Restless Spirits: Chapters 11 & 12
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Chapter Eleven
I heard voices in the attic. Lonely and bored, I had begun to wander, looking for some company in the form of people who didn’t hate me. That left out two-thirds of the Bairds. Lilly had recovered from her ordeal and was apparently hiding from her parents. Who could blame her? And Joe was nowhere to be found. I hoped Sarah wasn’t messing with him.
I was in the bathroom on the second floor, distracted again by the pretty tile, when I heard the voices drifting down from above. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but one of them was high and lilting enough to be recognizable as Lilly’s. A happy sounding bark told me she must be visiting Ed and Buster. I also thought I heard music. Interesting. I had to check it out.
I suppose I could have just floated up through the ceiling, or popped up there the way ghosts do sometimes. I was getting good at that sort of thing, but it still weirded me out. So I took the old fashioned route—if you didn’t count the short cut I took through the walls—and found the stairway in the master bedroom. The last time I’d gone up those stairs, they let right out into the attic through an opening in the floor/ceiling that was surrounded by boxes. But this time, when I got to the top of the stairs, I found a door.
I’d seen enough movies in my tragically short lifetime to know that going through this door was A BAD IDEA, all caps and underlined with exclamation points plus eleventy. If I had been alive, nothing could have gotten me through that door. Not money, not a double-dog dare, not even the danger of ruining our professional reputation as paranormal investigators. I would have volunteered to sit in the van and monitor the equipment on this one.
But I wasn’t alive. What I was was curious…and also not about to show fear to Sarah. I stepped through the door.
I found myself in another hallway. It was old and narrow, and lined with white doors. The decor, from the wallpaper to the molding to the doorknobs, all looked more Victorian than the rest of the house. It also looked newer, despite being more old-fashioned. It didn’t fit. The realization would have sent chills up my spine if I still had one.
Still, I couldn’t really say I was scared. Once you’ve experienced your own painful death, it really took a lot to scare you. Sarah scared me, but I think I’d be stupid not to be frightened of her. Of course, I had no way of knowing whether this was one of her tricks, so I probably should have been warier than I was. Which is not to say I wasn’t nervous. I was definitely nervous. But I wasn’t scared.
A door stood open at the other end of the hall. As long as I’d come this far, I might as well go check it out. I hummed to myself as I moved toward it, wishing Lilly or Joe were with me. Buster would also have made welcome company, not that he could do anything but bark at any potential boogey men. Heck, I’d even settle for a Senior Baird.
Okay. Maybe I was a little scared.
I reached the door and carefully peeked my head around the corner. It looked like a little girl’s room, all white lace and pretty paper, with an old rag doll propped up on the pillows on the bed. With a sinking feeling I wondered if I’d stumbled onto Sarah’s inner sanctum. What kind of punishment might I receive for this invasion? I’d be better off leaving it alone and forgetting it was even here. I turned to go.
And found myself facing a man.
At least, I think it was a man. It was hard to tell. Covered in severe burns, the figure before me was barely recognizable as human, let alone any specific gender. Whatever it was, it was charred so badly that its blackened skin cracked and oozed. Impossibly, its eyes were still intact. I avoided them as they stared at me—through me—like some monster from hell come to judge my soul.
I stood there in dumb shock for I don’t know how long. Then it reached for me, its mouth opening, its blackened, swollen, blistered tongue lolling out between teeth that no longer had lips to hide them. I screamed. I screamed like I didn’t know I was capable of screaming, and I ran back down the hall in the direction I had come from. I bolted through the door and found myself in the attic, where I ran smack into a stack of boxes, knocking them over and landing in a heap in the middle of them.
“Ow,” I moaned.
Buster met me there, yapping his little head off and turning in excited circles. Lilly and Ed both jumped to their feet.
“Ron?” asked Lilly as she hurried over to me. “Look what you did!”
“Yeah, sorry,” I said, climbing to my feet and trying to brush off my dignity.
“No, I mean, look what you did!” She pointed at the boxes I had knocked over.
“Oh. Huh.”
