Alone
Thursday, August 30, 2012
A cloud of grimness fell over Adam while he drove out of the Syracuse University parking lot.
The same melancholy had dogged him ever since his conversation with Wilhelmina earlier that morning. It stood beside him during his classes, worsened by gazing into the faces of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old students. Even though it happened longer ago than he’d been alive, he couldn’t help but dwell on the idea that a little girl who once lived in his house would never make it to college.
She might have turned out to be attentive and smart like Lexi Haney in his second class, or maybe she’d have had the ‘this is boring, I already know it’ attitude of Benedict Fletcher from his morning period, or daydreamed the whole time like Alicia McLaughlin in his last session. It didn’t matter what kind of person she might have been. The girl never had the chance.
Once he no longer had to focus on his job, he distracted himself with a mental debate regarding the odds of the entity being an actual child spirit or a demon pretending to be one. Mia had been quiet all day, not sending any texts. That happened sometimes, especially when a restoration project absorbed her attention entirely. However, after what happened last night, he worried about her.
Watching his wife have a complete breakdown had been perhaps the single most difficult experience of his marriage. Though, technically, it hadn’t so much been watching her that bothered him as much as his being powerless to stop it. Adam squeezed and relaxed his grip on the steering wheel at a red light while the formless blurs of traffic passed in front of him. He couldn’t ask Mia to do that to herself again. As soon as he got home, he’d suggest she avoid that room. The most upset he’d ever seen her prior to last night had been a little over four years ago when they’d first started dating. Her cat had died of old age, but even then, she hadn’t been anywhere near as devastated.
Mia’s grief took the form of quiet tears, lack of interest in doing anything but sitting in one place and staring into nowhere. The scream-crying hadn’t been her. It couldn’t have been. She either read the emotional imprint Evelyn Kurtis seared into that room or perhaps the woman’s ghost also occupied the house and had chosen that moment to inhabit Mia’s body.
The light changed.
Adam didn’t notice until a soft beep came from behind. He raised a hand in an apologetic wave and resumed driving. His mind jogged down a different thought path, sorting the types of activity he’d seen. If the child ghost was genuine, it would be unlikely—at least he hoped—that she gave off the dread Mia reported feeling from the house. That darkness either came from Vic or the psychic scar such a brutal killing could leave on an area. The sorrow clearly came from Evelyn, though none of the overt manifestations connected to her. Perhaps, like Mia’s stories of her childhood home, that ghost lurked in the attic or basement and avoided living people.
Mia had wondered why Robin kept running away after such short visits. Perhaps Vic remained in the house as well and she ran away from him. Though, if Evelyn haunted the place, why would the child ghost give off such feelings of loneliness? Perhaps they had somehow wound up isolated in different parts of the house and couldn’t interact.
He turned onto Minstrel Run a short while later, still no closer to understanding anything more than not wanting his interest in the paranormal to hurt Mia. The tree-shrouded street curved gradually back and forth for the almost mile between the corner and his house. He slowed to a stop by his driveway, gazing down the road toward Wilhelmina’s house, not that he could see it from there with all the trees in the way. Older people always filled him with a sense of nostalgic wonder at the idea the world they had once known had changed so much.
His hope buoyed by the prospect that the woman might be able to help somehow, he pulled into the driveway and parked beside the Tahoe. Eager to check on Mia, he hurriedly shut the engine off and ran inside. The downstairs appeared dim and empty except for various EM sensors, the camera tripod, and a few digital audio recorders. He walked far enough into the dining room to see the whole kitchen, and found no sign of her.
“Hon?” called Adam.
He looked around, listening to silence for a moment before checking the toilet closet in the small alcove off the dining room. Still, no Mia. Adam jogged back to the living room turned right, peering into the mostly-empty room they hadn’t yet figured out what to do with. Despite the early evening dimness, the two large bay windows let in plenty of light.
“Mia?” called Adam, his voice echoing off bare walls.
