by Apryl Baker
It’s the last thing I hear before my vision blurs and goes black, until I succumb to the drowning. Mattie Hathaway…who is she and why did I die because of her?
***
“Breathe, Mattie, breathe!”
I feel my lungs expand, then a pressure on my chest. Vaguely, I recognize that someone is giving me CPR. My lungs expand again with air and I gasp as water rushes up and out of my mouth. I cough and spit it out as it comes up.
“Thank God, thank God, thank God.”
The mantra is repeated over and over as I’m yanked off the floor and into a massive hug. Eli, of course. Mr. Heat, who takes the chill away! I know the feel of his arms and the heat coming off of him helps take the chill out of my wet body. I take a breath and more water pours out of my mouth. It’s choking me and I push him away so I can throw up. Drowning is messy and it hurts when all that water comes back up. It’s not just a simple mouthful of water like you see on TV, but a honking load of it. Eli holds me as I empty both my lungs and my stomach. It leaves me weak and woozy. I hate puking.
A washcloth bathes my sticky face and I’m grateful for it. I’m too tired to lift a hand.
“The ambulance is here!” Mary shouts from somewhere to the left. “I called Mom. She said she’d meet us at the hospital.”
The EMTs throw everyone out and I blink, trying to focus on their questions, but I’m so tired. All I want to do is sleep. I hear one of them say something about hitting my head and a possible concussion, then I remember the nasty hit I took from the tub on my way down. Yup, that’d do it.
“I’m riding with her,” Eli says.
That’s the last thing I remember until I wake up a little while later in another hospital room. My head throbs and it hurts to breathe. Those little oxygen tubes are stuck up my nose and make me want to sneeze. The light in the room is dimmed, but I can see Eli over by the windows on his phone. He looks worried, but since I didn’t drown, I’m counting it as a good day.
I move my head slightly looking for Dan, but he’s not here. I frown and try to sit up. Eli is there in a heartbeat, pushing me back down. A second later I understand why. The room is spinning. I shut my eyes and it makes the vertigo stop.
“Hold up there, Hilda,” he says. “No getting up just yet. You took a nasty hit to the head, not to mention almost drowning.”
“Where’s Dan?” I whisper, my voice hoarse.
“I don’t know.” He sounds aggravated. “I’ve been trying to reach him, but his phone goes straight to voicemail.”
“I left him messages, too,” Mary announces as she and Caleb enter the room. She’s carrying some of those cheap balloons they sell in the gift shop.
“It’s okay,” I say. “He had some family stuff to deal with.” I refrain from saying they were trying to get his mom out of jail in front of the brothers. No telling how either of them would react to that.
“No, it’s not okay,” Eli snarls. “He should be here when you need him.”
“You’re here,” I tell him softly. As much as I would love to have Dan here smothering me in bear hugs, having Eli is almost as good. Almost.
“Always, Mattie,” he swears, his voice solemn.
“What happened?” Caleb pulls up a chair for Mary and stands behind it.
“She just woke up,” Eli frowns and helps me sip some water. “Give the girl a chance to get her bearings.”
“We need to know if the demon did this…”
Demon…Silas! Oh, God, I’d forgotten about Silas.
“Silas didn’t do this,” I say, but it starts a coughing fit. Eli glares at his brother, who has the decency to look abashed.
“Here, drink some more water.” Eli pushes the cup to my lips and tips it forward. Most of it ends up on my gown and the sheets. He lets out a curse and starts trying to mop it up. As cute as I think it is, I just want him to go sit down and let me be for a second. Thankfully, the nurse chooses that exact moment to come in. She takes one look at me and orders everyone out.
“Honey, we have to stop meeting like this,” she fusses and helps me change into a dry gown then sets me into one of the chairs. Next she strips wet sheets from the bed and puts on dry ones.
I squint and realize I do know her! “Nurse Leigh?” She’s the same nurse who’d been here the last three times I came into the ER. Leigh has to be fifty or sixty, but she’s not at all grumpy like most nurses are when they get to that age. Her salt and pepper hair is pulled back into a bun and her blue eyes are crinkled with worry.
