Restless Spirits: Chapters 9 & 10
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Chapter Nine
I hurried back down to the parlor and made a beeline for the EVP recorder. There had to be a way to leave another message for Chris, to tell her how important it was for her to get me out of here. But without Lilly’s help, I couldn’t figure out what that way was. Maybe if I told Joe, he’d have some idea.
Yeah, right. Like he wouldn’t just tell me I was talkin’ all foolish and such-like. Not that I really cared what he thought.
While I was trying to decide what to do, the front door opened. Gus poked his head in and looked around. Oh, thank God. I never thought I’d be so happy to see Gus!
“Looks clear,” he said, stepping aside to let Chris in. Chris! My baby sister! Come back to save the day like I knew she would!
“Of course it looks clear,” she said. “They’re spirits. It’s not like we’ll see them tap dancing on the fireplace hearth. Just get the cameras—and hurry up, will ya?”
“Hey, I know it’s really hard for you to come back here, but you don’t have to be snippy.”
“Sorry,” she said, her voice not entirely sincere. “It’s just that I have to get back home and finish planning my sister’s wake. I hope I didn’t hurt your feelings.”
Gus had the tact to look sheepish. “No problem. I’ll get the cameras.”
Her tone softened a bit as she said, “Thanks,” her eyes already fixed on my laptop. Eyeing it grimly and shaking her head, she went over and opened it up. She swore at the sight of it.
I went to stand next to her. “Yeah, I know.”
“It’s fried. That’s never happened before.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Of course, she didn’t hear me. “Think you can recover the hard drive?” she asked Gus.
“Maybe,” he hollered down from the bookcase where I’d perched one of the web cams. “Might take a while.”
With a sigh, Chris folded the laptop shut and tucked it under her arm, then took a look around the room. “The fireplace!” I said. “Check the mantle!”
She was way ahead of me. She went to the mantle and took down the EVP recorder. “It’s at the end of the tape,” she said, loud enough for Gus to hear. “Looks like she turned on the recorder before...” Her voice cracked a little, and she swallowed. “Anyway, maybe this will tell us something about what happened.”
“Yeah,” said Gus. “Maybe.”
“Definitely!” I said. “Thank you, Lilly!”
Chris tucked the recorder into her jacket and strolled over to the spot where I had landed after my fall. She shoved her hands in her pockets and stared pensively at it.
“You okay?” Gus asked.
“Sure. Peachy.” She pulled a hand out of her pocket, and with it, an EMF detector. She switched it on and waved it over the spot. Nothing happened. Frowning, she sighed, and started to switch it off, but before she could, I ran over and passed my hand through it. The needle jumped. “Hey,” she said. “I think I got something.”
“After the other night,” said Gus, “I don’t really find that encouraging.”
I made the needle jump again. “Gus,” she said, “did you bring the thermometer?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me see it.” She held out her hand. He handed it to her and she waved it around. I stood right in front of her. I couldn’t have been that hard a target to hit. Finally, she stuck it into my space and froze. “Fifty-four degrees. What’s the temp today?”
“A sunny seventy-two,” he said. Yes!
Chris nodded. “Something’s here.”
“Yeah, I don’t think anybody doubts that,” said Gus. “Which is why I’d kinda like us to hurry like we said we would.”
She looked around the room once more, then nodded. “You’re right. We should go.”
No! I was so close! They couldn’t leave yet! In desperation and irritation, I reached out and yanked a lock of her hair.
“Ow!” Her hand flew to her head. It worked! I couldn’t believe it! She looked around. I realized I was grinning like an idiot, but it wasn’t like she could see me.
“Come on, Chris, figure it out.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Gus.
“Something pulled my hair.”
They let about two seconds’ worth of ominous silence pass before Gus said, “Let’s get out of here. Grab that camera!” They scrambled, grabbing equipment and ripping out power cords without any regard to damaging them.
“No!” I said. “Hang on! I was just getting through to you guys!”
I ran to the front door. It took a lot out of me, but I managed to push it shut. By the look on Gus’s face, I was surprised he managed not to pee his pants. He and Chris just looked at each other. Then she calmly walked over and opened the door. She held it while Gus, his arms loaded with electronics, ran through it so fast he almost tripped over the dangling cords. Chris started to follow.
