Turning in a circle, I stare at the emptiness in confusion. “Why does it look like this?”
“Like what?” he asks. “Looks the same as last night.”
“Where did all the trees go? The dirt and grass?” Sure, the Field of Reeds has been changing, dissolving as the Devourers consume the souls that give this place life, but it still looked like a forest the last time Timothy brought me here.
Timothy stares at me. “What do you mean? They’re all around us.”
I almost argue with him, because they aren’t all around us, but then I remember what Griffin said about the spiritual realm being relative to your expectations. I came here without meaning to, with no expectations. My focus was to exist in a space of nothingness for a little while before having to face reality again. “This is so weird.”
“You can’t see the forest?”
“I can’t see anything. It’s completely blank…empty.”
Slowly, Timothy’s head shakes back and forth. “It’s not empty, Echo. The monsters came by here just a few minutes before you showed up. Maybe you can’t see them, but…” He glances around, worried now that I can’t protect him if I can’t see the Devourers. “Should I bring Malachi?”
Unsure of what to tell him, I look around the emptiness again, no longer comforted by the blank expanses. “Maybe—” I stop talking when a strange swishing sound disturbs the silence. I spin to the right and Timothy is suddenly clinging to my leg.
“Can you see it? You can see it, right?” he pleads.
I can’t even begin to explain what I see. It doesn’t look like a Devourer, but somehow I know that’s what it is. Instead of the oily blackness that assaulted us at Madeline’s house, it is simply a void. It stalks forward, unrelentingly vicious, confident it has us trapped. I am completely petrified by its utter absence of life.
“Take us home. Take us home,” Timothy begs.
“I…I don’t know how.”
“Take us home, please!” His fingernails bite into my skin as his terror consumes him.
I’m the only one here. The only one who can save him. I have no idea how, but I have to. I can’t let him die here in this place where the Devourers will destroy his soul. I don’t know how to do what he’s asking. I was dying when I pulled us out of here last time. What happened in those few seconds is a complete mystery to me.
“Do what you did last time!” Timothy pleads.
I start to say that I don’t know what that was! Then I feel pressure around my middle. There’s nothing there. Not here. Not in this place. Back home, though…. I remember the feel of Kyran’s arm around my waist, the protective hold he kept on me even as we slept that reassured me I wouldn’t dissolve into my fears and shame.
The Devourer stalks closer, but as it reaches toward us…I remember more clearly those final seconds as my life nearly ended. Just like the memories of Noel’s death replay with perfect recall, the memory of that experience flashes through my mind with impeccable detail. The Devourer seems to slow as I relive the moment of Timothy making the same plea, for me to save us, and thinking of Kyran…of home. Its finger-like tendrils are bare inches from my face when I close my eyes and picture myself lying on my bed in Kyran’s arms.
***
My eyes flutter open to darkness. It’s still night, likely the middle of the night. Meetings with Timothy usually take hours in the world of the living. Why this encounter was so short is confusing, but this whole experience is nothing short of bizarre. I can’t even begin to process what just happened.
“Where were you just now?” Kyran asks quietly.
For some reason, I’m not surprised he’s awake, or that he sensed something unusual just happened. Everything that led to my nightmares, and Kyran being in bed with me, hovers at the edges of my consciousness. I have just enough control to keep them at bay for a few moments. “The Field of Reeds,” I say, “but Timothy didn’t pull me in this time. I went in my own and it was different, grey and blank, and I figured out how to get us out of there.”
“Really?” Kyran asks. “How’d you do it?”
“I just thought of…” My voice trails off and I’m suddenly glad it’s dark and he can’t see the red flushing my skin.
“Of what?” His voice is anxious, worried over what my answer will be.
I don’t want to answer, but my lips parts and the two words I fear speaking escape without my permission. “Of you.”
For a very, very long time, Kyran doesn’t say a word. Finally, he says, “I don’t understand.”
I can’t pretend I get it any more than he does. I can only explain what I felt. “A Devourer came after us tonight, and Timothy kept saying to do what I did last time. The Devourer was about to reach us and it was like seeing Noel die in my nightmares. The moment replayed in my mind and I remembered thinking of you before I woke up last time, that you would know what was happening, of how tired I was and how much I wanted to go home, back to you. I can’t really explain it, but…the nightmares didn’t come back tonight, either.”
Again, silence…for a long time. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know what any of this means anymore. Nothing makes sense. Everything I thought I knew has been torn apart.” A frightened sob breaks up my words but I force myself to continue. “I don’t know what’s true anymore, what’s logical or right or…real.”
I feel as if the world is about to splinter apart, but Kyran’s grip tightens around my middle and he pulls me more snugly against his body. “My mom died when I was four,” he says quietly. “She had picked me up from daycare and was in the kitchen starting dinner. I asked her if I could play at Malachi’s until it was ready. She turned around, smiled at me, then she started falling. I thought it was a game at first—she liked silly games—but she wouldn’t wake up. I got scared after a while, but I didn’t want to leave her by herself. So, I sat on the floor next to her, held her hand, and told her my favorite story until my dad got home and found us.”
