Free Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun by Victoria Laurie

me.
    “M.J.?!” Steven said in a voice filled with urgency and alarm. “What’s happening to your face?”
    I tried to focus on him, but my vision began to close in, and the tunnel I felt I was looking out of seemed to lengthen. “ Get . . . away !” I shouted, willing myself to stay in control of my body. But the energy that had jumped into mine and was attempting to literally hijack me wouldn’t let go.
    As if from a distance I felt myself being shaken, and Steven’s voice echoed into my thoughts. “M.J.!” he was yelling. “What’s happening to you?”
    “Nooooooo!” I said, curling my fingers around his arms, struggling with everything I had to hold on and resist the sensations assaulting me.
    The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. There was a hideous voice that kept echoing loudly through my brain, and I felt my lips moving and strange sounds coming out of my mouth, and then someone was pounding on the door, and I focused as hard as I could on the sound, like a drumbeat calling me back.
    Finally I felt the shivers, and such a deep sense of cold that I didn’t think I’d ever feel warm again. And then my vision came back, and I could see Steven clearly again, his gash bleeding badly and such a look of concern on his face that it shocked me.
    “Is she having a seizure?” I heard another voice ask.
    “I don’t know,” Steven said, relaxing just a bit when he saw my eyes blinking at him.
    “I’m okay,” I finally managed to say as my teeth chattered.
    “Can you hand me the bedcover?” Steven asked the man standing in the room wearing a gray shirt with a badge and black pants, who was obviously hotel security.
    The security guy yanked the coverlet off our bed and helped Steven wrap me in it. “Sir, you’re bleeding pretty bad,” the guard remarked, getting up and hurrying to the bathroom.
    He returned a moment later with a washcloth and a towel. “Maybe I should call an ambulance for you two?”
    “No,” I said, sitting up and clutching at the coverlet. “I’m fine.” But then I realized that Steven might be more hurt than he looked, so I quickly added, “Unless, Steven, you feel you want to go to the hospital by ambulance?”
    My boyfriend took a long time to answer. He’d let go of me and was holding the wet washcloth to his forehead, applying pressure to his head wound. The look on his face was both frightened and suspicious. “No,” he finally said. “No ambulance. I brought my bag with me,” he added, his eyes roving to the small medical bag he usually carried everywhere he went. “I’ve got medical glue in there that I can seal the cut up with.”
    “You a doctor?” the security guy asked. Steven nodded absently. There was an awkward silence before the guard asked, “Would either of you two like to tell me what happened?”
    I looked at Steven and he looked at me, as if to ask each other who wanted to explain the unexplainable. I took the lead. “We heard a fight break out in the hallway. It sounded violent, and my boyfriend here went to investigate, but the door got stuck and wouldn’t open. And then it gave way, and it hit him in the forehead.”
    “Did you see who was fighting?” asked the guard.
    I shook my head, and Steven said, “No. We didn’t. But it definitely sounded like two men.”
    “It was so loud I can’t imagine we were the only ones who heard it,” I added. “If you knock on a few of the other guests’ doors, I’m sure they heard it too, and maybe they saw something.”
    “Okay,” said the guard, taking out a small pad and jotting down a few notes. “I’ll ask around. Ma’am,” he added, looking at me with concern while I shivered in my coverlet, “are you sure you’re all right?”
    “Of course,” I said, and realized I probably didn’t look convincing, so I tossed in, “I’m hypoglycemic—low blood sugar. Sometimes it can give me the shakes.”
    “Can I get you a candy bar?” he suggested kindly.
    I forced a smile.