The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

by Paige McKenzie

  Nolan turns and steps closer to the desk. “What was that, Professor?”

  He says it again, but it just sounds like nonsense to me. I strain to make sense of what he’s saying, but it just sounds like “ooooo-each” to me.

  “Sorry, I didn’t hear that,” Nolan says. “Could you tell me again?”

  “Loo-seeech,” the professor says. Now his eyes are open wide—and locked with mine.

  “Nolan,” I whisper. “We should go. I don’t think he can help us.” I don’t want to spend another moment in this icy cold room. It makes me feel hopeless. Is this what happens to believers when they get old? Do they sit in lonely little rooms, all their knowledge overlapping until it comes out as nothing more than gibberish? Is this what happened to Nolan’s grandfather? What will happen to him? To me?

  Nolan goes back and leans over the desk to shake Professor Jones’s hand. But instead of pressing his hand into Nolan’s, the professor picks up an enormous old book off his desk and holds it out in front of him with trembling hands. There aren’t any words on the book’s worn leather-bound cover, just faded gold markings, like maybe once there was an elaborate drawing on the cover that had long since worn away.

  “Thank you,” Nolan says politely.

  “Well, that was weird.”

  Nolan shrugs. “He tried to help us.”

  “I don’t think he could help us.”

  I shudder when I think about Professor Jones all alone in that lonely cold room. When all of this is over, once Mom is safe, I’ll go back and visit him. I’ll bring him cookies or soup or pudding or whatever you’re supposed to bring to an elderly person and spend a whole afternoon listening to his gibberish and pretending to understand it.

  “He gave me that.” Nolan gestures to the tattered, leather book he placed carefully in the backseat. We’re almost back in Ridgemont.

  “Did you see all the books in his office? He probably gives one to every visitor.”

  Nolan smiles. “I don’t think he gets many visitors.”

  “No,” I agree. “I don’t think he does.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Luiseach

  “I think I’ve figured out what a luiseach is,” Nolan tells me when he walks me home from school a few days later.

  Pine needles fall onto my head from the Douglas firs above us. “I thought evergreens didn’t shed their leaves in the fall,” I complain, brushing the needles from my hair.

  “Missed one,” Nolan says. Before he can get close enough to take it out for me I flip my hair over and jump up and down.

  “What else you hiding in there?” he laughs.

  “It’s not funny.” My hair is so poofy that I could probably use it to smuggle contraband. I pull it into a messy knot at the nape of my neck. “Anyway, what were you saying? You figured out what a what is?”

  “A luiseach,” he answers. “Remember, before we left his office, Professor Jones said it?”

  “All I remember is gibberish,” I answer honestly.

  “I know it sounded like that, but I saw the word in the book he gave me.”

  “How did you know how to spell it?” Nolan reaches into his backpack and pulls the book out. It looks even more enormous than it did in the back of his car: bound in wrinkled brown leather and so thick that Nolan has to use both hands to hold it. “You’ve been carrying it around with you all this time?” It must weigh a zillion pounds.

  He nods. “I’m reading it every chance I get. It doesn’t always make sense—parts of it seem to be written in some kind of code, and parts aren’t even in English, but I think I’m finally getting something out of it.” He opens to a page he’d marked with a bookmark. “There,” he says, pointing to a word in the center of it. I take the book. The paper is yellowed and thin, as translucent as wax paper. The font is so tiny I have to squint to read the word.

  Luiseach.

  “Louis-each?” I say, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach. Who knew that just seeing a word printed on paper could provoke a physical response? “How do you know that’s the same word he said?”

  “It was the only word in the book that was close to the one the professor said to us.”

  He didn’t say it to us, I think but do not say, remembering the way he stared at me as he spoke. He said it to me. “You read the whole book already?”

  Nolan shrugs like it’s no big deal to be able to read a thousand-page tome in a matter of days.

