𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐝𝐝𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 • 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐛𝐲 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤

eight

I woke up the next morning in my own bed. I looked over at Colby's and saw him still asleep, so I silently grabbed clothes and went to do my thing in the bathroom. I took the laundry I had collected yet with me down the stairs.

"Hey Sam," I smiled at him. He was seated at the kitchen table, doing something on his computer.

"Hey there," he smiled back at me and looked at my laundry bag. "Do you need help?"

"If you could point me in the direction of the washing machine," I snickered. "That would be very helpful."

He pointed at the door behind him. "Right there."

"Thank you," I replied. "Do you have anything that needs to be washed?"

"Oh, yeah, thank you! It's in the basket on top of the machine," he answered and I nodded smiling.

I continued into the room and separated dark from light, then put in the dark laundry first. While the machine was doing its thing, I made breakfast. And with breakfast, I meant that I threw some granola in a bowl and mixed it with yogurt and fruit, all items I had bought yesterday. I sat down in front of Sam. "Whatcha doing?"

"I am trying to find some video inspiration," he replied, looking up at me and closing his laptop. "Got any ideas?"

"Hmm," I said, pondering. "What do your viewers like to watch?"

"Well, they really love the spooky videos," Sam answered. "But it's been so long since I last did a 3 a.m. challenge video and I feel like I don't really want to mess with that anymore."

"You've always been such a skeptic," I said. "What changed that?"

"Well," he started. "I had been doing these 3 a.m. challenges for a while. Just trying to prove to myself that there was something more than just this life, you know?" I nodded and he continued. "Weird things started happening around the house but it was never really entirely inexplicable. Colby and I, and sometimes a couple others, started visiting scary, haunted places around California and sometimes even outside of that. We went to the Queen Mary with two other guys and the ship intrigued us so much that when they announced they would open up their most haunted room, we had to go."

"Room B340," I replied. "I heard a lot about that."

"Yeah, that's the room. We booked it and were going to stay there overnight for a video. It was me, Colby, Aaron, Jake and Corey, so you can confirm whatever I am telling you with them," he spoke, occasionally looking at his hands. "At first, not a lot happened. We heard a couple things, but it was nothing major. Later that night, things started getting real. The faucet turned on for like a couple of seconds when we were just about to leave, talking about how much we just wanted a sign, so we stayed. We then noticed things usually happened when the camera was off, we thought it scared them off, so we all agreed to not take out anymore cameras and we just sat there in the dark, it was around 4 a.m., everyone was quiet."

I swallowed my last spoon of the granola mixture and put the bowl aside, intently listening to Sam as he talked on. "We started asking questions, and that's when it got freaky. We told whatever was in there to answer with knocks. One for yes, more than one for no. And it replied, every time we asked something."

"What?" I replied and Sam sighed, nodding. "What did you do?"

"We just kept on asking questions. And I can't even begin to explain what it felt like. The knocks came from all over the room, sometimes even from outside the window, and, you know, we were on a ship so nobody could've possibly reached that spot. We had been talking to it for a while, and me and my stupid ass, I asked..." he sighed deeply and rubbed his eyes. "I asked if there is any sort of Heaven."