by Terri Garey
Amber Marie was oblivious. She eyed me curiously, looking at the necklace of black beads I was never without, checking out the silver crucifix and the peace sign on a leather cord I’d worn along with it. “My sister put pink dye in her hair once. She was going to do it to me, too, when I was old enough.” Her lower lip quivered, then steadied. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, an oddly mature gesture for such a young girl.
A keening sound, very faint, reached my ears. The dog cocked his head, whining.
“I’m very sorry about Crystal,” I said, doing my best to ignore everything but the little girl in front of me. “You must be Amber Marie.”
Crystal was crying. I could feel her grief like a cold gust of wind, seeping into my soul.
Amber’s face brightened. “You knew my sister?”
I hesitated. “Yes.” And then I realized, I didn’t need to speak to Tina—the person I needed to speak to was right in front of me. “She wanted me to tell you something.”
“Who is it, Amber Marie?” A man’s voice. Heavy footsteps shook the trailer, and to my shock, Jimmy Boyd appeared in the doorway behind Amber. “Ah, Miss Styx. I had a feeling we’d meet again.”
A shriek of rage filled the air, but no one heard it but me—and the dog—who cringed and slunk away into the shadows. Grief turned to rage, just like that, and just as quickly, Crystal swooped into my mind with the force of a hurricane, making me stagger. I grabbed the rickety wooden railing for support, fighting for balance, both inside and out.
Kill him, she screamed, inside my mind. Kill him, before it’s too late! A swirling maelstrom of hate, despair, and desperation gripped me. He’s a liar, a cheat, a fraud! Kill him!
To my horror, I felt my fingers curl into claws, and felt an urge to launch them straight toward Jimmy Boyd’s lying, smiling eyes. Instead, I gripped the railing tighter, refusing to let go. I tried to speak, but couldn’t, the force of Crystal’s possession stronger than it had ever been.
Focus, Styx, focus. I shut my eyes, gritting my teeth against the shrieking still going on in my mind.
“Miss Styx? Are you all right?” Boyd’s voice came from far away. I could only hope he had the sense to stay back—if he touched me with those creepy child-molester hands I’d never be able to stop myself from going for his throat.
“Migraines,” I ground out, keeping my eyes closed. Light, focus on the light.
A car door slammed, and I knew Joe had noticed my odd behavior.
Let go! Crystal screamed, inside my head, but I wouldn’t. The wooden railing beneath my hands was the only stable thing in my world right now. And then, to my horror, I heard a sharp crack, and stability was a thing of the past. My eyes flew open, and I stumbled backward, my hands still clutching wood. I staggered, fighting for balance, but there was no need—my body was no longer my own. My legs planted themselves, and without conscious volition, my right hand rose high in the air, holding a piece of broken railing. I was about to bash Jimmy Boyd over the head with it.
“Nicki!” Joe’s shout made me pause, though the muscles in my arm shook with strain. He grabbed me from behind, wrenching the wood from my hand.
Noooooo… Crystal’s shriek of rage made my head hurt, but it was the shocked look on Amber Marie’s face that truly brought me to my senses. She was pressed against Jimmy Boyd’s side, seeking protection, his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer.
It terrified me. It made me want to throw up. And it gave me the strength to focus on Crystal’s rage.
Squeezing my eyes shut so Amber Marie couldn’t see the crazy look I was sure was there, I spoke to Crystal, who was still inside my head. Look at what you’re doing, I said silently, without moving my lips, look!
Joe’s hands steadied me, while I leaned against him and kept up the internal dialogue with Crystal’s spirit. You’re scaring Amber, I screamed, forcing her to hear me. You’re giving him an excuse to touch her, to hold her. Get out of my body and let me handle this my own way.
“I promised,” I said out loud, without meaning to. “I promised I’d take care of it.”
“You’ve done enough, Nicki,” Joe said grimly, obviously thinking I was talking to him. “Let’s go.”
But my feet weren’t moving, and for the time being, that was okay with me. I hadn’t yet done what I came here for. Get out, I told Crystal silently, you’re making things worse.
