The Ghost and the Goth

by Stacey Kade

  Caught off guard by her sudden exit—I was entertaining myself by watching Jesse McGovern use the Bunsen burner to heat and bend plastic straws swiped from the caf into swearword sculptures—I had to run to catch up.

  Joonie tucked her head down and darted down the hall and the stairs, through the main hall, and out the front doors. Interesting … she’d better hope that Brewster didn’t catch sight of her. He was exactly the type to bust her for skipping school, even if it was only the last ten minutes.

  Breaking into a light jog—I hate sweating—I caught up with her near the Circle and tagged along out to her car, the Death Bug. She tossed her bag in the back, climbed in, and started the car while I was still talking myself into sliding through the metal.

  She began backing out.

  “Hey, watch it!” I threw myself the rest of the way into the car, trying to ignore the cold shuddery feeling I got from passing through the door. “What is your big freaking hurry?”

  Joonie pulled out of the parking lot at, like, the speed of light, throwing gravel everywhere and leaving a huge trail of dust in her wake. She turned right onto Henderson, and then left onto Main. A couple more turns and it was obvious:we were heading into town.

  Referring to it as “town” sort of gave the impression that Decatur was the cultural center of the area. It was, however, where most of the jobs were—people just lived in the little towns outside, like Groundsboro, and drove in to work at the factories. On a day with a strong breeze, you could catch a whiff of ADM or Staley’s, processing soybeans in town. It smelled like instant mashed potatoes. There’d been days when I couldn’t wait to get away from here and that smell. But now, honestly, if I’d caught the scent, I might have felt a little comforted. I’d died, but some things still stayed the same.

  Anyway, Decatur did offer a few things—a movie theater, a mall, and a hospital. Actually, the big movie theater and the mall were technically part of Forsyth, another dinky little town clinging to the edges of Decatur, but that probably didn’t matter, since I doubted Joonie was going anywhere for fun.

  My hunch was confirmed when, twenty minutes later, the Death Bug pulled into the visitors’ parking lot of St. Catherine’s Hospital. Joonie had mentioned visiting Lily in the hospital. I sat up straight in my seat. Finally, this was getting good! Maybe now I’d get some answers.

  Joonie slammed the gear shift into park, snagged her bag off the floor by my feet, and hustled out of the car toward the hospital. With a sigh, I followed her, albeit at a slower pace. I didn’t understand what the big hurry was. If Lily was in the hospital, it wasn’t like she had other plans anytime soon, right?

  Joonie pushed through the revolving door, and I slipped into the compartment after hers, letting her do all the work of moving the heavy glass and metal. She headed immediately for the elevator and pressed the up button. While we waited—I might have figured out how to pass through walls and solid objects, but levitation seemed a bit more of a stretch and I didn’t particularly feel like searching out the stairs—I noticed a lot of nurses coming and going with their lunch bags and jackets. Shift change, probably?

  The elevator finally arrived, and Joonie pushed the button for the fifth floor. A short ride later, during which I very deliberately concentrated on thinking about how very solid the elevator floor was, we arrived at our destination—the children’s floor. The wall opposite the elevator was painted with fluffy clouds, rainbows, and bright yellow smiley faces—the exact same kind you see on bumper stickers with the saying Shit happens. I suspected that any kid residing on this floor probably already knew that fact better than most, anyway.

  Joonie stepped off the elevator and immediately headed to the left, like she knew exactly where she was going. The nurses manning—wo-manning?—the floor desk didn’t even glance up, as they were checking charts and talking to the next shift of nurses.

  I watched Joonie stop at a door midway down the hall and step inside. A second later, her head reappeared, looking up and down the hallway, before she slapped either a yellow sticker or magnet on the outside of the door and shut it gently.

  Interesting. Automatically glancing back over my shoulder at the busy nurses, like they could see me, I headed toward the now-closed door. When I got closer, I could see it was a magnet she’d put on the metal door frame, and it read, bathing. privacy please.

