Spooked

by Sharp, Tracy

  “Kerry, it’s the only way to avoid you getting into trouble.”

  “They’ll send me to juvie,” she said again, looking at the ground. “I’ve messed up too many times now. I’ve been warned.”

  I wondered why she pushed her luck so much. “Okay, then. That decides it. Let’s go, now, before they find us here having this little party.”

  Mick nodded once. “Right. This never happened.”

  We headed to the car and rode back to the school in silence. Police cars sailed past us, going in the opposite direction.

  “I bet we just missed them,” Mick said, his eyes darting between the rearview and side mirrors. “They’re headed to the Pointe now.”

  I was certain the police had checked there last night, but knowing that the Pointe was where kids went parking, figured they’d check again.

  Or maybe they’d gotten a tip from someone. Someone who took her.

  “Okay, folks. We’ve officially obstructed a police investigation by failing to come forward with information concerning the crime.”

  Kerry turned in her seat. “What the hell are you? A cop?”

  “No, but I watch a lot of cop shows.” I stared out the window, trying to slow my hammering heart.

  The air in the car was heavy with a single unspoken truth.

  Someone had taken Eliza, and it didn’t look good.

  ***

  I called Delia on her cell to tell her what was going on.

  “Oh, dear Lord, no,” she said in an urgent whisper.

  “She’s been missing since yesterday. She had a study period at the end of the day that she skipped out on. She hasn’t yet been gone twenty-four hours, but Eliza wasn’t one to just take off and not tell anyone. And she’s, well, Eliza. So they’re starting to search early.”

  Eliza had won countless pageants since she was a little girl. She currently held the much-coveted title Pumpkin Princess, for which she’d been crowned just the week before at the annual Saints Hallow Pumpkin Festival.

  “I’m glad. Oh, Lord,” Delia said again. This just didn’t happen in our sleepy little town. People kept their doors unlocked. “I’m leaving now. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The search party began at the wooded area that edged the school parking lot. The school sat on ten acres of land, much of it woods and water. A swampy area of dead black trees reaching toward the sky was home to various types of wildlife. We often saw fox, raccoon, deer, snakes, frogs, and a variety of birds. They made their way to the school grounds now and then, reminding us that we were infringing on their territory, and not the other way around.

  Side by side, the long row of students, teachers, and concerned citizens stepped carefully, slowly into the woods, watching every inch of ground for any sign of Eliza. Nobody spoke. Even the clowns who joked in nerve racking situations to lighten the mood were quiet. Devin Moran, Eliza’s ex-boyfriend, looked out into the woods, as if expecting Eliza to come out from behind a tree at any moment. His rugged, handsome face was drawn. But was it worry for Eliza or for himself? Was he involved in her disappearance? He had to have hard feelings about their breakup. I wanted so badly to open my mind and search through his, but I heard Delia’s warning in my head.

  The air around us was heavy with tension. The idea that we may not find Eliza alive weighed heavily on us all.

  I turned back and saw Delia coming up behind me, her face ashen. She took a spot next to me and briefly patted me on the lower back. “Good Lord,” she whispered. “Please let us find her okay.”

  Looking up, I spotted Cole Nichols, who just graduated from the academy in the spring. Seeing him with a police uniform on was strange to me. His baby face looked grim as he looked over the faces. He caught my gaze and held my eyes for a moment, giving me a friendly nod.

  Pretty eyes. His thought came through to me clearly. Then, a glimpse of a thought that my dark, shiny hair matched my eyes.

  I blinked. This was an unusual happening and despite the somber situation, I felt the blush on my cheeks.

  I nodded back, lowering my eyes to the ground again. I’d always liked Cole in a schoolgirl crush kind of way, but always thought that he would never give me a second glance in that way. The way that boys look at girls. But now, in the midst of this melancholy and chaos, he noticed me as a girl. How strange.

  When I glanced up again he had moved into the trees and his eyes searched the ground, looking for any clue that would tell him where Eliza had gone.

