The Burning

You can feel it. We hadn't even heard anything about this, but I started doing a little research and found out that this house is listed on a national registry of haunted places. Supposedly, it's the reason no one would buy the place and why they had to subdivide it into apartments. After I approached the owners with this news, the rent was dropped-on the condition that we keep our mouths shut about it. We have, pretty much, but word still leaked out, and one girl even moved because of it.'

'Jen,' Chrissie said.

'Yeah. Jen. She said she saw something in her bedroom, though I'm not sure she did. I'm pretty sure she just imagined it.'

Angela smiled. 'Her ghost is imagination. Yours is real, though.'

'That's about the size of it.'

'Well, call me the next time he-or she-shows up. I want to hear it.'

'You don't,' Winston said. 'But I will.'

The opportunity to do so came more quickly than any of them expected.

Angela and Chrissie returned to their own apartment soon after. It was getting late, so they flipped a coin for first shower. Angela won, and she quickly washed and changed into her pajamas. After saying good night to Chrissie, she went to bed and was asleep in a matter of minutes.

She was awakened by a knock on the bedroom door, and she had time to glance groggily at the clock on her nightstand and see that it was two fifteen before the knock came again, louder this time. She got up, pulled on her robe and opened the door a crack. Chrissie stood in the short hallway, holding her own robe closed, looking half- asleep. Behind her, through the living room, Angela could see that the front door of the apartment was open. Winston was standing in the outer hall, hair disheveled, wearing only light green drawstring pants. He saw her, and the expression on his face caused her heart to skip a beat, sent a bolt of fear through her body. She knew what he was going to say even before he said it.

'The ghost. It's down there right now. You want to hear it?'

She didn't. Not at this time of night. Despite her skepticism and the lightheartedness of their previous conversation, the idea of encountering a ghost was given weight and gravity by the hour, a seriousness it did not possess in the daytime or early evening. She was frightened, but she was the one who'd brought it up, she was the one who'd made the request, and she swallowed hard, nodded.

'Are you coming?' she asked Chrissie. The other girl shook her head, and Angela could tell that despite her professions of disbelief, her friend was frightened as well.

Angela followed Winston downstairs, where several other residents were already gathered around his apartment's open front door. Most were in their sleepwear, but despite the potential for casual camaraderie, no one was talking or visiting and the expression on each face was the same. Everyone was silent, expectant, on edge.

She heard it.

The sound was muffled from here in the hallway, but it was still audible, and it was definitely coming from somewhere inside. Goose bumps popped up on her arms and legs; peach-fuzz hair on the back of her neck bristled. An unintelligible babbling, an incomprehensible alien jabber, issued from the apartment behind the open door. Winston led her past Randy, Kelli and Yurica, into the living room, into the kitchen. 'Come in, everyone!' he announced. 'Catch it quick before it stops!'

He was trying for a party atmosphere, attempting to keep things light and fun, but Angela could see that he was scared, and by the tense clinging way Brock held his hand, she knew that Brock felt the same. Everyone else was silent, listening, afraid to speak.

The ghost's voice was as flat as ordinary conversation yet at the same time as sharp as an audiophile CD. It was high-pitched, sounding either angry or excited, and Winston and Brock were right: it was impossible to tell if it was male or female. It seemed to be coming from the oven, and while that should have been funny, it wasn't. Although ghosts were supposed to be ephemeral, Angela had the sense that the owner of the voice had been here forever, that although the house had been built around it and furniture brought in, these were the things that were transitory, and the voice would remain long after the oven had been removed and the house torn down.

All of a sudden it stopped.

No one knew what, if anything, was being said, but the voice seemed to cut off in midsentence, and after such hyperactive gibbering the silence seemed heavy and ringing in Angela's ears.

'Show's over, folks!' Winston announced, still trying to keep the tone light. But no one was having any of it, and the residents drifted away, back to their rooms, quiet and subdued. Winston caught Angela's eye, and she understood now how shallow and cavalier she'd been earlier in the evening, how she'd completely misread the situation. She wished she'd stayed upstairs with Chrissie, that she'd immediately gone back to sleep and experienced none of this. But she had experienced it, and now she was afraid to even walk back up to their apartment, afraid of what she might hear in the walls on the way, afraid of what she might see in the shadows darkening the top of the steps.

Winston and Brock obviously sensed her mood because they both accompanied her upstairs, acting as bodyguards. They saw and heard nothing, however, and when the three of them reached her apartment, Chrissie opened the door. 'So?' she asked.

Angela didn't know what to say.

'It was coming from the oven,' Brock said.

'Did you ... see anything?'

They all shook their heads. 'Just the voice,' Winston said. 'As always.'

Angela turned toward Winston, tried to smile. 'I'd like to say thank you for a good time, but ...'

'See you in the morning,' Winston said as he and Brock turned away and started back down the stairs.

Angela walked into the apartment, Chrissie closing and locking the door behind her. 'Was it scary?' Chrissie asked.

She nodded. 'Yeah,' she admitted. 'It was.' She didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to even think about it, so she forced a yawn and, wiggling her fingers good-night, retired to her room.

Where she lay in bed, unable to sleep.

Chrissie went into her room, and in the other apartments everyone else settled back down for the night, but Angela remained awake, listening for any sound in the now silent house, her body rife with gooseflesh at the recollection of that insane incomprehensible babbling. What was it? What caused it? What did it mean? Those were all questions for which she had no answer, for which no one had an answer, and when she finally did fall asleep she dreamed of a black gelatinous creature with no eyes and too many teeth that lived under the Babbitt House and waited for her.

Her second date with Brian was the next night, and though she longed to tell him about the ghost, she didn't. It was too embarrassing. She knew it had happened, knew what she'd heard, but outside of the Babbitt House, in the ordinary world of cars and other people and stores and restaurants, any account of her experience would sound ridiculous.

But it was on her mind all through dinner and the movie afterward. Brian could obviously tell that something was amiss, but he didn't know her well enough to butt in, and he chose to give her some space. For that, she was grateful. She perked up enough for a make-out session in the car, and on the way home she took the initiative to ask him out to a free jazz concert on Friday. He seemed surprised, and she wasn't sure if that was because she was being so forward-he was from Wisconsin-or whether he'd simply assumed from her behavior that she wasn't interested, but he happily said yes.

Angela didn't know how Brian felt, but as far as she was concerned, they were practically boyfriend and girlfriend. Such a concept seemed quaint and maybe even a little lame in these days of the hookup, which was why she didn't mention it, but sometime, and soon, they were going to have to talk about exclusivity.

He brought her back to the Babbitt House, parking on the street in front of the open lawn. At night, set back as it was, the mansion looked scary, forbidding. There were no lights on as far as she could tell, but it was Wednesday and it wasn't that late, so she knew someone had to be home.

What if they weren't?

'Would you like to come in?' she offered, hoping the nervousness wouldn't register in her voice.

'Yeah,' he said. 'That'd be great.'