The Unleashed

by Danielle Vega

  He lifted his head, eyes black with fear as they struggled to focus on Samantha’s face.

  “I’ll be back for you,” he said.

  And then he slumped forward, hitting the dirt shoulder first. A shudder went through his body, jerking his limbs, and then he was still. The only sounds left in the clearing were the steadily cracking fire, and Samantha’s desperate cries.

  CHAPTER

  19

  Hendricks didn’t go home. She got into her mom’s car and drove straight to Magik & Tarot. The shop wasn’t open. There wasn’t even a sign hanging on the door this time, it was just locked, and it wouldn’t budge, no matter how desperately Hendricks yanked on it.

  “Ileana?” Hendricks called, banging on the door. “Are you there? I really need to—”

  The door swung open, and Ileana stomped outside, an apple wedged in her mouth.

  “Oh hey,” she said, removing her apple. “Can we do this while walking? I’m running late.”

  Ileana looked different than usual, Hendricks noticed. She’d seemed to attempt to wrangle her bushy hair into a bun at the nape of her neck, and there was a pair of gigantic black glasses perched on her nose, the lenses making her eyes bug. She had a Spider-Man backpack slung over one shoulder.

  “It was the only one they had left,” she explained, when she saw Hendricks studying the backpack. “And it has a lot of pockets, so I don’t mind.”

  “Are you still in school?” Hendricks asked, eyes on the backpack.

  “Night school,” Ileana explained, yanking the backpack higher up her shoulder. “I take an accounting class at Devon Community College.”

  Hendricks wrinkled her nose. “Accounting?”

  “Yeah. The school’s only a few blocks away if you want to walk with me.” Ileana led Hendricks to the end of the street, past decrepit Victorians with boarded-up windows, overgrown yards, and trees with knobby branches and no leaves. She was walking quickly, and her legs were longer than Hendricks’s, so Hendricks had to practically jog to keep up with her. The sidewalk was uneven. Hendricks stumbled twice.

  “So,” Ileana said, rounding the corner, “what’s up?”

  Hendricks hesitated. Images moved through her head, making her brain feel mushy and slow. She remembered how Justin had covered Samantha’s mouth with that dirty rag, how he carried her through the school halls.

  And then she saw the clearing, the fire, Samantha lunging for the knife, burrowing it in Justin’s chest . . .

  Justin’s final threat echoed in her head.

  I’ll be back for you.

  Heart pounding, she told Ileana all of it, right from the beginning. She felt drained by the time she’d finished with her story. She waited for Ileana to provide her with some sage wisdom or mysterious spell, but Ileana only took another bite of her apple, her forehead creased in a slight frown.

  A sudden rush of wind moved down the street, rattling a bit of cardboard that had been taped over the windows of a nearby house.

  “So,” Hendricks urged. “What I am supposed to do?”

  Ileana chewed thoughtfully on her apple. “Ghosts don’t come back every day,” she said, swallowing.

  “I sort of figured that part out. I just don’t understand why this one came back. We didn’t do the séance for him, we did it for Eddie.”

  “When you call a ghost using a séance, think of it more like using an intercom at a department store. You can hope that the correct person answers the call, but there are no guarantees. Steele House is supposed to be this location of great spiritual energy.” Ileana finished her apple and chucked the core into the dandelion-covered lawn of an abandoned house. “I bet a lot of people have passed at that location.”

  “You think we called for Eddie and got the wrong ghost?”

  “You wanted to call Eddie from the void, right?” Ileana said. “But all sorts of things can happen when you open the door to the other side. People who’ve passed on can be called back, sure, but ghosts who are already here can also be made stronger. It’s tricky stuff, especially if you aren’t using a conduit.”

  Hendricks bit her lip. Ileana’s mention of a conduit reminded her that she still needed to swing by Raven’s house.

  They’d reached Devon’s main street. Unlike Ileana’s neighborhood, Main Street was cute and touristy. They hurried past a little market, the windows filled with fresh produce, and a coffee shop called the Sparrow.

