Vengeful Spirits series Box Set

by Val Crowe

She shook her head. “No one is that small-minded.”

  Lily poked her head out of the door of her RV.

  “Oh, look who’s up,” said my mother. “Want some pancakes?”

  Lily smiled. “Yeah, Patrick and I will be right over.”

  My mother gave me an imploring look. “Please, help me convince them to stay? I know you don’t approve, but I swear I’m not hurting anyone. And I need the job.”

  I was spared having to answer, because Patrick came over, rubbing his hands together. “Look at this food. Man, my stomach is growling.”

  “Oh, sit down,” said my mother. “There’s maple syrup. Listen, Patrick, I know we had talked about leaving—”

  “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.” He pressed his palms together. “I was actually wondering if there was any way I could convince you to stay after all?”

  “Oh?” she said, looking pleasantly surprised.

  “Yeah, Lily and I talked it over,” he said.

  “We’re not ready to give up yet,” she said.

  My mother smiled from ear to ear. “I could possibly be prevailed upon to stay.”

  * * *

  Smoke swirled out from underneath my mother’s table and into the tent that she and I had set up earlier that day. There were a cluster of lights at the top of the tent, some of them colored. When they hit the smoke, the effect was truly grandiose. My mother could control the smoke through a pedal underneath the table.

  Personally, I thought it was so conspicuous and obviously faked that it couldn’t possibly fool anyone. But people always seemed a little awed by the smoke.

  Like now, even though Patrick and Lily had been chattering anxiously at my mother a moment before, now that they saw the smoke, they were completely quiet.

  “A mist approaches,” my mother intoned in her serious, sort-of-British voice. “It may carry the spirits of the dead.”

  I saw Lily glance at Patrick, her expression hopeful.

  We were in a similar configuration as we’d been in at the first seance, the two of them sitting up with my mother and Oscar and I sitting back to observe. Oscar was recording all of this. He had a microphone on a stand resting on a nearby table. He leaned forward, watching it all with interest.

  “Who comes?” called out my mother. “If someone is there, give us a sign.”

  A book on a shelf next to my mother flew up into the air and landed on the floor with a thud. My mother always insisted putting down a flooring in the tent, because she said that it was classier than grass and because of that effect. It was rigged, of course. My mother had the controls under the table as well. She could reach in and hit a button and the book would go flying.

  Everyone jumped, except me. My mother did a very good impression of being startled. She threw up her hands, which meant that she broke the circle between herself and Patrick and Lily. After a moment, she reached out for their hands again. She shut her eyes and drew in a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, she whispered, “Is there a spirit among us? Knock if you are there.”

  A knock resounded through the room.

  Lily tensed, looking around.

  Patrick looked unsettled too.

  It was doubly weird because there was nowhere for the ghost to knock. The tent walls wouldn’t produce sound.

  “Are you the spirit of Molly Fletcher? Knock once for yes. Twice for no.”

  A knock.

  Lily’s lips parted. She sat up straight.

  And then… another knock.

  Huh. That was an interesting way to play it. My mother wasn’t going to reach Molly right away? I wondered why not.

  “Do you know of the spirit of Molly Fletcher?”

  A knock.

  My mother smiled. “Can you bring her to us?”

  Two knocks.

  “Why not?” said Lily. “Is Molly trapped somewhere?”

  My mother suddenly grimaced. She twisted a bit and then gasped and choked. “The spirit… is trying to possess… me,” she managed, as though she was barely getting air. “I will let it in… but hold tight to my hands to anchor me.”

  “Of course,” said Lily.

  My mother’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she convulsed.

  I twitched in my seat. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it when she pretended this kind of thing. It hit too close to home.

  My mother seemed to recover, squaring her shoulders and looking coolly at Patrick and Lily. “Who disturbs me?” she said in a raspy voice that didn’t sound anything like her own.

  I fidgeted in my seat. It’s not real, I reassured myself. She’s pretending. She was a good actress, after all. She could pretend all kinds of things. She wasn’t really possessed.

  “We’re sorry,” said Lily in a quiet voice. “We’re looking for our sister.”

  “You seek the spirit of Molly Fletcher,” said my mother. “But she is not here. She crossed over to the other side of the veil many years ago. Her spirit is at rest.”

  “Y-you’re sure?” said Lily.

  “I am quite sure,” said my mother. “Your sister is at peace. But she spoke to me before she crossed over.”

  “She did?” said Lily. “What did she say?”

  “Did she mention some jewelry?” said Patrick.

  “She said that she only hoped that her loved ones would be able to move on and find their own peace. She would always miss them, but she was going to a better place,” said the spirit. “She is a lucky one, unlike me. I am a spirit tethered to this mortal coil. I cannot leave.” On the end of this, my mother’s rasp broke and she sounded a bit more like herself.

  I was reassured by that, and if Lily or Patrick noticed, they didn’t let on.

  “You’re saying we can’t communicate with her at all?” said Patrick. “We can’t find the jewelry?”

  “There has to be a way to reach her,” said Lily.

