Girl of Nightmares (8 page)

Gideon sighs. “When I met your father,” he says, “he wasn’t much older than you are now. Of course, he hadn’t been using the athame for near so long as you have. But I remember thinking how old he seemed.

“He wanted to give it up once, you know.”

“No,” I say. “He never told me.”

“Well, I suppose that it didn’t matter, afterward. Because he didn’t.”

“Why didn’t he? It would have been better for everyone if he had. He’d still be here.” I stop suddenly and Gideon lets me finish my own thought. My dad would still be here. But other people wouldn’t. He saved who knows how many lives by putting away the dead, and so have I.

“What am I going to do about Anna?” I ask.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious,” he says. “Quite serious. The girl was tragic. We all know that. But you need to put her away and do your job. Stop looking for things you have no business looking for.” He pauses, and I don’t say anything. It’s almost exactly what Morfran said, and it makes the hairs stand up on my forearms.

“Theseus, if you’ve ever trusted me before, trust me now. Just do your job. Do your job, and let the girl go, and none of us have anything to fear.”

*   *   *

I go back to school, to the surprise of nearly everyone. Apparently, Carmel had already circulated news of my “illness.” So I put up with curious questions, and when they ask about my sore and bandaged shoulder, the white edge sticking up from my shirt collar, I grit my teeth and tell them about my camping accident. It was funny at the time but now I wish my mom had picked a less embarrassing cover story.

I suppose I could have just stayed home, like I intended. But rattling around the empty rooms like a lonely, crazy marble while my mom made the rounds to clients and occult suppliers wasn’t my idea of a good time. I didn’t feel like watching TV all day, waiting for Anna to come crawling through it like that mildew-covered chick from the Ring movies. So I came back, determined to soak up the last of what these junior year teachers had to tell me. It was supposed to be like someone kicking you in the shin to take your mind off your broken arm. But now, at every turn, in every class, Anna is on my mind. None of the end-of-the-year lessons are interesting enough to drive her away. Even Mr. Dixon, my favorite teacher, just sort of phones it in talking about the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. My mind wanders, letting her back in, and Gideon’s voice explodes between my ears.
Stop looking for something you have no business looking for. Let her go.
Or is it Morfran’s voice? Or Carmel’s?

The way that Gideon said it, that as long as I let her go, we have nothing to fear … I don’t know what that means. Trust me, he said, and I do. It’s not possible, he said, so I believe him.

But what if she needs me?

“So we pretty much just got given to England.”

“Huh?”

I blink. Carmel’s friend Nat is turned around in her seat, squinting at me curiously. Then she shrugs.

“You’re probably right.” She glances toward Mr. Dixon, who has gone to sit at his desk to mess with something on his laptop. “He probably doesn’t care if we talk about the war for real. So.” She sighs, looking like she’d rather be sitting in front of anyone else. “You going to come with Carmel to the senior party?”

“Isn’t that just for seniors?” I ask.

“Come on. It’s not like they’re going to card you and kick you out if you’re not one,” she scoffs. “Well, maybe if you were a freshman. Thomas could even come. Cas? Cas?”

“Yeah,” I hear myself say. But not really. Because Nat’s face isn’t her face anymore. It’s Anna’s. The mouth moves with hers, but not the expression. Like a mask.

“You’re acting really weird today,” she says.

“Sorry. My Percocet’s wearing off,” I mutter, and slide out of the desk. Mr. Dixon doesn’t even notice when I walk out of the classroom.

When Thomas and Carmel find me, I’m sitting on the quiet stage in the middle of the theater, staring up at the rows of blue-covered seats, all empty except for one. My trig text and notebook are beside me in a neat stack, as a reminder of where I’m supposed to be.

“Is he catatonic?” Thomas asks. They came in a few minutes ago but I didn’t acknowledge them. If I’m going to ignore one friend I may as well ignore them all.

“Hey guys,” I say. Their movements echo loudly through the empty theater as they drop their books and climb up onto the stage.

“You do a pretty good job of avoiding things,” says Carmel. “But then again maybe not. Nat says that you were acting weird during discussion questions in history.”

I shrug. “Anna’s face transposed over hers while she was talking. I thought I showed a fair amount of restraint.”

They exchange one of their ever more frequent looks as they sit on either side of me.

“What else have you seen?” Thomas asks.

