No Ghouls Allowed

by Victoria Laurie

  Tilting my chin up, I could see the stars in the night sky and feel the breeze stirring the leaves of the elm tree above us. No dream I’d ever had had felt this vivid and clear.

  So what the heck was going on?

  And, for that matter, what had my mother experienced as a child?

  “How long has the Sandman been hurting you, DeeDee?” I asked softly.

  Her small shoulders shrugged. “I don’t know. A while. Ever since Everett told him to come find me.”

  My brow furrowed. “Who’s Everett?” I asked.

  “Glenn’s cousin.” She started to say more, but at that moment a light came on in the house. DeeDee gasped.

  “DeeDee!” we heard from inside, and my own breath caught. It was the voice of my maternal grandmother, clear as day.

  “I have to go!” DeeDee said urgently, already wriggling to get down.

  “DeeDee!” my grandmother called again. “Child, stop hiding and come out right now!”

  I frowned as I set the little girl down on the ground. My mother’s mother had been a stern, religious woman. I’d always preferred my father’s mother to her, especially after Mama had passed away. “DeeDee!” I whispered, catching her hand before she could hurry away. “I know you have to go inside, but I want to tell you to get some magnets. Lots of magnets and put them under your bed and in the four corners of your room.”

  DeeDee appeared torn between nodding impatiently so she could get back to the house before she got in any more trouble and wanting to ask me why I was telling her to get some magnets.

  “As long as those magnets are in your room, the Sandman won’t bother you,” I told her. “His power will drain around the magnets—they’ll stop him in his tracks—so ask Grandmama—I mean . . . your mama to get you some.”

  DeeDee nodded and offered me a tiny smile. “Thanks, Mary Jane.” Then she was off, racing up the hill toward home.

  I watched her slip through the front door just as more lights in the house came on. I waited until I heard my grandmother exclaim, “There you are! Oh, you bad child! Why would you hide like that when you knew I was looking for you? And what on earth has you out of bed at this time of night?”

  I frowned again as my grandmother’s harsh words echoed out the open windows. I had half a mind to march up to that door and to lecture her, but at that moment I heard the sound of breaking glass coming from right behind me. I whirled around, but immediately lost my balance and began to fall to the ground. What was even odder was that as soon as I began to fall, I became totally disoriented, and for what felt like several long seconds, I had no idea which way was up. Flinging my arms out to try to catch myself, I felt something sharp cut into my arm and I hissed through my teeth. “Em! Can you hear me?”

  I blinked, but my vision was blurry and the world still felt like it was spinning. I thought I was about to throw up when I heard Heath say, “Steady, babe. I’ve got you.”

  And then Heath lifted me into his arms and I knew we were on the move. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t get either my vision to focus or the world to stop spinning. I clutched at Heath’s shirt and hoped that he’d set me down soon, because I was very close to tossing my cookies.

  And then I was aware that Heath was extending me away from him, and another set of hands had me under the arms. “Got her?” Heath asked.

  “Let her go!” Gil said. “I’ve got her!”

  “Gil?” I cried out a little desperately, so happy he was okay and the spook hadn’t harmed him.

  “I’m here,” he said with a grunt, taking firm hold of my torso and pulling me out of Heath’s grip.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, covering my eyes with my hand, hoping that would stop the spins.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here,” he told me, his voice strained as he took my full weight. “Sweet Jesus, girl. You gotta lay off the cupcakes.”

  I smirked in spite of my discomfort. If anyone needed to lay off the baked goods, it was Gilley. I was the same weight I’d been since high school.

  “Heath!” Gil called. “Get out of there!”

  I moved my hand and blinked furiously. At last the world came into focus, and just like that, the spins stopped too. I looked over Gilley’s shoulder as he carried me away from the house, and I realized the boys had broken a window and passed me through it to get me out. I looked anxiously for Heath and then he appeared in the window and began shinnying out of it. I didn’t relax until his feet were on the ground and running toward us.