“This is the third head wound you’ve been in with.”
“I was running a bath and must have slipped,” I tell her lamely. She frowns and I can tell she doesn’t believe a word of it.
“Well, you’re staying with us for a few days,” she tells me. “You were only just released from the hospital in New Orleans yesterday from a head wound and your friends said you hit it again in the airport bathroom this morning. You’re lucky you don’t have a skull fracture.”
“This one has a hard head.”
Dr. Ramsey enters, a frown on his face. He and I are also well acquainted. Like Nurse Leigh, he’s been my doctor two out of the last three times I was brought in. If not for the fact I switch foster homes so much, I’d be on the ER’s watch list of abused and battered kids. “How’s that noggin of yours?” he asks while checking my chart.
“Sore,” I admit. “I have a really nasty headache, too.”
“I’d be alarmed if you didn’t have a headache.” He leans over and flashes his light in my eyes. I wince and close them. “Uh-huh. You have a severe concussion, Mattie, so we’ll keep an eye on you tonight and tomorrow. I’ve already contacted your social worker and your foster mother is in the waiting room.”
“Can my friends come back in?” I ask him. When he starts to shake his head, I let my eyes tear up. It doesn’t take much to bring forth the tears. Pain and I don’t get along. “Please, Doctor? They’ll be quiet and I don’t want to be alone. Please?”
“For a little while,” he caves. A few waterworks and he always does. “If you get tired, just tell them to leave and let the nurse know. Leigh will be checking on you every hour tonight, so be prepared to wake up all night!”
“All the more reason for my friends to keep me company.” I smile at him.
He shakes his head and both he and Nurse Leigh exit, only to have Mary, her mom, and the Malone brothers rush back in. Maybe I should have let the doctor shoo them out for the rest of the night.
“Mattie, honey, how are you feeling?” Mrs. Cross asks. “How’s your head?”
I bite back a really nasty retort at that question. Why adults ask such obvious questions is beyond me. Maybe it makes them feel better to state what they clearly see in front of them.
“I’m okay,” I say instead. “Just tired.”
She first brushes the hair back from my forehead. “What happened? You gave me a good scare.”
“My fault,” I tell her, deciding not to let her know she has psycho killer ghosts invading her house. “I was running a bath and slipped. Must have knocked myself out when I fell. Next thing I know, EMTs are everywhere and I’m being rushed to the ER. I’m an awful klutz, Mrs. C. I’m sorry for all the bother.”
Mary and Eli gape at me; Caleb looks impressed. I’ve just lied through my teeth and came out smelling like a poor lost little girl. Dan is the only one who’s ever witnessed my epic lying ability. Mrs. Cross clucks and tells me I have to be more careful. She mutters something about finding better bath mats. I want to chuckle, but it would ruin the ‘poor me’ schtick.
“Mary and I are going to head home, honey. The doctor says you need rest and the boys are leaving soon, too. Unless you’d rather me stay here with you?”
“No,” I tell her, hopefully sounding very sincere. “I’m good. Seriously, I’ll be fine, and yes, I’m sure.” I wait for Mrs. Cross to nod in agreement. Finally she and Mary leave.
I look at the boys and tell them about my latest ghost vision episode. �
��We have got to find out what happened to these girls before one of them kills me.”
“I’ll ghost proof your bedroom and the bathroom,” Caleb says. “You just can’t disturb the salt once we put it down. I’ll do my best to find a way to block off the doorways so Mrs. Cross won’t sweep it up.”
“I’m tired of being on the losing end of these visions,” I say wearily and lay back. “If we don’t find these girls soon, God knows what they’re capable of.”
“We’ll find them, Hilda,” Eli promises. “We’ll find a way to keep you safe, too.”
“Yeah, we will, Mattie,” Caleb agrees. “I’m going to head over to your place and start trying to ghost-proof it. We’ll worry about demon-proofing it tomorrow. Eli, call when you’re ready and I’ll pick you up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eli answers. “I’m staying the night. She shouldn’t be by herself given what’s happened.”
