Lifelike

by Sheila A. Nielson

  I’d only been offering to help him get back together with Rosalyn. Why wouldn’t he want that? And why lock the door? To punish me? It seemed like such a childish way to get back at someone for saying something you didn’t like.

  Of course, there was one other reason a person might want to lock a door. That was to keep someone out. Had Xavier’s ghost been attempting to protect me? From whom? Rosalyn, his one and only true love? That was ridiculous!

  Or was it?

  Like me, Margaret must have sensed Xavier’s ghost still lingering about the house. I thought of all the awful dolls Margaret made at the end of her life. According to Kat, even from the asylum Margaret had begged her cousin to take the dolls and place them all around Kensington House. For some reason she believed those dolls would keep her dead son safe.

  Safe from what?

  Margaret had been committed after pounding holes in the walls of the house. Almost like she was trying to get at something she knew was hiding in there. Something she wanted desperately to destroy. That something had to be the bride doll. But why would the spirit of Rosalyn Worthin be a danger to the man she loved?

  The doll hadn’t actually done anything to hurt me when I picked her up today. She didn’t hurt Taylee, Aunt Victoria, or Gabrielle either. So, in what way was she dangerous?

  Knowing there would be no sleep for me anytime soon, I forced my weary body out of bed, put on some clothes, and hid the groom doll under my bed again.

  Where could Xavier’s spirit have disappeared to? Was it possible for a ghost to leave the house it inhabited? What were the rules when it came to ghosts?

  There was one person I could think of that might know the answer to those questions. Luckily for me, she was currently conducting a ghost-hunting vigil just at the other end of the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  On the upstairs landing, I found Cassandra standing in front of an open laptop which was perched on a folding table. A nearby black light made her lips glow bright green.

  “Testing, testing,” she said in a hushed voice. “Can you hear me?”

  “I can,” my tired voice come out sounding slightly sluggish. Man, was I feeling wasted.

  “Whoa!” Cassandra whirled around, clutching at her heart. Her glowing lips formed a startled O. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Wren. Especially during a night vigil.”

  “Who are you talking to?” I asked, forcing myself to concentrate.

  “Penny.” Cassandra gestured to the laptop’s screen which seemed to be broadcasting a live feed of Xavier’s study. “She’s setting up the camera in there.”

  I squinted down at the picture on the screen. There was only the oak desk and the mermaid bookshelves as far as I could see. No sign of any living person.

  Or a doll.

  Where was the bride, anyway? Had Aunt Victoria locked her up in the office before going to bed? Would a bolted door stop a haunted doll? I glanced nervously around the landing. The black light made the darkness around us seem eerie and threatening.

  “Are you sure Penny’s in there?” I asked Cassandra, forcing myself not to think about what might be lurking just out of sight.

  A shadow fell suddenly over the screen as a mouth full of large, dull teeth flashed in front of the camera, gaping open in a silent scream. I let out a small yelp of surprise. The disembodied mouth grinned at me in response.

  “Very funny, Penny.” Cassandra tapped one finger against the computer screen, not the least bit impressed.

  The mouth drew back until I could see Penny’s mischievous face and skinny shoulders. She had on another tank top. Did she or her twin own any other kind of clothing?

  “It was really nice of your aunt to let us camp out in her parking lot as long as we needed,” Penny’s hollowed features said into the camera. The voice broadcasting over the laptop’s live feed was just slightly behind Penny’s real voice which I could hear coming from the open doorway of the study. Talk about surreal.

  “It was cool of her to let us go through all those photographs and papers you found in the secret room,” Penny continued. “We half expected to find ourselves up to our ears in reporters before the day was out.”

  “My aunt decided to keep it under wraps a little longer,” I said, raising my voice so Penny could hear me in the other room. “She needs more time to get everything organized.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Penny’s head said. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep the secret until everything is official.”

  “I think Aunt Victoria would appreciate that. By the way, where’s the rest of your group?”

