by Apryl Baker
Mrs. Olson’s pale gray eyes turn steely. That hit a nerve.
“I do take care of you—better than most, Mattie. You have no right to say that.”
“Then call the cops! She’s not at the party! She’s dressed in her night clothes for crying out loud!”
Mrs. Olson’s eyes turn sharper. “I thought you said you didn’t see her, Mattie. How do you know what she’s wearing?”
Fudgepops, I shouldn’t have said that. Think fast, Mattie-girl. “Because… when I left, she had on her nightshirt and her fluffy gorilla house shoes. She was getting ready for bed.”
“Then she changed her mind,” Mrs. Olson replies. “Sally told Larry she was going to a party.”
Wait, Mr. Olson said Sally went to the party? And just where is he now? Why isn’t he out here to see what the shouting’s about? Everybody else is up; doors are opening and closing upstairs. “Where’s Mr. Olson?”
“He got called into work.” Mrs. Olson runs a hand through her hair again. “Mattie, I promise you if she’s not home in a few hours, we’ll call the police. Can you wait that long?”
“Okay,” I hold back a sigh. She really believes Sally is at the party. Sally’s already dead so technically finding her won’t help, but I don’t want her to be just another kid marked as a runaway. She deserves better than that. She deserves justice.
Mrs. Olson smiles tiredly at me. “Go fix yourself a cup of tea, dear. There are plenty of cold-cuts in the fridge if you want a sandwich.” She heads back upstairs, cordless phone in hand.
Great… what to do now? There’s only one thing to do — the one thing I swore I’d never do. I can talk to the dead kid in the bathroom. Sally can’t talk even if she shows up; her mouth is taped over, but the little girl in the bathroom can.
I so don’t want to do this, but it’s not about me, it’s about Sally.
I steel myself and head towards the bathroom.
Time to talk to the dead kid.
Chapter Three
My insides churn like I’m gonna upchuck at any second. I’ve worked so hard to deny this part of myself. It’s terrifying to own up to it now, but I have to. It’s for Sally. I can speak for her; find out what happened. My best chance is the kid. She had a wound similar to Sally’s and even if the same person didn’t kill them both, maybe she saw what happened to Sally. It’s a place to start.
The door to the downstairs bathroom beckons me, but I hesitate. What if this starts something I can’t stop again? What if they never leave me alone? This could be the beginning of the end of my sanity.
Stop, stop, stop, I say to myself. It’s not about you, Mattie Louise. Sure, Sally and I have only known each other a month, but foster kids are different. We know what it’s like to be dumped and abandoned. We’re tough as nails, but we stick together to survive. Finding her body is important to me and maybe to her too.
I take another step and stop again. I really, really don’t want to do this. The cold is what bothers me the most. I’ve never been able to get warm, not really. And the cold I’m feeling really hurts – it burns right through me. Especially right now. Deciding I should talk to the kid opened a door I’m not sure can be closed again. I feel the locks opening and the cold is already snaking into my bones. By the time I reach the door, I’m shivering. But I can’t back out now. Time to own up to my weirdness. This is for Sally.
Resolved, I push open the door and go in. The light switch is beside the door and I waste no time flipping it on. The harsh white tile greets me, but there’s no dead kid. But, then, I’ve never tried to find a ghost before, either. They usually find me. Well, Mattie, do something. Standing here like an idiot isn’t helping. “Um… hello?”
Silence.
Nada. No surprise there. I close my eyes and think of the kid, picturing her the way I remembered from before and concentrate really hard on that image. “Look kid, I’m sorry I ignored you earlier. Will you come out?” How stupid does that sound, right?
Well dang it. Maybe I need to concentrate harder. I close my eyes so tight they hurt and whisper, “Come out, come out, come out.” All I need now are red shoes, a blue checkered dress and a little dog named Toto. I feel really stupid.
A giggle breaks the silence behind me. I whirl around, but the only thing that greets me is the towel rack over the toilet.
“Hello? Little girl?”
“You’re silly.”