Caleb nods, ruffles my hair, and leaves with a promise of figuring all this out.
Which leaves me all alone with Eli Malone.
Chapter Ten
I stare at Eli with one dose of fear, two doses of fascination, and one dose of expectancy. He and I have these odd moments that always seem to get interrupted either by ghost attacks or his brothers.
Dan especially has a nasty habit of showing up at the most inopportune moments when it comes to his brother. He doesn’t trust him, which should make me not trust him, but I do. Eli can do so much damage to me emotionally, but for once I don’t care. It’s weird. Even with Dan, I hesitated to trust him. Eli feels different. He feels familiar, like I know him, like I’ve always trusted him.
My mind flashes back to the memory-slash-vision of the man and woman I’d had back in New Orleans. He’d had Eli’s aqua eyes, and told the woman he loved her even as he plunged in the knife. I shudder at the memory. I’d been her, felt everything she had. That moment was important then and everything inside of me says it’s important now, but I just don’t know how.
“How are you really feeling?” he asks when he settles himself in the chair beside the bed.
“Like I drowned?” I reply, my voice rough but sarcastic.
Eli smiles crookedly and I nearly stop breathing. Why, oh why, does he have to look so breathtakingly beautiful?
“You gave me CPR, didn’t you?” I ask softly.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You scared me there for a minute, Hilda.” He runs a hand through his hair. It looks messy and disheveled, like he’s just woken up or something. It only adds to his hotness factor and my mouth goes dry. “Did you get scared and slip?”
Wow, he bought the lie? I haven’t lost my touch. “No, it was more like the ghost pushed me down and held me under the water. I only remember seeing her face for a minute and then I was in her memories.”
“But you said…”
“I am one of the best liars you’ll ever meet, Eli.” I laugh. “Foster homes, remember? Lying’s like breathing to me. Easy.”
“Was it hard growing up in foster care?”
I sigh. “Sometimes. I’ve been in some good homes and some bad ones. It’s the bad ones you remember more than anything else, though. I know everyone expects us to look on the bright side and only think about the good times, but when you grow up knowing nobody wants you, that you’re just a meal ticket? It’s hard to think good thoughts.”
“Mrs. Cross seems nice enough,” he offers.
“Yeah, Mary’s mom is great. She also knows about the ghost stuff and that’s a plus. I hate going into a new place and having to act like nothing’s wrong when the house turns into an ice box.”
“Wow. She knows? I didn’t think it was something you’d share so easily.”
“It’s not. Did Doc tell you how I came to have my hands all messed up?”
He shakes his head. “I never got the details.”
“I didn’t always talk to ghosts.” I sit up a little straighter and he moves to help me. “No, no, I’m good. Before the Olsons, I pretended that ghosts didn’t exist, that I couldn’t see or hear them when they showed up. It worked too, for a long time. Ignore them and they’d eventually go away. Then I saw a ghost I couldn’t ignore. There was a girl in the bedroom next to mine at the Olsons. Sally. I remember the last thing I said to her was there was a mouse in the bathroom. I wanted to scare her so she wouldn’t go in there with the ghost that had just shown up. Stupid and a little mean, but it was my way of trying to protect her. Later that night, I saw another ghost at Meg’s party.”
“You and Meg were good friends?” Eli interrupts. I think he saw how badly my hands started to shake when I said her name.
“Best friends,” I whisper. “She was the only girl I ever let close enough to be my friend. Sometimes I miss her. Then I get mad all over again because I miss her.” I close my eyes as my head starts to throb. Just thinking about it still makes me furious, but mostly it just makes me sad. I’d lost a really good friend.
“Anyway, it was Sally’s ghost I’d seen at the party,” I bring things back round to the topic at hand. “I made Jake bring me home, knowing something bad had happened to her, but not sure what. I mean, I’d just left her not more than two hours earlier and she’d been fine. When we got home, I ran inside to find no Sally and my foster mom, Mrs. O., said she’d gone to a party and wouldn’t call the police.”
