Are you okay?” Her voice was still spooked and I couldn’t help the laughter that erupted once more. All the anger and guilt was now forgotten as I held my stomach while laughing. “That wasn’t funny!” She spoke as she appeared in front of me in an annoyed tone.