A Date with the Dark

There was a dark shadow behind her in the bathroom mirror. Again.

The real estate agent had warned Cassie that the house was haunted, but it was such a good deal she couldn’t pass it up. There was a whirlpool tub in the master bath, walk-in closets everywhere, a lovely kitchen backsplash, and a wine cellar. A freaking wine cellar. What was wrong with a little haunting if she could have her house stocked with her favorite Merlot at all times?

So she’d bought it—and at such a discount, it was a steal—then moved in.

After her first night in her brand new house, she woke up to see bright red words scrawled across her bedroom wall. GET OUT!

“Is that my lipstick?” Cassie asked.

Yeah, it was her lipstick, and it had been worn down to the nub. She loved that color, but it had just been discontinued. Ugh.

Two nights later she woke up to a loud crash in her living room. Grabbing the baseball bat she kept under her bed, she ran downstairs to see the mirror she had hung over the couch had fallen, shattering all over the floor.

Other than having to clean up the broken shards, she didn’t mind the loss of the mirror. Her friend Stephanie had given it to her, but she kind of hated it. She’d only put it up because the wall over the couch had looked so empty.

“Do you prefer paintings?” she asked the house. “I was thinking about getting a cheap copy of some famous artwork, like Lady of Shalott. What do you think?”

The hiss of the HVAC sounded like a snake about to strike.

“Or I could go more modern. How about a Rothko?”

The hissing eased. She bought a copy of Blue, Green, and Brown and hung it where the mirror had been. It never fell.

She kept passing through cold spots in random places. And in the wine cellar, which she fully expected to be cold, she could see her breath. The lone bulb overhead flickered no matter how many times she replaced it or had an electrician look at it. Cassie took to wearing sweaters inside her house, and she put candles in every room in case the lights suddenly went out, as they were wont to do. It actually made it pretty cozy, because it always felt like fall, and fall was her favorite time of year.

When the scratching started, she had an exterminator come out and inspect the house for pests, but he didn’t find anything. She figured she knew who the culprit was. Cassie started playing music to cover up the scratching. During dinner she tried some adult contemporary, but the scratching only got louder, so she switched to light classical and she couldn’t hear a thing. When she was trying to sleep, she played whale songs and rainstorms. She’d never slept so well in her life.

Then the shadows started showing up.

At first it was just something she spotted out of the corner of her eye. Something dark flitting away when she moved to look. Then it started appearing in the kitchen faucet, a mass of darkness looming over her shoulder, reflected in the chrome as she washed dishes. She dropped a mug the first time she saw it, but it was that cheesy one her ex-boyfriend had given her for Valentine’s Day—I love you thiiiiiiis much—so she wasn’t too upset. She’d been meaning to get rid of that one anyway.

When she started to see the shadow in mirrors—first her bedroom then her bathroom—that was just a step too far.

“Excuse me,” she said, mid-way through toweling her hair dry. “Could you give me some privacy, please?”

The shadow dissipated behind her, Sorry appearing in the leftover steam from her shower. From then on out, the shadow would always wait until she was dressed before it appeared over her shoulder.

After six months, Cassie had fallen into a routine. Wake up, write a message on the message wall beneath whatever had been written last night—it had gone from GET OUT to Good luck with your meeting today!, and she started writing back with Have a good day! or There’s some leftover lasagna in the fridge—get ready for work, say goodbye to the house at the door, and head out. When she got back from work, she’d put on some music, eat dinner, have a glass of wine while watching something on TV, then go to bed, listening to soothing ambient noises.

It was nice. Relaxing. The perfect little routine.

Then her friend Amber set her up with some guy from work.

The night of her first date, she came home from work and hesitated at the door. She saw the shadow flitting in the corner. This was when she usually put on some music and started cooking dinner. Instead, she headed upstairs to her bedroom and changed into a black cocktail dress.

The shadow appeared over her shoulder as she checked herself out in the bedroom mirror. On the message wall behind her, her lipstick wrote out Where are you going? It was the cheap lipstick she’d bought specifically for wall messages, not the fancy stuff she was applying to her lips now.

“Out,” she said, feeling guilty.

When will you be back?

“I don’t know.”

The floating red lipstick drew a frowny face.

“I’m sorry, it’s just I have a date with this guy, Tad—”

The lights in her bedroom started flickering wildly.

“You stop that. You know that messes up my electric bill. Now, I’ll be back later. Don’t worry, it’s just a first date. It doesn’t mean anything.”

The frown on the wall intensified, the lines of the mouth drawing further down.

Cassie ignored it, threw on a cute jacket, and left.

Within an hour, she regretted it.

Tad was just so boring. He talked about his job in accounting like it was an action-adventure movie but all he ever did was crunch numbers in QuickBooks. And he would not shut up about tiny houses.

She got it. They were tiny. She didn’t need to hear about how you could live in a loft above your kitchen and pee in a closet. Yeah, wow, Tad. Very wow.

For one second, Cassie thought she saw a shadow in the corner of her eye. She turned to look but it was just an umbrella.

She sighed.

“And I know what you’re thinking,” Tad was saying, “how do you entertain any guests when your dining room is just your kitchen shelf folded out? Well, let me tell you about these outdoor patios that will knock your socks off—”

“I’m so sorry, Tad,” Cassie said. “I’m not feeling well. I think there was something off about the fish.”

“You had salad.”

“Whatever. I think I need to go before I barf. Thank you for such a lovely evening.”

Cassie hightailed it out of the restaurant before Tad could think too hard about her exit. She drove home, opened her front door, and flipped the light switch in her living room.

The light wouldn’t come on.

“Really?” she sighed.

She lit the candles she kept in the living room for just this purpose.

“It sucked, by the way,” she announced to the house. “And the restaurant he chose was just the worst. Do we still have the rest of that pizza from last night?”

The door to the refrigerator creaked open ominously. The pizza sat on the middle shelf.

“Perfect.”

She popped it into the oven to heat it up. While she was waiting, she threw on her favorite sweater over her cocktail dress, kicked off her heels, and went down to the wine cellar, using a candle to light her way. She found a Jetbird Merlot and brought it upstairs. Pizza ready, wine poured, she put on some Debussy and sat down on the couch.

“You ever been on a really bad date before?”

The shadows hovering beyond the candlelight shifted. What looked like a spiky hand of darkness, the shadow of a tree branch, reached out over the chair opposite Cassie. A candle flame flickered as if saying no.

“Good. They’re one of the most painful social experiences. How do you extract yourself from that situation without making the other person feel bad?” She shook her head and took a sip of wine. “Yeah, it’s the worst.”

The shadow hand reached out as if for the bottle of wine sitting on the coffee table.

“You want some?” Cassie got up and grabbed a second glass from the kitchen. She poured the Merlot and pushed the glass across the table, toward the shadowed chair. “Here you go.”

The shadow hand reached for the glass. Some of the wine disappeared. “Clair de Lune” played while the candles burned, the house smelling like pumpkin spice.

“You know what this feels like,” Cassie said with a smile, swirling the wine in her glass.

The candles flickered like a blush.

“So,” Cassie said, “tell me about yourself…”