Wraith

by Gwenan Haines

  “No, I think men took Tommy. The same men that took Miki, or ones just like them anyway. Something happened to Tommy—something that stole his soul away—but I don’t know what.”

  Hunter fell silent. When he answered, his voice sounded uncertain, as if he were about to take the conversation into dangerous territory. “If you think Tommy and Miki’s disappearances are connected in some way,” he asked, “then why haven’t you seen Miki’s wraith? Wouldn’t it make sense that they ended up in the same place?

  “It would,” I said, still staring out the window. “But I don’t think they are. Or at least if Miki is in the same place as Tommy, he’s not soulless. I’m sure I would feel that.”

  “I think you probably would too,” Hunter agreed, stretching his legs out on the coffee table.

  I turned back toward Hunter and crossed my arms. I was tempted to make a joke about him feeling a little too much at home but I had other things on my mind. “I think I might have seen Annie’s wraith too.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Her back was to me. Well, my dream self. And I couldn’t get any closer. She kept getting farther and farther away, no matter how much I tried to catch up with her. It was like chasing the moon. It could’ve been another little girl. I don’t know.”

  “Are you…going to tell Liv?”

  I remembered the promise I’d made to Gavin. “No. I, uh, don’t plan on doing that. “

  Hunter studied my face but didn’t comment.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be seeing her anytime soon. Even if she wasn’t mad at me.” The Blue Moon had a reputation for remaining open during bad weather but I doubted they were serving now. Nobody but the men plowing the roads would be out on a night like this.

  Which was when my cellphone went off.

  I hurried past Hunter and grabbed the phone off the kitchen counter, where I’d left it when I first got back that afternoon. For a fleeting moment I thought it was my mother calling. Maybe something had gone wrong at the house.

  The number was one I didn’t recognize. Or at least one I hadn’t programmed into my phone. It did look familiar though. Maybe somebody I’d made a delivery for?

  “Hello?” I leaned back against the counter as Hunter appeared in the doorway.

  “Annie’s gone.”

  Liv’s voice. My stomach clenched. It didn’t feel good to know she believed me. In that moment I wished like hell my dreams had been wrong. “When?”

  “I don’t know. We were all in the apartment when Gavin went downstairs to make sure the restaurant was okay. He wasn’t gone long, but it was enough for me to start worrying,”

  Liv’s panicked voice faded in then out as she talked. I gripped the phone tighter, as if holding onto my cell would keep the call from breaking up. “So I left the apartment. Just for a few minutes. Gavin was in the basement. One of the pipes had burst and he was trying to clean things up. I didn’t stay that long—didn’t even really help him—and I went straight back up to Annie. But she wasn’t there. That was two hours ago.”

  “Have you called the police?” I asked. “You need to call them, Liv. Right away.”

  “They’re here now,” she said, her voice breaking. “They’ve been searching for the past hour but they can’t find anything. They think she probably saw something and wandered off but there’s no trail. The snow’s coming too fast.”

  Hunter’s expression darkened. He couldn’t hear what Liv was saying but from the look on his face he had a pretty good idea what we were talking about.

  “Everything’s going to be okay.” I had no idea if that were true but I didn’t think realism was the way to go at the moment. “She’ll turn up.”

  On the other end of the line, Liv was breathing hard. “Kira, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before but I believe you now. You said when you touched your brother’s hat you had a vision. What if you did the same thing with something of Annie’s. Maybe if you had one of your visions that would help the police find her.”

  I wanted to tell her that was the first time that ever happened. That my visions didn’t work like that. Then I remembered the little girl’s wraith in my dream, floating farther and farther away.

  “Give me thirty minutes,” I said, heading for the front door. “I’ll be there.”

  Hunter caught up with me as I was pulling on my boots. “What’s going on?”

  I stood up and reached for my parka. “I’m heading into town to see Liv. Annie’s missing.”

  He lifted a knit ski mask off the table and threw it at me. “Looks like I’m coming with you then,” he said, reaching for one of his boots.

