by Joanne Boyd
After a little searching, I found the gravestone I was looking for. Thankfully, his grave had one of those little photos so I was able to recognise the dead boy I had met in the garden. His name was Chester Grake. Sure enough, he had died eight years ago: the same amount of time he said had passed since his girlfriend had last come to one of the shows.
I supposed he wasn’t just clingy after all.
One positive thing about being a medium is that death doesn’t make you feel sad or uncomfortable. We understand that it’s a part of life. You live and then you move on; it’s the natural cycle.
However, a spirit with unfinished business cannot move on to... well... wherever they go next. A spirit trapped here; confused, desperate, unable to communicate, unable to finish their business: they become angry. That's when they turn mean. They become haunters, poltergeists or even demons. At least, that’s what Gran tells me.
That’s why those of us who are cursed with the ability to communicate with them have to send them away from this world before that happens. Seeing as there are so few of us, I can't really just say no, much as I might like to sometimes.
I did not mourn for Chester but nor could I leave him trapped here, confused and lonely. He deserved the dignity of a real death.
I knew if I dug up this grave, the body would not be inside. Albertino was keeping it somewhere to use in his shows.
“I’ll help you Chester,” I said to the gravestone.
“What about me?” said a girl’s voice from behind me.
I turned around to get a look at her and saw that she was about my age. She was pretty but I thought she looked a little too skinny. That and she was dead.
“Of course,” I said after a moment, “What can I help you with?”
“I’m Annie, the ghost. You’re a medium. Albertino, that fat guy, he’s a necromancer. I’ve been waiting forever for someone like you to figure out what he was up to and come to our rescue.”
She was already the most straight talking ghost I had ever met.
“I’m Ella. And how do you know I’m a medium?” I asked.
“Well you’re talking to me, aren’t you?” She laughed.
That was true.
“I’m a medium too,” she said, “Or, I was.”
“I still don’t understand…”
“Ok, fine. You know how you get that feeling when there’s ghosts around? Like that vibration in your chest? Well ghosts get the same thing when there are psychic people around. That’s how they find you.”
“I never knew that,” I said, “Me and my Gran call it ‘the pull.’ Sometimes it’s really hard to concentrate on though but I seem to be getting better as I get older.”
“Oh, that goes both ways,” she said, “Sometimes when we try to contact a psychic, they don’t understand what the feeling is so they ignore it, rather than focus on it and we can’t communicate properly. I mean we’re on different planes so naturally it takes some concentration... I think it gets stronger the more you use it though, maybe that’s why it’s easy for you now.”
“Well, I wouldn’t quite go that far. It’s still scary. And sometimes ghosts just want to act all cryptic. I’m like if you want my help, just tell me what you want. I don’t always know what to do and sometimes I have to get my Gran to help me.”
“At least you try though. You don’t just ignore the pull until it goes away, like some psychics.”
“That’s so horrible. My Gran always taught me that I wasn’t allowed to just ignore it because there aren’t many people who can do what we do. ‘If you’re the only one with the ability, that makes it your responsibility,’” I said, quoting her.
“Well, I wish I had your Grandma. When I was alive, nobody in my family believed me. They thought I was delusional at first but eventually they just thought I was doing it for attention and got mad. I pretty much just stopped telling them and stopped trying to help spirits. Then when I died, I found out that I was right the whole time. And then I found out how many of us there really are. Let me tell you, you’d be surprised.”
“Seriously?” That was pretty much the opposite of what I had been told my entire life. Surprised didn’t cover it.
“Yeah, except that most of them are like me,” she continued, “Everyone told them they were imagining it so they just shut their mouths; then as they got older they just forgot they could do it. Or they remember but they don’t want to deal with it so they just ignore you. But to let you in on what it’s really like: there’s nearly as many people who give off ‘the pull’ as people who don’t, meaning nearly half of all people have some kind of psychic ability. I’m not even the only former medium that Albertino has here. Most people’s pulls are just really faint. Yours isn’t though, I can talk to you easy. You must have a lot of power.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.
Yeah that sounds like me, I thought.
“Anyway it’s pretty crazy to be on the other side of this, knowing what it’s like,” she said.
She was right. I had a million questions running through my mind from this rare opportunity to talk to someone who was both a medium and a ghost. So far the only other medium I knew was Gran. Having someone my own age understand what it’s like was comforting, even if she was dead.
“It’s amazing,” I said, “I can’t wait to tell my Gran all this. Oh! Can you see other spirits?”
“Yeah, we can all see each other but it’s really hard to communicate. You have to really concentrate. Unless you were a medium when you were alive. Then everything is easier.”
“Do you know where you go next?”
“Nah,” she said, looking down, “I feel like there’s something but… it’s just a feeling. I don’t think you know until it happens.”
“Oh.” I knew it was a long shot when I asked.
“Anyway, when I was alive, I never did anything good with my powers. I’d like to make up for that now by helping you get all the trapped souls out of this place.”
