Relaxing back into the kitchen chair, he nodded.
“Do you know how I ended up in your room that day, bud? I was just wondering because I was thinking, if you need me, you can just call me back the way you did the first time, you know?”
Carlos gazed at her with uncertain eyes. “I don’t know how come you came to my room. I just remember I saw a picture of you in my head, and then you were in my room.”
So how in the fuck did a virtual stranger get a picture of her in his head? She and Kellen exchanged glances with questions attached to them. Kellen chucked him under the chin. “Has it been a long time since you started to see ghosts?”
He shrugged his shoulders, the blue of his sweatshirt bunching while he fidgeted. “I dunno. For a little while, I guess.”
“Do you remember who the first ghost was?” Kellen asked. “I totally remember the first one I saw. He wasn’t scary or anything. Just really loud,” he said as though he were confiding in Carlos, telling his deepest secrets.
“Yeah. I remember. It was my dad.”
Marcella fought her gasp. If she could grip the faded countertop for support, she would. Instead, she wobbled in midair. “Did he come to tell you he loved you, chico? I think that makes you pretty special if he did. Crazy cool.”
Carlos’s lower lip began to tremble. “I miss my dad. He played army with me. He told me he loved me, but he said other stuff, too.”
Kellen held his breath along with her. Kellen reached across the small table and ran his hand over the top of Carlos’s head. “You wanna talk about it?”
“He just said I was going to have to be a five-star general soon. I think he meant I have to be brave.”
Oh, sweet mother. “Did he say anything else?” Marcella fought for calm, to beat down the squeak in her voice.
Pulling his backpack toward him, Carlos shut down. “I don’t wanna talk about it anymore. I just want to play with my stuff.” Burying his head in his backpack, he withdrew. Gone was the impish grin. Gone the squeals of delight. Back was the solemn, intimidated little boy.
Marcella’s heart shattered into a thousand sharp pieces, each shard cutting her as though it were made of glass. She swallowed hard when Kellen’s eyes once more sought hers. Silent messages passed between them.
So much baggage for such a slight set of shoulders.
Bowing her head, she fought those ridiculous tears once more. When she lifted it, a silver gleam dragged her eyes front and center. Her hands went ice-cold. Her vision blurred, then cleared, only to return with a dizzying swoop.
Calm. Calm and steady. She battled for it. Refused to be anything but, in front of Carlos.
Yet her intestines tangled in knots. Her head rang with a piercing buzz. Wave after wave of panic thrust at her with vicious jabs.
Darwin had been right.
Carlos did have the box.
Terror rose like a flood of bilious waste, sticking in her throat.
Oh, Mary, Mother of God.
He’d opened the box that contained the fetid, vile, tainted soul of her dead husband, Armando.
Once locked away seventy-six years ago.
Now?
Not so much.
eight
Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, and fuuuck! Jamming a finger into her mouth, she fought her scream of horror.
“Marcella?” Kellen tipped his head in her direction, his concerned eyes falling on her.
She held up a hand to silently ask for a moment, turning from him and gasping for breath. Her head swam. How could Carlos have the box? It was supposed to be buried—years ago. How had he figured out how to open it? He was nine, for the love of God! She had to know where he’d gotten the box. Who he’d gotten it from. Shaking off the initial shock, Marcella turned back to face the pair, forcing a serene smile to her lips. “Hey, Carlos, where’d ya get the cool box?”
Holding it up, he smiled with pride. The silver interlocking sides were askew, no longer precisely aligned like they had once been. It shone, menacing and ugly. “My grandpa gave it to me. He’s in Puerto Rico visiting his cousins. But he said he gave it to me because I was sad he was leaving for a month. I unlocked it. It was really hard, like a puzzle, but I figured it out.”
Booyah for high IQs. Fine hairs stood up on the back of her neck. She had to try to see inside it. “You are seriously smart,” she complimented him. “Can I see inside the box?”
He twisted the top open, revealing the burgundy velvet lining and nothing else. Wrapping her arms around her waist, she bit the inside of her cheek to fight the onslaught of fury that rose like vitriol to settle in her mouth.
Kellen stood, pushing away from the table, and cornered her with eyes that held fear and hands that pinned her shoulders in a light grip. “Tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“I can’t,” she squeaked, swallowing hard.