  I gave myself a mental shake and said a silent prayer of my own, keeping my eyes down.

  I looked around for Kerry. She and Mick were farther to the right, several students and a few teachers between them. Mick seemed to feel me watching and lifted his head. His gaze met mine and a spark of regret flashed between us. We understood that we hadn’t caused Eliza’s disappearance, but we were involved in the crime, just because the mannequin that we hung was now wearing Eliza’s clothes.

  I wondered whether the police had found Irene yet. They must’ve. I’ve heard stories, told in an embarrassed hush, of police coming up on teenage couples in compromising positions. They mostly made sure the girl was okay, and not being forced into something they didn’t want to be a part of.

  I wondered where the police were when Eliza’s abductor dressed Irene in her clothes.

  Where were they when we’d hung Irene? I’d been so afraid we’d get caught. Now I wished that we had been. We wouldn’t now be unwitting participants in the abduction of a young girl.

  My throat constricted as we peered under fallen logs, moving them as best we could to see beneath them. I held my breath as long sticks were used to search for anything that could be Eliza’s in creeks and small ponds. Would they send divers out? I thought they probably would. I wanted to know where Eliza was, but I didn’t want to find her in that swampy, dank water. If we found her there, I didn’t think I could take it. I knew that I’d never be the same.

  None of us would.

  A light wind lifted my hair from my forehead and blew it back from my face, and on that breeze I thought I heard the voice of a child. I couldn’t make out the words, but a child whispered, close to me, feathery soft breath on my ear.

  I looked around, wild-eyed, my heart drilling against my chest. The closest person to me was about a foot away but he was no child. He was Mr. Tanner, the gym teacher that so many girls in my school had a crush on. Mrs. Tanner, beautiful in faded jeans and a sweat shirt, kept her auburn, ponytailed head downward, her face a study in deep concentration. Everyone knew her. She was an ex-cheerleader, ex-Pretty Pack girl from this school. She was about ten years my senior, and about ten years younger than Mr. Tanner.

  The gossip on the grapevine was that she had been Mr. Tanner’s student when she’d gone to Saints Hallow High School. Although they both swore up and down that their relationship hadn’t started until she’d graduated, most folks thought differently. Mr. Tanner had been right out of teacher’s college then, just a young man himself, in his early twenties. It wasn’t hard to believe an attraction had started between the beautiful Miranda Friedman, then a high school senior, and the young, handsome Edward Tanner.

  It was all water under the bridge now.

  Mr. Tanner turned his face to look at me and offered a sad little smile.

  The whispering stopped.

  “Are you okay, Lorelei?” Mr. Tanner asked me, his warm brown eyes concerned.

  No, actually. An invisible child was just whispering in my ear. “Yes, thank you.” I offered a smile back to him, though a chill had snaked up my spine.

  We searched for hours. I listened for the whispers of the child to come back to me, but the child was silent. At one point I stood still, closing my eyes and straining my ears, but heard nothing but the sounds of the others moving over dried leaves and twigs.

  By the time we found our way out of the woods, it was dusk. Everyone was hungry and tired, and I wondered whether they felt as I did about not finding Eliza—a mixture of disappointment
and relief.

  If we actually had found her in those damp, mossy woods, I don’t think any of us would’ve ever gotten over it.

  A darker thought entered my mind as we made our way back to the school parking lot. One that made my skin creep and crawl over my bones.

  Was Eliza’s abductor among those searching for her? Was he with us right now, pretending to search like the rest of us, and all the while getting his kicks because he knew something the rest of us didn’t?

  He knew where Eliza was, and if she were alive or dead.

  ***

  I went home with Delia, who was quiet during the drive, except for repeating the same phrase at one or two minute intervals. She kept whispering, “Dear Lord. Dear, dear Lord.” I think she was saying the same prayer over and over again, for Eliza.