It’s not my dead kid from before, but a little boy. He’s sitting on the bathtub and looks about nine. Floppy brown curls tickle his ears and eyes as blue as a cloudless summer sky stare at me from a bruised and smashed face. Dear God, it looks like someone caved in half of it. The left side of his face is sunken in, bones sticking out of the skin in a random pattern. His clothes are torn and muddy and he only has on one sneaker. His shoeless foot has been butchered. But it’s the bullet hole in his head that catches my attention.
“Hello,” I whisper.
“You can see me?” He jumps down and moves closer, forcing me to back up until I hit the door. My hand grabs the knob, ready to bolt if he gets too close.
“Yes.”
“Can you help me?” Those big blue eyes bore into me and the cold intensifies.
“What happened to you?”
“I don’t know.”
He sounds so lost and alone. I remember sounding like that after the whole Mom incident. It’s the worst feeling in the world. I probably looked about as bad as this kid, too. I’d been scared and alone with no one to tell me everything was gonna be okay. It’s a lesson we all learn, but to learn it like this is cruel. He’s just a little boy.
“Do you know the little girl that was in here before?” I ask him softly. After all, I don’t want to scare him.
“Can you find my mommy for me?” he asks. “She’s gonna be so mad. I wasn’t supposed to leave the playground, but I did, and now I can’t find her. Please, can you take me to my mommy?”
Oh, crap. I feel his pain and fear inside me. Why can’t the kid just shut up? I don’t like feeling sorry for him. It makes me vulnerable and I don’t do vulnerable. Ever. Best defense is always a good offense. Focus, Mattie. “Look kid, I’m trying to find my friend Sally. Have you seen her? She’s tall, about my age with brown hair and brown eyes? She’s wearing a Mickey Mouse nightshirt.”
He backs away from me, his eyes going round with fear and horror. His poor face becomes even more bruised-looking if that’s possible, now taking on a purplish hue.
“It’s dark there,” he whispers. “And cold.”
“Where?”
He shakes his head no. “I can’t tell,” the little boy says. “Not ever.”
The lights in the bathroom dim, almost going out, and the temperature drops to freezing.
“Why not?”
“Janey tried to tell,” he whispers. “She got caught and now she can’t never tell no one.”
Who is Janey? Another victim maybe? “Will you tell me where the cold, dark place is so I can find my friend?” Holy crap. I can see my breath. Frost appears on the mirror, working its way up like a vine and then splinters to cover the entire surface in white.
“NO!” the little boy yells. “We can’t tell!”
“Please…”
“NOT EVER!” he screams and the lights go out.
I plunge into an icy black abyss. Terror chokes me as I slam open the door behind me and flee into the hallway. I stand there shaking. Calm down, Mattie, I tell myself. It’s just a ghost, it can’t hurt you. Then I concentrate on evening out my breathing and letting my heart rate fall back to normal. Whew. The fear is still there, but at least I’m not biting my knuckles to keep from screaming.
Well, that didn’t turn out the way I hoped. The kid disappeared on me. I probably scared him as much as he scared me. What now? I could go looking for clues in Sally’s room, maybe. But even if I find something, I can’t do anything. Mrs. O has the phone….wait.
Duh, idiot. Can you say laptop?
I run up the stair
s to my room, lock the door and hit the power switch on my one-and-only possession. While waiting for it to boot up, I grab a new shirt and kick off my shoes. In the time it takes for me to pull the shirt over my head, the room turns into a freezer.
Well, fudgepops.
I hear a choked gurgle and that’s when the lights go out.
Chapter Four
I nearly break my neck trying to dodge my desk chair as I fumble for the lamp switch. Bright light blinds me while I search the room with my eyes. I knew this was going to happen. Talk to one ghost and the whole lot of them come out. So not fair.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m creeping myself out for no reason. It takes me a second to remember what I was doing. The laptop. That’s what I was going to do. I need to contact the police and I’ll do it via Google Talk. Thank you, Google.
