Awkward.
She pulled back and held me at arm’s length. She was crying, but her tears seemed more like tears of joy than of sorrow because she kept smiling.
“Come in,” she said, and pulled me inside.
This felt totally wrong, but I was too stunned to do anything but go along. She led me down a short hallway and into the living room of the warm and homey apartment.
“Sit,” she said as she brought me to a big old couch. “I want to take a good look at you.”
She didn’t let go of my hands as we both sat. The whole time, she kept looking me straight in the eye.
“I think you made a mistake,” I said. “My name isn’t Liam.”
She smiled warmly. “I know. It’s Marcus, right?”
“Yeah, and we’ve never met before. I’m here because…”
I stopped myself. I couldn’t bring myself to say the crazy words.
“It’s okay,” she said kindly. “Tell me.”
“It’s not going to make sense.”
Mrs. Swenor turned serious. “Marcus, I promise, there’s nothing you could say that would surprise me.”
She wiped her eyes and gave me a pleasant smile.
“I…I’m sorry about your husband,” I said, figuring that was the best way to start.
“Thank you. Do you know anything about him?”
What I wanted to say was Absolutely. His ghost has been haunting me! Does that count? But that wouldn’t have been cool.
“Not really” was my answer.
“Would you like to?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said with relief.
“Michael was a great person. A firefighter. The kind of guy who was always the first to run into a burning building.” She took a deep, sad breath. “I worried that something terrible would happen to him at work. I never imagined that the terrible thing could happen right here at home.”
“I’m sorry” was all I could think of saying.
She got herself back together and continued. “Michael also had a hobby. I guess that’s what you’d call it. He investigated paranormal events.”
I sat bolt upright.
“Really?”
“It was mostly online research. It wasn’t like he was traveling around to haunted houses or anything. It was all done right here. So many times he’d come bursting out of his office, all excited because he’d solved a mystery about how someone died or why a house was haunted.”
Her voice trailed off as if the memories she was digging up were painful. “That was a long time ago,” she finally said. “Twelve years. He suddenly stopped and never mentioned another word about anything to do with the paranormal.”
“Why did he stop?” I asked.
Her pained expression made me feel as though she had something to say that wouldn’t be easy.
“Michael had a partner. His best friend. They did the investigations together. I liked him. His wife too. We were all good friends.”
Her voice caught as if she was fighting back a wave of sad memories.
“Why did you call me Liam?” I asked, trying to get her mind onto something else.
She smiled as if remembering better times. “Because that’s who you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“But you are. I’ve known you since you were a baby.”
My head started to spin. Was this lady off her nut?
She added, “Besides, you look just like your father.”
“Wha—? You know my father?” I exclaimed, my heart racing.
“I do. He was the friend of my husband’s I told you about.”
I jumped to my feet.
“No way!” I shouted. “My father’s not a…a…ghostbuster. If you really knew him, you’d know how impossible that is.”
“I’m not talking about Ed O’Mara,” she said.
“But that’s my father,” I shot back.
“I know. Your adoptive father. I’m talking about your biological father.”
The rush of adrenaline nearly knocked me over.
“You knew my real father?” I exclaimed.
“Your mother too. They were our best friends. Michael was so upset when they died that he completely stopped his investigations. He was done with it all…until last week. Something happened that scared him, Marcus. He kept saying that it was back and it was real.”
“What was back?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
I was getting dizzy and had to sit back down.
“There’s more,” Mrs. Swenor said. “Michael kept saying he had to tell someone about what had happened. Someone special. But he never got the chance.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“He said he had to tell you, Marcus.”
“Jim and Joan Roxbury,” Mrs. Swenor said as she handed me a picture. “Your parents.”
It was a photo of two smiling people, a man and a woman, with their arms around one another. The man was holding up bunny-ear fingers behind the woman’s head. What was so incredible about the picture—besides everything—was that the guy looked exactly like an older version of me. He had my same dark hair and eyes. The woman was tall, with blond hair that fell to her shoulders. Both looked tan and happy.
They were my parents. My real parents.
I was relieved, excited, curious, and more than a little bit sad.
“So my real name is Liam Roxbury?”
“No, your real name is Marcus O’Mara. Liam was the name your birth parents gave you.”
“I knew that they died, but nobody told me how,” I said. “Do you know?”
She nodded and took a deep breath. I felt bad for her because I was asking her to relive more painful memories. But heck, I had to know!
“They were on their sailboat in the Atlantic. They loved sailing. A storm came up quickly. The boat capsized. They were both presumed to have drowned.”
“Presumed?” I asked.
“Their bodies were never recovered.”
Wow. Grim.
“You were a year old. We thought of adopting you, but Michael and I were just too young. And Michael was torn up over Jim’s death. It wasn’t a good time to bring a baby into our lives.”
“Weren’t there any relatives to take me?”