“It’s the box that you said your contact told you about?”
“Yes,” she hissed on a harsh breath.
“What was in the box, Marcella?” he demanded, keeping his voice low, but apparently unable to hide the harshness in it.
Pressing a fist to her lips, she spoke around her hand. “Something horrible. Vile. Heinous. Oh, Jesus, Kellen. How could a kid like Carlos have that box?”
“Tell me what was in the box.”
Over Kellen’s shoulder, she saw Carlos’s eyes taking them in. The last thing he needed was more turmoil. “Not now. Not in front of Carlos. I have to go, Kellen. I’ll be back, and I’ll tell you. I promise I’ll tell you.”
The tight line of his mouth expressed his aggravation at having to wait, but she pressed two fingers to his lips. “I promise,” she whispered. Clenching her eyes shut, she forced herself to smile once more.
“Carlos, chico? I gotta blow. So I’ll check ya later, okay?”
“Aw, how come?”
His question, laced with such disappointment, made her chuckle. “Dude, I’m a ghost, and it’s getting late. Ghosts work at night. We have important ghostie things to do like houses to haunt and doors to open and close so we can freak people out. We can’t spend all night playing Rock Band,” she joked. “So I gotta roll. I’ll catch you soon. Now remember what I said. If you need me, just think me up and I’m in, okay?”
He sighed, clearly resigned to her leaving. “’Kay. ’Bye, Marcella.”
“’Bye, Tommy Lee.” She blew him a kiss and sent Kellen a meaningful glance before floating to the front of the store and out the door.
She literally flew to the park, rushing to the bench where she’d told Darwin to meet her. The bench was devoid of anyone, hosting only dead leaves scattered along the seat from the tree above.
“God damn it, Darwin. Where the fuck are you?” she yelled into the brittle chill of the wind. “I need you to get your hairy ass here now!” As if yelling was going to help.
“Gurrrlll, shoot. You don’t gotta yell.”
Whirling around, she came face-to-face with a woman, a very large woman, with garish makeup, overblown lips, and so much frosted blue eye shadow she’d surely keep those women who sold that ridiculous Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics in business for life. Her platform boots wobbled beneath her enormous feet, and the pink boa she wore, covered in glitter, ruffled in the breeze, creating a gaudy halo around her neck.
Marcella expelled a huge sigh of relief, then paused. “Darwin? Please tell me you’re not three sheets to the wind. I swear, I’ll neuter you myself if you’re under the influence.”
He bent his hand at the wrist, placing the other at his hip. “Oh, honey, I’m not under the influence, but I’ve decided I wish I were. This she-male’s thoughts are insidious. What would ever possess her to want to have her Mr. Peabody turned inside out surgically so she can finally make the ‘big money’? It’s unthinkable.”
Marcella would laugh, if she didn’t want to cry. “Ay chihuahua, chico. Could you have found anyone uglier?”
Darwin rubbed his Rubenesque ass, his long, gleaming red fingernails getting tan
gled in his boa. When he responded, for a mere moment he sounded like the old Darwin. Her Darwin. “Have pity. I’ve been violated.”
Reaching for his large hand, she clasped it between hers. “Listen to me. Did you go back to Chez Dreary? Did you find anything out?”
His lips curled in disgust. “I went back, I did. I didn’t find out a friggin’ thing. Gurrrlll—I mean, girl, that shit’s tighter than my goddamned frilly thong. Which, I’m not ashamed to tell you, is unforgiving, if you know what I mean.”
Marcella would laugh at Darwin’s war with the transsexual hooker’s clothing and mental processes if everything weren’t such a blessed mess. Tears formed in her eyes again, and she swiped at them with angry fingers. “Oh, God, Darwin. Something horrible’s happened.”
His overly made-up eyes cast her a look of confusion. “Worse than that dress you got on, sugah?”
She eyed his pleather miniskirt and cropped corset where the bushy hair from his belly puffed out in dark tufts. “You should be throwing stones?”
He looked down at his breasts, overflowing from his corset like the doughy dinner rolls you bought in a can and opened by cracking it on the side of the counter. “Noted. So what’s happenin’? Tell old Brittany all about it, honey.”
Her eyes bulged. “Brittany?”
