I ran upstairs into my room. There was no lock on the door. My parents had always respected my privacy. In my mind, I moved a bunch of heavy furniture in front of the door, but what I actually did was just pick up my Magic 8 Ball, the plastic one that answered questions. Like a complete moron, I shook it and asked if I was going to die. I stared as the little letters came into focus. Outlook not so good.
Adrenaline was pumping through my body, skewing everything sideways. I felt like I was in some sick haunted house. Everything was deathly quiet. Then I heard Hemming come in through the glass sliding deck door, the one we never locked. I heard his syrupy, sickening voice.
“Echo? Come on, sweetie, this is just plain silly. You don’t have anything to be ashamed about. Those kinds of things are all in your mind. I can help you with that. I can help you make those thoughts go away.”
He was a teacher, all right, but he was so wrong. The feelings would not go away. I felt cheap and dirty and it was his fault. If Andy had taken the pictures it would be one thing. But Hemming was an old man.
“It’s just art, sweetie. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Trust me.”
Nice argument, but it wasn’t going to cut it. He was going down. If I survived.
I heard him coming up the stairs. In one hand I had his filthy hard drive. In the other I clutched the Magic 8 Ball that I planned on bashing his skull in with if he came after me. He opened the door to my room. I’d climbed up onto my bed and was ready to pounce.
“You have no right to steal my private property,” he said, his voice raspy now, not so calm. He had Mike Walker’s eleven-inch hunting knife in his hand.
I concluded that it was time to negotiate.
“Mr. Hemming, if … if you leave right now, I won’t call the cops and turn you in, if you promise to get help.”
I let that offer hang in the air. He considered it. Then sneered.
“You stupid little bitch…”
A low growl rumbled in my throat.
“Get away from me, you sick asshole!”
He changed his mind, folding back his anger. He shook his head and put on his sad face. He held his hands out like a priest ready to hear my confession. My confession!
“I’m going to count to three and you’d better get out!”
“Or what?” he said, mocking me. “You’ll do what?”
“I’ll kill you!”
He laughed. He actually laughed. That’s what triggered my leap. I saw the shock in his eyes as I flew through the air, the stupid 8 Ball raised with deadly malice. I pictured it knocking him out cold, blood flowing from his scalp. That didn’t happen. He was quick and strong and caught me, twisting the toy away from me as we fell to the floor.
“Give me the hard drive!”
I leapt to my feet, shaking.
“No!”
Softly, he said, “Don’t make me cut you.”
So calm. So measured. I wanted to kill him.
“Go ahead and try!”
I have no idea why I said this. His lips went tight on his teeth. Was he going left or right? He lunged. I guessed correctly. He slashed at my right shoulder and I ducked and tumbled left and got past him. I was free! Run, Echo—run like hell! He grabbed me from behind at the top of the stairs. We grappled, I could feel my hands being cut, then we tumbled down the stairs together, bashing against the walls, knocking off pictures, landing in a horrific crash at the bottom as we collided with a table. I felt a sharp pain in my ribs—like the kind you get from running too hard for too long.
I grabbed my side. I was clutching the knife. And I was bleeding. Mr. Hemming had his hand on the knife, too. He looked surprised as he slowly withdrew it.
“Jesus, Echo, what did you do? What did you do? I wasn’t going to hurt you; I just had to try and scare some sense into you!”
Holding the knife, he paced back and forth like a panther in a cage, biting his lips and rubbing his free hand up and down his pant leg.
“God, I loved you, and now look what you’ve done!”
The pain in my side was like a scalding-hot poker. I gasped. The life was draining out of me. I didn’t want to die. My voice was garbled and wet with blood.
“Please … Help me … Call an ambulance…”
My eyes were filled with all the pleading and peace and love and humanity I could possibly muster. Surely he would act fast now and help save me. He’d stopped pacing. Get the phone! Take out your cell phone and dial! But he didn’t. He didn’t reach for his phone. He’d weighed the options and made a decision.
“I’m sorry, Echo.” His voice was sad. “We both know I can’t do that.”
Haunting words like blows to my chest.
“Please…”
“You were my favorite. But you must know, sweetie, that I can’t let you live. This has gone too far. You’ll ruin my life—”
“No!” I blurted. “I swear…”
“It’s too late.”
He was so hideous in this moment, everything ugly and violent and corrupt—the seconds ticking by in slow motion on the wall clock—as he put the tip of the knife to my heart.
“Good-bye, Echo. You were always my number one girl.”
With one forceful thrust, he shoved the knife in. The pain was unbearable, exploding out from my chest to every cell in my body. Now my life was truly leaking away. I curled into a fetal ball. Everything went blurry, then dark.
I felt myself drifting up and away and in moments I was watching the whole scene from above. Hemming moved so slowly, so confidently, as he walked halfway up the carpeted stairs to retrieve his hard drive, which had slipped from my hand. He picked it up and slid it into the pocket of his jacket. I floated above him, watching as he methodically searched our house until he found a container of disposable antibacterial cloths, which he used to wipe down my hands and my neck and face, anywhere he might have touched me. He wiped down the sliding glass door handle, then quietly let himself out. I floated out through the door and watched him get in his car and drive away. He rolled his window down and played a song on the radio. “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” by Usher. Freakin’ weird.
