Michaelishious - Vol. 2022

Dec. 18th: Alexa (pt. 3)

I don't think Wez believed me when I told him everything that had happened the past couple of days. I didn't blame him because neither did I. But he saw how freaked out I was last night, so he was kind enough to help me find the number to both a priest and a ghost hunter. I appreciated that. However, after having digested it all and sorted my thoughts out, I was determined to go back to my house and claim it as my property once and for all. Whatever spirit there was, I was going to get rid of it. Then maybe I would have a tiny hope of getting Hayley back.

She still loved me. I was not the reason she moved out.

I went to work as usual and spent my lunch break talking on the phone. However, I didn't call the priest. Why? Because I had my doubts about the effects of prayers and sage. It was as if my instinct told me I had to bring out the big guns, whatever that was. Therefore, my choice fell on 'Free Spirits', which was a group of five people who cleansed houses all over America. According to people online and reviews, they were good, and I made a backup check on my own to make sure I could trust them. One thing was to have an invisible intruder. It was something completely different with five strangers having free access to every part of my home. Unfortunately, they couldn't come until two weeks later. That meant three hundred and thirty-six hours of being a free target for an invisible and highly unpleasant opponent.

I was exhausted already after the first couple of days. Nothing much happened other than a few new drawings and some strange sounds from the attic, which I quickly outsourced by turning up the volume of the TV or doing other noisy things. But it was like someone had put a straw in me and sucked out all my energy, and all that was left was fatigue and a chronic headache. I was fine when I was at work or somewhere else, but as soon as I came home, it was like I was met by a heavy fog. The house was charging. I was getting weaker.

I didn't dare to turn Alexa on. She was stored in one of the cupboards in the kitchen, but my growing paranoia was about to convince me to get rid of her once and for all. I just wasn't sure if I wanted to touch her long enough to carry her outside to the trash. Maybe she'd cast some sort of spell on me and start playing that horrible song. Or worse, start laughing again.

On the fifth day, I found yet another new drawing. It was a stick man with unnaturally long limbs, which was eerie enough as it was. But when I realized that the room it was standing in was my living room, I freaked out because I realized that there was a person with normal proportions lying on the couch, probably sleeping. And that person was me. That made me scared enough to call Wez and ask him to come over, which fortunately he did, and a part of me actually hoped something would happen so he could see it for himself. Then maybe he'd believe me.

"I brought a few beers," he said when he casually strolled in with a smirk like he always did. "You sounded like you need to relax."

"Oh, you have no idea..." I muttered. I didn't even get up from the couch to greet him, and that made him frown.

"You look like hell, man. Are you sure you're alright?"

I gave him a dumb look until he remembered what I'd told him. That shut him up, and I could see his gaze wander around in the room.

"It's that bad, huh?" he asked, and I shrugged with one shoulder. I watched him sit down next to me and open a beer, which he gave me, and in return I handed him the drawings I'd found.

"Who made these?"

"Don't know."

"You didn't have anyone over lately?" he asked suspiciously, but I shrugged again.

"Only you guys at Halloween. And I would probably not react this strongly if I found them hidden here and there, but they're literally being placed right out in the open. Taped to the bathroom mirror. Inside the fridge. Here on this couch," I explained and pointed at the pillow next to us. Wez seemed to try to make some sense of it, but just like me, he couldn't. Instead, he chose to distract me by putting on a football match and started telling me about his cousin who had recently been in a car accident. I only listened half-heartedly.