World Tree Girl

by Kerry Schafer

  I’m going to need fortification for whatever this is. I pull out my bag of coffee beans and then remember I have no coffee pot.

  “What have you done with Phil?”

  “Nothing. Yet.” Her tone makes this sound ominous.

  “At your earliest convenience, I’d like my coffee pot back.” Even as I say it, I realize that even for me, reusing that pot might be a stretch. I’m going to need a new one. With a sigh, I plunk down into another chair. “Talk to me. What happened?”

  “Jamie Bergstrom,” she says, as if this should have meaning to me.

  At my blank look, she takes a quavering breath and tries again. “He’s six. Was six. He crossed on Sunday morning. And now they…” She presses the back of her hand over her mouth, her face crumpling.

  “One of the nurses saw me leaving his room. They’ve banned me from the hospital. I needed to go up there this morning—I tried. Marie said she’d call security if I didn’t leave.”

  I’m the wrong person for this conversation. Anybody else would handle it better. Jake. Matt. Jill, probably. Even Mrs. Schrader.

  “What are people saying?”

  She lifts one shoulder in a half shrug, burying her face in the cat.

  “Sophie? What are they saying?” If there’s going to be mob action, we need to be prepared.

  “The nurses? I don’t know. They’re just whispering. But gossip runs fast in Shadow Valley, you know? I ran into some of the kids from my class. Kaylee called me Death Girl. Gage laughed. And—” Her voice breaks again.

  “Did anybody threaten you?”

  She hasn’t thought of that. Her head jerks up, tear-filled eyes wide with surprise. “No. Nothing like that.”

  “They sound like stupid kids. Why do you care what they think? Didn’t you drop out, anyway?”

  “They’ve always hated me. I’ve never had any friends. Everybody already thinks I’m some weirdo because of the undertaker thing. A bunch of them at school used to hold their noses when I walked by, saying I stink like dead people. Because of my dad. But nobody has ever called me that. And now—” Her voice breaks and she buries her face in the cat again, sobbing. Anubis objects, wriggling out from beneath her and taking refuge under the bed. The dog, a much better creature than either me or Anubis, steps up to the plate at once, licking away tears.

  She sighs tragically, wrapping her arms around the dog’s neck.

  “I’m sorry, Soph. Life’s tough sometimes.”

  She sniffles, face buried in dog fur. “Maureen? I’m scared.”

  “Of some idiot kids?”

  Her arms tighten around the dog’s neck. He whimpers and tries to wriggle out from her grip. She makes a choking noise and lets him go. I walk over and push back the screening fall of hair, taking her chin in one hand and turning her face up to mine so she has to stop hiding.

  “What really happened?”

  She swallows, twice. “I—when Kaylee called me Death Girl, I was mad. It would have been so easy. I could feel her soul. All I had to do was slurp it out of her and send it across. Poof. No more Kaylee. And nobody laughing at me anymore.”

  I wait. Not saying anything, not yet. Comfort isn’t what Sophie needs, although she hasn’t realized it yet.

  “They’re right about me. I’m weird. They could make a superhero movie about me, only I’d be the villain. Death Girl.”

  I say nothing, still holding her face and making her look at me. Letting the silence grow, waiting for her to come to the true root of her problem.

  Finally, she draws a deep, quavering breath and whispers the words I’ve been waiting for.

  “I’m scared of myself.”

  “Good. You should be.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Pat you on the back, say ‘there, there, you’re harmless?’ You are goddamn fucking dangerous and you’d better know it.”

  “You are the weirdest adult ever.”

  “And you’re a weird kid. So there we are. Look. Why would I lie to you? That serves no purpose. Tell me, why didn’t you just slurp out Kaylee’s soul, as you put it? Teach all those kids a little lesson?”

  “I didn’t think I could live with myself, after, if I did that.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I stared at her for a minute and walked away. Totally lame. They think I’m a weird idiot freak.”

  “You are.”

  “Oh my God! You are so bad at this!”

