I screamed and ran out of the room, down the hallway. I raced into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, cursing as soon as I realized that a ghost was chasing me. A door wouldn't stop her. Maybe I could get past her and go outside into the open.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My face was paler that I’d ever seen it; my blue eyes looked duller than normal.
Do it.
The girl’s voice sounded again, that time inside my head. My reflection in the mirror twisted, and my lips turned up into a scary smile, one that I was not making. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing would come out. I felt my body step forward and reach for the mirror, opening it and pulling out my dad’s anxiety meds. I tried to fight it, but my fingers popped the bottle open. I couldn’t stop it. The voice encouraged me again and somehow controlled my body. It wanted me to take them. All of them.
The first pill plopped out in my hand and then into my mouth. My reflection laughed evilly as I poured out another pill to take. I tried to stop myself, but nothing would happen. My father would think I was trying to kill myself again. Maybe they wouldn’t even find me, and I would be dead. Just the thought made me quiver uncontrollably until the bottle fell out of my hands and into the sink. As they crashed, my body was back in my control.
I grabbed for the doorknob and twisted it to no avail. It wouldn’t move; it just wiggled under my hand. I grabbed it with my second hand and tried again to scream for help. Still nothing would come out. My voice had left me, just like my self-control had earlier. I regretted speaking out loud in the house of my fears and my struggles, because now it knew and was using it against me.
A loud chuckle echoed throughout the tiny space, reverberating off the walls and into my very soul. My body began to shake as I realized I was not alone. I turned around slowly, hoping not to see anyone else in the room with me. I didn’t see anything until I looked up at the mirror.
My hand flew over my mouth. There was a reflection of the girl in the mirror. She laughed as she eyed me. Water from the tub’s faucet began to run.
“Who are you?” I asked and took a couple of steps towards the mirror. Maybe if I hid my fear she would leave.
“Your worst nightmare.”
“Yeah, what she said,” a similar voice sounded behind me. I turned around to see a smaller girl who also wore a creepy, old mask. “The house wants you.
Water continued to rise in the tub as the mirror girl laughed. “And we’re going to give you to it.”
There were two of them.
Shit.
I ran over to the tub and grabbed the knob, turning it until it clicked, but the water continued to spew from the spout.
“Damn it,” I mumbled, fiddling with the other one to try and make it stop. The girl moved over to where I was, looming over me and continuing to laugh.
A loud clank caused me to look over my shoulder and see the other girl standing in the room with my roaring hair dryer in her hand.
“Here, catch!” she said and threw it to the ghost by the tub.
My heart dropped. She caught it and looked at me. When she saw the fear, she cackled and threw it back to her friend.
“Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed as she caught it.
She shook her head and threw it back toward me, that time at my face. The second girl giggled and disappeared as I ducked out of the way.
Hands grabbed my waist and pulled me away from the tub. I screamed as we slammed into the wall and the hair dryer screeched in anger. As if nothing had happened, water stopped flowing from the faucet.
We were alone again.
My whole body started shaking uncontrollably as the realization of how close I’d come to dying hit me.
“Shit, I thought I’d lost you.” Cade turned me in his arms, grasping me to him and holding me tight.
I buried my face in his t-shirt, unable to respond because I couldn’t seem to get my breathing under control. I almost died. A ghost tried to kill me, and I’d come seconds away from dying. If he hadn’t grabbed me, I would have been quickly transported to the land of the departed. I would be dead. It was in that moment that I knew I wasn’t ready to die.
“I am so sorry I wasn’t here to protect you. My mom had to talk to me about family stuff, and then I had trouble getting into the house. Damn house was trying to keep me away, so it could have you.”
“There…there were two of them,” I whispered, still clinging to him as though he were grounding me in the moment and keeping me from going insane. The adrenaline slowly left my body as he held onto me. He continued to apologize as if there was something more he could have done.
“They said the house wants me.”
Cade froze. “They said what?”
I pulled back to look at him. “That the house wants me. What does that mean, Cade?”
He ran his hand down my hair to smooth it. “Nothing, Briar, don’t worry about them. They are just brats and have nothing better to do.”
I wasn’t sure he was being honest, but I was trying to trust him. His words terrified me. “How do I keep my family safe?”
“You don’t. I will deal with it. I will make sure they all know not to touch you again or I’ll…”
I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What are you going to do? Kill them?” I was being sarcastic, but I was irritated. “You don’t live here; you can’t be here all the time with me. There’s no way you can keep us all safe. I’m getting an exorcist.”
“No!” he exclaimed quickly and jumped back from where he stood. He shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a necklace. The chain was long and black, and at the end of it was a gothic old-fashioned cross. “Take this.” Before I could respond, he placed the necklace around my head. “I want to make sure you are safe.”
“This is just jewelry. No offense, but I don’t think it’s going to keep me from dying. I’m terrified here, especially after ghosts tried to kill me!”
“My mother had this made for me. It’s spelled.”
“By who?”
He shrugged. “I don’t fucking know, nor do I care. It works though; I’ve used it.”