  My mother hesitated. I could see that this wasn’t going the way she wanted it to. They weren’t satisfied with her answers. “There is no way. Unless I am mistaken and your sister has not crossed the veil.”

  “Well, could you be?” said Patrick. “Mistaken?”

  “It is possible,” said my mother. “It is possible, but—” And then my mother shook and gurgled and gagged, as if she were regurgitating something. When she finally got control of herself again, she addressed them in her normal voice. “I lost the spirit. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” said Patrick. “I don’t think that spirit knew anything, anyway.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “So,” said Lily. She was standing in the doorway to the Airstream. She’d stepped inside but hadn’t come in all the way. The door wasn’t even all the way closed behind her. “Is your mother for real?”

  I was leaning against the counter. “Uh… what makes you say that?” I bent down to open my fridge. “You want a beer? I swear I’ve got some Newcastle in here somewhere.” I pulled out a container of parmesan cheese and a head of broccoli.

  “I don’t know. Nothing exactly,” she said. “It was just a feeling I started to get during the seance. A niggling feeling, like she might be making it up.”

  I sighed. I couldn’t find the beer. I shut the fridge and straightened. “Look, I can’t lie to you. My mother puts on a show. The smoke, the knocking, the falling books? It’s all rigged.”

  Lily bit down on her lip.

  “I don’t think she can really get in touch with Molly’s spirit,” I said.

  “But you could?” said Lily. “You can see ghosts. Really see them.”

  “I can,” I said. “But it’s not like that. I don’t summon them. They’re either there or they’re not.”

  “And you haven’t seen Molly?”

  “No.”

  “You think what that other spirit was saying is true? That Molly crossed over the veil?”

  “That wasn’t another spirit. That was just my mother putting on a fake voice.”

  She wrinkled up her nose. “What? No. No way. That
can’t be true. It didn’t even seem like your mother. It was like her face changed.”

  I decided not to argue further with her. She wanted to believe. That was why my mother was so successful at what she did. The people she scammed were open to it. They would believe it even if they were told the truth.

  “The thing is,” said Lily. “I think that Molly’s spirit is here.”

  “You do? How come?”

  “I had a dream about her on the carousel the other night,” said Lily. “It was an incredibly vivid dream. I’ve never had a dream like that.”

  Huh. That was interesting. Because I’d had a very vivid dream the other night too. I was pretty sure that dream had come from the spirits in the park, trying to communicate with me. Maybe Molly was trying to communicate with Lily.

  “I want to go there,” she continued. “But… and this is going to sound dumb, I’m afraid. I don’t want to go by myself. Not in the dark. Not into the place where my sister went into and never came back out.”

  “It doesn’t sound dumb,” I said. “It sounds smart. We don’t know what might happen out there.”

  “So, you’ll come with me?” she said. “And if she is there, then you’ll see her.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure, I’ll go.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” I said.

  We set off across the parking lot together. It was dark, and I had brought a flashlight with me, but we didn’t need it yet. The lights from our campers lit our way to the arch.

  After we stepped beneath the arch, however, it was as though we had been flung into the pitch black. It was immediate, like a curtain coming down. I even looked behind me, half expecting to see the light cut off in a straight line in the middle of the air. But I didn’t see anything behind me. Back there, it was black too.

  That was when I remembered the maze tricking me into thinking there was no way out.

  My pulse picked up speed. It was true what she’d said about Molly. Her sister had disappeared out here. What if we never found our way back?

  “The flashlight?” said Lily, a note of panic in her voice.

  Of course. I switched it on. It illuminated a pitifully small circle of yellow.

  But somehow we managed to follow it through the park. Molly seemed to know where she was going. Personally, I didn’t remember the carousel at all. So, either she’d paid a lot of attention when we’d been exploring the park that first day, or else she remembered the path from her dream.

  We didn’t speak as we walked.

  I tried a few times, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to say something funny and witty to lighten the mood, but the darkness made it hard to formulate anything light. It pressed in against us on all sides, like a slinking animal brushing into our bodies, reminding us that it was there, that we couldn’t get away from it.

  Finally, we reached the carousel.

  I shined the flashlight all over the carousel, illuminating the faded horses, all covered in vines. Some of the center animals were covered in green, fuzzy mold. It smelled.

  I stopped short at the edge of it.

  Lily did too.

  We stood there for several moments and we still didn’t speak.

  “In my dream, she was here,” Lily finally said in a quiet voice. “You don’t see anything?”

  I raised the flashlight again, hesitant. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see a ghostly figure among those ramshackle horses. But when I shined it around, I didn’t see anything.

  Slowly, we edged our way around the carousel.

  A horse abruptly came into view. The paint around one of its eyes had worn away, giving it the appearance of a huge, misshapen eye.

  We both jumped a little. She burrowed in close to me.

  I put my arm around her. I didn’t think about it. It just seemed like the thing to do when a girl presses into your body, trembling.

  She didn’t protest.

  But I removed my arm right away. Putting an arm around a girl bespoke a certain about of intimacy. And I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. There was Mads to think about, after all.

  * * *

  Mads.