Without knowing why, I followed him, or what was left of me did. He drove slowly at first, then sped up, taking the ramp onto the freeway and then opening it up, rolling the other windows down, the wind whipping the interior of the car, as though he were trying to blow the sin off himself. It didn’t work. I was sitting in the back seat, calm as can be.
He drove out to Fall City and wound up along a logging road, parked, then got out and popped his trunk, took out a shovel, and walked fifty yards off the road into a dense thicket where he dug a deep hole and buried the knife. He filled in the hole, tamped it down, then walked back to his car, tossed the shovel in the trunk, and took off.
I opened my eyes and was with Cole again. I no longer wanted to hold the sweater. I wanted to burn it. I balled it up and threw it. Cole went and picked it up.
“I’m proud of you, Echo.”
“Proud of me?”
A slut who took her clothes off for one of her teachers?
“You fought him—you fought him as hard as you could.”
“Not hard enough. I didn’t win.”
“No, but you will. I promise you will.”
He came back over holding the sweater.
“Do you think you could remember where he buried the knife?”
“I don’t have to touch that stupid sweater again to remember. I know exactly where it is. My dad used to take me up there when he’d go fishing. I’ve been on that road. I can find it.”
“Perfect. You did great, Echo.”
I fought tears but lost. Cole touched me hesitantly, and I collapsed into his embrace, hugging him tightly. He whispered to me.
“He’s going to pay for what he did.”
“I know,” I said, but I wondered if I was right. There would be so much work to do. Fortunately, I was highly motivated and had at my disposal an amazing team of ghosts who were very good
at one thing in particular. Haunting the living shit out people.
POWER
Over dinner at Middle House, Darby, Lucy, Cameron, Dougie, and Zipperhead listened raptly as Cole told them what had gone down with Hemming, pausing only when Darby would spit out an apt expletive about the twisted teacher.
“I am so going to mess him up,” she said.
“Not before I get my sparks on him,” said Zipperhead.
“I’ll freeze his nuts off,” said Dougie.
“We’ll all get to contribute,” said Cole.
We agreed to get a good night’s sleep and take on the task of haunting Mr. Hemming the following day. I tossed and turned while Lucy purred. I couldn’t sleep and went up to the roof. After a while, Cole came up, too. The night was overcast and chilly. Cole had brought a blanket and we covered up. Even ghosts get cold. And lonely.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“You ought to know by now you can ask me anything.”
“Meryn. The girl you loved … the one you pretty much died for? Do you still think about her?”
“Sometimes.”
I waited for him to continue. But he kept quiet. I had to know.
“Do you still … love her?”
“Yeah, a part of me does,” he answered after a moment.
“That must be hard,” I said.
“It is, except for one thing.”
“What?”
“Except for the fact that everything I’ve ever done in my life, including getting murdered, led me here. To you.”
He’d done it to me again. I could feel the blood rising in my cheeks.
“Not that it means anything,” he said. “I know you have what you have in your heart and nothing I can do can make you change that. I’m not even sure I’d want you to. I want what’s best for you. Whatever makes you at peace.”
There he was, being all chivalrous again. A part of me was hoping that he’d stop saying and doing the right thing all the time and for once just throw it down and make a righteous play for me. But he was right. He knew what was in my heart. Andy.
“Um, remember you told me how you died? I was wondering—what happened to the guy who hit you with the pipe? What did you do to him?”
“Nothing yet. He’s too stupid to kill. I’m still working the whole thing out.”
“No need for you to be Mister Nice Guy when it comes to some knuckle dragger who murdered you.”
“He stood over my body and I thought he felt bad. But then he laughed. It kind of freaked me out. I was so shocked and angry that for some reason I blanked out on his face. I can’t remember what he looks like.”
“I’d say he’s got some horrible payback coming his way. I think you should let me help you find him.”
“Maybe someday. First we’ve got to deal with your killer.”
“Why do I come first?”
“Because I say you do.”
When a guy puts your world, your feelings and troubles and problems, before his, it does something to you, something that feels really good inside.
But something else was telling me that outing Hemming wasn’t going to be as easy as everyone thought. I hoped I was wrong.
“By the way,” I said, “do you have a power?”
“Um … yeah…”
He seemed embarrassed. I smiled at him.
“Okay…?”
Like, was he going to tell me? He didn’t say a word. But he smiled slightly, then looked down at the garden, staring intently, his eyes slowly narrowing. I watched, my heart beginning to flutter as a single stemmed rose snapped free from a bush and leisurely floated up until it was right in front of my eyes. It bloomed, just for me. Wham. I felt it in my heart.
“Telekinesis. I can make things move,” said Cole.
“You sure can.” My voice was barely a whisper.
* * *
That night in bed, I kept thinking about Cole. I was hoping he was in his bed thinking about me. But my heart beat on and on and spoke to me. Andy. Andy. Andy.
