The Ghost’s Obsession

3

RAVEN

The lights were off. Moonlight cut through the thin curtains in pale strips, just enough to see the balcony door standing wide open, swaying on its hinge. I hadn't left it open. I'd barred it myself.

Something flickered at the edge of my vision. I turned so fast my neck hurt, but the balcony was empty.

My breathing filled the silence, too loud, too fast. "H-hello?" My eyes went to my bag on the table. "Is anyone there?"

I crossed to it slowly, joints stiff, and pulled out the tactical pen, aircraft-grade aluminum, small enough to hide in a fist and sharp enough to matter. I walked to the balcony, gripping it. The neighbor's balcony was too far to jump to without a running start and a lot of noise. Below, people smoked on the sidewalk, oblivious. No one had jumped from up here. No one could have.

I let myself breathe. Maybe the lock was just broken. Shitty building, shittier locks; the agent would hear about this tomorrow. I shut the door and dragged a dining chair against it, wedging the back under the handle.

Only then did I notice the laptop. It sat open on the table. I stopped. I was almost sure I'd closed it. It wasn’t in my habit to leave it open. I walked over and looked at the screen. There was nothing. Just the desktop. I shut it anyway and told myself I was tired, that was all, just tired and careless.

Returning to the bedroom, I saw the bathroom door was ajar too. I couldn’t help but shiver a little as I walked over and pushed it shut without looking too hard at why it bothered me.

Dropping the towel, I caught my reflection in the mirror across from the bed. The scar under my left breast hadn't faded, wouldn't ever fade. A fight, inside, over a roommate who couldn't defend herself and didn't deserve what almost happened to her. Three days in solitary for that one. Worth it. My face in the glass looked thinner than I remembered, cheekbones sharper, the grey streak in my hair wider against the dark. My eyes used to look sharp. Now they just looked tired.

For the first time in months, I slept naked, sheets cool against my skin, the AC humming with a smell like it hadn't run in years. The hum blurred with the last song still playing low on my phone, one note bleeding into the next until I couldn't tell which was which, and somewhere in that blur a voice that wasn't the song at all started talking.

"It's always the ghost you don't see that kills you." The words were spoken so close to my ear I felt the warmth of a breath that shouldn't have been there.

I jerked awake, sucking in a breath. For one wild second, I was sure someone had been standing over me, but there wasn't. It was just morning light spilling through the curtains and the stale hum of the air conditioner.

My heart refused to slow down. It felt like I'd surfaced from underwater, leather pressed tight against my face, smothering, and then it wasn't.

"Get a grip, Raven," I muttered, rubbing a hand over my face.

It was just a dream...Wasn't it? I dragged myself up and pushed into the bathroom, and the scream was out of me before I could stop it.

The tub was red. The heater cord sat coiled beneath the surface, and floating on top were pieces of the rat, torn apart, meat and fur gone soft from a violent electrocution.

I sat down hard on the tile and cried, which made no sense; I'd wanted that thing dead since the moment I found it. But not like this. Not this close to what almost happened to me in that same tub.

A knock at the door cut through it. I threw on a shirt and shorts and answered before I could think better of it.

"Hi, miss, Mr. Martins said you had rat problems?"

A man filled the doorway, broad enough to block the hall behind him, his face hidden behind a maintenance mask. I looked at his name tag before I looked at anything else.

GHOST.