by J L Bryan
Obviously, that was why Clay, as Melissa, had pretended to be interested in my work. In my eagerness to get closer to Melissa, to gain her acceptance, I'd blabbed my head off to my worst enemy about everything I was likely to do in my attempts to defeat him.
“Okay, I'm ready,” I told Michael.
We didn't waste any more time, but hurried down to the parking lot, Michael in such a hurry that he ran to the van with my suitcase under one arm, even though the suitcase has wheels and can roll along the ground. Apparently that would have taken too long.
We raced across the parking lot to the van, and Michael definitely won that race, taking enormous strides like a lion streaking across the savanna after its prey.
He insisted on driving, so I let him, figuring he'd feel better with something to do besides sitting in the passenger seat and waiting.
The van was never speedy, but the hills of Tennessee really gave its puttering engine an extra challenge. Michael grumbled about our slow rate of travel, sometimes out loud, but mostly under his breath.
The day broke slowly behind us as we drove west. The light was pale in a cloudy sky, and a thin drizzle began to pour, the kind of rain that feels like slow, gray misery.
My stomach was tied up in a thousand acidic little knots; I was worried for Melissa, for all the things Clay might do with her while he controlled her...and for what he would do when he was finally done with her.
We couldn't seem to move fast enough.
Chapter Nine
We stopped for gas in Knoxville, the next big town, where Ryan had once suggested taking me on a date. That invitation was no doubt void now. Which was fine, really. I was far from ready to be a stepmom to three kids. I could barely take care of myself.
I looked over at Michael, his jaw set, his bright green eyes staring at the road ahead with unswerving intensity.
“I'm sorry,” I said, but it came out softly. I cleared my throat. “About Melissa. And bringing my baggage into your life.”
“Everyone has baggage,” Michael said. “You just...happen to have a lot of dead people in yours.”
“Yeah, well, there's an extra carry-on fee for that,” I said, feeling the joke fall from my lips to the floor of the van, where it died a slow and painful death. “Anyway, yeah. You were probably right to try to end it in the first place. I'm just like a wrecking ball that swings in, smashes up your life...then, just as you're getting up and recovering from that, I come back and smash it all again on the backswing.”
“Come on. Do you think my life was perfect before you showed up?”
“Well, closer to it, probably.”
“The real wrecking ball was my mom dying and leaving me to raise Mel on my own.” Michael frowned. “Or maybe that was more like a bulldozer, you know. Moving a lot of stuff around, creating a different path...but my dad left us years before that. So that was like....a total demolition, with shape charges and TNT, or whatever they use now.”
“Way to extend the metaphor,” I said.
“Yeah, so, my whole life was basically a demolition site full of wreckage before you showed up.”
“But your sister was safe.”
“Yep.” His fingers flexed on the wheel, gripping it so tight his knuckles had gone white. “When we find Clay, we have to save my sister, then get rid of him. For good.”
I nodded. Of course I agreed with him—Clay had been an ever more dangerous threat since he'd somehow escaped his original haunting ground. But every ghost was different, and Clay was more conscious than most, more aware of the strategies we might use to trap him.
When we caught up to Clay, hopefully we'd have an exorcist with us to kick him out of Melissa's body.
How to get him from there into a ghost trap was a tricky question, though, and not one to which I had any clear answer.
“I will deal with Clay,” I said. I knew this had to be true; my whole life, or at least my life since I was fifteen, had been leading up to some kind of final confrontation with Clay. Every ghost I'd taken out had been mere preparation for this.
One way or another, it was going to be the end of Clay's story.
The big question was whether it was going to be the end of mine, too.
It was a tense drive, with long silences. I let Michael pick the music, since he was driving, and since his sister had been stolen by an evil supernatural being.
“Got any Jason and the Scorchers?” he asked at one point.
“The who and the what?” I asked. “Is this more obscure rockabilly stuff?”
“It's technically cowpunk.”
“Cow...okay. I'll download it. If I can find it.”