Shaking my head, I turn around and come face-to-face with the little girl I’d seen in the bathroom earlier tonight. She’s sitting on my bed! ON MY FREAKIN’ BED!
Come on! This is my room for cripes’ sake. Can’t they stay in the bathroom or somewhere that’s not my room?
“Can you help me, please?” Her puppy-dog eyes plead with me. Why am I sucker for puppy-dog eyes? She looks so normal compared to the little boy. At least she wasn’t mangled, just shot.
They all have a bullet wound in almost the exact same place. I know, I know. That doesn’t signify a lead, but it’s all I have to go on. Detective Stabler wouldn’t dismiss it and neither will I.
“Look, kid, I don’t know if I can help or not.”
“I just want my Mommy,” she says. “She told me to stay by the swings and I didn’t. I wanted to see the balloons.”
“The balloons?”
“They were floating,” she whispers. “Red balloons just floating in the wind. They were pretty and I wanted one. I asked Mommy to buy me a balloon and she wouldn’t. I just wanted a balloon.”
“Did you get a balloon?” I ask her, afraid of the answer. Hmm…lured away from her mom with balloons? The kid was at least nine or ten – old enough to know better than to go off by herself. I knew that even before entering the foster care system at five years old! Really, how stupid can you be?
“I don’t remember,” she shakes her head. “I woke up and it was cold and dark and…and…”
“And what?”
“I don’t know!” she wails. Tears, real tears, make wet tracks down her face. “It hurt and then I was in the dark place. Please, please, just find my mommy! I want to go home.”
The pain and confusion in her voice twists my stomach. I know how that feels. No, no, can’t go there. Just push those feelings aside. I need her help. “Do you remember my friend Sally? She came into the bathroom when I left.”
Her eyes go wide and she nods.
“Did you see where she went?”
The room takes an even worse temperature dive and I start to shiver. The kid is shrinking in on herself. She’s drawing away from me, fading I guess you could say. She looks terrified.
“She’s in the dark with us.”
That much I already know, but I need to know the location. “Where is the dark place?”
“Can’t tell,” she shakes her head. “Can’t ever tell.”
“What’s your name?” I change tactics, not wanting a repeat of what happened with the little boy. I don’t want her running away from me just yet.
“Emma.”
“That’s a pretty name, Emma.” I smile at her. “You want me to find your mommy and bring her to you?”
She nods, her face brightening.
“I can’t do that if I don’t know where you are. I need to know where the dark place is so I can show her where you are.”
An ugly rattle floods the room and the little girl jumps off the bed, terrified. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”
The lights flicker and the temperature plummets past freezing. Oh, this can’t be at all good. The rattle seems to be everywhere, coming from nowhere, but surrounding us in its awful gurgles. Emma is crying and I almost feel like doing the same thing. I haven’t been scared since that awful day with my mom. I hate the feeling and as usual, when I get scared, I get mad.
“Emma, what is that?” I demand.
“I won’t tell,” she whispers. “I promise I won’t tell.”
Something’s not right. The kid’s not talking to me. That much I know because she’s not even looking my direction. She’s looking in the mirror. My eyes focus on the mirror and I fall backwards trying to get away from the image there. Bloody, broken bits of flesh make up what I think is a face, but it’s hard to tell. It looks like someone carved it up with a cleaver. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl staring at me and I’m not sure I want to know, either. The bullet hole in its head is there, but it blends in with the sticky black and red of the shredded face. Whatever got Emma got this… person, too. But why is it stopping her from telling me where they are?
“Look here buster,” I fume, working hard to sound confident and angry. “I’m trying to help. I can’t do that if I can’t find you!”
I blink and that bloody mess of ragged flesh is now standing in front of me, breathing heavily. I can smell its hot, putrid breath in my nostrils. For the first time in ten years, I know true terror. If it touches me, all bets are off. I’ll scream like a girl and run.
“No.”
