Restless Spirits: Chapters 23 and 24
Note: Sorry to have left you hanging for an extra day! Yesterday I got hit pretty hard with some kind of stomach bug that rendered me barely functional. I’m better today, and feeling well enough to push out all the rest of Restless Spirits. Enjoy these penultimate chapters, and watch your inbox later today for the conclusion. And happy new year!
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Chapter Twenty-Three
I knew what I had to do. I was less clear on the how, but I trusted that it would come to me. I needed to get Joe somewhere safe, where he could talk to me without any interference from Sarah. But first, I had to find him. I searched the house high and low, but all I found was Max Baird crying in the basement with Buster lying sympathetically at his feet. There was no sign of Joe, nor of Sarah. Which meant that she was probably still busy punishing him.
Whether it was part of his punishment or the safe place he went to recover, I wasn’t sure, but I knew Joe would go to the third floor eventually, if he wasn’t there already. The times I’d been there, it was because Joe had wanted me there. He’d wanted to tell me from the beginning. I understood that now. He just couldn’t, because of Sarah. So he’d tried to show me, and I was too dense to catch on.
In the attic, I sat down on the settee and considered my options. They were pretty limited. I could either wait and hope that Joe would extend another invitation to the third floor, or that he would show up back in the existing house in one piece.
Or I could try to go to him on my own.
You might have noticed by now that waiting isn’t really my style.
I closed my eyes and focused on Joe, putting aside all of the doubts I had about him and just letting myself feel the love that had grown between us. My heart was full of it, and I felt like I could do anything. Man, Chris was right. If my guarded adult heart could feel so deeply and give me so much power, then I shuddered to think how much power a child’s uninhibited heart could muster. I visualized the third floor, pictured myself sitting on Clarice’s bed. I focused on that image, solidified it in my mind, and felt myself shimmer.
I opened my eyes. Her room looked the same as the last time I saw it—doll next to me on the bed, ball in the chair, not much else going on. I retrieved the ball, sat back down, and waited.
All of the pieces were starting to fit together. There was just one more piece needed to complete the puzzle. I knew it had to be done, even though I really didn’t like the picture that was beginning to emerge.
It didn’t take long for him to show up.
I was playing catch with myself, tossing the ball in the air and catching it, trying not to think too much, when I saw him appear in the doorway. I stood up, replaced the ball in the chair, and went to him, all of my fear replaced with familiarity and a deep sadness. With lidless eyes--those steel-gray eyes that I knew so well by now--Joe watched me with a mix of wariness and wonder as I approached. His gaze seemed to penetrate me, to reach in and grab me by the soul and hold on for dear life.
I raised a hand to his face, but I didn’t touch him. “Does it hurt?” I asked. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he nodded, and broke off his gaze. “I saw Clarice,” I said. That got him to look back at me. “She showed me what Sarah did to her. I know this was her room. This is a safe place, isn’t it? We can talk here?” His eyes roved the room and settled on the ball. He nodded. “I know this hurts,” I told him, “but I need to know what happened after that. You did something to Sarah, didn’t you?”
He looked away again and nodded. I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.
His shoulders shook, and a moan escaped from deep inside him. He dropped to his knees, and when he landed, he was no longer burned. He was just Joe, and he was sobbing.
I knelt in front of him and reached out to stroke his hair but stopped short of touching him. “What did you do to her, Joe?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean to,” he managed between choked sobs.
“You need to tell me,” I coaxed him. I hated this so much. I didn’t want to put him through this. And I really didn’t want to hear what he had to say. I didn’t want to know this stuff about him. But I had to. We both did. I knew in my gut that this was the key to freeing us. “Tell me, Joe.” I pushed past my revulsion over what he’d done and took hold of both his hands. Then I was in a cemetery. Not the one I’d been in earlier that day, but the one that had eventually become a parking lot. The gray sky and light drizzle of rain formed a stark contrast to the conditions of my own funeral and was more appropriate to the shell-shocked appearance of the people gathered around an unbelievably tiny casket. I could hear the drone of the minister’s prayer, and as I approached the little group, I recognized Joe.
He stood at the foot of the casket with his head bowed, his newsboy cap pulled low over his eyes. His shoulders shook as he cried silently over his little girl’s grave. I moved to stand next to him. He had no idea I was there—this version of Joe didn’t even know who I was—but still, I hoped I could somehow lend him some small amount of comfort just by being close. Maybe it was my own comfort I was really seeking.