  “Downstairs trying to get some readings.” Five glow-in-the dark fingernails flashed at the end of Cassandra’s fingertips as she waved a hand in that general direction. “With all of Margaret’s dolls down there, they’re bound to capture something.”

  “This room is better, you’ll see,” Penny’s disembodied head said on screen. Her features were slightly distorted from being too close to the camera lens. It gave her an alien appearance that I found unsettling. “Xavier Kensington spent most of his time here when he was alive. His spirit is the most active.”

  “Which is why Penny and I chose to operate the camera up here instead of downstairs. We’ve got a bet going with Mom that our team will catch some kind of phenomena before hers does,” Cassandra said, glancing over at me. “You interested in ghosts yourself?”

  “I never thought much about them until I came to live here,” I admitted. “After hearing all the stories about Kensington House and its history, I’ve got a lot of questions.”

  “I don’t know that we have all the answers, but feel free to fire away,” Cassandra said.

  Okay, I’d bite.

  “How come ghosts show themselves to some people and not others,” I said. “I mean, not everyone who comes to the museum sees ghosts. In fact, my aunt says most people don’t?”

  “Some people are more sensitive than others,” Penny explained on camera. “I also think certain kinds of people attract ghosts.”

  “What kinds of people?” I asked. Was I one of those people? I’d never seen a ghost in my life before coming to live in the museum. Now I saw them everywhere.

  “Ghosts are just the souls of people who are lost,” Cassandra said. “Each ghost would have different tastes when it came to the kinds of people they would be interested in.”

  Penny’s head nodded. “For example, the ghost of a lonely child might seek out kids close to their own age. A playmate, if you will.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” I said. But it still didn’t explain why the ghosts found me so interesting.

  “My sister and I once investigated an apartment that was supposed to be haunted by a ghostly young woman.” On the screen, a sly smile lifted the corners of Penny’s distorted mouth. “There were three college guys living there, but the ghost only bothered to show herself to one of them. We couldn’t help but notice that he was the cutest. If I’d been a ghost, I’d have picked this guy to haunt, too.”

  “How can a ghost be attracted to someone? I mean, they’re dead,” I said, stating the obvious.

  Cassandra gave a casual shrug. “Just because a person’s spirit leaves their body when they die, doesn’t mean they stop being who they were when they were alive.”

  “You’re thinking of ghosts the way they’re shown in movies,” Penny said. “Inhuman looking creatures, dripping blood, with a hockey mask to hide their monstrous features—the whole Hollywood works.”

  “If you could see a ghost with your eyes,” Cassandra said. “They’d look like a regular person, dressed in the kind of clothing they were familiar with in their lifetime. Nothing scary or mysterious. Of course, most people can’t see ghosts, only mere shadows of them.”

  Oh, yes. I knew all about shadow ghosts. Especially ones that liked to sneak up behind when you weren’t looking.

  I stared absently down at the illuminated laptop screen, my thoughts swirling about inside my head in a muddle of mad reas
oning. “You said that not everyone becomes a ghost. Most people’s spirits just cross straight over to the other side, right? Can a ghost visit the other side from time to time?” Was that where Xavier had disappeared to?

  “Ghosts can’t cross over,” Penny said. “Someone who becomes a ghost has broken the natural flow of things. They should have moved on at the time of their death, but for one reason or another, they choose not to. They actually trap themselves here.”

  I felt my body turn cold. Xavier was trapped? Like some animal in a cage?

  Cassandra spoke softly amid the shadows of the landing, her voice turning suddenly thoughtful. “Have you ever stopped to think about it? What it means if there really are ghosts? What if death isn’t the end? What if love goes on? What if the most important things are never truly lost? What if there’s always hope?”

  It is never too late for hope.

  Those were the words supposedly carved into the museum’s front door by the ghost of Xavier Kensington. I thought about Margaret being hauled off to an asylum by her cousin, Roberta. Had Xavier left the message to comfort his mother as she was taken away from him for the last time?

