Chapter 4: At midnight they met again

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The drafting table was finished. But there was a problem. It was too big to fit in Ryder's room.

"Didn't you measure it beforehand?" Henry asked his daughter while she stared at the drafting table in disappointment. He was changing the light bulb, tripping over his own foot, and then he even dared to say he wasn't clumsy.

Ryder frowned, the furrow between her eyebrows deepening. "I followed the measurements in the blueprints."

"Well, we can always just sell it. A friend of mine was planning on buying one. How about I ask him if he's interested in buying it?"

It was a nice opportunity, but Ryder wanted to keep the drafting table for herself. She had worked hard on it and spent so many hours creating something from scratch... it hurt to part from it. Still, it would be sad to just keep it in the garage and never use it. In the end, Ryder sadly nodded. "I think I will fix my current desk into a somewhat drafting table."

Henry chuckled at his daughter. His eyes wandered at the junk around the backyard, his hands resting on his hips. "Why don't you sell the things you do online? You can even take orders... it's a nice way of saving money."

Ryder considered it for a moment. She made a lot of things, most of them just for the sake of the "making" process than the end result. A lot of the things just gathered dust and nothing more. Selling them online wasn't a bad idea. "Mhm." Ryder smiled.

"Okay then... clean the backyard first."

The smile disappeared with no trace. C-clean then backyard? "Dad...."

"You don't have school tomorrow, and you also need to sort out the things that can be sold. So clean the backyard. Your mother gets depression every time she sees it." Without giving his daughter any change of objection, Henry walked inside the house, firmly closed the door with a grin on his face as if he had achieved something to be praised for, and rushed to his wife to collect his praises.

Ryder looked around at the backyard and then at the time on her phone screen. It's already eight pm. How could she clean this whole place alone? For sure, her parents wouldn't help her, because they believed in "you made it, you clean it up" and they always went to bed at ten o'clock since they had to wake up early to go to work in the morning. She was left alone with her mess.

Damn it. Should have invited Jasmine to sleep over. That way she would have forced her into helping.

With no way out of this, Ryder started to clean. To avoid any possible encounter with a random demon or ghost, she played music on her phone, this time just sweet melodies of a piano or violin. With her current state, with trauma from the movie still lingering in her heart, the usual rock or rhythmic music wouldn't be much of a help, so classical music it is.

While she was picking up some wood pieces from near the fence, humming along with the melody, a voice sounded from above. Now there are a lot of things to be taken into consideration. First of all, it was late at night, the sky was as dark as it could be, there was no moon, and if not including the piano music lingering in the air, the place would be dead silent. Secondly, the girl was still thinking about the horror movie. Casually imagining scenes that made her body shiver. On top of that, out of nowhere, a male voice spoke to her right above her head.

Needless to say, Ryder almost had a heart attack. And so her response to "You changed the light bulb." was a scream mixed with a cry as she fell on the ground trembling like a beaten kitten.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" She roared in a hushed tone so her parents wouldn't listen, even though the possibility of that was pretty low. Once those two fell asleep, unless it were an earthquake or fire, they wouldn't wake up. And their bedroom was on the other side of the house, the farthest from the backyard. "You scared me to death."

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