From where I stood, I could see his face. His eyes were raw and red, and snot dripped from his nose. As I watched him, his gaze shifted away from the coffin, and his jaw hardened. I followed his gaze to Sarah. She stood between her parents, holding Clarice’s ball. As her mother sobbed, Sarah played with the ball, a cold smile on her face. I looked back at Joe, at the hatred that filled his eyes, and I knew that he knew what Sarah had done.
“What did you do to her, Joe?” I whispered, and the scene changed.
Back on the farm, I stood on the house’s front porch. Sarah’s father and brothers were piled into what I would guess was a Model T—it’s not like I really knew cars—with her mother standing outside the passenger side, calling for Sarah. Joe walked into the front yard, carrying a tool box. Mrs. Collier saw him and went up to him. “Joe, have you seen Sarah?”
“Can’t say as I have, least not this morning.”
Mrs. Collier cast an anxious glance back at her husband, who waited in the car with their two boys. “That girl. I swear, when I get a hold of her...”
“Let’s go, Martha,” Mr. Collier hollered from the car. “We don’t have time for her nonsense. I’m sure she’s all right. Joe can look after her.”
“How can you be so ready to leave, not knowing where she is? And after what happened to Clarice?” She glanced at Joe, whose back and shoulders had gone stiff. “I’m sorry, Joe.”
He nodded. Then he gave her a smile that looked totally forced and said, “I’m sure she’s fine. You know how she likes to hide. I’ll keep an eye out for her. You and Mr. Collier go on about your business.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“Not a bit,” he said.
She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Thank you, Joe. Please, don’t work too hard. Herbert told you to take all the time you need.”
“I appreciate that, ma’am, but working’s what gets me through.”
She smiled, and he tipped his hat at her as she went to the car. “When you see Sarah,” she said, climbing in, “tell her she’s to stay in her room until we come home.”
“Will do,” he said, still smiling. He stood there and watched them as they drove away. Once they were out of sight, his smile faded and his shoulders sagged. He turned to look at the house.
I stood back as he came toward the porch, then followed him inside. He went to the kitchen, set his toolbox on the counter, and washed his hands in the sink. He stood there a while, just watching the water run out of the tap. Then he broke down in a sobbing heap. He slid to the floor and sat there, crying his heart out for several minutes.
Oh, Joe.
Once he cried himself out, he just sat there, staring up at the dangling light fixture. Then he got up abruptly, shut off the water, and went to his toolbox. After rummaging through it for a minute, he pulled out a length of rope. He grabbed it in the middle and gave it a tug as if testing its strength. Then he went to the light fixture, reached up to grab hold, and hung from it. Apparently satisfied it would hold his weight, he dragged a kitchen chair and centered it beneath the light. His face was completely devoid of expression the entire time.
“Please, Joe,” I cried, “don’t do this.” I knew that whatever I was about to witness had already been done a long time ago, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
He stepped up on the chair and knotted the rope. He slung one end over the light fixture and tied it there. He tested his weight on it. Then, after taking a deep breath, he raised the looped end to slip over his head.
A thump came from upstairs. Joe paused what he was doing—thank goodness—and glanced up at the ceiling. Reluctantly, he stepped down and left the rope hanging there while he went to investigate the noise. I followed him up the stairs, sticking close as he checked the bedrooms. Another thump came from the floor above us. Joe went to a door and pulled it open, revealing a familiar set of stairs. I followed him up into Clarice’s room.
Sarah was there, sitting on the bed and playing with the doll. She looked up at Joe. “Get out of my room,” she snapped.
He looked like he was about to explode, but somehow, kept his voice calm. “This is Clarice’s room, Sarah.”
She leveled a cool gaze at him and said, “Not anymore. It’s all mine now.”
I could almost hear the moment he snapped, like a rubber band breaking. He rushed forward and grabbed her by the shoulders and started shaking her, hard. “Do you think I don’t know?” he screamed. “Do you think I don’t know you killed her?”
Sarah screamed. “Stop it! You’re hurting me! Ma!”
“Your ma’s not here!” He flung her off of the bed. She landed on the floor just inside the doorway. She got up and shouted, “My pa’s gonna kill you if you touch me again! I hope he does! I hope you die like Clarice!”