Cocking an eyebrow at her, he stuck his neck out, circling his head. “From what I hear her tell the younger, less experienced girls, Brittany says that using a younger, uh, stage name makes men feel virile when they scream it out during the, you know”—he winked—“passion making. I don’t choose the names of the prostitutes and addicts I possess. Cut me some slack, girlie.”
Hearing his voice, even embodied in this heifer of a transvestite, pushed her over the edge. Fat tears streamed down her face, disappearing before they ever hit the ground. Sinking to the bench, she gripped the edge of the seat on either side of her legs and drew in ragged breaths. Her shoulders sagged as the weight of seventy-six years seeped into her bones. “Darwin, oh, Jesus, Darwin. This is so bad. Everything’s gone to shit.”
Cupping her chin, he pulled her eyes to his. “Who the fuck are you, sister? The Marcella I know sure don’t”—he sighed in clear exasperation—“doesn’t cry. She’s a hard-ass from way back.”
Yeah. Who the fuck was she? “I don’t know!” she yelped in helplessness. “I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me. All of a sudden I have all these weird bodily functions. Like, I’d swear my heart beats, and I can’t stop crying over everything.”
“Phantom pain, sugah. The heartbeat thing, breathing, a pulse is what the souls call phantom pain. Like when you lose a limb and your brain tells ya it’s still there.”
“Those shitty-ass souls have an explanation for everything, don’t they? Can anyone explain why I’m a shitwreck all the time? Why I’m getting attached to a little boy who’s in some serious dookey? I mean, me, Darwin, me—attached to a nine-year-old child. Kellen’s behaving like he’s found the meaning of life with Tibetan monks, so he won’t fight with me anymore, and now there’s the box.” Tremors of anxious panic swept up her spine.
“The box . . . Christ almighty! I remember talking about the box—but damn if I can remember what I said, I was so trashed. What’s so important about the box?”
Marcella began to wail. Highly uncharacteristic and so out of the blue, even she was surprised. “Carlos has the box, Darwin,” she sobbed.
His garish lips formed an O. “What’s in the box, sugarplum?”
“My d-d-dead husss-baaand.”
His O-shaped lips fell open. “You had a husband?”
She sprang up from the bench, clenching her fists and yelling to the sky, “Yes! God damn it all, yes! I had a husband. He was a disgusting, filthy, lying pig, but he was mine! It makes me want to vomit just saying it, but yes, yes, yes! I had a husband.” It shouldn’t feel good to say that out loud, but it did. Fuck-all if it didn’t feel good to finally spew her hatred for that monster out loud. Sinking back onto the bench, she inhaled deeply.
Darwin also took a long, shuddering breath, and when he released it, the condensation of warm breath hitting cold air created a puff of cloudy steam. He dropped down beside her in a slump. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a husband?”
The disbelief that settled on her face went straight from her brow and out her mouth. “Why would I tell you anything, you mange-riddled mutt? You hate my guts. Everyone hates my guts because I’m a bad-girl demon. I’ve found peace with that. We’re not friends. I don’t confide in you unless you make me. I wasn’t always a demon, you half-wit. I didn’t just hatch. I once had a life and I shared that life with a husband.”
“Easy there, girlie. Okay, so we weren’t friends. Did we have to be friends for you to tell me you had a husband? One that’s in a box . . . Wait. Did you put him in the box?”
Oh, indeed she had. “You bet your ever-lovin’ ass I did, and I’d do it again, that fucking prick.” Her eyes narrowed just thinking about that day. The betrayal, the urgency, the horrific choice she’d had to make in a matter of moments.
He peered at her from beneath his false eyelashes. “Was he in pieces when you put him in the box?”
“No, you moron. It’s a long story. One I don’t want to get into, but now he’s out of the box, Darwin. How could Isabella let that box get away from her?”
“Marcella?”
“What?”
“I need you to move at a slower pace. I’m fighting a mind that thinks turning your Mr. Peabody into a Mrs. is going to garner her at least a buck over minimum wage per hour. Who is Isabella?”
“My sister.” God, she missed Isabella. They’d been so close until she’d married that bastard and he’d kept her from everyone she held near and dear.
“You had a sister, too?”
“Again, I didn’t just hatch. I had a husband, a sister, parents, a house, a—” She bit her tongue. “A very real, rather ordinary life with all the things real, ordinary people have in it.”