I don’t understand why he’s telling me this story, but the shock of it pushes everything else away. Shock stills me as I lay with him. A million questions race through my mind. I understand how painful this must be to speak about. I don’t ask why or how or what. None of those answers will change the level of pain this memory must cause him. None of those answers are why he’s baring this most private, sacred part of himself to me right now.
“What story…did you tell her?” My voice quavers through the question, broken up by sniffling as I make a lousy attempt at hiding my emotional response.
His chest convulses against my back. I feel his muscles tighten as he tries to rein in his own emotions enough to speak. “It wasn’t really a story so much as I recited Goodnight Moon to her, word for word. It was the book she read to me every night without fail. It was my favorite time of the day. I didn’t understand what had happened to her, but somehow I knew it would be our last moment together and that she would never read to me again, never again help me say goodnight to the socks and the great green room and all the noises. I had to say goodnight…goodbye…to her, and that was the best way I knew how.”
He can feel a tear slip free of my control, now, and reaches up to brush it away. “I know things don’t make sense right now,” he whispers against my cheek, “but this is real.” His fingers run gently down my arm. “All the bad in the world doesn’t take away from the good. Not unless you let it.”
I shake my head, unable to argue with him, but so buried beneath the bad that I can hardly see the good anymore.
“When my mom died, my dad fell apart,” he says. “Didn’t care that the autopsy said it was an undiagnosed weakness in a heart valve that burst without warning. To him it was evil, something someone had done to her, something he had to protect me from, something to be fixed or cured by spells or rituals or whatever else he could think of.”
Kyran’s familiarity with such a wide range of the occult finally makes sense. Realizing that frig
htens me, not for myself but for him. I can’t imagine everything he must have sat through or been subjected to as his father tried to halt evil or banish curses or…sit in on séances meant to contact his dead mother. Guilt for asking him to be a part of something like that again adds to the weight already threatening to crush me.
“He lost his job,” Kyran continues. “Almost lost the house, too. Until my aunt came to live with us and basically took over, I’d been terrified I’d have to move and never seen Malachi again. I’m pretty sure I only survived those first six months because I just about lived at Malachi’s. Half the time my dad didn’t notice when I’d sleep over there. Mrs. Fields took me in, fed me, made me feel like a person instead of something connected to my mother’s death. She likes everyone to call her Mama, but that’s why I do.”
I want to hug Malachi’s mother for being such a saint, but I am equally awed by Kyran. My childhood sucked. Without having already known he’d lost his mother, and now hearing how it happened, I never would have guessed Kyran had experienced something so heartrending. The point of his story is clear now. Anyone who meets me knows within five minutes that I’m seriously screwed up. My childhood and abilities define me in many ways. I let them. I hide behind them. I use them as a mask.
“I’m not as strong as you are,” I say as tears attempt to betray me.
Kyran shushes me gently. “I wasn’t strong on my own.” He strokes my cheek, clearing away tears. “I had Malachi, his mom, all his sisters, his dad, Aunt Aurelia…they helped me hold onto the good and not let the bad consume me like it did my dad. You have that, too, Echo. You have help. You have your friends and Morton. You have me.”
“It’s too late,” I tell him. I try to pull away. But he won’t let me go. “I’ve taken in too much of the bad…caused too much of it.”
Kyran’s lips press lightly against the corner of my jaw. “It’s never too late. Even if you can’t see the good anymore, I can. In you, and in what you’re doing. I’ll help you see it, too, if you’ll let me.”
I want to believe his theory. I so desperately want to believe any person can survive facing death and savagery and evil and choose to hold onto the good over everything slowly disassembling their soul. It’s a beautiful thought. The truth, I’m afraid might really be true, is that Kyran is simply a much better, stronger good person than I am, and that no amount of searching for the light in my quickly darkening world will save me from what I know is coming.
26: Consequences
(Griffin)
My alarm wakes me, and for half a second I’m annoyed that I have to get up for work when I have a migraine. Then I remember where I am, why my head hurts so damn much, and that I didn’t set an alarm before passing out last night. That means it’s a phone call. Detangling myself from the blanket Dad must have thrown over me, I slap at the nightstand until I find my phone then drag it to my ear. “Agent Morton,” I mumble.
“Uh…hi, yes, is this Special Agent Griffin Morton?”
Pushing up in bed, I blink away the sleep and pain and try to sound like I didn’t just wake up. “Yes, it is. How can I help you?”
“Oh, well, it’s really more about me helping you.” She pauses. I’m not conscious enough to form a response, and she carries on in the silence. “This is Carmen Johnson with Monte Grove Hospital. You called with a request to speak with one of our patients yesterday. Lucy Coulter.”
Now I’m awake. “Yes, I did. Thank you for getting back to me so quickly.”
Carmen clears her throat, anxiety bleeding through the line. “I’m afraid timing doesn’t matter much. The answer is the same regardless.”
“If I need a judge’s signature…” I begin.
Carmen cuts me off. “It has nothing to do with court orders, Agent Morton. I assure you.”
“Then why?” I demand. “What reason does the director have for rejecting my request?”
There is a half second of silence before she says, “The reason of Lucy Coulter being dead.”
