Me and Gabby went back to my place and ran up to my bedroom. I closed the door and turned on the camera again. "We have this on camera! We have this on camera!" I showed Gabby once again. She turned away and folded her arms.

"It gives me the creeps," she said.

I sat down on the bed next to her. "No wonder you couldn't see them," I said, nearly out of breath. My heart was pounding, excited and disturbed by what I found out today. I put my hand on my head, thinking about everything. "They warned me about this place...this house, but never told me what happened to them."

There was a long silence. Gabby shrugged, playing with her hair and twisting it out of nervousness. "You think this house is cursed?"

"Maybe," I said. "I don't know."

Gabby laid down. "I need a nap."

I nodded and laid down next to her. I stayed up, thinking about everything until I drifted off to sleep.

***

I woke up to laughter in my ear. Crisp clean laughter coming from a kid. I could see my room but my eyes had trouble adjusting. It was blurry but I could see my dresser, my TV, my window.

The window.

There was someone standing by the window but I could only see the silhouette of the legs and torso. The top part of the head was covered by the curtain. The figure was dark, skinny, and lumpy. Again, it looked burnt. That's when I realized I was having sleep paralysis again. I tried to move and this time, I tried to speak. I could hear my words come out like an echo but my mouth wasn't moving.

"What are you? Who are you?" I could hear myself say, almost like in my mind.

There was no more laughter. More of a pressure in my ear followed by a static. The silence was soon filled an inhuman moan from neither a female or male. I never heard anything like that before. The shadow was still standing there. By this point I was afraid to talk or move. I just wanted the paralysis to end. I began praying in my head and as soon as I did, I heard a voice.

"She's dead," followed by laughter from a kid's voice. "She's dead."

The voice kept repeating.

"She's dead, she's dead, she's dead, she's dead."

The shadow figure lifted a hand onto the window and it began to moan again.

"Leave me alone!" I tried yelling.

"Leave me alone! "Leave me alone!"

I could move again and this time my mom was holding me in her arms and dad standing next to a cop. There was blood where Gabby was laying. I fully woke up. "Where's Gabby!" I pushed mom away and stood up, looking around. 

"I'm so sorry," my mother got up to hug me. Dad followed. "She died in her sleep, Esther," she said. "We thought you were dead too!"

The cops moved my parents from in front of me and called the medical examiners to get me. We all went down stairs. I was shaking, crying, and looking back. This had to be a dream. It just had to be...

I woke up gasping for air to see Gabby on her phone. I quickly hugged her and touched her face to make sure this was real. I touched myself. I looked around. 

"It was just a dream," I whispered.

Gabby looked at me with a confused look on her face. "What happened?"

I didn't want to tell her what I saw about her so instead I told her about the shadow figure I saw in my sleep paralysis. I explained how real it felt and how the strange voices I head. I was still trembling while talking to her and I felt like the pressure I felt was still there. My ears were still ringing too.

Gabby didn't respond. She just looked at me. "What's wrong?" I asked her.

"I had a dream there was a little girl underneath your bed and she was playing with a  match," she took a deep breath. "and she asked me if I wanted to play with her. She called me by my actually name. She called me Gabby."

I didn't know what to say. She gave me a faint smile before getting up. 

"Call me when you figure this out, okay?" She looked at me while walking towards the door. I looked outside. It was starting to get dark.

"Don't you want to stay?" I asked.

"I'm afraid," she said before leaving. 

I walked down stairs with her. When we got outside, we found Kass smoking a cigarette on the stoop. Gabby and I hugged then said our goodbyes. Kass was about to say something to me but I told her to wait there while I got something from upstairs. I grabbed the camera and took it back downstairs to show Kassandra what me and Gabby found. I turned on the camera only to find out that none of them had been there. The camera SIM card memory had zero images on them. Someone had erased everything!

Kass smiled at me. "You want to take my picture?" She took the cigarette from her mouth and posed.

I just looked at her with a blank face. Slowly, I held up the camera and took her picture.

"How do I look?" She asked.

I showed her the picture. "Good..."