Reveal (Cryptid Tales)

by Brina Courtney

“Dr. Tafford, both my parents hold doctorates, just not the medical kind.” I don’t know what is making me tell him everything about my life, I just feel like he’s so safe, there’s something so trusting about those amazing eyes.

  “Oh yeah, I have her for Psych 102. She’s pretty cool. Gives us extensions and stuff all the time.”

  I laugh, “Yeah she’s known for that. Which means I won’t see her for about three days at the end of the semester when everybody turns all their stuff in.”

  He smirks, “I guess I never thought about it like that. So about my Calculus…”

  We work on problems for the next two hours. He basically has the concept by the time we finish. It’s past nine and I close blinds and count the money in the drawer. We really aren’t doing very well. Hopefully the profits we earned at Christmas this past year will hold us over until the summer sales.

  Hugh is reading over the notes I wrote for him to help him with the more advanced formulas.

  He closes his notebook and says, “You know you’re a pretty good teacher. Maybe we could do this again sometime.” He winks at me. It’s cheesy, but cute. He shoves his book and notebook back in the bag.

  He comes around the counter with his bag slung over his shoulder. He takes my hand and writes his number on it with a blue pen.

  “For my beautiful teacher, thanks for your help. Call me.” He kisses me on the cheek before he walks out.

  I stand there blankly staring at his back. He is so gorgeous and it appears he actually likes me. I’m dumbfounded.

  “Yeah, see ya,” I say waving lazily as the bell chimes one last time.

  Chapter 8

  I spend the next few weeks on campus looking for Tall, Dark and Handsome, but to no avail. We’ve texted back and forth but it’s been totally platonic, no mention of the kiss on the cheek which practically made me melt. I’ve been neglecting Liv and she’s starting to notice. It’s Monday morning and in English she confronts me about not texting her back last night.

  “I talked to Eddie about getting together and you didn’t even respond! I made a total fool of myself. Where have you been?”

  She has a right to be upset. I’ve been so absent lately. I sit in the library on campus most of the time, waiting for a glimpse at Hugh, neglecting my phone because it has to be on silent in there. On the plus side my grades are better than ever before if that’s even possible. Maybe it’s just given me time to refocus.

  “I’m so sorry Liv, what happened?” I ask. It’s odd that he would just pack up and leave.

  “He said he took an internship in Washington state and doesn’t want me to tarnish his reputation. Can you imagine?” I kind of thought this might happen but of course I agree with her.

  “How rude, I am so sorry Liv. Is he done? I see he’s not here.” Did she really scare him away?

  She sighs, “His time here ended last week. I asked you to come to his going away party after school, but you never showed. Whatever I’m so over it.”

  “What an asshole. Sorry about not texting you.”

  “I get it. I just hate one way conversations, ya know?” she says, starting to relax.

  “I do. I’m sorry.”

  My mind is still focused on fixing my relationship with Liv when Mr. Thomas returns to Beowolf. I immediately tune him out as usual.

  The rest of the day goes by blandly as many of my high school days usually do. Olivia decides she’d rather stay on campus today then go to the college because it’s miserable outside. We’re in the library watching the rain come down in sheets when the announcement comes on that all sports practices are cancelled for the day. I decide to head home while Olivia says she’s going to stay and finish her chemistry lab. I invite her over for a movie on Thursday, saying she can sleepover too. She agrees whole heartedly and I think our friendship is back on track. Chad gets a ride home with his friends anyway, so I’m free to go home and curl up with some coffee and a good book. I wave goodbye to Liv and head for the car. Luckily I brought a hoodie today. I put it on, pull the hood up around my face and run through the rain to my car. It seems I was somewhat successful at staying dry when I get in the car, though the parts of my long dark hair that were hanging out have quickly become soaked. I pull the mass of hair behind my head in a knot and drive home. This is one nasty storm. The lightning makes me think I should have stayed at school to ride it out.

  Driving is a nightmare and I’m not even going twenty- five. I can hardly see through the rain, but as my windshield wipers move as a fast as they can, I see something standing in the middle of the road. Or rather, someone. I hit the brakes because in this rain I can’t see the edges of the figure moving. I can’t see that she’s only energy, pure energy. As I screech to a halt my car slides and suddenly I’m sideways on a deserted road. When I get out to see if she’s OK or needs help, I realize she’s gone. I sit back down in the car, now totally drenched and shake my head, are my eyes playing tricks on me? And then I feel it, the same energy I felt a few weeks ago in my little Honda Civic. I turn my head to the right to see the blue eyed little girl sitting in the passenger’s seat staring right at me.

  The air comes out of my lungs in a single whoosh. After taking a couple deep breaths I say, “You know, you really shouldn’t creep up on people like that Wendy.”

  She smiles a toothy grin at me, “Sorry Shay. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just really needed to talk to you. I know how to find my father.”

  Chapter 9

  I’m still driving at a crawling pace, but not to home, we’re headed back to the blue house.

  “So what exactly did this guy tell you again?” I ask her, I want to review this situation one more time.

  She sighs, “Shay, we’ve been over this at least three times.”

