Ethereal

by Moore, Addison

  “I’m sorry.” I direct it at Logan. It’s because of me. Whatever it was, it wanted me.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Smash

  Mom and Tad are frantic when they pick me up from the emergency room. The doctor on duty assured them I had no signs of damage to my lungs, and my blood oxygen level was perfectly normal.

  After I shower and dress, my mother makes me lie down in the family room where she covers me with a blanket and makes me try and eat disgusting day glow yellow chicken soup from powder, and drink bland tea.

  “I almost burned to death. I don’t have diarrhea.” I’m quick to remind her as she ups the ante and offers to make me toast.

  She holds her hands up near her temples and shudders.

  “I can’t lose you Skyla. Too much has already happened here. I’m starting to think moving was a very big mistake.”

  I toss the covers off. It’s stifling in the house, and her last comment sends a heated rush of adrenaline through me.

  “I think moving here was the best thing that’s happened to this family in a really long time.” Like before daddy, but I don’t say that part.

  “You think the best thing about moving here is named, Logan.” She says his name like it’s the plague.

  “I’m sure there are boys named Logan everywhere.” I try and appease her by making it sound as though I could have fallen for someone anywhere, but deep down inside I don’t believe a word. “You met Tad at work.” I shrug. They both worked for the same design firm in L.A. The way Tad whooped about opening his own division on Paragon you’d think he won the lottery. I think my mom assumed she’d be an equal partner, but from what I’ve seen, she’s nothing more than his secretary.

  Tad walks by and breezes into the kitchen. We watch together as he inventories the refrigerator then slams it shut with disappointment.

  “Lizbeth, there’s no food in this damn house.” He says it in such a comical way I think he’s half joking. Who talks to my mother that way? My dad would shoot him if he could. He’d probably want me to do it for him. Sure my mom and he fought, but he never addressed her that way, at least never around me.

  In less than ten minutes my mom and the Gestapo are doing a grocery run. Unfreakingbelievable.

  Drake and the girls are quiet upstairs so I head on up to grab my phone so I can chat with Logan. My jealous rage towards Michelle seems to have subsided for the moment. I mean he did pull me out of a burning building. He did kill a Fem for me. And then there’s Gage who lifted Logan’s truck out of the way of oncoming traffic.

  A cold chill descends upon me as I climb the stairs. I rub my bare arms running up the final steps. It’s freezing up here. Drake’s door is shut and so is the girls. The hall window is fixed so it can’t be coming from there. I lay my hand across the glass, warm like the weather outside. So where’s this cold air coming from? Neither the heating nor the AC works in this place. I have a feeling the blue light special had a little more to do with this defunct lemon and all of the broken amenities, than it did the disappearance of one of its residents or any so called ghosts.

  The air continues to become more frigid as I move down the hall. I bypass my bedroom with my hands extended before me like a zombie.

  “Oh my gosh.” I whisper in disbelief. A light fog fills the hole of my parent’s bedroom. I walk in treading with caution. It looks remarkably normal. The comforter is drawn tight over the bed and a hundred microscopic pillows sit neatly arranged in rows. “Please God, kill me if I ever live like this.”

  I head in a little deeper into the heart of the sharp, glacial chill. It’s so cold it stings my flesh like a sunburn.

  “What is this?” I ask out loud as though I might get some sort of answer.

  The door to the closet is open. I’m immediately attracted in a morbid way to the dark gaping hole. It’s an icebox in here. You could hang meat. I pull the string dangling from the center of the walk-in, and turn on the light. My mother and Tad have divided the closet down the middle. My mom’s clothes are arranged in no special order with the exception of long dresses towards the left, but Tad’s side reeks of anal. Dress shirts are scaled from black to white in color order. Who does that? Maybe a girl would do that—maybe a thirteen-year-old girl would color code her wardrobe, but a grown man? His pants are laid out the same way, even his shoes fan out in a depressed rainbow of color.

  An icy bite of air circles around my left leg. It’s as though it’s speaking to me, telling me something. I crouch down and feel with my hand until I hit the back wall behind Tad’s shoes. It’s dripping wet. My fingers snag on a small lever. I pull it down opening a small door in the wall. I pat my hand around blindly and come up with a stack of paper.

  I rifle through it, my heart feels like it’s going to seize up, not to mention this piercing cold air has me feeling lightheaded.

  A stack of hundred dollar bills—fifty, hundred dollar bills.

  Crap! I never want to hear him harp about not having two dimes to rub together, again. The next time he does this, I might just say, no dipshit—we have Benjamin’s.

  A waddle of newspaper clippings wrapped in a rubber band vies for my attention. I go to loosen the band, severing it on accident.

  Great.

  I open them up and flatten them out with the palm of my hand.