“What do I do? Just wear it?”
“No.” He laughed. “You have to close your eyes and hold onto it while wishing them away. If you don’t believe in them, they can’t hurt you. I think that’s how it works at least. Maybe it just wards them off. I don’t know.”
I looked back at him with disbelief in my eyes. “It can’t be that easy.”
“You can do what you want, but I’m trying to protect you. You’re mine, and I won’t let them hurt you.”
“Possessive much? We aren’t even dating.”
“That’s what you say.” He reached out to take my face in his hand. He looked at me wistfully as if I were the most important thing in the world. We hadn’t known each other long, but I couldn’t deny the feelings inside me when his eyes met mine. However, I could pretend they weren’t there. I shrugged and stepped back from him, which seemed to give me more willpower. If I let him kiss me, he’d know he was right.
As we stepped out of the bathroom, I froze. The scream of a desperate child resonated throughout the house. Fear coiled around me, even more so than when I was in the bathroom with those two ghosts. My heart pounded inside my chest as I recognized the voice. It was Dillon’s screams piercing the hallway, and I could hear my dad’s voice as he rushed up the stairs.
Without a word to Cade, I took off toward my brother’s room. It was across the hall from mine. I beat my dad to it and slung the door open, finding the room empty. My eyes searched frantically through the room, but he wasn’t there.
“Dillon?” I called out.
“Sissy! I can’t get out,” he screamed. His voice came from the direction of his closet. He banged on the door, and I knew he was in there.
I ran over to the door, unlocked it, and twisted the knob. It wouldn’t budge. It was stuck, just like the bathroom door had been. I pulled at the handle and jerked it repeatedly. My brothe
r's desperate cries for help rang out.
My dad was right behind me, pushing me to the side and trying the door himself, all the while Dillon screamed and cried inside as if something had a hold of him. I was scared to death and worried about what was happening to my brother. So many terrible things could be happening or already happened in the time it took us to get to his room. I feared for his life. He was alone in there, in the dark, with something otherworldly. There was nothing I could do about it.
“Hurry, Dad!”
“I’m trying,” he said as he started to throw himself up against the door. “I can’t get it!”
“Don’t you have something to open it with?”
He looked at me as if I had grown a third head. “Not on me, Briar.”
“Daddy!” Dillon screamed. “She’s in here! Don’t let her take me, Daddy!”
In desperation I reached for the charm around my neck and closed my eyes. “It’s not a ghost in there with him; it’s just his imagination. Please, please, please work.” I continued to mumble and poured my very soul into it, until the pounding inside the room stopped. I feared for the worst as I yelled out my brother’s name, and my dad grasped for the doorknob again. It gave under his hand, and he threw open the door.
My brother sat there by himself with his head buried in his knees with his breath coming in large hard gasps as he cried. Dad reached down to take him in his arms and console him. I threw my arms around the both of them.
“It’s okay, Dillon; you’re safe now,” I whispered.
He twisted in Dad’s arms and grabbed for me, wrapping his limbs around my body. “Sissy. It was the bad woman. She wanted me to go with her.”
When I walked out into the hallway, Cade stood there with his arms crossed as he leaned against the wall. I raised my eyebrows at him. I wondered if he knew who was after Dillon. He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t know.
I turned to my dad and scowled. “Now do you believe me?”
He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry I didn’t believe you, Briar. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. I’ve felt like crap this week.”
“What are we going to do?”
He sighed. “I will look into it. Maybe we can find someone to cleanse the house.” I was appreciative of that, and the fact that he finally believed me. His eyes roamed over to Cade. “Who’s your friend?”
I sucked in a breath, ready for the lecture to come about boys in the house, but it didn’t. “This is Cade. Cade, this is my dad.”
Cade pushed off the wall and held his hand out, giving my father that charming smile of his. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Summers.”
My dad cocked an eyebrow and took his hand. “Same to you, kid.”
“Guess I’d better be going. Hope Dillon is alright,” Cade said and turned to me. “See you later?”
“Yeah.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed down the stairs. Dad didn’t ask any questions about him, so I took Dillon to get ready for bed. I sat in the bathroom with him as he took a bath and played with his toys, crashing them into each other and making sound effects. I didn’t want to leave him alone. With my e-reader in hand, I flipped through the pages of a recent romance novel while he played. I stayed until his fingers were pruney, and I had to pry him out of the bathtub. He dried off, put on his pajamas, and brushed his teeth. Then he took my hand and led me back to his bedroom.
He pulled a book off his shelf and stopped me as I was about to leave. “Read to me?”
I couldn’t resist that sweet look so I obliged, tucking him into bed and curling up beside him to read until he fell asleep. I flipped on his nightlight as I left and went back into my room. Thankfully, the rest of the night was quiet, and I was able to sleep without any more ghost appearances. I hoped my dad found an answer fast, or we would end up having to move out.
Chapter Twelve
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Summers,” the man at my front door said as he stepped inside clad in his black priest outfit. I’d seen those movies; he was the one there to cleanse the house. Like that ever worked.
