by Nathan Roden
“It’s always been my job to be little brother, although if I don’t stop with the boohooing you might start calling me little sister.”
“There’s no shame in that,” Duncan said. “I’ve done more than my share.”
I leaned closer to Duncan, but he was…fading.
I looked around for Holly. She had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water.
“Holly! Holly!”
I’m sure that I looked as desperate as I sounded.
She ran into the room and grabbed my arm.
Duncan became clear again. I was hyperventilating. Duncan fading away threw me into a panic.
“Oh, no,” I said. “I can only see him when…after you touch me? Is that how this works? Please tell me that’s not how it works.”
Holly rubbed her hands up and down my arm.
“It works like a battery, that’s the simplest way to explain it,” Holly said. “The more contact with me—the more you’re close to me, the longer the sight stays with you.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself into?” I asked. “You can’t just leave me now.”
Holly smiled and sighed.
“I told you. I had to tell someone.” She pointed at Duncan. “I’ve been waiting for some kind of sign for a long time.”
“So are you two engaged now or what?” Duncan asked.
“What?” Holly and I said at the same time.
“No! Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” Holly said.
Toby barked.
Duncan laughed.
“Me thinks the fair damsel doth protest too much, Brother.”
“Yeah,” I said, crossing my arms and frowning. “Too much and too quickly.”
I turned to Toby.
“Are you throwing me under the bus, too? Hey, good luck with the microwave, Popcorn Puppy.”
Holly dropped to her knees and grabbed Toby behind his ears. They started another snuggle-fest.
“Did you know that it works on animals too?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Can’t be helped, I guess. At least, we don’t have to worry about him talking to the press.”
“Look at the bright side, Wyles,” Duncan said. “If you can get her to scratch you behind your ears half that much you’ll never have to worry about losing the sight.”
I nodded, and then opened my mouth and started panting. Holly looked up at me and rolled her eyes.
“You can forget about it, Mister.”
She looked at Duncan and shook a finger at him.
“Don’t you make me regret this, Duncan Westerfield. He doesn’t need your kind of help.”
“It’s Westerhouse. Duncan Westerhouse.”
“Aw, Dunky. She does that on purpose,” I said.
Holly looked away, trying to hide her grin by burying her face in Toby’s fur.
Oh, Man. Won’t it be great when Nate finds out? Nate was Duncan’s friend, too. Man, is he going to freak—
A sickening thought crossed my mind.
Was this too good to be true?
Holly noticed my change of expression. She gave Toby a kiss on the nose and stood up.
“What is it?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“I was just wondering—does this happen to anyone that you touch? Or can you control it?”
The look on her face told me that she had read my mind.
Does it happen to any boy?
To any boyfriend?
To any…?
Any…?
Grady Plimpton?
Thirty-three
Wylie Westerhouse
Branson, Missouri
I tapped on Holly’s door prepared to struggle through another suntan inspection.
She answered the door wearing an over-sized Branson sweatshirt, canary-yellow sweatpants, and slippers that looked like hedgehogs.
* Scout Patrol to Bridge*
Primary weapon system is in stand-down
Negative presence of short shorts
Undetected visual of long tanned legs
Abort Def Con Status
Blood pressure stabilizing.
*Respiratory system coming to resting level.*
Holly stretched to look over my shoulder and around me.
“Is he here? Did you bring—”
“No,” I said. “About fifteen minutes after we got up this morning, Duncan faded out on me. His voice was breaking up. By the time I got dressed, I couldn’t see or hear him at all.”
I turned around and looked up and down the hall.
“He’s not here, is he?” I asked.
She reached and grabbed my hand. She pushed up my sleeve and rubbed her hands on my arm.
“Can’t we do this later?” I asked.
She looked hurt and dropped her hands.
“I’m sorry, Holly,” I said. “It’s just…out of all the weird things that have happened lately nothing seems as weird as having you rub my arm.”
“So I’m rubbing you the wrong way.”
“No, it’s not that—hey. Did you make a joke? That wasn’t bad.”
I flopped into one of the comfy chairs and blew out a long breath.
“I’m twenty-three years old. I’ve been in more nerve-racking situations than most people face in their whole lifetime. The only person in the entire world who has the right to think that I’m being a big weenie is right here in this room.”
“This is true, Grasshopper. When you can snatch this pebble from my hand it will be time for you to leave,” she said with a straight face.
I sat forward.
“Hey, a joke, and a TV show reference? Oh, man, what show is that from…? Have you been yanking my chain all this time?”
“Rubbing people in the wrong way and yanking their chains,” she said, shaking her head. “You Yanks have hijacked the Queen’s English, jabbed at it with your pointy sticks, and forced it to do your bidding. For your information, after my Father bought the telly, he and I watched several installments of the Kung Fu. But once he and Baron McIntyre discovered the Baywatch, we didn’t watch the Kung Fu as often. I never really cared for the telly all that much.”