It turned out the music was fast-paced, and he played it loud. Not bad driving music for going at high speed across empty, rolling countryside, urged on by panic and fear.
The highway took us through hills and valleys crowded with tall old trees. The view was probably lovely in spring or summer, when it was green, or in autumn, when the trees no doubt blazed with color.
It was winter, though, and the trees stood like giant skeletons instead, swaying in the gray drizzle, the clouds low and heavy overhead, not a glimpse of the sun anywhere in the sky. It felt like evening all day long.
Jacob and Stacey were somewhere behind us, gradually catching up despite their late start. The rain only grew heavier, with dark thunderheads creeping in from the west. The weather app on my phone projected a heavy downpour in our path for hours to come. So we had that to look forward to.
Calvin called me in the afternoon, as we snaked through downtown Nashville, high-rise hotels and office buildings looming above us in the stormy sky.
“Bad news,” Calvin said. “I'm afraid James Lachlan won't be available anytime soon. He's in Romania, apparently. Facing a problem with some very old spirits. His email said it could be weeks before he returned.”
“Great,” I said. “So...do we know any other actual exorcists? Who's our second string?”
“I have a short list of names,” Calvin said. “You're in Tennessee, correct?”
“On our way to Oklahoma,” I said. “The okay state. I think that's their motto.”
“I doubt it. There is a man by the name of Tucker Nealon. A Texan. He's the closest geographically.”
“Is he...ordained? Father Tucker? Or wait, he must be a friar. Friar Tucker. Right?”
“No—”
“It's a Robin Hood reference.”
Calvin paused for a long moment. “I caught the reference, Ellie. I'm not so old that I predate medieval English legends.”
“I know that, but you didn't laugh, so—”
“Anyway,” he interrupted, “Mr. Nealon is not a Jesuit like Dr. Lachlan.”
“You mean ex-Jesuit,” I said.
“He's not that, either.” Calvin sighed. “He's a deliverance minister. But Ellie—”
“Calvin! Are you serious? We're talking about Clay here. And a serious possession, not an annoying poltergeist. Anyone can call themselves one of those.”
“I'm aware of that,” Calvin said, his voice heavy.
“So what are his qualifications? Did he take classes at an online exorcist university? Or maybe he watched a YouTube video?”
“Lachlan said he's an eclectic spiritual researcher, and also has a background in chaos magic.”
“Oh, good. I'll be sure to think of how colorful that sounds while I'm burning to death.”
“Ellie, this man may be unorthodox...both literally and figuratively...but Lachlan named him.”
“Calvin, this is my life we're talking about. And the lives of some people very close to me.” I glanced at Michael, who'd turned down the music when I'd answered my phone. Now he gave me a puzzled look. I sighed. “I'll take whoever's available, honestly, if they're up for a trip to Oklahoma. Labor omnia vincit, am I right?”
“What?”
“Labor conquers all,” I said. “It's their actual state motto. But I'm still going to suggestion-box my idea if we pass the state capitol
building. 'The okay state.'”
“How is the investigation progressing on other fronts?” he asked.
“We're just checking Michael's online account periodically to see if Clay leaves us any more little bread-crumbs of credit card fraud. Nothing so far, but it can take hours for a transaction to show up. How about the PI that Clay hired? Badger?”
“Bodger. He hasn't answered my phone calls. I just left him another voice mail, telling him that he's the last known contact of a female minor who's gone missing, and we're working on behalf of her brother and legal guardian, and that Bodger's name will be on the front page of the police report, if he doesn't get back to me. So I expect to hear from him before long.”
“Thanks, Calvin.”
Traffic grew thick around Nashville, and the rainy weather didn't help too much.
We made it out to the countryside and picked up speed, following long, curving roads through more giant-dead-tree graveyards. It certainly was winter out here.
