Chapter 3 – The sleepover

After the incident with the bleeding man, I tried my best to forget about the whole thing. About the girl and the treehouse and what might have happened there.

But I couldn’t let it go. And after a few days, when the events of that night sort of dimmed and became less frightening to think about, I started to get more and more curious about what, exactly, had happened to the girl. I asked a few of my neighbor friends, but they all sorta shrugged and said they didn’t know, and obviously didn’t care. But I kept it up, asking whenever I thought it would seem natural and not like I was obsessed with it or something. I even asked a few teachers about it, and the postwoman when she dropped off a package one morning for my mom. But the adults seemed to know even less than the kids, and were a lot more reluctant to chat with me about it.

As it turned out, it was my neighbor’s mom who finally caved and told me what happened to the family who lived in our house before we moved in.

Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to get her going. Apparently “everybody” knew but nobody liked to discuss it. She said it wasn’t polite. That it scared people. Which makes more sense after you know what happened.

Because it’s horrible.

Okay, so one night, Jamie, who lives three houses down and has sort of become my default best friend in the neighborhood, invited me over for pizza, movie, and a sleepover. My mom seemed pretty excited about the idea of having a night to herself, which didn’t bother me in the slightest. If I had to make me dinner and bug me about taking a bath and doing homework and going to bed every day I’d want a break too.

“Was awful what happened there,” Jamie’s mom said while filling our milk glasses. She was sort of the exact opposite of Jamie, who was tall and skinny with black hair and brown eyes. His mom was short and had a big bowl of blonde hair on her head. I found myself staring at her bright pink fingernails while she poured my milk. I’d never even met Jamie’s dad. “I mean, it’s a beautiful home, and you guys will be happy there, no doubt. But, geez, the people who lived there before you?” She shook her head and pursed her lips, which were bright red. “Did not end well.”

I pretended to be enjoying my pizza when, in fact, I was really just doing my best to simply gag it down. My throat felt like it was closing and my face got kinda hot when she started talking.

She’s going to tell me, I thought, and the idea of finally knowing was both exhilarating and terrifying. I could feel myself sweating as she talked, and hoped she or Jamie didn’t notice that I was having an anxiety attack or whatever.

“I’ve heard a few things,” I said, and took a long sip of milk. “But wasn’t sure if it was real or not. I didn’t want to ask Mom about it because I was afraid she’d feel bad.”

Part of this was a lie. I hadn’t heard anything about anything. Obviously, there must be something wrong with the house. Something happened, and I just couldn’t contain my curiosity. Seeing a ghost, I’ve learned, makes a person question all sorts of things.

“Well, that’s considerate,” she said, and sat down at the table with us, nibbled at the end of her lone slice of cheese pizza. “And I don’t want to, you know, speak out of school or anything. I mean, are you sure you want to know this stuff? It might freak you out.”

Jamie looked at me with wide eyes, and I wondered which one of us it would freak out more. As for me, I’d seen some insane stuff already. Stories weren’t going to make it any worse, but they might explain some things.

“No, it won’t bother me. I don’t scare easy.” I wasn’t sure if this was true or not, but part of me hoped it was. Then, of course, I remembered the bleeding man crawling toward the girl – moving like a giant spider as she started to scream, the spill of warmth in my pants as I pissed myself…

“Okay,” she said. “Well, no need to go into all the gory details. And I’m sure your mother is well aware of the basics, as they probably told her before she bought the place. It’s the law or something.”

I nodded along, not fully knowing what she was talking about, and getting the sense that Jamie’s mom wasn’t, as my dad used to say, “the brightest bulb.”

“So, first of all, you should know this happened a while ago. That house sat empty, God, for at least three years. Which is crazy in this neighborhood, but it was tied up in legal mumbo-jumbo for a while, and then was purchased by a bank and renovated, which is why you have the nice floors and those new appliances.”

I kept nodding, hoping she’d get back to the stuff I cared about. Jamie was finished with his pizza and was studying his phone, so I had the feeling time was short before he demanded more movie and less dinner conversation with his mom. “But someone lived there before us,” I said gently. Prodding.

“Oh yes honey, of course. And, well, that’s the thing. See, the people that lived there… gosh, I don’t know if I should be telling you this.”

She looked at her son, saw his attention was diverted, and shrugged. Maybe giving me nightmares was okay if it meant spilling local gossip, but I don’t think she wanted to deal with Jamie screaming in the night.

“Look, first of all, you need to understand that this is a very, very safe neighborhood. And that what happened, my gosh, was a total anomaly. You know what that means?”

