by Alex van Tol
A chill slips through me.
Sick. A best friend who turns into a jealous killer?
“And, oh my god, I get it now,” says Shannon. Her eyes widen as she looks at me. “Jessica disappeared the week before the cheerleading finals.”
“Right, so?”
“Sam won, Elliot. She took the championship for Wildwood.”
I give a low whistle. “She didn’t want any competition for the cup. And Jessica was just too tough to beat.”
Shannon turns back to the board. Her next question is interrupted by a soft grating noise. We turn our heads to see a necklace appearing from between two floorboards. The tiny silver links roll up and over the edge of one board, coiling up like rope on a ship’s deck.
My skin breaks out in goose bumps.
We watch until it’s finished moving.
Shannon shivers and looks at me.
“And there’s your evidence,” I say. I push myself to my feet and walk to the spot where the necklace sits, bunched up on the boards.
“Which one is it?” Shannon asks.
I squat down to examine it, but I can’t see a thing. I bring the lamp over.
“It’s the BEST. Same one as before.”
“Sam’s part,” Shannon says.
“So then where’s the other half?” I ask.
We look at each other, and then Shannon looks back at the board. “Jessica, were you wearing part of this necklace when you died?”
YES.
Shannon swallows. “Where are you now?”
With a low squeak, the door swings open.
Chapter Seventeen
We shiver as the evening air rushes in.
I’m not sure if it’s because it’s cold or dark or just plain freaky out there, but I’m not in any rush to leave the boathouse, even after all our wishing that we could leave. It’s funny.
Or almost funny.
I turn to Shannon. “Shall we?”
She nods and gets to her feet. I blow out the lantern and set it on the shelf beside the padlock.
The breeze from the lake is sharp. Shannon wraps her scarf around her neck and slips her mittens on. I zip my hoodie.
“We still don’t know how Sam’s necklace came off,” I say. As we step out of the boathouse and onto the dock, I feel lighter somehow. I don’t feel like any weird things are going to happen now. Jessica’s story has been told. She doesn’t need to slam any more doors or move stuff around or burn people to get them to pay attention to the truth.
To listen.
“Jessica said she fought against Sam,” Shannon says. “The necklace could easily have come loose in a struggle.”
I think about that for a minute. “Man, that’d be a hell of a fight.”
Shannon nods. “You don’t want to mess with someone who’s strong enough to lift another human being into the air while shaking a pom-pom and spelling out W-I-L-D-C-A-T-S.”
“Especially if she’s mad,” I say.
“But there’s not much you can do if someone sneaks up on you and throws a rope around your neck.”
My words settle over us. We go quiet for a few minutes as we look out at the lake. The wind’s calmed down now. The night is almost still.
“There,” Shannon says. She points down the dock a little ways, off to one side. I look, but I can’t see anything.
She crosses the distance in a few quick steps and kneels down, hanging on to the edge with her mittened hands.
“Oh my god, she’s here,” Shannon says. Her voice is thick with tears.
I follow, peering into the depths. Is she seeing a light or something? I strain my eyes against the dark, but I can’t see anything.
Shannon’s crying now, sniffling and wiping her nose and sitting right near the edge of the dock with her legs all bundled up against her body. I sit beside her.
“How do you know she’s here?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. “I can feel her,” she says. “You know? Can you feel her too?”
I close my eyes and try to feel, but all I can think about is how damn cold I am.
“She’s free now,” Shannon says.
I get that. I felt that release when I left the boathouse. So I guess I did feel Jessica, after all. On her way to a better place.
Shannon sniffs and glances back toward the boathouse. “But how did the necklace end up back in the bin?” she asks.
I suppress a laugh. Nothing can stop the relentless whirring and clicking in this girl’s brain.
“Well, they would have fought on the dock, right?” she says. “And then the necklace would have fallen off into the water.”
I shrug. “Maybe it came loose and only fell off later. Maybe when Sam was putting the lid back on the bin? Covering her tracks?”
Shannon nods. “Maybe.” We sit there, huddled together on the dock, looking out across the dark lake. I slip my arm around her shoulders.
My touch triggers more questions.
“But, then,” she asks, “how would Sam have even gotten into the boat-house in the first place? How would she have bypassed the padlock?”
“Well, when we got there today, it wasn’t even locked,” I tell her. “When I went to put the key in, the padlock was already open. So it could have been open this whole time, I guess.”
Shannon looks at me. “But why was it unlocked? Who left it that way?”
I smile and touch her hair.
She smiles back. “Look at us,” she says. “All sleuthing.”
“Like we have any clue what really went down,” I agree. Dozens of unanswered questions swirl around us.
She glances back toward the boathouse. “But who’s going to believe us that we were talking to a ghost?”
“We leave the ghost part out of it,” I say. “We just have to show them the necklace.”
“And what, they’ll automatically connect it to Jessica’s disappearance?”
“The photo in the yearbook,” I remind her. “That’s a pretty clear connection to who owned the necklace. Finding Sam’s necklace down here is reason enough for them to investigate.”
Shannon looks back at the dark water in front of her.
“They’ll find her,” I say softly.
She nods, without words for once.
I stand and hold my hand out to her. She takes it, and I pull her up from the dock.
I can just imagine what Harrison’s going to say to me once the police are involved. Something about sending me out to clean up and instead getting a dead body dumped in his lap.
I laugh.
“What?” she asks.
“Harrison.”
“What about him?”
“Just what he’s going to say about all this.”
“Who gives a rip?” Shannon growls. For a second, I see a flash of the girl I thought she was before this whole thing started.
All two and a half hours ago.
Not too often your entire outlook on life changes in such a short span.
“You’re right.” I nod. “Karma’ll take care of him.”
“Or an act of god,” she says. She laughs, and for a second I wonder what it’s going to be like between us.
And then I catch her eye, and she presses herself against me and wraps my arm around her shoulders, holding it there.
And I know it’s going to be great.
Alex Van Tol admits to having made more than one Ouija board in her lifetime, but has never, to her knowledge, unleashed any angry demons. She dreams up creepy plotlines in her seaside home of Victoria, British Columbia. Which, incidentally, she shares with a ghost. Visit her on the Interwebs at www.alexvantol.com.
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