Until It Sleeps

by Val Crowe

  “Unless they’re lying,” he said. “Maybe they’ve seen something, and they’re covering it up.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “I don’t see why they would.”

  “Maybe they’re lying to themselves about it,” he said. “They’re in denial about what they saw, so they’re telling themselves it was nothing.”

  I considered. That made sense to a point. “But a haunting this powerful…” I shook my head. “Look, I’ve never seen a haunting powerful enough to influence people if I wasn’t around strengthening it. So this haunting would have to be off the charts. They wouldn’t be able to deny that it happened. They probably wouldn’t be able to stand living in the place. Or they’d already be dead. It would have convinced them to do some kind of violence by now to strengthen itself even more. That’s what the spirits were like in Point Oakes.”

  “That’s when you almost ax murdered people, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said in a low voice. Thinking about that always gave me chills. I tried to use my abilities to help people, but I ended up hurting people sometimes, whether I wanted to or not.

  “So, then, what?”

  “Well, I don’t know, but it doesn’t add up.”

  “But you said that the house is haunted.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But maybe that haunting is recent and relatively weak. Maybe Cheyenne is only there because of the energy released when she killed herself. And maybe I’m the only one who can see her.”

  “Oh,” said Wade.

  “But it doesn’t make much difference, I guess. The house is haunted either way.”

  “Yeah, but if it’s a new haunting, created with Cheyenne’s death, it could have been created when she was murdered just as easily as when she committed suicide, right? A murder is even more violent than a suicide. It would leave behind residual energy.”

  “True,” I said. “It would. I guess this doesn’t rule out murder.”

  “How do you think we could do that?” said Wade.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not a detective.”

  “Damn it, why do I feel like we did all of this for nothing?” said Wade.

  * * *

  “Geez, Deacon, you really need to clean out this pantry,” said Mads, who was surveying all the cans I had stacked in the cabinets in my kitchen.

  “Why?” I said.

  “You never use this stuff.”

  “So?” I said. “I might some day. And it’s not like cans of food go bad. That’s the whole point of having it in a can.”

  “Well, they might not go bad, but the nutritional content decreases as time goes on.”

  “What? Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I think I read that somewhere,” she said.

  “Well, even if it’s less than nutritious, it’s not going to hurt me. And besides, how nutritious can chili or corned beef hash really be in the first place?” I reached over and closed the cabinet. “When were you reading something?”

  “I think I was reading over someone’s shoulder in a library computer lab or something,” she said. “I do that sometimes. I get bored when you’re not around. No one can see me. I have to amuse myself.”

  “Sounds pretty awful if you’re reading about the longevity of canned food.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes, I guess. Not always.”

  I leaned back against the counter the kitchen, folding my arms over my chest. “So, can I ask you a weird question?”

  “Um, I guess so,” she said.

  “Can all ghosts possess people?”

  “I really don’t know,” she said. “How would I have any way of knowing that?”

  “Okay, I’ll ask a different way,” I said. “Can you possess people?”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, Deacon, I could never do something like that.”

  “Because you’re not able, or because you don’t want to?”

  “Well… well, I’ve never tried.”

  I scuffed my toe against the floor. “Maybe you should.”

  “Why would you want me to do that?”

  “Because you’d have a body. Because we could…” I didn’t even finish the sentence.

  “I don’t want a body that way,” she said. “It would be wrong to steal a body from another person.”

  “What if… I don’t know, maybe if you stole a body from a person in a vegetative state,” I said. “Someone in a coma who’s never going to wake up or something. Would that still be wrong?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I don’t know that it would be.”

  “It would be selfish,” she said.

  “So?” I said.

  “And how would it work anyway? I’d take over the body and all the person’s loved ones would be expecting the real person to be back, but it would be me. That would be impossible.”

  “We wouldn’t have to even interact with them. We’d just go into a hospital late at night, and I’d sneak you out.”

  “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” she said.

  I hung my head.

  “What would we do with the body that we stole?” she said. “Would you want to kiss me while I was in it? Would you want to… do other things?”

  I shook my head. “I…”

  “That would be a violation of that person. You’ve been possessed. You know what that’s like.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to do it if they’re still trapped in there,” I said. “But if they’re brain dead, in a coma, then… well, they’re already gone, right?”

  “You don’t know that,” she said.

  “Mads, I just think—” And my phone rang. I ignored it. “I’m only saying things like this because I want this to work with us.”

  “It doesn’t work,” she said. “You better answer that.”

  “No, let’s talk.”

  “I’m done talking.”

  The phone was still ringing.

  I got it out of my pocket. I didn’t recognize the phone number. But Mads had disappeared on me, so it wasn’t like I had any reason not to answer. I put the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Hi, there, is this Deacon Garrison?” came a voice on the other end of the phone.

  “Yeah,” I said warily, expecting it to be a telemarketer or something.

  “This is Wren Bentley. You came to my house earlier today? Gave me your number if I needed to call you for any reason?”

