Quiet Hours

You ever get that feeling like you’re being watched? Even with your eyes closed the tactile heat from their glare makes the hair on your body stiffen and stand up. When you move into a new house you get a bunch of strange feelings like that, especially if it’s a much larger space the you were used to. This time however, as I lay in bed trying to force myself to go to sleep I got the feeling much stronger than before. I would have normally just ignored it and gone to sleep but for whatever reason I opened my eyes. It takes the brain milliseconds to process information but I think when you’re groggy time isn't the same. My body was frozen stiff and burned all at the same time as adrenaline rushed to snatch me awake. My stomach felt as if I had fallen from some great height where the pit inside grew larger until my heart sank down into its abyss. Floating right above my face were two round flat-white orbs encompassing dark brown rings, with even deeper black holes in the middle of both. My brain told my body that it was time to scream but my burning frozen muscles felt as if they were all pulling in the opposite direction of what was instructed. The scream finally cut through between gasps as my body broke free from the hold of the darkness where I sat up alone in bed. 

That was my first encounter and luckily my wife Mary, was away on a business trip otherwise I’m sure she would have called the paramedics. I turned on every light in the house checking every room like a kid being left alone by their parent’s for the first time. You that cliche in the movies where the couple moves into the obviously haunted house but the husband tries to rationalize it because it was such a good deal? Well, I was halfway there but mostly we couldn’t just go to the bank and say “whoops the house is haunted.” We were both tired of living in apartments and all the not so fun things associated with shared living spaces. We just wanted space to be together, alone. This wasn’t some old dilapidated fixer upper, it was a normal unassuming three bedroom house with a large magnolia in the front yard. The previous owner lived in the house until the late 90’s when they started renting it out. Even with renters the place was kept in great condition by the owners but they never lived in it again. That would have obviously been a red flag if I knew then what I know now. Still, I did a bit of research and aside from a report of a domestic dispute by a couple living there, not much happened. 

A few days after the first encounter when my mind had settled I thought I might have just dreamed it. It happened in the middle of the night and I wasn’t able to scream until whatever it was had gone. Sleep paralysis crossed my mind but like any person who had seen posts on the paranormal, I started researching. I had the gas company come check for leaks and the city to check the water table to make sure we weren’t drinking lead. I even started checking the house for strange carvings and hidden rooms but I couldn’t find anything. When Mary returned I realized how silly I might have looked so I didn’t even tell her why I was doing what I was doing. From her point of view I was just taking care of all the things a house needs. It was quiet for a few days until the next small occurrence. 

It was a Saturday and I was working on an article for a freelance job. I was sitting at the kitchen table in front of the bay window occasionally watching some squirrels run down and bounce around in the grass. It was a very peaceful level of sound that you couldn’t get with others living in such close proximity. There were kids playing out near the street but I could only barely hear the occasional yell. The peaceful mood had made me all but forget about the strange happening until I saw Mary’s reflection approaching in the window. Since the blinds were open the glare made it seem as if she was floating towards me in her bath robe, while the towel she used to dry her hair looked as if she was hanging herself. I turned around quickly to see she wasn’t doing that and sighed in relief. 

“What did you want?” She asked. 

“Hm? Nothing?” I replied a bit confused. She gave me a look as if to say “come on now.”

“You knocked on the door when I was in the shower.” She replied rubbing her hair some more leaning her head to the side. I almost had to stop myself from letting out a nervous laugh. All those silly thoughts I had before were creeping back into my head. I should have just told her that I hadn’t moved in over an hour when she was in the shower for 30 minutes, but I just smiled. 

“Oh? What did you want for lunch?” I asked. She looked at me for a moment and let her towel plop unto her shoulders. 

“Really?” She asked dryly. I grabbed my phone and pulled up the delivery app and gave it to her. 

“Yeah you chose, I picked the last 3 times.” She playfully snatched my phone walked off but in the window there was still a reflection. 

“Next time knock like a normal person. I thought the house was on fire.” She said going back to the bathroom. That was strange, I would have heard knocking that loud from the kitchen but there was nothing. If ghosts really did exist then they couldn’t do anything to the living right? I mean if that wasn’t the case then how could you explain people still being okay after doing some of the most devious things you could think of to another person, taking their lives in the process? I did find reports of people seeing the ones they wronged on their deathbed but those were patients with declining mental faculties. I wasn’t sure if mine weren’t starting to head over to the hill as well. 