“You think you can really get rid of the evil shit in this house?” I laughed.
My father took a hold of the door as he stepped up beside me. “Please excuse Briar; she isn’t used to new people.”
“I’m not used to people,” I clarified.
The man’s smile faltered as he looked back at me. I smirked, finding entertainment in his uncertainty. If he couldn’t take a little teasing, how in the world was he going to get rid of the ghosts? As he stepped further inside, his eyes grew wide but he held his composure.
“I do believe this place is dangerous…”
I rolled my eyes.
“No need to worry, child, I will rid your house of spirits.” He opened his small bag and placed it on a table. He reached inside and pulled out a small silver instrument. As he walked around the house, he shook it, causing water to spurt out of it.
“Oh geez. Dad, this is ridiculous.”
“Briar!” He walked over to me and took me by the arm, pulling me into the other room. “I’m sorry, Father, we will be back.”
“Of course.”
He didn’t speak to me until we reached the kitchen. “Briar, what has gotten into you?”
“Nothing. I just thought you would take me seriously when I said the house was haunted.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing. What’s gotten into you?”
I jerked my arm out of his grasp. “This place is haunted. A priest isn’t going to fix things.”
Without another word, I spun around, threw open the back door, and didn’t stop until I was halfway across the property. No one could see me from where I was. I fell to the ground, big tears falling down my cheeks as I buried my face in my hands.
I missed my mother.
My heart ached. She was my best friend, and I missed her. When she died, I’d lost a piece of myself. I dreaded the day my father would die. He was the only thing I had left. At that point, I would be all by myself. No one else in the universe would ever love or care about me like my parents did. Except maybe Dillon.
A rustling sound caused me to look up. I could see something in the distance, but I wasn’t sure what. I pulled myself up onto my knees and wiped my face, rubbing the tears on my legs. Someone was there; I could barely make out the figure of a woman.
“Hello?” I called out.
The figure froze and slowly turned back to look at me. Her hair was dark and curled, and she was dressed in clothing that looked like she’d been pulled out of the 1800s. In a flash, she was in front of me. Her mouth gaped open into a high-pitched scream. I covered my ears and closed my eyes, hoping she’d disappear. My hand grasped the necklace as I tried to convince myself she wasn’t real. She had to be another ghost.
The screaming stopped, and I looked up to find myself alone in the field.
“Any dark energy be gone. You are no longer welcome here!” The priest’s voice flowed outside.
With a frown, I slipped back into the house unnoticed. I didn’t want to be there when he got to the field. I just hoped my dad was right, and he would get rid of the spirits.
Chapter Thirteen
“Happy Halloween!” Meredith squealed as I walked into the sociology building. She had been waiting by the door for me to enter and attacked the second I did.
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“Those are nifty,” she said and reached up to flick the purple and black horns clipped into my hair. It was the one day out of the year I could dress any way I wanted to and get away with it. Even my dad hadn’t said a word about my black lipstick, dark eye shadow, short poofy black skirt, and tight purple shirt with a skull on it.
“You, uh, you look good,” Ryder said as he joined us. His eyes roamed over my body, stopping on my pale legs before continuing down to my favorite combat boots. He shifted his backpack on his shoulder and looked up to smile at me.
“I, um, thanks.” Compliments were hard for me to take and, well, the way he looked at me made me slightly uncomfortable. He liked me, a lot, but someone else was taking my heart away from him.
Meredith’s green eyes sparkled brightly as she looked at me. “So, we have some awesome ideas for your favorite day!”
“We were thinking ice cream actually,” Ryder said. He put his arm around me as we walked down the hallway.
I frowned. “That sounds fattening.”
“Like you have anything to worry about,” Meredith said sarcastically and motioned at my short, thin frame.
“Maybe not.” Truth was, I wanted to be home with my family…and Cade.
“Come on, let’s celebrate! Please?” Ryder said and beamed at me with those beautiful brown eyes. “And, I know how much you’ve wanted to get a new piercing.”
With that offering how could I say no?
After school, we stopped by Lovely Shadows to get my lip pierced. The hoop was pretty freaking awesome, and I didn’t even have to pay for it. Ryder did, and there was a twinkle of mischief in his eyes as he did so. I think he had other ideas for what he could do with that ring, and I had to fight back the blush that rose to my face.
My dad wasn’t going to be happy about it, but I was very excited. He had already shown his clear distaste over my nose ring when I’d gotten it done, but he would get over it.
After that, we picked up ice cream and toppings before going to Ryder’s house. I hadn’t been there, and I was surprised at how large and beautiful it was. Where mine was outdated, old, and freaky looking, his was white with columns that screamed perfect. It made me wonder what he saw in me and if we were anything alike.
“Is your aunt coming home tonight?” Meredith asked, pulling me from my thoughts as she unpacked our ice cream supplies.
“No, she’s on a business trip,” he said and reached into a cabinet to retrieve three bowls and spoons. He opened the cartons.
“You live with your aunt?” I asked, curious.
“Yeah, my parents died when I was really little. I don’t remember much about them.”
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