Morning took a long time to come. Time passes slowly when you have something you’re looking forward to, and I was looking forward to tormenting Hemming until he begged for mercy. For months, maybe even years, he’d been taking advantage of young girls and getting away with it. It was time for retribution.
After breakfast, we went for a flight. I led the way, with Cole, Darby, Dougie, Cameron, Lucy, and Zipperhead following. We swept over the treetops, gliding effortlessly. I knew my way around King County and would have no trouble finding the Fall City logging road Hemming had taken to the place where he’d buried the knife. We needed it. We had plans for it. We soared over Lake Sammamish and were cresting over Fall City in another minute. I swept down to the main road and looked for the turnoff.
I was confused. It wasn’t where I thought it was. I backtracked and came in from another angle but with even less success. I was getting disoriented. So many new roads, new buildings, houses, and developments since I had been there when I was a kid. Cole read the confusion on my face.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s … not there…”
“It hasn’t moved; things have changed—that’s all,” he said.
He was right. I just needed to keep looking. I remembered riding with Hemming, sitting in the back seat of his car, the departed passenger, watching trees rush by on either side of the car. I remembered a field with tall grass growing around the skeleton of a rusty, old green John Deere tractor.
We flew down to ground level, the same level I’d been at when Hemming was driving. I zoomed down road after road, my eyes like lasers, scanning, searching … hoping … praying. And then there it was. The tractor.
I recognized a grouping of tall pines by the turnoff.
“Here!” I said. “Right here.”
I found the general area, maybe because I was actually remembering, or maybe because some kind of fate was drawing me there. I dropped down, let myself become earthbound, and felt the ground beneath my feet. I walked on the damp grass, my new friends by my side.
“How do you know where it is?” asked Zipperhead.
“I don’t,” I said. “But it’s here. I can feel it. Right here.” I pointed to my chest.
It was true. I could feel a very light stabbing pain in my heart and as I moved deeper into the pines, the pain grew stronger. If I veered one way or another, it would either increase or diminish. I had what amounted to a cosmic divining rod in my spectral body and it was going to lead us to the weapon that had killed me. In another minute, the pain in my chest was so intense that I collapsed. Cole caught me in his arms before I hit the ground.
“I think it’s here,” I said.
Cole carried me backward while the others sank down into the cold earth. No need for a ghost to dig. We can pass easily into the ground. It welcomes us.
It was Lucy who found the knife. Hemming had wrapped it in a rag and it hadn’t been buried that long. Cole suspended the knife in midair and studied it carefully.
“It looks like he’s wiped it down. I don’t see any marks. And there’s no blood, nothing to connect it to you, Echo.”
The blade was sharp and deadly. It gave me the willies.
“He stuck you with this thing?” said Darby, grabbing the knife out of midair and hefting it.
“That must have hurt like a mother,” said Zipperhead.
“Duh,” said Lucy, looking a little peeved. “About as much as having your skull impaled on spikes, right?”
Zipperhead frowned and looked like he was thinking. “I dunno; both suck. The way we all got it sucked.”
Everyone nodded his or her silent agreement. Reliving the various ways in which we’d been undone was not a joyful pastime.
“Well, we can’t just drop off the knife and call the cops and hope they find some DNA, right?” Cole said.
“Yeah, I don’t see that working,” said Cameron.
“So then. Let’s go do some haunting,” said Cole.
As we approached the school, I wondered if Hemming would even be there. We didn’t have a concrete plan, so we left the knife stuck high in a tree and went in and wandered the halls, watching as life went along just fine without us. I noticed that this time around, Zipperhead, Darby, Dougie, and Cameron were having a hard time hanging around a school full of living, breathing teenagers. The fact that they’d been cheated out of the most formative years of their lives was apparent on their faces and it made me sad. But they were there for me, ready to right the wrong that had been committed. I knew that wouldn’t repair the damage that had been done to them, but busting Hemming would help. Eventually, we found him.
We bird-dogged Hemming throughout the day, watching as he wore his sticky-sweet smile, chatting up girl after girl. I wondered why I’d never noticed how he paid so much more attention to girls than guys. Now I knew. He was a predator.
We were in no hurry, and collectively decided that a haunting on the school grounds would have too much collateral damage to be feasible. There were plenty of kids at school that I would have loved to give a good scare to, but there were kids that I liked, too, friends and people who I knew were mostly okay, even if they acted like jerks so they wouldn’t be picked on.
The main thing was I wanted to keep my eye on Hemming in case he made a run for it. I didn’t want to lose him. After observing him for an hour or so, I concluded that there wasn’t much chance of him bolting. Even after all that had happened, he was cool and calm, the picture of patience and understanding as he taught his Psych 101 and Photography as Art classes, smiling at the girls as always.
When the 3:00 p.m. bell rang and the school emptied out, Hemming lingered only briefly at his desk, copying some files onto another hard drive. I sat with my ghost posse in the empty desks, watching him. Out of habit, I sat in my old seat, the one I used when I was alive. At one point, Hemming shivered as if he was cold and scanned the classroom, his eyes finally settling close to me. He was looking at my desk.
Bad Girl Gone Page 18