Rivers broke up the cold wilderness, each one seemingly wider than the last. We crossed the Duck River, the Buffalo River, and eventually the expansive Tennessee itself. The great Mississippi waited ahead, America's legendary waterway connecting the Great Lakes to the Gulf, our version of the great rivers like the Nile that gave rise to early civilizations. We'd be crossing it at the city of Memphis, named for the ancient capital of Egypt.
This fact did not really prepare me for seeing an actual life-size pyramid as we rounded a bend in downtown Memphis, on our way to the long bridge across the Mississippi.
“Look at that.” I pointed at the glass pyramid. “Who do you suppose is buried there? I don't think there were many pharaohs from Tennessee.”
“Maybe Andrew Jackson?” Michael said.
I smiled a little. “Yeah, that's probably it. Buried with his chariot, and golden urns full of gems, and sacred mummified cats.”
“Yep, that's one hundred percent Andrew Jackson all the way. But I'm surprised it's a glass pyramid. You'd think he would want to be surrounded by a....stone wall.”
“Uh, but—”
“Because they called him Stonewall Jackson. Get it?”
“That was a totally different guy.”
“There's some hieroglyphs on the side.” He slowed and pretended he had to squint to read the giant logo. “It says...'Bass Pro Shops.' And 'Ducks Unlimited.' And there's an image of the Egyptian duck god. What was his name? Daf-Fe?”
“You might be rusty on American history, but your knowledge of ancient civilization is flawless.”
“I spend a lot of time reading ancient scrolls and stuff. And hieroglyphs.” He gestured at the Bass Pro Shops pyramid again.
It took me a moment to recognize the weird feeling in my face. I was smiling. I hadn't done much of that lately. The unknown dangers waiting ahead hadn't changed, but for a just a moment, it was nice to not have the fear right at the front of my mind, to find a moment of lightness in the dark. It was almost like old times, joking around with Michael.
The rain had stopped, but dark clouds remained overhead as we approached the long, long bridge that would take us across the immense river.
“I've never been west of the Mississippi,” I said, realizing it just as we reached the bridge. I hadn't really thought about that one way or the other before, but now that we were crossing the great river, it seemed like a significant milestone.
“Now you can be like Yosemite Sam,” he said. “The rootin'est, tootin'est ghost trapper in the west.”
“I don't know. My rootin' is pretty rusty. And as for my tootin'—”
I didn't have to finish that thought, because my phone buzzed with a message from Stacey.
“Hey, Michael,” I said, after glancing at it. “Jacob and Stacey are suggesting we stop for lunch here in Memphis. Stacey claims to know the best barbecue place in town.”
“I'm not hungry,” he said. “At all.”
“Okay, I'll tell her no.”
“I can drop you off if you want to meet them,” he said. “I don't mind. But I want to keep moving.”
“No, thanks. My stomach's kind of cramped up with stress and fear.”
“Yeah. Mine, too.”
I texted Stacey that we would continue on and meet them at the hotel in Ardmore.
We started across the bridge. The far bank of the Mississippi wasn't even visible; the bridge seemed to disappear into the fog and clouds ahead, as if to make it clear that we were driving into a dark and uncertain future.
Chapter Ten
“So, listen to this,” I said, reading from my phone. “'The Gatwich Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma was damaged in 1895, in a fire that destroyed most of the town. Only the hotel's original brick foundation survived. Four people died in the hotel fire.'”
“Sounds like a place where Clay would feel right at home,” Michael said.
“Maybe he wasn't just looking for a place to stop for the night,” I said. “Maybe he picked it out deliberately.”
“I hope that means he'll still be there tonight,” Michael said.
“I just wish I knew what he was up to.” I looked back at my phone, where I'd pulled up a ghost-lore site that collected stories from around the country. It had come up in my search results for the hotel. “'After the hotel was rebuilt, guests began encountering strange phenomena. Some reported an intense heat in their rooms. Others heard agonized screams late at night, believed to be the sounds of tortured souls reliving their painful deaths. The experiences are strongest on the third floor of the hotel, where four people were trapped in the flames, including a mother and a young daughter. Hotel guests have reported the apparition of a small, badly burned girl approaching them late at night, begging for help, or sometimes for water, only to vanish when the lights came on. Sometimes she's described as having fiery eyes, like a jack o' lantern.'”