Chapter Five: I Will Not Be Caught Dead
Annie and I came up with a plan together. She told me Albertino kept all the dead bodies in the basement, including her own. The whole thing had been converted into a freezer to preserve them. Yuck.
Obviously I couldn’t just walk back in the front door and stroll on down there but there was a window half buried in the ground. I could dig my way in, using a shovel I’d find in the shed.
Once inside I would find a necromancy orb – which Annie explained looked like a crystal ball.
That was how Albertino kept the spirits from being able to leave the grounds when he wasn’t using them. The orb thing had a perimeter on it that the spirits could not cross so they couldn’t wander too far from the studio. Then when he was ready to do one of his shows he would use his talisman to force them into their bodies in order to control them. If I smashed the orb, he couldn’t hold the spirits to his studio anymore and hopefully they would all leave.
He would feel them escape because of his talisman, which Annie told me was a ring. I had to destroy that too or he might locate them all again or even start over with new spirits. Apparently necromancy talismans aren’t too easy to come by so destroying it should do the trick.
Annie would keep an eye on Albertino and warn me when he headed for the basement. Then when he came down to stop me… somehow snatch his ring and run like hell? Simple enough to work, I hoped.
I broke into the shed and found the shovel, shuddering at the thought of what Albertino must use it for. The digging took a good half hour despite not being very deep. I guess I’m not much of a handyman.
I shoved my backpack and the shovel through the window before sliding through myself. Annie was right about this being a freezer. The air was so cold that it stung my skin all over and every time I took a breath, I felt a sharp pain in my chest.
It was pitch black so I felt around the floor for my backpack and located the torch inside. I debated whether to take my pocket knif
e out at the same time and figured I may as well. I stashed that in my pocket and flicked on the torch, shining it toward the door which was up a set of stairs. I then turned it to the left and nearly fell over backwards when I saw about thirty corpses in ballerina outfits hanging from the ceiling.
It was unreal. I shined the light over their faces and saw kids as young as me through to adults. Girls and boys, all of whom had been dug up from the graveyard by Albertino and hung by the neck in the psycho’s freezer. I couldn’t imagine how their families would feel if they saw this. Not to mention the poor spirits themselves; they must have been so confused. Annie was a medium so she understood what was happening but what about the non-psychics like Chester? He seemed to have a vague idea of something being wrong but he didn’t even know he was dead. It must have been like a weird nightmare that he couldn’t wake up from.
I’d seen hundreds of spirits before but corpses were a different story.
I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, I wanted to throw up.
It’s bad enough when souls can’t move on for their own reasons. It’s even worse when necromancers like Albertino keep them here for their own selfish purposes. This was beyond evil. It was worse than murder. It was afterlife torture.
I had to get them, and myself, out of here.
Shining the torch to the right side of the room, I saw something just as creepy as the corpses hanging from the ceiling: makeup.
There were two tables covered in all sorts and next to them were racks with costumes that Albertino must put on the dead bodies before his shows. The more I found out about this whole thing, the creepier it got.
I saw Annie near the stairs and sneaked over to her. I could see my breath when I spoke.
“Ok, where’s the orb?” I whispered.
But she didn’t answer.
Or move.
Because I had just spoken to her corpse.
Her spirit was upstairs watching Albertino and once again I couldn’t tell the difference between a ghost and a physical body.
Obviously I already knew she was dead but seeing her corpse really hit me hard. She seemed so in control of her afterlife when I talked to her in the cemetery but now that I thought about it, she was helpless just like every other lost soul. She was nothing but a puppet in that freak’s disgusting show.
I turned back to the side of the room where all the makeup and everything was but I couldn’t see any crystal ball.
“Hey,” said a voice behind me.
I jumped higher than I ever had before in my life, sure that it was Albertino, despite the fact that it was clearly the voice of a young girl.
“You can see me, right?” she asked. This time I was sure the person I was looking at was a ghost. She looked a little older than me and was wearing a ballerina outfit, with the pink tutu and the ribbon and everything. This girl was what you see in your head when you think ballerina.
“I can tell. You can see me,” she said.
“I can,” I said, my voice shaking as much from fear as from the cold, “I’m here to save you.’”
“Do you know about the orb?”
“Do you know where it is?”
“He took it. You’re the one he was scared of. He took it upstairs and he gave it to the living one.”
Jennah.
I started up the stairs even though I had no idea what I was going to do. As soon as she saw me, she was going to call Albertino. Getting his ring off him was going to be hard enough as it was, how was I meant to do it at the same time as snatching the orb off Jennah?
“I can’t do this,” I said, stopping half way up. “I’ll have to wait until he brings it back.”
“No, you have to do it now,” said the spirit ballerina.
She was so scared and I felt terrible but there was nothing I could do.
“I’m sorry but I can’t.”
“Today is the only day he’s not expecting it,” she said.
I looked up toward the door, considering that. “If he isn’t expecting it, then why would he take the orb away now?”
She hesitated.
“Just trust me ok, this is your only chance.”
