Red Herring ✔️

2. Blackout

Six, That Night.

Amelia pulled back the willowy curtains covering the windows in the front room where the two girls stowed away from the rest of the raucous Wellington family who corralled in the kitchen and conjoining living space.

"He's the guy who wears the jacket?"

Mazie gave her a look. "Um...what?"

Amelia gazed outside beyond the fog that rolled in with he darkening sky. "Christian Slater wears that black jacket a lot."

"How did you notice that? It just started really getting cold out." Mazie lifted herself off the couch to stand slyly beside her best friend.

Amelia shrugged, attention focused on the neighbor's house. A black lamppost shone like a beacon at the end of their driveway. "I like the jacket. He's kind of cute, isn't he?"

Gazing into the night and studying all of the cars in the neighbor's driveway, Mazie tried to remember which car was his. "I wouldn't exactly use the word cute to describe him."

Her friend glanced at her. "What would you call him?"

"Striking. Clean-cut. Hot," she admitted. "A little bit douchey."

Amelia closed the curtains. "You think so? Why's that?"

Tucked safely inside, Mazie returned to the couch and Amelia followed in her footsteps. The two of them huddled together in the darkness. The dark calmed down Mazie how as feeling a little high-strung after a run-in with her father. Amelia lit a candle upon her arrival, the only source of light save the life and ambiance from the kitchen around the corner. The candle was their compromise.

"Just a vibe I get," she explained.

"You've never talked to him before." Amelia was always the voice of reason.

Mazie smirked. "Vibes speak for themselves."

Collectively, all of the lights in the house shuddered and the house groaned. Amelia sat up straight and looked to the ceiling. The flickering lights plunged into darkness for a split second before flooding the house with light again.

In the kitchen, her baby cousins screamed in a mix of laughter and fear, while her aunt shushed them.

Amelia's brows puckered in confusion. "Is it supposed to storm?"

The hairs on the back of her neck and on her arms stood on edge. Maybe it was just the spooky season but something in the air felt sinister. "I don't think so."

"Girls! Dinner!" Her aunt called over the kids' overlapping voices.

"See the lights?!" Chandler yelled to Mazie the moment she and Amelia emerged from the dark sitting room.

Mazie squinted from the bright lights and grimaced at Chandler's high tone. "Yeah, buddy, I saw it. It's probably the werewolves and vampires playing outside!"

Aunt Felecia shot Mazie a withering look as she set out dinner on the kitchen island. "You'll scare them. Stop it."

Amelia circled the kids' blue plastic table about a foot off the ground and attacked little Chandler with her manicured fingers, tickling him under his arms and chin. "She's just teasing, peanut."

Two year old Chandler erupted into giggles and shied away from Amelia.

Felecia used the interruption as an opportunity to further chastise her. "Speaking of werewolves and vampires, you have to stop leaving American Horror Story open on Netflix in the living room because the twins figured out how to turn it on the other day. Scared them half to death."