  “What the hell?” I muttered.

  “Don’t you know you’re on the kids’ floor?”

  Startled, I looked down to see a little blond girl with pigtails, staring up at me from her old-fashioned wooden wheelchair.

  She sighed in disgust and rolled on down the hall, passing through the wall. Yep, dead like me. Maybe it was a good thing Killian hadn’t come with me. The hospital was probably full of spirits.

  I approached the door Joonie had closed and cautiously peered in, ignoring the chill against my face.

  At first, it appeared to be your standard hospital room. Blah beige walls with a matching tile floor, a puke green curtain hung on a rack in the ceiling so it could be pulled for privacy from annoying roommates, and a television mounted high on the wall. That old cartoon Mighty Mouse was on, but the sound was off.

  The girl in the bed, though, was my first clue that not everything was as it seemed. I recognized her, sort of, as the girl in the picture Joonie had pulled up earlier. I mean, I recognized her, but she only vaguely resembled the person she’d once been. Her dull and glazed eyes stared straight ahead, about three feet below the television. A jagged scar, still puffy and red, decorated the left side of her face from her hairline down to her jaw. There were no tubes or anything, other than an IV, and a monitor with her heartbeat showing, so she was obviously breathing on her own, just not much else.

  The weird part was that seeing her this way, as a three-dimensional, albeit damaged person rather than a flat image on a screen, finally made it click for me. I knew where I’d seen her before. Months ago, she’d been one of Ben Rogers’s girls, another stupid and willing underclassman. Really, I’d only seen her a few times with Ben before they broke up …or at least, that’s what I assumed happened.

  She was new, as of last year, I thought. Didn’t have many friends. I’d never seen her with Killian or Joonie … as far as I knew. To be fair, though, until recently they were not a demographic I would have bothered noticing. People like them don’t even vote for homecoming queen.

  I tried to remember the last time I’d seen this girl, Lily Whatever—Turner, that sounded right. Maybe Ben’s back-to-school bash? I did remember something about a car accident a few miles away, one they were going to try to pin on our party, but the driver hadn’t been drinking, so they had nothing to hold over us. But that was, like, all the way back in September. She’d been like this since then?

  The utter stillness about her was the worst part. She still moved—even as I watched, her fingers, resting on the top of the bedcovers, jerked and twitched—but she seemed …empty. I’d never thought about life as energy before, at least not until Killian talked about it like that, but now I could see what he meant. Even someone sleeping, eyes shut and not moving at all, would have seemed more alive than she did, and I could see that from across the room.

  Joonie, however, did not seem to notice or care, and that was my second clue that something was really wrong. She was racing around the room, setting what appeared to be little silver hockey pucks on the floor at set intervals around the bed and talking to Lily at the same time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried to get Killian to come with me. I thought it would work better with him here, but he …” She paused, probably remembering his reaction to the Ouija board. “He wouldn’t. I’m so sorry, Lil.”

  I snorted. He wouldn’t. Right. Well, I mean, he wouldn’t have, but she didn’t even try to explain what was going on or what she wanted him to come to the hospital for. Speaking of which, why did she want him to come to the hospital? This was obviously more than just a friendly, keep-coma-girl-company visit. />
  “But it doesn’t matter,” she said firmly. “I’m going to make this right, no matter what it takes.” Her gaze wandered to the still form on the bed. “I’m going to get you back where you belong.”

  Joonie jerked back into motion and her combat-booted foot knocked one of the silver disks toward the door, where I still stood, half in and half out. I looked down and found it to be a little white candle in a metal wrapper, like the kind my dad used to put in my carved pumpkin when I was little.

  Candles, living-dead girl, creepy declarations of intent, plus the Ouija board Joonie was packing … uh-oh. I knew nothing about magic, witchcraft, voodoo, or whatever else this might be (and I bet Joonie didn’t either, given the results so far), but I’d seen enough Charmed reruns to know this was trouble.

