Page 66 of My Road Trip with a Vampire: Season One
We’re standing up to leave when I see her.
The woman with the high-neck scarlet dress. Her parasol rests against the chair she’s sitting in, and her lantern sleeves fall back from her wrists as she spreads her hand of cards.
I gasp, and Dennis touches my low back.
“Do you see something?”
My heartbeat eases up when I lock eyes with the lady in red. Her heart-shaped face is much softer and sweeter than the ghost that appeared in the bathroom.
“No, she’s not a ghost, but her costume looks exactly like the one I saw,” I whisper back to him. I’m staring rudely now, so I give her a small wave and step over to the table.
“Your costume looks so real,” I tell her, pulling up a free chair near her. Dennis takes one next to a young woman in a sexy Beetlejuice costume.
“Of course it does,” Beetlejuice laughs. “Brittany saw Martha for real.”
Another woman places a card on the table and shoots a look at her.
“Stop messing around, Alex. You know Brittany believes she actually saw her.”
“Because I did,” Brittany says, still studying her cards. “Not that any of you believe me.”
“Haven’t we all seen Martha at one time or another?” Alex grumbles, taking off her black-and-white striped jacket. She slides her chair closer to Dennis, and I try to ignore how she’s looking at him.
It’s the bond. You don’t get jealous,I remind myself.We’re here to do work.
“What do you mean everyone has seen her?” I ask.
“Well, not Alex, but pretty much everyone here. We’re all seniors, so we were at Pratt Hall for our freshman year before they revamped the facility for the education department. A bunch of us saw the weird red lights, and some of us are pretty sure we saw Martha wandering about in her nightie,” someone at the far end of the table says. “But Brittany here transferred after her first year because her experience messed her up so bad.”
I watch Brittany’s expression change. She doesn’t find this to be as amusing as the rest of them do.
She must see me watching her because she takes a drink and shakes the sullen look from her face.
“It’s true. I come back every year for the run though. It’s almost like I want to see her again.”
“Thanks, I thought it was because we’re besties.”
One of them laughs.
“That too,” Brittany says.
“What happened with Martha?” I ask, then catch myself getting too serious again. “Sorry if I’m being nosey. I swear I feel like I’ve seen a ghost before too, so I’d love to hear your story.”
Brittany swallows, her blue eyes dropping when she starts talking.
“The first time she came to me, I couldn’t see her. The semester had only started a couple weeks before, and I woke up to a glowing red light beneath the door, but by the time I woke up my roommate, it was gone.”
She tosses her head toward Alex, who’s so enamored by Dennis that I’m surprised she heard any of that.
“What? Oh yeah, the red light was always gone when I got up.”
“I saw the red light a few times, but I lived down the hall,” a redhead says, and a couple people at the table nod.
“Me too, and I heard the phantom footsteps.”
“But things got worse,” Brittany continues. “I kept waking up at night, always feeling like someone was watching me. That went on for about a month, then I saw her sitting on the edge of my bed, twirling an umbrella over her shoulder that looked just like this.”
She pats the parasol behind her.
