The Midnight Lullaby

by Cheryl Low

  Benedict couldn't stop himself from glancing to the side, at the wall of family portraits and the ghost standing in front of it. Emmeline scrutinized the paintings, leaning close and studying them one at a time. "Yeah," he answered without thinking.

  Emmeline turned around, brow raised just as his family cheered in excitement.

  "We met in college," he fibbed. "We've been living together for years."

  Elysium appeared the most surprised. "I've never seen her."

  Benedict shrugged. "It's not like you stay long." He had said it lightly, but his brother still looked the tiniest bit hurt. Why? He had a whole secret family. Was it so unreasonable that the youngest could do the same?

  "What's her name?" Lucy urged.

  Emmeline came closer to him, head shaking. "Don't."

  He knew her panic, felt it rising in his own chest. Names had power. Ghost hunters used them to invoke spirits and put them out of the world. "Emily," Benedict lied, easier than even he had expected.

  Lucy was ready to dive into more questions when the doors opened and Luis returned to the dining room. They all looked up.

  He carried a box in both arms, shoulders still sagging and eyes still teary—the way they had been all day. He was like a human raincloud—reminding the rest of them that they were a bunch of heartless assholes trying to picnic at a funeral.

  "I was going through some old things, looking for pictures…" he started.

  Theodore shoved a spoonful of brownie chunks and melty chocolate ice cream into his mouth, probably trying to smother any comments bubbling up inside.

  Luis didn't notice, putting the old box on the table.

  "Did you find any?" Lucy asked kindly. They all knew that photos were rare in the Lyon house. No one had been snapping pictures of their first toddling moments or children's birthday parties or Christmas; Gloria and Vernon had had other priorities. There had been no parties.

  Luis shook his head. "No, but I found all this stuff." He brightened a little, pulling the old puzzle boxes and decks of cards from the box.

  Theodore stood up, dropping his spoon into the carton and grabbing up one of the decks. "I remember these!"

  Benedict groaned. He remembered them, too.

  "Odd toys…" Emmeline commented, circling the table to get a look inside the box.

  "I hated those!" Benedict said. They had all been to test and build psychic abilities. Cards and lightboxes and impossible puzzles.

  Theodore was already flicking the rubber band off the deck and shuffling the large, worn cards. "That's just because you sucked at it."

  Hazel pressed her smile back unsuccessfully. "Aunt Gloria would make us sit in the parlor with those cards until we could get five right in a row."

  Theodore nodded, shuffling the cards and flashing the images on the underside. Colored pictures, shapes, words, and numbers. "I had the best record."

  "Second best," Elysium corrected.

  "I had to sit in that parlor for two days straight," Benedict sulked. He had never gotten more than one right at a time, and those rare victories had been sheer luck. Elysium and Lucy would eventually lie and say he'd gotten five. They were all certain Gloria knew, but even she got tired of Benedict crying in her parlor.

  "Okay," Theodore put the shuffled deck down.

  "No," Benedict whined.

  Theodore grinned and picked up the top card. He looked at it once, Elysium and Luis getting a peek at it over his shoulder, and then he stared across the table at Benedict.

  "I'm not playing," Benedict persisted.

  "Just guess," Lucy urged.

  Emmeline walked around to the other side of the table, standing behind Theodore's chair. "A black heart."

  Benedict sighed, trying to sound annoyed so he wouldn't smile. He had hated this game so much as a kid, and he hadn't even thought about how it would work now. "Heart. Black."

  Theodore's eyes went wide, and Luis grinned. He turned the card. Lucy and Hazel cheered on either side of Benedict.

  Luis picked up a second card.

  Emmeline leaned over his shoulder. "The number twelve."

  "Really?" Benedict complained when his brother took part in the game. He groaned, nodded, and pretended to think hard. If anything, Benedict had become a good performer during his decade of ghost hunting. "It's a number. Twelve."

  Lucy screamed in delight when the card turned. They continued to play until Benedict was up to seven in a row. Should he throw out a wrong answer to end the game?

  "What's your record, Elys?" Hazel asked.