  Ileana turned to Hendricks. “This ghost you saw, you said his name was Justin?”

  “That’s what Samantha called him.”

  “That rings a bell, but . . .” Ileana seemed to think for a moment. “There’s someone I think you should talk to,” she said finally. “This guy at my school”

  “A teacher?”

  Ileana laughed. “Crow is definitely not a teacher.”

  Hendricks felt a twinge of doubt. Crow?

  “Trust me,” Ileana assured her. “Crow knows everything.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Devon Community College was a short walk from Main Street. It was a small campus, just three flat brick buildings crowded around a stone fountain that had long ago gone dry. The surrounding grass was all dead and brown, weeds swaying in the stale wind.

  Hendricks followed Ileana past the fountain and toward the center building. A bell tower sat on the roof like a hat, and if Hendricks squinted, she thought she saw movement in the shadows. She shivered. This place looked more like a mental asylum than a school.

  She followed Ileana up the short staircase and through green-tiled floors with dim lighting until finally they’d reached a small room without any windows. There was a smattering of desks inside the room, a few students already milling about: a young woman in a shapeless white shirt-dress hunched over a desk in the second row, an older man writing something on the chalkboard, a group of students huddled near the windows, talking in low voices.

  Ileana ignored them, making a beeline for a man sitting in the back row. “Hendricks,” she said, stopping before the man’s desk. “I’d like you to meet John Crowski.”

  John Crowski was a bald, middle-aged Black man. He wore a navy-blue polo and jeans, a silk scarf draped over his shoulders like a shawl.

  “Call me Crow,” he said, eyes flicking over Hendricks and then back to Ileana. “Did you bring my black tourmaline?”

  Ileana pulled a small black crystal out of her Spider-Man backpack and handed it to Crow, who moved it through the air around him as though cleansing the space.

  The group of teens near the front of the classroom glanced over at him curiously, but none of them said anything

  “Crow’s in my witch group,” Ileana explained, sliding into the desk next to him. She shrugged off her backpack and motioned for Hendricks to take the desk in front of them, explaining, “He’s the one who told me about this class.”

  “Someone had to help you out,” Crow said, rolling his eyes. He finished with his crystal and placed it on his desk, sighing deeply. “Your books were a mess. It’s amazing you can still afford the rent on that little shop of yours.”

  Ileana pulled a notebook out of her bag, frowning. “They’re getting better.”

  Crow didn’t have eyebrows, but a muscle in his forehead popped like he was trying to raise one. “Are you still keeping track of sales in that sad little spiral notebook?”

  “Anyway,” Ileana said, a blush creeping up her neck. She swiveled around in her seat and nudged the back of Hendricks’s chair with her boot. “Hendricks here had some questions about Steele House, so I thought I’d bring her to the expert.” To Hendricks, she added, “Not only has Crow been practicing witchcraft since before either of us were born, but he actually grew up in Drearford. He even went to Drearford High.”

  One of the guys suddenly leaned back, sending his chair balancing on its back two legs. He released
a sharp laugh before slamming the chair back down on all fours. Around him, his friends dissolved into giggles and howls.

  Hendricks glanced at them, frowning, wondering what was so funny. Crow was studying her now, a curious from on his face. But all he said was, “I graduated in ’88.”

  Hendricks thought of the banner she’d seen in the flashback: CONGRATS CLASS OF ’86! Samantha would’ve only been a couple years older than Crow.

  She leaned over the back of the chair. “Did you know Samantha Davidson?”

  Crow gave a short snort of a laugh. “Did I know the cheerleader who went crazy and killed that kid? Girl, everyone knew Samantha. You forget, we didn’t have reality TV back in the eighties. We had to watch each other. And Sam . . . well, Sam was like our version of a Kardashian.”

  “The kid she killed . . . his name was Justin, right?”