“‘Huh?’ That’s all? That’s—no one else has been able to do anything like that. No one except me, I mean. And Sarah.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Cool. That’s not all I did, either. I got through to my sister earlier.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I pulled her hair, and I think she heard me say her name.”
Lilly clasped her hands together in front of her chest in a move worthy of a silent film star. “Oh, Ron! That’s wonderful!”
“Yeah, that’s great. So, what do you know about Burning Man?”
“That lawless hippie orgy out there in Nevada?” asked Ed. “My daughter wanted to run off to that with her good-for-nothing friends the year before I died. I told her if she went not to bother coming back home.”
“Uh...yeah. Not that. I’m talking about a walking burn victim. Or at least the ghost of one. I ran smack into him in the mystery hall. Hey, did you guys know this house has a third floor?”
Lilly and Ed both looked at me, then at each other.
“You guys have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Ed waved me off grumpily and headed back to his milk crate. Lilly faced me and smiled sweetly. “I remember it’s really hard in the beginning. Your mind can play tricks on you—”
“You mean in, what, seventy-five years in this house, you’ve never seen this giant walking blister?”
I could tell by her face that she wanted to tell me yes, but she shook her head no instead.
I sighed, deflated. Great. I wasn’t just a ghost. Apparently, I was a crazy ghost. “Figures,” I muttered. “Anyway, I guess it’s not really important. So what are you guys up to? I thought I heard music earlier.”
“Oh! That was me!” Lilly’s smile could light up a room. She picked up her skirt and hurried over to a battered old suitcase propped open in a dusty corner. “Look what I found! It belonged to Ed’s grandpa.” She reached in and plucked at an old ukulele. “It only has two strings, but I can play simple songs.” With that she started to pluck out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
“My granddad had that old thing in the war.”
“Which war?” I asked.
“Spanish American. He used to talk about driving the Cuban girls wild with that thing, teaching ‘em how to hula dance.”
“I wish I knew how to hula dance,” said Lilly dreamily, plucking absently at the strings.
“I can teach you,” I told her. Not that I ever learned how to hula, but I’ve seen it enough times on television that I ought to be able to perform a close approximation.
“Can you really?”
“Sure! Come here.” I pointed at a spot beside me. “Now just do what I do,” I said as she joined me. “Shake your hips...and sway your arms like this...” I started humming Aloha ‘Oe and doing the best imitation I could of the hula girls I’d seen on that Hawaii episode of The Brady Bunch when I was kid. If it was good enough when I was eight, it was good enough now.
Lilly copied my movements and took up the humming until she broke into giggles. I laughed, too, my fright from before melting under her infectious joy.
“You ask me, you girls are far too happy to be dead,” Ed grumped, but that only made us laugh harder.
“Fine,” I told him. “We’ll leave you to your fortress of poutitude. Come on, Lilly. There’s more room to dance downstairs.” We were still giggling when we arrived in the empty dining room. “Ed can really stand to lighten up.”
“I know,” said Lilly, still working out her hula moves. “He’s always so serious. All of the adults are. Except you. And sometimes Joe.” She improvised a little twirl. “My mama takes the cake, though. She most certainly would not approve of our dancing.” She gave her hips a rebellious shake and then asked, “Would you like me to teach you the Charleston?”
“Sure, why not?”
The moves she showed me looked a little more complicated than my made up hula, but after a few tries, I started to get the hang of it. Soon, we were kicking up our heels like Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed. I liked to think I was Donna.
“Are there any other dances you can show me?” she asked once I’d mastered the Charleston.
“Uh...well, there’s this.” I broke into the cabbage patch, singing something from Janet Jackson’s ‘eighties oeuvre as I busted my move. If the look on Lilly’s face wasn’t enough to start me laughing all over again, the juxtaposition of her 1930s Catholic schoolgirl look with such a cheesy, anachronistic dance move set me rolling. Lilly faltered and looked uncertain, but I managed to rein in my laughter long enough to assure her, “It’s not you, sweetie. It’s just a really stupid dance move.”
She stopped. She seemed to think about it a minute, then asked, “Can you show me how to dance like a Fly Girl?”
“Like a...a what?”
