I woke up to heavy pounding at my door, and I immediately jumped out of bed. I was half expecting myself to still be stuck to the chair in my dream, which made me stumble a bit, but I managed to catch myself before I fell to the ground.
“Andi, hold on!” shouted a voice from outside the door as there was a momentary pause in the pounding noise. “If you can hear me, Caitlin has gone to get the manager to unlock the door. We’ll be in there in a minute!”
Why did that voice sound familiar, I asked myself. Thinking was like trying to wade through a heavy fog, and I was having trouble even remembering where I was.
I looked around, and started to remember the hotel room. The pounding at the door was Liam, and maybe Luke, too. I shook my head, trying to remove the last bits of fog as I headed toward the door and unlocked the bolt.
The shoved the door open immediately, almost knocking me down in the process, but Liam managed to catch me as I started to fall. “Andi!” he said, his voice still near a yell. “Are you alright?”
“I think so?” I asked, pulling myself back to my feet. Like last time, none of the pain of the dream had followed me back to real life.
“You were screaming in your room,” Liam said, guiding me over to the couch to sit down. “We thought you’d hurt yourself or were having a seizure or something.”
“No,” I responded, reaching my hand up to feel my shoulder, just like before, there was no injury. “Or at least, I don’t think so. I think it was just a bad dream.”
“A dream bad enough to wake us all up?” Luke asked. I noticed for the first time that he was standing there just in his gym shorts, and Liam was just wearing a pair of boxers. I guess I wasn’t much better, in an old t-shirt and shorts.
“Was it the ghost again?” Liam asked, paying no attention to Luke’s question.
“Again?” Luke asked while I nodded.
“In the same room?” I nodded again.
“What the fuck is going on, and why am I not a part of it?” Luke demanded. Liam looked at me and raised his eyebrows, as though checking to make sure it was okay with me that he told the story. I nodded for a third time, and he told Luke his version of events, clueing Caitlin into them, too, when she walked back in.
“So,” Caitlin said slowly as Luke finished telling her about the dreams. I hadn’t explained the new dream I’d had yet, but none of them had asked. Frankly, I was glad, because I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk it through it just yet. “You’ve been having dreams about this ghost that’s not like any other ghost you’ve ever seen?” She thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “I mean, we’ve all had the occasional nightmare. Most of us don’t wake up half a hotel, but it is what it is.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Most of us don’t have these sorts of effects, either,” Liam said, gesturing to me. I couldn’t help but wonder how rough I looked - I certainly didn’t feel great. “I don’t know if we can really compare that to our bullshit.”
“But you don’t think it’s real, right?” Luke asked. “Like, as far as you can tell, this is just some weird dream, maybe brought on by the fact that you’re doing actual ghost hunting?”
“I’ve done ghost hunting before,” I answered, my voice sounding as shaky as I felt. I wasn’t sure why this time seemed to be affecting me so much more than the last one, but there was something in my gut that told me that this time was more important than the last one. “But I don’t think it’s real. I don’t seem to actually be injured.” I lifted up my sleeve to show them, as though I had to provide evidence of the claim they were so willing to believe.
Caitlin nodded. “But,” she started, “it could still be both - it could be that the ghost is real, but that the injuries in the dream are not, couldn’t it?”
I shrugged. “Maybe? I’ve never had a ghost enter one of my dreams, so I don’t know if that’s actually possible.”
“And you said that the ghost wanted you to leave him alone?” I nodded. “Who’s him?”
“They never said,” Liam answered for me. “Although unless they’re talking about some other ghost, I’ve got a couple of guesses.” He pointed to both himself and Luke. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that it’s just one ghost that’s really pissed at the ghost you saw in here yesterday?”
“It seems weird, but I suppose it’s as possible as anything else,” I agreed. “I’ve only had this dream here, but there’s been a lot of things that I’ve only done in the last few days.”
“Well then,” Caitlin said, standing up from the edge of my bed she’d been perched on, “I, for one, think that the best course of action would be to get the fuck out of here.”
“Now?” Luke complained.
She looked at her watch. “It’s 7:00 in the morning. I know we were up to date trying to get you unpossessed, but these are normal human hours. And I, for one, don’t want to go back to sleep just to be woken up by screaming again.”
I nodded, unsure of what I was going to do. My flight was still not for a couple more days, but there was no way I was going to be able to afford this hotel for myself. I supposed I could go and find a local Days Inn? I couldn’t help but sigh.
As though reading my mind, Caitlin grabbed my empty bag and tossed it to me. “And of course, you’ll be staying at the boy’s place,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be staying there too for a bit. There are plenty of spare rooms, and believe it or not, it’s more homey than this place. Hopefully fewer ghosts, too.”
I blinked, trying to process it. Man, I couldn’t ever remember my brain being this slow before. “You want me to stay at their place?”
“Only if you want to, of course,” Liam said with a grin.
“It could be good, too,” Luke added. “At least while we’re working on the video. I assume you don’t have any professional recording equipment at your house, just in case we need to rerecord some audio?”
I shook my head. “Then it’s settled!” Caitlin exclaimed. “We can leave you to get packed up, and we’ll plan on heading out in a half hour. Nobody,” she looked pointedly at Luke, “go back to sleep.”
“I’ve gone back to sleep all of once when we were on a tight deadline!” he argued.
“Once is enough for me to always remember it,” Caitlin said.
The two of them headed out the door, but Liam hung back, packing up some of the remaining camera equipment. As soon as the door was closed, though, he abandoned the bag and walked up to me. He grabbed my hand and lightly squeezed it. “I know you’ve already been asked this, but I just wanted to double check for myself,” he started. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I said, more sure than the last time I had said it. Liam's eyes burrowed into me, clearly trying to figure out if I was actually telling him the truth. Eventually, he must have figured it out, because he squeezed my hand one more time, then let it go.
“You know,” he said, as he threw the strap of the camera bag over his shoulder, “if you’re ever not okay, I would really appreciate it you told me, right?” I nodded. “Okay, good. Because we’re in this together, and I need to know that you and Luke and Caitlin are all okay. You guys are my family now, and you mean more to me than these ghosts ever did. Maybe not much more,” he joked, lightly slapping the camera bag, “but more.”
As he turned to leave, I couldn’t help but think about how fast I seemed to have been adopted into the group. I had to admit it to myself, but part of the hesitation earlier was not just not knowing where to go, but not wanting to leave. I was glad that at least one of them felt the same way. Trauma bonding at its finest.