“She’s in pain. Like she’s being tortured. She was in my room last night. There were wounds, opening and closing on her arms and shoulders. I couldn’t do anything to help her. She wasn’t really there.”

He pushes his glasses up on his nose. “We have to find out what’s going on. That’s—that’s sick. There must be a spell, something to reveal—”

“Maybe mysticism isn’t what we need right now,” Carmel interjects. “What about something else, like maybe a psychologist?”

“They’d just drug him to the gills. Tell him he’s got ADD or something. And besides, Cas isn’t insane.”

“Not to be a downer, but schizophrenia can strike at any time,” she says. “It’s actually common for it to manifest around our age. And the hallucinations seem just as real as you or me.”

“What are you talking about schizophrenia for?” Thomas blurts.

“I’m not saying that specifically! But he’s been through a significant loss. None of it might be real. Have you seen anything? Have you even felt anything weird like your grandpa said?”

“No, but I’ve sort of been slacking off in my voodoo studies. I’ve got trigonometry, you know?”

“I’m just saying it doesn’t always have to be spirits and magic. Sometimes hauntings are in your mind. It doesn’t make them less real.”

Thomas nods and takes a breath. “Okay, that’s true. But I still think a shrink is the wrong way to go.”

Carmel makes a growling noise. “Why do you have to jump straight to a spell? Why are you so sure it’s paranormal?”

This is as close as I’ve ever heard to a Thomas and Carmel argument. And as special as it is to listen to your friends argue over whether or not you have a mental illness, I’m starting to get the urge to go back to class.

Stop poking your nose around where it doesn’t belong, before someone cuts it off. There’s something else going on around you, like a storm.

I don’t care.

In the sixth row of the theater, in the third chair in, Anna winks at me. Or maybe she just blinks. I can’t tell. She’s missing half of her face.

“Let’s go talk to Morfran,” I say.

*   *   *

The bell over the antique shop door jingles and there’s the click-click-clatter of dog toenails on hardwood before Stella collides with my legs. I give her a few scratches and she gazes up at me with huge brown eyes like a seal pup’s before moving on to Carmel.

We aren’t the only ones in the shop. Morfran’s talking to two women, forty-something ladies in sweaters asking questions about one of the china washbasins. Morfran laughs and starts telling them a cozy little historical tale that may or may not be true. It’s weird to watch him with customers. He’s so
nice
. We try not to make too much of a ruckus on our way to the back room. After a few minutes, we hear the women saying good-bye to Stella and thank you to Morfran, and seconds later, he and the dog walk through the curtain into the back, where he keeps the stranger and more obscure occult supplies. My mom’s candles enjoy a table in the front window. She’s gone mainstream.

The way Morfran’s looking at me, I expect him to produce one of those doctor’s flashlights and check my pupil response. His arms are crossed over his chest, bunching up the black leather of his vest and covering the Aerosmith logo on his t-shirt. When Thomas tosses him a freshly packed pipe of tobacco, his hand shoots up and catches it, and his eyes never leave my face. It’s hard to believe that the kindly antique shop proprietor and this man of dark magic are one and the same.

“You kids here for an after-school snack?” he asks as he lights up. Then he checks his watch. “Can’t be. School’s not out for another five hours.”

Thomas clears his throat uncomfortably, and Morfran’s furry eyebrow lifts in his direction

“You flunk out and you’ll be picking crud out of everything I buy up at swap meets this summer.”

“I’m not flunking out. It’s the last two weeks. Nobody even cares anymore really.”

“I care. Your mama cares. And don’t you forget it.” He nods at Carmel. “What about you?”

“Perfect grade point average,” she replies. “And it’ll stay that way. It’s all about results, my dad says.” Her smile is sweet, apologetic but confident. Morfran shakes his head.

“You talk to that Brit friend of yours?” he asks me.

“Yeah.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said to let it go.”

“Good advice.” He draws on his pipe; the smoke obscures his face as he exhales.

“I can’t take it.”

“You should.”

Carmel steps forward, her arms crossed over her chest. “Why should he? Can you stop being so cryptic? Maybe if you’d just tell us what’s going on, tell us why we should let it go, then maybe we would.”