I could understand why they were freaked, but with so much at stake, their haste to leave really cheesed me off. I gathered up what was left of my strength and put it all into bellowing as loudly as I could, “CHRISTINA MARIE WILSON!!!”
She spun around, her eyes huge, her face as white as a...well, you know. “Ronnie?” she whispered.
Yes! I did it! But I couldn’t give her any more. Hopefully, the equipment would tell her what she needed to know.
“Chris, come on!” Gus hollered.
“I think I heard Ron!” She took a few steps back inside, but Gus re-appeared at the door, grabbed her arm, and hauled her out of there. “Wait! I heard my name, I think it wa—” The door slammed shut, cutting her off. I heard the key turn in the lock. I closed my eyes and sat down on the floor, having never felt so tired in my entire actual life.
When I opened them again, Joe sat beside me. “So, just what do you hope to accomplish by getting through to your sister?”
“I hope to get us all rescued and get that brat some comeuppance.”
A shadow seemed to pass across his face, but it was so fast I wasn’t sure I’d really seen it. “And how do you think she’ll do that without getting herself stuck here with the rest of us?”
I sighed. “I don’t have the first clue. But at least this is a start.” With that, I blacked out.
And I didn’t even know ghosts could faint.
Chapter Ten
Home. I sat on the stairs, playing with the Barbie Dream Car I’d gotten for Christmas a few days earlier. I could hear my mom upstairs, singing “Winter Wonderland” and telling Chris to pick up her toys before she got more out. Dad was in the living room, taking down the artificial tree. I was in my own little plastic Barbie and Ken dreamland, having a romantic picnic on the hood of the convertible while overlooking the Grand Canyon. Ken was just about to cop a feel when Dad called me from the living room.
“Ron! Come here for a second.”
I abandoned my toys on the stairs and ran to see what my daddy wanted.
He wrestled with an armful of artificial spruce branches and pointed with his chin. “Hand me one of those bungee cords over there, sweetie.”
I went to get the cord. It was tangled up with a bunch of others on the coffee table, and it took me a minute to unknot it. I handed it to Dad and headed back to my Barbies just as Mom came down the stairs, still singing as she rubbed lotion on her hands. It smelled like strawberries. She looked at me and smiled.
That was when her foot landed on the Barbie car. The rest of what happened seared itself onto my soul in excruciating detail. The way her hand, slick with strawberry lotion, slipped when she grabbed for the rail. The way her feet flew out from under her, one of her slippers coming loose and soaring through the air. The cracking sound her head made when it hit the wooden step. Dad screaming, Chris standing up at the top of the stairs, crying, and me standing there in dumb shock as the plastic car clattered to the ground, smashing into pieces.
I didn’t make a sound. Not even when Dad took me by the shoulders and shook me. “How many times have I told you not to leave your toys on the stairs? Look what you did!”
A blur of sirens and doctors and hospital smells later, she was gone. My mom was dead.
And I had killed her.
“Ron! Ron, come back!”
I stood in the hospital corridor, holding Chris, and looking at my dad’s back as the doctor told him Mom was dead.
“Veronica!”
The scene faded. I was back in the house where I had fallen, looking at Joe.
He looked relieved. “There you are.”
I blinked my eyes and tried to sit up. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. You just sort of faded. Went someplace else. You okay?”
I gave him a weak smile. Poor guy looked like he’d seen a ghost. Or hadn’t seen one, in this case. “I’m still dead.”
“Well, yeah. I meant other than that.”
“Yeah.” I got to my feet. “I’m just peachy.”
“I know it couldn’t have been easy for you,” he said, backing up to give me space and shoving his hands in his pockets, “seeing your kin like that. Being so close, and not a thing you can do about it.”
“Yeah,” I said again. “I’m pretty sure I got through to her, though. She already suspects I’m here. Once she gets the message we left for her, she’ll be back.”
“You sure? She sure seemed in a hurry to get out of here.”
“They’re professionals. They’ll regroup, figure out all the precautions they need to take, and then they’ll be back. I know my sister. She’s been obsessed with this house for too long to give up on it now.”
“Even after it killed her sister?”
“Especially since it killed me. She’s going to want answers. Which works out pretty well, because so do I.”
“If you say so,” said Joe, “but I still think you’re opening up a can of worms that’s best left closed.”
“So why do you keep hanging around me if you think I’m so much trouble?”
He shrugged. “You’re pretty easy on the eyes. In case you haven’t noticed, the scenery around here ain’t much to look at.”