I nodded. I had no idea.

“Right. Well, there’s no sugar-coating it. One night there was a break-in. A burglary, you know? An intruder.”

The word “intruder” conjured up an image that raised the hairs on the back of my neck, the image of the man in the corner of the treehouse, breathing heavy, covered in blood and sweaty, holding his torn guts.

I set down my pizza, but met her eyes, willing her to continue. I needed to know.

“I’m sorry to say, but the man – this intruder – he, okay, he killed the people in that house. But remember,” she added hurriedly, “this was many years ago. We had just moved in, hardly knew a soul. Hadn’t even met the woman.”

“Woman?” I asked, intrigued despite the crawling dread in my stomach.

“Yes honey. A woman and her little girl.” She leaned closer to me, as if we were in public and she didn’t want to be overheard. As if saying something quietly makes it less true, less horrible. “They’d been strangled.”

I tried to swallow but couldn’t do it. I noticed my hand was trembling and tucked it into my lap beneath the table. “The little girl, too? She was…”

Jamie’s mom nodded.

“Horrible,” she said.

And it was.

“Where did they die?” I asked, realizing I’d unconsciously matched her strained whisper.

Jamie, meanwhile, had stopped playing with his phone and was staring at his mom as if she was telling me about the end of the world, letting me in on a hot tip that it was coming in just a few days. He looked plenty scared, and I hoped his mother wouldn’t notice. Not yet.

She looked away, as if debating whether to answer me. I pressed the issue.

“Did the little girl die in the treehouse?”

Her head jerked back to me, her eyes shining with what I could only describe as anger*.* Like I’d insulted her cooking, or her looks. Or her kid. She was angry, but I think she was also afraid*.* Yeah, looking back on it, I’m almost sure of it.

“How…”

Then she shook her head, her face reddening. I knew it was all the information I was going to get. But it was enough.

More than enough.

“Dinner’s over,” she said, and then just stood up and left the room.

At least now I knew, knew for sure, what happened back then. And why the ghost of the little girl was trapped in that treehouse, reliving the same night over and over.

With me as her sole audience.

Later that night, I convinced Jamie to let me use his computer, and together we looked up stuff on ghosts and haunting spirits. It was actually Jamie who found the information that proved most useful, buried deep within a website devoted to hauntings around the world.

I had never told him what happened to me, or what I’d seen. I think some part of him knew – had pieced it together from my questions and our following information dive for hauntings – but he never asked. I don’t think he really wanted to know what I’d experienced.

I didn’t blame him.

“It says here that some ghosts are forced to relive their deaths over and over again, for eternity,” he said, reading off the screen. “Like an old film replaying a traumatic event from the past.”

“Let me see,” I said, and read the passage he was referring to. There was a bold section break that read PSYCHIC IMPRINTS. I scanned the paragraph below it quickly, getting excited. It made perfect sense, and fell into line with what I’d seen. Unlike many of the other described hauntings, my ghost wasn’t interacting with me. It was just doing whatever it had been doing that night.

So why was I seeing the bleeding man? Was that part of some sort of show the little girl was putting on for me? To let me see for myself what had happened?

To see if I could do anything about it?

“I wonder if there’s a way to help them,” I said, scrolling further down the page, desperate for answers. “If there some way to, I don’t know, release them.”

Jamie spun off his chair and flopped down onto his bed. He gripped a pillow to his chest and faced the wall. “I don’t know dude, but I don’t want to talk about this shit anymore. It’s stupid.”

By stupid, he of course meant scary. And it was, but I felt like I was finally getting somewhere. I wanted to help that little girl. Free her.

But how?

While Jamie had his back turned, I googled one more thing before shutting the topic down for the night.

I typed my street address, city and state. Then I typed the word MURDER.

I got multiple hits.

One was a local news page that had a two-paragraph article and a photo of a woman hugging a small girl.

I recognized her instantly.

My skin tingled unpleasantly, as if I’d been lightly touched by someone I couldn’t see, or was suddenly covered in baby spiders.

Scrolling down, I passed by a few links that had nothing to do with my house at all. Then I saw a link to the city’s homicide department website. I clicked on it, and it brought up the same incident the news article had, but it was more technical, like a crime report.

They were asking people to come forward who had information on the murders of the woman and her daughter. There was a form you could fill out to respond.

The page was old. Dated almost four years ago. But it was still active. They hadn’t taken it down. They were still looking for information.

They were still hunting the killer.