  “Mm-hmm, Justin Morrelly. He was certainly a piece of work, always following Sam and her friends around, watching them, doing messed up things to small animals.” Crow pressed a hand to his chest, sighing deeply. “Personally, I think that little freak had it coming, but the cops and Justin’s family didn’t see it that way. After the murder, Sam was committed.”

  The boys were laughing again. One of them said loudly, “You have got to be kidding me.” Hendricks felt her eyelid twitch. It was taking a lot of energy to tune them out.

  “To that Longwood Place?” she asked Crow.

  Crow raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Sam was sent to Longwood. Technically, I believe she was diagnosed a schizophrenic, but you and I both know that’s not really what she was.” The muscle in his forehead popped again. “Don’t we?”

  Hendricks stared blankly, and eventually Crow sighed and said, “Okay, so the whole history of Drearford is pretty messed up, but the absolute craziest shit that ever happened in that town has to do with the Steele family. You know about the Steele family of course.”

  “Wait, there was a Steele family?” Hendricks asked.

  “Maxwell and Thelma and their five daughters,” said Crow. “They came to town in . . . let’s see . . . it was 1886, I believe? They were cultists, worshipped some insane god. Long story short, they sacrificed their daughters to this god, and now people think their sacrifice opened, like, a portal between the living and the dead, which, by the way, is why the whole town is overrun with ghosts.” Crow glanced lazily at Hendricks and said, “It also, I think, explains why you’re here.”

  Hendricks was about to ask him to elaborate, but at that moment one of the other guys suddenly climbed onto his desk. He was holding some old textbook, and without any warning, he dropkicked it, sending it flying across the room. It landed on the floor with a thud that made Hendricks flinch, just a few feet from the woman wearing the shapeless dress.

  The woman took no notice of the book but only twirled a strand of hair around her finger muttering to herself. The man standing at the front of the classroom glanced over one shoulder, scowling.

  The boy’s friends doubled over, hooting and howling with laughter.

  “Jesus,” Hendricks said, turning back around. “What’s wrong with them? Haven’t they ever been in public before?”

  Ileana looked at Crow and raised her eyes. “What did I tell you?”

  “What?” Hendricks asked, looking back and forth between the two of them. “What did she tell you?”

  “Ileana thinks you’re the new medium,” Crow explained. “That’s what they call someone who can see and talk to ghosts. Ever since Drearford became ghost central, there’s always been a medium.” Crow held up one finger. “But just one. It was Samantha Davidson for the last thirty or so years, but she died back in January, which I’m guessing is about when you were called.”

  Hendricks swallowed. “How did you know?”

  Crow suddenly leaned forward, eyes bulging. “Take a look around right now. How many people do you see in here in this room with us?”

  Hendricks looked. There was the girl in the shapeless dress, and the guy at the chalkboard, the three rowdy students. “Uh . . . five? Not including the three of us.”

  Crow blinked at her. “Honey, Ileana and I meet here before class because it’s a nice, quiet place to go over her notes.” He made a show of looking around the room, his eyes drifting over the other five people without seeming to see them. “Right now, the three of us are the only ones here.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Hendricks couldn’t spend another moment in that room. She said a quick goodbye and thank-you to Crow and then it was through the hallway and back outside, where she doubled over, breathing hard.

  It was getting dark. Hendricks’s parents would be sitting down to dinner soon, and they were going to be wondering where she was. Hendricks couldn’t bring herself to care. The weight of everything she’d just heard had settled over her like a thick blanket. Ghosts, medium, chosen. She pulled at the collar of her jacket, feeling like she couldn’t breathe.

  The door creaked open and closed behind her, and Ileana said, “You okay?”

  Hendricks tried to answer but only managed a strange, strangled laugh. Okay? She didn’t know whether that was a word she could use to describe herself anymore. She was a medium. She could see ghosts.

  The last medium was committed.

  Tears blurred her eyes. “You knew?” she managed to choke out. “Crow said you knew.”

  Ileana hesitated. Hendricks straightened, forcing herself to meet the woman’s eyes.