I couldn’t think of a response to that. I was too busy trying not to smile.
“So where’d you go?” he asked me.
I paused, trying to decide what to tell him. Reliving the night I accidentally killed my mom and got emotionally abandoned by my dad seemed a bit much to throw at him just yet. We’d only just met, after all.
Finally, I just said, “Home.”
He nodded as if in understanding. Not that he possibly could. “Home,” he repeated. “Must have been nice.”
“Yeah,” I said flatly. “It was great.”
He studied me a minute. “Now why don’t I believe that?”
“Sorry,” I grumped, “I didn’t know it was share time.”
His smile went all sarcastic and bitter as he dropped his head to hide it. Then, nodding, he said, “Suit yourself. Guess you got better things to do than talk to this old ghost, anyway.” He started to fade out.
“Wait!” I called, and his image sharpened back into focus. “I’m sorry. It’s just...you don’t want to hear about all my childhood trauma.”
He shrugged. “Not like there’s much else competing for my time.”
“Thanks,” I said, “I’ll keep that in mind. Though I’m not sure what kind of insight you’d have to offer.”
“Maybe none,” said Joe. “But I can listen. Seems to me, talking about it might do you some good. Besides, I’m very old and very wise. I ought to be able to lend some kind of perspective.” This time, the smile he gave me looked genuine.
I scoffed. “Right.”
“I mean it! Heck, if I was still alive I’d be...what year is it?”
I told him.
He whistled. “Time really does fly, don’t it? I guess that puts it at right around a century since I died.”
I sat there a moment, stunned, as I tried to imagine an entire century of living this way. Finally, I managed, “Wow.”
He shrugged it off. “Well, I can’t make you talk if you don’t want to, but if you decide you do, I’ve got two ears ain’t got much else to do with themselves.”
“Some other time.” I sighed, then looked at him sideways. “You’re starting to remind me of one of my characters.”
“Uh...thanks.” He looked confused.
“That’s a compliment,” I assured him. “He’s the hero. Basically a good guy, even if, at times, the heroine finds him completely irritating.”
“Now that does sound familiar. So you’re a writer?”
“Yeah. I write romance novels. Well, I used to. Not in the sense that I’m dead now, I mean before. I was trying to branch out of romance. But now, I guess that’s all I’ll ever be known for.”
“Huh,” he said. “Seems we lucked out, getting us a story teller in our midst. You don’t want to talk about yourself, maybe you can spin some tales to relieve these tired old ears instead.”
“I don’t think so,” I said, laughing.
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” I said, growing frustrated, “I don’t work that way. I need my computer, and a blank screen to stare at, and a giant mug of hazelnut coffee. I need something to type on. It’s part of my creative process. I can’t write any other way.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but—”
“Yeah, I know. I’m dead. No more computer.” I sighed heavily. “No more hazelnut coffee.”
“No more creative process?” he asked.
I sighed even more heavily. “Guess not.”
He nodded. “So I guess your imagination died with you.”
“Yeah,” I said, then thought about it for a minute. “Wait a minute. No, it didn’t. My last book’s still all up here.” I pointed at my head. “Heck, I’ve still got plenty of stories left to tell.” Sigh time again. “Hence the tragedy of my early demise. At least my publisher ought to be able to sell a lot of books off of that.”
“I don’t see why you’ve gotta stop telling ‘em, just ‘cause you can’t write ‘em down. Got yourself a captive audience here. Might as well make the most of it.”
I mulled that over. Was it such a crazy idea? My novel was nearly finished. I knew how the rest of it played out in my head. If I could just get through to Chris. “You know, you might be onto something.”
“Good!” He surprised me by plopping down on the floor and sitting cross-legged, looking up at me like a little kid. “So tell me a story.”
Why not? Joe clearly wasn’t going anywhere, and the truth was, I didn’t want him to. As wiped out as I still felt, I was enjoying our conversation. When he wasn’t intent on convincing me how idiotic and stubborn I was, he was actually kind of nice. And he wasn’t too hard on the eyes, either. Not that he was my type.