“You killed her!” Joe was screaming. “You killed my baby girl, just like you killed those kittens! What kind of monster are you?”
Sarah screamed again, and Joe backhanded her. Hard. Something cracked, and she flopped like the rag doll she coveted down the flight of stairs.
I stood there with my hands over my mouth, my eyes as wide as they could go, the taste of bile filling my throat. Sarah might have been a monster. But she was still a kid. Next to Clarice’s murder, that was the single most horrible thing I’d ever seen.
What made it more horrible was the thought that kept going through the back of my mind: she had it coming.
I closed my eyes. If I was still alive, I knew I’d be sick, but as it was, I felt numb. I waited for the vision to end, now that I knew how she died.
But it wasn’t over. “Oh, God,” Joe said. I opened my eyes to see him standing in the doorway, staring down at Sarah’s limp, lifeless body. He looked at his hands. “Oh, God. Jesus, forgive me. I didn’t mean to...oh, please Jesus.” He twisted his fingers in his hair and pulled. He looked completely out of his mind. Then he seemed to come to his senses a little, enough to hurry down the stairs and kneel next to Sarah. He grabbed her by the shoulders, gently this time, and shook her. Her head lolled unnaturally, her dead eyes staring at nothing. Joe slumped to the floor beside her and rubbed his face in his hands. He was crying again.
Then, suddenly, he took a deep breath through his nose and picked Sarah up. I went behind him as he carried her downstairs, wondering what more this vision had to show me. He led me to the cellar. Awkwardly, he got the door open, then took her down into the dark. Once there, he set her down and lit a kerosene lantern. Then he got a shovel from the corner and started to dig.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It had been an accident. He was a distraught father…no jury would convict him. Why hide the body? I couldn’t believe he was the type of guy to try and get away with this. It didn’t make sense. But then I realized, as he dug furiously, his eyes wild as the dirt flew, that he and sense were no longer even mild acquaintances, let alone friends. He had truly snapped.
I watched in horror as he buried Sarah’s little body in a shallow basement grave. Everything made so much sense now. Ruth’s axe-murdering of Maxwell, Lilly getting left in the cellar to die, my own death… it all added up to a twisted reenactment of everything that had happened here.
Once she was buried, Joe replaced the shovel, grabbed the lantern, and headed back up to the kitchen. It had grown dark outside while we were down there, and Joe set the lantern on the kitchen table and climbed back up in the chair. There was no hesitation this time as he slipped the noose over his neck, not even a glimmer of fear or regret as he kicked the chair out from under him.
I wanted to bury my face in my hands, but I forced myself to watch as he hung there. It wasn’t quick. His body convulsed and twitched. The motion caused him to swing back and forth, and he kicked over the lantern. Kerosene spilled out onto the table cloth, and in a moment, the whole table was on fire. Joe’s pant leg caught fire, and I heard a gurgling sound come from his throat as flames engulfed him.
I covered my face and screamed.
Someone grabbed hold of my wrists. “Ron! Ron, it’s all right!” Joe’s voice called. I opened my eyes and saw him sitting on the floor in front of me. Tears still ran down his face as his eyes pleaded for understanding.
But I couldn’t give him any. Not just then. I yanked my wrists out of his hands and got up. He sat there with slumped shoulders, looking defeated and exhausted.
I backed away from him and closed my eyes again. I might not have had a real stomach anymore, but that didn’t keep me from feeling sick. Part of me was screaming to go put my arms around him and hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay. But I couldn’t. I just...couldn’t. Not yet. I needed time to process what I’d seen. I needed to calm down and think. I knew now how Sarah had died and why she was on such a rampage, but I still didn’t know what to do with that information.
I looked around the room again, and my eyes landed on the ball. I realized that it hadn’t been there in the vision. Sarah had it at the funeral, but it was nowhere to be seen when she was in Clarice’s room. “What happened to the ball, Joe?”
He didn’t answer me. I forced myself to look at him. He had that lost look on his face as he stared at nothing. “I’ve lived through this so many times,” he said. “So many...but I can take it.” He looked up at me. “I deserve it. I know that. And I know I don’t deserve you. But I can’t take losing you. Not now. Not after…” He squeezed his eyes shut and looked away.