  Suddenly a big fat raindrop falls from the sky, landing right in the center of Nolan’s new word. Quickly Nolan stuffs the book back into his bag. “Let’s make a run for it,” he says. “I don’t want to risk the book getting wet.” He breaks into a sprint, reaching for my hand as he does so.

  My fingers wrap around his automatically, as though, unbeknownst to me, all this time they’d just been waiting for a boy’s hand to hold. At the same time, my stomach is doing somersaults, high kicks, back flips—whatever a stomach does that makes it feel like it’s trying to leap out of its rightful place in your belly and come flying out of your mouth.

  So I slide my hand out of Nolan’s grasp, put my head down, and sprint. By the time we get to my house I’m panting the way Oscar does when it’s ninety degrees outside. Not that I can even remember what those kind of temperatures feel like. My hair is soaked, but for once it’s not due entirely to the rain. I’m actually sweating, for what feels like the first time since we moved here.

  “Not a runner, huh?” Nolan laughs as I open the door for us. I lead the way into the kitchen, slip off my backpack, and collapse into a chair at the table. Nolan grins, getting us drinks out of the fridge as though this is his house and I’m his guest. Or at least with the same familiarity Ashley used to navigate our kitchen back in Austin. Which is kind of nice.

  When I finally catch my breath I say, “Okay, so tell me what you think a luiseach is exactly.”

  Nolan plops down in the chair beside me and retrieves the book from his bag. I wonder how old it is. It’s funny to think of a book like this alongside Nolan’s chemistry textbook and math homework. Just another assignment, more research.

  Except, instead of an A from the teacher, if we do well, we’ll keep my mother from hurting herself again.

  “Everything I’m about to say is going to sound crazy,” he warns as he hugs the book to his chest.

  “I’m not sure how much crazier things can get,” I say sadly.

  “From what I can tell—and like I said, this book isn’t the easiest thing in the world to decipher—luiseach are some kind of paranormal guardians. They’re well suited to their task because they can be around the paranormal and yet be perfectly safe—they don’t have to worry about being possessed, that kind of thing.”

  “If only my mom were so lucky,” I say wistfully.

  “It’s not exactly your mom that I have in mind,” Nolan mumbles.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” he says quickly, setting the book down on the kitchen table and flipping through its thin pages. He pulls his wire-rimmed glasses from his pocket and puts them on. “According to this, luiseach have been around for centuries and live long lives.” He reads aloud from the book: “Because they can sense older spirits, luiseach are commonly drawn backwards.” He looks up. “I think that means they like old-fashioned stuff. You know, antiques, cemeteries, stories about the way the world used to be, that kind of thing.”

  “Sound like my kind of people,” I quip, taking a sip of water. “So you’re saying we need to find a luiseach to perform an exorcism or something?”

  Nolan shakes his head. “Not exactly.”

  “Why not? It sounds like a luiseach is exactly what we need right now.”

  “Yeah,” Nolan agrees, “It does. I just don’t think we need to find one exactly.”

  “Why not? You have a luiseach hiding in your pocket or something?” I reach for his backpack and pretend to rifle through it, like I think I might find a luiseach inside. I guess I
picked a bad time to make a joke, because Nolan doesn’t even give me a sympathy laugh.

  “No,” Nolan says slowly, and I take another sip of water. “I’m saying I think you are a luiseach.”

  Water literally shoots up my nose and I spit it out all over the table in front of me. Nolan hunches over the book to protect it from the spray.

  “I told you it was going to sound crazy,” he says.

  I shake my head, pretending not to remember the way Professor Jones looked at me when he said the word. “Okay, but there’s crazy, and then there’s crazy.”

  “What makes you think that you’re not a luiseach?” Nolan leans back and folds his arms across his chest.

  I don’t even know where to begin. “Um, are you kidding? We don’t even know if luiseach actually exist outside of the ramblings of a possibly senile old man.”

  “And this book! It says here that luiseach look like humans and live among humans—they just have certain”—Nolan struggles to find the right word—“abilities,” he decides finally, “that make them not quite human.”