“What?” I said, cracking up. “Your father and this dude who’s been dead for five hundred years used to hang out and watch Baywatch? That is the craziest thing I have ever heard.”
”Why is it crazy?” she asked. “We were the first people that could see them or talk to them. They had been confined to the castle grounds for all of that time. That’s why Father bought the telly in the first place. He felt sorry for them and thought that they must be bored out of their wits.”
I nodded, stood up and walked toward the television.
“So have you had a chance to play Tomb Raider—?”
I looked down to find the Playstation controller in four pieces. The pieces were connected by strands of multi-colored wires.
“What the—?” I said, picking up the ruined controller. “What happened?”
“You didn’t tell me that I would have to watch myself be murdered over and over again,” she said. “I got frustrated. I was only meanin’ to act as if I was throwing it against the wall but it slipped out of my hand.”
“You did this throwing it against the wall?” I asked. “You have a heck of a fastball.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “It didn’t look like that until after I jumped on it a few times.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Don’t get out of your head, Wylie. I’m buying you another one.”
I sighed, dropped the controller into a waste basket and sat back down.
“So the only people that have ever been able to see these ghosts are you and your family?”
She sat down across from me. She looked kind of sad as she rubbed her chin with one hand.
“It wasn’t my whole family. It was only me—the six-year-old me.”
“Wow,” I said.
She looked even sadder now and was no longer making eye contact. I could almost see her a
s a confused, lonely, and scared six-year-old.
“I saw Charlotte the first night we were in the castle. I could near Nora somewhere nearby. She told Charlotte to stay away from me. I was in my bed and I could hear my parents downstairs, talking. They had a fire burning in the fireplace and were celebrating our move-in with a bottle of wine.”
“Did you freak?” I asked, on the edge of my chair.
“Only for a few seconds,” she said. “Charlotte was being cautious and tip-toeing around like she was afraid of me. I could hear Nora begging her to get away but Charlotte didn’t stop coming toward me. She crept close to my bed. She was right in front of me and then she leaned over.”
Holly closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead with one finger.
“Well?” I said, “What happened?”
“I looked her right in the eyes and said, ‘Are you going to bite me?’”
We looked at each other. Holly’s hand covered her mouth, but her eyes were laughing.
I completely lost it.
When my laughing slowed down enough to allow an occasional syllable, I said,
“The first thing…..you ever…..to a ghost….!
“Are you going to bite me?”
It’s a good thing that Holly was laughing, too, or I might have been in major trouble. But I guess the stress release was good for both of us.
“What did Charlotte do? When you asked her that?” I asked.
“Well, she was startled, of course. She stood up straight as a board, but then she smiled and said, ‘Why? Do you taste good?’”
“No way,” I said.
“Charlotte is as smart as a whip and quick as a fox—as is her sister,” Holly said. “The whole family, as a matter of fact.”
She then made a sour face.
“Not the whole family, exactly,” she said. “Prince David and Princess Arabella are the Baron’s great, great aunt and uncle. They’re cut from a different cloth.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re in their Fan Club,” I said.
She shook her head.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“I said, ‘what’s your name?’ and she said, ‘My name is Charlotte McIntyre and your name is Holly’. I asked her, ‘Who is talking to you from the hallway?’ she said, ‘That’s my sister, Nora. She’s afraid of everything’.
“Nora said, ‘I am not!’ She ran into the room, her eyes big as saucers. She grabbed Charlotte’s hand and dragged her from the room. Charlotte looked over her shoulder and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Holly’. I said ‘Okay’.”
“That is so cool,” I said.
“A minute later my mother stuck her head in the doorway and said, ‘I thought I heard talking up here, Holly. Have you been speaking out loud?’ I shook my head and pulled the blanket up to my chin. She said, ‘Why don’t you come down by the fire with your father and me for a little while. It’s not all that late and this old castle is no place to be with a chill in your bones’. So I sat down beside Mum on the sofa underneath a blanket. Dad put more logs on the fire. He sat back down and said, ‘You’re not frightened to be in your new room are you, Holly? This is a tired old place with a lot of years behind her. She will groan and snap and pop, on occasion, but there’s nothing to be afraid of.’
“I said, ‘I was a little afraid at first, but I’ve met two very nice girls—Charlotte and Nora. Well, I haven’t spoken to Nora, but I’ve seen her.’ My parents looked at each other. My father walked across the room and picked a book from the top of one of the many boxes that we had yet to unpack.
“He returned to his chair and I saw that his hands were shaking. He turned pages in the book and then looked up at me, and at Mother. He picked up his glass and downed it in one swallow before he looked back at the book. He read aloud—
‘Baron Dallas McIntyre, Lady Elizabeth, Nora, and Charlotte…died fifteen hundred and thirty-two’.”
“So they believed you, then,” I said.
