by Val Crowe
“They probably didn’t know anything anyway,” said Wade.
“Why would they say they did, then?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Wade. “Maybe because you’re ringing the dinner bell for ghosts and they’d say or do anything to keep you there? Getting out of there is the best idea you’ve had.”
“I guess,” I said. I was feeling less and less sure that I should leave. “Maybe I’m going to stay another day or so, though. I have enough food and water. I mean, maybe it would be a waste to leave so soon. I feel like I barely scratched the surface of this place.” Man, my bed was comfortable. I burrowed into my pillow, shutting my eyes but keeping the phone close.
“Look, if you stay, I’m thinking I really should come down,” he said. “I could come for a weekend at least. Just to look out for you.”
“Wade.” I yawned. “Last time you were messed up in stuff like this, the ghosts used you against me. You were in danger. I think it’s better if you stay out of this.” I yawned again. The bed hugged my form. I didn’t think I’d ever been this comfortable in my life.
“Deacon?”
“What?”
“I just said something and you didn’t even respond.”
“What did you say?” I said in a sleep-ravaged voice. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Are you falling asleep on me?”
Another yawn. A tugging feeling of comfort and floating. “No,” I murmured. “Maybe. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?” I didn’t wait for a response. I hung up the phone. I didn’t have the energy to put it next to the bed, so I tucked it under my pillow.
That was the last thing I remembered doing.
* * *
Morning.
Gray light cutting through the windows of the Airstream. I had forgotten to draw the blinds because it had been so gloomy yesterday.
I sat up straight in bed. It was as though I had only closed my eyes a moment ago, but I felt well rested and ready to face the day. If I was really going to leave this place today, I needed to at least attempt to get some answers.
I dressed quickly, surveying myself in the mirror. My scraggly stubble was fast becoming an actual beard and not an attractive one. I scratched the growth on my chin and promised myself I’d shave later.
A skip in my step, I hurried out of the Airstream and into the park, crossing under the archway and down the brick pathway.
In the distance, I could hear a buzzing sound, a faint droning, like the sound of a swarm.
Blindly, I walked toward the buzzing.
As it got louder, it became clear where I was heading, and I wasn’t even surprised by that. Of course, I should go to the mirror maze. Why would I go anywhere else? I even laughed aloud, because it was so obvious.
Yeah, it was a good joke.
I was in a great mood. I felt as though I’d embarked on an exciting adventure, like the beginning of a quest. When I was a kid, before all the crap with the ghosts, I’d been pretty imaginative. My favorite kinds of stories had been fantasy stories, like King Arthur, and space exploration, like Star Trek. Yeah, I hadn’t admitted it to Lily, but I used to really enjoy that kind of stuff as a kid. I guess all it proved was that I was shaping up to be a pretty big geek. I even used to get good grades in school, whenever my mother would plop me into an actual school instead of homeschooling me.
But, yeah, after the ghosts, things had gotten pretty screwy. With them flitting around and following me all the time, it was hard to concentrate. And I found I didn’t much care about pretending I was on a big quest. Instead, all I wanted was to focus on getting rid of the spirits that were bothering me.
Then Negus possessed my mom and…
Well, I wasn’t the same after that.
But now, walking through this park, heading toward the mirror maze, it almost felt as though none of those problems had ever happened, like I was still just a happy-go-lucky kid, and this was going to be my first big adventure, where I would prove myself as a hero and pull the sword out of the stone or save the oppressed alien woman.
When I got to the mirror maze, it looked dull and dirty and rundown. The paint on Slappy’s tongue was worn off in several places.
I approached, curious.
Was it really as dangerous in there as my mother had claimed? Sure, there was some broken glass, but I could avoid that. The bigger problem would be if there was structural damage. The maze was several stories high. If some of the pathways were weakened, then I could crash through them and get trapped or hurt. I’d have to be careful.
Because I’d already decided to go in. I was stepping up onto the tongue already, peering inside.
A faint musty smell greeted me.
Yeah, this place had been abandoned for a long time. It was probably mildewed. I wrinkled up my nose, but I stepped inside anyway.
The walls were covered in sheets of mirrors. Most of them were intact, but two or three of them were shattered, pieces of reflective glass on the ground. One was broken but still against the wall, reflecting distorted pieces of me back at myself. The effect was still of a path that went on and on for infinity, swallowing itself.
I turned to look back at the entrance, trying to assure myself that it was still there.
Then, squaring my shoulders, I pressed inside further. I could do this. I was exploring the unknown. Boldly going where no one had gone before. Well… okay, where tons of people had gone before, but no one had gone recently. I smirked.
I rounded a bend.
A kid was sitting in the middle of the floor. He looked up at me. “Hey,” he said. “Do you know the way out?”
I was stunned to see him there. “How’d you get in here?”
“I got away from him,” the kid said. “He said it would be fun. He said there would be candy. But it was bad.” His face crumpled. “And then I got away, but now I’m lost.” He got to his feet.