  “Just because something is in a book doesn’t make it true.” With effort, I pick the book up off the table. It’s about a million years old. Okay, not that old, but perhaps older than even a first edition of Pride and Prejudice. I flip through it, trying to decipher what’s so powerful about these pages that they could convince Nolan that I’m something less than human. Or maybe something more.

  There’s no copyright page, no publisher, no Library of Congress description like there is on a real book. From what I can tell, it doesn’t even have a title or an author.

  Every book has an author. Maybe this one just didn’t want anyone to know who he was.

  I put the book down, my hands trembling so much that I practically drop it and it lands on the table with a loud smack. “Let’s say—just for the sake of argument—that luiseach are real. I can’t possibly be one. You said it yourself, luiseach can be around the paranormal and be perfectly safe. I’m not safe! I’m scared all the time. I feel so creepy everywhere I go.”

  “Exactly!” Nolan practically shouts.

  “Exactly what?”

  “You said you’ve felt weird for months now—cold and strange—everywhere you go.”

  “So what do you mean?” I ask, though I’m not entirely sure I want to hear his answer.

  “I think that creepy feeling is you perceiving the spirits around you. I don’t feel it. Your mom doesn’t feel it. Only you do. You’re capable of perceiving something that the rest of us can’t—even though I believe in ghosts, just like you, and can see all the evidence of your haunted house, just like you can.”

  I shake my head so hard that my neck hurts.

  “And you said so yourself, you’re playing with her. Maybe a normal person wouldn’t be able to interact with a ghost like that.”

  “I wasn’t trying to interact with her. It just seemed like what she wanted—”

  “Okay, but how many normal people would be concerned with—or know—what a ghost wanted?” Nolan counters. “And you love old stuff. My jacket, all those vintage clothes—”

  “What, so having a nontraditional sense of style makes me into some kind of paranormal superhero?” I say incredulously, as though just thirty seconds ago I wasn’t imagining that luiseach would dress like I do.

  “There’s just one thing I can’t quite figure out,” he adds slowly. “The book says that being a luiseach is hereditary. So your mom should be one too. But she’s totally been affected by the ghost, or spirit, or demon—whatever’s in this house with you.” Nolan leans over his book once more, poring over the pages like he believes that if he just looks hard enough, the answer will appear.

  Everything that happens next feels like it’s going in slow motion. All except for my heart, which is racing. I push my chair out from under the table and slowly stand. Nolan doesn’t look up—he’s reading every bit as intently as I read Jane Austen. Slowly, like I’m afraid I might trip and fall, I begin to pace the room. Oscar and Lex follow me, questioning looks on their faces, like even they know that something is wrong.

  Softly I say, “I’m adopted.”

  “What?” Nolan asks, still not looking up from his book.

  “I’m adopted,” I repeat louder, and start pacing at a normal speed.

  Now Nolan does look up.

  “That doesn’t mean I’m a louise, loo—whatever you call it. I mean, plenty of people in the world are adopted. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “You’re right,” he nods. “But those tons of people aren’t in the situation you’re in.”

  “Tell me more about those things. Louises.”

  “Loo-seach,” Nolan corrects.

  “Whatever,” I shrug. I know how to pronounce it. I just don’t want to.

  I continue pacing as Nolan speaks. “In ancient times luiseach were raised in insular communities, training from childhood to protect humans from the dark side of the paranormal world.”

  “What does that mean? The dark side of the paranormal world?”

  A cold breeze blows through the kitchen despite the closed windows. I shiver, but I keep pacing.

  “This is where it gets tricky—”

  “This is where it gets tricky?” I groan. “It hasn’t exactly been a piece of cake so far!”

  “The books says that there are two sides of the paranormal. Like two sides of a coin.”

  “Or a magnet,” I mumble, but I don’t think he hears me.

