Manifest

by Artist Arthur

  “I was just wondering what you thought about all this rain. It seems like it’s forever raining here in Lincoln.” That was true, in fact, it had rained earlier this morning.

  He shrugs. “El Niño.”

  “Really? That’s all you think it is, some strange weather system that blows through town every once in a while?”

  “Yeah, that’s what my dad says. He’s at the station reporting on the heavy rains now.”

  “Hey, can you remember any other strange storms in Lincoln? I mean like a few years back.” I didn’t want to say sixteen years back to be specific especially considering he would have been a newborn then.

  “We have storms and stuff all the time. Sometimes they’re worse than others. I do remember a really big rainstorm a few years back and some flooding. And my dad talks about all the storms when he was young.”

  “I bet he saw a lot of, like, blizzards and stuff, too.” Ricky’s still sitting there, lifting his arms as if to say, “What are you doing?” I quickly look away from him.

  “He talks about them all the time. I mean, like every time the weather changes again. He even has this system that helps him predict some of the bigger storms.”

  That gets all my attention. I lean in a little closer to Franklin, my eyes drift down for a second to the cute cleft in his chin, then back up to his eyes. Very cute, I think absently.

  “A system, huh? That’s funny because I thought I heard one of my mom’s friends talking about a storm coming. Your dad thinking like that, too?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did say he thought we were in for another one sometime soon.”

  It’s then that Franklin reaches out a hand and touches my cheek.

  “You’re really pretty, Krystal,” he says and all talk about weather flees my mind.

  “I am?”

  “You are.”

  He’s leaning in closer and I don’t know what to do. Ricky’s watching. I want Franklin to kiss me, I think. But Ricky’s watching. Did I want Ricky to kiss me, too? I used to, but he’s a ghost, making that totally impossible and slightly insane.

  My cell phone chimes and Franklin leans back.

  Saved by the bell, my mind roars while my body has some regret-like reaction.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, reaching into my purse to get the phone. Pressing the button, I see the text and instantly feel nauseous.

  seventeen

  I am in my room now after having left Franklin and Ricky at the library. The text I received freaked me out and I needed to be alone. Only something tells me that I’m not.

  Ignoring that feeling when I pull the cell phone out again, I scroll down until I find the text message and read.

  Im a great photographer.

  Will u pose 4 me?

  As if that’s not creepy enough, scrolling down a little further the picture reveals itself. The picture of a very alive, very naked Trina.

  This whole situation just got a little more bizarre.

  What kind of sick, perverted mess have I gotten myself involved in? Here I think I am helping out a spirit, doing something with the power I’ve been given, then another spirit comes along. A cute, street-wise, hot-to-trot spirit that I now know is into posing nude.

  Yuck!

  And whoever took this picture of her now wants to take pictures of me.

  Double yuck!

  There is no number so I don’t know who the sender is. I guess if I call our cell phone provider I can find out. But then I’d have to tell Janet and she’d most definitely tell Gerald and I have no idea what he would do. Would he blame me? Would he punish me?

  Where Gerald is concerned I just don’t know.

  So the obvious move would be to keep my mouth shut. I don’t have to answer this text and I don’t have to keep looking at it. But I don’t delete it either.

  No, I am going to wait for Ms. Trina to make another appearance, acting like she knows me on a personal level, telling me what I should do for her boyfriend. And then I’m going to pull out my phone, show her this pic and see what she has to say. Bet she won’t act so high and mighty then.

  The tapping wakes me up.

  It sounds like a nail against the window but when I climb out of my bed to investigate, there is nothing there. I get back into bed, pull up the covers and burrow down to fall asleep again.

  Screeeeeaaacccchhhhh!

  Every nerve I have goes on end. My entire body stiffens as if keeping still will stop the god-awful sound. I cover my ears but it persists. Rolling over until I am flat on my back, I open my eyes wide to the darkness. Of course I see nothing, but it isn’t what I can see that frightens me. It is the unknown.

  Somebody or something is in the room with me. I can feel it, as easily as I feel my heart about to beat right out of my chest.

  “Ricky?” I whisper his name but even as it falls off my lips I know it’s not him. The feeling is not the same. My insides aren’t fluttering around. Instead I’m breathing heavy, my chest has a dull ache in the center and my forehead is pounding. Whoever or whatever is here is not welcome.

  But I don’t think that’s going to make them go away any sooner.

  I sit up in the bed, despite the warning bells going off in my head and the little voice saying, “Don’t be like those kids in the movies, you know the ones who always die first!” I push the covers off me thinking that’s just fiction when my stuffed animal army comes barreling at me one by one, each smashing into my head, chest and arms with brutal force. As I raise my arms to ward them off, I can still hear that high-pitched screeching sound and wonder how long it’s going to take for Janet to barge in here asking what’s going on.

  But after a few more seconds pass and, thankfully, all the stuffed animals have already been hurled at me, I figure that’s not going to happen. So, putting my arms down I climb out of bed slowly, not knowing where I’m going or what I’m going to do when I get there. All I know for sure is that this is my room and there’s no way I’m going to let some spiritual being or ghost or whatever keep me hostage in my bed. My feet touch the floor and I take the first step. It’s quiet now, maybe the ghost or whoever had the wrong house.