“Listen, I know you don’t want to be here anymore but you just need to hold on for a bit longer. If I mess this up, no one else knows you’re here. You’ll be stuck even longer.”
“No, you don’t understand. Now is your only chance,” she said, her voice was now shaking as badly as mine.
She started fidgeting with her tutu like she was nervous and that’s when I realised that something was very off.
“What are you wearing?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The outfit. You died in that ballerina outfit.”
“So?”
“And you’re obviously a medium, you understand way too much not to be,” I said, remembering that Annie had told me there were other psychics under Albertino’s control.
“What’s your point?” she asked.
“I told you I can’t go now and maybe you just want to be free but you seem way too desperate…”
“What are you getting at!” she said.
“You’re here on purpose aren’t you?”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You killed yourself to be in his show. Now you’re trying to sabotage me so I can’t free you.”
She looked as though she was trying to come up with an excuse but gave up and instead rolled her eyes.
“All I ever wanted to do when I was alive was be a ballerina but no matter how hard I tried he said I wasn’t graceful enough. My body just couldn’t live up to his vision. So I taught him what he could do with necromancy; he’s not even a medium.”
“How do you know about necromancy?”
“Please. That stuff has been in my family forever, I even gave him all the materials he would need. You think helping spirits cross over is the only magic in this world? That’s just the tip. You’re not special. And you’re in way over your head.”
I think I just stared at her, not knowing what to say.
“I came up with this whole idea when Chester died, and then, yeah, I killed myself because I understood that wasn’t the end for me. This, now, is my real life. Everything before it was nothing. Albertino fired all his living ballerinas and works exclusively with the dead. Now I get to be a part of his ballet shows – the main part, in fact – forever. And you’re not going to take that away from me.”
She was by far the craziest, smarmiest spirit I had ever met.
“What about all the other spirits who don’t want to be in the show?” I asked.
“That’s a sacrifice Albertino and I are willing to make,” she said, “Anyway most of them don’t really understand that they’re dead so it doesn’t matter.”
This was not a person worth reasoning with. I wanted to slap the smirk off of her face but she didn’t really have a face.
“Just shut your mouth, you… feral, tutu-wearing fiend,” I said, “I don’t need your help.
Hey!” I called, “Anyone else here? Where’s the orb?”
I retrieved the Ouija board from my bag and wrote a message:
im here to help please where is the orb
I shined the torch ahead of me and jumped when I saw Chester glaring at me with his finger pointed right at my face.
No, wait, he wasn’t pointing at me. He was pointing behind me.
Toward the necromancy orb!
I turned around and swallowed hard. It had been down here the whole time; I just hadn’t seen it before. That was because it was behind all the dead bodies.
“Gross,” was all I could think to say.
“You get away from there – you’re going to ruin everything!” yelled the Tutu Fiend.
I shined my torch past the bodies and there it was - a perfectly round ball of glass, just like Annie had described it. It was sitting on top of an altar right at the very back, behind all the hanging corpses.
Only
problem was there was no room to simply walk around them.
Every part of me was screaming to just go home, this was way too much to ask.
But the spirits. Chester. Annie. Who else could save them? No one.
I was the only one who could do it, the only one who knew they were here.
I was the only one who would even believe this was all possible, besides Gran, and there’s no way I’d let her do it.
That made it my responsibility.
I walked toward the bodies and paused for a few seconds, trying to compose myself.
I took a few deep breaths but it didn’t matter - my heart was blasting. There was no way I was going to calm down; I just had to get it over with. I pointed my torch at the end goal and took the first step in.
I squeezed between the dead bodies, doing my best to look at the orb and not at them, doing my best not to touch them.
I swear I could actually hear my heart pounding so I put all my energy into trying to keep my breath even. I was moving painfully slow through the bodies, taking deep breaths, holding them, and releasing. I knew the moment I stopped focusing on my breath I would have a panic attack.
I could see the condensation in the air each time I exhaled but I was too busy trying not to freak out to even feel the cold anymore.
The Tutu Fiend was screaming at me the whole time but I could barely hear her over the sound of my own deep breaths.
I was about half way when I began holding my breath in. The frozen bodies did not particularly smell since they were kept in this freezer but it still felt like I was breathing in death.
I felt a cold tear roll down my cheek. I needed to get this over with before I lost all my courage. I sped up the tiniest bit.
That was a mistake.
I felt one of the bodies brush against my arm and instinctively, aimed the torch up.
There was a man in his late twenties with an expression of terror forever frozen onto his face. He had died in fear. Now his afterlife was riddled with fear too.
I couldn’t hold it in any longer; the tears began pouring from my eyes and now my whole face was drenched and freezing.
Then once I had seen one, I couldn’t stop. The corpse next to him was Chester. His body must have been here longer because it was starting to show signs of decay. The eyes were sunken and his face looked all dark and bruised.
Next to him was an older lady and I didn’t have to wonder what had killed her - her neck was all bruised where she had been strangled.