“She sounds adorable,” Michael said.
“The town was wrecked by fire again in 1915, when a train car full of gas exploded and blew up a bunch of buildings downtown.' Huh. Maybe Clay's shopping for a vacation home. Sounds like a spot he'd love, with all those fires.” I skimmed down the article, looking for more details about the fire. Despite the report of four or more deaths in the hotel fire, only one victim was named, in the admittedly spotty ghost-blog article: Hugh McClaskey, one of the two brothers who built and ran the hotel.
Searching around, I found more details about the town's fires, but it remained unclear what started the original in 1895. I also didn't find any more victim names; maybe the death toll at the Gatwich Inn had become exaggerated over the years. Soon I'd exhausted what the internet could provide about the nearly-forgotten event in the small town's history.
To learn more, I'd probably have to dig into local sources, like the town courthouse or newspaper archives. Maybe that wouldn't be necessary; it would be nightfall before we actually reached Ardmore, and we might well have new information by then, maybe new charges on Michael's credit card giving us some leads.
So far, though, there was nothing.
The bridge over the Mississippi had brought us into Arkansas, where the landscape turned much flatter and the sky much bigger. Scattered clouds filled the view from horizon to horizon, but the rain had stopped. Forests of skeletal trees gave way to farms and fields of dead yellow grass. The view was definitely changing as we moved west, into open plains and toward the vast desert beyond.
“The next big city is Texarkana,” I told Michael, zooming on out my phone's map app. He was still driving. We'd gone about ten hours and I'd yet to drive a single mile.
“That's where the Bandit picked up his beer,” he said.
“This is turning into kind of an all-American road trip,” I said. “Remember when you talked about moving out west somewhere? Getting away from...” I gestured back at the road behind us, indicating everything back home, every bad memory and experience one might want to leave in the dust.
“I've still been thinking about it. Up until this.”
&
nbsp; “Right. Obviously, this isn't how we wanted it to happen. You still want to move, huh?”
He shrugged. I don't know if that meant he wasn't sure, or he just didn't want to talk about it right now. Or, possibly, that his thoughts about leaving town no longer involved that one part about bringing me with him.
Maybe I was just another bad memory he wanted to leave in the dust.
The mood in the van felt a little cooler after that, at least to me.
Michael switched from my digital playlist to the plain old radio, scanning for nearby stations. A country station came in, quite fuzzily, followed by something even fuzzier that was either sports or talk radio. Definitely a man's loud voice yammering on and on about something.
The first clear signal was a local R&B station, playing the Atlanta band OutKast. “Hey Ya!”
“I haven't heard this in forever.” Michael turned up the volume.
“No.” I switched the channel, landing on some brassy, fast-paced Latin music.
“Seriously? Who doesn't like 'Hey Ya!'? It's like the happiest song ever. Maybe even happier than the song 'Happy,' which is not an easy accomplishment—”
“I just can't stand to hear that band.”
“Not a fan?”
“I was supposed to go to a concert that night, when I was fifteen. My parents found out and forbade me to go. I had to break off my date with my boyfriend. I remember being so embarrassed. Thinking it was the worst night of my life, the worst thing that had ever happened to me.” I let out a derisive little sound at myself. “And it was. I was really so spoiled. I went to bed so angry at them. I woke up later that night and my room was full of smoke. My dog woke me up, actually. The dog got me outside. I never saw my parents again. They died thinking I hated them. That was the last thing I ever said to them. That I hated them.”
I shook my head, feeling a dark surge of grief welling up inside me. I hate when it does that. Grief should just dry up over time, like an old well in the desert. It shouldn't lurk beneath the surface, waiting to erupt at long, random intervals, like hot lava bursting forth from a seemingly dormant volcano.
