Shade

by Marilyn Peake

  Turning to George, Kailee and me, Gabriella asked us for details of everything we had discovered. She also said she was ready to know which missing girl each of the items in front of her had belonged to. We identified the owner of each item. Then we told her about everything we had read in Annie’s suicide letters. We described Misty’s preoccupation with modeling and her diary entries about getting ready to meet some man who had offered her a modeling job. We told her about the ominous change in Dylan’s letters to Ursula Wooten and the letters we had found from some guy named Tom, offering to help her. We described everything in great detail, including the money the guy was offering Ursula.

  Gabriella just said, “Hmmm ... Hmmm...” from time to time. When we finished talking, she turned back to her crystal ball. I couldn’t see inside it, only caught flashes of something swirling within. I wanted to look closer, but was too afraid of that blinding headache I had experienced last time I tried. I didn’t want to go through that again.

  After what felt like forever, Gabriella turned away from her crystal ball and toward us. She said, “I basically see what I saw before, but I feel much more certain about it now and the details are stronger, less vague. Definitely, look at house number 1044.” With that, she looked directly into my eyes. “I feel now that the girl who wrote in the diary, you said her name is Misty Perkins, is connected to my earlier vision of a dungeon or basement. I believe now that the dungeon is located in a basement and it might very well be the basement of house number 1044. Be very careful when you go there.” Turning to Brandon she warned, “Do not let George, Kailee or Shade out of your sight. You check out the house and the basement first. But do not let these young people out of your sight at any time, Brandon. There is great danger in this location.”

  Gabriella’s cat came slinking back into the room, eyeing each of us suspiciously. It looked intently in the direction of each of the ghosts and appeared to be studying them, so I assumed it could see them. Gabriella called to it, “Fury! Fury! Come here, girl! I have someone I want you to meet.” To Neil she said, “Do you like cats?”

  Neil gave her a big, hopeful smile.

  Gabriella scooped up her cat—a big, fuzzy mass of patchwork fur with eyes—and placed it next to Neil. She said, “You two will be great friends, I just know it. Neil, meet Fury. Fury, meet Neil.” The cat meowed. Neil pulled some string that looked a lot more real than he himself did from out of his pocket. As he made circles on the floor with it, Fury took off, trying to catch it with her paws.

  Gabriella turned back to the rest of us. “OK. Now, the girl with the suicide notes and the hair in the hairbrush...”

  I trembled inwardly. My hands started to shake. I thought I might pass out. Those items were Annie’s! I tried not to miss anything Gabriella was saying about them, although part of me wanted to hear absolutely nothing.

  Gabriella said, “This girl is in grave danger.” My heart sank. The hope I had been clinging to just kind of dropped out of me. I felt exhausted. Tears started running from my eyes. Numbed by shock, I only realized I had been crying when I felt water on my lips and tasted salt.

  Neil stopped playing with Fury. Fury rubbed her back against Neil, which caused cloudy edges of him to float up into the air, much like dust motes in sunshine. Then she hopped into his lap and curled up there, waiting until he’d once more pay attention to her.

  Gabriella continued, “This girl ... Annie Green you called her ... is the one I had sensed wandering off into places she shouldn’t have gone. There was danger where she went; she just didn’t know that until it was too late. The truck I had seen before, and the dusty road with a serpent uncoiling itself and rattling its tail—I’m pretty sure this is a real truck taking Annie into a desert somewhere. The skull and crossbones I saw hanging above her head ... I don’t believe she’s dead yet, but she is very close.”

  I lost it. I started sobbing openly. Kailee came over and put an arm around me. We sat together then, holding each other, while Gabriella described what she saw of Ursula Wooten.

  Gabriella said, “My visions are clearer now. Earlier I had told you that I saw a basement, a babbling stream, a pine tree with the number four on it, a pirate on a boat and darkness all connected to the girl with the diary. As you’ve informed me today, the girl with the diary is Misty Perkins. But right now at this point in time, I only see her as connected to the basement and darkness. The other images appear to come from Misty’s future if we don’t rescue her.” Gabriella paused. She took a breath. Then she said, “I do not have such hopeful news regarding the final girl, Ursula Wooten. She’s connected to everything that Misty and Annie are connected to, but her situation is different. She’s the girl with the pregnancy test sticks indicating a developing pregnancy, is that correct?”

  Too frightened to speak, superstitiously feeling as though anything we put into words might make bad things come true, Kailee, George and I just shook our heads yes.

  Gabriella continued, “Well, I sense both life and death in the visions I see for Ursula. The earlier images I had experienced before of teenaged girls and babies, chains and a dirty hospital room and surgical equipment—I believe now that those are most strongly connected to Ursula.” Gabriella paused. Her face looked old and strained. She said, “Ursula was definitely pregnant. The pregnancy test sticks you found were hers, I’m sure of it. I believe that either Ursula or her baby have died. I don’t think that both have died, but I’m not sure. Pregnancies carry such strong signals of life renewing itself that it’s not always possible for psychics to decipher whether or not an infant in a vision is still alive ... or has passed away.”

