Ha! This wasn’t so bad! She had always thought there would be creepy paintings and cobwebs and depressing music when she was younger, but then, she thought the house would eat her, too.

She wasn’t even close, not even about the cobwebs! Thank God. Kay didn’t like spiders much. There were no white sheets to cover anything, not even any weird art on the walls; it looked like a regular house. Just bigger, and covered in an inch-thick layer of dust. Kay decided she might actually enjoy herself.

She flopped down on an old, off-white loveseat and reached in her bag for the book she had meant to read at Sam’s. It was an old book that she’d read three or four times already, but she was just looking to kill time anyway, she didn’t need to focus.

…And she didn’t. She was asleep within twenty pages. The couch was too comfortable; anyone with prejudice against antiques being awesome: this was the most awesome sofa in the history of sofas.

Through half-closed eyelids, Kay could tell it wasn’t morning yet; it was still way too dark. She turned and let the book hit the floor as she settled back to sleep. She heard the house settle with her, creaking a little as it went with the wind. Kay wanted to tell it ‘shut up I’m not done napping’, but it silenced on its own after a minute.

She curled her legs and waited for the sleep to come back, but she couldn’t quite grasp at it; the dryness of her throat bothered her… and the bad taste in her mouth… and the chill of the night air…

Wait, shoot. She thought. Was there an open window somewhere? The night was damp outside, but it was becoming bone chilling inside as the wetness seeped through her skin. Kay stood up and walked a ways, partially to fully wake up, partially testing for a draft. The house creaked with her steps, but it wasn’t a scary sound, just a comfortable, rhythmic, almost soothing…

Why didn’t it stop when she did? The floorboards continued to shift weight even after Kay stopped. Well, that’s creepy, she thought, trying to be nonchalant. Alright, so the house was a little scarier than she’d admitted, but if anything was going to get her, it would have happened by now. She was sleeping before. Perfectly vulnerable.

Kay yawned and pushed a button on her watch to light it up: three a.m. Seven hours before Bri could pick her up. Kay went back to her loveseat and sat with her legs up. It was less cold now that she’d moved around a bit; maybe she’d listen to something soft on her iPod and fall asleep to that.

She pulled the music player out of her bag and unfolded her sleeping bag along the floor, regretting to leave the couch, but the chill was getting worse. Whoever lived here could have at least gotten a decent heating system, Kay thought sourly. She put her headphones in and pressed play on the nano.

Slayer screamed into her ears a little too loudly. She ripped the headphones out and hurried to turn it down, then glanced around. Why? She couldn’t disturb anything here, but the silence was so heavy that she was afraid to listen to anything too deafening. There was something about this house, she could feel it. A certain… respect? When someone came into it, they had to feel a sort of awe. Kay scrolled through her music and wondered who had lived here. Well, obviously no one for a long time, but before…

She got a mental image of girl her age, walking down the winding stairway, streaking the polish on the handrail as she went. This would be a beautiful place to live if someone would just fix it up a little; it still even had the furniture for crying out loud! Kay yawned as she felt a sudden weight on her eyes, pressing her back into sleep. As soon as she picked a song, she’d crash back into the sleeping bag in a fetal position and rest. She yawned again quietly as the wind blew and then stopped as her heart kicked up a notch.

Was there someone in the house? She could have sworn she heard-

No, she didn’t hear anything. She was so tired, she was making things up…

There it was again. Kay shook the tiredness away and stood up; the stupor vanished instantly, leaving a dead taste in Kay’s mouth as she wandered toward the sound. It was a sort of rhythmic sound, almost… melodic. It sounded like the wind in the treetops during fall, but Kay tried to listen closer; it was too eerie for trees, too eerie for anything Kay had heard before.

This is so stupid, she thought, meandering aimlessly through the house. But she was totally awake now, and (embarrassed to say) freaked out, no way she’d be able to sleep anymore.

Kay opened another of the seemingly endless dark wood doors into what looked like a kitchen. The lethargy from before came back ten-fold, but her heartbeat quickened. What the heck was going on?

…There was a girl in the room. She was about Kay’s age and had beautiful, flowing blonde hair that coursed down her back. She felt cold, even from a distance, like that chill that seeped through the house was all coming from her; but something else bothered Kay in spite of that: the girl was pale as paper, but her face cut through the dark with a blinding light.

She felt a rush of fear when the girl was suddenly close, almost touching her face. Her heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second and out of sheer terror, Kay ran. There was no forethought as to where she was running, and she didn’t try to remember the way out of the house, but somehow she made it, with the freezing numbness of the girl’s skin feeling only seconds behind.

Kay tripped out the front door and landed on the dew-covered grass. The water soaked through her clothes and skin, but she got up and kept running. She ran a block and as fast as she could until she collapsed on the sidewalk a few feet from her driveway.

After her brain finally realized the need for oxygen, Kay turned around and looked behind her as the feeling that she was going to throw up faded away. It was gone. She was home.

Time decelerated back into a normal pace that now seemed sluggish as she headed up to her front door. She reached into her pocket for her key, but whether she had it or not didn’t much matter; she was getting into that house. She’d wake her parents and would accept the consequences, if that’s what it took. …No, thank God, her key was still in her front pocket. Her parents wouldn’t look into her empty room until they got back from church in the morning; she was safe.

It seemed like an insignificant ‘safe’ now, but the memory already began repressing itself.