A Ghost Story by Keriann Hopkins
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"The Click"
Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, six college freshmen were sitting around a fireplace, telling their best ghost stories. It was a cold winter’s night in the mountains of Vail, Colorado. The wind was tearing violently over the mountaintops, causing the hail to loudly crash into the windows. The fireplace caused their shadows to leap and slither along the walls of the creaky old wooden cabin as they talked in hushed, excited whispers so as not to waken the young children in the household.
“I don’t believe in ghosts!” said one of the students in loud pronounced voice, as if in an effort to dispel the creepy, frightening atmosphere that was swallowing the room. The pronouncement, unsure and scared, resounded in the silent room, and she regretted saying it the moment it was out.
Another student whispered, “Well, if you don’t believe in ghosts, then I have a story that will chill even you to your core. The worst part is that it’s a true story. It happened to my sister, three years ago.”
Her audience waited in the room with baited breath. A long silence ensued, as the atmosphere grew tense and the dark the room seemed to shrink. The fire in the fireplace dwindled to a mere flicker.
She began her story: “Four years ago, upon her graduation from college, my sister moved to a old, previously abandoned, penthouse apartment, forty stories up, in New York City, to begin her life as a journalist. The night she moved in, it was dark and stormy, much like tonight’s tempest. Her apartment was empty and dark. Lying on the floor were her boxes, stacked in piles. The only light in the apartment came from the full moon, dimmed by the raging storm clouds outside. The moonlight leapt around the boxes, making them take on vague and elusive shapes.”
“In the middle of the night she woke up, and laying deathly still, she heard something very strange. It was a clicking sound, like chalk writing on a chalkboard for a split second. She checked all her doors and windows, and upon finding them securely locked rendering her apartment impenetrable, she lay back down in bed. The night passed, and the clicking noise continued. She could not sleep, for fear of the unknown source of the noise gripped her.”
“When the next night came, and she was lying in bed, the clicking noise began again. Again, she got up and checked her doors and windows. Again, all of them were firmly shut and locked. The apartment creaked ominously. But it was old, she told herself, and as the room was as secure as she could assure, once more, she lay back down to bed. Once more, the clicking continued all night. In the morning, the doors and windows were still locked and her house was filled with sunlight. She convinced herself that her imagination was working overtime.”
“But each night as she fell asleep, she would hear the click, click, click, click, click, click coming from the roof and walls. It was audible; it was real. Each night she made sure her doors and windows were locked.”
“This continued for almost three full years. For the first few months, she was afraid, very afraid. But as time wore on, she grew used to it, as time has that effect on so much. She still locked her apartment, but now it was more the result of habit, rather than the fear that she had felt the first few nights.”
“She had lived in that creaky old apartment for exactly three years, when one night, as she fell asleep, she noticed that there was no clicking sound. She had grown very used to it, as almost a comfortable presence in the apartment. The apartment seemed quiet – eerily, too quiet – after the years of the clicking she had grown used to. She managed to fall into a deep slumber. When she woke up the next morning, she opened her eyes, and screamed – a loud, blood-curling scream. Surrounding her, covering the walls from floor to ceiling, then across the ceiling and even surrounding her on her own bed were hundreds of thousands of pictures. Pictures of her sleeping.”