  Meanwhile, Gil had finally had enough of carrying me, because he was easing me to the ground as carefully as he could. “I’m okay,” I told him, trying to squirm out of his grip to make it easier on him.

  “Hey!” he barked. “Settle down, sugar. You’ve been out for like five whole minutes, so just let me put you down, okay?”

  I held my hands up in surrender and Gil set me on the ground with another grunt. Then he held on to my shoulders and peered into my eyes. “Where the hell did you go?”

  “How is she?” Heath asked, coming up behind Gil.

  “She’s awake and seems alert,” Gil said.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated. “At least now I’m fine.”

  Heath reached out and took hold of my hand. “You look pale.”

  I nodded. I could imagine I did look pale, given how shaky I still felt, but then Heath was the one with the giant bump on his head, which was still bleeding. He wiped absently at it, but his focus was still all on me. “I’m fine,” I assured him. “I think I just need a minute to get my bearings, but I’m okay.”

  Heath and Gilley both looked at each other, then back at the house; then both of them turned to look back at me. “What happened to you?” Gil asked me.

  “I have no idea,” I said honestly. “One minute I’m trying to stop that spook from attacking you, and the next I’m having an OBE.”

  Heath’s eyes widened. “You had an out-of-body?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. And it was so weird.” I then gave them a brief overview of the encounter with my mother as a child.

  “That’s crazy!” Gilley said.

  Heath’s brow was creased with worry. “So you didn’t see this spook that was attacking your mom as a little girl?”

  “No. I mean, I saw DeeDee suspended in midair by an unseen force. She was being held by the throat.”

  Gilley bit his lip and slid his gaze toward the house. “What?” I asked him, and then I realized I had no idea what’d happened to Gil and Heath while I’d been having my OBE. “What went on in there?”

  Instead of answering me, Heath lifted up my arm and made a face. “That’s a mean-looking cut, Em,” he said.

  I turned my arm and saw that I had a good-sized slice to the back of my arm, probably from a piece of broken glass. Of course, the second I set eyes on it, the damn thing began to throb. Clamping his hand over the cut, Heath said, “Gil?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do we still have that first-aid kit in the van?”

  Gil’s head turned toward the van. “Yep. It’s in the back.”

  Heath eyed the house warily and I noted that all the slamming doors had stopped and the house seemed to be relatively quiet now that we were outside. “Do you think you can get to the kit while I stay here with Em?”

  Gil stood and bounced from foot to foot, eyeing the house, then the van. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Good man. And see if you can retrieve your phone too,” Heath said. “We’ll need someone to come get us, and that cut on M.J.’s arm might need stitches. And watch out for anything coming off that third-floor balcony.”

  Without another word, Gil got to his feet and raced toward the back of the van. The second he was out of earshot, I focused on Heath. “Tell me what happened in there.”

  Heath sighed. “What
’s the last thing you remember?”

  I blinked. “Well, I remember trying to get to Gilley before that spook did, and immediately after that I was having an OBE.”

  Heath’s expression was grim, and the lump above his eye was large and still swelling. I wasn’t the only one who needed medical attention.

  “You went diving for Gil,” Heath said, turning to look back toward the house. “I tried to stop you, but that damn door was fighting me. I thought if I let it go, we’d get shut in.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  The corners of Heath’s mouth quirked. “I let go, and we got shut in.”

  I eyed the broken window. “But you guys figured out how to break the window and get us out, right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I sighed and rubbed my temples. I was still feeling a tiny bit queasy and I could also tell I’d have a raging headache before this was all over. “Honey, please just tell me what the hell happened in there, would you?”

  Heath nodded. “Sorry, Em. I’m caught between full disclosure and the possibility of upsetting you.”

  I stopped rubbing my temples and stared hard at my boyfriend. “Spill it.”

  Heath cleared his throat and said, “The second you made contact with that spook, you just went out.”