  No, I decided on the walk back to the campers after nothing at all happened at the carousel ride, it wasn’t fair that I thought of Mads when I put my arm around another girl.

  Because Mads was a ghost, and there was nothing between her and me. It was an impossibility for there to be anything between her and me. We could not be together. She was not corporeal. In point of fact, I couldn’t put my arm around Mads. It would go right through her. So, how could that blasted woman make me feel as if she had some prior claim on me?

  She wasn’t even a woman, I thought sulkily as I walked back, following the yellow circle of the flashlight while Lily kept pace next to me. Lily kept trying to talk, but I kept not really responding because I couldn’t stop thinking about Mads.

  “So, you didn’t see anything at all?” said Lily. “Because I could swear that she would be there if I went there.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Nothing.” The thing with Mads, it was all kinds of weird. And it shouldn’t even be the slightest bit romantic for a number of reasons beyond the fact that she was a ghost. For one thing, the first time I had seen Mads, I had been a kid. Younger than ten. So, that’s gross. Grosser than Padme-and-Anakin gross. Of course, that franchise seemed to have a lot of troubling romantic pairings, what with the unwitting incest kisses and all.

  Point being, even if she had been a real live person, then there would never have been anything between me and Mads.

  Point being, it was totally okay for me to put my arm around Lily and let her press her small, warm, trembling frame against mine. I could have done that. I could have stood there, arm around her, both of us close. I could have rubbed her shoulder. She could have looked up at me and—

  Well, anything could have happened.

  And it would not have been wrong or a betrayal or anything like that.

  God knew I could stand a palate cleanser. The last woman I had kissed had been Wade’s fuck buddy Charlotte, and that had only been to transfer a killer ghost barnacle from her to me, and that had been the worst sex ever.

  Not that putting my arm around Lily automatically equaled sex or anything. I wasn’t even thinking about having sex with her. I wasn’t thinking about kissing her.

  But, see, damn it. I should be. Because Mads was not part of the equation, not really.

  I mean, I guess… Okay, so when Mads first showed up in my life when I was a kid, she was just one of the spirits that flitted around me. There was no significance to her, except that she seemed different than the others. More together, more formed, more as though she had a full personality instead of an obsession with her unfinished business.

  And then Mads had driven Negus out of my mother, which was how I knew my mother had been possessed.

  The act of that had weakened her so much that she couldn’t manifest for over a decade.

  When I did see her again…

  Well, look, it was not my fault that she was hot as hell. Any guy would think she was attractive, even if she was a ghost. But maybe it was my fault that things got weird between us. Maybe I made comments or maybe I flirted or maybe…

  No.

  It was her fault. She was the one who was always showing up in skimpy fucking outfits, taunting me when she knew that I couldn’t touch her.

  Oh, and she was jealous.

  This was why I felt guilty. Because after that thing with Charlotte, Mads had gotten all weird. And, it was utterly uncalled for. Because, okay, if Mads was off making out with ghost guys—

  Ugh.

  Okay, I would hate that.

  “…back tomorrow?” said Lily.

  “What?” I turned to her, also turning the flashlight.

  She cringed. “Geez, don’t blind me!”

  “Sorry.” I lowered the flashlight. “I, uh, I didn�
�t catch what you said earlier.”

  “I said maybe we could come back tomorrow to try to find Molly.”

  “Oh, okay. Yeah, we can try that, I guess.”

  “What are you even thinking about? It’s obvious that you’re off in your own little world there. Are you sure you didn’t see something? Are you hiding it from me for some reason?”

  “I swear I didn’t see anything. It’s not that.”

  “So what are you thinking about?”

  I blushed. I was glad it was dark. “Nothing,” I muttered.

  “I’m, um, I’m sorry that I got freaked out back there,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to make things weird. It’s only that there’s something about this park that gets to me.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I said. “You were fine. I just shouldn’t have… I mean, I don’t want things to be weird either.”

  “Well, they’re not,” she said. She took a step closer, and her voice was soft. “What you did, the way you comforted me… that was nice.”

  I licked my lips. I didn’t say anything.

  “You didn’t do anything that I didn’t like is all I’m saying,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  Wait, was this a cue? Was I supposed to, like, grab her again? Make a move? I just stood there, like an idiot.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Uh, I guess we should…” I gestured with the flashlight down the walkway.

  “Right,” she said.

  We walked.

  It turned out that we weren’t far from the entrance. Soon, we were out of the park and back to our little campsite, which looked as cozy and welcoming as it always did.

  Lily and I said some awkward goodbyes, and then I went into the Airstream. I stalked up and down the length of the trailer. “Mads?” I said. “Mads, are you around?”

  Nothing.

  But the last time I’d seen her, she’d been pulled away from me. She disappeared. And she’d never come back.

  Oh, hell, I was a dick.

  I’d completely forgotten about Mads. She might be in trouble. She could be hurt or… I didn’t even know if she could be hurt. Could she die? I knew that spirits could be absorbed into other things, more powerful energies. What if Mads had been absorbed into the park? What if she was gone?