The paranormal love affair you didn't know you needed. After Harry Styles began the hiatus from One Direction, strange things started happening in his flat with his new roommate Niall. Can they chalk it all up to coincidence or could it have somethi...
I walked through the door to our new flat to hear a startling crash from my soon-to-be bedroom.
"You bugger!" I called to my flatmate with a chuckle. "What have you done?" I didn't expect him to have beat me over here. I ran my fingers through my freshly cut brown hair, still surprised by how short it was. There was no response to my question, so I walked into the bedroom to see complete emptiness. I furrowed my brow and quickly glanced into the closet. Nothing.
I had so much work to do moving in, I put the strange noise out of my mind and leaned out the window to see if my flatmate had arrived yet.
"Harry!" Niall called from the busy brick sidewalk below. He was carrying a large bookshelf that looked dangerously close to falling at any moment. He still somehow found a way to wave, the bookshelf teetering unstably.
We were in an unfamiliar stage of life, having just began a hiatus from our successful band after five years of constant touring and recording. Niall and I decided to move into a decent-sized flat together in London in an attempt to get a taste of normalcy. Out of the four of my past bandmates, Niall was a comforting, boisterous presence I just couldn't escape.
I trotted down the stairs quickly to stabilize the other side of the bookshelf for him.
"Anybody take us up on helping with the move?" I asked Niall with a cheeky smile as we worked our way up the stairs.
"Payno and Tommo agreed to take a day off of dad life for us!" Niall replied exuberantly. Louis and Liam were both newly fathers to baby boys.
Three pieces of furniture later, our bandmates had yet to make an appearance.
"Zayn said he'd come, but I told him not to because I knew he would just leave early," Niall said cheekily. We both threw our heads back with a laugh.
"Wait, did you hear that?" he stopped abruptly, turning to look over his shoulder, his baby blue eyes scanning the perimeter of our open apartment.
"Hear what?" I asked, waiting for the punchline that always seemed to come from him. To my surprise, he said nothing and stood up to head directly into my bedroom. "Mate?" I called out, rising from the floor to follow him.
He was standing very still, peering into my closet.
"What are you on about?" I asked again, getting a bit worried about this rare moment of Niall's silence. I saw him blink and turn back to me quickly.
"Guess it was nothing." Niall shrugged it off and moved back into the living room area. At that moment, there was a knock at the door.
"The Dad Club has arrived!" Louis and Liam cheered in unison as we opened the door. The look of chagrin on Liam's face told me for sure Louis had planned the greeting. We all exchanged hugs with a few ruffles of each other's hair and got right to work, moving in and unpacking.
"Your flat is freezing, lads!" Liam called out from my bedroom as he assembled my bed. We knew to give him the assembly tasks after our camping trip in which he was the only useful tent-builder. Louis mainly sat and observed our work.
"I keep turning up the thermostat, but I think the heater is broken in my room," I called back to him, stepping through the door frame and experiencing the drastic drop in temperature. "We'll talk to the landlord."
"Time for a celebratory break, lads!" Louis bellowed from the kitchen as we heard a pop of a bottle.
"The good champagne!" cried Niall, gesturing toward the expensive bottle fizzing in Louis' hand.
"What's next, private planes?" I joked with a smirk as I sauntered over to the counter. We toasted with joyous laughs until I got distracted by a strange scratching noise. I could've sworn the champagne bottle that sat in the center of the island counter was sliding toward me ever so slightly. As I looked down at it, it appeared to be still again. This move was making me delusional!
"Dad duty calls," Liam said as he glanced down at a text from the only person he followed on Instagram - the mother of his baby, Bear.
"We had better be packing up and taking off," Louis agreed as they began to gather their belongings.
"Thanks for your help!" Niall said. We could feel a twinge of sadness at another goodbye.
"This is not the end, lads!" I said, trying to reassure myself and them. Our lives, having once been the same, were now diverging. As I leaned in for a hug, we all abruptly leapt at the sharp sound of glass hitting the floor.
"Holy shit!" The champagne bottle was in a hundred pieces, shattered on the floor beside the fridge. Our jaws were dropped, and we frantically moved to examine and clean up the shards.
"How the hell..." I mumbled, turning over a piece of glass in my palm in utter confusion.
"I heard a huge truck go by outside," Liam began frantically rationalizing the anomaly. "Also your heat just kicked on, and I think the ice maker in the fridge is going. It could have been any of those... Or all of them, I don't know!" He quickly grabbed his coat and Louis' arm and made a move for the front door.
I exchanged a confused look with Niall, not buying Liam's incessant attempt to make sense of this quite yet.
"Dad duties!" Louis called behind him as they shut the door.
"That was weird," Niall declared with an amused expression. He was reaching for the dustpan, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was up.
I retreated to my bedroom after a few minutes of cleaning. I still had a lot of work to do unpacking, but I was exhausted. I threw my clothing into my closet, knowing I would deal with it tomorrow. I scoured through boxes until I found a set of sheets and turned in for the evening.
~~The lights go down and the night is calling to me. ~~
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