  “Yes, but this all sounds a bit off to me.”

  “Ugh fine. The ghost, a dark haired man, he said I could get my dad back and that he is probably looking for me right now. We just have to get some other ghosts to help me to look for him. That’s where you come in; you’re like a ghost magnet. If you think about him enough he might come to us, or at least other ghosts who know him will come to you and then we can get information about him from them.”

  “And you’re sure all I have to do is think about him?” We’re almost to the house now. I can see where we broke through the trees last time. The ground cover hasn’t had time to grow back yet. Mud is splashing up on my tires; my car is going to need a serious bath after this little adventure.

  “Well there is one more thing.”

  Uh-oh, what I feel coming can’t be good. I knew it was important to have her repeat the instructions.

  “And that is…” I prompt her, we’re at the house now and I put the car in park but leave it running because I’m still damp and freezing. I appreciate the heat blowing on me, warming me slowly. “You have to drop a little blood on his grave.”

  “I have to do WHAT?!?” Suddenly the air blowing on me feels too hot. I need to get out of this car, I go to open the door when I realize it’s still pouring outside and I really don’t want to get soaked again. I close the door and instead I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the cold window. I turn off the heat immediately using the dial. “Take deep breaths,” I tell myself aloud. “Try not to pass out.”

  When I was three I broke my leg in a sledding accident. It was just Dad and I; we were at this huge hill by his work. Well huge for a three year old. We had one of those discs that go super fast when you don’t weigh a lot. My dad gave me a push, never realizing I would move as fast as I did. I was so happy screaming and laughing as I went down that hill. I never saw that fence coming and when I ran into it, I didn’t feel a thing. I just remember hearing the screaming, it was my own voice, but I didn’t feel like it was coming out of my body. I opened my eyes briefly to see my left leg totally gnarled up next to my body. My dark red blood soaking the freshly laid snow that had silenced my footsteps just seconds before. The rust taste filled my mouth and as I panicked, I saw
my dad’s horrified face. I see his face every time I see or hear about blood now. It makes me feel like my whole body is about to cave into itself. The pain from my broken leg was nothing compared to the look on his face; that look has haunted me ever since. It impacts me every time. I once passed out in elementary school when Olivia scraped her knee. I actually cried last time I got a paper cut and I’m eighteen freaking years old, an adult, I mean really?

  I turn back to Wendy, she’s looking at her hands laying in her lap.

  She mumbles, “Shay, please help me.” Then she slowly turns to look at me with those big blue eyes.

  What can I do? I have to suck it up and help this little ghost; why else would I have this ability?

  I sigh and as I suck a deep breath back in I make a decision, “Ok Wendy, let’s do this.” I’m surprised at how confident I sound.

  We get out of the car and I run to the house to try to stay semi-dry while Wendy floats around looking for her father’s grave. She thinks it’s near the lake so she’s headed that way, though I can hardly make out her semi-translucent figure through this rain. I walk through the front door of the blue house and decide I might as well look around. I enter in a hallway with a seating area to the right and a dining room to the left. It appears as though a chandelier fell through the floor in the dining room at some point so I avoid the dark open space left behind. It looks as though it could suck me into it. Instead I walk to the back of the house and find myself in a huge kitchen. It goes the entire length of the back of the house. The pantry alone is as big as my bathroom at home. Come to think of it, this house is at least twice the size of mine. I start exploring the cupboards, who knows what I’ll find in them or what I am looking for, but the opening and shutting of the doors is calming me. I find some old vintage tins when Wendy shows up. She has an apprehensive smile on her face, “found it” is all she says and I know it’s time to go to work.

  We walk out of the back door of the house or what’s left of it. A screen door blocks most of the doorway and I have to give it a good shove to get it open. Wendy hardly notices it as she floats right through the screen. I notice the rain has lightened up significantly as I put up my hood. It’s more of a drizzle now, which I really appreciate. Wendy moves in front of me, leading me to her father’s burial site. We move toward the lake across the wet, slippery grass. I notice a half sunk wooden rowboat tied to a fairly stable looking dock.

  “We used to fish off that dock, you know. I caught a big bass in that pond the year before, well before I left.” Wendy looks nostalgic.

  “Hey Wendy, can I ask you something?”

  She snaps back to our current reality. “Sure.”

  I pause, rethinking my question but decide to go for it anyway, “How did you, you know, die?”

  “Well that’s easy Shay,” she says with a sad look in her eyes, “I killed myself.”

  Chapter 10

  She turns to look out over the churning black water. It’s been disturbed from the rain and as it drizzles the water continues to move. I put my hands in my front sweatshirt pocket to keep them warm.

  I can see her slipping into her past. She seems to get a dazed look whenever she’s back in her time. She continues to look out over the lake and takes a deep breath to begin.