  Oh my gosh! This is from my dad’s accident. The other three are clippings of a missing West Paragon High School girl. Chloe. Another one from last October, about this house being haunted.

  I scramble putting everything back together the way I found it and shut it back in the tiny compartment.

  I get up and start heading out the room, and run smack into Tad himself.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Secrets

  “Get a small bottle or plastic bag and collect some of the moisture.” Logan instructs me over the phone.

  I consider this a moment. Perhaps calling Logan with the odd news of what I discovered on Tad’s side of the closet wasn’t the best idea. Plus I had a mild heart attack when Tad walked back in to get his wallet. I told him I was just borrowing my mom’s hairspray and he didn’t bat an eyelash.

  “You don’t get it.” I say. “The clippings were just weird. He’s psycho! I’m living with a lunatic.”

  “I agree with you. The clippings are strange. But Skyla, listen to me—go right now and find something to capture that moisture. I’ll give it to my uncle and he’ll analyze it.”

  “Analyze it? It’s water.”

  “It may be something more than that.”

  “Like ghost water?” OK, that made no sense.

  He expels a heavy sigh into the phone.

  “I’m sorry.” I whisper.

  “You did nothing wrong. Listen, I’m coming over.”

  “You can’t come over. My parents will kill me.” And it kills me that I just referred to my mom and Tad collectively as, my parents.

  The line goes dead.

  ***

  Logan arrives seemingly on foot. He parked somewhere below Brielle’s driveway and appeared at the backdoor of the kitchen.

  I give a small yelp when I see him waving. My hand flies up to my throat as I jump backwards into the sink.

  “You know I’m afraid to look out this door.” I scold, as I let him in. Mia and Melissa are in the back practicing how to play spin the bottle for a party they’ve been invited to. I’ll have to teach them later how to manipulate it just perfectly, so the bottle lands square on the boy you want to kiss.

  Logan and I head upstairs. He pulls a small glass vial from his pocket just like the one he took my blood in.

  “You get a bulk discount on those?” I say sarcastically.

  “With you around I might have to.” He gives a slight grin.

  I take him straight into my parent’s closet, turn on the light and orient him to the exact area. It’s not so unearthly cold in here anymore. Before I can ask if it’s good. I hear my mother shout from the bottom of the stairs.

 
; “Help unload the car please!” Her voice carries up the stairs.

  Without thinking, I bolt out of the room and head downstairs in an effort to keep them from heading up. It would have been nice if I informed Logan of my plan. But he’s a bright boy. He’ll figure it out.

  “Don’t just stand there like a statue. Get out there and grab some groceries.” Tad barks as he heads through the door.

  A part of me wants to listen and run out to the minivan, but it’s parked so far away, and by the time I get back Tad might already be upstairs changing.

  Mia and Melissa each come in with an armful of bags. Funny, I don’t see Drake in the familial equation. He’s probably upstairs with Brielle, bathing, or playing hide-and-seek or whatever the hell it is they do. Drake is clearly the golden child who can do no wrong.

  “Hey, young lady.” Tad snaps his finger towards the van.

  “Oh God.” I mouth as I sprint down to the open trunk and grab the last of the paper bags. I make a mad dash up the porch and spill half the contents of a bag full of loose fruit. Who puts loose fruit in a paper bag?

  I run the bags to the entry and place them on the floor in an effort to bolt back and gather the rolling apples, and pears. I spot a bunch of bananas that have managed to fall under the slotted stairs. Shit! It’s going to take an entire millennium to scurry up the slope and retrieve them. I decide to ignore them and head inside.

  I unload my bags onto the kitchen counter as mom and Tad bitch about the lousy job the guy at the grocery store did of bagging up their stuff. Little do they know there are much bigger things to bitch about, such as the boy I left stranded in their bedroom. I toss the fruit in a glass bowl mom has set out with a few heavily puckered apples already in it.

  I fold the paper bags neatly and put them away, then stretch my hands out and yawn dramatically.

  “I think I’ll catch a nap.”

  “And where the hell are the bananas? I know I put them in the cart.” Tad complains as they both ignore my spontaneous monologue.

  I take the stairs two by two and head straight into their bedroom. It’s not cold anymore. In fact the air is stuffy and stale like it usually is in here. I whip open their closet.

  “Logan?” I hiss.

  Nothing.

  I take a peek in their bathroom, and that’s when mom and Tad decide to walk in. He’s got his hands cupping both her breasts outside her shirt, and she’s laughing like she actually enjoys that perv touching her.

  It’s a real deer in the headlights moment, with Tad’s hands dropping straight to his side as the expression falls right off mom’s face. A small bit of vomit rises to the back of my throat.

  “Just borrowing the hairspray.” I say, afraid the image will engrave itself in my brain as I walk past them.

