Truly Madly Ghostly

Chapter Nineteen: Lure of Dark Eyes

"What?" Charlotte so wanted to take steps away from Rebecca to make a good distance between them. The woman's sniffing was making her feel so uncomfortable.

She was thinking that she reeked of sweat or whatever, but here she was being told that she smelt of a spirit—as in a ghost. Nova's mother was clearly one weird woman who also ran a very weird business. 

Who knew people can smell a ghost like a dog sniffs out gunpowder.

"Mom!" Nova shrieked in embarrassment from where she was standing near the counter.

"Hush, child." With a finger pressed to her lips Rebecca turned briefly to her daughter, telling her to be quiet. Then she turned back and moved her hand as though she was touching something invisible surrounding Charlotte's body snugly.

Frowning, Charlotte leant away from Rebecca's reach.

Rebecca dropped her hands. "Are you being haunted by a spirit, dear?" When instead of replying Charlotte's frown remained intact and she looked at Nova for some help, Rebecca asked even more questions, "Any paranormal activities around you? Things you can't explain? Objects disappearing even when you clearly remember you've kept them at certain places, and then reappearing on their designated place without any contribution from your part?" Rebecca tilted her face with a haunted look on her own face. "Do you see shadows? Things uncanny? Do the lights flicker or bursts or always burn out no matter how frequently you change them in your home?"

Something clicked inside Charlotte.

"Have you ever found doors or windows of your home opened even when you clearly remember closing them?"

Charlotte stilled. Memories flashed on her mind.

"Do you sense, strongly, eyes on you from the shadows, from darkness? Do you feel allured to it? Does the temperature around you suddenly drops to freezing cold or heat up abnormally no matter the season?"

Charlotte was so startled she sucked in a sharp breath.

Rebecca clasped her hands together and a hint of a knowing smile twitched on her mouth. "You have, haven't you? All this things and more strange things are happening around you, with you, am I right or am I right?"

It took a moment before Charlotte regained her composure. She straightened and crossed her arms, although still looking quite overwhelmed by all this. It was mind-boggling the fact that she was experiencing half the things Rebecca had mentioned—lights flickering and dying out, finding numerous times the balcony door mysteriously open even when she could clearly remember locking it tight. She even recalled the day Linda had come with her weird warning about not staying out at the balcony after sunset and after she scrambled away even more weirdly, Charlotte had sensed eyes on her from the darkness of the corridor. And, guess what, even all the lights had been dead then. Then every now and then there was this change of the temperature—this sudden, bone chilling, goose-bumps erupting cold she had been encountering since moving to her new apartment and had gotten used to with it slowly.

If it was a coincidence that everything Rebecca asked about or, more like, insinuated matched so scarily to what she had been truly experiencing, then it was perhaps one of the most enormous coincidences that had occurred and would ever occur in her entire lifetime.

But too bad Charlotte didn't believe in illogical stuff. She never had, she never would.

"I don't believe in ghosts, ma'am," she said the truth.

Rebecca's small but soft smile didn't change by that, just sparkle of wisdom glassed on her eyes. "You not believing in them won't make them not exist, child."