  “I only suspected,” Ileana admitted, after a long moment. “You said that you could see things back at Steele House, and you showed up here right around when Samantha died. But I didn’t know for sure, Hendricks, I swear.”

  Hendricks felt suddenly ill. She brought a hand to her forehead and said, almost to herself, “If I can see ghosts, why can’t I see Eddie?”

  “I don’t know.” There was pity in Ileana’s eyes as she added softly, “I’m sorry, but there’s something else we have to deal with now. Justin is getting too strong. If we send him back to the void without cutting off the means of his return, he’ll just come back again. We need to close the seal for good. As the medium, you need to close the seal for good.”

  If they closed the seal, Eddie would be gone forever.

  “When?” she asked.

  Ileana lifted her eyes to the sky, where a nearly full moon was just peeking out behind the scattered community college campus, turning the early evening sky purple.

  A few students had begun to trickle up the stairs of the adjacent building, but Hendricks was too nervous to ask Ileana whether or not any of them were actually there.

  “Tomorrow night is the full moon,” Ileana said. One of the students waved, and Ileana lifted her own arm to wave, lazily, back. Hendricks breathed a sigh of relief. At least that one was real.

  Ileana continued. “I recommend that we gather as much of the original circle as we can and meet at Steele House then, at midnight.”

  “What about the catalyst . . . or conduit thing?” Hendricks faltered. “Or . . . is that me?”

  “No, we can’t use you.” Ileana sighed and sat down on the top of the steps, her elbows sliding onto her knees. “Very few mediums are capable of throwing their consciousness into the void. And you’re new, you’ve never tried anything that complicated before. It’s best that we use someone who exists on both planes naturally—”

  “I told you, we can’t use Raven.” Hendricks sat beside Ileana, stretching her own legs down over the steps. “She could get hurt.”

  “Fine.” Ileana plucked a weed up from beneath the stone steps and wove it between her fingers. “I’ll figure something else out. You just make sure everyone is there.”

  “I can do that,” Hendricks said.

  She sat next to Ileana for a long time, watching students mingle around the dried-up fountain. And when she finally pushed herself
back to her feet, it was with a sense of unreality. She felt changed.

  She started down the stairs.

  “Hendricks?” Ileana called after her. Hendricks turned back around. “I don’t know if this helps but . . . if Eddie is trying to communicate with you from the other side of the void, it’s possible that it doesn’t look like what you’d expect.”

  “What do you mean?” Hendricks asked.

  “There’s a theory that flashing lights, even certain smells are all spirits from beyond the void trying to communicate with their loved ones.” Ileana shrugged. “I’ve even heard stories about people receiving gifts or finding spots of dead grass on their lawn and knowing that it was the departed trying to reach them. Or even inexplicable rain.”

  The hair on the back of Hendricks’s neck stood up. “But . . . why would the grass be dead?”

  Ileana only smiled, a little sadly. “Who knows? Some things about the afterlife are a mystery, even to me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was gray as Hendricks drove back to Drearford, and so foggy that she couldn’t see the tops of the trees or houses that lined the streets. A crow cawed outside her car window, but she only saw a slight stirring in the gray, and nothing else.

  She shivered and drove a little faster.

  It wasn’t just the weather that had Hendricks feeling off. It was everything. It was Samantha and Justin. It was the fact that they were going to close the seal for good. It was having to leave Eddie behind, forever.

  And that’s if they were able to close the seal at all. The closer Hendricks got to Raven’s neighborhood, the more she thought of the terrible meeting at Tony’s the other night, everyone arguing and talking over each other. Vi and Finn taking Portia’s side, refusing to believe that the ghost was anyone other than Eddie, Blake not quite managing to accept that there was a ghost at all.

  Just thinking about that argument made Hendricks’s shoulders creep up toward her ears, the muscles in her back and in her jaw coiling tight. Things were still weird between her and Portia. Was she still on the outs with everyone else, too? If she decided to do the séance after all, would anyone even come? Or was it going just going to be her and Ileana and a moldy hunk of bread?