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“I need to pee.”
“Wh—again?! Jesus Christ, Ash, you sick or something? We’ve only been on the highway for like an hour, and—”
“Well that’s too bad, because I need to pee.”
There was no describing the relief Sam felt when she said that. Without wasting any time, she thrust her own hand up into the air like a kindergartener in class. “Me too, actually.”
“Oh my God.”
Chris shot Josh a glance from the rearview mirror, “Dude, chill, there’s a rest stop like right here, and uh, I’m pretty sure the lodge isn’t going anywhere.”
His battered minivan had showed up in her driveway way too early for her own comfort (or her dad’s, for that matter), but the CREEPs had warned her the drive to Blackwood was a monster in and of itself, so she hadn’t complained too much. Truthfully, she’d been too sleepy to do any complaining—she’d sort of just sluggishly dragged herself out of the house with her bags packed and a blanket still wrapped around her shoulders, kissing her dad on the cheek before piling into the van with the rest of them.
The sun was high in the sky now, though, and after a massive breakfast at a cozy little Mom ‘n Pop place they’d stopped at, she might’ve still been a bit groggy but ooh, her bladder was certainly awake.
“Is it just me,” Sam said a few minutes later, raising her voice to be heard over the ear-splitting roar of the bathroom’s hand-dryer, “Or do these places feel like, exceptionally creepy to you too?”
“Yeah, liminal spaces’ll do that,” Ash sighed, still examining a small patch of graffiti next to the mirror. It was funny how she did that—said the most bonkers, inscrutable crap and just expected other people to know what she was talking about.
“Um…” she laughed and brushed her hands off on her pants, all the while wondering why everyone just kept using those dryers when they never, ever worked as well as they were supposed to. “I’m sorry, what?”
Ash looked up from the writing (‘FUCK DA PATRYARKEY, UR BEUTIFUL’ scrawled in thick black Sharpie), blinking a few times before it sank in. “Oh! Oh, sorry. Uh, liminal spaces are like, um, places where you transition from one spot to another, if that makes sense? So like, airports and hotels and…” she gestured to the dull grey tiles on the walls, “Rest stops. They’re places where you’re not really meant to stay for long, so sometimes they just kinda feel spooky, like you don’t belong there. Like none of it’s permanent, like it could just disappear into mist the second you lose sight of it in your rearview mirror.”
Again, bonkers, inscrutable crap. Oh the joys of having an English major for a friend.
“Maybe we should be investigating this place instead of the lodge, huh?”
She stuck her tongue out with a quiet ‘urk’ of disapproval before joining Sam in the mirror. Without their makeup and gadgets, they looked more like two girls who’d just left a slumber party more than anything else: hair messy, faces upsettingly pale under the harsh bathroom lighting, circles under their eyes despite their messy, sleepy smiles. “I dunno,” Ash laughed, “I feel like if anyone anywhere was going to actually summon Bloody Mary, it would probably be right here.”
“It does kinda have that feeling to it, huh?” Sam took a step back and set her weight on one leg, letting her hip jut out as she examined the long, sprawling mirror with a thoughtful finger on her chin. She let the act drop a second later, shaking herself out with a shudder that was only half-pretend. “Blech! Absolutely blech.”
“You’re the one who brought it up!”
They laughed in the empty bathroom, their echoes cut short by the horribly static-y radio being piped in over the rest stop’s speakers. They hadn’t gotten close enough to the mountains for the country stations to have taken over, and for that they were both silently glad, but man oh man, the weird smooth jazz playing wasn’t really a whole lot better.
When the jag of sleep-deprived giggles finally ended, Sam gestured towards the bag slung over Ash’s shoulders. “You got a pen or something in there? A permanent marker?”
She narrowed her eyes slightly before pulling away the bag’s flap, digging around inside. Sam couldn’t fathom what she must’ve had in there, but each movement of her hand caused a strange wave of clicks and clacks. “Uh, I think so…I…hmm…oh, here! What for, though?” She pulled out a purple permanent marker and held it out to Sam.
Ah, it was one of the fine-tip dealies…not exactly what she’d been hoping for, but it would do. She uncapped it, skirted around Ash, and as neatly as she could, drew a cute little version of the CREEPs’ logo just to the side of ‘FUCK DA PATRYARKEY’. The dorky ghost’s glasses were a tiiiiny bit crooked, his head maybe lumpier than it had to be, but it did the job. Across his belly, she carefully printed ‘S + A’ before capping the marker with a flourish. “Liminal shliminal,” she said, offering the marker back to Ash. “Proof we were here. We came, we saw, we…” Sam frowned, shrugged, laughed again, “‘Conquered’ feels like the wrong verb, but…”
“How about ‘we came, we saw, we gave Josh an embolism?’” Ash had taken her phone out to snap a picture of the friendly little ghostie, it seemed, but when she turned the screen to Sam all she could see was the group text, a message under Josh’s contact name simply reading ‘?????????????????????’
“God, he’s worse than my dad.”
“I know, right?” Ash peered down at her phone again, slipping it into her pocket instead of answering him. She was quiet for a second, and then something that looked an awful lot like mischief flashed across her face. “Wanna go check the snacks they have out front? Really make him squirm?”
Sam grinned so wide it almost hurt. “Oh man, you really are psychic! You just read my mind.”