Famous Last Words

There was no one there.

Only a trail of rose petals, red and plush. A solid blanket of them, a foot wide, leading away down the hall and disappearing in the inky darkness.

I could go wake up Mom and Jonathan, but I knew from the bathtub incident that there was a very decent chance the hall would be perfectly clean when I brought them back upstairs. I could take a photo, or scoop an armful of flowers, but what would that prove? The obvious assumption would be that I had done this myself. For attention, or as a weird prank, or whatever. Face it — “crazy ghost” is never going to be people’s go-to explanation. Not when there’s a teenager in the house to take the blame.

Leyta’s advice ran through my head:

You just have to work through it.

I walked alongside the trail of roses, keeping one hand on the wall, because I needed to feel co

I decided that if the trail led to Jonathan’s office, I wouldn’t follow it inside.

But it didn’t lead there. It led to the third bedroom, the one directly across from the top of the stairs.

I stopped about a foot from the door.

Then I took a step back.

From the other side of that door came a soft:

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Before I could take another step back, it came again — a little faster, a little harder:

Knock-knock-knock!

I hardly had time to catch my breath before the sound turned furious:

KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!!!

Every corner of my consciousness was scared — scared of whatever was doing this, scared that Mom and Jonathan would wake up — and absolutely terrified of what was waiting for me, beckoning me inside.

But if I turned back, I would never get up the nerve to come this far again.

Get through it. That’s all you can do. There are no shortcuts in the flow.

This is your journey.

I opened the door.

This room was a mirror image of my own. The bed was to my right, and the bathroom was to my left. I got the feeling that I’d warped into an alternate universe.

The trail of petals stopped just inside the door.

As I crossed the threshold, a headache pierced cleanly through my temples, as if I’d been shot with a poisoned arrow. I pressed my fingers against my eyes, trying to ward it off.

Then I heard:

Drip … drip … drip …

I flipped the light switch and the overhead light came to life — but only after hesitating for a second. Like some force was deciding whether I got to have a light on or not, and it finally took mercy on me.

I followed the dripping sound to the bathroom, knowing what I would find: the bathtub full to overflowing. A serene surface. And reflected in that surface, the face of the ghost that had wrapped its fate around mine like a boa constrictor.

So I went in, mainly because I was begi

The light in the bathroom wouldn’t turn on. But all right, no big deal. The window over the bathtub let in pale moonlight, and the light from the bedroom spilled through the door. It wasn’t ideal, but I could still see — enough to glance around and be sure that there wasn’t a corpse, or a murderer.

Just a ghost.

I walked over to the tub and looked down at the surface of the water.

Perfectly smooth and serene, like I’d known it would be.

“I would really appreciate, at this point,” I said out loud, “some guidance as to why you’ve brought me here.”

Drip.

“Awesome,” I said. “Wow, thank you, that is so incredibly useful.”

Now that I’d found my voice, I couldn’t stop talking. Getting the words out slowed the chaotic whirring in my brain.

“What we have before us is a bathtub full of water. And I can only imagine that you intend to do another abracadabra thing where I look away and the water’s gone or overflowing or … I don’t know, turned to vanilla pudding, maybe?” I closed my eyes and turned around. “So why don’t you do your little trick and we can get on with things?”

I counted to five, then spun around.

The bathtub was not dry.

But it wasn’t just full of water anymore.

The water was thick with rose petals. Thousands of them. In fact, it was more like someone had filled the tub with rose petals first and then filled the tiny spaces between them with water.

“This … sucks,” I whispered. Then I raised my voice slightly. “Hey, newsflash: I am not putting any part of my body into that water.”

There was, unsurprisingly, no answer. I stayed a good four feet away, staring at the water in a state of highly uneasy expectancy.

“Never,” I said. “No body parts. No hands, no feet … I’m not going to duck my head underwater and look for your corpse. So if that’s what you’re hoping for, let it go.”

Suddenly, the rose petals began to move.

Something was in the tub.

And whatever it was, it was coming to the surface.

I staggered back and ran into the counter, gripping it to keep myself from passing out. Behind me, the bathroom door slammed, shutting me in and eliminating about 80 percent of the light.

And in the sudden darkness, the water trembled.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away, anticipating the moment that a hand dripping with decayed flesh would push free of the petals.

Finally, the petals parted. But what came up between them wasn’t any kind of hand….

It was a piece of paper.

I looked around for something I could use to fish it out — a toilet brush or a plunger. But the bathroom was devoid of anything remotely useful.

I had to know what was on that paper. I knew in my gut that I needed to see it. I also had a feeling that, no matter how hard I tried, the bathroom door wouldn’t open for me unless I followed these ghostly instructions.

I stepped closer. The page was crumpled, and a corner of it floated up out of the water. If I was careful, I could grab it by that corner and pull it out without even touching a single flower petal.

The room was dark, but the tub was lit in a slanted rectangle of moonlight. My heart had taken over my whole body, beating so hard I swayed on my feet.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I reached my hand down toward the piece of paper.

I was a foot away. Then ten inches. Eight. Six.

Four.

My fingers hovered over my target. The roses in the tub drifted in a slow circle, stirred by some supernatural current.

I grabbed the exposed corner of the paper and yanked it up so fast that I splashed myself full in the face with water.

But I got it. And not so much as a single body part had I submerged in the evil haunted bathtub. I’d given the spirit what it wanted….

Now the door would open and let me out.

Feeling a thin silver lining of triumph, I sighed and turned to walk out of the bathroom.

That’s when it hit me. Not a physical thing, but a force, like a powerful burst of wind — my own private tornado. The impact slammed against my torso and propelled me backward, until I lost my footing.

As my feet came out from under me, the backs of my legs struck something hard and smooth, and before I had time to take a breath deep enough to scream, I plunged backward into the bathtub.

The rose petals were so soft. It felt as if thousands of gentle fingers were touching my hands and arms and face and throat and feet, and the parts of my back and stomach that were exposed when my pajama top floated around me in the water. My screaming/breathing reflex showed up just late enough that I opened my lips and nearly choked on a mouthful of wet roses. I sprang out of the tub, about four feet straight into the air, miraculously not landing face-first against the corner of the bathroom counter.