"What is it, that thing you keep saying?" I broke down and asked. "And why do you keep doing it?"
My companion had brought a red plastic flashlight. She aimed a big yellow circle at the ground and we did our best to keep our feet inside it as we walked across the grassy, gravelly ground between our cabin and the bathroom building. When we were about halfway there, she answered.
"It's a thing I say when I'm scared. If I say it over and over again, and I think about it as hard as I can, they don't bother me. "
"They who?"
"I'm not sure, exactly. But they hang around and I see them sometimes when it's dark. They especially like to hang around mirrors—at least I think they do. Maybe that's just when I see them best. I don't know. "
I stopped, and she aimed the light at the spot between our shoes. The puddle of illumination seemed awfully small against the wooded night. I shifted back and forth between my sweaty feet and rubbed one heel up against an itch on my leg. "Does this have something to do with your real ghost story?"
"Yeah, but don't stop here. Let's keep moving. Let's get it over with. I've really got to go, you know?"
I could stand to take a pee myself, but I held my ground. "And you didn't just ask me to come along because you're scared. If you were scared, you would've gotten Maggie up and made her come with you, since that's her job and all. "
"Yeah," Cora said again. She grabbed a handful of unruly black hair and tried unsuccessfully to stuff it behind her ear. "I kind of figured you might—I mean, I wanted to know if, um . . . Well, last night when everyone was laughing at me you weren't, and I wondered if maybe you would understand better than the rest of them. "
"And?"
"And . . . I wanted to know if you could see them too. "
That was the root of it, and it was what I'd suspected. On the one hand, I couldn't hold it against her—and I'd wanted her to confide in me, hadn't I? But on the other hand, the bathroom building was only a few yards away, and it was filled with mirrors. I glanced back at the cabin and considered my bladder capacity.
"Please? Don't make me go by myself. For real, I don't think I can do it. I'd rather stay in the cabin and wet the bed or else go pee in the bushes than go in there by myself. Please?"
I didn't mean to make her beg, but that dimly glowing bathroom building was looking less and less like a direct necessity. "If you're serious, about the bushes I mean, I could run in there and get you some toilet paper. And I could keep a lookout. "
She fidgeted, doing the universal hopping jig of a needy kid. My offer made sense, but it wasn't exactly what she wanted. "We could do that, yeah. But I really want to know if it's just me. If you can see them too, and it's not just me, then . . . " Her voice sputtered out. She wasn't sure how to finish.
I understood better than she knew. If you're the only one who sees them, then maybe they aren't there. Maybe it's you and you're crazy, which isn't ideal; but maybe it's not you, and there really is someone or something closing in around you. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I didn't know what the better option was any more than she did.
"All right," I caved. "We'll go. Come on. "
We cleared the last stretch in a few seconds. Cora stopped before crossing the threshold, flipping the switch to turn off her light. Everything inside was already brightly lit with an ugly fluorescent glare, and she needed an excuse to hesitate another moment.
"Do you hear anything?" she asked.
I did the auditory equivalent of squinting, even closing my eyes so nothing would distract me. I heard things, yes; I heard crickets, and, nearby, an owl was interrogating the mountain. I heard a restless sleeper turn over on a squeaky mattress, and
a row of creaking boards beneath an insomniac counselor's feet. But I knew what she really meant. She wanted to know if I felt anything, but she didn't know how to ask that question.
I wouldn't have known exactly how to answer it, anyway. Maybe there was something, but I couldn't have told her what. It might have been nothing more than trees and wind on the edge of the sounds I could sift from the near-silence.
"No," I answered, because that was the easiest thing to say. "I don't hear anything. Let's go, if we're going. Don't look at the mirrors, if you're scared to. You can run right into a stall. You don't have to look over to the right at all. I promise I won't tell if you don't wash your hands. "
"Yeah. " She dipped her chin and dropped her eyes, crooking her head over to the left. "But you stay here. You look, and you tell me if you see something. "
"All right. "
She took off, slipping slightly on the dingy tile, and she flung herself into the nearest available stall. Her bottom connected hard with the seat and I wondered how she'd had time to bypass her underwear.
I took up a position in the next stall over, doing my business and listening to the sound of my friend's rushing torrent. I finished up faster than she did, and I went to wait for her by the sinks. By the mirrors.
I held still, trying to feel out the room. Whenever I'd seen the three women, there had always been a change in the way the air felt—everything went empty and dry. The bathroom building was anything but dry, and it couldn't possibly feel empty with every stray, slight sound echoing from tile to tile and from door to bent metal door.
From within the stall, Cora was talking to herself again, or maybe to me. It was hard to tell. "It's like talking to babies. It doesn't matter what you say, it's how you say it. You can change the words around however you want, as long as they sound nice, and as long as they make you feel better. "
Although I deliberately hadn't done so yet, now I turned to face the crusty old mirrors. To call them mirrors at all was to give them more credit than they deserved; they more closely resembled polished strips of sheet metal. You could see yourself in a vague sort of way, but your reflection was an impressionist representation composed of fuzzy colors. I stood facing the nearest square full on. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what Cora was so afraid of. I barely recognized my own familiar shape, and I couldn't imagine she'd see anything distinct enough to be threatening.