Part 2 || 6 | Grace

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A Tale of a Sleepover

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“I first noticed a change in Franklin’s demeanor on the third weekend of July,” Grace said, thinking back to the week before she and Judy visited his house for a sleepover they had planned that weekend via Screen Chat. “When Franklin visited my house that time, he looked like he had lost a lot of sleep. I asked him what’s going on, but he told me not to worry about it and asked me if Judy was at my house. I said, no, she wasn’t, so he told me to be careful of her. I asked him why, but he wouldn’t say anything else about it and left.”

“He just stopped by to say that?” Sakura said.

“Yeah,” Grace said. “I asked Judy about it via Screen Chat later that night, but she had no idea what’s up with him, so we tried hitting Franklin up on Screen Chat. We couldn’t reach him, though, which was really strange.”

“Why so?” Sakura said.

“We can usually catch him on Screen Chat.”

“But he wasn’t responding?”

“Nope,” Grace said.

“Like, at all?” Sakura said.

“Yep, and we couldn't reach him by email, phone call, or text message,” Grace said, wondering how she was going to tackle the next part of her story. In the end, she decided to be up front with her new confidant and added, “Anyway, Judy and I talked about it over the next few days, and we decided to ask him about it on the fourth week of July during the weekends. We had actually planned on a sleepover for that weekend at Franklin’s house a week before, but when the weekends rolled around, we noticed a difference. Franklin looked more tired than he had when he visited me, so we were worried and asked him about it, but he’d sidestep our questions.”

“Anything else that sticks out?” Sakura said.

“Yeah,” Grace said. “I noticed that he was very uncomfortable around Judy, as if she had him spooked for some reason. And Judy wasn’t helping in that department, either. She kept sneaking up on us whenever I was alone with Franklin.”

“Let me guess,” Sakura said.

“Sure,” Grace said.

“Was she cock-blocking him?” she said.

Grace just gaped at Sakura, feeling her cheeks burn at her crude wording, and said, “It’s not like that!”

“Then what is it?” she said.

“Look,” Grace said, “he and I were both a bit antsy over Judy asking us what we were doing, like a nosy mom. You know what I mean, right?” When Sakura nodded, Grace continued, adding, “So Franklin flat out told Judy to back off, which surprised me, because he was so gruff with her. When I asked him why he said that, he said he just wanted Judy to leave us alone. I mean, it wasn’t like, get out of the house, you know? It was like, give us some space.”

“Did she?” Sakura said.

“Yeah,” Grace said, “but she was upset.”

“Understandable,” Sakura said. “What did he say about it?”

“He said he’d apologize afterwards, and he did,” Grace said, “but Judy was still upset and wanted to go home, so we tried convincing her to stay.”

“Did she?”

“Yeah, once she calmed down.” Then Grace let out a sigh and waited for Sakura to say something, but when she couldn’t get a read on her companion, she said, “What is it?”

“Sounds like she’s a ‘third wheel.’”

“What?” Grace said, wondering why Sakura would even bring up something like that. “Where did that come from?”

Sakura just deadpanned, shook her head, and said, “Never mind. What did Franklin tell you, anyway?”

“You might not believe me,” Grace said, remembering how she gawked at Franklin’s words at the time.

“Try me,” Sakura said.

Grace eyed Sakura: she seemed a bit ditzy with her cutesy twin tails, yet her eyes gleamed with a velvety hue that cut through her like butter. If this Sakura girl was willing to listen to Judy’s account of her dream, then maybe she can hear Grace out about her own encounter during that sleepover. She said, “He said Judy’s been haunting him.”

Sakura gaped and said, “Are you serious?”

“I know it sounds crazy,” Grace said. “Hell, I thought he was crazy, too, but then . . .” Yet her words drifted off, because Grace wasn’t sure how to make sense of this next part, let alone what happened afterward.

“And then what?” Sakura said.

“At first, I thought Franklin was just making it up, trying to scare me,” Grace said, “but when he kept persisting that he had seen Judy over and over, I thought he was crazy and told him he needed to sleep more. But then he said that he couldn’t sleep, because he kept seeing Judy almost multiple nights in a row for a week like she was a succubus. Despite not believing him, I could tell he was dead serious, so I decided to ask Judy about it later on that night while we were telling each other scary stories close to midnight or past midnight. I’m a bit iffy on the exact time.”