  Gabriella took a sip of tea. Then picking up a ledger from the coffee table and hugging it tightly against her breasts, she said, “Now, these ledgers ... I think they’re extremely important.” Gesturing with a hand toward all the items on the coffee table, she added, “I think all these items are related to the ledgers and to the missing girls. And I think that all three of your missing girls are connected in their circumstances.” She then talked about the photographs I had found retweeted on Annie’s Twitter feed: “I’m not sure how the pictures on Annie’s Twitter feed are related to the missing girls, but I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that they’re important, especially the one of the water and the pine tree bent into the letter four. What I can’t see ... and it frustrates me no end that I have absolutely no vision related to it ... is exactly who retweeted those pictures and how they relate to the girls.” She then went back to discussing the ledgers: “I think that if you can find the ledger or ledgers from this year, you’ll see notations about all of these girls. I suspect the ledgers are records of human trafficking.”

  George asked, “What? What do you mean?”

  Gabriella’s eyes filled with kindness, with emotional support and warmth. “Human trafficking. I believe your friends have been sold for whatever reason or are in the process of being sold. It’s important to find them as quickly as possible.”

  By the time Gabriella had shared all the information she had figured out, it was midnight. Gabriella and Harper conferred with each other. They concluded there was too great a sense of imminent danger around house number 1044 right then, but that we should go with Brandon to investigate it tomorrow evening at dusk.

  The next day was Black Friday.

  When I got home, I assumed my mother would be home, most likely sleeping, after all the work she had done this Thanksgiving. Not only was she not asleep, she was nowhere to be found. Scared to death that she was home in some room I had overlooked, I tiptoed into her bedroom as quietly as I could. I wanted to see that box that had been delivered to her.

  It was sitting right there in the open, right on her bed.

  I opened the box flaps. The purple maternity dress with yellow ducks all over it was gone. I realized I needed to move fast and keep my wits about me if I didn’t want to get caught. One by one, I pulled all the items out of the box; then piled them up on the bed in reverse order, so that I cou
ld put them back in the same order in which I had found them as quickly as possible. After removing adult clothes from the top half of the box, I was shocked to find baby clothes and other baby items at the bottom of the box.

  My hands shook so bad, I ended up dropping a whole bunch of baby pacifiers all over the floor. They went bouncing all over the place, several different colors of pacifiers: pink, blue, yellow, green. I felt horrified. I had no idea how many there had been. When I thought I had found them all, I found a pink one under the bed. Shit. Shit. Shit. This was not good.

  I heard my blood pumping in my ears so loudly, I was afraid I wouldn’t hear my mom if she came back home. I made my heart slow down. I went back to inspecting the box.

  Every item of clothing had two or three letters printed on the tag with black permanent marker. I assumed they were people’s initials, the way moms print their kids’ initials inside stuff like school jackets and camp clothes. My mom had printed my own initials inside everything, even my underwear, when she sent me off to summer camp when I was a kid.

  I noticed there were a number of baby outfits and blankets and a bunch of maternity clothes marked with the initials U.W. Did that mean Ursula Wooten? My hands started shaking again at that thought. Was my mother somehow involved in Ursula’s disappearance?

  Then I had one positive thought: If U.W. did stand for Ursula Wooten and if those items were for her, did that mean she was still alive?

  I packed everything back in the box and hoped it looked exactly as I found it. Then I went upstairs to my bedroom.

  In order to keep my mind off what I had just done and what we’d be doing the next day, I finished designing the Christmas version of The Tiger’s Den. I became so obsessively immersed in this project that the end result had a rather busy-looking format. There were Christmas and winter symbols everywhere. I kept in mind what Mr. Lafferty had told me about keeping the separation of Church and State and adding lots of secular stuff. And boy, did I add secular stuff. I’m not sure I missed a single winter image. The Tiger’s Den became alive with children building snowmen, snowwomen, snowchildren, snowbabies, and even making snow angels in the snow itself. There were skiers and snowboarders and sled riders. There were Christmas trees and fires in fireplaces.

  I added Easter eggs of Leotard Girl everywhere. Lots of girls in my new Christmas-themed forum design were wearing red leotards.

  Then it struck me. This would be kind of devious. I hoped it wasn’t stupid. I hoped it wasn’t dangerous. I had planned, as usual, to invite the students at my school to find as many Easter eggs as possible. But what if I included an Easter egg of something no one would even know was an Easter egg unless they were already familiar with it?

  I added a stream in front of a hill. On top of the hill I placed two pine trees, one with branches shaped into the letter four.

  CHAPTER 25

  I woke up early afternoon on Black Friday. With hours to fill before dusk, I felt completely at loose ends with myself. I decided to get out of the house and do some Christmas shopping.

  The stores were crazy. This year more than any other, I realized how disconnected from Christmas I felt. Everything around me conspired to inform me that shopping and buying should be my highest priorities right now. And if that wasn’t the case, I must have a major personality flaw that kept me from understanding the true meaning of Christmas and getting into the “Christmas spirit.” But I had so many other things on my mind. My best friend was missing. Two other girls from my high school were also missing. I knew things I felt too young to handle. One of the missing girls was most likely pregnant. Best guess from a psychic analyzing lots of physical clues is that these girls were kidnapped for human trafficking, a term I only became familiar with after we found the ledgers.