  "Eleven."

  Emmeline grinned. "We could beat that…"

  Theodore picked up another card, glancing at it quickly and then pressing it to his chest.

  "Star," Emmeline said. "Yellow."

  "A yellow star," Benedict repeated.

  Theodore laughed and swore, tossing it down. "When did you get good at this?"

  Benedict shrugged. "College. I'm a late bloomer."

  "Keep going," Elysium pressed.

  They did. He had ten right.

  When Theodore reached for the eleventh card, Elysium put two fingers to the top of the deck to stop him. He slid the top card off, face down on the table, and stared across it at Benedict. "Guess it."

  Hazel groaned. "That's cheating, Elys. The whole point is to get it from someone else's mind."

  Emmeline leaned over the table beside Elysium. And for the first time, it struck Benedict how young she looked. It had been easy to forget that she was unaging, caught forever as a reflection of herself at eighteen, when it had just been the two of them. But seeing here there beside Elysium underlined both the new streaks of gray in his brother's hair and the fact that Emmeline would never catch up. Someday, Benedict would be old and gray, and she would still be the same.

  She was so close to Elysium, right beside him, but he didn't notice. How could he not sense her? How had none of them noticed her?

  Benedict was about to laugh and toss out a guess when Emmeline reached out. Her fingers touched the top of the card, almost touching Elysium's digits. She stared hard at it and then grinned, looking up at Benedict. "It's a rose. And that one," she pointed at the top of the deck. "Is a raindrop."

  Benedict wanted to ask her how she knew, but Emmeline's vision was different than his—than any of theirs. As much as she appeared to be here with him on this plane, she was someplace in between, overlapping places and times. He stood and stretched like he might leave without guessing. His family held their breaths, about to complain.

  "It's a rose."

  Lucy made her excited, humming sound, heels beating a drumroll on the floor until Elysium flipped the card.

  Theodore shouted, smacking the table.

  Benedict grinned and walked down the side of the table to reach the deck. He didn't break eye contact with Elysium. "Raindrop," he said and flipped the next card.

  Even Luis let out a peal of laughter, the room erupting with squeals of delight as he called the twelfth card in a row.

  Elysium's hard expression pulled suddenly into a grin. "Well, damn." He laughed and fell back into his seat. "Maybe the rest of us should still be practicing…"

  "That's some serious ugly-duckling-turning-into-a-swan shit," Theodore said.

  "We shouldn't have second-guessed him," Hazel chuckled. "He's been hunting ghosts for years. It's just hard not to think of him as our little runt anymore." She managed to make it all sound sweet, and Benedict laughed.

  But he noticed Emmeline wasn't laughing. She was back to lurking in the corners, stalking the room and watching all of them with her mysterious green gaze. He was so used to her that he easily forgot how strange this was. And the only ones he could ask about Emmeline, about how she could exist without anyone but him seeing her, and why he could see only her and no other ghost, were the very same people he could never tell. His family believed he was normal now, normal like them, and they had made a life out of pushing spirits from their world on to the next. No, he could never tell the
m. He supposed that meant he could never know why she was here—a small price to pay to keep her.

  Chapter Nine

  Benedict woke suddenly that night. He sat upright in bed, staring at the darkness of his room and waiting—listening. Something had pulled him so completely from sleep, and yet he couldn't remember what it was, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

  A heavy thud came from downstairs, making him jump where he sat.

  He pushed back the covers and turned on the bedside lamp. 12:14 a.m.

  Another thump. A door slapping against a wall?

  Emmeline stood beside the doorway, staring at him. She hadn't made an appearance since the game with the cards hours ago. "Don't go," she whispered.

  Another thud. Someone hitting the wall? Or stomping on the floor downstairs?

  Benedict pulled on a t-shirt and padded barefoot toward the door. "What is it?"

  "Don't go," she repeated, eyes big and head shaking. "Don't look."

  A chill ran up his spine, and he hesitated at the door, staring at the knob. They had been through at least a hundred hauntings and séances together. What could be worse in his own house? What would he see that could be that bad?