  “It’s good to know what you are. Spider-Man was a freak. So was Superman and all of those heroes the kids think are awesome on TV. Even Buffy the Vampire Slayer was weird. People laugh at what they don’t understand. Dismiss it. Because it’s different and scares them. You are what you are. Best accept that.”

  She still looks sort of limp and frayed around the edges. The kid probably needs a hug, but the best I can manage is an awkward pat on the shoulder. “Look—your wonderful, brave, weird Death Girl self saved my life. And Matt’s, and Jake’s. If that had been Kaylee or one of the others in the lab that day, none of us would be here. Understand?”

  Instead of looking encouraged, her shoulders slump a little more and she turns her face away from me.

  I curse my own self for an idiot. Sophie took a life to save ours that day, slurped the soul right out of a paranormal-human hybrid.

  “Look. I’m not going to say that I know how you feel—I don’t. But I do remember the first time I felt guilty about killing a paranormal. It was a werewolf. It had been on a killing streak for a couple of nights in wolf form. Phil showed me what was left of the dead bodies—a couple of mangled teenagers. A little kid. And then he took me out hunting. We caught up with the monster just at sunrise, and it shifted back to human when I put a silver bullet in its belly.

  “I knew it was a monster. I saw what it had done. But in human form it was this teenage girl, with acne and big brown eyes. She was scared and screaming with the pain, hands pressed against her belly, trying to stop the blood, begging me to help her. I stood there frozen, unable to do anything. And then I fell down on my knees and put my hands over the wound.

  “Phil put his pistol against the side of her head and pulled the trigger.”

  Sophie gasps. “How could he?”

  “That’s what I said. He ignored me for a minute—got down on his knees beside me, closed her eyes, ever so gently, and then picked her up like a sleeping child. ‘What would you have us do, Maureen?’ he said to me. ‘She’s got a taste for human blood. She’ll shift again. She’ll kill. We can see her locked up for the rest of her life. Or we can kill her. Sometimes, killing is a mercy.’

  “And that was it. We never talked about it again. But that’s why both of us were excited about the Paranormal Research Facility. We thought it would be about helping the paranormals, not torturing them.”

  Sophie plays with the dog’s ears, her face averted. “You don’t think you could have—I don’t know—changed her? Saved her?”

  “I don’t have an answer. We need research. Science is still debating the nature versus nurture question with humans. We haven’t even begun to delve into paranormal behavior.”

  She exhales, as if she’s been holding her breath, and nods once. “Maureen? There’s another thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have a ghost problem.”

  “I’d noticed.”

  “I mean, really. I’m seeing spirits I’ve never seen before. Some of them aren’t even connected to the Manor. I don’t know why they’re here, and they’re agitated. None of them are interested in crossing.”

  “Which is why we are all meeting in the lab at three.”

  “We are?”

  “I tried to call you. You didn’t answer your phone. “

  “It’s not working.” She pulls it out of her pocket and taps the screen. “Too much energetic interference. Not the first time. What about the dinner thing?”

  “Canceled.”

  She blin
ks. “You canceled? On Mrs. Schrader?” She couldn’t sound more shocked if I’d invited a tribe of vampires over for dinner.

  “You think we should have a bunch of kids up here with spirit activity manifesting all over the place?”

  “Well, no, but…”

  “What is it with this Mrs. Schrader? I’m sure she’d appreciate the fact that we’re looking out for her kids. We’ve had palpable paranormal activity. Something needs to be done. You’re sure you can’t talk to them?”

  “If I could, you don’t think maybe I’d have done that already? I keep telling you I’m not a medium.”

  “There must be some way to communicate.”

  “They are not so good with language. I think it’s one of the first things to go when they die. Maybe that’s why some are so angry. They need to communicate something and have no way to do it.”

  I have an uneasy feeling I should tell her about the conversation with Phil on Dason’s laptop, but I keep it to myself. “What about Ouija board and all that?”

