The water in the glass sloshed back and forth in her hands as she started down the dark hallway. She could have sworn the hallway wasn’t this long during the day. She glanced back at the bathroom door, partially ajar, and contemplated turning the light back on, but it felt silly leaving it overnight. She scolded herself for being such a coward. Her life was not a movie. There were no men waiting for a young girl such as herself to maybe wander down the hall of her wonderfully suburban house (with Neighborhood Watch) to pounce on in the middle of the night.
Although it was the girls who were dismissive of the foot steps, or the open window they had left closed who always got murdered…
She shook her head. Her imagination was going to ruin her. She almost deserved a horror story, for following all the useless, wimpy girl stereotypes. She was better than this! This made her march forward bravely. She had seen enough horror movies to be scared, but she’d also seen enough action movies to know to go for the eyes. Unless it’s Slenderman, because he didn’t have eyes, but really there’s nothing you can do about him. Even this last thought didn’t scare her, until she heard a creak.
Was that under her feet? Or was it behind her? Could it be the house shifting, settling? Was someone following her?
She froze, her only movement the widening of her eyes. She listened, hard. Somewhere down stairs a clock ticked, and a fridge hummed on.
She continued on, her suspicious eyes darting around. The doors were all shut, or she thought. It was impossible to tell if it the darkness caused by a room without light, or if it was the darkness caused by a solid piece of wood.
She reached out to touched a door with her open hand, and felt something cold, hard, and not where the door should be. Her hand darted back to her side, and she felt a little water running down her hand, for it had spilt over the edge when she had jumped. She returned her hand, this time feeling the shape of it, and realized it had just been the doorknob.
She did not breathe a sigh of relief this time. Although she would have laughed it off during any other time of day, she was currently breathless with fear. Even if she did have the voice to cry out, she would not have. It was like a birthday wish, it would only happen as long as you didn’t tell anyone. And although she didn’t want there to be some predator in the hall, or some texas chainsaw massacre to happen, it felt silly to call out. She was at the stage of admitting the fear to herself, but pride was the other thing that kept her silent. She was not 6. She didn’t need someone to check under the bed for her.
She continued again, a little faster.
Something cold lands on her foot. A gasp escapes as it slides off. Her mind summons up spiders, tiny metal bugs that crawl on you and eat your brain, a dead man, cut at the throat bleeding out above her.
After glancing up to assure herself it’s not the last one, she looks closer at her foot. Just a drop of the spilt water on it, now on the carpet.
Even with this revelation, her heart didn’t slow the slightest. She full out ran. Ignoring the shadow that resembled a hanged man, and the curtain, either being moved by a person or a draft, or a ghost.
She reached her room, pushed the door open the rest of the way, and closed it, wincing as the hinges screeched. With a flick of her wrist the light was on, and she moved in slowly, setting the water on her bedside table. She opened the closet, moving the clothes to one side to make sure nothing and no one was hiding there. After she was sure, she got on her knees, and checked underneath the bed. She even sifted through her laundry piles for good measure.
Finally after casting one last cautious look around her room, she flipped off the light switch and climbed into bed, resigning herself to get a water bottle to keep by her bed in the morning. But for now she felt relieved, and saved, and a little secret-agenty. She would feel silly about it tomorrow, if she even remembered it. She wasn’t even scared of the dark. Just the unknown, and as the lingering heat of her bed lulled her to sleep, she felt nothing but certainty.
Although the shadows were sharpening their claws for when she got up to go to the bathroom a few nights later.