“Who?” I said. There was someone in the park?
“Do you know the way out?”
“Yeah, it’s just back there.” I pointed. But then I realized that the way out wasn’t the way out anymore. It was just a reflection, an endless reflection, mirrors reflecting mirrors…. My heart picked up speed. I went to the way I thought was out, put my hand against the mirror. It was solid. “That can’t…” I turned back to the kid. Was he a real kid or a ghost kid?
“Please help me,” said the kid. “I want my mom. I want to go home.”
I crossed to the kid and offered him my hand.
He put his hand in mine.
Except my fingers went right through his.
The kid sighed, his face falling.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I knelt down so that I was facing him. “Look, we can still get you out of here.” Maybe that was the kid’s unfinished business. Maybe he could follow me out and then he would be released. “You can follow me.” Of course, I might be trapped in here now too…
The kid raised his face, and now his features twisted. “My mom… she’s different.”
I recoiled.
The kid came for me, looking more and more like a pint-sized me as he did so. “Can you help me? Please?”
“I’m not dead,” I said in a grating voice, backing away from him—it. “Don’t be me. I’m not dead.”
“I asked her to stop.” It was still talking. “She wouldn’t. She just laughed in my face.”
“Shut up.” And now I was stumbling back the way I came, and there was no barrier, nothing at all, just a clear pathway to the outside world. Within minutes, I was out of the maze, my heart pulsing at my temples.
CHAPTER SIX
“Mom,” I said. I was standing over her shoulder. She was at the grill again, the griddle spread out over it. She was flipping pancakes.
“Good morning,” she said cheerily.
“I need you to come with me to the maze,” I said. “I can’t go in there alone. I tried, but I can’t. And if you’re there, it’s going to be different, I just know it.”
&nb
sp; She turned to look at me. “How’d you sleep, kiddo?”
“Are you listening to me?”
She patted my cheek. “You need to shave.”
I sighed.
She turned back to the griddle. “I think the syrup is in your refrigerator.”
Right, another thing she’d forced us to get. Real maple syrup. Once opened, it had be refrigerated, and she had opened it to taste it, and then claimed I needed to store it in the Airstream. “I need to talk to you about this maze thing,” I said.
“Can you check and make sure the syrup is there? And if it is, bring it out.”
I groaned. But I didn’t see what good pancakes would be without syrup, so I went over and sorted through the crap in my fridge until I found the syrup and came back.
“Now,” my mother was saying as she transferred pancakes to stacks on two different platters, “these are the gluten pancakes, and these are gluten free.”
“They look great, Mom, but I really want us to go to the maze. Especially if we’re all leaving. This is our last chance to figure out what’s going with that. I feel strongly that it has answers, and I need to know what’s going on with me.”
“Oh, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” She gestured with her spatula. “I know we were all talking about leaving last night, but I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. I need you to help me convince the Fletchers to stay. Talk to Lily. She likes you.”
“Wait, what? They said they didn’t want to stay,” I said. “Anyway, who cares about that? What I’m talking about, it’s about you and me. It’s our past, and I think we need to face it together—”
“You don’t think Lily needs to face the past?” said my mother. “That’s why she and Patrick came here in the first place, don’t you think? They want to understand the past. They want closure for what happened with their sister. They came to me for that, and I can give it to them.”
“Not really,” I said, and I lowered my voice, in case anyone was listening. “You don’t know anything about what really happened to Molly.”
“That’s not important,” she said. “What’s important is closure.”
“And the jewelry?” I said. “You’re never going to be able to tell them where that is.”
She shrugged. “Oh, that’s the least important thing of all. They care about their sister, not about money.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Patrick seems pretty interested in the money. I mean, maybe he considers paying you an investment, right? Like if you can help him find the jewels, then it’ll be worth it to have hired you.”
She shook her head. “No one is that small-minded.”
Lily poked her head out of the door of her RV.
“Oh, look who’s up,” said my mother. “Want some pancakes?”
Lily smiled. “Yeah, Patrick and I will be right over.”
My mother gave me an imploring look. “Please, help me convince them to stay? I know you don’t approve, but I swear I’m not hurting anyone. And I need the job.”
I was spared having to answer, because Patrick came over, rubbing his hands together. “Look at this food. Man, my stomach is growling.”
“Oh, sit down,” said my mother. “There’s maple syrup. Listen, Patrick, I know we had talked about leaving—”
“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that.” He pressed his palms together. “I was actually wondering if there was any way I could convince you to stay after all?”
“Oh?” she said, looking pleasantly surprised.
“Yeah, Lily and I talked it over,” he said.
“We’re not ready to give up yet,” she said.
My mother smiled from ear to ear. “I could possibly be prevailed upon to stay.”
* * *
Smoke swirled out from underneath my mother’s table and into the tent that she and I had set up earlier that day. There were a cluster of lights at the top of the tent, some of them colored. When they hit the smoke, the effect was truly grandiose. My mother could control the smoke through a pedal underneath the table.
