“Just be cool,” Eddie said, shoving the door open with his shoulder.
The shop was darker inside than Hendricks had been expecting. Someone had slopped black paint over the windows, so the only outside light that drifted into the room was streaky and faint. Cluttered shelves lined the walls. Hendricks stopped at the nearest shelf and examined its contents.
Crystals. Tiny vials filled with murky liquid. Dried rose petals. Statuettes of naked women with snakes for hair. Hendricks saw a realistic-looking cow skull covered in sketchy symbols and resisted the urge to shudder.
“Whoa,” she breathed.
“Yeah, not quite dream catchers and greeting cards,” Eddie said. “But at least they have what we need.”
Hendricks nodded, noticing one other person in the store, a woman sitting behind a cobwebby glass case that held a taxidermy fawn. The woman had dark skin and blunt bangs and wore a lot of black eyeliner.
Hendricks lifted her hand to wave, but the woman just stared at her, saying nothing. Her eyes were flat and black. She was so still that, for a strange, tilting moment, Hendricks thought she was taxidermy, too. A stuffed woman with marble eyes. The thought was unsettling.
Hendricks looked away, but she could still feel the woman’s eyes trained on her.
She stopped in front of a table laden with all sorts of rocks and crystals and picked up a bundle of something that looked a lot like weed. She cautiously took a sniff and found it astringent but kind of earthy. “You said you had a list?” she asked Eddie. The sooner they got out of this place, the better.
Eddie dug a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. “That’s the sage,” he said, nodding at the bundle of green in Hendricks’s hand. “And we also need clear quartz and black tourmaline.”
Hendricks picked up a black, chunky stone. The sticker on the side said $27.50.
“Wow,” she said. “Spiritual healing doesn’t come cheap—”
Eddie cut in. “I’ve got some cash saved.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got a credit card for emergencies,” Hendricks said automatically. She looked up and saw that his face had gone stony.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” he muttered.
“You’re judging me because I have a credit card?”
“I said it was nothing.”
But he didn’t say another word to her as they gathered the rest of their supplies and piled them onto the glass case. Glancing down, Hendricks saw that the stuffed fawn inside the case had two heads growing side by side out of its fragile neck. Its eyes seemed to follow her. Both of its mouths were open, revealing sharp, brown teeth. Her nerves crept.
One more. The thought came unbidden.
She jerked backward, heart hammering.
“What?” Eddie asked, frowning, but Hendricks just shook her head.
“It’s nothing,” she reassured him.
The woman rose from her seat behind the fawn. She smiled faintly as she began checking them out.
“You have a ghost problem,” she said. Her voice was softer than Hendricks had been expecting. It made her want to lean closer, worried she wasn’t hearing every word.
“How’d you know?” Eddie asked.
The woman nodded at the materials spread out on the counter. “Sage, blessed salt, tourmaline.” She picked up the quartz. “But, if I might make a suggestion, you should use amethyst instead. Quartz clears your own negative energy, amethyst clears the negative energy of others.”
“Thanks,” Hendricks said, as Eddie switched out the crystals. “You know a lot about this stuff.”
“A bit.” The woman handed over their bag, smiling slightly. “That’ll be $122.50.”
Hendricks reached for her credit card, but Eddie was faster. He tossed a wad of bills onto the counter. “That should cover it.”
Hendricks dropped her hand, leaving her wallet where it was. If Eddie wanted to be petty, she was happy to let him. She didn’t want to explain to her parents why she was spending a hundred bucks at a place called Magik & Tarot, anyway.
Hendricks couldn’t be sure, but she thought she heard the woman call “Good luck” as they let themselves out.
CHAPTER
20
It was dark by the time they reached Steele House. Eddie pulled the Buick up to the curb and cut the engine. They sat there for a moment without speaking, the car growing cold around them.
Hendricks found her eyes drawn to the windows of the house. It occurred to her that they looked sort of like eyes, and the front porch was like a thin smile, almost as if the house was watching her.
The thought made her shudder.
Eddie’s shoulder briefly nudged hers. “You cool?”
No, Hendricks thought, I am not cool.
But she glanced up at him, offering a weak smile. “I’m fine. So where are we doing this thing?”
“The ritual’s supposed to be most effective when it’s performed in a place of great supernatural energy.” Eddie sounded like he was reciting something from a textbook. He cleared his throat and added, in a small voice, “I was thinking we could do it in the cellar.”
Hendricks had been thinking they should do it in Brady’s room, but at the mention of the cellar she blushed. Of course. That’s where Eddie’s little sister had died. It made sense to do it there.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “That sounds right.”
They got out of the car and walked around to the side of the house. Hendricks tugged the cellar door open with a grunt and held it while Eddie climbed down the stairs with their supplies.
Hendricks flipped the light switch, and the single raw bulb flickered to life, illuminating the cramped space and packed-dirt floor. Even though she and her father had cleaned up, wine still stained the walls a dark, crusty brown in spatters. It made the cellar look like a slaughterhouse. Hendricks glanced uneasily at Eddie.