  “Oh, sure, of course,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Um… well, not so much,” she said. “Philip and I just saw a ghost.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I don’t know what the hell you did,” Philip Bentley was saying. He was pacing in front of me in the den in his house, and his face was red. “Maybe this is some scam you run. You leave behind creepy digital projections or something, and then you charge to come back and remove them, maybe?”

  “No,” I said. “I swear that’s not what’s going on.”

  “We didn’t find any projectors, Phil,” said Wren. “And they don’t make them as small as you think they do.”

  “Actually,” said Philip. “You’d be surprised. I was looking them up on Amazon, and—”

  “It’s not a projection,” I said. “It’s a real ghost. And I’m afraid that your seeing her is probably my fault.”

  “What?” said Wren. “How?”

  I smiled at them apologetically. “My ability doesn’t only allow me to see ghosts. It can also strengthen them. I wasn’t in the house for very long, but I obviously strengthened Cheyenne’s spirit enough so that she could make contact with you.”

  “Oh, this is all horseshit,” said Philip. “How much are you going to charge to get rid of her?”

  “I don’t charge,” I said. I turned to Wren. “Actually, I can’t be sure if you saw Cheyenne or not. Can you describe for me exactly what you saw?”

  “It was awful,” said Wren. “This woman was screaming at us. She only had ha
lf a face.”

  “Yeah, that’s Cheyenne all right.” I sighed. “Look, I will get her out of the house for you. That’s what I do.”

  “If you don’t charge, what do you want from us?” said Philip.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Only your patience. I can’t be sure how long this will take.”

  “So, what are we supposed to do?” said Wren. “Go stay in a hotel indefinitely?”

  “You don’t have to move out,” I said. “Cheyenne probably isn’t dangerous. She can’t affect the corporeal realm. The only damage she could do would be to influence either you or your husband. I think you can stay here for now. But if either of you start to experience suicidal or violent thoughts, that’s when it’s time to leave.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Wren, distressed, putting both hands on her stomach.

  “Can’t you take care of it quickly?” said Philip.

  “I wish I could,” I said. “It’s not like setting traps for vermin or something. It’s a delicate sort of thing. Let me see if I can make contact with her again. Then maybe I’ll know better what I need to do.”

  “You saw her before?” said Wren.

  “I did,” I said. “In the baby’s room.”

  “Oh, my God!” said Wren. “This is awful. What are we going to do, Phil? We’re going to have to move. We can’t afford to move!”

  “We’re not moving,” said Philip. “This asshole is going to fix whatever he broke or I’m going to sue his ass.”

  I gave him a small smile. “I will fix it, sir. Please try to calm down. Let me go back up to the nursery alone.”

  Wren nodded. She looked practically on the verge of tears.

  “I don’t know why we should give you run of the house,” said Phil.

  “Either you want me to fix it or you don’t,” I said. “If you don’t, I can leave right now.” Although why I said that, I didn’t know. I couldn’t leave this alone, not when it involved Wade. If Philip kicked me out right now, I’d still have to find a way back into the house. Way to go, Deacon, I thought at myself, annoyed.

  But luckily Philip said, “Oh, no you don’t. You can’t make a mess and then walk away without cleaning it up. You get up into that nursery and get rid of that… that thing.”

  So, I climbed the steps up to the baby’s bedroom.

  The lights were off up there, and the whole place seemed dark and cold and a little unreal, as though I was stepping through a veil into another realm, one superimposed over our own.

  I hunched inside my flannel shirt, wishing I hadn’t taken off my coat when Wren had offered to hang it up for me.

  At the end of the hallway, the single window cast a blue-ish light over everything.

  I walked toward it, and I felt dread in the pit of my stomach. Something inside me was telling me not to keep walking forward, not to go into that blue light. But this was what I did now. I went inside the places where my instincts told me not to go.

  As I moved down the hallway, the hairs raised on my arms and my whole body was covered in puckered goosebumps. I felt cold.

  I swallowed, and the urge to stop and go back was even stronger.

  But I pushed forward, and then I came to the end of the hallway. The door opposite the baby’s room was open. It led to a shadowy room where I could see an exercise bike and a treadmill.

  The nursery door was closed.

  I wrapped my hands around the doorknob.

  It was ice cold.

  I turned the knob and slowly pushed the door open.

  Inside, there was just the crib, nothing else.

  I stepped inside. I remembered that she had been behind the door before, so I shut it quickly, bracing myself for the sight of her.

  But there was nothing behind the door except darkness.

  I took a deep breath, looking around the room.

  And she came through the crib, moving as if the wooden slats weren’t even there. She touched her destroyed face and her fingers came away bloody. She advanced on me, and I cringed.

  But she walked right through me, icy darkness chilling me as she did.

  She smeared her bloody fingers against the wall.

  She was…

  She was writing something.

  M… U…

  I shuddered as I read the word she had written on the wall. It was smeared and red and sloppy, but unmistakable.

