Page 4 of A Heart So Haunted
Another bang.
It sounded like the heel of a palm against a wall. Or a locked door that made hinges rattle.
I whirled. Sayer stood stick straight now, both hands clutching his phone. The tendons in his forearms stood taut.
“I know you heard that,” he whispered. “That was not me. Obviously.”
Obviously not. But if it wasn’t either of us, and no one else was in the house—
I glared at the foyer floor, waiting. Maybe it would come again?
The stained-glass coverings, which hung over the sidelight panes on either side of the front door, cast ribbons of color onto the rug. A draft brushed over the baby hairs at my temple, the back of my neck, hot and soupy. Typical of Lowcountry, even this early in the summer season.
“Don’t lie,” he urged.
I squeezed my eyes shut. The draft—that had to be it. It must have caught momentum when it slipped through a window and shut a door that hadn’t been latched.
“But what if—” I started.
“Landry.” Sayer’s mouth pinched. “You heard it. You told me nothing would happen. Youpromisedyou haven’t seen anything weird. You know how I feel about this kind of … stuff.”
“Okay, okay, I heard it,” I whispered. Still, I didn’t move. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Sayer was right. I’d promised him as much—he wouldn’t have agreed to help me otherwise.
Suddenly, I was ten again, unwinding the balls of yarn in Aunt Denny’s room, asking why she didn’t let me stay at night.
“Are there ghosts? Amber at school says ghosts live in old houses like this one. She had one in her grandma’s house and didn’t wanna stay at night. Said that if this one’s haunted, you wouldn’t let me stay, either,” I blurted, swinging the unspooled yarn in two clenched fists.Aunt Denny folded clothes at the foot of her bed. Every so often, she’d glance to the door, then at me. “Is that why I can’t stay? I can handle ghosts. What if they’re friendly? Would that make it okay for me to stay?”
“There are no ghosts, Lan.”
“Then why can’t I stay?” I whined. The yarn drooped at my sides.
“Because your momma wouldn’t be happy with me. And you have school.”
“But I’m on break and there’s nothing to do and I only see yousometimesand what if the ghosts need—”
Her eyes grew hard; the T-shirt she held up crinkled at the shoulders, all around her fingers. “Have you seen anything here, Lanny? Anything like that?”
This had made me pause. Seen anything? No. Sometimes the birds perched by the breakfast table in the little windows. The sill was extra wide and I liked to watch them there. Their shadows curved over the glass and the table and sometimes it was like those shadows moved on their own, but never anything else.
“No. Don’t think so.”
“See? No ghosts.”
Sometimes the floors creaked, but Aunt Denny said old houses did that. So I believed her.
“But that story you told me, could it be real? Have you seen anyth—”
She shot me a look down the bridge of her nose. “I have not. You know the nursery rhyme is simply that—a rhyme. For eager little minds and imaginations. Now pick out your yarn so we can make those potholders before your momma comes back.”
She’d promised me. And there had never been any reason not to believe her.
I didn’t realize tears had started to burn the backs of my eyes until Sayer’s voice reeled me to the surface.
“Shouldn’t you … go look?”
I blinked them away. Inhaled a shaky breath. Sayer was gangly, stuck in a perpetual state of adult-adolescence, despite being on the eve of thirty-one and a long-since graduate of USC’s MFA program.
“Don’t tell me all those horror novels finally caught up with you,” he said, looking at me over the frames of his glasses. Still, a tinge of wariness—like I might crack—crinkled around his eyes. I drew my shoulders back and garnered my only line of defense: sarcasm.