  Too late—already has.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Passage

  He couldn’t have left, I would have seen him—someone would have seen him.

  I lock my bedroom door. It looks as though there’s a body underneath my covers, but then again it always looks like that because I never make my bed.

  “Psst?” I hiss walking carefully as though he might pop out at me. “Logan?”

  A small sliver of light emerges from the line under my closet door, and I head on over.

  I find Logan inside sitting Indian style, reading a book. Everything about him is perfectly serene. You could easily exchange the surroundings for a library and he would fit right in.

  “You should really consider putting a nice comfy chair in here. It’s a great place to take your mind off things and relax.” He tosses the book behind him. “Maybe a bean bag?”

  “Funny.” I slide a pile of shoes to the side with my foot. “How are we going to get you out?” I well up with fear at the prospect of Logan becoming forever trapped in my closet.

  “Don’t worry.” He hits the air brakes with his hand. “I’m sure you’ll bring sustenance when needed. And we can do this.” He pulls me down over him and presses in with a long hot kiss. “I want to show you something.”

  “What?” I rub the palms of my hands across his chest in a series of small circles. The scent of laundry softener lights up my senses.

  “Not that, but it’s a good idea for later.” He pulls us both to our feet. “Up there.” He points to the top shelf towards the back. “You have a chair we can stand on?”

  I haul in the rolling desk chair that glides around like it’s on ice.

  “I’ll hold it.” I offer.

  Logan climbs on and reaches up towards the wall. His feet engage in a full swivel in both directions as my fingers slip off the back.

  “Oops sorry.” I say.

  “There might only be two of us left, Skyla. Please don’t try and kill me.”

  “Really are there only two of us left?” If we were the last of the Celestra then it would be our genetic duty to produce offspring—lots and lots of offspring.

  “No, but at the rate they’re killing us, we might get there soon.” Something snaps and the wall comes off in his hand.

  “It’s a façade!” I don’t know why this thrills me.

  “Most things are.” He hands it down to me, and I place it upright between my winter jackets. A sliding panel door bumps back, and there’s a two and a half foot wide opening. “Come on.” He urges me to climb up there.

  “What is it, the attic?” I take his hands and let him help me up into the narrow dark opening.

  “It’s,” he grunts as he pushes himself in after me. “It’s a locked off portion of it. Chloe didn’t know it was there until just a few months before she… discovered it by accident.”

  “Oh.” A pinch of jealousy stirs hot inside me. “Were you trapped in her bedroom and in need of a way out?”

  He doesn’t bother with a laugh. Instead he gropes around above me and a small bare bulb goes off.

  I suck in a lungful of air. It’s beautiful. The walls are covered in a million paper butterflies—large, small, every color of the rainbow. It must have taken her hours, weeks, maybe even months to fill in all the bare spaces.

  “This was her getaway. I was here once, and that was because she kept something I gave her, here.”

  “You came to check on it?” I can’t help but bite into him a little each time he mentions her. I guess I am the jealous type, and I don’t really care if he knows it.

  “I came to get it back.” His eyebrows give a gentle rise.

  “So you have it?” I don’t even know what it is, but I love the fact it was something akin to the breakup collection agency more than it was a secret rendezvous.

  “No she never gave it back.” His gaze wanders past the wall into oblivion, reliving the moment.

  “What was it?”

  “A pendant that belonged to my grandmother. Chloe said she wanted to give it back. And then she went missing and that was that.”

  “I thought you said she let you in here, and she was going to give it to you?”

  “I never said that. I said I’ve only been here once. It was after she was gone. Brielle took me up here when I told her Chloe had something important of mine.”

  “Oh. Maybe she was wearing it—you know, when they took her.”

  “She wore it for a little while, then she wanted to prove she didn’t need it. We had a fight and I never saw her wear it again. She told Brielle she was keeping it in her diary.”

  “Strange place to keep jewelry.” My eyes narrow in on him. “Maybe she got rid of it, or pawned it. Do you believe her?”

  “She couldn’t lie to me.” He says serious.

  Of course she could lie to him. Anybody can lie to anybody. It’s part of the rules of this game called life. Not that it feels good or it’s right or that anybody should do it, but it is possible. It’s like he thinks she was perfect. He has a serious case of a Chloe based messiah complex.

  “She could lie.” I match his over serious tone to the T. It’s comical, both of us here in a paper butterfly sanctuary cre
ated by his dead ex girlfriend, having a spat over, of all things, the virtues of his ex.

  “I think I like you jealous.” His lips curve into a delicious smile. He leans in and bites gently on my lower lip causing a full-blown meltdown in my stomach. We spend the better part of an hour making good use of the gorgeous surroundings—the inflexible sturdy floor. I don’t think I could ever stay mad at Logan.