by Val Crowe
“Spirits can’t affect the material world,” she said. “How are they doing all this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe they’re really powerful now that they’ve absorbed all of my juice. Maybe my power is making them solid and strong.”
“So, we can’t move my motorhome, and we can’t move your truck,” she said. “I mean, maybe I could figure out how to hotwire a car if I had access to a youtube tutorial, but we don’t have cell phones anymore, so no internet.”
I groaned. “I’m really sorry about the phones. They got in my head.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “If anyone understands a supernatural entity taking control, it’s me.” She started to pace the length of the motorhome. “What do we do? What do we do?”
I shut my eyes but struggled to keep conscious. To help with that, I talked. “Well, I had this barnacle on me.”
“What’s a barnacle?”
“That’s not really what it’s called. I just called it that,” I said. “It was a thing that was stuck on my neck and was trying to make me kill myself.”
“Deacon!”
“Well, it’s fine now,” I said. “We went to a place that had a lot of really strong supernatural energy, and it absorbed them into it, and then we got away, and left them there.”
“Oh, this is what you were talking about before, when you were spinning your theory about ghosts. Who’s we?”
“Me and Wade,” I said. “And this girl named Rylan.”
“Oh, a girl?”
“She’s a lesbian, Mom.”
“I wasn’t suggesting anything,” she said. “I really don’t see why you’re telling me this.”
“Mostly, I’m trying to stay awake.”
“Then open your eyes.”
I opened them. The light inside the motorhome seemed especially yellow. A dim, depressing yellow. I groaned. “Anyway, we can’t do anything like that here. We can’t take the entire place with us somewhere and release it.”
“No, we can’t,” she said.
“I mean, I took everything that was haunting Ridinger Hall out with me,” I said. “But it was all in the barnacle. I don’t have a barnacle.”
“But if we got all the energy in the park contained in something?” said my mother. “Would that work? Could we get away?”
“You got a magic genie lamp or something in here?”
“Well, no,” she said, sighing. “No, I don’t.”
We were quiet.
I shut my eyes again.
This time I did fall asleep.
* * *
My mother was shaking me awake again.
I sat up, feeling as though I had just a little more energy. I guessed that sleeping might have helped. That was interesting. I wondered if the ghosts really did want to kill me or not. Maybe if they kept me barely alive, they could get me to regenerate more and more energy, and that would power them for ages. It would probably be in their best interest not to kill me after all, just to keep me captive. Was that their endgame, or were they not really intelligent enough to know to do that?
I blinked hard. Sitting out on the table were those same strange bottles and odd herbs that my mother had used in the spell to summon Negus.
Wait. Was this a dream? Was I awake? Was this another vision from the past?
“Deacon, how are you?” said my mother. She came into view, and she looked like her present self, gray around the temples and all.
“Mom, what the hell?” I gestured to the stuff.
“Well, I was thinking about what you said,” she said. “If we could contain all the energy, then, um, you could get away. That is, if you’re strong enough. I’ll do this ritual and I’ll absorb the power in the park. It will be contained in me. I still have all the ingredients, do you believe that? I couldn’t throw them away, because if I did that, I’d have to acknowledge to myself that I had them in the first place.” She let out a bitter chuckle.
“Wait a second, Mom, you can’t do this. This whole park had a lot of power. If we put it inside you, I don’t know what might happen.”
“That’s why you get away from me as fast as you can,” she said. “You just run. If you have to, there’s this. I did go back and get it while you were sleeping.” She reached behind herself and pulled out the ax from the shed.
My eyes widened. “No.”
“Deacon, I’d rather be dead that be possessed by… by that.” She pointed out there. “But if you can’t kill me, especially with an ax, I suppose I understand. Promise you’ll find some way to do it, though, even if you just bring the cops back and they shoot me.”
“I don’t want you to die!” I was on my feet now. “There’s got to be another way.”
“Okay,” she said, spreading her hands. “So, tell me what it is.”
I stepped back, sucking in breath through my nose. I tried to think. I rubbed my thumb over my chin, which was now very prickly with growth, and I was actually sort of glad of it.
The shaving obsession wasn’t me. That was something the park had put in my mind. I was myself again. My mother had saved me. She had gotten to me when no one else could. She was like Mads in that way. Mads had gotten through to me before when I’d been under the influence of a spirit.
But I couldn’t get to Mads now. She was blocked from me. I didn’t know what she’d do, anyway. The last time she’d fought a spirit for me, it had been Negus, and it had weakened her so badly that she couldn’t contact me for years.
No, it wasn’t better to ask Mads to put herself on the line for me, even if I could get to her.
“Well?” said my mother.
“You don’t even know if it would work. It was supposed to summon something completely different, right?” I said. “So, say you try it, and you don’t get the spirits of the amusement park. Say you get something else, something worse. Then I’ve still lost you, and it’s for nothing.”
