Beads of sweat pooled on my brow and the tiled floor blurred between my feet.
“Tell the kids… tell them I love them,” I yelled through gritted teeth.
Jessica tutted from the other side of the bathroom door and I could have sworn I heard her eyes roll in their sockets. The chasm between our two differing senses of humour couldn’t have been wider, but we managed to love the socks off each other all the same. I only wished she’d smile a little more.
“Stop being so bloody dramatic and hurry up,” she repremanded me in her usual disapproving tone. Then, in a tone quite alien to me, she whispered something else. “Who’s there?”
I frowned. “Jess? You okay baby?”
No reply. I heard footsteps padding away across the bedroom floor and into the connecting hallway. I listened for a moment, a small debate waging in my head to the tune of the extractor fan whirring above.
Was she messing with me? Was this her weird way of getting back at me for the countless years of dumb jokes I’d subjected her to? I thought it likely, but I promptly wiped my ass and pried the door open all the same.
An assortment of fancy clothes and makeup accessories lay strewn about the bedroom, mapping out our- well, mostly Jessica’s- past few hours. She was one of those girls that could never seem to decide on an outfit no matter how much time she was afforded in advance. She’d throw something on and ask me how it looked, I’d tell her truthfully that I thought it looked great, then she’d sigh and rip it off again, mumbling that it made her hips look like boulders or some similar nonsense.
My nostrils crinkled involuntarily as the bathroom door clicked shut behind me. The air didn’t seem much fresher out here.
“Jess?” I called once more.
An eery silence was all that answered, pressing in from all angles. Even the incessant ticking of the ornate clock sitting in the corner seemed oddly muted under the steadily rising volume of my heartbeat. As sure as I was that this was nothing but an overdue wind up, there was still that nagging thought tugging at the back of my mind. What if it wasn’t?
“This isn’t funny,” I told the silence sternly, before its answer jolted me into a jump of surprise.
A high, breathy titter floated in through the open doorway.
I pictured her hidden away in some distant corner of our sprawling country home, suppressing laughter by biting down on her dainty forearm. Then my brain decided to offer up some unsavoury alternatives- many of which involved grinning killer clowns.
“Jess?” My voice cracked this time and my adam’s apple rose and fell as it worked.
With a grimace and a final gulp, I urged my legs forward and peered around the doorway like an overgrown kid playing peakaboo.
A spectator in the hall would have seen my fearful brown eyes quivering as they scanned the hallway. With a surplus of sunlight that left no crevice for shadows to hide in, I was confident enough in my initial assessment. It was empty.
The doors lining the hall remained firmly shut, and I dearly hoped they stayed that way as I passed cautiously between them on unsteady legs. I could hardly justify my own fear in that moment. A suffocating atmosphere had fallen around me and my knees were one cheap fright away from physically knocking together. I hoped for my pride’s sake that it wouldn’t come to that. I couldn’t give Jess the satisfaction.
An unpleasant smell was clawing its way up my nostrils as I descended the stairs, growing stronger and stronger with each step until it finally qualified as a full-fledged stench. By the time my feet made contact with the ground floor I was near the point of retching.
A quick rattle of the front door knob told me it hadn’t been unlocked, nevermind opened, and then there was that titter again. Louder now and much more clear.
I held my breath and turned begrudgingly to the ajoining living room with its grand archway entrance. There, standing in front of our marble fireplace, was Jess. Though the sight did nothing to relax me.
She was adorned with a pretty green cocktail dress that revealed lengthy legs accentuated by a pair of stilleto heels. Her jet black hair hung in loose ringlets, falling around a set of expensive hoop earrings. A thin gold necklace rested upon her ample cleavage, and some crazed part of me marvelled at the magic of push up bras.
Despite all that, if she’d asked me there and then how I thought she looked, I could not in good conscience have given her the truth.
Mascara ran in thick globs down her cheeks, spilling free of wide, red-rimmed eyes. Carefully applied lipstick cracked as her mouth widened before me, forcefully peeling back to reveal more and more of her straight pearly whites. The usual sparkle had vanished from her ocean blue eyes; they were surrounded now by webs of vivid red.
“Eeeel eeeee,” she sobbed desperately, unable to properly form the words with those filthy grey fingers wedged in the corners of her mouth. “Eeease, eeeeel eeee!”
Blood welled from cuts that were erupting into being all over her still stretching lips as the fingers pried them wider and wider. Saliva bubbled out from between her teeth, dripping messily down to her chin were it hung in swelling strands.
Before Jess’s screams began, I heard that titter again. That haunting, mocking little laugh. Only I knew now that it didn’t come from Jessica. It never had.
No.
It gurgled out from the gaping maw of the thing peeking out from behind her.