  “Maybe some spirits are linguistically gifted. But you know how people are—they love to tell stories. One tiny communication from a spirit turns into a novel by the time the story is told. All I know is that spirits never even try to talk to me.”

  There are other ways to communicate.

  Just like that, the overhead lights blink on and off. A burner on the stove starts to glow. And the dog points his muzzle up to the ceiling and lets out a mournful, melancholy howl, worthy of his wild forebears. Every hair on my head stands up as if there’s an electromagnet hovering there, or I’m about to be struck by lightning.

  God, I hate ghosts.

  The knob for the burner is turned off, but it glows cherry red with heat. They’re going to burn down the Manor if they keep this up.

  “Turn it off, now, or I get out the salt sprayer,” I say.

  A moment, and then the red hot glow fades back toward black.

  “Thank you. Now behave yourselves.” I turn to Sophie. “Meeting at three. Don’t be late.”

  She gets up to go, the dog at her heels, his hackles raised and a low growl pulsing in his throat. “Phil has to cross, Maureen. I’m telling you again. He’s like a beacon for the others.”

  Again, I think about the unfinished chat conversation. I want more. “He’ll go when he’s ready,” I tell her. “You can’t make him do anything.”

  “Are you ready to do what needs to be done if he doesn’t?” Her skin is always pale, but her face looks bloodless, green eyes enormous.

  “You mean, erase him completely?”

  “If there’s no other way,” she says. “There are spirits here from across the country, Maureen. They are drawn to him. They keep coming. None of them will cross.”

  I’ve been involved with eliminating a spirit who refused to be tamed. It was unpleasant, but in that case, it wasn’t somebody I’d known and loved. It was easy enough to tell myself the soul had always been evil, that elimination was an act of good will. But this is Phil we’re talking about. A man I’ve slept with, worked with, trusted with my life.

  “There’s always another way,” I say, after a minute.

  She nods, as if I’ve just said something meaningful, and leaves me there, closing the door firmly behind her.

  Before I start digging in boxes for all the ghost hunting paraphernalia I own, I check in with Dason’s laptop, wanting desperately to connect with Phil. Surely I can still reason with him. Ask him to help with this situation, even. But the chat window is empty. Worse, there’s no transcript of our previous conversation. The laptop is inert, sterile, wiped clean of any trace of either me or Dason.

  Chapter Twelve

  The temperature in the lab is so frigid, despite two space heaters turned on high, that I can see my own breath. Both Matt and Jake are hunched up, hands tucked under their arms for warmth. Sophie is not here.

  “She’ll show up. Let’s get started,” Jake says. “It’s not like she needs any of this equipment.”

  Matt passes Jake a pair of infrared goggles, an energy sensor, and a recording device.

  “What am I supposed to do with these?”

  “Ghosts leave an energy signature. You can see it with the glasses.”

  “And detect it with this gizmo, I suppose.” Jake switches on the handheld energy scanner, and it goes crazy. He switches it off. “This is an old government installation. How do you know I’m not just registering radiation or some such?”

  His natural-born skepticism is held in check by the inexplicable things he’s been part of recently. When you’ve been almost killed by an invisible jelly-thing like the Medusa, scoffing at the idea of ghosts is a luxury you can’t really afford. But he’s still having a problem with the concept of a ghost hunt.

  “Put the goggles on,” I tell him. “Have a look. And then please tell me there’s a way to get at all of that equipment that came from Phil’s house, because we are going to need it.”

  “Shit,” he says. “This is bad, I’m guessing.”

  I put on my own pair of goggles. Oh yeah, it’s bad. In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like it.

  Ghosts throng the room. Most of them are lined up around the walls, like high school kids at the beginning of a formal dance. A few roam freely, one of them touching Jake’s cheek and evoking a shiver. Even as I watch, two new ones drift down from the ceiling.

  “I don’t think we’re going to be doing much hunting,” Matt says. “What do they want?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know. Sophie thinks it’s Phil.”

  “Can’t she talk to them?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “It is Phil,” a voice says from the doorway. All of us jump, but it’s just Sophie, the potato salad container cradled against her chest.