  Another thump downstairs. He threw the door open and hurried into the dark hall. Elysium and Lucy emerged from their rooms almost at the same time.

  "Go back to bed," Elysium said to them both, first to the foyer.

  Neither listened.

  The thudding grew louder on their path to the dining room.

  The scent of cigarette smoke made Benedict's stomach knot. It wasn't the brand Theodore smoked—it was their mother's favorites. Elysium paused at the doors, and Benedict knew it must have hit him, too. And then he threw them open and they were all marching into the lit dining room.

  Lucy inhaled so sharply that her whole body jerked back a step.

  A woman sat on the dining table, arms gloved in fresh blood up to her elbows. Thick sprays of red speckled her face and neck, staining the front of her uniform. She stabbed a long kitchen knife into the table beside her thigh, fingers twisting around the handle. She stared, unblinking, at the wall of family portraits in front of her.

  A thick smear of blood colored the floor where a man had fallen and dragged himself to the other side of the room. Shaking, he reached up, smacking his palm to the wall once more in a desperate plea for help.

  "Lucy," Elysium called their sister but didn't take his eyes off the woman. Lucy hurried across the room. She grabbed the man by the shoulders and turned him over, soft assurances flowing from her lips like a sweet river.

  It was the same man who had carried Benedict's bag into the house yesterday. His shirt and vest were soaked with blood, more bubbling up from his lips when he tried to speak. Lucy pushed her hands against his stomach to stop the bleeding, but it came up faster for her efforts, leaking between her fingers.

  "What have you done?" screamed the woman sitting on the edge of the dining table.

  Benedict and Elysium jumped at the sudden outburst, but she wasn't looking at them.

  Her mouth opened wide, dragging in a breath that shook her where she sat. "What have I done?"

  She stared at the family portraits, tears streaming down her face, dragging the spray of blood into thin streaks of pink.

  "Madam?" Elysium spoke, voice stern, one hand out in a calming gesture.

  She began to turn toward him, but her attention snagged on Benedict. He held his breath when he met her gaze. There was something alarmingly familiar about the way she stared at him. Her expression softened, tears still bright in her eyes and her mouth trembling. "I did it for you, boy," she whispered.

  Elysium made a choking sound—it was the first time Benedict had ever heard it. He grabbed Benedict's arm and pulled him a step back and behind him. "Mother?" Elysium said loudly.

  Her gaze slashed to him, lips curling. She pulled the knife from the table and slid from the edge, landing on her feet in the puddle of blood. It dripped from her, oozing out of the gashes in her uniform.

  "Holy shit," Benedict hissed. "I think she stabbed herself…"

  The woman ignored him. "She's still here," she told Elysium, voice distorting, and Benedict could almost hear it—almost hear their mother's voice echoed in this woman's throat. "What did we do?"

  "Mother, please," Elysium tried to soothe. "Look at what you're doing. These people don't deserve what's happening."

  She blinked back at him almost lazily, head tipping to one side. "No one's getting out. Not them. Not you. Not him." She cut her gaze to Benedict, and he jumped.

  "Enough," Elysium snapped. "You will leave this house. You will not linger and degrade your spirit like this."

  "My spirit? Or our name?" she laughed.

  Elysium balled his hands, glaring at the woman—through her and into the spirit that infected her. "Get out," he ordered.

  Her laugh dwindled, but a smile remained. It was their mother's smile, the sharp one they all knew too well. "You've met your match, boy. I trained you well. You're better than the rest. But not better than me."

  "Leave this place!" Elysium's voice rose, and Benedict winced back—but the woman possessed by their mother didn't flinch.

  "I was wrong, Elysium," their mother said in the cruelest whisper. "We were all wrong. You're wasting your life, pulling weeds in the forest for gods that do not care. We are bullies, distorting the natural order for our own pride."

  Benedict waited for Elysium to speak, to command her to leave again, but he didn't. His brother stared at the woman, stunned.

  "Stop it," Benedict spoke up, trying to step around Elysium, but that jarred his brother, the other man moving quickly to keep him behind. "You're hurting people. You could kill them. Just leave."