Her hold on me was weakening. I could feel it.
“Close the door, Amber Marie,” said Jimmy Boyd, pulling the girl backward into the trailer. “You people get out of here before I call the police.”
I opened my eyes, clutching Joe’s arm.
“Do that,” Joe said harshly. “Maybe the police would like to know what you’re doing here alone with a little girl who should be in school.”
Yes! I’d never loved Joe more than I did in that moment.
Boyd froze, eyes narrowing. “I’m a friend of the family,” he said warily, shooting glances between Joe and me.
“Is that so?” The sarcasm in Joe’s voice would’ve been apparent to anybody.
I let the men engage in a stare down while I focused my attention on Amber Marie. As long as I looked at her, Crystal would see what I saw—a scared, vulnerable little girl about to be drawn in to something very, very ugly. She was afraid of the wrong people, and I had to make her see it.
There was a tightness in my chest, a squeezing like a fist around my heart, and for the first time, I was really afraid.
If you kill me, he’ll get her for sure, I thought, directing all my brainpower toward Crystal. If I’m dead, there’ll be no one to save her.
Desperate, I took a deep, shuddering breath, doing my best to ignore the pain in my chest. Let me help, Crystal. Let me help.
It was the dog that tipped the scales. His ugly brown face appeared, just by Boyd’s left knee. He stared at me, silent and unmoving, eyes intent on my face.
He knows. I couldn’t explain it, but the dog wasn’t really looking at me. He was looking at Crystal, almost as though he were adding a silent plea to mine. He whined, a thin whine, barely heard.
“Shut up, Pete,” Boyd snapped.
Amber Marie frowned, obviously not liking how he spoke to her dog. She straightened, pulling away from him a bit.
Unbelievably enough, the pressure on my chest began to ease. I took another deep breath, easier this time. The swirling storm of rage and anguish inside my head slowed, faltered.
And then, as abruptly as she’d come, Crystal left me.
If Joe hadn’t been holding me up, I would’ve fallen. As it was, my knees buckled, and he braced himself at the weight of my body. “Nick? You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I lied. “Just a little light-headed for a second. Lost my balance.”
The dog helped me out again, pushing past Boyd to nose my hand. I scratched the ugly mutt under the chin gratefully, murmuring, “Good boy. Nice doggy.” He wagged his tail, nosing me even harder.
Amber relaxed visibly, moving forward to grab Pete by the collar. “He likes you,” she said, sounding surprised. “He don’t normally like people he don’t know.”
Her diction was atrocious. Small wonder, if she stayed home all the time instead of going to school.
“Get back inside, Amber Marie.” Boyd talked to her like he owned her. He was glaring at Joe, his face a mask of hostility.
“Crystal wanted me to tell you something, Amber,” I said quickly.
“She did, did she?” Boyd spoke for the girl, narrowing his eyes at me. “When I talked to you yesterday, you didn’t seem to know anything about Crystal.”
Creep.
I ignored him, looking down at Amber. “Your sister told me a secret.”
Her face lit up. “A secret?”
Nodding, I kept petting the dog. “A secret she wanted me to tell you.” I risked a hostile glance at Boyd, glad Joe was still there.
Boyd’s face flushed, and I saw his fists clench, just once, before he opened them
again. “Get inside, Amber,” he repeated. “These people are not your friends.”
“And you ain’t my daddy,” she told him flippantly, over her shoulder.
The girl had spunk. I was glad, because I had a feeling she was going to need it.
“Now, Amber, honey…” His tone turned conciliatory, but she ignored him.
“What did Crystal say?” Amber’s resemblance to her older sister was obvious, despite the fact that she weighed more at twelve than Crystal had when she died. The high cheekbones, the blond hair—it made me sad to see the little girl Crystal might have been as compared to the bony, angry person she’d become.
It wouldn’t do for Amber to see me sad, though. Not if I wanted to be her new best friend. I arched an eyebrow playfully, and said, “Secret. Remember?”
She looked pointedly at Joe, who still had his arm around me.
He sighed, knowing when he was beaten. “I’ll wait in the car,” he said. The glare he gave Boyd was scorching. “I won’t be far.”