  “Okay, then.” I pushed myself the rest of the way into the room. “Hey, Joonie, stop. Whatever your freaky little self is up to, cut it out.”

  Joonie ignored me, of course, and reached into her bag to pull out the lighter and the Ouija board.

  Oh, crap. I paced a step or two and lifted my thumbnail to my teeth—what now? It wasn’t like I could march out into the hallway and shout at the nurses for help.

  Nurses. Help. Call button. If there wasn’t a lightbulb hanging in the air above my head, there should have been. If I had the strength to concentrate and shove folders around the floor, surely I could push one little button.

  I strode confidently across the room, avoiding Joonie as she crouched down to begin lighting candles, but I hesitated when I reached the bed. Up this close, Lily was tragic … and eerie. The light of the television flashed in her blank eyes, adding a creepy and superficial spark of life. The remote with the bed controls and the nurse call button lay half under Lily’s arm, a big sign of someone’s wishful thinking.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” I told myself. Trying not to think about the germs that had to be floating around here—it was a hospital after all, full of disgusting sick people—I reached down, intending to scoot the remote out from under her arm with a series of little pushes. My hand should have passed through her arm with little more than a cold tingle, but the second I touched her skin, I felt it. An intense heat radiated up my fingers. Then the solidity that was Lily’s arm melted beneath my touch and my hand sank into her arm. Not through, but in. My skin, the darker of the two, thanks to my hours in the sun for prom prep, melded with hers.

  I sucked in a breath and jerked my hand away. Her arm followed, lifting off the bed. I watched in horror. For an endless moment, the bond between us held tight, then something loosened and let go. Her arm flopped back onto the bed, landing squarely on top of the remote. It didn’t push any buttons. Oh, no, that would be too good to be true. It prevented me from another attempt to reach the call button, though, unless I wanted to touch her again.

  No freaking way. I stumbled back from the bed, clutching my arm against my chest. I didn’t know what had just happened, nor did I want to know.

  I bolted past Joonie, who, her acolyte duties finally completed, was settling herself on the floor with the Ouijaboard in her lap. I passed through the door, barely even feeling the tingle of it, and darted down the hall.

  I ran for the nurses’ station. But what could they do? What could anyone do? I was terrified to even look down at my hand, afraid I’d see Lily’s pale skin instead of my own.

  When I drew even with the nurses’ station, the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Some instinct made me look up and over. Killian, head tucked down and hands tucked in his sweatshirt pockets, strode off the elevator and then down the hall toward me and Lily’s room.

  “Will!” I darted toward him, relief at seeing him here washing away any of my leftover anger from earlier this afternoon.

  He looked up, startled. “What are you—”

  “Joonie’s in there right now and she’s doing something with that stupid board.” I spoke as quickly as I could.

  He started down the hallway toward Lily’s room. I stayed next to him, trying to explain. “I told you, she’s the one that’s doing it, calling up that creepy ghost, and when I tried to stop her, my hand touched Lily’s arm and …” I shuddered. “Something is just wrong. I don’t understand—”

  The air suddenly turned to ice around me, and Killian stopped suddenly. I watched the color drain out of his face as he stared at something down the hall.

  I turned away from Killian slowly, knowing already what I would find. The creepy shadow ghost was back. This time, it grew, rippling at its edges, to fill the entire hallway, blocking out the light from the windows at the end of the hall. Inside its misty body, things moved beneath the surface, like snakes sliding under a blanket.

  It gathered itself, pulling together at the edges until it hung over us like a wave waiting to crash.

  “Killian,” I said, my voice wobbly.

  “Yeah?” He didn’t sound so great either.

  “Run!” I shoved him away.

  With a roar that should have shaken the building, the shadowy spirit crashed down on me. Slivers of what felt like frozen metal tore through my skin, and I screamed. Then everything went dark.