Worry rising, he ran to the stairs and went up.
Upon seeing a light on in Robin’s bedroom, he froze, a chill creeping down his back. Soft muttering in Mia’s voice leaked out into the hall. Adam’s briefcase slipped from his fingers, striking the floor with a thud that startled him. Ignoring it, he walked to the door and peered in.
None of the moving boxes remained.
A child’s bed occupied the inner corner to his right, a cute white dresser against the wall straight in front of him. In the left corner by the window stood a mound of cardboard scraps, likely the packaging material for one of the two pieces of furniture that hadn’t been there earlier.
Mia lay on the floor in the middle of the room, curled up in a ball on her side, her hair fanned out on the rug. She muttered random nonsense that didn’t make sense as words, a repeating pattern of syllables.
“You bought a bed?” asked Adam, hoping ‘normal’ might help snap her out of it.
She didn’t react.
“Mia…” He took a knee and grasped her shoulder. The instant he touched her, she jumped as if startled, stopped muttering, and looked up at him. “Hon. What’s going on?”
Her eyes fluttered; she looked around with an expression as though she didn’t remember how she wound up on the floor. “Umm…”
Only her absence of alarm kept him from freaking out. He sat on the floor, holding her hand. “You seemed to be in some kind of trance.”
“Yeah… something like that. A woman sat here for hours like that… probably Robin’s mother after finding her.” Mia grasped the front of her throat, choked up. “She found her body… right over there on the floor past the foot of the bed.”
Adam’s guilt got into a war with his excitement over validation. “You know the girl’s name?”
“Yeah…”
“It’s right.”
Mia glanced at him. “What do you mean, ‘it’s right?’”
“I met a woman at the university today who lives down the road a few houses. She knew the family, said she babysat a couple times when she’d only been a kid herself. The girl’s name was Robin.”
“Is,” whispered Mia. “She’s still here.”
Adam bit his tongue before musing aloud about the potential of a demon impersonating a child. “I’ve been worried all damn day about you. What’s with the furniture?”
“I…” She looked over at the dresser. “Don’t know what came over me. Called out of work sick and just wound up getting them.”
He rubbed her back. “It’s okay. At least kid furniture isn’t too expensive.”
“You’re not upset?”
“No. I was worried about you.” He exhaled out his nose, relieved. Aside from appearing faintly disoriented, she acted normal. “I’d never seen you that upset before.”
Mia leaned against him. “I think that came from her mother… I saw such awful things. He killed her and wrote ‘bye bye mommy’ on the wall in blood. I felt everything that woman felt when she found her child dead.”
Adam shuddered, on the verge of tears at the thought of it. “Damn… shit like this is why I didn’t go into clinical practice.”
“She killed him. I’m sure of it. I think right in the courtroom or something. A police officer even gave her the gun.”
“What?” Adam blinked. “How’d you find that out? Wilhelmina told me about it, but she didn’t know exactly how the woman got a weapon. Of course, everyone assumed the cop
s helped her. It’s pretty damn hard to sneak a gun into a courthouse.”
Mia explained her dream. “It felt like a long time ago. Everyone’s clothes looked dated. Like something out of the sixties. I have no idea if she wanted me to see that or if I picked it up somehow.”
“It happened in 1970.” Adam rested a hand against her cheek. “Please be careful… two women who lived here both suffered serious injuries. A third almost died. I’m not sure what made the spirits turn hostile or if that’s just what they do… act harmless for a while and then go off.”
“I… don’t think so.” Mia picked at the rug by her knee. “I know you’re going to say it could be exactly what the spirit wants me to feel, but I feel like she won’t hurt us.”
“Maybe it’s not Robin we should be worrying about.” Adam glanced at the little bed. “Perhaps Evelyn is still here and if we get too close to the child, she goes all possessive and wrathful.”
Mia kept picking at the rug.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I feel fine now. Just needed a day to recover from last night. It took a while for me to separate myself from that woman’s grief.”