  I pulled on the mask, which covered all of my face except for the slits around the eyes and mouth. Even though I’d been dreaming of Annie’s disappearance for weeks everything felt unreal, like none of it could actually be happening. I kept waiting to wake up and see the sun slanting through my bedroom windows, just like it always did.

  Then Hunter handed me one of the shotguns that hung on the wall.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “A little girl’s been taken and we’re about to drive through the dark on a couple of snowmobiles. We probably won’t meet anybody along the way but I sure as hell want us to be ready if we do.”

  I adjusted the shotgun so that it hung across my back. “All right. But you should probably know now I’m a lousy shot.”

  Hunter pulled a ski mask over his own face and slung a shotgun over his shoulder. “That’s okay.” He pulled the door open for me. “Because I’m not.”

  ****

  Liv’s face was red and swollen when she greeted us at the entrance to the Blue Moon. She opened the door the moment we pulled up and rushed down the unshoveled walkway to meet us. A police car was parked outside and from the amount of snow on its windows, it had been there a while.

  “That’s my dad’s car,” Hunter said after he pulled off his snow-crusted ski mask. He stomped on the mat with his boots and rubbed his hands together to get warm. If the numbness in my own hands was any indication, it was going to take a while. When Liv’s gaze fell on his shotgun he took it off and laid it against the wall. I did the same, half expecting her to ask us why we’d brought them.

  She didn’t ask. I almost wished she would. Somehow her acceptance of the danger made it worse.

  “Your father came as soon as I called,” Liv said to Hunter, hugging herself to stop her shaking. “He’s upstairs in Annie’s room. There was another guy, too, but he had to leave. I think there was a car accident.” Tears spilled down her cheeks and she swiped at them with the back of her hand.

  “We should get back upstairs.” Gavin took hold of Liv’s elbow and guided her toward the stairs that led to their apartment.

  “I want to go look for her,” Liv said, resisting his effort to nudge her forward. “She’s out there all alone. And she’s scared. She’s really scared. I can feel it.” She place her fist over her heart and looked at me, her face a mask of grief. “I swear to God I can feel it.”

  “I can feel it too, Liv,” Gavin said quietly. Though he wasn’t as visibly upset as his wife, his composure seemed as fragile as hers was. Probably the only reason he hadn’t broken down was that he was trying to be strong for Liv. “But there’s no point walking out into a blizzard when we don’t know where to look. Maybe Kira can help us.”

  The butterflies in my stomach felt as if they were multiplying at the speed of light. Funny that I’d spent so much of life wishing I wouldn’t see the future and now I was terrified I might not be able to do just that. I shoved my ski mask into my jacket pocket, along with my gloves.

  “I’ll give it my best shot,” I said, mounting the first step. “But I can’t promise anything. My visions are—well, let’s just say I can’t control them. I don’t know when they’ll happen or if they’ll happen at all.”

  “But you saw Annie before,” Liv said. “You said you�
�d been dreaming of her for weeks.”

  “She has,” Hunter said from behind me. “But even Kira’s not sure what her dreams mean. They keep changing on her, like a moving target.”

  Bad choice of simile, I thought, wincing inwardly. “I’ll do my best.” I reached the top stair and stepped up into the apartment. The truth was I didn’t know if I even needed another vision. Because the vision of the girl in the cave had been pretty clear. The other dreams had kept changing, but that vision had been as solid as visions get. If Annie was still nearby, my guess was she was in that cave. But I wanted to be sure, if I could. Then maybe I’d be able to convince Hunter’s dad and some of his buddies on the force to head out there with us.

  Which was going to be easier said than done. But one step at a time. The first thing I needed to do was conjure up a new and improved vision of Annie’s location.

  Yeah, right.