  I was beginning to think that the universe was united against me in some kind of vast conspiracy. I was supposed to be in detention right now, and I would have been … if someone hadn’t accidentally set fire to a bunch of straws in chem lab during last period. The fire alarm went off right as school let out for the day. Recognizing the hopeless prospect of keeping all of us delinquents in one place in an area as unconfined as the parking lot, Ms. Bernadino, the detention teacher for today, had canceled detention and rescheduled it for next week. I’d gone there for four years and had had more than my share of detentions probably, but I’d never heard of them canceling it before.

  Feeling unexpectedly lucky—really, I should have known better—I headed to the Dodge, which started on the first try, and then on to St. Catherine’s. I knew that’s where Joonie would be.

  I couldn’t forget what Alona had said about her. She, Joonie, had been acting so weird lately. But she’d been my friend, pretty much my only one, for years. Why would she want to mess with me like that? Of course, she’d have no way of knowing what a Ouija board did when I was around. But Alona was right. Why else would she act so guilty? Why run away? Why didn’t she just laugh or seem confused at my strange reaction to seeing her with one?

  I was afraid I already knew the answer, but I needed to know for sure. I needed to talk to Joonie. If she was involved, that changed everything, including—most likely—the true identity of the entity Alona called Gus. As an angry and despondent ghost, my father might have attacked me to show his disapproval. Maybe. But he wouldn’t need Joonie or a Ouija board for that.

  I’d gotten to the hospital in record time and found a parking space in the first visitors’ row. A waiting elevator, which also happened to be both people- and ghost-free, had taken me directly to the fifth floor. And then my luck had changed with a vengeance.

  Rooted to the spot, I watched the shadow ghost collapse over Alona and tear through her, her green eyes going wide with the pain before she vanished.

  “No!” I shouted, furious. Why hadn’t she run? She knew what this thing could do to her, knew that every time she disappeared there was a growing chance she might not come back.

  Because she was saving me. The realization knocked me back a step. She’d seen what Gus could do to me, and Alona Dare had just sacrificed herself … for me.

  My throat grew tight, and the hallway blurred before my eyes. Maybe that unselfish action would be enough to send her to the light, though I’d seen no sign of it before she’d vanished. Either way, I wouldn’t let it be in vain.

  “Joonie, get out here!” I forced the words out past the lump in my throat.

  Rushing footsteps sounded behind me as the nurses’ abandoned their station and raced down the hall toward me. “Sir? Sir, you can’t yell in here. This is a hospital.”

  “Joonie, I said come
out,” I repeated.

  The black shadow ghost, having long since dissolved Alona, just hung there in midair as though waiting and watching to see what I would do next.

  “Joonie …”

  “Sir, you’re going to have to come with us.” Strong female hands grabbed at my arms and shoulders. “Somebody call security, please.”

  All up and down the hallway, doors started to open, and pale and somber little kid faces poked out to see what was going on. Then Lily’s door opened and Joonie stepped out.

  “J,” I said. “Call it off, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  She shook her head, eyes bright blue and red-rimmed. “I can’t, Will. I just … can’t.”

  Then she backed up into the room and shut the door.

  “Sir, you have to come with us.” Those hands on my shoulders and arms began pulling me backward, but it wasn’t enough. I knew it wouldn’t be.

  The shadowy ghost poured over me, surrounding me in deathly cold and tearing me from the nurses’ grasp. I struggled, pulling back with all my strength, but it … he? …she? … easily overpowered me, slamming me face-first into the wall. Something in my face, possibly my nose, possibly a cheekbone, cracked, and someone screamed. It might have been me.

  “What do you want?” I squeezed the words out.

  It gave no response, only a vague howling sound, like wind rushing through a broken window. Then it hauled me away from the wall and tossed me down the hall. I tried to regain my footing and stumbled, bashing my head into the side of a medicine cart left abandoned there, and everything went mercifully black.

  I woke up in restraints, my hands pinned to the bed beneath me with Velcro and fabric straps. Never a good sign, really. Before I even opened my eyes, I recognized the antiseptic smell unique to hospitals. So I wasn’t in jail—that was a plus, at least.