I wanted to give him the assurance he wanted to hear, but I couldn’t bring myself to. So I asked him again: “Where’s the ball, Joe? This one’s a phantom. So is the one Sarah’s always playing with. The real ball—Clarice’s ball—what happened to it?”
He shook his head. “Sarah had it at the funeral. She stood there over my baby girl’s grave, playing with the toy that she murdered her to get—” His face twisted in pain and rage, and I realized something. I was looking for a way to kill Sarah. He had done it in the heat of the moment, but I was methodically seeking out a way to destroy her. I had no place to cast stones.
“I should have told about the kittens,” he said.
That was out of nowhere. “Kittens?”
“One of the barn cats had a litter. Four of ‘em, one for each of the children. They got to go by age, picking them out, the boys first, then Sarah. Clarice got the one that was left, a little fluffy gray one, but when Sarah saw how much Clarice loved it, she wanted to trade. Clarice didn’t want to, and Mr. Collier told Sarah she had to live with her decision.”
I nodded. “I don’t think I need to hear the rest of this story.”
He went on anyway, as if I hadn’t said anything. “I found them that night, or what was left of them.” He looked as sick as I felt. “I told myself it was a coyote that got ‘em, but I knew. I knew she did it, and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to upset her folks.”
I sighed. Child or not, Sarah was a monster. She always had been. Squatting before Joe, I put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at me in surprise, then gratitude, as his hand covered mine and held tight. “Did you take the ball from her?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I gave it back to Clarice.” He wiped his nose and said, “I buried her with it.”
I closed my eyes and kissed him on the forehead, then rested my brow against his. “Thank you, Joe.” He broke down again. I sat on the floor, and he leaned into my arms, and I held him until we both stopped crying.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Are you sure about this?” asked Chris.
“As sure as I’ve been about anything since I died.”
“Which would be, not very.”
I tore my eyes away from Clarice’s grave to look over at her. “I’m pretty sure.”
We stood side by side at the grave’s edge, watching Gus dig. It was a clear night, with stars visible through the trees overhead. We had a lot of company in the form of other ghosts wandering about, most likely doing their best to fend off boredom. Chris held a flashlight for Gus, but the moon was bright enough that he didn’t really need it. I was oblivious to things like hot or cold, but judging by Chris’s leather jacket and the way she hunched her shoulders, I guess it must have been a bit nippy. Save for the grunts and labored breathing coming from Gus, it was a quiet night in the cemetery.
“It feels wrong,” Chris said. “Digging up a little girl’s grave...you know, grave desecration can bring about some pretty hefty consequences.”
Clarice appeared on the other side of her grave, just for an instant. She looked at me and smiled, then vanished. “Don’t worry,” I told Chris. “We’re doing the right thing here.”
“I hope you’re right. ‘Cause if I get haunted by anybody else, I’m going to sick the exorcist I hire on you.”
“Why are you so cranky?”
She turned to stare at me. “You’re kidding, right? It’s an ungodly hour of the morning, it’s cold, we are now officially grave robbers, and I’ve barely gotten any sleep since you died.”
“Here.” I nudged the thermos that sat on the ground between us in her direction. “Have some more coffee.”
She glared at me, but she helped herself to a cup all the same.
Gus looked to be about three feet down by now. He stopped digging and leaned on his shovel. “You know,” he managed between all his panting, “I didn’t sign on for this. How come I have to do all the digging?”
“Cause Ron’s a ghost and I’m the boss, and I’m paying you double-time for this,” said Chris. She blew on her coffee. “Besides, you need a lookout.”
“Can’t Ron be the lookout while you help dig?”
“Tell him to shut up and dig or I’ll tell you what he did to my body at the wake.”
Sipping her coffee, Chris almost spit it out, and choked trying to keep it in. “What the heck did you do to my sister at the wake?” she asked when she finished coughing and could breathe again.
Gus’s eyes widened. His face was already red from exertion, so it was hard to tell if he blushed. “Nothing,” he said, and got back to work.
Chris looked at me, and I shrugged. “Gus loves me.”
“Since when?”
“Beats me. It was news to me, too.”
She just shook her head and went back to sipping her coffee. We settled into a comfortable silence for a while. Then, out of nowhere, she said, “So if this works, what will happen to you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“You probably should. Your novel’s done except for the clean-up, and I can hire an editor for that. I read it, by the way. It’s really good.”