“A Fly Girl,” she said, then started gyrating with a certain amount of rhythm while singing the theme song to In Living Color.
“Sorry, but I was more of a slam dancer when that was big, and trust me, you don’t want to learn slam dancing. Kinda pointless when you’re incorporeal anyway. How do you know about Fly Girls?”
“I used to watch them on TV before Ed died and his children took all of his furniture away.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Ed was checking out the Fly Girls, huh? I wonder if JLo was his favorite. That
old scamp.”
“He didn’t watch it. He usually wasn’t home when it was on.”
“You mean you turned it on yourself?”
She nodded, and sighed. “I used to love to watch television. I tried to do it when people weren’t home so I wouldn’t frighten them. When I first learned how to turn it on and change channels, I got carried away and scared Miss Martha half to death. She slept with all of her lights on that night. She moved away soon after that.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Ed was more understanding, though. He left the TV on for me at night, sometimes.” She gave a little shrug and went back to practicing her hula. “Right now, I’d just be happy if someone left a radio here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Then we could find an oldies station and I could teach you how to do the twist.” I twisted my hips back and forth to show her.
“That looks a lot like your hula,” she said.
“More like hula hoop,” I said. “Same principle.” She started to twist with me, and I did a ridiculous Chubby Checker imitation, and she started laughing again. I laughed too until I saw Joe standing in the doorway, watching us. “Meep! How long have you been there?”
“Don’t stop on my account,” he said. “That’s some mighty fine dancing you ladies are doing.”
I rolled my eyes, but Lilly went up to Joe and held out a hand. “Dance with me, Joe!”
“Never been much of a dancer,” he said, but as Lilly’s face fell, he stepped forward. “Guess I can give it a go. My ma made me learn how to waltz. Let’s see if I remember.” He held out his arms. Lilly positioned herself so that they were almost touching, and they started to move like that, awkwardly at first as Joe tried to remember the steps. Lilly giggled and looked almost as if this moment made up for her horrible, untimely death.
I smiled for her, but suddenly, I felt like a fifth wheel. I decided to slip out quietly and let them do their thing. I made it as far as the doorway when Lilly spun away from Joe. “Ron, wait! Joe, can you teach Ron to waltz?”
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t want to stop you guys’s fun—”
“Well, I don’t know that I’m really good enough to teach anyone—”
We stopped as we realized we were both making excuses.
“Don’t be silly, Joe,” said Lilly, “you’re a wonderful dancer! Ron, try it. It almost makes you feel alive.”
Joe and I looked at each other, and we both gave a resigned shrug. I went over to him and moved into his embrace, so to speak, and kept my gaze fixed on our feet as we started to move them in a basic square pattern. It was awkward and uncomfortable and, well, weird. Our hands hovered close to each other’s bodies without actually touching, except for when I stumbled. I felt a strange and not entirely unpleasant tingle whenever my essence bumped up against his. “So, this is waltzing,” I said lamely.
“Not quite,” he said. “It might go better if you lift your head up and look at me.”
“But then I can’t see what your feet are doing.”
“Just...trust me,” he said, and I looked up and found his steel-gray eyes looking at me with such intensity that I flashed back to the burned monstrosity I had seen in the mystery hall. I shuddered as a chill went through me, but it was quickly displaced by the warm twinkle in his eye that set it apart from those pain-filled nightmare eyes. Not to mention the way they crinkled at the corners like George Clooney’s. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“No. I...I’ve just never waltzed before.”
“Well, you’re waltzing now,” he said, and I realized that I was moving in sync with him. My eyes widened with the realization, and the corner of his mouth quirked up into an amused smirk.
“I guess I am,” I said, and Lilly began to hum. I lowered my gaze, but I didn’t pull away from him. I let him lead me around the dining room as long as he pleased.
There were some aspects of this afterlife that I could definitely get used to.
Chapter Twelve
Everyone gathered in the kitchen except Ed, who apparently, never left the attic. It was one of the rare times when Sarah wasn’t “playing” with any of us. Ruth wouldn’t stop apologizing to her family, who in turn, kept trying to console her. Joe caught my gaze and held it as he reminded her once again that it wasn’t her fault. She was as much a victim as any of them. Any of us. That wasn’t the only time he glanced my way. I knew because I couldn’t stop looking at him, either.