  Murder.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Cheyenne,” I said, my voice urgent. “Look at me.”

  She did, turning her awful face toward me. Her good eye stared at me almost accusingly.

  “You were murdered?” I said. “It was Tex?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, well, we’ll do something about it. We’ll make sure he isn’t free anymore. I promise you, we’ll—”

  Cheyenne disappeared, flickering out the way that Mads sometimes did.

  “Cheyenne!” I called. “Cheyenne, come back.”

  I waited.

  She didn’t.

  But Mads appeared on the opposite side of the crib, peering down at the blankets and stuffed animals. “A baby,” she whispered. “When was the last time you held a baby?”

  “Me?” I said. “Maybe never.” That couldn’t really be true, but I didn’t have a lot of experience with kids. I was an only child, and my mom and I weren’t real close with her side of the family or my cousins. I didn’t interact with babies much. “I hear they cry a lot. Look, Mads, what are we going to do about Cheyenne?”

  Mads continued to stare down at the crib. “So small,” she breathed.

  “Mads,” I said. “Come on.”

  She looked up at me. “I wonder when the last time it was I held a baby.”

  I hesitated. I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I wondered if Mads’d had a baby in her human life. If she’d even had a human life. Entities like Negus weren’t echoes of dead people. They were something else. We just didn’t know what. Maybe Mads was like that. She was more together and more cogent than your average, run-of-the-mill ghost. But I had to admit I didn’t know what she was.

  She shook herself. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  “Cheyenne,” I said. “She wrote that on the wall.” I pointed.

  “Murder,” read Mads. “She’s trying to tell you that she didn’t commit suicide.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Wade will want to know. He’ll want to make sure that Tex Sanford goes to jail.”

  “Wonder how he’ll do that?”

  “That’s his problem,” I said. “We have to release Cheyenne from this house. Do you think we can use the oil?”

  Mads shut her eyes for a minute. She floated across the room and put her hand into the wall. It was weird, watching her limbs plunge into the wood like that. She made a small humming noise and then her eyes opened. “No, she’s too attached. The oil isn’t going to be enough to get her out.”

  “She can’t be that strong. The people who live in the house didn’t even know she was there.”

  “She’s not the strongest spirit you’ve ever faced, no, but her tie to the mortal realm is very strong.”

  “What if I summoned something incredibly powerful?” I said. “Something that would definitely entice her?”

  “You wouldn’t be able to control it if we summoned something powerful enough,” she said.

  “Damn it,” I said, shoving my hands into my pockets. “So, what do we do then?”

  “Well, since she’s trying to communicate with you, maybe she just has unfinished business. Maybe all we need to do is bring her murderer to justice, and that will release the energy here.”

  “Like Macon,” I said, nodding. “It might work.”

  “It’s our best play, I think,” said Mads.

  I left the room and went back downstairs to find the Bentleys. I explained about the word murder being written on the wall and that we would need to try to find justice for Cheyenne.

  “Well, that makes sense,” said Wren, looking hopeful.r />
  Philip made a sour face. “Yeah, right. How are you going to bring him to justice? The police had him under investigation. They couldn’t find enough evidence to arrest him. How are you going to?”

  That was actually a really good question.

  * * *

  “So, you said that Kadan has bad dreams, right?” I was on the phone with Wade again. It was the next day, and I’d called him right after his morning class, because I knew he had a break then.

  “Wait, wait,” said Wade. “I’m still reeling from the fact that you’re telling me that Cheyenne was murdered. She actually wrote that on the wall? That’s awful. Her restless spirit has been roaming the hallways of that house for years, and no one could see her. It’s just… I feel a lot of rage.”

  “Look, we can’t change the past,” I said. “We have to do whatever we can now to help Cheyenne.”

  “And guilt,” he said. “Because I could have saved her from all of this—”

  “Come on, not that again, Wade,” I said. “You were a kid. You were eighteen years old when she left you. Cut yourself a break. Now, about Kadan and his stepfather. You said that Kadan’s afraid of Tex.”

  “Yeah, and no wonder,” said Wade. “He’s a murderer.”

  “Right,” I said. “Do you think it’s possible that Kadan witnessed the murder?”

  “Jesus, I hope not. That would seriously fuck him up.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “About what?”

  “About his mother’s death.”

  “No,” said Wade.

  “What do you mean, ‘No’?”

  “I won’t let you bring that up to him. You’ll freak him out. He doesn’t ever have to think about all of that ever again.”

  “Come on, that can’t be healthy.”

  “Why do you want to torture my son?”

  “Because we need some kind of evidence if we’re going to bring Tex to justice. I can’t just go to the police and say the ghost of the murder victim told me that she was killed.”

  Wade was quiet.

  “So,” I said in a softer voice, “can I talk to Kadan?”

  “No,” said Wade.

  “Come on, Wade, I’ll be very sensitive about the whole thing. I won’t push or scare him or—”

  “Absolutely not. No way, no how.”