Eddie started unloading the supplies. “Why don’t you light the candles, and I’ll draw the pentagram.”
“Yeah,” Hendricks said, taking the bundle of candles that Eddie held out for her.
He pulled a container of blessed salt from the bag and poured it in a star in the middle of a large circle. Hendricks placed the candles at the five points of the star. She went to light the match and noticed that her fingers were trembling. It took her three tries to coax a tiny red-orange flame to life.
When they were done, the cellar certainly looked spooky. The candles illuminated the white-salt pentagram and flickered in the dark glass of the few wine bottles sitting on the shelves. Her dad had been slowly trying to replace his collection.
Hendricks scanned the wine until she found a bottle with a twist top. She pulled it down and opened it, hoping it was cheap.
“Sacrifice,” she said, pouring a little wine into the middle of the circle. Eddie grinned. He lit the sage with one of the candles, and thick, fragrant smoke quickly filled the air.
It smelled better than Hendricks expected. Not like weed at all, but sweeter, like cedar and grass. She took a small sip of wine, and felt her nerves fade, just a little.
Eddie’s eyes darted to her face. “I’m going to start the ritual now.”
Hendricks took another drink of wine, gathering her nerves. “Go on,” she said, swallowing.
He pulled a crumpled paper out of his back pocket and unfolded it. Then, hesitantly, he began to read.
“Air, fire . . . um, water, and earth.” He looked up. “Make this place clean again.”
A cool breeze seemed to sweep through the room, raising the hair on the back of Hendricks’s neck. The candles flickered—
Then, one by one, their flames died.
The wine suddenly felt stale on Hendricks’s tongue. “Was that part of it?”
Before Eddie could answer, the light bulb above them popped and fizzled, pl
unging them into total darkness.
Don’t freak out, Hendricks told herself. But her body didn’t seem to want to listen. Sweat broke out on her palms. Her spine went stiff.
“Eddie,” she whispered.
“I’m right here.” His hand was suddenly on her back, his touch light. “This is supposed to happen. The ghosts will put up a fight, but that . . . that just means we’re winning.”
Hendricks cast her eyes to the side, searching for him in the darkness. “Did you get that off Reddit, too?”
Eddie didn’t say anything. Hendricks hugged the wine bottle close to her chest, her skin creeping. The air was still thick with the smell of sage—
And something else. It was a sweet, dank smell. Dead leaves. Meat left to spoil.
Hendricks wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think this is working,” she murmured. “We should go.”
“Quiet.” Eddie’s voice was barely more than a breath. “Listen.”
Hendricks listened.
At first she didn’t hear anything at all.
And then—
Laughter.
It was soft, and it seemed to fade the second Hendricks started listening for it, like a radio going in and out of tune. Fingers shaking, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned on the flashlight app, casting a solid white beam at the wall across from her. She turned in place, and the soft pad of her shoes in the dirt sounded loud and close.
She sent the light from her phone bouncing over the brick walls and the wine stains. She had a hard time holding her hand steady, and the beam shook and bounced as she moved, making her feel slightly motion sick. There was nothing there. But she had the feeling of something stirring in the shadows where the phone’s light didn’t reach, taking shape the moment she moved the beam away.
She jerked the light around her more quickly now, wishing she could see the whole cellar at once, but she was going too fast, and it wasn’t until she moved it away from the far corner of the cellar that she processed what it had just illuminated:
A boy standing in the corner with his head bowed, his hands clasped.
Hendricks’s chest clenched. She spun back to the corner, one hand curled around the other to hold her phone steady. But the corner was empty again.
“Shit,” she said. Her breath was a dry rasp in her throat. Her eyes darted from one side of the cellar to the other, but she didn’t see the boy again. She turned in place, saying, again, “Shit.”
“Hey,” Eddie muttered from beside her. She looked up and saw that his skin had gone completely white. “Do you feel that?”
Hendricks swallowed. She felt it. The temperature in the room had dropped. It felt like a cloud passing over the sun, and she shivered violently. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“We hold our ground. Show the ghost that this is our house.” But Eddie didn’t sound as confident as he had a few minutes ago.
Hendricks’s heart pounded in her chest, and her ears felt like they were filled with static. She held her phone before her like a weapon.
Stand your ground, she told herself. My house.
The smell of dead leaves filled her nostrils. But now the scent seemed sweeter, muskier . . .
Cologne, she realized, and the smell set off an old terror in her, worse than anything else she could’ve found in the cellar. In an instant it grew so strong that it clogged her throat, stopping her breath. It didn’t even seem right to call it a smell. It was a stench, a reek. It reminded her so strongly of Grayson that, for a moment, she expected to find him down here with her. The thought froze the blood in her veins, and she didn’t realize that she’d let her fingers go slack until the cell phone slipped from her hand and hit the ground with a soft thump, the dim glow illuminating nothing but dirt.