“Not like you could say you’d seen her ghost, either.” Eli leans forward, propping himself up on the bed with his elbows.
“Exactly.” I nod and force myself not to touch him. He’s so close and all I want is for him to hold my hand, to feel his skin against mine.
“What did you do?” He tilts his head and looks up from underneath lashes long enough to make a fashion runway model die of envy.
“The only thing I could do and the one thing I’d sworn I’d never do,” I answer. “I decided to talk to the dead girl in the bathroom.”
“But why?” he asks. “After years and years of ignoring them, why do it for one girl?”
“She wasn’t just a girl. She was Sally, my foster sister. Foster kids take care of each other,” I explain. “We don’t have anyone but us. Foster parents don’t really care—to be honest, most of them are only in it for the money. I felt like I owed it to Sally to make sure she wasn’t just written off as another runaway. I was her family and if it had been me that died, I’d want someone to find me, too.”
“You guys stick together, huh?”
I wait a moment before answering. “Are my shoes here?”
“Yeah, in the closet, why?”
“Can you get them for me, please?” He frowns, but does as I ask. Then I flip my right shoe over so that the bottom is visible. “See that? Carved into the flat of the rubber?”
“The 29 with four marks out from it? What does it mean?”
I trace the carvings with my fingers. I’d received my first mark the night I’d been released from the hospital and went to stay with my first set of foster parents. One of the kids, I think his name was Mark, showed me how to put the marks there, out of sight. He told me that it was our badge of honor when we went into a new home. He’d been nine and had three marks. It’s something I’ve never forgotten to do and every time I was put into a new foster home with other kids, we always compared.
“These are all the foster homes I’ve been in. Thirty-three since I was five. I’ve met hundreds of other kids and we all have one thing in common—we were castaways that no one wanted. Kinda like Peter Pan’s Lost Boys. That kind of despair binds you in ways love never can.”
“I’m sorry, Mattie.”
“Don’t be.” I smile. “I’ve grown up a lot over the last few months, Eli. More than I’d even realized. Or want to admit. I used to be all ‘poor Mattie, the kid no one wanted,’ but I realized something. If I hadn’t grown up tough and if I hadn’t had those experiences, I don’t think I could have survived what happened next.”
“What happened next?” he asks softly.
“When I quest
ioned the ghosts about Sally, I met Mirror Boy.”
Eli frowns. “Why do I know that name?”
“Eric,” I say flatly.
“Oh.”
Yes, oh. Eric sacrificed his life for mine in New Orleans. He’d made me reap his soul into mine. My Mirror Boy was a part of me now, would be with me until the day I died and took both our souls to the other side.
“Eric didn’t know he could hurt me,” I say and wince at the memory of the pain he’d caused. “I ended up in the hospital and told my social worker that Sally was missing. She’d made Mrs. Olson call the cops. That’s how I met Officer Dan. He was one of the cops who showed up to take the report and the only one who believed me when I said Sally didn’t run away.”
Eli makes a face and sits back. I laugh at the disgruntled look. “You need to learn to get along with him, you know. He is your brother.”
“I’m trying,” he says, but neither of us believe him.
“Try harder,” I tell him. “If you plan on hanging out with me, get used to him. Dan is my family as much as he’s yours, and where I go, he goes. Besides, he really is trying.”
“I like him less and less,” Eli mutters.
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes at Eli. “Anyway, while in the hospital, I got a visit from another ghost, or so I thought. It was Mary, only she wasn’t dead yet. She was dying, though, so we figure that allowed her soul to travel to me.”
“Wait, what?” he asks, confused. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.” I nod. “Long story short, I eventually found her and the killer who just happened to be my then foster mother, Mrs. Olson. Sally had seen something she shouldn’t have and Mrs. O. killed her. When I followed Sally to where her body was, she led me to Mary. Before I could get help, Mrs. O. took me hostage.”
I stop and shiver, the memories of those awful days flood my mind. I still have nightmares about it. Even now, just thinking about it sends me into a small panic. Eli takes my hand and squeezes it. Warmth radiates from his hand into mine and I smile, grateful.