  As if to emphasize her point, the room begins to spin. All of the spirits swirl toward her in a paranormal cloud, as if she’s a cosmic vacuum cleaner sucking them in. Sophie is still visible, but when I take a look without the glasses, her form wavers in a shifting blue light.

  “Back off!” she says, as if she’s talking to a pack of dogs. “I’m walking here.” The cloud parts to let her move, closing in behind her as she proceeds to the back of the room. She sets down the container on the table beside the old lab equipment. It is instantly surrounded by a cloud of activity, and the spirits stay there when Sophie walks over to join us.

  “I wanted all of you to see. It’s not me they’re thronging to. It’s Phil.”

  “Why is he in a potato salad container?” This from Jake, who appears somewhat shaken. I can’t blame him. He’s probably never seen a ghost in his entire life, let alone a spirit manifestation of this magnitude.

  Sophie doesn’t answer. She goes back to the container, carries it across the lab, and sets it carefully in the hallway. Then she closes the door, locks it, and pours a mound of salt across the threshold. Most of the spirits remain on the other side of the door, although a few still drift around the room.

  “Phil needs to cross, or he needs to be eliminated,” Sophie says, in a clear, emotionless voice. “Maureen isn’t able to see this, but I’m sure the two of you can. He is no longer the man she knew and worked with. And he needs to be stopped before somebody gets hurt.”

  “Like Ghostbusters?” Jake asks, finally finding his voice.

  “This is not some stupid movie. What they could do in these numbers is terrifying. Besides, they’re not meant to be here. They need to move on. And as long as Phil is here, they won’t go.”

  As if to emphasize her words, the lights go out.

  We’re equipped with flashlights, but they only serve to make the dark look darker. A blue glow illuminates the cracks where the door doesn’t quite seal.

  “It’s a drastic measure,” Matt says quietly. “Wiping somebody out forever like that. Do you know what’s in the Beyond, Sophie? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.”

  “Comfortable?” she asks, her voice breaking. “You think I�
�m comfortable? Souls are my job. Destroying one is like the worst sin I could commit. I just don’t know what else to do.”

  Relieved to hear humanity and emotion back in her voice, I draw a deep breath and a little of the tension I’m holding eases out, enough that my toes uncurl. “That’s what this meeting is for,” I tell her. “So we can figure it out, together.”

  “Has he done anything awful?” Jake asks. “Visibly campaigning for a ghost uprising, doing something to draw them in?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Sophie says. “They just keep coming.”

  To illustrate her point, a ghostly flicker emanates from one of the walls and trails across the room, hovering in front of the door that bars it from Phil.

  “We need a medium,” I say. “But since we don’t have one, I’ve brought some possible communication devices. We’ll run recorders consistently down here, since this is currently the hub of activity. Everybody carry a small one with you as you move through the Manor. While you’re at it, keep scanning for energy.” I dole out the small recorders and EDI scanners. “Be sure to make notes of time and place of any manifestation. And take pictures. I have one full-spectrum camera, but cell phones work surprisingly well.”

  I hand the camera to Matt, who gets busy photographing the lab.

  “Now, for communication purposes.” I open the laptop and pull up a blank Word document.

  “What if they can’t type?” Jake asks. Before I can answer, he waves me away. “I know, I know. Electronic signals, or whatever. And I assume the flour is not for a baking project.”

  “Every possible opportunity.” I spread a cup full out on the table. “Are we set?”

  “What happens if they get out of hand?” Jake asks. “I mean, can they hurt people? Are they dangerous?”

  “Yes,” Sophie says. “They could.”

  “Let’s not get melodramatic,” I object. “They might manifest, which scares people. They can tear up a room and throw things around. But we’ve got the salt sprayer. They don’t like salt. And we’ve got Sophie. Let’s stay in pairs. Sophie goes with Matt. Jake is with me. Okay? First, let’s see what we can pick up. Sophie, bring Phil back in here.”