“And what did Judy say?”

“That’s the weird part,” Grace said. “Judy paused for a long time, long enough for Franklin to ask if Judy had experienced astral travel in her sleep. And get this: Judy said that she remembered a few of her dreams that involved getting up from her bed and going to other places, and when I asked what places she went to, she said she went to The Cake Fairy in her dream a few times. That’s when she told us that dream you’ve just heard her talking about.”

“I see,” Sakura said.

“But then it gets weirder,” Grace said. “In addition to the nighttime visitations, Franklin added that Judy seemed to be lost, like she was looking for a way out or something. Judy paused again, then said that she didn’t remember feeling lost, per se, just knew she was somewhere else. When I asked her what she meant by that, Judy said . . .”

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A Tale of a Chance Encounter II

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On that night, the designated trio were in the family room of Franklin’s house after their storytelling wore the edge off of their little spat in the afternoon. Sakura had been right about Judy being something of a ‘third wheel’ in her relationship with Franklin and Grace but not quite to the ‘cock-blocking’ extent that Sakura had suggested. After an early dinner, a scary movie, and dozens of scary stories over bags of chips in the hours leading up to midnight, the trio had their sleeping bags out and dressed in their pajamas before Grace and Franklin revealed to Judy what they had talked about earlier that afternoon that resulted in their squabble. While Franklin told Judy about the nocturnal visitations in his bedroom, Grace and Judy occupied both sofas in their sleeping bags, while Franklin lay in his own sleeping bag on the floor between the sofas and the flat-screen TV atop the media console.

Judy had the fingers of her hands laced together behind her head over a pillow beside the headrest, looking up at the ceiling as she listened. Yet when Franklin finished talking, she stayed silent for a long time, so he said, “Have you experienced astral travel?”

“Yeah, I have,” Judy said.

“Do you remember what they’re like?” Grace added.

“Yeah,” she said. “Get out of bed, walk around for a bit, get back into bed. Sometimes I’m looking down on the neighborhood, but the novelty wears off fast.”

“Besides your house and the neighborhood,” Grace said, “was there anywhere else?”

“Yeah, actually,” Judy said, then filled them in on her dream about the nine-tailed fox woman and their walking trip to The Cake Fairy, then sat up. “Frank, whenever you saw me in your dreams, what was I doing?”

“I’m not sure,” Franklin said. “To me, it looked like you were lost or something.”

That’s when Judy paused again, making Grace wonder what was rolling through her mind, then said, “I wasn’t lost, per se. Just . . . there, if that makes any sense.”

Grace sat up, too, catching Judy’s attention and saying, “What exactly do you mean by ‘there?’”

“It’s hard to say without showing you,” Judy said. “I mean, I knew I was in a different place, but it felt familiar to me, like I had been there before.”

Grace blanked out on what to say to that, so she looked over at Franklin (also sitting up in his sleeping bag), but the boy shook his head.

“No clue?” Grace said.

“None whatsoever,” Franklin said.

“It’s kind of like nostalgia,” Judy said. “That’s the best way I can put it. There’s a word for what happened to me, but I forgot what it was.”

The word, ‘nostalgia,’ set Grace’s mind running through the many MeTube videos that she had been watching at the time about liminal spaces in everyday locations, which then led her down a rabbit hole of video games like Gone Home, Control, or The Backrooms. Then, all at once, she chanced on the word Judy was getting at and said, “Is it déjà vu?”

“Yeah, that’s a better way of saying it, but that’s not the word I’m looking for,” Judy said. “I’m not much of a creepypasta reader, so I don’t know the term for it.” Then she pointed to a wall in the family room and added, “Grace, think of Alice entering the Looking-Glass at her house, but you enter through a false wall into another place.”

Grace knew what she was talking about, but the term escaped her at the moment, till Franklin said, “Wait, did you no-clip out of reality?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” Judy said.

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“Did this happen in your house?” Grace added.

“While I was asleep, yeah,” Judy said, lying back down in her sleeping bag and looking up at the ceiling with her hands laced over her stomach. “I found myself going down the stairs over and over after having that fox-girl dream, but one time when I was about to step onto the base of the stairs, I found myself beside a highway in the middle of the night.”

“Yep, that’s no-clipping,” Franklin said.