“I’m not sure what they believed,” Holly said “But I do know that they weren’t happy about it. They were afraid.”
“So then you rubbed their arms and everyone was introduced and then what?” I asked. “You must have thousands of crazy stories.”
“It was nothing like that,” she said. “It wasn’t pretty at all. The next couple of days they both tried to act like nothing had happened. I saw my mother creep around the castle like she knew that someone was there—but she couldn’t see them. But the worst part was her fear. She was afraid. Of me.”
“Wow,” I said. “That sucks.”
“My parents had both just started teaching at the high school. My father made friends with an administrator. When the administrator found out that my parents were in love with boating, he offered them the use of his motorboat. He said that he rarely used it and that it would be fitting for someone to enjoy it. He kept the boat at a storage facility close to a nearby cove. He explained to my father that the cove would be a perfect place for them to learn their way around a vessel.
“It was a small boat. My parents were so excited that day that they were shaking and chatting it up like kids on Christmas morning. I was nervous but I was happy for them.
“I sat on a bench, staying out of the way and trying to look like there was nowhere else in the world that I would rather be. I wore a life jacket that was a bit too big for me, and as we got closer to the middle of the cove I began to feel claustrophobic. I began to wiggle about, not trying to take the jacket off—but trying to get it away from me a just a little.
“One of my arms got stuck and I couldn’t get it loose. My parents were talking and laughing, and I tried so hard not to bother them but I couldn’t help it.
“I panicked and stood up and started thrashing about. By the time they saw what was happening, I lost my balance and toppled right over the side.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
“The water wasn’t deep and the water was perfectly still inside of the cove. The life jacket never came off completely, so I only went under for a few seconds before I bobbed up to the surface.
“But both my parents jumped in after me.”
She stared into space and continued as if she was in a trance.
“For maybe five or six seconds our heads were under the water and they were both beside me, holding onto my arms. We each had our eyes open. There were thirty to forty of the dead around us.”
“Forty?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’ve wondered how many people might have drowned there over a thousand years,” Holly whispered. “Maybe entire ship’s crews were lost—some passing over and some not. Maybe some made their way to the cove in search of others or to be as close to the shore as they could get.”
“It could have been such an amazing thing, you know?” Holly continued. “My parents and their profound love of history—suddenly able to step into history and live in the midst of it. But because I couldn’t do something as simple as sit still in a boat, they were forced to dive in after me. I pulled them right into the middle of a nightmare.”
“Whew,” I said.
I leaned back in the chair. “That was a rough introduction, all right. But didn’t it get better after they met the McIntyres?”
Holly shook her head.
“Mother could never deal with it. I explained to them that there were some really nice ghosts who had lived in the castle for many years. Mother insisted that she couldn’t do it—she was too frightened. Her mind would not accept it—and she was certain that she would slip into madness.
“Father may have felt the same way, but he realized that the only way to keep our family together was to keep one foot in Mother’s world, and one in mine.”
“No doubt about it,” I said. “I just thought I’ve had it rough. How in the world did you grow up without anybody finding out? Did you wear long sleeves and gloves all the time?”
“This was just before I was to start school. My father explained to the authorities tha
t I would have to be schooled at home on account of I had fits.”
“You threw tantrums?” I asked.
She looked annoyed.
“I forgot,” she said. “You people call them scissors.”
“Sciss-, oh, you mean seizures,” I said. “I didn’t know about that. Do you still have them?”
“I never had them, Wylie. He was lying. What was he supposed to tell them?
‘Oh, by the way, my daughter won’t be coming to school because she sees dead people’?
“They couldn’t afford for either of them to quit teaching, so they hired tutors. The tutors never lasted, though. And every tutor they interviewed wanted more money. That’s when they started holding tours of the castle on the weekends. They were desperate.”
“Where was your uncle during all this?” I asked.
“I was getting to that.”
“Sorry.”
“Uncle Seth was the handyman for the schools in the township. He was an educated man, but he loved working with his hands more than anything. Seth and I had been close forever. When my parents seemed to be doing everything they could to keep me away from him, he wasn’t having any of it. Father knew that there was nothing to do but let Seth in on the secret.”
“Did he believe it?”
“Of course not. Not until we showed him.”
“How did that go?” I asked.
Holly held up her arm and then dropped it toward the floor.
“Boom. Like a sack of potatoes.”
“Yeah,” I chuckled, “I can relate.”
“Seth pleaded with my mother to accept this…he always called it a gift. But I remember the day that he gave up. I couldn’t help but hear her yelling at Seth. She wasn’t only afraid of the ghosts.
“She was afraid of what would happen if the secret got out. She was afraid that I would be taken away to be studied—that I would be examined, poked and prodded—and have my blood sucked out. She said that I could end up locked in a glass cage in front of every egg-headed scientist on the planet—and I could be stolen like I was some kind of weapon.