  “It was summer and I liked to swim. I thought I could reach the bottom of the lake if I tried hard enough. I filled my lungs with air and swam hard to the bottom. I brushed the silt floor with the tips of my fingers. When I approached the surface I saw my daddy paddling around in our dingy.” She gestures to a half submerged dock. “He said I was in too deep and I should work my way back to shore. I was angry with him. I knew I could do it and I could go longer holding my breath, I was a fantastic swimmer. Daddy used to say I swam like a fish since I grew up in this lake. So I dove back toward the bottom. But I had moved too far in the lake. It was too deep. He was right; I would never reach the bottom. The water swirled around me as I struggled to breathe. I couldn’t get back to the surface to take a breath. I remember it getting dark and feeling weightless.”

  She looks down at her hands, “I had drowned and I had done it to myself. He tried to warn me and I wouldn’t listen, it was my own fault. I watched him as he dragged my body out of the water and tried to revive me on the shore, but it was no use. I was already gone. He cried for days after he buried me in the backyard.” If ghosts could cry, this is where she would have done it. She was sniffling, but no tears were shed. Ghosts don’t have any fluids like live people do, so essentially they don’t cry, but they also don’t need to eat or sleep or any of our other daily activities.

  Wendy continues her depressing tale, “I watched him for years, but eventually he left our home and moved away. He never remarried and I just stayed in this house while it rotted away. I’m tied to the home, not him, so I can’t leave Marksville. Only adult ghosts travel with people tied to them by experience. Kids stay near landmarks because their experiences are mostly based in their environment. It’s rare we attach to a single person, so as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t follow him. But eventually he returned… in a coffin. It was in his will that he wanted to be buried with me and Mama. I guess he kept the property just for that.”

  Finally she looks back to me, “I miss him, Shay. I just want a chance to see him again. I thought by having you bring me here I would be able to.”

  I get that she’s done telling her story and it’s time for some action. “Alright where do we start?” A rock floats by my head. I nearly jump out of my skin; she is a freaky little girl. “Do you have to do things like that?”

  “Sorry. It’s just, well the blood thing… I need you to cut yourself, remember?”

  How could I forget? Ugh, gross. I grab the rock out of the air and push it into my left palm. A small tear in my skin develops right near my age line, the line that extends from my wrist to the middle of my palm. My mom used to be into palm reading, wait until she sees that I cut my life line right in half, super, she’ll be thrilled. After the blood begins to pool in my hand and I’m starting to sway Wendy reminds me why we’re here.

  “Alright now, drop your blood over here on this patch of grass.” She points and I see a small crooked stone standing out of the ground.

  “OK.” I walk over without looking at my hand. I crouch down and rub my bloody left hand in the wet grass, the coolness of the ground feels good on my fresh wound.

  “Now,” Wendy says floating behind me, “think really hard about me and my dad. Think of how you want him to return to this place. You’re performing a summoning, only really strong paranormals can do this, and I know you can.”

  I break my concentration for a minute to look at her, “A paranormal?”

  “Shay focus! It just means you can see and speak to ghosts.”

  Right, just my normal life.

  She whines, “Shay, focus.”

  OK, OK. Think, dead father, you were here, come back to your little girl. I’m thinking about Wendy, the water, I’m freezing… thinking, thinking. I take a deep breath and the rust taste fills my mouth, I try to focus on it.

  Then it happens, that electric current I feel off of Wendy is suddenly at my feet, or maybe it’s in my feet? I take another deep breath and attempt to focus as the electric current settles in my feet. It’s climbing up my legs, weird. The current fills me up making me feel warm until it touches my fingertips. Then like lightning it shoots out of my fingers, I open my eyes and I can actually see it. Little tiny blue lightning bolts come out of my fingers, this is absolutely insane. And then I see him, just a shimmer at first, but then he’s there. A tall light haired man, dressed in clothes from the early 1900’s. I know it worked, this is Wendy’s dad and I brought him to us.

  Relief floods me, but so does sudden exhaustion. I fall to my knees, feeling the squish of the wet ground against my jeans. I can hardly keep my eyes open as I see Wendy’s reaction to seeing her dad for the first time in all these years. She’s overjoyed, jumping up to hug him tightly.
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  I hear a man’s voice say, “Thank you. This is all I’ve ever wanted. I have missed her so much.”

  I nod at him. I just manage to get out, “You’re welcome.”

  I am so tired and cold, so cold. Maybe, if I just sleep, for a minute, yeah that will work, just a little nap. I close my eyes not realizing there’s no one really there who can wake me up.

  Chapter 11

  My fingers curl around the cool side of my pillow and I breathe in the scent of Tide, mmmm home. I sit up so quickly it makes my head spin. Wait, home? How did this happen? The last thing I remember was being at the old blue house with Wendy and her dad. Did I actually do that? Did I bring him back to our world? And if I did, where was he to begin with? Oh snap, what kind of trouble am I in now?

  I race to the window and pull back the light lavender curtain to see my car sitting in the driveway under the maple tree where I usually park it. But how? I mean could I have driven myself home and went to bed without even remembering it? I guess I could have, I was really tired. My head hurts and since it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work till two this afternoon I decide a couple more hours of sleep couldn’t hurt. Maybe things will become clearer then. I climb back under the covers and wrap the sheets around me. I drift off easily into a dreamless sleep.