Rivalry (2 page)

From everything I had read, that was actually what most people thought ghosts really were; random events, unusual but explainable, that are given supernatural meaning by people with overactive or easily suggestible imaginations. Doug’s ghost didn’t sound like that, of course. Anything throwing around salt shakers and coffee mugs seemed far beyond a door creaking open because the door frame was at an angle.

Doug actually seemed annoyed at my level of excitement during lunch.

“
You’re acting like you’re going to Disneyland,” he said.

“
I’m sorry - this is just too cool for me.”

Doug frowned. “Owen, it’s not cool for me at all. I don’t sleep through the night because it knocks things over, or sometimes slams the door to my room. My parents are always jittery, and my mom cries a lot. It’s really stressful.”

I felt my cheeks turn red. “Well...have you tried to get rid of it? Contact a - you know - an exorcist or something? I read that they really exist.”

Doug looked oddly horrified. “No! My, uh, my parents don’t want to do that. They’re worried they’ll just make it mad, or that it’ll get, I dunno, hurt or something. We don’t think it’s evil, it’s just upset sometimes.”

“
Yeah, but if this things is making you guys miserable -”

“
No, it’s fine, really. Sometimes it can get a little crazy, but it really isn’t so bad. Please, just don’t mention that idea around my folks, okay?”

Doug seemed to be in a panic, so I just nodded and finished my lunch.

We shared a seat on the bus during the ride to Doug’s house. He seemed nervous, fidgety, and I think he was about to call it off a couple of times, but then stopped himself before saying anything to me. The bus pulled up to Doug’s home, a pleasant looking ranch with whitewashed wood siding, white window frames, black shutters folded open, and a white front door with a frosted glass window. This was early November, and there was a thin curl of smoke coming from the chimney. The modest yard was well-maintained, with all the leaves raked and the hedges trimmed. A blue Subaru hatchback was parked in the driveway, and a small workshed sat back behind the house. All in all, not the sort of place you’d look to find a ghost, but what did I expect? The Bates Motel? A drafty old castle sitting on a Scottish moor?

Doug’s mom greeted us at the door. Her name was Sharon, and she was slight, petite even, with dark eyes just like Doug’s, the same black hair and pale complexion, the same wan smile. Sharon (she told me to call her Sharon) invited me in and offered me a plate of chocolate chip cookies. I took one - it was quite good - but I noticed there was a sizable chip knocked out of the side of the plate. Sharon tried masking the damage with her hand, but I saw it when she offered the plate to Doug. Primed by the stories I had heard, I wondered if the plate was a victim of the ghost’s temper tantrums.

Doug told me his dad, Mike, didn’t get home from work until almost six, but would swing by the movie rental store on his way home and pick up a few VHS tapes for us to watch. Until then, we decided to just hang out and get some homework done for Monday, so the rest of the weekend would be free.

Before we sat down to math and English, Doug agreed to show me around. His house wasn’t big, and it was just him, his mom and dad. There was a living room, a dining room separated from the kitchen by an island counter, and a bathroom off the living room. I noticed in the bathroom there was no medicine cabinet or mirror, just a shelf fitted to the wall above the sink holding soap and other items. Down the hall, there was Doug’s room, his parent’s bedroom, and a third room that Doug just walked past until I called his attention to it. At first he didn’t open the door, but when I loitered at the door, obviously wondering what the problem was, Doug reluctantly let me take a look inside. There was a twin-sized bed with a light blue comforter, a bureau, and a modestly-sized desk and chair. A few cardboard moving boxes were tucked here and there about the room.

“
Am I sleeping in here?” I asked.

Doug looked aghast. “Oh, no - I’ve got a sleeping bag, and an inflatable mattress. You can sleep in my room tonight, that way we can hang out and not bother my folks.”

“
Uh, okay. What is this room for, then?”

“
Oh, just stuff. We only moved a few months ago, so my Mom hasn’t unpacked everything yet. She says she might use it for sewing or other projects.”

I noticed there wasn’t a sewing machine anywhere to be seen, but said nothing.

Doug’s room was pretty cool. He had a good collection of the usual action figures, and some sweet model jets and tanks. Several action movie posters were pinned to the walls, and best of all, he had a television in his room, hooked up to a Super NES, with two controllers laid out on the floor in front of the console. Doug handed me a shoebox filled with game cartridges, and I dug through them all; he had an awesome collection of games, a lot newer than my own. My Super NES was hooked up to the living room TV, and my folks only let me play for an hour a day, two on the weekends. Doug told me his parents didn’t care how much he played, as long as he did his chores and finished his homework.

“
This is pretty sweet - you’ve got a bunch of two-player games,”

“
Oh, yeah. Before we moved here, friends would come over and play sometimes.”

So far, my visit to Doug’s house was completely normal, and I began to feel a sense of being let down. I didn’t know what to expect from a supposed haunted house, but this wasn’t it. So when we started to leave Doug’s room and go back to the kitchen, I thought it was my overactive imagination when I saw a brief flicker of movement in the reflection of Doug’s TV screen.

He must have seen me hesitate and look back, because Doug let out a nervous laugh and grabbed my sleeve, pulling me from his room. “Come on dude, you can get your Super Mario World fix in after dinner.”