I’m confused. “What do you mean dead? She’s a thirty-six year old women. The last report I read said she was in perfect health.”
“Physically, maybe,” Carmen says without bothering to cover up her own irritation. “She wouldn’t have been in this hospital without psychiatric issues but, even so, no one had any indications she was contemplating suicide. The violent tendencies, yes, we knew about those. Not that it helped.” She sighs. “This is more complicated than what I can simply explain over the phone.”
I hesitate at saying I can come to the hospital, two states away. Normally, I’d go wherever the case took me. Echo changes things. I can’t leave her when she’s so fragile. Abandoning her last night was risky enough. “What do you need?” I ask.
“Are you, by chance, related to Special Agent Arthur Morton?”
Confused as to why she would ask, I answer anyway. “Yes. He’s my father.”
Carmen sighs in relief. “That’s what the director thought. Given your father’s connection with the case and his previous relationship with the director from the first time Mrs. Coulter was investigated, he’s given me permission to send you the files of both patients.”
Pain is throbbing behind my eyes and at the base of my skull, muddling my ability to concentrate. I’m sure I just misheard something. “Both patients?” I only asked about Lucy.
“Yes,” she says, “Mrs. Coulter’s and Mr. Noel Glasscoe’s…the man she murdered before taking her own life.”
I recognize the name immediately, but it does nothing to explain what the hell is going on. Echo and Malachi seemed to know something more about the ghost they called into the circle last night after his attack on me. I was locked up in Dad’s office all day yesterday tracking down and speaking to everyone and anyone associated with the Coulter-Francis case. Whatever they know about this guy, they hadn’t had a chance to share it with anyone else.
“Can you email the files to me?” I ask, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.
“Of course. All our records are digital. I just need to know where to send them.”
I give her my email address and end the call shortly after. My head screams at me when I stumble out of bed and toward the shower. There’s no time for pain. Dad stands from where he’s sitting at the kitchen table, nearly spilling his coffee.
“Griffin?” he asks worriedly. “Are you all right?”
“They’re sending files.” A spike of pain slices through my brain and I have to press my hand against the wall to steady myself. Dad is next to me then, helping me, reminding me of those painful days back when I was eight and the migraines were a regular thing I couldn’t yet explain.
“Who’s sending files? On what?” he asks. “I’ll handle it. You need to go back to bed.”
I start to shake my head, then freeze as the pain worsens. “No. Echo…it’s Coulter, not Francis. I have to talk to her.”
“You put in the request to interview Lucy Coulter. I’ll call again, push them to—”
“No,” I bark, frustrated I can’t focus my thoughts through the pain enough to make him understand. “Lucy’s dead. She’s the one trying to kill Echo.”
Dad is silent, and takes a different approach to figuring this out. I should have done the same from the beginning with the way my head is fighting me right now. After a few moments, Dad’s expression calms as understanding sets in. “Go, shower, I’ll deal with the files. Is there anything I can do for the pain?”
He already knows the answer to that, but I appreciate him asking all the same. Nothing has ever been capable of reducing this kind of pain. “I’ll be fine.”
Dad knows that for the lie it is, but can’t do anything about it. He nods and helps me down the hall to the guest bathroom. I don’t worry about him needing the password to my government email and leave getting the files to him. I’ve missed working with him over the last few years. Echo is a big enough reason for me to transfer down here, but being closer to Dad certainly doesn’t dissuade me. I
t’s been difficult not having his usual compassionate an unfaltering love in my life regularly. Sure, this case hasn’t been a prime example of what he’s normally like, but I know better than anyone that working with Echo is anything but the usual.
Ten minutes later, I drag myself into the kitchen and fall into the chair across from him. The shower did nothing for the pain, but I’m at least fully awake now. “Have you had a chance to read through any of it?”
Dad shakes his head. “Everything’s printed so we can go over it with Echo. This Noel guy, you know anything about him?”
I shake my head. “I think Echo and Malachi do, but…”
Frowning, Dad’s frustration spikes. “She knows better than to keep something from me.”
“I don’t think she did it on purpose. She and Malachi seemed surprised Noel had anything to do with this last night.”
Dad closes his laptop and stacks everything he’s printed on top of it. “Let’s go find out. We need to wrap all of this up. She can’t take much more.”
“No,” I say, “she can’t.”
I almost didn’t leave her last night, despite knowing I would have been completely useless to her. She was terrified, so guilt-ridden she could barely hold herself up under the weight of it, brimming with despair to the point I worried about her mental stability. I trusted Kyran to keep her afloat last night. She’s on the brink, though, and I’m not sure I can keep her from falling if she’s forced to face anything more.
It’s early when we knock on Echo’s door, but Zara opens it immediately. “She’s still asleep. Should I wake her?”
I shake my head and tell her I’ll do it. She nods and closes the door behind us. Holden is already up, Malachi too, the both of them pouring over something on the coffee table. No Kyran. That means he’s still with her. I hesitate when I reach her bedroom door. Last night I told her she was strong enough not to give in to any desire to hide from her fears by using someone else. I know she is strong, but I haven’t managed to convince her of that quite yet.
The Ghost Host: Episode 2 (The Ghost Host Series) Page 22