I needed to get out of there. I had a lot to think about. Not just Joe. I was working on a theory about what it was that enabled me to manipulate objects, and I was eager to test it. I needed someplace to be alone with my thoughts. The basement was too creepy without any company, and the rest of the house was too depressing. That left Ed’s attic. I knew by now that Ed liked to be left alone for the most part, which most likely meant he’d be all too happy to leave me alone in kind.
I knew I was taking a big risk by venturing out of the kitchen. Sarah was likely to get bored and come seeking a playmate any minute. I thought of that little girl’s room I had seen the day before and wondered what she did in there. I also thought of the burned man and wondered who he was. There were no records of a fire ever happening in this house, and all of the residents and victims over the years that I knew of had been accounted for. Maybe that was what happened after Sarah chewed them up and spit them out. Could that apparition have been Jim Feldman or one of the other disappeared ghosts? It was a mystery I couldn’t wait to discuss with Chris.
Then, of course, there was Sarah. She must have been older than all of us if she was responsible for Joe’s death, too. Not that I’d gotten around to asking how he died, but I just kind of figured. I would have to ask Chris to dig deeper and check out the rest of the house’s history. Maybe if we could figure out where Sarah had come from, we could figure out how to stop her.
But first, I had to figure out how to communicate with Chris. According to Lilly and Joe, Sarah blocked any attempts to communicate with outsiders. Lilly could get through somehow, and so did I the other day. If I could just work out how I did it, what had allowed me to get through Sarah’s block, then getting through to my sister should be no problem.
Assuming she returned to the house. But I had no doubt that she would. Well, maybe a tiny bit of doubt. But not much.
I entered the parlor and froze. Sarah sat on the stairs, watching me through the railing.
My impulse was to run like hell back to the kitchen before she could get me, but I stood my ground. “Hello, Sarah.” Looking at her made me want to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was just a little kid, after all. Sure, she was a horrible, evil, demonic little brat, but still. Maybe she was just misunderstood. Maybe she just needed someone to treat her decent.
She smiled, and I went cold. “Do you want to play?”
I forced myself to return her smile. “Sure. Why don’t we go up to your room and play with your dolly?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned her head through the railing. “That’s not my room.”
“Oh,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Well, do you have a room? Maybe we can play there.”
“My room is gone.”
She was getting agitated. “I’m sorry,” I told her. “Where would you like to play?”
She smiled again. “You know where.”
I stopped smiling. “No, Sarah,” I said, my voice firm. “I don’t like that game.”
“But it’s fun!” she chirped.
“It’s not fun. It’s not fun for any of us when you put us through that. Do you understand that?”
She reminded me of the Cheshire Cat, sitting there on the stairs and grinning at me. And I was feeling more and more like a cornered mouse.
“I bet your sister would like to play,” she said. “If you won’t play with me, maybe I can get her to.”
“Leave her alone.”
“Why? Don’t you want your sister here? If I had a sister, I’d want to play with her forever and ever. Maybe she’ll be my sister. Her hair is red, just like mine.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Fine. I’ll play with you.”
Sarah giggled. Then she stood and went upstairs. I could hear her voice floating down, singing a nursery rhyme, lisping adorably through her missing front tooth.
I hated that kid.
I went upstairs. As I climbed the staircase, I thought of her threats to my sister. I thought of what she had done to Lilly, how many times over the years she must have made her relive the horror of starving to death in the dark. I thought of Ruth, crying her eyes out with unsubstantiated, never-ending guilt. I remembered the sight of her ax plunging into Maxwell, again and again, remembered the sound of his blood-filled screams.
I remembered that she killed me, and that I was her prisoner.
By the time I reached the top of the stairs, I had worked myself up to being furious. Kid or no kid, I wanted to kill the little monster. She threw the ball, and I raised my hand and knocked it away. Her eyes went as wide as mine, and for a fraction of a second, I thought I saw fear in them. But before I could enjoy any satisfaction, she flew at me, and as she did, she changed. The thing that hit me was no child. It was the polar opposite of little and cute, and it sent me tumbling back down the stairs, where I lay disfigured and terrified that it would come down after me and swallow me into its gaping black maw.