“Well, I have to do something,” she said. “All of this is my fault. I’m the one who let you play with that stupid necklace. I’m the one who made you into this catnip thing. So, it’s all, all my fault, baby. You are my son. There’s no question about whether or not I’d die for you. I will. I will save you.”
“No,” I said. “You can’t.”
“Well, I’m going to do it whether you like it or not,” she said. “I have to give you the chance to get away. It’s only a matter of whether or not you’re strong enough to run.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Mom, there’s no way I’m going to agree to this.”
“You don’t have to,” she said.
“I don’t want to lose you,” I said. “I just got you back, and now…” I shook my head. “No.” And now a lump was forming in the back of my throat, and I was fighting them, but my eyes were stinging, and—
I threw myself out of the motorhome and stood outside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It was full dark now.
Above me, the sky was full of bright pinpoints of light glittering on a velvet background. It was beautiful. It shouldn’t be allowed to be beautiful. Not when everything was about to fall apart. Not when all this was happening.
I stared at the sky for a while, and then I got terrified that my mother was in there, making that freaking potion since I wasn’t watching her. She was intent on doing whatever she could to save me, but what she didn’t understand was that I wasn’t ready to let her go.
I ducked back inside.
“You all right?” she said. She had the piece of paper in her hand with all of the strange, arcane symbols. It was crumpled and ragged around the edges, but it still looked readable. “Are they trying to get to you out there?”
“No,” I said.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said. “If they start feeding on you, I need to be close to stop it.”
“Fine,” I said. “But you don’t take that potion. Don’t even mix it.”
“Deacon—”
“At least…” My voice cracked.
“At least wait until we have the chance to… to…” Say goodbye.
“Okay,” she whispered.
I went back out of the trailer and looked up at the stars again.
And then, despite the fact that I’d told her I wouldn’t go anywhere, I went up to the fence. I grasped the chain links and I shook them, as if I could shake the whole thing off. Wait a second. Why weren’t we climbing this fence?
Maybe the ghosts would try to stop us, but we needed to try to do that first, before she did anything with that stupid potion.
“Mads?” I whispered. I wouldn’t ask her to fight the ghosts. I couldn’t ask that of her. But maybe she would have some advice for me, some insight.
She didn’t answer.
Maybe they’d driven her off.
Or maybe she was right there, and I couldn’t see her. Ghosts could make it so that you saw and felt things that weren’t there, just like the bullet that had hit Patrick. So, they could be hiding Mads from me.
Hold on…
I ran to the gate, and I grabbed hold of it. I could see the chain, locked tight, and when I rattled it, it wouldn’t budge. I felt the resistance of that strong chain.
But I persisted anyway.
Not real, I thought.
And the gate burst open.
Now, I could see that the chain was cut open, and the lock was open too. The bolt cutters were even lying on the ground right there next to the gate. I pushed the gate wide open, and then I yelled for my mother.
“Mom!”
Wait, what the hell was that?
A dark, dark haze had gathered above the park. It was congealing, and it had taken on the look of the same thing that crawled into my mother’s eyes and mouth and nostrils all those years ago. A brackish liquid. It was descending on my mother’s motorhome.
“Mom, I told you not to do it!” I screamed, running for the motorhome. My feet pounded against the pavement, and I tore down there as fast as I can. “It was a trick, Mom! The gate’s open.”
But when I got there, my mother was locked in the bathroom.
I yanked the door open.
She was writhing on the floor, and the liquid was coming in through a crack in the window, wrapping her up in long, seeking tendrils. She looked at me, and she gasped. “I love you, Deacon. Go!”
Damn it.
I slammed the door to the bathroom.
Okay, okay. Think. Think.
Ghosts were usually tied to a place. Sometimes a person, if they needed to be, but usually a place. The spirits here were tied to the park. Maybe if I got my mother away from the park before they got into her…
But the keys.
We didn’t know where the keys were.
Well, it had been hiding them. I bet they were right up there where my mother usually kept them, lying out on the dashboard.
I rushed through motorhome and into the cockpit. I sat down in the driver’s seat, and I felt around on the dashboard.
At first nothing.
Maybe she’d put them somewhere else?
No, no, it was a trick. They were here.
And my hands closed over the keys. I jammed them into the ignition of the motorhome and turned the key.
Nothing happened.
Trick, I thought, and sure enough, there was the hum of the engine beneath. The motorhome was moving.
I put the thing in gear and jammed my foot down on the gas.
The chairs and the table were still outside. Also, the awning was still hanging off the side.
I didn’t care. I zoomed past them, knocking them over and then made a wide turn, heading for the gate.
Which, of course, looked closed.
But I knew that I had left it open, so I just gunned it and drove the motorhome right through the gate.
There was a crashing noise and a tearing noise.
That would be the awning. It was toast.
But, yeah, otherwise, we were out. I zoomed out onto the dirt road that led to the park, leaving it behind me.
Two seconds later, Mads popped up, sitting next to me in the passenger seat.
“Mads!”
“Hey, Deacon,” she said, a smile on her face. “You’re out.”