  “The paranormal world is made up of spirits who hang around after they die, waiting to be ushered into the beyond.” Before I can ask the most obvious next question, Nolan says, “The book doesn’t say anything about what the beyond is.” He continues. “The light side includes fairly harmless and even helpful ghosts and spirits.”

  “Few spirits are truly harmless,” I recite, recalling the professor’s warning.

  “Well, maybe not, but this says that most people who die are pretty anxious to move on. It doesn’t feel right to stay behind. But every so often a spirit will refuse to move on. And remaining here changes them, makes them turn dark. They’re so desperate to cling to life that they begin messing with the living—like poltergeists who can take hold of human bodies, that kind of thing. Over the centuries, in addition to helping the willing spirits move on, luiseach have been protecting humans by forcing dark spirits—the ones who linger too long and become demons—to the other side.”

  I stop pacing. “So luiseach are kind of like guardian angels for the entire human race?” Definitely not me, I think. I’m too much of a wimp to be anyone’s guardian angel.

  “Kind of,” Nolan nods. “They even exorcise spirits who refuse to be moved, who wreak havoc on humans’ lives. The word luiseach means ‘light-bringer’ in Celtic—”

  “Celtic?” I echo.

  “Old Irish,” Nolan explains. “Though I think the word luiseach precedes it.”

  “How can a word be older than a language?”

  “If the word was spoken in an even older language first,” Nolan supplies, like the answer is obvious. “Anyway, luiseach send good spirits into the light and shed light where spirits are dark. Supposedly they bring a sort of light and joy wherever they go.” Nolan looks at me without blinking until I blush. Is he trying to tell me that he feels some kind of light and joy when he’s around me?

  I don’t exactly feel full of light and joy these days.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” Nolan says. “I know. But you’ve got to admit there’s a lot of evidence here. Like I said, the word literally means light bringer.”

  “So?” I fold my arms across my chest as though that will somehow slow my speeding heartbeat.

  “So . . .” he says, and I swear, I think he’s blushing. “Your name is Sunshine.”

  “That’s just a name. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like my mom had ever heard of whatchamacallits when she named me.”

  Nolan doesn’t know the story of the first time my m
other held me. With you in my arms, little girl, I felt like I was in a state of perpetual sunshine. I close my eyes. More than once I’d joked that maybe she felt sunshine the first time she held me because she was living in Texas and it was August and about a million degrees outside, but that particular joke never made her laugh. She always remained serious. It had nothing to do with the weather, she’d always insist. I think it was the closest my cynical, scientific mother ever came to believing in magic.

  Now Nolan is saying that maybe it was magic. Or whatever luiseach call their powers.

  Does that mean that when my mother picked me up, that warm, sunshiny feeling she experienced wasn’t the joy of a new mother, wasn’t just her maternal instinct kicking in like it had for millions of mothers before her? Instead, she felt the way she did because I wasn’t entirely human?

  I shudder—had some other person held me first, maybe they’d have taken me home instead. Maybe I’d be someone else’s sunshine. Is this the reason why Mom never needed anyone else—rarely dated, never got serious? Because she had me and my light, whatever that means, so she didn’t feel like she needed anything else? Was it some kind of illusion I’d unknowingly cast, a trick I’d unintentionally played?

  I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter. Maybe Mom wouldn’t have even wanted me if I’d been normal, maybe picking me up wouldn’t have felt any different from picking up the dozens of infants she’d probably already held that day.

  I shake my head. No. No. I am my mother’s daughter. I wrinkle my nose like she does and have her same ridiculous sense of humor. Luiseach or not—and probably not, I mean, Nolan’s evidence is thin, at best—she and I were meant to be together, like she always said.

  And I love her so much that I’m not about to let this ghost or demon or poltergeist or dark spirit or whatever is in this house hurt her.

  I open my eyes and walk across the kitchen and sink into the chair beside Nolan. “Tell me more,” I say softly. He leans over the book and begins reading.

  “Should the luiseach fail in their cause, the dark creatures would destroy humanity.”