Portal House - Chapter 10
Charlene
ED:
“Hm…? What?” I rolled over in bed and turned on my table lamp. Jessie’s eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, and possibly bluer.
She opened her mouth to speak, then sat up straight and stared forward. A minute of silence dragged by. “I didn’t say that.”
I frowned, looked around the bedroom, checked the clock, then back at my wife. “What? Say what?” I rubbed my eyes as my heartbeat sped up just enough to keep me from going back to sleep, but not enough to clear my mind.
“Don’t. If you’re playing with me, Ed, just don’t. I know you heard it, because it woke you up.”
Great. Super-serious Jessie at three in the morning was never a good sign. She was AWAKE. I sighed, sitting up halfway, propped up by my right arm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But based on what you just said, how could I be joking with you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice softening as she dropped her head into her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m just so tired. I can’t do this anymore.”
I cleared my throat as I wrapped her in my arms, which oddly always made her cry if she wasn’t already, or cry even harder if she was. “Calm down and tell me what happened,” I said, already contemplating whether it was a good day to take today off work. We both needed sleep.
“It’s this damn house. Everything in it. I just want to be left alone,” she said between sobs.
I rubbed her back slowly. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” she said, her body tensing up again. “We have to move out. We have to find another place. Can you take off work soon so we can go look?”
I laughed, wondering if she could actually read my mind. “Baby, just tell me what happened tonight and we’ll figure out the rest.”
Jessie pulled my arm tighter around her, leaned onto me, and wiped her eyes. “Okay.” She took a deep and shaky breath, as if what she had to say was going to physically harm her. “I heard this voice. I was kind of half asleep, so for a second, I thought I was dreaming. Then when you woke up, I knew you heard it, too.”
“Okay…what did the voice sound like?”
“I don’t know, a man? Not a familiar voice, just like a random guy. It sounded and felt like it was right in my ear, but it wasn’t a whisper. It was as loud as we’re talking now. All he said was a name.”
The hair on my arms raised. I wanted her to stop as much as I wanted to know more. “What name? Somebody we know?”
My anxiety rose as Jessie reached for her phone. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Here.”
I looked at her phone as she handed it over. “Charlene?” I read aloud. The note she had open was time-stamped at exactly 3:03 a.m. Ten minutes ago.
“Yeah, but the way he said it made me feel like…”
I put her phone down in front of her.
“…made me feel like he was accusing me of something. Or that he thought I was this person.”
She shivered, so I wrapped the blanket around her and switched on the TV. “Charlene, huh? So, you don’t know a Charlene?”
“No, do you?”
“I don’t think so. Think she was screwing around on him or something?” I joked.
Jessie glared up at me, freezing me in the Blue Stare. “Or maybe he was the one screwing around…before he died.”
“Is this a bad time for me to start deleting my text messages?” I asked, watching her finally crack a smile.
“No, it’s been long enough since we started your life insurance policy,” she said, joking right back. “You’d actually be helping my case.”
“Okay, so no crime shows,” I said, clicking through categories on the TV.
“Comedy. Please,” she said, snuggling in closer.
I turned on a movie for us while already thinking of how to arrange the schedule to make up for a missed day of work.
To Be Continued…
I’m trying to figure out how they’re all connected. More chapters, please!