  “How do you know any of this true?” I threw my hands into the air, my voice becoming urgent.

  On the screen, Penny pressed her lips tight together, her eyes saying a whole lot of things that her mouth wasn’t.

  “Go ahead. Tell her, Penny. She’ll be cool about it,” Cassandra said, her glowing lips smiling in my direction. “Wren is serious about wanting to know more. I can tell.”

  “I accidentally overdosed my prescription drugs when I was a teenager. My sister, Lynne, found me lifeless on the couch and called 911. Sometime between when I passed out and the time the paramedics revived me—I died.”

  Her words caused me to shiver. Death. So final, so unavoidable. And yet here was someone who had passed beyond and come back. Was that even possible?

  Penny’s voice fell into hushed tones. “I left my body and found myself in a terrible, empty place. It was full of darkness as far as the eye could see. Then a light broke through the darkness of limbo, calling me to the other side.”

  “Limbo?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “What is that, exactly?”

  “The place in between the world of the living and the world of the dead,” Penny explained. “I wanted to go into the light, but I was slowly being revived. As long as there was still a sliver of life left within my body, I couldn’t cross over. My body was like an anchor holding me back. When my heart started up, I was yanked out of limbo, back into the world of the living—almost violently.”

  “When the body dies, it doesn’t work as an anchor anymore,” Cassandra said.

  “That’s why ghosts must find something else to haunt. A place, a thing—any physical object they can anchor themselves to in order to keep their soul from drifting off into the eternal darkness of limbo,” Penny said.

  “Like a doll,” I said softly.

  Penny nodded on screen. “That’s probably why your aunt’s museum gets so much paranormal activity all the time. Dolls can be big trouble.”

  She now had my full attention. “What kind of trouble?”

  “Most ghosts just haunt their anchor object,” Cassandra said. “They move around it, appearing in different places near the item. If you move the item to a different location, the ghost goes with it. But dolls are objects that ghosts can actually possess.”

  “You’re talking about dolls that move by themselves, aren’t you?” I said, slowly. Now we were getting to it.

  “When a ghost doesn’t have a body, it can’t interact with the world around it very well. It takes a lot of energy to make themselves felt or heard,” Cassandra said.

  I thought of the invisible fingers touching my wrist and guiding my hand. How much energy had Xavier expended in order to help Cassandra and me get out of the secret closet the other day? What cost had he paid in our behalf?

  “A ghost who possesses a doll can use the doll’s physical form to interact with the world of the living,” Cassandra continued, unaware of my inner thoughts. “It can cause all sorts of trouble.”

  In other words, a possessed doll could do physical damage.

  “Possessed dolls are powerful.” Penny leaned slightly forward, her distorted face suddenly filling up the computer screen. “If a ghost continues to possess the same doll again and again, it will eventually meld with it. The doll will become the ghost’s new body and the spirit becomes permanently trapped inside. The only way to get rid of a ghost at that point is to destroy the doll it inhabits.”

  A shiver of understanding went through me. That was why the bride doll was blindly crawling around inside the walls. She was trapped. Bound to the doll’s body as if it were her own.

  “Wren? You okay?” Cassandra asked, her voice deepening with concern. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, forcing myself to shake off the dark thoughts clinging to me. “It’s getting late. I think I’m a little bit tired.” Talk about understatements.

  Cassandra studied me a moment, then leaned her hip companionably against the card table. It swayed dangerously beneath her weight. “Hey, what are your plans for tomorrow?”

  “Plans?” I said, rubbing one of my eyes in tired confusion.

  Cassandra laughed, as if she thought I was messing with her. After all, what teenage girl wouldn’t have plans? “Want to join me on a little shopping trip in town tomorrow?”

  “And exactly how are you going to get there?” Penny asked from the laptop screen. “You gonna take the RV for a spin?”