“None. You were put up for adoption, and that’s when the O’Maras came into the picture. But I didn’t lose track of you. I wanted to make sure you had gone to a good family, and you did.”
I kept staring at the picture. My worries about being haunted didn’t matter much anymore. I was looking at my parents. My real parents.
“So I do know you, at least a little,” Mrs. Swenor said. “Now it’s your turn. Why are you here?”
All my worries came flooding back. I put the picture down and took a deep breath to buy time and try to kick my brain into gear.
She must have sensed that I was having trouble, because she said again, “There’s nothing you could say that would surprise me.”
“Don’t bet on that.”
She stared at me, waiting for me to say something.
“I’ve been,” I said, stumbling over my own thoughts and words, “I’ve been seeing things. Strange things.”
Her gaze didn’t waver, so I let it all out in a rush of verbal diarrhea.
“There was a bull, and an old lady, and things were smashed one second but not the next. I’m not sure what was real and what wasn’t, because I’m the only one who’s been seeing it.”
I stole a look at her, expecting her to roll her eyes or reach for the phone to call an ambulance to cart the loony kid away.
She didn’t.
“This is the tough part,” I said. “I saw your husband. At least, I think it was him. Or his ghost. That’s why I’m here.”
Mrs. Swenor didn’t show any emotion. I think she was trying to absorb the crazy information.
“Did he say anything?” she asked with a shaky voice.
It was the only hint that I was getting through to her…and that s
he didn’t think I was nuts.
“No. He just held out this old-fashioned key and—”
Mrs. Swenor gasped and sat back so suddenly, it was as if somebody had shoved her.
“You sure it was a key?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“Well, yeah. I tried to grab it, but my hand went through it like it was, well, a ghost. And there were messages too. They said—”
“Surrender the key,” she said softly.
It was my turn to sit back.
“How did you know?”
Mrs. Swenor’s hands trembled. She ran them through her hair nervously, as if that would somehow stop the shaking.
“When Michael started acting strangely, I tried to get him to open up about it, but the most I got from him was that he had to do something else but was afraid it might be another mistake.”
“Another mistake? Did he make more than one?”
“I don’t know. All he kept saying was that he had to protect me, and the less I knew, the better.”
“Did he say what he had to do?”
“Yes. Apparently, twelve years ago, right before your parents went on that sailing trip, Jim gave my husband something for safekeeping. He asked Michael to take care of it until the time was right.”
“Right for what?” I asked.
Mrs. Swenor looked straight at me and said, “To give it to you.”
I gasped. At least I think I did. That’s usually what happens when you hear something that is so stunning, you have trouble breathing.
“My father gave your husband something for me twelve years ago?”
Mrs. Swenor stood and grabbed her purse from the floor next to the couch. She reached inside and pulled out a ring of keys. She flipped through them until she came upon one that was small and golden.
“That’s not it,” I said, actually feeling relieved.
She went to a table next to the couch. The table had a drawer; the drawer had a lock. Mrs. Swenor inserted the key with shaking hands, twisted it, and pulled the drawer open.
My heart was beating so fast, I was sure she could hear it.
She reached inside and gently lifted out a thin leather cord. Dangling from it was a four-inch-long brass key.
The key.
“Your father asked Michael to give this to you, but only when the time was right. I think that time is now.”
“Noooo!” came a scream from deeper in the apartment.
We both looked with surprise toward the hallway to see a little boy sprinting toward us. Before we could react, the kid ran into the room and snatched the key from her.
“You can’t have it!” he yelled, and ran back the way he had come.
“Alec!” Mrs. Swenor yelled.
He ran into a room at the end of the hall and slammed the door shut.
“This has been so hard for him. He was on the roof with Michael when—”
“I get it,” I said, and took off after the kid.
It was a totally brazen move. He wasn’t my brother, and this wasn’t my house. But if my real father wanted me to have that key, nobody was going to keep it from me.
It was pretty bold of me to run down the hallway of a stranger’s apartment, but I didn’t think twice about it.
“Hey, Alec?” I called. “It’s cool. Let’s talk about it.”
I pushed open his bedroom door and poked my head in, only to see that things were definitely not cool.
The window leading out to the fire escape was open. I caught a quick glimpse of Alec’s sneakered feet as he climbed up the ladder outside.
Headed for the roof.
“Hey!” I shouted, and ran straight for the window.
It didn’t seem safe for a little kid to be crawling around on a fire escape. It didn’t seem all that safe for me either. But I crawled right out the window and looked up to see Alec stepping off the steel structure and onto the roof.
“Alec!” I called. I don’t know why. It wasn’t as though he was going to stop and come back just because I yelled his name.
I climbed up after him, and when I’d gotten halfway up, I heard the window slam shut below me. I looked down and saw Mrs. Swenor inside, pulling on it, trying to get it open. For some reason the window had slid shut and was now stuck.
I was on my own.
I quickly climbed up, trying not to think about how this was the very same roof that Michael Swenor had fallen from. When I got to the top, I saw Alec running to the far side.