The sound of its voice is painful; the screech is soft, but intense. Cold grips me and I want to run, but can’t. This broken mess of flesh, one eye missing, and the other bloodshot-blue, now towers over me. I feel so much anger rolling off it: anger at me, anger at whoever hurt it, and anger towards everything in general. Oh, crap. If a ghost could actually hurt a person, it would be this one. Not that I begrudge it the anger part, I just don’t want it this up close and personal with me.
“Back off, ghostie,” I snarl and hope anger masks my fear.
“You first.”
Pain explodes in my head and my hands automatically cover my ears. As I fall to my knees, the screeching intensifies with the cold burning all the way to the bone. Make it stop! The screech is even louder, like a power saw cutting through a wall of nails, each one twisting and screaming as they die. It’s what I’d imagine a banshee to sound like. I can’t see and can’t breathe past the pain grinding away at my ears. Only then did I hear myself screaming.
Somehow I feel the vibrations of feet thudding on the floor, but that’s it. Shapes blur as I try to blink away the tears. It hurts so much! I just want it to stop. Please, please make the pain stop. Hands shake me, but I can’t talk.
The mutilated mess of flesh swims up in front of my face and it’s the only thing I can see clearly. Its death rattle is the last thing I hear before a white-hot pain rockets through my head and I fall into a dark pit, screaming as I go.
Chapter Five
The steady beep, beep, beep wakes me. My eyes slam shut as soon as I open them. The bright light shoots pinpricks through my head and the slightest movement causes spirals of fresh pain to ripple through my skull. My stomach rolls and bile rises up into the throat. I don’t ever remember hurting this much. Holy crap. If this is what a hangover feels like, I swear I will never again even contemplate sipping a beer.
It takes a minute for my fuzzy mind to remember what happened. What exactly did Mirror Boy do to me? At least I think it was a guy. Anyway, I didn’t know that ghosts could physically hurt people. Scare them sure, but actually cause harm? That’s new to me. First order of business when I feel better is to do some intensive research into ghosts. Even if I never speak to one again after this, I want to know what they can and can’t do.
There’s that antiseptic smell – and the beep, beep, beep. It’s a big indicator, at least to me, that I’m in a hospital. Hospitals are a haven for ghosts. It’s why I never willingly go into places like this. They badger me with questions and it’s all I can do to pretend I don’t see the little buggers. Usually, it doesn’t bother me. They’re background noise like a T
V or radio playing, just to eat up the silence. But since my encounter with Mirror Boy, I’m more than a little bit terrified.
Fear is not an emotion I’m not used to feeling. I’ve made myself fearless over the years – but when that ghost got in my face, all my defenses scattered to the wind. Blind terror was all I’d felt. I didn’t like it then and I certainly don’t like it now. Nothing has been able to make me feel helpless since the Mom incident. Being here, I can’t help but to remember that day.
We were in yet another run-down motel in New Jersey. I was five. The walls were an ugly shade of burnt orange and the stains in the carpet only added to the stink of the room. Mom gave me Spaghetti-O’s to eat and then turned the TV to the only cartoon channel the motel’s cable service offered. I remember watching SpongeBob and laughing as he and Patrick irritated Squidward.
Mom came in and sat down next to me a little while later. She stroked my hair absently. It was odd because she hadn’t done it in a while. She was usually jonesing for her next heroin fix and this was nice. I didn’t see the knife at first. I was too caught up in the fact she was acting like my Mom again. I remember she started to hum and I smiled. Mama could sing like nobody else I’d ever heard.
“Don’t worry, baby girl,” she’d whispered. “It’s all going to get better now.” She raised her hand and that’s when I’d seen the knife. By then it was too late. I pitched forward off the couch when she ripped the knife out of me. Pain lanced through my chest and I screamed. She brought the knife down again and again, her eyes calm and peaceful the whole time.
She kissed my cheek and told me to go to sleep. Raising the knife once more, she pushed it deep into her own throat before pulling it out. She collapsed beside me, her face inches from mine. I had to lay there and watch her die. The last thing I remember seeing until I woke up in a hospital room was the life bleeding out of her eyes.
