Aliens on Aventine Hill

Ghost Stories [Part 3]

Alice stared hopelessly up at the creaking ceiling fan as it spun.

The rest of the night had been horribly quiet. She'd had a thousand questions, but no opportunity to ask any of them. Joseph had kept his distance from the six of them, and while Jimmy had held her hand, he'd seemed loathe to look at her even when they were safely in the station wagon.

Lisa and Heather had whispered to each other the entire ride home. Alice had caught their eyes flicking towards her in the rearview mirror. Marty too kept glancing furtively in her direction. What did you see?

We all heard you scream.

Jimmy had walked her to her door, kissed her cheek goodbye and stuffed a slip of paper with his phone number into her hand, but he'd said nothing else. Alice had watched the station wagon's taillights disappear into the darkness and wondered if they'd ever come back.

Slipping quietly through the front door, Alice had snuck past her parents' bedroom door and collapsed onto her bed but never fallen asleep. Every time she closed her eyes, Alice saw them again: first the ghost and then the light.

She glanced agitatedly at the morning rays of sun peeping through her blinds. They were so different from the blinding, searing, freezing light that had last touched her skin. She examined her arm—it felt as though it had left a physical mark on her—but her skin was pale and smooth.

Alice glanced over at her alarm clock before snatching the scrap of paper with Jimmy's phone number from her nightstand and ambling downstairs to the yellow plastic hall phone.

It rang once, twice... six times. The woman on the other end sounded tired, "Hello? Who is this?"

"Hello," Alice straightened, "this is Alice Turner. I was hoping to talk to Jimmy D'Angelo."

"Hold on just a minute," the voice sweetened, "I'll go wake him..."

"Oh, no," Alice felt her face flush, "That's alright. If you could just let him know I..."

But the woman was already gone. Alice cursed under her breath and shifted the handset to the other ear as she pictured Jimmy—lying in a messy bed, boxed in by walls plastered with rock n' roll posters and black-out curtains drawn shut, with his head under the pillow as he nursed his hangover—and she imagined the woman throwing the curtains open and flooding the room with sunlight. Alice could have sworn she heard a voice singing out "Buongiorno Pigrone!"

She definitely heard the woman snap, "Up! Up! Up! There's a pretty girl on the phone for you!"

A sleepy voice grumbled into the receiver, "Hello?"

"Hey, Jimmy," Alice could feel the blood burning in her cheeks, "It's Alice."

"Oh, hey."

"Sorry," she shook her head. "I didn't mean to wake you..."

"No, no, I was planning on calling you," he laughed, irritation vanishing into concern, "How're you feeling? You looked pretty spooked last night."

"I..." Alice confessed, "I was."

"You didn't have to, you know," Jimmy apologized. "Go up to the house like that. You know, for all his bravado, Marty's only ever made it halfway up the hill."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Jimmy laughed nervously. "You must be pretty fearless."

"I don't know about that," Alice looked away. "Chalk it up to not being acquainted with local legends. Speaking of which..." she cringed at her voice, "Do you think you could tell me more about the ghosts that're supposed to be haunting the house?"