  Bill Jackson was on his cell phone when we entered Annie’s room. To say he seemed out of place didn’t begin to capture it. He stood with his back to us, his voice low as he spoke to whoever was on the other end. There were bins of stuffed animals and more on the bed. Everything—the walls, the ruffled bedspread, the curtains, even the dresser—was violet, the same shade as the one in my dream. A copy of Goodnight, Moon lay open across the bed above a basket stuffed with children’s books.

  Liv crossed to the closet and started rifling through Annie’s clothes, shoving the hangers to one side as she searched for the outfit that would give me the vision she needed.

  Because that’s what she really wanted. Even more than a specific location. She needed to know Annie was safe, wherever she was.

  The memory of the wraiths in my dream forced themselves to the front of my brain. What if that girl had been Annie? What if it was already too late—suppose I did manage to see something and that something was a vision of Annie dead?

  Or worse. Because in our psychotically messed up world, there are things worse than death. What if I saw something so awful I could never tell Liv and Gavin about it? Did they have a right to know—or was it better to lie and give them hope?

  Bill slid his cell into his pocket. “That was the National Crime Information Center. They’re going to enter Annie’s information into the missing persons file. There’s no waiting period if the child’s under eighteen.”

  “Thank you,” Gavin said. “How soon can we start a search?”

  Bill pressed his lips together. “As soon as the storm breaks.”

  Gavin nodded. “Are you sure we can’t start sooner?”

  “Most of our men are out dealing with accidents and people stranded in their cars. As you know, we haven’t got a lot of manpower. Tony searched the yard and the woods behind the house before he got called out to the accident. But there’s no trail and visibility is zero. In the morning, we can get the dogs.”

  “If she’s out in this,” Liv said, pulling Annie’s footie pajamas off a hanger. “she’ll be dead by morning. You can organize all the searches you want, but it will be too late.”

  No one spoke. Liv was right, of course. No child would survive out in this weather.

  It was Hunter who finally broke the silence. “Annie’s a smart kid. Even if she did get lost she’d find a safe place to wait until the storm ends.”

  Liv walked over to where I stood by the bed and placed the footie pajamas into my hands. “Not if somebody took her. You’re right. Annie is a smart kid. Too smart to walk out of this house into a blizzard. So that means somebody tricked her into going. And wherever they took her, we need to find that place and bring her home. Because I’m not going to sit here twiddling my thumbs while some bastard hurts my child,” she said, her voice strangely calm. “Kira, will you try now—to see something?”

  The desperation in her eyes was too hard to look at. I sat down on the bed and gathered the pajamas into my lap. When I closed my eyes there was nothing, just the same blankness there had been when I first held Miki’s hat the day before. I waited for the shapes to appear but nothing changed.

  “Do you see something?” Liv asked, kneeling before me. “Do you see Annie?”

  I opened my eyes. “No,” I said. “I’m sorry. The visions don’t happen when I want them to. Usually I dream them. The vision with Miki’s hat may only have happened because he’s my brother.”

  “Maybe if we gave her some space,” Gavin said. “What if we all left the room, Kira? Would that help?”

  Behind him, Bill Jackson watched me with the sharp eyes of a cop. I wondered if he thought I’d scammed the Michaels into believing me somehow. If he knew Hunter had just been with a girl who may or may not be delusional. A girl he probably didn’t think was right for his son. In all the years I’d known him, Bill had never been anything less than polite and respectful toward me. But there was always an unspoken question below the surface, as if he’d never really trusted me. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” he said, ushering Liv and Gavin out of the room. “Come on, I want you both to take a look at that list of names you made before. I’m gonna need you to take me through it, one name at a time.”

  Liv glared at him. “Nobody on that list would take Annie.”

  “You’re probably right about that. But I’m the type that likes to dot my i’s and cross my t’s, so to speak.” When Bill reached the door he stopped and addressed his son. “Aren’t you coming?”

  Hunter’s eyes met mine as if he were asking my permission to go. I nodded.

  “Yeah, sure, dad.” He turned to say one last thing to me before he left the room. “If it doesn’t work, it’s not your fault.”

