Free Haunted by Dorah L. Williams Page B

he called. “And I’ve brushed my teeth too.”
    Kammie was a few inches taller than Matt. Her hair was a bit darker and quite long, and she had been wearing a red outfit that day. Still I reasoned that, since there were only the four of us in the house, it must have been Kammie I had seen instead of Matt.
    â€œWas it Kammie who came in here just before me?” I asked Rosa. She shook her head and continued to colour her picture, unaware of my bewilderment. Given the speed at which that child had rushed through the doorway, he would have run right into Rosa’s chair and table, and yet she had been oblivious to anyone except me entering the room.
    â€œKammie?” I called. “I’m up in the bathroom brushing my teeth,” my oldest daughter called down from the second floor. Matt came down the stairs at a safe pace, dressed in jeans and a green sweater, and started to put on his boots.
    â€œDid you want me?” he asked.
    â€œNo, I just didn’t know where you were,” I said, trying to make sense out of what had just happened so I could convince myself I was not losing my mind.
    â€œI went up to get changed like you told me to,” he said, petting Piper who was now nuzzling up against him.
    â€œI know. You’re a good boy.” I forced myself to smile but noticed my hands were shaking as I opened up the front door. When Kammie came down the stairs, they both headed back to school.
    I walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone, feeling the need to talk to another adult about what had just happened. I called Ted on his phone cellular and caught him as he sat in a lineup at a drive-through restaurant. He was having lunch on the road as his out-of-town meeting with a client had run longer than expected.
    I told Ted about seeing the young boy run across the foyer.
    â€œDo you want me to come home?” he asked, thinking I was frightened.
    â€œNo, I’m okay,” I answered, and was surprised to find that I actually was.
    The fact that the presence was that of a small boy made that sighting different. It made me feel more sad than frightened that this child, who was perhaps even younger than Matt, was a presence in our home. The energy and rambunctious nature the young boy had manifested were just like those of any other youngster. I found nothing terrifying or threatening about him; he was apparently only the spirit of a child who was now no longer alive.
    Sighting the boy was also much less scary, not only because it had taken place in daylight, but because he had not attempted to communicate or interact with anyone in the house. Matt and Kammie had not been aware of him on the second floor where I assumed he must have been before running down the stairway. And obviously Rosa had not seen him enter the living room. He had not seemed to notice that the dog and I were right behind him after he ran through the foyer, but both Piper and I had been very aware of his presence.
    After the children were tucked into their beds that night, I turned on the lullaby tape I played for them at bed time. They fell asleep every evening to the soft music coming from the cassette player in the hallway. We all said our goodnights, and I was headed back down the stairs when the machine suddenly clicked off. The lullaby tape signified the end of play and the beginning of sleep time, so I thought perhaps Kammie was playfully showing me that she did not yet want to go to bed. I was a bit surprised, though, that she had been able to press the stiff button on the fairly old cassette player firmly enough to stop the tape.
    â€œThat’s not funny,” I said as I turned to head back upstairs. I fully expected to see Kammie smiling impishly beside the machine, but she was still snuggled in her bed where I had left her only moments before. There was no way she could have got back into bed that quickly without my seeing or hearing her.
    â€œWho turned this off?” I asked, after