Free A Summer of Fear: A True Haunting in New England by Rebecca Patrick-Howard Page B

old . I couldn’t drink as much as they did, or as quickly. I was already feeling like I was going to vomit so Lord only knew what the hangover would be like. Janet was probably about ready to kill me with my constant headaches and stomach problems. I certainly didn’t need to exacerbate things and damage our sticky, tenuous relationship.
    I could put up with the drinking, though, and excuse myself from the hilarity of the juvenile stunts. When three of the interns brought out the weed, though, I knew it was time to call it quits. Having the alcohol on the resort’s property was one thing. I’d thought about bringing in my own bottle of wine or Baileys to help me sleep at night, but marijuana was pushing it. I didn’t want to sound like a goody two-shoes, but I also didn’t want to get in trouble, either. I was a long way from home without anyone to bail me out and the last thing I wanted was to get fired or end up in jail. I’d never smoked pot before and the idea didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. We were already drunk; how much further from reality did we really need to get?
    Besides, the evening was wearing thin and these people didn’t feel like real friends. They weren’t trying to get to know me and only seemed to be tolerating my presence. The sensitivity Elsa had spoken of rang true. The interns didn’t really even like me; they weren’t sure why I was there and neither was I. I was a sixth wheel. I tried, it didn’t work out.
    Ghosts or not, I excused myself from the cabin and decided to brave the farm house again.
    The day before, I’d gone into town and picked up some Tylenol PM. I took it now in an attempt to put myself to sleep. It worked to an extent, I certainly fell asleep fast enough, but it didn’t keep me there. The noises almost immediately woke me up. They were insistent, predatory tonight. The pacing back and forth outside my door was louder, heavier, and even more frantic. The pauses, which usually came after every few steps, were nonexistent. I felt the fear crawling on me, almost strangling me. The effects of the medication heightened my sense of awareness; the drowsiness made me weak.
    Trembling and with exhaustion, I finally sat up in bed and said, very sternly, “Please leave me alone. It’s been a long night, I’m tired, and I just want to go to sleep.”
    I’d no sooner laid back down when I heard the faintest of whispers wafting through the walls. They were muted at first but gradually grew louder until I could make out actual words.
    “Don’t bother her,” the first one said. It was toneless, even, neither male nor female.
    “Leave her alone,” the second one echoed, the sound bouncing off the walls and closing in around me.
    “Let her go to sleep…”
    Shutting my eyes in panic, I squeezed back some tears and prayed for sleep to come.
     

     
    J anet took me to lunch the next afternoon. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “You don’t seem happy.”
    “The noises are keeping me up at night,” I explained. “The ones I told you about? I’m having trouble sleeping. And I guess I’m a little homesick.”
    For the first time she appeared sympathetic and compassionate. We talked about my mother, being so far away from home, and resort life. I could see the kind of person she was outside the office, outside of the job. Some people were different away from their responsibilities and duties. I knew that; I knew I was. It made me that much more homesick and sad for Angie, my former supervisor (and more importantly, friend) and our time together. At work Angie had been efficient, serious, and mostly no-nonsense except for the moments when she blasted 80s rock or Pink on the facility’s loud speaker before we opened or we took an extended lunch break to discuss the details of Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series.
    Outside of work, though, Angie and I had vacationed together in Ireland and England and had sneaked into crumbling abbeys after closing time, climbed