  If only I could believe that were true. Bill met my gaze after Hunter passed him on his way out. I could almost hear the warning bells going off in his head. More like cannons. I wasn’t sure what worried him more—that I’d see something or that I wouldn’t. As for Hunter, I wondered if he’d admitted to himself that he was relieved the two of us wouldn’t be together past this week.

  I closed my eyes again and held the pajamas, willing a vision to appear. But the second try wasn’t any better than the first. I wanted to hurl the damn sleeper across the room and to punch the wall until it cracked. Instead I decided to give rational thought a chance.

  Sort of.

  I set the footies down on the bed and scanned the room. If the pajamas weren’t working maybe something else would. But what? A stuffed animal might do the trick. But which one? There were dozens. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen Annie with one in particular but nothing came to mind. My eyes skipped over the objects scattered around the room. A doll? Another piece of clothing?

  Forcing myself to slow my breathing, I sat on the edge of the bed and thought. Or did my best imitation of it, anyway. What I actually did was to stare unseeing at the cover of Goodnight, Moon.

  Until I really saw it.

  I grabbed the book and wrapped both hands around it. This time the images were there even before I shut my eyes. Annie’s red hair, a gray wool blanket thrown over her, the shadows of flames licking the ceiling of ice, the backs of men warming themselves by the fire.

  I was off the bed and into the hallway before sixty seconds passed. “I saw something,” I shouted down the corridor, rushing toward the four of them.

  They were seated at the kitchen table, a list of names between Liv and Bill. If it hadn’t been for their faces, I could almost have believed they were sitting around going over the books for the restaurant. Everything was warm and homey, from the clutter of drawings on the fridge to the copper pots hanging from the ceiling. Without Annie though, the room was nothing but a shell of itself. Or maybe a movie set waiting for the actor family to show.

  “I think I know where Annie is,” I said.

  Hunter rose out of his chair. “The cave?”

  “You mean the cave you found the hat in.” Liv rose out of her chair as well. “Is that the one you’re talking about?”

  Bill said nothing, only watched me with those cynical eyes of his. Even if I’
d been selling Bibles, he wasn’t buying. Hell, if I was giving away the Hope Diamond for free he still wasn’t buying.

  “The other day I saw her there, asleep. Or pretending to be,” I added, because even the happiest kid in the world wasn’t about to sleep through her own kidnapping. “I saw her there again, just now. There were men sitting in front of a campfire. The shadows of the flames were bouncing off the ice, flickering across the colors on the walls. I think she’s being held there until morning.”

  “We need to get somebody out there,” Gavin said to Bill. “Right now.”

  “Believe me, I’d like to,” Bill said. “It’s not that I don’t have faith in what Kira saw, though I’ll admit all that hocus-pocus stuff isn’t for me. But even if it’s true, there’s no way I’m sending anybody out there until morning. It’s difficult enough to get there during good weather, never mind a snowstorm. And even if I did manage to find my way there, what am I going to do when I arrive? Every man I’ve got is out dealing with accidents and God knows what else. I’m sorry. “

  “Tomorrow’s too late,” Liv said. “I’m begging you.”

  “I promise you we’ll get somebody out there in the morning,” Bill said. “You have my word, Liv. But to ride out there tonight is to fulfill a death wish. I doubt I could ever find the place in this weather.”

  Liv walked over to Bill and gripped his jacket in both hands. “What kind of a cop are you?”

  Hunter flinched. “My dad’s a good cop,” he said. “If he says we need to wait until morning then that’s what we need to do. If we head out there it might be worse for Annie than if we waited. If anything goes wrong Annie could end up dead.”

  Now it was Liv who flinched. “How dare you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hunter said quickly.

  Bill laid his hands on Liv’s and gently removed them from his jacket. “They’re as stranded as we are. If he does happen to be out there like Kira thinks they are, they’re not going anywhere anytime soon,” he said to her, not unkindly. “We’ll be there right after dawn, most likely. And if Kira’s vision is true, then your daughter will still be alive.”