No. Hendricks dropped to her knees, hands trembling as she groped for her phone—
Cold fingers closed tightly around her wrist. Hendricks felt a single moment of pure terror, and then her arm was being yanked behind her back, and she was lifted from the ground, shoved up against the wall. She felt the press of dirty bricks against her cheeks, tasted blood in her mouth.
“Hendricks? Holy shit! Hendricks! Get off her—”
Eddie’s voice sounded far away, like he was speaking on the other side of thick glass. The fingers around her wrist were crushing now, and a solid weight leaned into her back, pinning her body against the wall. Hendricks was so completely stunned that she made no effort to move, to scream out. One thought circled her mind.
This can’t be happening to me, not again.
Another cold hand snaked up the back of her neck and cupped the crown of her head. Hendricks barely had a moment to register what was about to happen before the fingers grasped a thick knot of her hair and pulled. She felt her head jerk back, and pain jolted up her neck like electric shocks.
“Did you think we really liked you?” hissed a deep, cruel voice, directly into her ear. “Poor Saggy Maggie.”
Hendricks blinked into the darkness, unable to speak. She knew it was the ghost. But another part of her felt like it was Grayson’s breath misting her face, Grayson pinning her arms to her side.
“You could be pretty if you tried,” the voice continued. “We can help.”
Something cold and sharp touched the side of her face.
A knife.
Hendricks’s breath stopped and pure panic took over. She flattened her hands against the wall and, with the last of her strength, she pushed, launching herself back against the force that had been holding her in place.
From far away, as though it was echoing down a long corridor, Hendricks thought she heard Eddie’s voice,
“Cleanse, dismiss, dispel.”
She expected to feel resistance, but the pressure behind her gave at once. She lost her balance and stumbled backward, her tailbone slamming into the packed-dirt floor. A fresh wave of agony rocketed up her spine.
Hendricks drew a long, sobbing breath as, all at once, the cellar grew warmer. The change was sudden, and so surprising that she felt the skin on her back grow damp. The smell quickly faded, the cologne replaced by the earthier scent of the floor.
The candles flickered back to life as one.
“Are you okay?” Eddie asked, crouching beside her.
Hendricks couldn’t speak, she was breathing so hard. Little by little, she managed to get control of herself. “What just happened?”
“I don’t know.” Eddie met her eyes and then cut his away, a frown creasing the skin between his brows. “It said the ghosts would fight back, but I didn’t think it would be like that.”
“They tortured a girl down here,” Hendricks said, her voice still weak with fear. She couldn’t say exactly how she knew this, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she was sure it was true. Saggy Maggie. “I thought it was just one boy, but now I think there were a couple of them. He kept saying we, like he was talking about his friends, too.” She brought a hand to the back of her neck, cringing when she touched the spot where she’d felt the cool blade of a knife. “They were going to hurt her.”
“Who was talking about his friends?” Eddie frowned, studying her.
She blinked. “Didn’t you hear him?”
“Hear who?”
Hendricks felt suddenly cold. The ghost boy’s voice had been so clear, like there’d been another person standing in the cellar with them. “That guy,” she said, insistently. “It sounded like he was talking to someone. He said something about how they never really liked her, and he called her Saggy Maggie.”
“I didn’t hear any of that, I swear.”
Hendricks’s skin was buzzing. She began backing toward the staircase. “Let’s get out of here.”
Eddie frowned, slightly. “We have to do the ritual three times for it to work.”
Hendricks made a sound between a huff and a snor
t and groped for the staircase bannister behind her. “I don’t want to be down here if he comes back.”
“Then I’ll stay.” Eddie said this so quickly, so easily that, for a second, Hendricks didn’t think she’d heard him correctly.
“You’ll stay?” she repeated.
“I’m not leaving this house until I know for sure that you’re—that it’s safe.” Eddie shrugged off his jacket, and settled on the ground. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, but I’m not going anywhere.”
Silence stretched between them.
Hendricks bit her lip. Was she really going to make him stay down here alone all night? His little sister died in this room. His brother had committed suicide in the room directly above it.
Eddie cleared his throat, drawing his knees toward his chest. Judging by the tense expression on his face, Hendricks knew he was thinking the same thing. Leaving now would be cruel.
She settled herself on the ground beside him, hugging her own knees to her chest in an unconscious imitation of his posture. She found her eyes drawn to the far corner of the cellar, where she’d been so sure she’d seen the ghost boy standing in the dark. There was no one there. For now, at least.
“All right,” she said, finally. “Let’s go through the ritual again.”
CHAPTER
21
They performed the ritual two more times all the way through, but the ghosts didn’t show up again. Hendricks still wasn’t convinced they were gone, so they settled on the floor, the cell phone light shining up at the ceiling between them. Waiting.
After a few moments of silence, Hendricks grabbed what was left of the bottle of wine and took a swig. She cringed a little—she’d never liked the taste of wine, which was why she usually cut it with sparkling water—and then handed the bottle to Eddie.
The Haunted Page 13