He exhales and looks away from her, sets his pipe down on the glass countertop. “Can’t tell you what I don’t know. It’s not an exact science. Not a news bulletin. It just blinks up, in here,” he says, and points to his chest. “Or in here”—he points to his temple. “It says stay away. It says let it go. People are watching you. The kind of people you don’t mind just watching, but you hope they never show up. And there’s something else.” He draws again on the pipe, looking thoughtful, which is really the only way you can look when smoking a pipe. “Something is trying to hold this back, while another thing is trying to draw it on. And that’s the thing that concerns me most, you want to know the truth. Makes it hard to hold my tongue.”

“Hard to hold your tongue on what?” I ask. “What do you know?”

Morfran looks at me through the smoke but I don’t drop my eyes. I’m not letting this go. I can’t. I owe her. And more than that. I can’t think that she’s suffering.

“Just drop it, all right?” he says, but I hear it. The resolve has gone out of his voice.

“What do you know, Morfran?”

“I know…” He sighs. “Someone who might know something.”

“Who?”

“Miss Riika.”

“Aunt Riika?” Thomas asks. “What could she know about it?” He turns to me. “I used to go over to her house when I was a kid. She’s not really my aunt, but you know, more like a friend of the family. I haven’t seen her in years.”

“We lost touch.” Morfran shrugs. “It happens sometimes. But if Thomas takes you to see her, she’ll talk to you. She’s been a Finnish witch all her life.”

A Finnish witch. The phrase makes me want to bare my teeth and put my fur up. Anna’s mother, Malvina, was a Finnish witch. That’s how she was able to curse Anna and bind her to the Victorian. Right after she cut her throat.

“She’s not the same,” Thomas whispers. “She’s not like her.”

My breath shakes out of my lungs and I nod at him fondly. It doesn’t bother me anymore that he sometimes breaks into my thoughts. He can’t help it. And the way I instantly seethed about Malvina must’ve lit his dendrites up like a Christmas tree.

“Will you take me to her?” I ask.

“I guess so.” He shrugs. “But we might not get anything besides a plate of gingersnaps. She wasn’t exactly ‘all there’ even when I was little.”

Carmel lingers on the outskirts, quietly petting Stella. Her voice cuts through the smoke.

“If the haunting is real, can this Miss Riika make her go away?”

I look at her sharply. Nobody answers and after a few long seconds, her eyes drop to the floor.

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s just get on with it, I guess.”

Morfran puffs his pipe and shakes his head. “Cas and Thomas only. Not you, girl. Riika wouldn’t let you in the front door.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“Because the answers they’re after, you don’t want,” Morfran replies. “Resistance is coming off of you in waves. If you go with them, they won’t get anywhere.” He presses the ash in his pipe down.

I look at Carmel. Her eyes are hurt, but not guilty. “I won’t go then.”

“Carmel,” Thomas starts, but she cuts him off.

“You shouldn’t go either. Neither of you.” I’d speak up, but she’s looking at Thomas. “If you’re really his friend, if you care about him, then you shouldn’t indulge this.” And then she turns on her heel and walks out of the room. She’s all the way through the antique shop before I can say that I’m not an infant, I don’t need chaperones, or babysitters, or a goddamn counselor.

“What’s the matter with her today?” I ask Thomas, but from the way his jaw is hanging open in her wake, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t know.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHT

Thomas’s Aunt Riika lives in the middle of bumble-fuck nowhere. We’ve been driving on unmarked dirt roads for at least ten minutes. There are no signs of any kind, just trees and more trees, then a brief clearing leading up to more trees. If he hasn’t been out here in years, I have no idea how he seems to be finding his way so easily.

“Are we lost? You’d admit it if we were lost, right?”

Thomas smiles, maybe a bit nervously. “We’re not lost. At least, not yet. They might’ve changed some of the roads around since the last time.”

“Who the hell are ‘they’? Road construction squirrels? It doesn’t even look like these things have been driven on in the last ten years.” The trees are thick outside my window. The foliage has come back to fill in the winter spaces. We’ve taken too many turns now, and my sense of direction is shot. We could be going northsouth for all I know.

“Ha! There it is,” Thomas crows. I sit up straighter in my seat. We’re approaching a small white farmhouse. There are early shoots of a flower garden cropping up around the front porch, and a walkway of flagstones leads from the driveway to the front steps. As Thomas pulls the Tempo onto the pale gravel, he beeps the horn. “I hope she’s home,” he mutters, and we step out.