Personally, I thought it was so conspicuous and obviously faked that it couldn’t possibly fool anyone. But people always seemed a little awed by the smoke.
Like now, even though Patrick and Lily had been chattering anxiously at my mother a moment before, now that they saw the smoke, they were completely quiet.
“A mist approaches,” my mother intoned in her serious, sort-of-British voice. “It may carry the spirits of the dead.”
I saw Lily glance at Patrick, her expression hopeful.
We were in a similar configuration as we’d been in at the first seance, the two of them sitting up with my mother and Oscar and I sitting back to observe. Oscar was recording all of this. He had a microphone on a stand resting on a nearby table. He leaned forward, watching it all with interest.
“Who comes?” called out my mother. “If someone is there, give us a sign.”
A book on a shelf next to my mother flew up into the air and landed on the floor with a thud. My mother always insisted putting down a flooring in the tent, because she said that it was classier than grass and because of that effect. It was rigged, of course. My mother had the controls under the table as well. She could reach in and hit a button and the book would go flying.
Everyone jumped, except me. My mother did a very good impression of being startled. She threw up her hands, which meant that she broke the circle between herself and Patrick and Lily. After a moment, she reached out for their hands again. She shut her eyes and drew in a deep breath. When she opened her eyes, she whispered, “Is there a spirit among us? Knock if you are there.”
A knock resounded through the room.
Lily tensed, looking around.
Patrick looked unsettled too.
It was doubly weird because there was nowhere for the ghost to knock. The tent walls wouldn’t produce sound.
“Are you the spirit of Molly Fletcher? Knock once for yes. Twice for no.”
A knock.
Lily’s lips parted. She sat up straight.
And then… another knock.
Huh. That was an interesting way to play it. My mother wasn’t going to reach Molly right away? I wondered why not.
“Do you know of the spirit of Molly Fletcher?”
A knock.
My mother smiled. “Can you bring her to us?”
Two knocks.
“Why not?” said Lily. “Is Molly trapped somewhere?”
My mother suddenly grimaced. She twisted a bit and then gasped and choked. “The spirit… is trying to possess… me,” she managed, as though she was barely getting air. “I will let it in… but hold tight to my hands to anchor me.”
“Of course,” said Lily.
My mother’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she convulsed.
I twitched in my seat. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like it when she pretended this kind of thing. It hit too close to home.
My mother seemed to recover, squaring her shoulders and looking coolly at Patrick and Lily. “Who disturbs me?” she said in a raspy voice that didn’t sound anything like her own.
I fidgeted in my seat. It’s not real, I reassured myself. She’s pretending. She was a good actress, after all. She could pretend all kinds of things. She wasn’t really possessed.
“We’re sorry,” said Lily in a quiet voice. “We’re looking for our sister.”
“You seek the spirit of Molly Fletcher,” said my mother. “But she is not here. She crossed over to the other side of the veil many years ago. Her spirit is at rest.”
“Y-you’re sure?” said Lily.
“I am quite sure,” said my mother. “Your sister is at peace. But she spoke to me before she crossed over.”
“She did?” said Lily. “What did she say?”
“Did she mention some jewelry?” said Patrick.
“She said that she only hoped that her loved ones would be able to move on and find their own peace. She would always miss them,
but she was going to a better place,” said the spirit. “She is a lucky one, unlike me. I am a spirit tethered to this mortal coil. I cannot leave.” On the end of this, my mother’s rasp broke and she sounded a bit more like herself.
I was reassured by that, and if Lily or Patrick noticed, they didn’t let on.
“You’re saying we can’t communicate with her at all?” said Patrick. “We can’t find the jewelry?”
“There has to be a way to reach her,” said Lily.
My mother hesitated. I could see that this wasn’t going the way she wanted it to. They weren’t satisfied with her answers. “There is no way. Unless I am mistaken and your sister has not crossed the veil.”
“Well, could you be?” said Patrick. “Mistaken?”
“It is possible,” said my mother. “It is possible, but—” And then my mother shook and gurgled and gagged, as if she were regurgitating something. When she finally got control of herself again, she addressed them in her normal voice. “I lost the spirit. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said Patrick. “I don’t think that spirit knew anything, anyway.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“So,” said Lily. She was standing in the doorway to the Airstream. She’d stepped inside but hadn’t come in all the way. The door wasn’t even all the way closed behind her. “Is your mother for real?”
I was leaning against the counter. “Uh… what makes you say that?” I bent down to open my fridge. “You want a beer? I swear I’ve got some Newcastle in here somewhere.” I pulled out a container of parmesan cheese and a head of broccoli.
“I don’t know. Nothing exactly,” she said. “It was just a feeling I started to get during the seance. A niggling feeling, like she might be making it up.”
I sighed. I couldn’t find the beer. I shut the fridge and straightened. “Look, I can’t lie to you. My mother puts on a show. The smoke, the knocking, the falling books? It’s all rigged.”