Adam hugged her. “Promise you’ll tell me if you start feeling un-fine?”
She nodded.
“Hmm. The bed and dresser could make for good trigger objects.”
Mia emitted a sad chuckle. “Babe, I don’t think we need trigger objects to encourage activity. There’s plenty of it already.”
“Right…” He chuckled. “All that’s missing is a stuffed bear.”
She flashed a weak smile. “Ordered one already… the store didn’t have the right kind.”
Adam started to laugh, but gave her a quizzical look. “Right kind?”
“A plush rabbit, not a bear. Like the one she used to have.” Mia bit her lip. “I think you’re right. I’m probably psychic. I shouldn’t know what her toy looked like or her dresser, or even what her name was until you told me.”
“Hon, that’s great, but I’d rather spend the rest of my working life as a psychology professor with a healthy, happy wife by my side than be a successful parapsychologist. Please be careful.”
“I will.”
Adam kissed her. “I’ll go whip up something for dinner.”
“Okay. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Mia sat on the floor after Adam went downstairs, hoping to see some sign that Robin liked her gifts.
It caught her off guard that he hadn’t been upset about the furniture. While they didn’t exactly live paycheck-to-paycheck, spending a couple hundred bucks on kid furniture would throw off the budget a little. Until she paid off the Tahoe, it really didn’t make sense to throw money at useless things.
But they didn’t feel useless.
A child did exist inside the house. Even if she couldn’t use either bed or dresser, their presence here would help. Mia didn’t know why she knew that, but it felt right. She’d spent hours earlier in the afternoon trying to find the exact dresser she’d seen during that awful vision. The bed, too, came as close as she could manage to the one that used to be here. A spirit might have compelled her to buy them, or perhaps the urge had bubbled up from her deep-seated need to destroy the darkness she’d seen here, adding things to the room to brighten it, make it the little girl’s bedroom it had once been.
Perhaps her idea had backfired. She sighed at the empty bed. It struck her every bit as depressing as an empty room had been, perhaps even more so. Mia bowed her head, brushing her hand across the beige carpet. Which prior owner had installed this? It looked new, but given how sparsely the house had been occupied in the years since the murder, the rug could’ve been thirty years old and remained in good shape.
Cold air brushed over Mia’s shoulders and a sense of being watched fell on her.
She looked up from the floor—and clamped both hands over her mouth to stop from screaming.
A little girl in a plain white nightgown stood by the foot of the bed, arms at her sides, tiny hands balled into fists. She stared at Mia with an intense glower, her eyes brimming with darkness well beyond her tender age. Long, straight light brown hair framed a delicate face frozen in an expression of territorial challenge. Unlike Vic, she appeared whole from head to her bare feet, though her entire body had a mild transparency. A blast of fear radiated from the spirit along with a raspy hiss.
Mia twitched in response to the wave of paranormal fear, but didn’t otherwise move. The anger in the child’s glare stunned her, but she forced herself not to look away or run. A sense that this girl radiated anger at her circumstances, not Mia, teased at the back of her thoughts and gave her enough nerve to hold her ground.
Trails of blood started to leak from Robin’s nose and lip, dripping down onto the chest of her nightie. After a moment of silent eye contact—and Mia not fleeing in terror—the blood receded.
Mia moved her hands from her mouth to her chest. “Hi, sweetie. You’re Robin, right?”
The child nodded once, still glaring at her with a ‘why are you in my room?’ scowl.
“My name’s Mia.” She couldn’t help but start crying all over again, though this sorrow came from inside and manifested in her usual manner: silent tears rolling down her face. “Is it okay that I got you some things?”
Robin turned her head to peer at the bed. For an instant, her face flashed to a blood-soaked horror. Mia flinched. Again, the girl nodded once. Some of the hardness in her glare lessened.
“I hate that you’re sad and lonely,” whispered Mia. “I hate even more what happened to you. How can I help?”
