22. THE SIXTH FIGURE
CHAPTER 22
THE SIXTH FIGURE
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"Hey... what's with the silence?" Elec's mom asked. She sauntered in undoing her hair with her unruffled makeup.
She looked just like Elec and she looked like someone who'd be mistaken for a model. Elec inherited everything from her mother except that deep auburn hair. It's mostly brown, but you'd see red in some light settings. I really needed to learn how Mrs. Withers kept her hair under control.
She screened the silence for a good one minute and asked again. "Why are you all so silent?" and then she got distracted by the appearance of Aiden and Verena. "Who is this?" she asked Elec, pointing at Verena.
"That's our old friend - Verena."
"Old?"
"She used to be our classmate and then their family moved out of town."
"Nice to meet you, Verena." She gave an effusive smile. "Aiden...!" She said in a spirited exclamation. "I'm surprised to see a boy in my house. I don't think Miles had ever step foot in my house." Elec rolled her eyes. Her mom didn't have a clue of their breakup or was she putting feelers out? Only Elec would know. "Is Elec still giving you a tough time, Aiden?"
"Oh! No, Mrs. Withers. We are cool," he lied with a feathery smile. I must say he knew how to act cool.
"You are a maligner, too. Oh! I'm not surprised." She gave a faint click of her tongue. "I still give you a hard time and I will continue."
"Elec..." I shook my head in repudiation of her rudeness. Why did she have to get rude like that to him?
"Elec..." Her mom's voice was a confection, but with the undertones of a candied warning. Ran in the blood, that trait. "Be kind, Elec. Aiden, don't take anything that she says personally. She just hates all men. You know, it all started with her dad...," She began to explain how her misandry started.
"Mom... I think you should go prune in your bathtub," Elec growled.
"I'm out." She half rolled her eyes and walked away with a dainty wave. I was still looking at her luscious gleaming hair as she climbed the stairs.
Mrs. Cherie Withers was a lawyer and she was the strongest women I had met in my real life. She had done a good job of bringing Elec up. Strong like her except Elec had this need to control everything. The good thing was, she knew how to control things and she could be a good leader. She was an alpha like Fiona said. Fiona... Fiona... Fiona... Why was her name going around in my mind like a duck running?
The figure that I saw outside the window, it had features like Fiona. I mean, it wouldn't be very appalling if she had followed us there, but why would she do that? I watched as Mrs. Withers took the last step up the stairs, and then she disappeared from my sight. I leaned in and I shushed.
"What is it?" Irsia whispered.
"I think I know who the sixth figure is."
"The one by the window?" Elec asked, giving her head a confused tilt.
"That's someone we know?" Irsia's tone was crammed with some form of distaste. "Why couldn't I guess? Maybe it's the nyctophobia. It's stressing me out."
"I can't hear you," Aiden hushed.
I gestured to him to come near us. "I think it was Fiona. You know her hair style, height and dress... you know that oversized kaftan top she wears, right? It kind of looked like her."
"Oh! My God! That makes perfect sense. Fiona fits to a T to the silhouette's profile. The high plait... that's a replica of Elec's middle school hairstyle." Irsia construed the details.
"That copy snake." Elec remarked in an arid inflection.
"Fiona Raddix?" Verena was trying to get confirmation, as if there was someone else who was that deluded to follow us to a haunted mansion to stalk us.
Fiona had this habit of plating her hair so high and she was kind of tall. Not as tall as Elec. But tall. And she had a habit of following us. So, it all made a whale of a sense.
"What would she be doing there?" Verena asked in befuddlement. "I know the animosity between you girls and her is deeply bilateral. But what could she be possibly doing after dark in an abandoned house?"
"Believe me. She would even follow us into the bathroom stall if she had the chance to," Elec blurted out in a half sigh and half exasperation.
