Scary Stuff

Just Your Typical Haunted House.... Part 5

        The second time I woke up, it was because I'd fainted. I checked my phone immediately, afraid I'd been there for another hundred years, but it had only been a couple of minutes. Looking around, I noticed how everything was even more run down than before. Part of the ceiling had collapsed in the living room, and the hall ceiling didn't look to far behind.
        Getting shakily to my feet, I tried to think, breathe, focus, and come up with a plan. I decided that, as much as I hated it, MK was most likely dead. After a hundred and thirty years, I should be dead, too. I didn't know why I wasn't. I didn't even feel any older. Suddenly I remembered what Erik had said what felt like forever ago: "We had a guy call from Minnesota... he was the same age as when he disappeared six years before."
        Yeah, well, he was lucky, I thought. Suddenly I felt like crying. My parents, sister, all my friends.... they were gone. Even if I somehow managed to get out of this house- which I now knew really was haunted- I'd have no home, no place to go. No one would believe my crazy story. Maybe I could show them my phone... by now they had to have a hundred newer models and mine would seem ancient...
        My phone!
        I could call for help! The police, the fire department, anything. Would their numbers be the same after all this time? Either way, I had to try. I reached into my pocket for my phone, but it wasn't there. Then I remembered: it hadn't been in my pocket, it had been in my hand.
        It wasn't now.
        Where could it have gone? I started to freak out again. I KNEW I'd been holding it, hadn't set it down or put it anywhere... So where was it?!
        Then I knew: Mr. Evans was responsible. He'd taken my cell phone. I started to feel sick all over again. I was never getting out of here. I ran for the door, planning to yank and pull and kick down the door if I had to. It was practically falling off the hinges anyway.
        But before I reached the door, a freezing, dusty wind blew past me and coalesced into a swirling column of air in front of me. It rotated a few more times, then solidified into the form of a person. I'd been prepared to see a bloodied, crazy-eyed man, but the form in front of me was the last thing I expected.
        It was MK.
        She stared at me, seeming to wait for something. Waiting for me to figure it out. Maybe, I thought, Mr. Evans had gotten her, trapped her "soul" or whatever. Like she'd read my mind, MK smirked at me, and a horrible thought occurred to me. What had Alan said her name was? Marla? Mary? No, Maria. Maria Katie.
        MK.