“Did your sister hack your husband up and put him in the box?”
“No, Darwin. He wasn’t in the box. His soul was in the box. And now it’s loose and running around somewhere. I have to find that scumbag. If I don’t . . . Oh, God. What if I don’t?” It was unimaginable. Unthinkable. Un-everything-able.
“May I remind you, I’m a simpleminded hooker? And take no offense. I’m certain there are oodles of hookers who have an IQ the size of seven continents. This just isn’t one of them, and her thoughts stray; they muddle. Thus, it’s hard to focus while I fight her desire to hit Harvey’s Hut of Hanky-Panky, where business is good this time of night. So explain slowly. How did you get your husband’s soul? That makes no sense. I can’t articulate why, because I’m hampered by a limited vocabulary. But take my word for it, it makes no sense.”
Marcella’s mouth thinned to a line of hatred. “I killed him. I nailed the motherfucker when he wasn’t looking. Then I summoned his black soul and I put it in the box. A locked box no one was ever supposed to figure out how to open.”
“Oh. Of course you did. I mean, ordinary people kill their husbands every day and summon their souls so they can put them in a box—that’s locked. Film at eleven.”
“Forget it. You wouldn’t understand. All of that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is he’s out. Free to roam. That cowardly fuck.”
“So I finally know how you became a demon. Murder is frowned upon. You know, that crazy commandment about thou shalt not nail the motherfucker?”
No. No, that wasn’t it at all. But she didn’t owe Darwin or anyone else an explanation. She couldn’t speak of her reasoning behind killing Armando because it hurt so much it made her physically tremble. “Right. Look, that isn’t the point. The point is Carlos let him out of the box. I don’t understand how he got his hands on the box, but he has it, and it’s been opened. I sealed that myself and made Isabella swear she’d bury it where no one would ever find it.”
“So this sist
er of yours, she’s some slacker, huh?”
His dig fell by the wayside due to Marcella’s terror. “Something must have happened to prevent her from burying it. She knew how important it was. She knew Armando had to be stopped. I told her. Begged her.”
“Did she believe you?”
Marcella frowned. Isabella had never believed entirely. Not in the afterlife, and certainly not in demons or the supernatural. But the day she’d gone to Isabella and begged her to bury the box, surely her hysteria was enough to convince her that Armando’s soul could never escape that box. Would her sister have ignored her last wish? And even if she had, how in the name of all that was holy had Carlos gotten his hands on it? “Isabella wasn’t a believer in Heaven and Hell. She didn’t believe in my gift of sight, and she definitely didn’t think Armando could hurt anyone after he was dead.”
Darwin scrunched his face up. “Whoa there, girlie. You had the gift of sight? What else did you have in this ‘ordinary’ life?”
So many things, she couldn’t speak of them. Her head nodded with a slow bob. This was more than she’d ever shared with anyone since she’d chosen Hell, and it was like having her teeth pulled one by one without aid of anesthesia. “Yes . . .” She blew the admission out with reluctance. “When I was alive, I had medium abilities.”
“Astonished” wasn’t a word she’d use lightly when referring to Darwin’s tone. “So you knew there was another side?”
Hoo, boy, had she ever. “Yes. I knew.”
“And you chose Hell? I always thought you were a bitch, but not a dumb one.” He clucked his tongue with scorn.
Hold up there. Anger fused her brows together and narrowed her eyes, but her words were measured and hissed from between her teeth. “Fuck you, Darwin. Fuck you, you judgmental asshole. You know what?—go away. Go now before I wrap my hands around that thick neck of yours and squeeze until your Mr. Peabody turns itself inside out without any help from a surgeon’s knife. You don’t know me, Darwin. You don’t know a damned thing about me except for what you think you know. So take your trashy ass on outta here. I asked for your help because a little boy’s in danger. An innocent little boy. It isn’t for me. I’d rather be banished to a place a million times worse than Plane Dismal than ask for help for me. Just go away. Better yet, I’ll go away. And stay away from me from now on, or I swear, as I stand here in front of your freaky ass, I’ll figure this ghost thing out, and when I do, I’ll make being run over by a big ole Lincoln seem like cake and ice cream.”
My Way to Hell Page 13