  A gust of wind has my nightgown whipping up my legs. As I’m struggling to pull it down my legs are hit with freezing cold air. Now I’m getting pissed off. I’m cold and I’m shivering and I’m trying to move toward the window that I now see is open. I know it wasn’t open when I went to it just a few minutes ago. Then again, I also know that stuffed animals can’t throw themselves across the room, no matter how much I dislike them.

  Reaching out a hand, I try to grab hold of the edge of my dresser because this wind is crazy and in a minute I’m going to go flying through the air like my name should be Dorothy and there should be a little barking dog beside me. But before my hand can grab the edge I’m stunned by the lifting of a charcoal pencil—one of the ones that Janet bought me the other day that I’d thrown on my floor. It floats toward the mirror and begins writing.

  Still shivering, I’m standing in the middle of my room reading as the pencil writes Charlotte Ethersby.

  The pencil falls to the dresser and rolls right off the end to the floor. By now I’ve crossed my arms. My teeth are chattering and my knees knocking.

  “If you had something to say to me, Ricky, you could have just opened your mouth and said it. All this isn’t necessary.” I am so hoping it is him. Who else would come into my room in the middle of the night to leave me a cryptic message? It has to be Ricky, right?

  Wrong.

  The army of stuffed animals assault me again as they all circle around my feet until, as I’m busily trying to step over and around them, I fall to the floor with a loud thump. Then something falls on top of me. I can feel the weight but I can’t see anything or anyone. What I do feel is the sharp pinch on my right cheek, the pinch that I soon realize is something scratching me.

  To hell with this. I open my mouth and scream like somebody is attacking me. Which, by the way, they are. It just so
happens to be a dead and invisible someone.

  My screaming goes on forever and the weight on me finally shifts. I roll real quick, coming up on my knees, still trying to see something in the dark. Behind me the window slams shut and the breeze abruptly stops. The stuffed animals stay on the floor as evidenced by the one I trip over when I finally stand up and make my way across the room to my lamp. Flicking it on, I turn slowly to look around me, hating what I know I’m going to see.

  Nobody.

  That hard wind has blown papers from my desk all over the room, the stuffed animals are on the floor and so are all of the charcoal pencils from my dresser. The note on the mirror is there, visible and with some sort of meaning.

  And there is something else.

  On the floor right next to the window seat is a picture. I walk over, crouch down and pick it up. It was here, the crying girl spirit I’d seen at the school.

  CYBER PREDATORS INVADE LINCOLN

  Investigators in the Computer Crimes as well as Sexual Assault section of the Lincoln Police Department are looking into numerous claims of online sexual assault and sexting (text messages filled with sexual innuendo).

  At the time of this report, three teenage girls in the area reportedly told their parents of mysterious text messages and instant messages received from an unknown source. The girls reported these actions after they thought they were being followed. The police have seized the computers and cell phones from these individuals and an investigation has begun.

  Evening Headline

  The Lincoln Gazette

  eighteen

  Did I ever mention that I hate Biology?

  Well, I do.

  It’s one of those subjects that if you miss a day or two of work you are totally lost, which equals totally busted when quiz day arrives.

  The fact that today’s quiz is open book doesn’t even help me. So for the first ten minutes I just stare at the work sheet, my mind more focused on what I had heard on the news this morning. Other girls were receiving texts and IMs of a sexual nature. I’d immediately thought about the messages I’d been receiving from “number1.” I don’t think I can say the IMs were sexual. Creepy, yes. But not really sexual. Now as for the text message, well, the naked picture definitely said sex. Did that mean the sender was hinting at having sex with me? He’d only mentioned posing for pictures. Had the person had sex with Trina? Maybe that’s how she died.

  I’m so full of questions it’s no wonder I can’t focus on schoolwork. But I don’t have a choice. I either need to get it together or fail.

  That’s a no-brainer.

  Finally, sighing wearily, I pick up my pen and open my notebook. Flipping to the Biology section, I’m pleased to see that I do have the answers to the first ten questions in my notes. It’s the other twenty that I’m having problems with. I’m trying to think back, maybe I heard Mr. Lyle talk about some of this stuff but just didn’t write it down. I’m in deep concentration mode when the room gets a little darker. The sun must have shifted behind a cloud. I keep working.

  The rain comes fast slapping against the window like a thousand tapping nails. I’m happy that when I look to the windows I’m not the only one. The entire class hears and sees the same thing. A sudden torrential rain doesn’t seem to bother them though; they go right back to work.

  Screaaacchhhhh!

  The sound moves through my body tortuously slowly and I drop my pen. Bending down, I pick it up and on the way back up I hear the sound again. My eyes shoot around the classroom; everybody’s still working. I look up front. Mr. Lyle is at his desk, looking down at something. Then I stifle a gasp. On the blackboard just behind Mr. Lyle the chalk is moving by itself.

  It’s scribbling across the board just like that charcoal had on my mirror last night.

  MONEY. PICTURES. LIES. KILL.