  The secret that I was keeping was beginning to eat me alive. I wanted to tell Delia about sneaking out, meeting Mick and Kerry. About hanging Irene. Everything. But the thought of her disappointment in me was almost too much to bear. So much so that keeping the secret was worth the guilt I was feeling.

  “I want you to be very careful, Lorelei.” She looked away from the road and at me for a long moment. “Don’t trust a soul. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, not thinking that she couldn’t see my nod of agreement because she was looking back at the road in front of us.

  “Lorelei?”

  “Yes. I do understand.” My voice was barely a whisper.

  She reached over and patted my arm. “I am certain that Eliza knew her abductor. It was somebody she trusted. Otherwise, she never would’ve gone with him.” She was thinking out loud, trying to figure out the puzzle. “There’s a wolf among us, in sheep’s clothing.”

  I nodded again, watching as dusk fell around us.

  “It could be anyone,” she said. “Dear Lord. Dear, dear Lord.”

  ***

  Although we didn’t expect many trick-or-treaters that night, Delia and I both donned our witch’s hats and long, black gowns. Halloween was for kids, Delia always said. We couldn’t disappoint them, even with everything going on.

  Delia placed an enormous pumpkin cake on the table, with candles, which she lit in front of me. “Lorelei, this isn’t how our usual tradition goes for your birthday, but I know you don’t feel like celebrating with Eliza having gone missing.”

  I nodded.

  “I thought you could make a wish, blow out the candles, and we’ll share your cake with the trick-or-treaters as we always do.”

  A knock sounded on the door and I turned and headed down the stairs, smiling at Wentworth as he gave me a little wave. He stood on the stoop, fedora propped on his head, and a gaggle of dressed children around him.

  “As you can see, we have a bunch of spooks who want their treats. I think you’d better hand them out. Goodness knows what these ghouls are capable of,” Wentworth said as I stepped aside to let him in.

  “So I see,” I said, tossing handfuls of candy into each child’s container.

  After several “thank yous” I closed the screen door.

  “Delia is in the kitchen cutting the cake for the kids,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  Wentworth nodded, his round spectacles perched on the end of his nose. “Lorelei, I’m very sorry about the disappearance of young Eliza. I hope she’s found safe and sound.”

  “I hope so, too, Went.”

  He headed into the kitchen.

  More kids came out than we thought would, but very few without their parents, which was a good thing. Every year there were teens who dressed up, trying to stretch their childhood out a little longer, and Delia always gave them treats as long as they had costumes on. The teens who weren’t dressed up got only a frown and a lecture from her. Not this year. Delia was understandably preoccupied. I tossed candy into their containers, but they weren’t getting birthday cake.

  She came out of the kitchen with a bright, cheerful smile for the kids, but her eyes belied the worry she felt for Eliza—for all the kids in the town, if there was a predator among us.

  It could be anyone, she’d said. I saw her eyeing the fathers out with their children. Her gaze remained on them just a little longer than normal as she handed out pumpkin orange cake on small paper plates. She ooooh’d and aaaahhh’d over the little ones’ costumes, and her tinkling laughter filled the house, but the effort she’d put into being cheerful at Halloween exhausted her.

  After the last stragglers were gone, she plopped herself down in her rocking easy chair, slowly rocking back and forth as she did each night. But tonight she stared out the window at the pattering rain hitting the glass. The sky had just opened up.

  Wentworth sat in a big, fluffy easy chair cleaning his spectacles on his shirt. “At least this stuff held off until now.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good thing.”

  “But it will destroy evidence,” Delia said, her words sounding breathless.

  Wentworth glanced at her, and then his gaze shifted to me and stayed there long enough to tell me that he was worried about her. She wasn’t herself at all.

  I turned to her. “Delia? Are you okay?

  She opened her lips, about to speak, and then closed them again. She continued watching the rain for a long moment, before her lips parted again. Clearly, she was struggling to get it out.