“What happened while you were there?” Grace added.

“I’m not sure,” Judy said. “It’s kind of fuzzy, because it happened in transition into another dream.”

“Just tell us what you can.”

“Let’s see,” Judy said. “I remember walking along the shoulder of a highway in some desert at night. I could see the stars really bright above my head, there was no traffic, and there was no sound besides my footsteps. That’s it.”

“Really, that’s it?” Grace had said, lying inside her own sleeping bag atop the other sofa as the warm summer night drew on towards midnight.

“That’s it,” Judy said.

“That doesn’t make sense, though,” Franklin said.

“No, wait,” Judy added. “I remember picking up something small and metallic.”

“A knife?” Franklin said.

“No,” Judy said. “Smaller than that.”

Then Grace said, “Was it a coin, a ring, or a—”

“A dog tag!” Judy said. “Yeah, that’s it: a dog tag.”

“Was there a name on it?” Franklin said.

“If there was, I don’t remember,” Judy said. “Like I said, I’m fuzzy on the details.”

“Did you take it with you?” Grace added.

“Yeah,” Judy said. “Took it back to my house.”

“You no-clipped back to your house?” Franklin said.

“Yeah,” Judy said. “When I found myself outside the house, I entered the living room through the front door, stalked up the stairs to my room, and hid the tag under the base of my lamp. On waking up that morning, I checked under my lamp and found it where I had put it in my dream.”

“What about the door?”

“That’s the strange part,” Judy said. “I remember closing the door and locking it when I entered, but when I went downstairs, I found it ajar.”

“Geez, that’s creepy,” Grace said.

“I know, right?” Judy said. “That’s why I spent that morning and afternoon looking through my rooms, seeing if anything had been stolen.”

“Was anything stolen?”

“I don’t think so,” Judy said.

“Do you still have the tag?” Franklin said.

“No, not anymore,” Judy said.

“Someone took it?”

“I think so, yeah,” she said.

“Then tell us about it,” Grace said.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Judy said. “Are you sure you wanna hear it?”

Grace and Franklin said yes.

So Judy told them that after closing the door and checking to see if nothing had been taken from her house, she went about her day like normal and went to sleep after checking the lamp again. The tag was still there. Yet that night, she found herself awake, unable to move, seeing the same nine-tailed fox woman she met on her way to The Cake Fairy creeping into her bedroom, looking for something beneath her bed. That morning, she checked her lamp to see if the tag was still there: it was. After that, she took the tag into her walk-in closet, hid it inside a tin container in the corner beneath the hems of her clothes, and continued her day like usual, checking to see if it was still there before going to sleep. Yet after waking up to the presence of the fox woman checking the lamp on her credenza for the tag, she went to her closet, took out the tag from the tin container, exited the closet, and went over to the low bookshelf beneath the window sill of her bedroom, where she hid the tag in the hollow of the spine of her Sherlock Holmes omnibus and replaced it on the shelf.

“Yet that night,” Judy continued, “I awoke to the fox woman entering my bedroom again, looking for the tag in my walk-in closet. That makes three times that she entered my house looking for the tag. Three times!”

Grace sat up in her sleeping bag again, staring at Judy across from her on the other couch, while Franklin got up and turned on the lamp between them, making both girls wince.

“Why’d you turn it on?” Judy said.

Grace and Franklin just stared at her.

“What’s going on?” Judy said, looking from Grace to Franklin, then back to Grace. “Is there something I’m missing? Because you’re starting to freak me out.”

“Did that actually happen?” Grace said.

“Yeah, it did,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

“Judy,” Franklin said, “you saw that fox woman looking for that tag or whatever: what you just described matches exactly what I saw you doing in my room.”

“Seriously?” Judy said.

“I’m dead serious,” Franklin said. “I mean, your house and my house share similar floor plans on both floors, but my bedroom is configured differently from yours, so from what I saw, it looked like you were going through the walls. I honestly thought you were lost, so I decided to stay up and see what you were up to, and I saw you walking down the hallway into various rooms, but you weren’t there when I got there. Then I saw you going down the stairs before disappearing right before my eyes, and a few hours later, I saw a small nine-tailed fox going back up the stairs and entering a room, but when I got there, I saw you wearing a kimono, and you had nine tails, and you entered the closet in that room, but when I opened it, you were gone. That’s why I visited Grace’s house soon afterwards and told her to be careful of you.”