The next few weeks it was just small things like movement always in my periphery, scratching within the walls and things not being where I left them. Could have been bugs, mice or even just me being forgetful but Mary as well? She never forgot a thing and if I ever lost something she knew exactly where it was. The first time she said the words, “well that’s odd," I knew things were not just isolated to me. I thought that it was maybe extra stress, closing on the house and finding all the fun parts about being a new home owner. It could have been the extra hours I was spending freelancing, because one night while proofreading an essay for a college student on the East coast, I sat in the same spot in front of the bay window. The glow from my computer screen cast reflection on in the glass and since it was dark out it was all I could see. That, and whatever was illuminated of the long hall towards the bedroom behind me. I rubbed my eyes for a moment until I saw those multi colored blobs and when I opened them the reflection show the light on behind me. When I turned around however the hallway was still only lit by the glow from my screen. I sat there looking at the darkness for a while because I felt that feeling again, someone or something was watching me. After a few more moments of staring into the dark until my eyes adjusted I turned around and in the reflection with the hall light on there was someone standing over me. I immediately closed my laptop lid so hard that I caught a hangnail on my thumb, which if anything was going to make me scream those two were at the top of the list. I clenched my jaw so tight I felt like I was going to crack my teeth. Just like in elementary school I put my head down on the table and choked that scream down while I could clearly hear something breathing behind me. Actually I wouldn’t call it breathing, it was more like someone humming into a box fan distorting their voice. 

That was enough for me so I figured it was time to tell Mary what was going on. She said she heard knocking at the bathroom door so I wonder what else she had seen or heard. I couldn’t for the life of me think of a good way to bring it up so I just hovered behind her as she sat on the couch. I think she was reading a book because she was very still. I fumbled around with some things in the kitchen while trying to muster the nerve, muttering to myself. 

“Hey babe, I think I know why we got a such a good deal. No…that sound stupid. Hey, I think the house is haunted, but it might just be in our heads. You remember that one movie we saw with the kid who could see dead people?” I chuckled to myself as I grabbed the two wooden posts sticking out of the chair at the kitchen table. 

“What is it honey?” She asked. 

“Oh nothing, I was just thinking about something absurd.” 

“Absurd…how so?” 

“Like we might have a gho—.” My words stopped in my throat as I looked up from the chair to see Mary pulling into the driveway. I gripped the edges of the chair so hard if felt like the wood was going to splinter into my hands. Fingers spring over my shoulders where I could see them in the reflection but I didn’t feel anything physical. Just the weight of my fear and sweat beginning to drip from under my arms. Then the hair on my ear tingled as the voice cut through those hypothetical plastic box fans blades. 

“A ghoooooost?” The voice said as I looked down, refusing to glance at the reflection in the window but Mary screamed. She dropped the bags she was holding which snapped me out of my fear. I ran out to help her while she just tried to rationalize what she saw. From her point of view I was standing in the window and there was half formed woman’s body seemingly floated behind me. The cat was pretty much out of the bag by that point and although she was angry at me for not speaking up we knew two facts. One, we weren’t both going crazy and two, there was indeed something else living or existing in our house besides us. After talking with the owners again they finally came clean that they knew something was in the house and they even had an idea who what it was. They sent us a picture of their daughter Angie who passed away due to an illness when she was a teenager. This man had the nerve to tell me that she wasn’t dangerous and all we had to do was acknowledge her every now and then. She used to do this thing where she used to watch them sleep, but mostly because she was afraid to wake them up. She was so quiet that she could sneak up behind them like a cat and they wouldn’t know it. Another thing she did which really both irked and amused her parents was talking into their box fan. I must admit that after hearing that I laughed, Mary laughed even harder. They were right, after we acknowledged her existence and I didn’t crap myself whenever she was around things were just playful. She even stopped when we told her it was too much or let us know she was sorry by knocking softly. It seemed that even though we now had a house, the ghost of shared living was still with us, but are we really ever alone? At least this one respected the quiet hours.