  I waited for her to tell me what she really wanted to tell me. Wentworth placed his glasses back on the end of his nose and tilted his head back, watching her. The air in the living room had gotten heavy with her unspoken concern.

  Finally, she said, “I know what you’re thinking, Lorelei, and I want you to forget about it this minute.”

  Wentworth had known about my gift for a while. He was old school, and he’d been around the block a few hundred times. He had recognized it on his own the moment he’d laid eyes on me. But he was one of the very few on the planet who could be trusted with my life.

  I dropped my gaze, chewed my bottom lip.

  “You’d make yourself a target, girl.”

  But the fact that she had struggled to say this to me told me that she had been considering it, too. She was worried sick that there might be a maniac out there, and that Eliza wouldn’t be the last girl he took.

  “Maybe there’s a way I can do it without anyone knowing,” I said, all in a rush. “Delia, I can find out who took Eliza. I know I can.”

  “I know you can, too, but when you use that bit of magic you have, you put something of yourself out there. There is a chance, if the person you are looking into pays attention, they will figure out it is you doing the searching. If you lift this secret from them, and they know it’s you who has taken it, they may come after you.”

  I sighed. “There has to be a way.”

  “And you know that it isn’t just the person who took Eliza that I’m worried about. What if they find out and come looking for you?”

  I stared out the window, watching as the rain hit the glass harder, faster, like being thrown by some unnamed fury. They. I knew what they she meant.

  “There has to be a way,” I repeated.

  Delia pushed out a deep, resigned breath. “You’re playing with fire, girl.”

  ***

  I hadn’t seen my parents since my father dropped me off at Delia’s eleven years before. Delia said that they missed me, and sent the rare text messages to her cell phone on cheap, pay-as-you-go phones that they immediately destroyed. They were followed, by things they called shadow spooks—entities that hid in shadows, dark silhouettes that attached themselves to shadows and watched you from shaded areas. They didn’t like the sunshine and couldn’t stay attached to anything in the light.

  “The shadow spooks are a type of shifter. They are supernatural creatures sent from the Underworld. The Devil has various levels of dark angels. Each has a job to do. Those with powerful dark magic can summon them to do their bidding. The shadow spooks are sent to watch and often collect those who shimmer—those, like you, with a particular gif
t. Your energy would be sucked dry by entities that use it like a drug.”

  “Like crack for demons?”

  Delia nodded once, without smiling. “Yes. Exactly like that. Energy like yours is difficult to come by, rare, and the high they get from it is unmatched by anything they can get from any other creature.”

  My head was spinning, trying to take it all in. I’d been taught up to now to forget anything unusual, so that I wouldn’t draw any attention to myself. But now Delia was filling me in on things I never knew, but needed to know now. “Who would send the shadow spooks after Mom and Dad?”

  Delia sat back in her rocking chair, moving slowly backward and forward, and knitting needles in her hands, working as if they had a mind of their own. “Some think your gift is too dangerous for you to be…here.”

  “You mean alive?”

  She nodded again, once. “Yes. You’re a threat to all kinds of people. But mostly bad people. You could put them out of commission.”

  “But what do they look like? Shadow spooks?”

  Wentworth leaned forward, his forearms resting on his lap. “There have been glimpses of phantoms. So quick that many times those who do see them wonder whether they’d actually ever really saw them at all.”

  “And they use people like me as a drug?”

  Wentworth leaned back, clasping his hands together. “They might use you to barter for more power. Like a gift to the upper management, shall we say? Or they might use you for themselves. There are stories…fairy tales really, about what they do.”

  “But the fairy tales are true, aren’t they?” I asked, uneasiness creeping over me.

  Wentworth nodded. “Many times they are, Lorelei. The stories come from somewhere, don’t they?”

  Delia watched me for a long moment, her face becoming resigned. She sighed. “But you’re still going to do this, aren’t you?”

  I gazed out the window at the blackness beyond the glass. Rain drilled against the pane, as if coming out of nowhere. “If I don’t do this, another girl may vanish, Delia.”