“Amber Marie…” Boyd said warningly, but the little girl cut him off.
“I just want to talk to her!” She turned partway in his direction, still holding on to Pete’s collar. “I’ll take Pete. We’ll be right over there on the swing set.”
Jimmy Boyd obviously wasn’t used to being thwarted. His face turned red, and the look he gave me was black. But, short of grabbing Amber and physically dragging her back into the trailer, he had no other options.
Besides, Joe was still right there, and so was the dog. Either one looked willing and able to bite his head off if he laid a hand on her. “I’m calling your mama,” he said. “She’s not going to be happy about you talking to strangers.”
Yeah, like Amber Marie needs to worry about strangers with you around.
The swing set was rusty, and the seat was hard. My butt was a tight fit, causing me mentally to swear off the blueberry muffins from Moonbeans for a while. Pete snuffled around the broken lattice at the bottom of the trailer, obviously hoping to find the cat, while Joe sat none too patiently in the car. I could see his fingers drumming the steering wheel.
Amber Marie scuffed the toe of a dirty tennis shoe into the red clay beneath our feet. “What’s your name?”
“Nicki Styx.”
She eyed me sideways. “How come I never seen you before?”
If anybody needed to be in school, this kid did.
I shrugged. “I didn’t know Crystal for very long.”
She nodded, as if this made perfect sense. “Crystal didn’t have many friends. She spent most of her time in her room.”
Unsure what to say about that, I said nothing.
“She said most people were stupid, and pretty girls were all bitches.” Another look from beneath her lashes.
Talk about your backhanded compliment. “I imagine some of them are,” I said lightly, resisting the urge to react to her use of profanity.
Silence for a moment. Pete snuffled and growled at something behind the lattice.
“You must miss her,” I said.
Amber’s eyes filled with tears, a couple of them spilling over onto her cheeks. She swiped them away with hands that looked surprisingly clean, though the nails were bitten to the quick. “Yep. But Mama and Mr. Boyd say she’s with the angels now, so it’s okay.”
No, it wasn’t.
“Does Mr. Boyd come around here often?” I was glad she’d given me an opening.
She shrugged. “He used to, but mostly we just see him at prayer meetings and church. Wednesday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays.”
Tina Cowart was certainly devout. “What’s he doing here now?”
She shrugged again. “I dunno. Just came by to see how I was doin’, he said.”
I’ll bet he did.
Still, I had to be delicate. I couldn’t just blurt out the ugly truth to a twelve-year-old.
“What did Crystal think of Mr. Boyd?”
Amber gave an unladylike snort of laughter. “She used to call him Asswipe.”
I couldn’t help my answering smile.
She shot me a mischievous look. “Sometimes she called him Dickhead.”
That one was a little too close to home.
“So Crystal didn’t like him.”
Amber shook her head, blond hair swinging. “Nope. Her and Mama used to get into fights about him all the time. Mama wanted her to go to church with us, but Crystal never would.”
“Do you like him?”
Her smile faded. “He’s okay, I guess. He brought me a stuffed bunny when Crystal died.”
A movement from the trailer caught my eye. Jimmy Boyd had moved aside a curtain and stood watching us through a window.
“I don’t like him.” There, I’d said it.
“He and Mama used to be engaged or something, back when I was a baby.” Amber pushed herself backward in the swing, kicking off. She swung back and forth while she talked. “She says I have to be nice to him, no matter what Crystal said, ’cuz he’s a man of God and all that.”
Uh-oh.
“What if he wanted you to do something you didn’t want to do?” I was trying to go at this sideways. “Would you do it?”
She looked at me curiously. “What’s it to you?”
Her directness took me aback. I wasn’t used to smart-mouthed twelve-year-olds. Or twelve-year-olds of any kind, for that matter.
“There’s a reason Crystal didn’t like him, Amber.” Taking a deep breath, I started to tell her. “He—”
A burst of frantic barking interrupted me. Pete was going nuts over by the trailer, clawing at the already broken lattice. An unearthly yowl told me that the cat he was after didn’t appreciate his efforts.
