“You’re the host!” he growled. Oh man, not this again. Last time we got into this dilemma I was practically dragged up the stairs of a lighthouse. “Man up!” he added. “I’ll be beside you the whole time, I just need to get you on camera.”
I shook my head but knew he was right. Why did I sign up for this?
I walked slowly over to the side of the house. I felt no urgency to surprise whatever the hell it was.
As we inched closer, I told him to turn on the camera light. Night vision didn’t help me in anyway.
The light flicked on and my path was illuminated, albeit poorly. My vision was filled with grain, but I could make out the kitchen window, its broken glass glistening, a faint light from the dining room shining through. A rock or two still bounced off the window. Dex moved the light to the origin of the rocks – my heart caught in my throat at what it might reveal – but there was nothing there. It was like the rocks were being thrown out of thin air. It was just…darkness.
“What’s going on?” a voice snaked out from behind me.
I yelped and we both spun around. Dex aimed the light showing Miguel a few feet behind us, wearing pajamas and holding a shotgun.
“Jesus!” I couldn’t help but swear again. I was a bit relieved it wasn’t some ghost but I can’t say Miguel with a gun made me feel any less scared.
“What the hell is going on?” he snarled. “I hear all these screams, glass breaking.”
“I was hoping you could tell us,” Dex said, filming him now.
“Get that thing out of my face, I’m not telling you anything. Where is Will?”
“Right here,” I heard Will say. He came out from around the front of the house, huffing and puffing. “Sarah’s OK, I think it stopped.”
It had stopped. Probably didn’t help that we were all standing right at the rock epicenter.
“What is it this time?” Miguel said. “I told you you’d never last a day here. I never screamed at some rocks.”
“You would this time, they came through the darn window,” Will said pointing at the broken window. “How am I going to replace that?”
“Dumb teenagers,” Miguel said. “We should set up video to catch them.”
“That’s kind of what this is,” Dex said.
“You think they are teenagers? No person could have done this,” I said forcefully, annoyed at Miguel’s assumptions. Wouldn’t last a day? Go f**k yourself.
“She’s right,” Will agreed. “Miguel, I’ve never seen it so bad.”
“You’re all loco. That’s what you are. Go to bed,” he snarled and started to walk back across the yard. “I’ll fix your window in the morning.”
Morning. The term never sounded so foreign to me. How the hell were we going to get through till morning?
Somehow though, we were on our way. After Miguel slinked off, we decided it might be time for us to all turn in. Will insisted in doing the dishes and cleaning up in the kitchen and I have to say I wasn’t one to protest. After what we just witnessed, the kitchen was the last place we wanted to be. I told Will to make sure to lock all the doors a million times too. I don’t know how he wasn’t going mental with all this crazy crap going on. I was already feeling frayed.
On the way down the upper hallway, Dex and I inched past Sarah’s room, careful not to be too loud. Apparently she had heard the rocks too but wasn’t scared, least not more than normal. Either she was a liar or very good at hiding things from her husband. There was no way in hell that she could just shrug off what just happened as a normal occurrence.
Once inside our room, I locked the door, turned on all the lights available and shut the blinds. The darkness outside was unnerving, even from a second story window.
Somehow with all the scariness and commotion, I had forgotten how awkward bedtime was going to be. Seemed like fear erased all sorts of non-issues like that one. In the bathroom, I got changed into PJ pants and a baggy concert tee (Mr. Bungle) and quickly washed my face and brushed my teeth. I didn’t like being alone, even with Dex outside the door. I did run the taps while I did my business, but the walls were too thin for any real privacy.
When I was done, Dex was already in bed and scribbling into a notebook. He was shirtless. Despite what you’d think, I hoped he was wearing pants of some sort underneath the covers.
He looked up at me and smiled. “So this is your sleeping attire. Classy.”
“I hope your sleeping attire consists of undergarments of some sort,” I replied dryly, getting into my side of the bed.
“Well, you’re just going to have to find out for yourself,” he said with a smirk. I gave him a look and settled underneath the covers. Now that I was actually in the bed, it felt immensely small. I couldn’t lie here without rubbing against his shoulder.
I eyed his chest, now that I had a closer look at it. The words tattooed across it said, “And with madness comes the light.”
He caught me looking. “Admiring my pecs or trying to figure out the tattoo?”
Both.
“The tattoo,” I said. “What does it mean?”
“Song lyric,” he said, his lips clamping together, signifying not to ask him anymore. So I didn’t. About that tattoo.
“And the arm? What’s the fleur de lis for?”
“I’m French.”
“I thought you were Irish.”
“I’m a mutt. Done with your questions?”
I shook my head and pulled my covers up closer. “What’s the point of tattoos if they aren’t a conversation starter?”
“We don’t need conversations starters, kiddo.”
We stared at each other for a few weird beats. We were too close to each other. I could see the tiny spirals of ebony in his etched brown irises.
“This is cozy,” I blurted out. I turned my face away from his.
“We could make it cozier,” he grinned, the bristles on his moustache sticking up. He seemed quite relaxed considering what had happened earlier and considering what he had been going through.
“You’re just begging for a pillow fight, aren’t you?”
He smiled even broader, showing his shiny white teeth. “Actually, I was hoping you might warm up my feet.”
Suddenly his feet surrounded mine, cold blocks of ice. I nearly screamed but caught myself. I flinched, my body turned rigid.