  She didn't look at Benedict, not even when she spoke. Her gaze was fixed on Elysium, as though she meant to entrance him like a cobra. "Am I hurting people? Am I killing them?" she asked, mock sympathy dripping from her words.

  A rush of movement across the room drew Benedict's gaze. Lucy was on her knees on the floor, beside the injured man but not tending to him. No, there was no point. He was dead—no longer gasping for air through a mouthful of blood but staring sightlessly at the ceiling, face twisted in terror.

  Lucy moved her hands across the seat of a chair, drawing circles and runes with globs of thick, red gore. She wrote something in the middle.

  "Wait…" Benedict barely got out the word before she stood, picking up the chair. The light gleamed off the blood she had used for paint, and he saw their mother's name shining there. "It's a possession not—" he tried, but she swung the chair and broke it against the wall.

  It wasn't the ghost that screamed—it was the woman she had possessed. Elysium's eyes flared in alarm, and he reached out for the maid, but it was too late. The spirit clung onto flesh and bone, the spell swirling around her in a gale, rattling the paintings on the walls and knocking over chairs. Elysium grabbed her arms, but the wind lifted her, eager to banish the ghost inside. She screamed and screamed until Benedict clapped his hands over his ears. She twisted in the air, and despite all the sounds and his hands pressing over his ears, nothing could mask the snapping of her back. Crack after crack. Her head turned backward, limbs mangled in all directions and flesh split open.

  She fell to the floor hard, and her skin and bones smacked the hardwood, echoing through Benedict and down to his gut, dropping him to his knees.

  The wind stopped, the room stilled, and the three Lyons stared at the dead bodies.

  "Why did you do that?" Benedict whispered, panting for air.

  "I had to," Lucy hissed, clawing at the table to drag herself to her feet. Thumping steps upstairs promised that they had awoken the whole house. Everyone would see this soon.

  "But you can't drive out a possession like that… You know that." How could she not? They all knew. Possessions were not the same as casual hauntings. And a spirit as willful as Gloria Lyon's would not be cast out that easily. They could push
her back, but they couldn't banish her with a broken talisman.

  "She would have died anyway," Lucy said, voice too weak to enforce any belief behind her words.

  "You don't know that!" Benedict snapped, turning on his knees toward his sister. "You accomplished nothing!"

  Lucy didn't defend herself like he had expected. She wouldn't even look at him—wouldn't look at either of them or the bodies, her gaze stubbornly piercing the floor at her feet.

  "Enough," Elysium said, swallowing hard. He hadn't looked away from the twisted corpse at his feet, hands still out toward it as though reaching for her.

  The doors opened, and Theodore rushed in, reeling back almost as soon as he did and colliding with Hazel.

  "Get them out of here," Elysium ordered.

  Hazel stepped closer, gaze flickering between Lucy, Benedict, and the bodies. "Elys?"

  "Them," he clarified sharply, pointing at Lucy.

  Hazel nodded once and crossed the room, collecting her cousin by the arm and leading her out of the room.

  Benedict felt Theodore's hand on his back before he heard his voice, deep and steady now. He couldn't quite make out the words, though. He couldn't shake the sound of that woman's spine twisting, vertebra grinding and cracking.

  "What happened?" Theodore asked, voice hushed as he led Benedict up the stairs.

  He didn't remember leaving the dining room, gaze hazy with tears. "She was possessed. We should have coaxed Mother out of her or done an exorcism, not…"

  "Mother?" Theodore interrupted, steering Benedict down the long hall toward his bedroom. "Aunt Gloria possessed the maid?"

  Benedict nodded, remembering the minutes like hours played out frame by frame. "She killed the footman. She was completely mad."

  Theodore managed to open the bedroom door without letting go of his iron grip on Benedict's arm, leading him in and pushing him down onto the nearest couch.

  Benedict caught his hand before he could step back, looking up at his cousin. "Lucy made a talisman and broke it, driving her out."

  Theodore blinked at him. "What? No. She wouldn't do that."

  Benedict exhaled, grateful someone else saw how insane the choice had been. "She did."