“Fine,” I said, sitting down and mirroring his position on the floor. “Let’s give this a whirl. Okay, so. Once upon a time.” It was a clichád opening, but at least it got the ball rolling. I continued, “there was a little girl. She lived in a split-level house in the suburbs with her parents and kid sister, and she was very loved. Or at least she felt that way.” Wow. I really didn’t start out intending to make this about me, but once it started coming out, I couldn’t seem to stop it. “Until one day, following the last good Christmas that she and her sister would ever have, she left a dangerous, dreaded Dream Car on the stairs. She didn’t mean to, and it was only for a minute, but that was just long enough for the beautiful queen to trip on it and hit her head. The queen slipped into a deep, deep sleep, and then the angels came and carried her away. And from that day on, the little girl became invisible in the eyes of the King. The end.”
I stared at my hands the entire time I spoke. After a minute or so passed in silence, I ventured a look at Joe. He leaned forward with his arms resting on his knees, his head bowed so I couldn’t see his face.
Yeah. Good going, Ron. Talk about too much, too soon. How about next you tell him vivid details about that time you got food poisoning from an undercooked bratwurst? Don’t forget to describe the dysentery. Everybody loves a good dysentery story.
“Sorry,” I said at last, unable to stand the silence anymore. “Next time, I’ll try for something cheerier.”
“My wife died in childbirth,” he said, not lifting his head.
Wow. Totally didn’t expect that. “Oh. Oh, man, Joe. I—I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“The first time I held my daughter in my arms, this beautiful little baby girl…prettiest baby anybody ever saw...all I could see was the thing that killed my wife.”
I looked back down at my hands. I didn’t know what to say.
“I had to take her home and take care of her, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream a dozen different ways of leaving her to be someone else’s burden.” He finally lifted his head and looked over at me. “That lasted right up until the first time she smiled at me.”
I met his gaze and held it. He looked at me with an intensity I hadn’t seen since...well, since that time my dad yelled at me for leaving the car on the stairs. Joe’s was softened with kindness, though, and a complete lack of blame. “She smiled”—he paused to smile at the memory— “and I felt a right fool. I understood right then that my wife’s death wasn’t that baby’s fault, and that I was the only thing she had in this whole world. I promised then and there to spend the rest of my life making it up to her.” His gaze faltered, and he sighed. “Anyhow, that little girl’s no more to blame than mine was. Seems to me any man who’s worth his salt as a father would figure that out at some point.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Seems that way.” I didn’t want to talk about my dad anymore, so I tried changing the subject. “What happened to your daughter?”
He glanced at me, then shrugged.
I smiled reassuringly. “People are living a lot longer these days. Maybe she’s still out there, surrounded by hordes of grandkids and great grandkids, and she’s safe and loved and she’s had a great life.”
His jaw seemed to tighten. “Maybe.” He stood up. “Reckon one of us ought to go check in on Lilly. She’s probably close to the end by now.”
“Oh no!” I jumped to my feet. “I promised her I’d stay with her.” I headed for the basement but stopped at the dining room and turned back to Joe. “Thanks,” I told him.
He shrugged, and smiled. “My pleasure. Now git.”
I smiled and got. I was still smiling when I reached the basement, but my smile twisted itself into an expression of horror at the sight of Lilly.
She huddled in a corner, her eyes sunken in with emaciation, her lips dry and cracked from dehydration. She was shivering. I ran over to her and saw that her fingers were bloody. Some of the nails were missing. No doubt she’d tried to claw her way through the door all those years ago. It made me sick to think of her having to relive that again. She had also pulled out fistfuls of hair that lay in puddles around her. Anger rose up inside me, becoming almost a tangible presence. I could take falling down the stairs and breaking my neck. I probably even deserved it. But Lilly was just a kid. She didn’t deserve this back then, and she didn’t deserve it now.
Something had to be done about Sarah.
Boiling with fury, I tried to reign it in as I reached out instinctively to brush a lock of Lilly’s straggly hair off her face. She seemed oblivious to my presence, but when I touched her, she gave a start. So did I as I realized that I had touched her. How was that possible? Grabbing my sister’s hair was one thing—she was still alive, corporeal flesh, something to be touched. But Lilly was as intangible as I supposedly was. Maybe it had something to do with her being able to touch and move things. Whatever it was, I could figure it out later.
For now, I just wanted to do what I could to comfort her. I remembered a lullaby my mom sang to me when I was little. Not that horrible one about the baby falling out of the tree, but something sweet, something my grandmother had sung to her when she was a baby. I didn’t remember the words, but I started to hum the tune.
I sat there, stroking Lilly’s hair and humming to her until the end.
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