Page 3 of Magpie

“ M aggie, it’s just a house,” Tim says as he rubs my shivering arms up and down.

My teeth are chattering nonstop in the autumn cold.

I look up at the great Victorian farmhouse, its looming awnings and dark windows staring back at me.

It isn’t painted black with gargoyles adorning the drainpipes, nothing like the haunted house I pictured whenever Tim and Jessica brought this place up to me.

It looks well-loved, cozy, even. It certainly shouldn’t fill me with a deep sense of foreboding.

It’s just a house.

“Doesn’t it seem strange that they would make us wait this long?

” I mutter between my chattering teeth, sinking further into my coat as my eyes stray back to the picturesque house.

I shiver again. Tim wraps his arms around me, pulling my back tightly against his chest as he presses a kiss to the top of my head.

I try to lean into his touch, beg myself to feel anything when his lips press against my skin.

I try to battle the creeping numbness that has filled me steadily these last few years, but after so long fighting, I’ve realized it’s easier to just pretend.

“They have to wait for everyone to get through,” Jessica says, shivering beside me, pulling me from my thoughts.

She nudges my shoulder and grins at me, trying to infect me with her excitement.

I return a half-smile, the best I can muster.

“It won’t be any fun if the place is full of people.

The emptiness is spookier.” She makes her voice deep and dramatic for the last word.

“Don’t you want to be scared, Maggie?” Tim asks, holding me tighter, and damn if it doesn’t feel like a cage.

I shift uncomfortably against his hold, and he instantly relents.

I take a hasty step away, giving him a sheepish look.

How can I possibly explain that his touch borders on suffocating?

Tim has never been anything but respectful and kind all through our high school relationship, following us now into college.

He is a perfect boyfriend on paper, and it is that perfection that I resent.

It would be so much easier to sink into this numbness if he weren’t there, trying to pull me out of it.

I can easily ignore the growing disquiet inside of me when I’m alone.

None of my classmates take note of the sullen girl who never speaks up, never asks questions.

No one at work questions why I’m not chattier, why I never agree to go out with them for a drink after work.

When I’m around anyone but Tim and Jessica, I can let that abyss of darkness inside of me spill out and consume everything. I can drift in it, get lost in it.

Tim and Jessica are another story. Friends since childhood, we’ve grown up alongside each other, a near inseparable trio.

We do everything together, and it was a surprise to no one the day Tim finally asked me out on a date.

Most people would have thought we would ruin the dynamic of the friendship by dating, but our group’s bond is deeper than that.

The three of us would stay up into the late hours of the morning, planning our lives down to the last detail, determining how to always remain in each other’s.

I used to love it, melting into Tim’s arms with Jessica by our side, excitedly imagining the future.

It used to be so calming to have every detail of my life decided.

I don’t know when the aching cold first crept in.

It was so slow it’s hard to say. I became used to it, unaware that it was slinking closer, freezing more of me.

I realized it first when we were discussing which college we would all attend, and the conversation suddenly felt like planning my own funeral.

I found myself uncomfortable in Tim’s arms, his loving embrace suddenly too tight.

I shook the feeling off, too scared to consider why my life suddenly felt smothering.

It was the first time I forced a smile onto my face, and I never melted into him quite the same way again.

As high school came and went, and the three of us started college in the fall, the numbness planted deep roots inside of me.

I smiled and laughed alongside my friends, though I was too cold to feel the joy of it.

Jessica was an expert at reading my moods, but I became even better at faking happiness.

If I didn’t acknowledge the chilling darkness that was claiming more and more of my mind, then I wouldn’t have to fight it.

The fake smile I painted across my face became like a second skin, but eventually the numbness claimed that too.

It was harder and harder to muster the energy to pretend to be excited alongside Tim and Jessica.

They are content to continue to live in our small town, in our small lives.

The truth of the matter is that I can’t remember the last time I felt content.

I can’t remember the last time I felt . I began to find it impossible to stomach the idea of continuing this life.

I thought that maybe if I got out, it would unplug this well inside of me and the darkness would drain out.

I applied to multiple colleges out of state, even one in Ireland, sending the application letters in late one night and feeling like a traitor for it.

I never heard back, not even a rejection letter.

I tried to hide my disappointment, tried to push down the longing to be out of this town, out of this dull life, out of myself entirely.

But the feeling refused to die, festering deep in the pit I shoved it in, rotting me from the inside out.

I knew they sensed it. I even caught them on more than one occasion whispering behind my back, when they thought I was well out of earshot.

“—something’s not right, Tim.” Jessica’s voice filters out of our dorm, the door left slightly open. I slow, looking up from the game I’m playing on my phone and listening.

“She won’t talk to me about it,” Tim says, his voice pained, and guilt grows inside of me at the sound. “I’ve tried to get her to talk to a counselor, or an adviser. Fuck, I even tried to get her to just talk to her doctor. But she insists she’s fine.”

“Then she gives you that fake smile…” Jessica muses, and my hands hang limply at my sides as the gnawing cold steals more of me.

It’s easier to be numb than to face my friends, and the fear and worry I know will be etched on their faces. So I turn from them, and I walk away.

I made an effort after overhearing that conversation.

At least, I tried to. I told myself if I pretended hard enough to be the Maggie that Jessica befriended and Tim fell in love with, then maybe I would truly become her again.

So, when they sat before me, showing me a viral video about a haunted house somewhere close to us, I smiled and demanded we all go as a group.

They were giddy, almost jumping out of their seats as they explained the famed nature of the House, and how lucky we were to have it show up so near us.

I closed my eyes and decided to try, try to be happy for them.

I didn’t really have any desire to spend an evening in the cold just to have bad actors in costumes jump out and try to scare me.

Yet I was the one to follow the clues in the video, to decipher the exact location of the House.

It was a few towns over, but we all quickly agreed to attend on Halloween night.

The two of them became obsessed with the House, sharing endless videos and posts about it.

If I’m being honest with myself, I think they were just excited that I was responding to them again.

I felt like a monster. I was able to sit alongside my best friend and my boyfriend and start our lives together like we always dreamed.

I should have been happy, thrilled to be living this life.

But I could only think of Ireland, or New York, or any town that was far away from this one.

As Tim moved inside me, his was not the face I saw, my traitorous mind wondering what another’s touch would feel like.

Would it chase away the cold that had settled so deeply inside me I was no longer able to find my way out?

The first time Tim touched me, his fingers were so soft and tentative, yet they ignited a fire in me, a fire I wanted to burn in forever.

Then his embrace began to feel too tight, his hands trying to hold me like I was water slipping through his fingers.

The heat couldn’t reach me, couldn’t ignite me like it used to.

The pain in his eyes was too hard for me to acknowledge, and his worried lectures only made me angry, so I pulled back from him.

And, eventually, he began to pull away, too.

I knew he could feel it, each time I rolled away from him or pulled back from his touch too quickly, the same touch I used to melt into.

I could see it in his eyes each time I ended our kiss too quickly, dipping my head to keep myself from seeing the hurt in his eyes.

He does not deserve my disdain. Neither of them do.

But I still can’t help but let that growing darkness fester within as I shiver in line for a haunted house I care nothing about.

It was one thing to plaster a fake smile across my face as we drove the miles out of town to an abandoned farm, the house the only structure untouched by time.

It is a lot harder to maintain that plastic happiness as I stand shivering in the cold and the damp, waiting to get this night over with.

I don’t even like horror films, and the idea of Halloween has always seemed a bit childish to me.

But I’m trying, so I force myself to laugh alongside Jessica, attempt not to pull away from Tim too quickly.