“You thought that was me?” Judy said.

So Franklin said, “What else was I supposed to think?”

“That’s really weird,” Judy said, “because I know I took the tag and hid it inside two other rooms for the next two nights. In one room, I hid the tag in a roll-top desk, and in the other room, I hid it under the keyboard at my computer desk. On both of those nights, I woke up and saw the fox woman entering my room again, looking for the tag before leaving. So on the next night, I took the tag with me to bed, holding onto it just to see if the fox woman would come to me.”

“Then what happened?” Grace said.

“I don’t know why,” Judy said, “but I found myself getting out of bed, leaving my room, and going down the stairs. That’s all I could remember before waking up in a cold sweat. That’s when I noticed the tag was gone.”

“What about the last part?” Franklin said.

“The last part?” she said.

“The part where you came back up the stairs and entered the closet,” he said.

“That wasn’t me,” Judy said.

“Are you sure it wasn’t you?” Franklin said.

“I’m sure,” Judy said. “In fact, I don’t remember that last part at all. I stopped having more visitations to my room after losing the tag. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t me.”

“Then why did you go down the stairs?”

“That I don’t know,” she said.

Then Grace thought back to what Judy said about meeting the fox woman for the first time on her way to the Cake Fairy and said, “Was that the last time you went down the stairs in your dream?”

“Yeah,” Judy said.

“Did you see that fox woman?” Franklin added.

“Not anymore,” Judy said. “I didn’t even go to the Cake Fairy that time. All I remembered was going down the stairs and then waking up in a cold sweat that morning.”

“When was this?”

“Last Thursday,” she said.

“Okay, that’s fairly recent,” Grace said, rolling the details through her mind. “When was the last time you had that dream of going to the Cake Fairy?”

“The last day of June,” Judy said. “Also, when I saw the fox woman that time, I saw her in her little fox form from when I first met her in the middle of June. I called out to her on my way to The Cake Fairy and ran up to meet her, but I lost track of her around the corner.”

“So taken together,” Grace said, “your interactions with that fox woman dwindled to the point where you can’t even access that dream you had going down the stairs.”

“Yep, that’s it,” Judy said.

This left Grace wondering about the small fox Franklin saw ascending the stairs of his own house and the room where he saw the fox woman impersonating Judy entering his closet, so she said, “Frank, can you show us the room where you saw this fox woman?”

But Franklin shook his head and said, “I closed off that room. I don’t wanna go back there.”

Grace traded a quizzical glance with Judy, and she saw Judy’s eyes light up with the same epiphany running through her mind. Something about this Judy look-alike was keeping Franklin on edge in his own house, so maybe he had them come over to his house to keep him company.

So Judy said, “Frank, we’re here with you.”

And Grace added, “Let’s go up there and see for ourselves.”

Nothing from Franklin; he only ruminated some more.

“Is something the matter?” Grace added.

“It’s off limits,” he said.

“But we’re here, aren’t we?” Judy said.

“Yeah,” he said, “but I don’t wanna put you two in danger.”

“Frank, think about it for once, okay?” Grace said. “This is the perfect opportunity for our first real ghost hunt, our very first one! We’ve dreamed of something like this since we were kids! Are you in?”

“Or are you a chicken?” Judy said.

Only then did the edge wear off of Franklin’s face, which manifested in a cock-sure grin as he said, “First one to scream has to buy ice cream cake at The Cake Fairy every time we eat there for the whole summer.”

“You’re on, scaredy-cat!” Judy said.

“Don’t regret it later, okay?” Franklin said.

“And don’t you dare jump-scare us,” Grace added, “or we’ll make you pay for seconds at The Cake Fairy, too.”

“Okay, I promise I won’t!” Franklin said.

With that, the three would-be ghost hunters passed by the dining area, the kitchen, and the hallway separating the kitchen from the living room. As they all went, Franklin turned on the kitchen light and the ceiling lamp in the living room, then turned on the wall sconces lighting the stairway up to the second floor. There he turned on the ceiling lights lighting the L-shaped hallway and led them to the door at the bend of the hall, where a chair was propped up against the knob of the door, closing off the room.

