Traces of Delilah

Twenty-Five

Someone had been inside the house. I could hear them downstairs hours after Delilah's head hit her pillow, when she flicked off her lamp, and her eyes drifted shut. As soon as the loud clank interrupted her sleep, all instances of peace fled from her body.

But apparently, no one had heard it but her.

My toes pressed into the creaking steps as I descended down the stairs. Left, right, then forward, my eyes scanned the hallway area carefully. I spotted the all-white drying rack to the side of the living room first. Delilah's house was the same exact pattern as it was in Skylar and I's present. The only things that were different was the furniture setup, the colors, and the inner décor.

She was crazy to go downstairs by herself. If it were me, I wouldn't have. I'd have probably woken the rest of my family. Maybe I had then called the cops. Depending how drastic the situation turned out to be, really. 

Regardless, this wasn't me. So, I couldn't play by my rules. The good thing was she had waited minutes before she bothered climbing out of bed. It was probably to test the waters. See if the intruder had left already or if they had still been lurking around the house.

"I could've sworn I heard noises down here. . ." I scratched the top of my head, frowning. 

My feet led me into the kitchen where there wasn't a speck of dust that could have indicated someone was here. Not in the hallway, not near the basement door. Nothing. 

There was nothing out of place except for a pan that seemed to have fell. That was probably the source of the loud noise. There was that familiar feeling in my chest, that belonged to Delilah. The one that I disapproved of.

Could she have been imagining things? The noises were too clear to have been imagined. The sound of something clashing against metal objects, that's how it echoed upstairs. Shivers. All throughout my veins, they possessed me until my body jolted forward.

"Weird," I muttered, pivoting back into the darkness of the staircase. 

My ears twitched at every soft noise my eardrums picked up on. But nothing was similar to the sounds I'd heard before. Crickets, average house noises. Nothing I hadn't expected to hear when 11:00 PM was approaching several minutes from now.

I jumped back into bed, pulling the covers over my shoulders. 

The window was in my field of vision. I could only glare at it. Her thoughts were circling her head. I could feel every one of them. Bright shadows danced around the room—just some glimpses of cars and their headlights that drove by every once in a while. Inner peace hadn't existed in her mind. It was like a blackhole swallowing Delilah and whatever energy she had left.

My eyelids drifted shut once again, urging sleep to take its course. The sooner it captured her, the sooner she could forget this night ever happened. She must not have been able to fall asleep easily though. Her body was on high alert. That meant a lot of tossing and turning for me.

Something weird was going on here. I couldn't put my finger on it, but from the moment I'd entered Delilah's memory, to now, there was a strange discomfort hovering over her. One that caused her skin to shrivel up and crawl. Something stunk too. It was very faint but the smell lingered. She'd probably been imagining things again though because I could barely smell it anymore.

Delilah's phone lit the pitch-black room every time she clicked the button on the side. Five minutes. Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour. I'd lost track of how many times my eyes flicked over Delilah's phone screen at the time. And the smell was getting stronger. 

I guess it wasn't all in her head. It was such a weird smell. Why did it smell familiar too? Something that Delilah nor myself could put a finger on.