It didn’t come. When I opened my eyes, I saw Sarah standing at the top of the stairs, holding her ball. Oh, no. Not again. I closed my eyes again and visualized the attic. I felt myself shimmer in a way that’s hard to explain. I heard Buster’s bark and opened my eyes, having successfully transported myself.
I was really going to have to stop taking the long way through the house.
“Who’s there?” called Ed.
“It’s just me, Ed. Go back to...whatever it is you do. Pretend I’m not here.”
“Fine by me,” he called, and fell silent again.
I got up and strolled through the attic, with Buster sticking close by, until I found the old ukulele. I sat down in front of it, and Buster came to lie beside me. “Good boy,” I told him, reaching over out of habit to scratch his ears. My hand passed through him. He tilted his head in that adorable, questioning way that dogs do, and I laughed weakly. “I’d give you lots of ear skritches if I could, puppy.” He seemed to accept that as better than nothing, and laid his head on his paws.
I turned to the ukulele. Lilly had plucked its strings with no problem. I reached out to do the same, but my finger just slid right through without a sound. I sighed and thought about the things I had touched. What was I thinking when it happened? What was I feeling? I knew there must be some common denominator, if I could just put my finger on it.
I drew my knees up to my chin and thought carefully about each time I had managed to touch or affect something tangible. When I swatted Sarah’s ball away just now I was angry enough to break something. I had been full of rage when I touched Lilly, too. I remembered kicking the ball that first day when I went to confront the kid. I’d been pretty angry that time, too.
Anger seemed to be the commonality. Except when I pulled Chris’s hair and she heard me say her name. I wasn’t angry then. I was desperate. Panicked. And when I was dancing with Joe? What was I feeling then? We didn’t exactly touch—not really— but there had been something, some tangible sensation that I definitely didn’t get when I tried to pet Buster just now.
“Not that I don’t think you’re swell, Buster,” I said out loud. He raised his head at the sound of his name. “Sorry. Never mind.”
I couldn’t deny that Joe made me feel things. I didn’t have a name for exactly what things, but things were definitely felt.
So. Strong emotion, then. I thought about Joe, about dancing with him, and tried to pluck the string.
Nothing. Okay, so liking a dead guy was exactly as useless as I’d suspected it would be.
I turned my thoughts to Chris, and the prospect of never seeing her again. I thought about everything Sarah had taken from me, from Joe and Lilly, and from so many others. I pictured her smug, cold little smile as she threw that ball at my head. I thought about falling down the stairs.
I thought of my mom. And then I thought about my dad. About the way he made me feel, the way he blamed me, made me blame myself all these years, all of the self-loathing I had to spend three years in therapy to get over, and you know? Joe was right. What kind of father was that, anyway? I was just a kid. He saw me playing with the car, and he called me over to help him, just for a minute. And even if he didn’t, Mom should have watched where she was going. She wouldn’t have blamed me. She would never have blamed me. I mean, who does that to their own kid?
I plucked the string. Buster looked up again, his ears perked.
I focused on my dad. I pictured his face that morning as he shook me, as he screamed at me about the car. I plucked it again. I thought about all the times he was cold to me, all the school functions and important life events he didn’t bother showing up for, about the way he couldn’t look at me when he dumped me and Chris on our Aunt Judy that summer. I kept all of these things in my heart as I picked out Mary Had a Little Lamb.
Buster jumped up and started barking, his tail wagging. Quickly, while I was still upset, I reached out to scratch him under the chin. That time, I made contact. He got so excited he started spinning in circles. It was so cute that my anger evaporated, and the moment was gone. I tried the ukulele again, and nothing happened.
Well, then. If I could just manage to piss myself off, I should be able to communicate with Chris. No problem.
I thought of Dad again, and of Joe, of how much he had loved his little girl, and how I’d have given
anything for my daddy to love me like that.
I practiced playing the ukulele until Chris came back.
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