Quick isn’t the word for how fast I stripped. I almost literally jumped out of my wet pants and GoodNite. I can remember how soaking wet the GoodNite was and I had the unpleasant thought, that I must have wet earlier that day and hadn’t known it. Oddly enough it wasn’t until that moment, that I realized I hadn’t used the restroom at school once that day.
But I didn’t hold onto those thoughts very long. I still wanted to call Gary and I wanted to do it before anything else came up to sidetrack me.
I was rummaging through my backpack for the extra GoodNite when the door to my bedroom opened. Nude from the waist down I turned to see who was coming in, but there wasn’t anyone at all. My first thought was, that Grandfather hadn’t completely closed the door and a breeze must have blown the door open again. However, I then had a more alarming thought. What if it was the ghost of Chris, only now he was invisible as most ghosts are on TV and in the movies?
If I had been moving fast before, I was now moving at near the speed of light. With no regard for the contents of my backpack, I turned it upside down and dumped everything onto the floor. That’s when I really got scared. The extra GoodNite I had taken to school was gone!
“OH MY GOODNESS! OH MY GOODNESS! OH MY GOODNESS!” I said, fearing the worst.
I stood up, scanned the contents which lay scattered and quickly flipped through my memories of the day in an effort to discover who might have taken it. But it was useless. I couldn’t see a single moment when my backpack and I had been parted anytime during the day.
With my heart beating so hard that I thought it was going to burst through my ribcage, I raced to the armoire, retrieved a pair of pants and bolted out the door without even putting them on.
When I hit the floor at the bottom of the steps I heard a squeal of terror. In my frightened state I thought it was Chris’s ghost howling after me, which made me run even faster.
An ungodly, shrill voice filled the house, “Alastair! Alastair!”, but I was too scared to realize, that the ghost wasn’t screaming my name at all.
I ran all the way back to the kitchen door. However, instead of busting through as I had done before, I stopped without looking back and jumped into my pants with both feet at the same time. Holding my pants in place I pushed open the door, slipped in and closed it behind me again.
Oddly enough, Micah was nowhere to be seen. The kitchen seemed oddly quiet after hearing the shrill cries of the ghost, but even still I didn’t stop. I ran over to the phone, grabbed the cordless receiver off the wall and dove into the pantry, where I closed myself in.
Breathing hard and shaking all over, I pressed zero and waited for the operator.
“Thank you for using AT&T. How may I help you?” the operator asked.
“I-I need to call Gary collect!” I said quickly.
“Do you have the number ma’am?” the operator said.
“I’m not a ma’am! I’m a guy!” I shot back.
The operator quickly apologized, “I’m sorry sir.” And then asked again, “Do you have the number?”
I still had the number memorized and recited it flawlessly.
“One moment sir.” She said.