Robin took a few steps closer, her hands relaxing open, no longer fists. Bloody footprints on the rug lingered for seconds before fading, though her legs appeared clean.
“That other spirit hurt you, didn’t he?”
The girl nodded. “I’m scared of him.”
Mia choked up again at the sound of the child’s voice. It had a far-off quality, sounding as though it came from somewhere down the hall, part whispery, part tonal. “I am, too.”
“Mia,” said the ghost, her glare fading to a plaintive expression. “I don’t want you to go away. I’m lonely. I want you to stay here with me.”
“I’m not gonna leave.” Mia raised her arms, inviting the girl into a hug. “Oh, you’re still only a baby… so young.”
Robin took another step closer, pausing inches from reach. “Don’t go away and leave me alone. Everyone always leaves me alone. I don’t like it.”
“C’mere, sweetie.” Mia smiled, the urge to hug the sweet, innocent child growing. “I’m not gonna leave you.”
The girl appeared about to move closer but whirled to the left and went wide-eyed in fear. Without another word, she bolted back to the spot where her body had been, and disappeared. The rumble of Adam walking up the stairs came from the hall. Mia let her arms fall into her lap.
“He’s not like your bad daddy. He won’t hurt you.”
“Hon?” Adam poked his head in. “Dinner’s almost ready. Oh, crap… what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re crying.”
Mia stood and wiped her face. “Yeah. I know. I just saw her.”
“Her? Robin or the mother?”
“Robin. I think she’s afraid of you.”
Adam set his hands on his hips. “Understandable. Between what her father did, then Mr. Vaughan and that pastor, I’m not surprised she’s afraid of men.”
“What did the pastor do?” Mia blinked at him in shock.
“Not sure exactly, but probably nothing worse than shouting at her to go away, calling her an unclean spirit or some nonsense like that.” He sighed out his nose. “Hey, you up for a little validation test?”
Mia folded her arms. “Now what?”
“Just thinking I might grab some random photos of kids, stick one of Robin in there and ask you to pick her out.”
“I think it would be obvious for being a newspaper clipping from 1970. I hav
e a better idea.” Mia let her arms fall and walked out into the hall. “I’ll sketch her. Maybe even paint a portrait if I can find where my stuff is.”
“Speaking of stuff… what did you do with all the crap we had in here?”
“Moved it across the hall to the other empty bedroom. This one’s in use.”
Adam glanced at her, then the bed. “Yeah… I suppose it is.”
16
Certain Sorts of People
Friday, August 31, 2012
The alarm clock erupted in a beeping fit.
Already near conscious, Mia awoke in seconds, and smiled. She’d skipped the late night ghost hunting and crashed early, around nine. Unusually happy, she bounced out of bed and shut the alarm off. The patter of water in the bathroom told her Adam was in the shower. With a mischievous grin, she pulled off her nightgown and decided to join him.
Mia zoomed into the kitchen and went straight for the cabinet where she kept the oatmeal, pausing to look at the box of pancake mix out on the counter already.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but I don’t have time to make pancakes today. I promise I’ll make them tomorrow when I don’t have to work.”
The pancake mix teetered and fell off the counter, hitting the floor with a thump.
“Oh, please don’t be like that…” Mia set the oatmeal aside and picked the pancake mix up. “I’d make them if I could today but”—she blushed, thinking of what had occurred in the shower moments ago—“there isn’t enough time left. If I lose my job, we could lose the house and have to leave.”
She replaced the pancake mix in the row of boxes by the wall on the counter, beside the coffee machine, then microwaved a portion of oatmeal. Adam rushed in only long enough to give her a quick kiss before hurrying out the door. Mia ate as fast as the temperature allowed, rinsed the bowl, and jogged to the front door.
The instant her hand touched the knob, the deadbolt flipped itself on. She opened it, and a click came from the knob. When she twisted the little thing by the knob to unlock it, the deadbolt threw again.
The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run Page 11