When they reached the door, all three ghost hunters paused for a spell. Then Franklin said, “Do you really want to go inside this room?”

Grace and Judy nodded their heads.

So Franklin removed the chair and opened the door, which creaked on its hinges.

Then the trio entered, and Franklin turned on the ceiling lights and pointed out the closet behind them, saying, “That’s where I saw the fox woman enter.”

“Did you check what’s inside?” Judy said.

“I did right after I saw the fox woman enter, but she wasn’t there,” Franklin said. “And besides the fox woman, there wasn’t anything off about it, either.”

“Let’s check it out then,” Grace said.

“Are you sure?”

“Are you scared?” Judy said.

“Fine,” he said. “Ladies first then.”

“You really are scared, aren’t you?” Judy said.

“Fine, I’ll go first!” So Franklin stomped over to the closet, slid open one of the closet doors on a sliding track above their heads, revealing nothing out of the ordinary except for boxes of old video game consoles and board games, so he said, “See? Nothing’s here, so let’s just drop this, okay?”

“We wanna do it, too,” Grace said.

“Sure, knock yourselves out,” he said, sliding the door back in place and standing aside.

Then Grace stepped forward, took a deep breath, and slid the other closet door aside, but nothing happened: all she saw were the same boxes of said items. Letting out her breath, Grace slid the door back in place, disappointed that their first ghost hunt had gone bust, and said, “Judy, you’re up next.”

Now Judy stepped forward, slid one door aside, the one Franklin had opened before her, but the boxes of old game consoles and game boards were gone. In their place was an empty closet space and a doorway in the back wall, where a set of stairs led down into God knows where.

“What the fuck?” Judy said.

“Close it right now!” Franklin said.

“But—”

“Just close it!”

So Judy tried sliding the door back in place, but it wouldn’t budge. She tried a few more times but said, “It won’t close! I think it’s stuck. Can you help me?”

Grace and Franklin just stared at her.

“Are you gonna help me or not?” Judy said.

Grace and Franklin approached the closet and stood beside Judy, grasping at the door handle along with Judy with their fingers, and together they pulled with all of their might, yet the blasted door wouldn’t budge at all. It just stayed locked in place in defiance of their efforts, till their tenuous finger holds slipped off—

Causing Judy to lose her footing and stumble backwards into the empty closet space—

Before the door slid back with a bang against the door jamb, rattling the walls of the room and staying shut, shutting Judy out of the sight. Then came Judy’s frantic knocks and bangs against the other side of the closet doors, screaming, “GET ME OUT OF HERE! GET ME OUT OF HEEEEERE!”

“Judy, hang on!” Grace yelled as she and Franklin tried to pry the door open, straining against their finger holds on the circular closet door hand hold, but the door defied their efforts. Even as the door vibrated with Judy’s blows and her screams for help continued, the door itself held fast like that of a bank vault.

Then the blows and Judy’s screams ceased.

Then the door let go with a bang against the door jamb, yet there in the closet were Franklin’s boxes of console games and board games.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Grace said, stepping into the closet space and palming the back wall where the doorway had been moments before. “JUDYYYYYY!”

Yet Grace found herself pulled away from the crazy closet, Franklin yanking her back out, making her grit her teeth in a grimace (“Ow!”) when she pulled on her wrist too hard. Then Grace turned on Franklin, yelling, “What the hell was that for? Can’t you see she’s missing?”

“I don’t wanna lose you, too!” he said.

Grace grimaced and said, “We should call the police!”

“And tell them what?” he said. “That Judy disappeared after going into a closet? They won’t believe us!”

Grace was about to curse at him—

When the telephone went off in Franklin’s bedroom.

Without another word, Grace exited the room, sprinted down the hall towards the room at the end of the hallways beside the head of the stairs, shoved the door out of the way, making it bounce against the door stopper, and snatched up the receiver of the phone atop a credenza next to the bed, saying, “Judy, is that you? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Grace. Don’t worry,” Judy said over the connection, the huffing and puffing of her breath creating static against Grace’s ear on the receiver.

“Where are you right now?” Grace said. Then Franklin joined her inside the bedroom moments later, asking Grace if she was talking with Judy, so Grace nodded that she was, then waited for Judy to respond. “Judy, are you there?”

“You’re not gonna believe this,” Judy said, “but I’m back inside my house.”

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TBC