“
Uh, yeah...okay. I just thought -”

“
C’mon man, homework! My dad’s going to be annoyed if we don’t have it done by the time he gets home. He’s renting
Total Recall
tonight - I think some mutant chick shows her boobs in it.”

I grinned. “Sweet. Okay, let’s hurry up then.”

We plowed through our math homework and most of our English by the time Mike, Doug’s father, got home. Mike (he said “Call me Mike!”) was an accountant for the city and had just started his job in September when the family moved into town. He was friendly, asked about my mom and dad, what sorts of classes I liked, and what I thought of baseball and fishing.

Over the course of dinner, consisting of stir-fried chicken, vegetables, and rice, I had the distinct, weird impression that I was being in some way interviewed as a friend for Doug. I made sure to avoid talking about ghosts, horror stories, exorcists, or anything else that might set off parental alarm bells. Sharon and Mike were certainly friendly, perhaps too friendly, and I began to get the feeling that if there was an interview going on, it was in the hopes that I would be a good friend for Doug, helping him get out of his shell and meet people, perhaps eventually becoming more “normal”.

While Doug and I were clearing the table after dinner, I noticed the first sign of something distinctly...unusual. We volunteered to wash and dry and put away the dishes, and as I was working at the sink I couldn’t help but notice how so many of the ceramic plates and bowls had minor chips knocked out of them, as if they were regularly banged against each other or some other hard surface. I tried to dismiss this as just paranoia on my part, and I began to put dishes away in the cabinets above the kitchen counter. I opened one cabinet, containing mugs, glasses, plates and bowls, and put away a plate. As I turned away for a moment I heard an odd...scraping sound, coming from inside the cabinet. At first I thought I had stacked the plate wrong, and it had shifted in the cabinet, so I glanced inside.

What I saw made my blood run cold.

The cabinet hadn’t been a disorganized mess before, but there was no real rhyme or reason in how the contents were sorted. Now, however, everything was arranged so neatly, so precise that I would have needed a ruler to make things look so perfect. All the glasses were to one side, all the mugs on the other, everything sorted by size and even color. Whatever happened in the cabinet, it happened in just a second or two, and it happened without anyone touching the dishes.

Anyone alive
, that is.

I looked at Doug. He must have heard the noise, but he made no indication that he thought anything unusual had happened. I washed a plate, dried it, and asked him, “Could you put this away for me?”

Doug took the plate, reached up to put it on the shelf, and then paused. He looked at me, and I looked back at him. Doug’s parents were now in the living room watching the news, so I kept my voice low when I spoke to him.

“
Was that, you know...
it
?”

Doug looked back towards the living room, then turned to me and nodded. “It messes with the dishes a lot; that’s why so many are broken. I’ve never seen this before. Was that the first time you looked in there?”

“
I put a plate away and it seemed, you know, normal. But then I heard stuff move and it changed to look like that.”

Doug just put away his plate and nodded. “Let’s just get the dishes done and not mention this to my folks, okay?”

“
Yeah...sure.”

Afterward, we moved into the living room to watch the movie. The room contained a large, plush sofa and two easy chairs, one on either side. The fireplace occupied one side of the room, and a pleasant warmth radiating from the banked coals kept the temperature comfortable. I noticed the mantle had a few old family photos, obviously grandparents and great-grandparents, but strangely, there were no family photos of Doug, Mike, or Sharon.

I turned and whispered to Doug. “No family photos?”

Doug glanced at his parents, watching the end of the evening news. “We had some, but they...tend to break a lot. So they are packed away.”

“
In that junk room?”

“
No, in my parent’s bedroom. Mom keeps them in an album.”

Doug and I watched the movie from the couch, while Doug’s dad sat in his chair and joked with us, laughing and enjoying the action. Sharon sat in the room with us, too, but she wore a pair of headphones, listening to a book on tape while knitting. I hadn’t seen the movie before, but after a little while, I began to feel disconcerted; it took me a while to figure out why, but eventually I noticed that every so often, I felt like one of the people on the screen would glance in my direction. I don’t mean towards the camera - I mean right at me. At first I thought I was just a little freaked out by the cabinet incident, so I got up, got a glass of water, and sat down on the couch at a slightly different angle to the television.

The moment I sat down, both the characters on screen looked right at me for a moment. The action didn’t stop, everything seemed normal, but it was incredibly unnerving all the same. I’d heard how some portrait paintings make you feel like you’re always being watched, but to have it happen through the TV was far weirder.

I turned to Doug. “Does something seem a little weird to you?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Do the actors look...a little funny? Like they’re looking at the camera a lot?”

“
I don’t know what you’re talking about - hang on, I bet this part is going to be awesome!”

I finished my glass of water and I got up to put the glass away, glancing over my shoulder as I crossed the room. The characters on the screen followed me with their eyes as I walked from one side of the room to the other.

Eventually the movie ended, and while Doug and his dad laughed and talked about their favorite moments, I just stared at the screen while the credits rolled past.

“
Hey, Owen? Didn’t you like it? I figured it’d be right up your alley,” Mike said.

“
Oh, yeah - sorry, I was just spacing out for a moment. It was pretty cool. Thanks for renting it for us!”