  I can’t make myself stop looking. The room’s still kind of dim, rain—actually it sounds more like hail now—slaps against the window. Then comes the breeze whirling around the room ruffling the pages in my notebook. The words on the blackboard repeat in swirly handwriting. By this point my heart’s beating a frantic beat. I’ve gotta get out of here.

  Slamming my notebook shut, I scoop it up in my arms and stand to leave. Nobody around me even looks up, like I’m not even here. I’m moving fast heading to the door. I wonder if I need to get a hall pass. I look over at Mr. Lyle; he hasn’t even looked up. So I keep moving until I brush past Mr. Lyle’s desk, knocking over some papers. I hurry to pick them up and release a little yelp when I see writing on one of them.

  MONEY. PICTURES. LIES. KILL.

  Dropping them, I run straight to the door and out into the hall. I don’t stop until I’m in the bathroom leaning over the sink, trying to catch my breath. From the speaker above I hear the bell ring and I close my eyes.

  Apparently spirits are not the only things I see.

  By lunchtime Sasha is even more wound up then she was this morning. I’ve had two more class periods to get myself together after the last ghostly encounter. I have no idea what the words meant but know that all of this is connected somehow.

  Sasha’s not eating her lunch and she keeps twirling strands of her hair around her finger. She looks like her mind is someplace else even though she’s sitting right at the table talking to me and Jake. I think about asking her what’s really wrong but then I stop. Sasha and I are too different to be friends. We’re just Mystyx.

  “What happened to your face?” she asks while I’m opening up the sandwich Janet packed for me. I know it’s ham, cheese and mustard on whole wheat because that’s what she gives me every day. I usually don’t even bother to open it since I have no intention of eating it. Today, though, I’m hungry.

  Dropping the sandwich, I immediately lift my hand to my right cheek. I’d seen the scratch this morning as I looked in the mirror after my shower. It had come from my evening visitor.

  I wonder if I should tell them about that and the text and the vision I had in class this morning, but then I decide against it. I don’t know how Trina’s involved or who Charlotte Ethersby is, so I don’t know what we need to do for Ricky. And he hasn’t reappeared so I can ask him.

  “It’s nothing. I fell.”

  “Did you talk to Franklin?” she follows up.

  The mention of his name has me looking around the cafeteria to see if he’s there. I don’t see him. “Yeah, I did. He says his father has a system to track weather patterns and that he thinks there’s a big storm brewing.”

  “Really?” Jake says. “That’s interesting.”

  “Why’s it interesting? I could have turned on the television to get that very same report. Doesn’t really help us either way.”

  Jeez. She was in a snippy mood today.

  “But it might,” Jake begins, scooting up closer to the table and putting down the magazine he was only pretending to read. Inside the magazine was the diary of Eleanor Jean Kramer. “Listen to this. December 1946—”

  “Wait, the diary started in 1932. There aren’t that many pages but it goes…” Sasha counts off to herself. “It goes fifteen years.”

  “She doesn’t write consistently,” Jake says, sounding a little irritated at Sasha’s interruption.

  “‘William’s doing things. Strange things. If he looks at something it moves. No matter what it is, all he has to do is look at it, focus on it and it moves. He’s confused. I want to help him but I am afraid. Afraid of the darkness.’”

  Sasha perks up. “What darkness?”

  Jake shrugs. “It stops right there.”

  “Darkness,” I begin talking, picturing it clearly in my mind. “The dark fog. I saw it.”

  “What?” they both ask in unison.

  Then just Jake. “What did you see and when?”

  “Yesterday when I fell, there was this black fog all around me. It kept moving and moving like it was going to choke me.”

  “Did it say anything?” Sasha asks.

  “No. It was a fog. Not a spiri
t. It didn’t speak or anything, just kept coming.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Jake says.

  “No. It doesn’t.”

  For a few minutes we’re all quiet, not really knowing what to say next.

  “How did it go with Antoine?” Jake asks suddenly.

  Sasha frowns. “He’s a jerk.”

  And she says it with an attitude that makes both Jake and I look at each other in question then back at her.

  “And?” he says.

  “And he was an even bigger jerk when I asked about his brother. He was like, ‘Yo, that’s in the past. I’m tryna make a future wit me and you. What you tryna do?’”

  I chuckle. Can’t help it, her imitation of the thug-lovin’ Antoine Watson is right on point. I know because I overheard him talking to his friends this morning by the gym.

  Jake smiles, too. “So he tried to get with you instead of helping you? Is that what’s got you so ticked off?”

  Sasha rolls her eyes at both of us. “I’m not ticked off.”

  Jake nods and I go back to unwrapping my sandwich. She is lying and not doing a good job of it.

  “So did you find out anything that could help us?”

  Sasha huffs so hard her bangs flip up and fall back down in spiral ringlets on her forehead. “Just that Ricky was dating this girl Trina before she turned up missing. A few people said Ricky did something to her. Said they had a fight over money or something.”

  “Money?” Jake whispers.

  I am remaining quiet, waiting to hear what else she has to say, wondering how it will relate to the picture on my phone or the message on the blackboard.

  “He said it was more like Ricky was hounding Trina about where she was getting all this money. Trina told him to mind his business, got mad and broke up with him.”