Only when I heard the sound of his racy laughter, I knew he was sitting right beside me on the chaise lounge. Only a centimeter away. Okay, I was the one who asked him to come closer, but not this close. I noticed my eyebrows going out of its place. I looked down at my feet before anyone else could notice what was happening. I suddenly had this urge to stare at Verena because she could be reading my mind. I stared at her, rubbing my neck, pretending and struggling to be perfunctory.
"Relax, I am not reading your mind." She smiled a knowing smile which was peculiarly incriminating. I kept staring at her. Thank God, the others didn't pick up on what she just uttered.
"You can read minds?" Irsia picked up on something else that probably wouldn't be a menace to me.
"Only if I concentrate hard and I have to be near you... like I have to touch your head to read your mind. I am not exactly good at this but I'm getting there." She nodded in assurance. "And as for your case, Margo..." she dragged. "It's hard even for a PSB to read your mind. You have a gift of blocking your thoughts. Use it well," she said, standing up.
"Are you leaving?" Aiden asked. Again, reminding me that he was right next to me.
"Margo, are you alright?" Irsia asked as it was too obvious that I looked like I had frozen.
"Yeah, I am good. I need water. Can you bring water, Elec?" I said the words so fast, fanning my face with my palms.
"Whoa...! You alright?" Aiden surveyed my pasty face with his eyebrows knitting together.
Ugh... the whole point was to avoid him. "Yeah, I am." I cleared my throat, looking for Elec to come back with water.
"Uh... Verena... are you going home?" What a stupid thing to ask? I regretted as soon as I asked that.
"Umm... Yeah... kind of..." she dragged, scrutinizing me.
"Good." I nodded my head. I wiped my cheeks with the back of my palm. "So, I am not getting possessed by the ghost anytime soon if I block my thoughts, right?"
"Margo, you are not going to get possessed. If the ghost wanted to, it could have possessed you in that 20-minute window that it had. It couldn't possess you because you had some sort of hope that you held onto." She snapped her fingers to which her red hair cascading down her shoulders did a lively brief bounce. "Trust me, you are safe but if you don't block your thoughts like I told you to - you might be putting your friends in danger."
"Why is that?" Irsia's green eyes glistened with a terrifying fright. Then it hit me, she didn't have time to wear her blue contact lens when she heard me scream. Irsia was an angel.
"Well, if Margo feels scared about the ghost, the ghost can appear out of nowhere. But the ghost for some reason couldn't enter Margo's body but it had the chance and power to abduct her. I'd say, it can do it again. Leveraging her to lull you. Maybe then the ghost could possess anyone of you," Verena declared like it was something that happened every day. She had an extremely extemporaneous manner of talking about cryptic matters.
"Why would it appear to Margo if she thinks about it and not when others think about it? I mean it's not like she was the only one that saw it. I saw it way before anyone else saw it"
"Has the ghost touched anyone else here to establish a connection?" A staggering theory by Verena.
"Awesome..." Aiden exclaimed sarcastically.
I saw Elec walking toward me from the kitchen. Thank God. I walked to her before she could reach me and I gulped down the water.
Verena standing at the threshold, looked at Aiden, who was her ride, who was obviously examining me drinking water.
"Aiden...," she called out.
"Yeah." he said, sharp; snapped out.
"You are my ride."
"Oh! Yeah..." He stood up and waved at us.
I waved at him too swiftly, and I sat back.
"I should leave too..." Irsia got up.
"Sit tight. We're having a sleep over." Elec admonished. But Irsia was still standing.
"Actually, I have plans to study math tomorrow. The midterms are approaching." If puppies had green eyes.
"Do you want me to restrain you?"
"Yeah... you should stay with Elec and Margo. Have fun, Irsia," Aiden loved taunting Irsia when her plans were ruined.
"Aww.... I'd love for you to stay, Aiden... but you know you can't stay," Elec retorted.
He actually laughed at her comment, fishing for his keys in his jeans pocket. Even I laughed.
"And Margo... better don't sleep alone. Don't stay in the dark, always have the light on for a few days until you block the thoughts completely and also be wise in choosing which thoughts to block," Verena reminded me one more time before she left. She didn't have to keep reminding me of that.
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