~5.11~

“Um, hello?” Laurie said, looking back at the spot where the girl had been sitting.

She was gone.

“Hello?” Laurie repeated, louder. She had to stop herself from calling out. You’re not supposed to be here, Laurie, she chided herself. “Um… are you still with me?” she asked, after a brief pause in which she grappled for the girl’s name and realized that she’d never gotten it.

Tiny cold prickles of fear climbed up her skin. She fought them off… it was not the time to panic. The girl was just playing a joke. She’d padded off somewhere in her bare stocking feet while Laurie had been distracted, in order to make her think that something eerie and otherworldly had happened.

Either that… or…

Laurie took a cautious step, intending to check behind the bushes by the bench. Dry leaves crunched under her foot. She looked down and realized that the ground all around the stone bench was blanketed with them. It was exceedingly unlikely that the girl could have managed to creep across them with catlike tread, shoeless or not, and not make a sound.

Laurie looked at the camera in her hand. For a moment she had the impulse to point it at her own face, recite her name and the time and date, and report that she was witnessing a supernatural event. She didn’t, though. She told herself that it would be disrespectful, that she might jinx things somehow… but mostly she was afraid she’d look foolish on camera. There was already a timestamp on the video. All she had to do was upload it, slap on an intro, and anybody who watched it would get the idea: in the courtyard at night, the girl and her talking, and then she was gone.

Except… she wasn’t sure she’d actually caught the girl on the camera. And even if she had, she’d vanished while Laurie was looking away. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to fake.

Shit.