“Alec, stop!” I yelled.
“You can’t have it!” he shouted back.
I climbed onto the roof and walked after him. I didn’t want to panic the kid. I was up there to make sure he didn’t get hurt, not to run him off the roof.
Oh yeah, and to get the key.
As I strode across the tar-papered surface, the wind picked up. A dark line of storm clouds was creeping in from the west. No biggie. We wouldn’t be up here long enough to get caught in the rain.
Alec reached the far side and turned to face me. Tears ran down his cheeks.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to sound calm. “My name’s Marcus. Your father knew my father and—”
“I know who you are,” Alec said, sobbing. “You can’t have the key.”
He clutched the brass key and folded his arms together.
The wind grew stronger. The line of storm clouds drew closer. Fast. Really fast. Suddenly, the roof was cast into shadow. I looked over my shoulder and saw another line of dark clouds looming in from the exact opposite direction. Huh? There were two lines of ominous black clouds racing toward each other.
“I’m sorry about your dad, Alec,” I said. “I hear he was a really good guy.”
His tears came even harder.
“He followed me up here to save me,” Alec cried.
“Tell me what happened.”
“The dog. It was under my bed. It chased me here, to the edge. Right here. I saw a ladder, but when I climbed over, it wasn’t there anymore. It was a…a…”
“An illusion,” I said with a growing sense of dread. I didn’t like where this was going for all sorts of reasons.
Alec nodded. He was spewing impossible facts…that I knew were totally possible.
“It was the lady,” he said, sobbing. “She tried to make me fall.”
I stopped breathing.
“Lady?” I asked, stunned. “What lady?”
“An old lady,” he said. “With long gray hair.”
It felt as though I’d been punched in the stomach.
“In a green dress?” I asked, incredulous.
Alec nodded. “Nobody believes me.”
I didn’t know whether to cry or scream or puke or all three. What happened to Michael Swenor wasn’t an accident. Or a suicide.
It was her.
“I believe you,” I said numbly.
“She is very bad.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that.”
“My daddy saved me,” Alec said through hitching breaths. “But then the dog came back. It knocked him over the side.”
The stiff wind picked up and began to howl. I had to plant my feet wider apart, or I might have been blown off the roof. Alec crouched down and pushed himself against the low safety wall for protection.
“That key belonged to my father,” I said. “Your dad wanted me to have it.”
“No!” Alec cried. “It was my father’s!”
Lightning flashed through the clouds, followed by a sharp clap of thunder. The two storm fronts had collided, blocking out every last bit of blue sky. The dense, dark canopy had turned day into night.
I knelt down a few feet from Alec.
“Let’s go downstairs and talk about it,” I said, trying to sound calm, but it wasn’t easy while screaming to be heard over the howling wind.
“No!” he yelled. “I’m keeping it forever and—”
He spotted something over my shoulder, and his eyes went wide.
“No, not again,” he said, so low I could barely hear it.
I spun around to see what he was looking at.
A woman stood on the far side of the roof.
Not Mrs. Swenor.
Her.
The old woman’s long green dress and black shawl snapped in the wind. Her gray hair was no longer piled on top of her head. Long, loose tendrils flew around her head in a swirling maelstrom that looked like gray fire.
It made my blood run cold.
“Is that her?” I yelled to Alec.
Alec managed to nod.
I stood up to face the woman.
“Who are you?” I yelled. “What do you want?”
She didn’t move. Good thing. If she’d taken a step closer, I think I would have passed out.
“She wants the key,” Alec called to me. “I won’t let her have it either.”
“Did you hear that?” I called to her. “You aren’t getting the key.”
A brilliant bolt of lightning tore through the sky, followed by a huge rumble of thunder. It was as if my announcement had angered the gods.
We couldn’t stay on this roof forever, but the only way down was to go past that old creep. It was a standoff. Both of us were waiting for the other to blink.
I saw movement along the edge of the safety wall behind the old lady. At first I thought it was a shadow, but there was no sunlight to make one. A dark mass rose up and crept over the edge of the roof.
“What is that?” Alec asked nervously.
It looked like thick, molten tar. It oozed up over the edge of the safety wall and slid down until it hit the surface of the roof. From there it kept moving and growing. It stretched out for several yards along the roof behind the old lady while flowing forward, spreading toward us. When it reached the woman, it split and skirted around her as if it could think and knew she was there. It then joined back together in front of her, leaving the old lady on a clean, dry island.
Either the nasty blob had a mind of its own, or she was controlling it.
Alec scrambled to my side and leaned into me for security.
I wished I had somebody to lean into.
“I’m scared,” he said.
Join the club.
The dark pool now covered half the roof and continued to spread forward, moving ever closer to us.
I looked back over the edge of the roof behind us, desperate to find a way to escape.
This time I saw it.
Curse of the Boggin Page 5
