"It's you again," I said.
I can't say if she looked surprised.
In the dim light of the bathroom, it was hard to make out the expression on the face of the ghost girl who hovered behind me. I had just dried my face, but I turned the tap on cold and splashed myself again. I reached for the towel and dried my face, slower this time, pressing into my eye sockets like I could push back whatever insanity I was currently experiencing.
When I opened my eyes again, the ghost girl was gone. Because of course she was. She had never been there to begin with.
"You're losing it, J.J," I chided myself as I hung the towel back on the rack, "just like you knew you would."
I shut off the light and stepped into my bedroom, tossing aside a pile of laundered clothes before falling onto the bed. I stared up at the ceiling, the ticking of the clock on the wall the only sound.
I had always loved that about this place - the stillness. Like someone had turned down the volume knob on the world. I had hoped that coming back here would help, would make me feel a little more grounded…but apparently it was having the opposite effect.
I couldn't remember a time I had felt this depressed. Maybe after mom died, but even that had been different. That had hurt enough that I didn't feel it all, like when you cut yourself so deep that you don't even know anything happened until you see the blood.
This was more…dull. Like someone had thrown a heavy blanket over my head and I couldn't shake it off. I'd gained five pounds since I'd moved in - all the takeout food probably wasn't helping, but there was no way I was about to cook for myself. I could barely scrounge up the motivation to get off the couch most days.
I sat up, filled with a sudden sense of self-disgust. I couldn't just lie around this place getting fatter. And I absolutely couldn't get crazier.
I pulled open the drawer of my bedside table and took out my pill bottle. How many times over the past few weeks had I fantasized about taking them all at once? But I pushed that dark thought down as I read the instructions, reminding myself that I had indeed taken the correct dose that morning.
I'd call Dr. Naresh tomorrow, I decided, tossing the pill bottle back in the drawer. Maybe I needed to up my dose. I knew I was in for a lecture, though; Dr. Naresh had warned me about moving up here, about the dangers of isolation when I was still so unstable. I had countered that being around my family wasn't a much better option than being alone, but still…I was beginning to wonder if my psychiatrist had been right.
I got out of bed and wandered downstairs. This house seemed so much bigger than I had remembered. But that was just the emptiness. Whatever had possessed me to take this house on, I couldn't have told you. Maybe it was just the timing; after Nicole left me and took most of our friend group with her, I guess I just wanted somewhere to retreat to - and this old house in the middle of nowhere seemed as good a place as any.
I headed for the kitchen and grabbed a Twisted Tea out of the fridge. I really wasn't supposed to drink while on my meds, but screw it - I was seeing ghosts already anyway. What was the harm?
I wandered into the living room and dropped onto the couch, as the cushions wheezed like they were tired of me, too. My laptop sat open on the coffee table, the screen loaded with the half-written article I was supposed to be writing. It had sat like that for three days, the blinking cursor mocking me from the mostly-empty page.
I sighed and folded it shut. I wasn't going to get anything productive done tonight, that much I knew.
When I closed my eyes, all I could see was the ghost.
She was just like I remembered her; a round face with pale skin, shoulder-length blond hair that curled slightly; and that long nightgown, the color of moonlight, flowing around her slight frame. She had always reminded me of a movie star, some 1950's beauty queen.
I wasn't scared of her; I'd stopped being scared of my hallucinations a long time ago. What I was scared of was the idea that I was slipping again, that now that I was alone in this house, there was no one to tell me what was real.
"You can't trust yourself, Jordan," I said out loud. But was that me saying it? Or was that just my stepmom's voice echoing in the back of my mind? I could still hear her and my dad arguing, late one night when they thought I was asleep.
'You can't trust him,' I had heard her say from behind the bedroom door, her voice almost manic with worry, 'what if he hurts someone? What if those voices that he's hearing tell him to stab one of us in our sleep? I don't want him in the house, Tom!'
'Well, what do you want me to do, Shelley?' my dad had countered half-heartedly, 'Lock him up?'
'Obviously not,' she had snapped, 'But that doesn't mean we couldn't send him somewhere. He'd be safer somewhere else, somewhere they could keep an eye on him. We'd all be safer.'
I leaned forward, rubbing my temples. Had she been right all along?
I was a danger to myself, if nothing else - my recent suicidal depression was proof of that. But I still knew reality from hallucination. I knew that girl in the mirror was really just a girl in my head, so that was progress, right?
It didn't really matter, though.
I was alone out here, far enough from everyone that I wouldn't be a burden or a threat. Nicole made the right call, I thought as I swigged the last of my alcoholic tea.
I would have left me, too.