“I’m out,” I said.
“But, um… you’re just bringing all the power from the park with you. It’s all inside your mom.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I skidded to a stop in the middle of the road and pounded the flat of my hand against the steering wheel. “Damn it. I wasn’t in time.”
“No,” said Mads, shaking her head.
“So, what do I do?” I dragged a hand over my face. “Am I going to have to kill my mother?”
“It’s going to do that on its own,” said Mads. “Her body can’t contain all that. But there’s the thing. When it comes out of her, it’s going to be free. It’ll attach to you. You’re the nearest source of energy.”
I hit the steering wheel again.
From the back of the motorhome, my mother rattled the door of the bathroom. “Let me out of here, you little shit!”
I shut my eyes. I couldn’t handle this right now. “So, she dies, and then all the energy from the amusement park is feeding on me, attached to me, and then we both—”
“I won’t let it hurt you,” said Mads.
I pointed at her. “Don’t you even think about it. I’m not losing you too. I…” I slumped down in the seat and I tried to think of something to do, some way out of this. But all I could think about was that my mother had done this without even giving me the chance to say that I loved her or to tell her goodbye or to do anything at all. She had the best of intentions, and I knew she wanted to atone for the things that she’d done to hurt me, but she didn’t understand that the best way to atone for all of that was to just be there for me. Every day for as long as I needed her. Just be my mother. That was what I needed. More than anything else.
Well, okay, in this moment, what I actually needed was some way to kill ghosts, but—
I sat up straight. “Okay, but what if I did kill her?”
“What?” said Mads. “I didn’t think you’d want to do that.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But is it different? If the ghosts are inside her when she dies is that different than them escaping?”
She bit down on her lip. “Well, I don’t know. I’ve never seen what happens if a person is killed when they’re being possessed.”
“This isn’t like possession, though, not exactly,” I said. “Look, these ghosts, the ones in the park, they were given form by the psychic imprints left in that place. But if they latch onto something more powerful, they change form, yes?”
She nodded slowly. “I think so.”
“And I’ve seen ghosts sort of… go away. Like if they resolve their unfinished business, the energy that’s powering them goes away. They break up and disappear.”
“We can’t resolve all of the unfinished business of the park,” she said.
“No, but if they’re all tied to my mother’s energy right now, and my mother’s energy goes away, it’s the same thing, right? They lose their form, they go back to being whatever they are… neutralized energy sources searching for something to feed on.”
“Right,” said Mads. “That’s what I’m saying. They’ll go for you.”
I scratched my chin. “So, it’s not different. I can’t be near her when it happens. But when it does happen, they’ll… they won’t be vengeful anymore? They’ll be released?”
“I don’t know,” said Mads. “Maybe.”
I laughed softly to myself. Maybe. Great. Yeah, story of my life. No one had any idea. We were all just making guesses.
“What are you going to do?” said Mads. “Leave her here?”
“No,” I said.
“Deacon, that much energy attached to you, even if it’s neutralized and not vengeful…”
“No, I know. Whatever they are, they’re hungry. They want energy to feed on. And I’m an all-you-can-eat buffet.�
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“It would destroy you.”
“It needs to be attached to something else,” I said. “Something that could be contained and destroyed.”
“Like what?”
I put the motorhome in park, yanked out the keys and tossed them on the dashboard.
“Deacon?” said Mads. “What are you going to do?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I stalked back into the motorhome, and I yanked open the door to the bathroom. My mother tumbled out of it. She started clawing at me. Her voice was grating. “You didn’t break your arm. It doesn’t look broken to me. You’re just a whiny crybaby, and I think you need to take your medicine.” She slammed me back into the wall.
Oh, yeah, I remembered this.
I smiled at her. “You don’t want her. You stay in her, and she falls apart. You want attached to something else, something stronger, something stable. Something with a lot of traumatic energy, like…” I pounded the wall. “This motorhome here.”
My mother staggered backward.
I nodded. “Yeah, yeah, look at it. It’s not an amusement park, and no one got murdered here, but you know what she did to me in this place? She cut me and punched me and pushed me face down into that table and dug her nails into that space just under my ear lobes.”
My mother looked up at the ceiling of the motorhome.
“And that’s not all she did,” I said. “Oh, no, that’s not all. This place is full of pain and misery and stuffed-down emotion. There’s plenty for you to feed on here. Leave the body. It’s no good to you. Stay in the motorhome.”
My mother hesitated. Then she fell to her knees and began to cough. Blackish liquid started to spew out of her mouth.
It came for me right off.
I sidestepped. “Mom, I can’t be here, or it’ll come for me. Just let it out, and then leave the motorhome. You got that?”
The liquid reached through the air for me, forming into tendrils like fingers.
I moved out of its way, and then I dove out of the motorhome, throwing open the door and hurling myself out onto the road. I had to go through the tatters of the broken awning on the way out, but then I made it. I sucked in a gasping breath.