“Really? Thanks.”
“Your agent thinks so, too. She’s sure this will get you on the best-seller list.”
“Well, that figures.”
“Better late than never. Anyway, that’s done, and your relationship with Dad is as resolved as it’s ever likely to get. You don’t have any more unfinished business. The only thing keeping you here is Sarah.”
“Oh. Y’know, that didn’t even occur to me.” Now that I thought about it, she was probably right. Once Sarah was out of the way, it would most likely be time to move on. I’m sure Max couldn’t wait. And Joe...well, Joe had been tortured long enough. The prospect scared me, though. I didn’t know what we’d be moving on to.
“If that happens,” said Chris, “I’ll miss you.”
“I know. But you’ll be okay.”
“Eventually, maybe.” She sighed, then looked over at me. “Say hi to Mom for me.”
“I will if I see her.”
We both got quiet again. I realized that this could be our last opportunity to say anything to each other. It was too much pressure. I wanted to leave her with some piece of profound wisdom, or at least a useful bit of advice. I supposed I could apologize for all the times I was mean to her growing up, but that stuff didn’t really matter now. There were probably a million things I could or should say. But I couldn’t think of a single one.
I figured she was probably thinking the same thing.
So neither of us said anything. But it was a peaceful silence, not awkward or uncomfortable. The kind of silence that can only exist between two people who love each other so much they don’t need to say so.
Eventually, Gus went from a torso and a head sticking up out of the hole in the ground to just a head. “I think I hit something,” he said. I leaned over to peer into the grave while he scraped dirt off of the casket. “Aw, man,” he said once he’d uncovered it. “I don’t want to be here anymore.” He climbed up out of the grave. I couldn’t really blame him. The casket had been made of pine, and it had rotted and cracked under the weight of all the dirt. Clarice’s tiny corpse, or what was left of it, could be seen, her skull grinning up at us through the slats.
Chris sighed, handed Gus her coffee, and jumped down into the grave. “Look for a red ball,” I said, “about the size of a croquet ball.”
“I know.” Grimacing, she bent to grab hold of the rotted wood. It came away pretty easily. She had most of the lid torn up when she called, “I see it!” She retrieved it and held it up for us to see. “It’s not very red anymore, though.”
“That doesn’t matter. I just need you to get it to the house for me.”
She handed the ball to Gus and let him pull her out of the grave. “You guys go on,” he said. “I’ll stay here and fill this in.”
Chris looked him up and down. “How come you’re so eager to do backbreaking labor all of a sudden?”
“Look, I may be so sore I can’t move for a week,” he said, tossing a shovel full of dirt back into the grave, “but at least I know I won’t be stuck haunting that house with Ron by morning. Don’t worry. I can take the bus home.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re going to get on the bus outside a cemetery, covered in dirt and carrying a shovel?”
“Have you seen most of the people who ride the bus? I’ll fit right in.”
“Fraidy cat,” I muttered.
Chris rolled her eyes. “Let’s go,” she said, heading off in the direction of her car.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ll meet you there. I better get back and give the guys the lowdown.”
“Oh. Okay.” She looked a little disappointed.
I sighed. “Look, I don’t want you coming inside that house again. When you get there, just open the door and toss the ball in, then get away.”
She rolled the ball back and forth between her hands. “Sure,” she said. “Fine. So I guess this is it.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
She blinked her eyes rapidly and tried surreptitiously to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye. “You were kind of a jerk sometimes.” Her voice wavered a little.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. But you were kind of a twerp sometimes.”
She smiled, and sniffed. “Yeah. I’m not really sorry about that.” Then she got serious. “You were a good sister, Ronnie. You were my best friend.”
“Hey, what’s with all the past tense? I’m not gone yet.”
Sniffling, she looked down at the ball and nodded. “Yeah, well... have a good afterlife, okay?”
“I’m not really sure how much say I get in that.”
“Are you scared?” she asked.
“Kind of. A lot.”
She nodded again.
“My kid sister’s safe, though,” I said. “And she turned out pretty awesome. So I think I can deal with whatever’s next.”
She smiled again. She just looked at me for a minute. Then she said, simply, “Bye, sis.”
“Bye,” I said, and returned to the house.
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