  As I tried to find gifts for the people in my life, I felt jarred by the loud music. Every once in awhile, there was a soothing, peaceful Christmas song, but mostly it was just loud and overly happy. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose ... Oh, please! Just shut up!

  Lights blinked in all kinds of mismatched rhythms, some in time to the music, some not at all. Purple lights blinked in time to the beat of Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer while the red lights were completely out of sync. The red lights seemed to be going much slower, more like: Blink ... Silently count 1-2-3-4 ... Blink ... Silently count 1-2-3-4 ... And there it is once again: Blink! It distracted me. I pondered the philosophical/artistic question: shouldn’t the red lights be the ones blinking in time to a song about a red-nosed reindeer? Just sayin’. Over-the-top gaudy decorations had been hung everywhere. Candy canes. Ugly plastic elves with carrot-orange hair and huge plastic ears. They reminded me of Pinocchio when he got his donkey ears. The Christmas trees were gaudy, festooned with Christmas balls, sprayed with fake snow and garland that looked like red and silver aluminum foil. And everywhere, the main decoration: sales signs. I started singing to myself with sarcastic religious fervor: Oh, come let us adore it: Only $100! ... Only $5 ... One day only! OK, that wasn’t right. But, seriously, Christmas was getting on my nerves.

  Eventually, I managed to drown out a lot of the noise and buy some thoughtful gifts. I bought Mary Jane, my best friend back in my old neighborhood, cool stickers for her laptop and cell phone. I bought Kailee a stuffed anime doll. For George, I bought a couple of graphic novels—ones a lot more tame than the ones we had discovered Annie owned. In case Annie came home in time for Christmas ... and I really, really hoped she would! ... I bought her a pink cashmere sweater with gold satin stars all over it. I couldn’t even believe I had found that sweater! I don’t even know why it seemed like the perfect gift for her. Yeah, it had stars all over it, but not red stars. Annie’s style would be more like a black sweater with red stars that appeared to be dripping blood. Her mom’s style would be more like the sweater I bought. But I guess it felt safe to me, all pink and sunshiny gold like that. And it felt warm. I guess that was the main thing. I wanted to wrap Annie all up in a warm sweater. I wanted to make sure that she was safe and warm and back from whatever part of the cold December world she had been disappeared to. I went one step further. I also bought Annie a pink hat and mittens. If she hated me for those gifts, we’d have a good laugh.

  I had no idea what to buy my mom. I wanted to get it over with, though. I also wanted to get a good sale price on whatever I picked out. Finally, after wandering around for half an hour, I found the perfect gift: a red Christmas sweater with a green Christmas tree and blinking lights on it. And it was discounted from $25 to $5. Perfect!

  By the time I finished shopping, it was 3:00. Just enough time to dash home, take a shower and get ready for dusk. Also, I needed to make sure that Brandon knew how to find his way from the afterlife into my life before sunset.

  After I got home, took a shower and got dressed, I grabbed the necklace Brandon had given me. Speaking into the blue stone, I repeated his name several times. In what felt like only seconds, Brandon popped into my room.

  Thank God he was there and he would go with us that night!

  I texted George and Kailee. We decided to meet at my house and then head on over to house number 1044 in the neighborhood of the psychic and our old squatters’ clubhouse.

  When we finally arrived in the neighborhood, we found comfort in the blinking, flashing Christmas lights at the psychic’s house. I especially liked how the Tree of Life appeared to be just that.

  We had all dressed in black, to be as invisible as possible in the night. Well, all of us except for Brandon who could actually go invisible at will.

  When we reached the house a couple of addresses down from the one we were looking for, we saw someone come out of number 1044. We all freaked, jumping behind bushes. Brandon did something I hadn’t known he could do before then: he became invisible to everyone except us. To us, he just appeared lighter, slightly pale blue in color and even less substantial than normal, but we could still see him.

  I squinted, trying to decipher the features of the pe
rson who had exited the house. In the darkness, I could see the clothing of the person better than I could make out any of their facial features. It looked like a man. At least they were wearing men’s clothing: tan dress coat, brown pants, men’s dress shoes and a brown hat.

  I assumed it was a man.

  He looked up and down the street, then put his fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle. As he waved for someone else to come out of the house, he unlocked an old beat-up van.

  My heart pounded. I forgot to breathe until my head went dizzy from lack of oxygen. I wasn’t totally sure at this distance, but that van sure looked like the one in which I had seen two men and a girl they had been pushing around and yelling at pull away from the curb on Halloween night.

  Then I heard him say, “Come on, come on. We don’t have all night.”

  That voice! That was the voice of the guy who had been delivering boxes to my mother, the same one who Brandon had whacked with a tree branch.

  Then I saw what he was doing.

  Three more guys came out of the house, each pulling a teenaged girl by the arm. And the girls were all handcuffed! OK, those were definitely not relatives reprimanding kids for playing in an abandoned house.