  “Out?” I repeated. “Like unconscious?”

  Heath shook his head. “No. Not exactly. Your eyes were open and you were breathing, but there . . .” Heath paused as if he couldn’t find the words.

  “There what? What happened to me?”

  He sighed and looked over his shoulder toward Gil, who was rooting around in the van still. Then he turned back to me and said, “It’s like when we looked at you, there was no soul. You were totally gone. For a second we even thought you’d died. It scared the shit out of me, but then I saw you take a breath and I felt your pulse, but you . . . well, you were gone, Em. Like . . . gone.”

  “Wow,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.

  Heath shook his head and cleared his throat. “I gotta tell ya, I’ve never seen anything like what happened to you and I’ve never been that scared in my life.”

  I gazed at my incredibly brave sweetheart. Coming from him, that was saying a lot. “How long was I like that?”

  Heath’s expression turned grim. “Long enough. And then, all of the sudden, you just jumped to your feet and started thrashing around. That’s when you broke the window. I barely had a chance to grab you before you cut yourself to pieces, and that’s about the time that you started to come around, back to us.”

  “Mission accomplished,” we heard Gilley say. Heath squeezed my hand tight and we both looked to see Gil coming up to us, wiggling his phone.

  “Did you call someone to come get us?” Heath asked.

  “I called Mama, and a tow truck.”

  My eyes narrowed at Gil. He wore a very slight smile and I had a bad feeling. “Which tow company?”

  Gil pursed his lips to keep from smiling even more. “I called Robby.”

  “Oh, Gil!” I snapped. “Why?!”

  “What’d I miss?” Heath asked.

  Gil folded his arms and looked crossly at me. “If you must know, I called two other tow companies, but when I told them where the van was parked and what’d happened, they both refused to come out here to this nightmare on Elm Street. So, as a last resort I called Robby because we need a tow and I was hoping your history with Robby would override any fears he might have of helping us out.” Focusing on Heath, Gil added, “Robby Reynolds was M.J.’s ex-boyfriend.”

  I glared at Gil. “He was not my boyfriend.” I hated that Gil was stirring up trouble for Heath and me. My sweet man had had to put up with another ex of mine recently, and it’d caused more than a bit of tension between us. Turning to Heath, I explained, “Robby asked me to prom my senior year of high school. Stupidly, I said yes. It was a total crap fest.”

  “That’s not how Robby tells it,” Gil said, and I offered him a murderous look. At least Gil had the decency to appear chagrined and he got busy opening the first-aid kit and squatting down next to me. “Anyway, he’s reliable and he has a body shop that should be able to fix the van. He promised to be here in ten minutes to give us a tow and Mama says she’s on her way as soon as Miss Dalia finishes her hair, so probably in an hour.” When Heath frowned disapprovingly at him, Gil added, “Hey, I couldn’t tell her we’d been attacked by some spook ‘cause it would’ve freaked her out. Mama’s old, Heath. I’m not gonna give her a heart attack my first day back in town.”

  Turning to me, Heath said, “Em, we can call your dad or a cab to get you to the hospital for that cut.”

  I twisted my arm a little to take another look at the slice from the glass just as Gil sprayed it with antiseptic, which had me hissing through my teeth. “Sorry,” he muttered. He then dug into the kit again and brought up one of those instant ice packs. Breaking the gel inside, he handed it to Heath and said, “Put that on your forehead, honey. I’ll clean you up after I help M.J.”

  While the two of them were busy with the ice pack, I eyed the cut on my arm closely. “It’s actually not that bad,” I said. “The bleeding has nearly stopped and I think we can put a few butterfly bandages on it and avoid the emergency room.”

  Gil pulled my arm out straight so that he could apply the first bandage. “Mama can stitch that up for you if it comes to that, M.J.”

