Old houses creak.
The mantra wasn’t working. Neither were the blankets tucked up to Erin’s nose, suffocating everything but a stubbornly persistent fear.
She’d left her bedroom door open out of habit, but she’d begun to wonder if it would be worth it to escape the safety of her bed to slam it shut.
Another groan echoed from the hallway. Fresh shivers rippled up Erin’s nerves. Old houses creak, she repeated to herself, as if the words could actually make a difference.
Why had her dad chosen to purchase this rickety old mansion anyway? Mom’s house may not have been a palace, but it was clean and cozy and—
A pair of muffled clunks sounded from beyond Erin’s bedroom walls. She strangled a squeak and yanked her blankets up to her eyes.
—Mom’s place definitely wasn’t haunted.
If only Dad had said no just this once to late-night drinks with his work pals…Erin needed someone to hear her if she had to scream.
The thuds repeated themselves. Erin couldn’t deny it sounded like something shuffling itself around the house.
That can’t be footsteps. Old houses make a lot of noises that sound just like footsteps, after all. That absolutely cannot be footsteps…
But no matter how hard Erin tried to will it to silence, the thunking refused to stop.
She was torn between shifting her position to peek out the door, or staying still and remaining oblivious to any possible danger. Would a ghost leave her alone if she pretended to be asleep? She didn’t care if it just wanted to wander about, after all.
Though if it was something more sinister than a wandering spirit…
In the movies, the protagonists always armed themselves with crucifixes, rosaries, and holy water whenever they had to face off against a demon. But Erin didn’t have any of those things. The best she could do was the high-end custom lightsaber her father had gotten for her for her birthday. It propped outside her closet door.
After a breathless second to debate, Erin flung off the covers and leapt towards the closet. She braced to slam into the door, but stumbled to a stop just short of a painful collision. She reached out to snatch the saber, then pivoted, launching herself back towards the bed. She faceplanted into the mattress with an ungraceful oof.
Erin pushed upright, cradling the saber against her chest. Was it safer to duck back under the covers, or lie in wait near the door for an attack? She certainly wasn’t going out there to meet the thing. If it didn’t want to bother her, then she didn’t want to risk bothering it.
A new idea sprung into Erin’s head. Possibly insane—but she was being fueled by blind fear and screaming adrenaline now.
She dashed to the bed and tugged on the sheets, dislodging the top blanket in a series of determined yanks. She fluttered the fabric over her head, enveloping her in a curtain of softness. She wrangled it until she opened up a small sliver before her eyes. One arm emerged from the pale folds to brandish her lightsaber.
She tiptoed to the door. Were ghosts scared of other ghosts? Would it be able to tell if she wasn’t dead?
Moonlight struggled into the hall from the windows on either end. Shadows swathed everything in between. To Erin’s right, almost all the way down the corridor, a staircase led down to the lower floor.
The thuds were coming from somewhere near the stairs. So the thing hadn’t gotten upstairs yet. A bit of relief sighed its way out of Erin’s chest.
If she hadn’t been spotted yet, then that meant she still had time to dash to another hiding place. As if the thing somehow knew who lived here, and that Erin was in her bedroom…but she felt better going to a place where it wasn’t obvious people might’ve been. If there was a chance she was going to be discovered, then she wanted to make sure she had the element of surprise on her side.
Erin glanced at the lightsaber clutched within her clammy grip. It might prove unwieldy if her goal was to achieve stealth. Reluctantly, she lowered it to rest on the wall beside the door. She could always grab another object if need be.
She headed for the stairs first. She couldn’t see anything in the shadows below, but the thuds echoed far too crisply for her taste now.
Erin spun around to face the rest of the hall—and she had an idea.
Clenching her blanket tighter, she sprinted down the corridor, twisting and thrusting each door open as she reached them. Her footsteps masked behind the creaking and slamming of wood against the weathered doorjambs.
Once no entrance in the hall had been left untouched, Erin chose a room and snuck inside, murmuring prayers she didn’t know under her breath.
The air shivered with the exhausted groan of the final stair. Then the thing’s footsteps muffled against the upstairs carpet.
Erin peeked out from her hiding spot, crouched behind an old chair in view of the ajar door.
That definitely wasn’t her dad back early from his night out. Whatever it was, it looked only vaguely humanoid, draped in dark clothes with a face obscured in shadow. The sharp glinting on its face might’ve been eyes.
Erin held her breath, waiting until the thing had bypassed the room where she hid before sprinting back out into the hall. Her blanket fluttered like a cape in her wake. She jumped onto the stairs and pivoted to peer behind her.
The thing trudged into another room. Erin waited until it had disappeared before dashing up and yanking the door shut.
The thing rammed against the wood from the inside. Erin stifled a shriek, but the door held.
Thin black lines spiraled from the doorknob, too inky and janky to simply be cracks.
Shit. Erin scrubbed over her sleep-mussed hair. Salt…demons didn’t like salt, right?
She scrambled down to the kitchen, then rummaged as quickly as she could through the cabinets, cursing that she hadn’t memorized where everything was yet. Finally, with the prized canister in hand, she flew back up the stairs.
The next moment would either prove Erin to be a genius, or the world’s biggest idiot. She thrust the shaker at the door, loosening a shower of glittering white grains. They speckled against the black tendrils like snow.
A wounded hiss bled from behind the door. Then the black tendrils began to retreat.
Erin choked down her surprise, and shook out another serving.
This time, the blackness withdrew completely. The thing battered at the door again, though considerably weaker this time.
For the first time since waking that night, Erin’s anger bubbled up higher than her fear. She tightened her grip on the canister of salt. That’s right, asshole…you’re playing my game now.
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