“Pete!” Amber Marie let the swing’s momentum carry her forward, then jumped out. “Get over here! Leave Shadow alone!”
With a sigh, I got up from the swing, too.
“Shadow had kittens last week,” the little girl said, over her shoulder. She grabbed Pete by the collar and dragged him backward, showing no fear despite the dog’s continued growls. “Five of ’em. Mama won’t let me bring ’em into the house, so I made her a bed under here. Wanna see?”
The idea of crawling beneath that trailer was not something I’d even consider.
“Not right now,” I said hastily. “It would probably upset the mama kitty to have strangers around her babies.”
“Yeah,” she answered, nodding. “That’s why Pete’s so riled. He wants to see ’em, and she won’t let him.”
Smart kitty. Keep the big bad wolf away from your babies.
Too bad Tina Cowart wasn’t as smart as the cat.
The sound of a car made me turn around. A battered old Saturn was making its way up the road toward the trailer.
“Mama’s home,” Amber said brightly.
I sighed, glancing nervously at Joe, where he sat behind the wheel of his own car. The windows were tinted, and he was wearing his sunglasses, so maybe if Tina didn’t look too closely, she wouldn’t recognize him.
She parked the car beside the trailer and cut the engine, getting out. “Go in the house, Amber Marie,” she said, by way of greeting.
“But Mama—”
“Get in that house before I tan your bottom, girl,” she said, walking toward us, cigarette in one hand and purse in the other. “Take Pete with you.”
To my surprise, Amber did as she was told without any further argument, though the look on her face was sullen. Tina’s threat of a whipping was obviously one she took seriously.
“What are you doing here?”
My greeting from Tina was just as blunt as Amber’s had been.
“I need to talk to you.” No sense beating around the bush. “About Jimmy Boyd.”
“He called me,” she said, eyes narrowed, “and told me you and your boyfriend was out here causing trouble.” She glanced toward Joe, sitting in the car, then back at me. “He says you broke my porch, tried to hit him with a piece of railing.”
I could hard
ly deny it—the broken railing was right there for anyone to see—but I could set the record straight. “That wasn’t me. It was Crystal, just like in the store,” I said, reminding her what happened when she came to see me at Handbags and Gladrags. “She doesn’t like his being alone with her sister.”
Tina stared at me, taking a drag from her cigarette. I couldn’t help but notice that her hand was shaking, just a little. “That ain’t none of your business.”
“You’re right. It isn’t. Except Crystal has made it my business.”
She swallowed, hard. “You sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’? ’Cuz that ain’t what you said to me the other day.”
It was my turn to swallow hard. I didn’t like admitting to anyone that I saw ghosts, much less that I was getting possessed by one on a regular basis. Squaring my shoulders and lifting my chin, I said baldly, “I didn’t want to tell you the truth, but now I have to. Crystal’s spirit won’t leave me alone. She’s not at peace.”
Tina’s face flushed. “If she ain’t at peace, it’s because of that damned hospital,” she hissed. “They won’t release her body to the funeral home until there’s been an autopsy.” Her lip quivered, but she covered it by taking another drag off her cigarette. “My baby should’ve been cremated and put to rest by now. Damn doctors.”
It would hardly do to point out that Tina’s lawsuit was the reason for an autopsy to begin with. “That’s not it, Tina, and you know it.” I had to be blunt. “It’s because of Jimmy Boyd, and what he did to her when she was thirteen. What he might do to Amber Marie, if you don’t stop him.”
She went dead still. All color left her face, leaving it white as a sheet.
“Get off my property,” she said, so low I could barely hear her.
“It’s true.” I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d made her listen. “Crystal told you what happened, but you didn’t believe her.”
Color came rushing back into her cheeks. “It isn’t true,” she said, throwing the cigarette to the ground. “Crystal came on to him. Jimmy and me were datin’. She was so used to gettin’ attention from all the boys that she couldn’t stand it when somebody else got some. She got mad when Jimmy didn’t take her up on it, that’s all.” Her voice quivered—rage or grief, I couldn’t tell. “She made it all up.”