  I blinked. Of course she could. Gil’s mom was a retired registered nurse. “What’ll we say happened?” I asked him. Gil hadn’t been lying about his mother’s reaction; she was as scared of spooks as Gilley was.

  He shuddered. “As little as possible. In fact, the less said the better. I told her we’d meet her at the bottom of the drive—that way she won’t get too close. And, speaking of being too close, how about after I help Heath, we head toward the road? We can wait for the tow truck there.”

  I held in a groan. The only thing worse than dealing with a dangerous, havoc-wreaking spook was seeing my senior prom date after all these years.

  Robby had used every trick in the book to try to get me to sleep with him the night of prom: groping me on the dance floor, trying to coax me into the janitor’s closet, and repeatedly offering me a swig from the silver flask he’d stolen from his grandfather. He’d only quit his antics when I’d used a particularly tricky dance move that’d involved my knee in his crotch. The night had ended abruptly with him doubled over and me stomping off. It’d been a terrible memory to end my high school career with, and to make matters worse, the following week I’d learned that Robby had told everyone that I’d gone all the way with him.

  I think I was still a little furious about that because most people believed I’d lost my virginity to Robby Reynolds, who’d been a good-looking guy but a total himbo, even back then. I’d only agreed to go to the prom with him because the guy I’d really liked, Mike Newcomber, had chosen to take “Double-D” Debbie Campbell to prom even though he and I had gone to the movies and made out a couple of times.

  I could only hope that when Robby showed up to tow the van, he’d be sporting a paunch belly and a receding hairline.

  “Come on,” Heath coaxed after Gilley had done his best to tend to his forehead. Taking my hand, he added, “Let’s get as far away from the house as we can.”

  Heath had pulled me to my feet, but I couldn’t help looking back over my shoulder. The mansion was giving off a seriously sinister vibe, which I hadn’t detected when we’d first pulled up to it. Turning to Heath, who was also glancing nervously over his shoulder, I said, “Can you feel that?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty thick, right?”

  “What’s thick?” Gil asked.

  I shuddered and moved a little faster. “The energy coming off the manor. It’s thick with something big, bad, and evil.”

 
Gilley rolled his eyes. “Well, duh.”

  “It wasn’t like that when we first entered the home,” Heath told him.

  I nodded. “Odd that we wouldn’t sense it immediately, right?”

  “It is. Energy as thick as that should be oozing from every crack and crevice. We should’ve picked up on it like a bad smell.”

  “What if it was like Godzilla?” Gil said.

  Heath and I both turned to him. “Come again?” I said.

  He shrugged. “What if it was like Godzilla, you know, asleep, and then we came around—or rather, you two fools with your abilities to talk to dead people—and that thing detected that in you and it woke up?”

  “You’re seriously comparing that spook to Godzilla?”

  “He may have a point,” Heath told me. I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Seriously, Em, things were a little bumpy in there until all the doors started slamming. Something shifted. Didn’t you feel it?”

  I thought back, but I honestly couldn’t say that I’d felt any sort of shift. “I didn’t,” I told him. “But then, I might’ve been more focused on getting to Gilley before that spook did. After that, I ended up on a whole other plane.”

  A rumble alerted us to an approaching vehicle. I tensed when I realized it was Robby.

  Gil nudged me with his elbow. “Are you wondering if he’s still as gorgeous as he was in high school?”

  “Uh, no,” I said crisply as I reached for Heath’s hand and hoped that he and I didn’t look too beat up. Little did Gilley know that I was actually hoping Robby appeared fat and bald.

  Chapter 3

  The person who stepped out of the tow truck was somewhere in the middle of what I��d hoped to see. “Hey, y’all!” Robby said, after opening the door to his truck and leaning out to wave at us across the cab.

  He looked much as he had in high school, except his hairline was receding (yes!) and he was a little thicker around the middle (yay!), but there was also that same underlying handsome smile and twinkle in his eye, which had always made him so appealing to the girls in my high school (dammit!).