  “Wren can drive us,” Cassandra said, gesturing in my direction.

  I all but choked on thin air. “Me?” I squeaked in surprise.

  Cassandra narrowed her eyes, homing in on my odd reaction. “Sure. Why not?”

  How would a normal teenager without a care in the world answer a question like that? What would they say exactly? Darned, if I knew.

  Heart pounding in my throat, I forced my voice to remain calm and neutral as I spoke. “I don’t have my driver’s license, yet.”

  Yet? Would you listen to me? As if I the only reason I hadn’t gotten my license was nothing more than a busy schedule. Truth be told, I’d spent my sixteenth birthday—and most of the following month—sick in bed or on my knees worshiping the porcelain god. I’d only started feeling better after they stopped all the chemo treatments. By then, driving had lost most of its appeal for me—especially after the car accident.

  “No license? Really?” Cassandra raised one eyebrow. I shook my head. “Well, that bites. Would your aunt be willing to drive us into town?”

  “I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “We could ask her, I guess.”

  “Great!” Cassandra said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. “How about around noon tomorrow? I always sleep late after pulling an all-night vigil.”

  A high-pitched scream tore through the darkness somewhere in the house below. Cassandra and I whirled in surprise.

  “Was that your mom?” Penny’s voice demanded from the laptop.

  “I got something! I got something!” someone yelled from the back of the house.

  As long as it wasn’t a possessed bride doll, then I was good. I seriously needed to put a GPS tracker on that thing before I had a complete nervous breakdown.

  Penny’s image disappeared from the computer screen and a moment later the real Penny hurried out of the study toward us.

  “I think I may have just lost my bet,” Cassandra said to me out of the corner of her glowing mouth.

  “I GOT it, I tell you!” The voice definitely belonged to Cassandra’s mom. She came barreling out of the Postmodern Doll Room and rushed toward the stairs, her glowing green lips a bobbing beacon in the black light that shown down from the upper landing. She was waving a square object above her head as she came.

  “What is it? What did you find?” Mr. Dale’s deeper voice cried from somewhere at the eas
t end of the house. I could hear hurried footsteps approaching in the distance.

  “I recorded an EVP!” Cassandra’s mom all but squealed as she reached the top of the stairs.

  “Sweet!” Cassandra said, pumping one hand in the air.

  Penny’s eyes widened, the whites of her eyes glowing eerily in the black light. “Are you certain, Darcy? You’ve listened to it already?”

  Cassandra’s mom nodded over and over again, as if she had lost all ability to stop once she got started.

  “What’s an EVP?” I asked in confusion.

  “Electronic Voice Phenomenon,” Cassandra explained. “Sometimes you can catch the voices of ghosts on digital recorders.”

  Ghost voices? Was she kidding me? Probably not.

  “Well, don’t just stand there. Let’s hear it already!” Mr. Dale said as the shadowy forms of the rest of the ghost hunters joined us on the landing.

  “Put it on repeat, so we can figure out what it says,” Lynn said, sidling in next to her twin.

  Cassandra’s mom waited for them to crowd in around her before she pressed the play button on the little digital recorder in her hand. A crackle of static was followed by the chilling sound of ragged, uneven breathing.

  “That’s me,” Cassandra’s mom whispered to us over the recording. “I pushed the record button because I suddenly had this feeling that I wasn’t alone in the room.”

  Been there, done that.

  The freaky breathing continued for a few seconds and then we heard it. A drawn-out hissing noise, like a person whispering too close to the microphone. Shivers of unease moved slowly through my body as I recognized the sound. It was the same voice I’d heard speaking my name the morning I woke up in the study after the storm. I thought I’d dreamt that.

  Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  The recording ended and Cassandra’s mom hit the replay button to start it over. Again, with the heavy breathing, followed by a creepy voice speaking an unintelligible message through the recorder.

  “It sounds male,” Mr. Dale said softly. “Probably Xavier.” His words made my heart beat hard within my chest.