Krysta's Curse (6 page)

“Why not? She might need someone to talk
to.”

“Honey.” Brow’s raised, Gertrude shook her
head. “We spirits ain’t all the same.”

“You’re not?” Scratching my head, I wondered
why. I mean, weren’t they all in the same ghostly dimension?

Ed held out his palms. “Gertie and me, we
died natural-like. We was
expectin’
ta die.”

“That girl, though.” Scowling, Gertrude
shook her head. “She didn’t die like us.”

“Why should that matter?” I was majorly
confused. It shouldn’t have mattered how they died. Ed and Gertrude
could still go comfort her.

Looking at each other, they both nodded
before turning back to me and answering simultaneously. “Well, I
guess you’d have ta be dead ta understand.”

Then Ed did something I’d never seen a ghost
do. He started pacing, hands clasped behind his back. I felt like a
little kid about to get a big fatherly lecture. “Ya see, Emmy, she
wasn’t ready ta go, so she’s not takin’ death real well.”

Gertrude wagged a finger. “She’s in a real
dark place and we ain’t goin’ in there.”

“A dark place?” What was this dark place
like? Was it cold, lonely, scary? My heart clenched, thinking of
Sunny’s bleak existence in the afterworld. “How do I get her
out?”

The ghosts shared a nervous glance.

Ed shrugged. “The thing is…we don’t really
know.”

Chewing on her lower lip, Gertrude turned to
me with grim determination in her iridescent eyes. “Maybe if we
punished that boy who kilt’ her, that would be a start.”

****

“Hey, how you doing?” Lying supine on her
bed, AJ tossed a softball into the air. The ball barely scraped the
ceiling with each throw before falling straight in her outstretched
palm.

AJ had a gift for making the ball go
wherever she wanted. Sometimes I thought she inherited a little of
her grandma’s gift for teleporting objects. Unlike Sophie and me,
all of the women in AJ’s family had some kind of gift. Actually, I
never knew any women in my family. It’s been just Dad and me. My
worthless excuse for a mom left us last summer after the money
started running low. Her leaving wasn’t much of a loss, anyway. She
was never really a loving mother. I could count on one hand the
number of times she’d hugged me.

But all of that seemed so long ago, so
unimportant now that I had much bigger problems.

“Not so good.” Slumping into AJ’s bean bag
chair on the floor, I rubbed my throbbing skull. The pain spread
through my shoulders and neck to the back of my head. Every nerve
in my body felt like a coiled spring.

I rested my head against the wall. Looking
toward the ceiling, I thought AJ had installed some new kind of
lighting. I blinked once, before realizing I was looking at two
pair of dangling legs. Then I remembered Ed and Gertrude said they
were going to tag along. They bent over and waved at me, two huge
goofy grins plastered on their faces.

You know, I was really starting to like
them.

AJ stopped throwing the ball and sat up.

I gasped, thinking she was seeing ghosts,
too.

“Want to talk?” Looking straight through
their legs, AJ leveled me a stare that showed concern in her
crystal blue eyes.

She wasn’t seeing them; she was just
concerned for my problems.

“Where do I begin?” I threw up my hands,
trying my best to keep my focus on her and not the two dead wall
fixtures.

“I tried texting you.” The pitch in her
voice rose and she sounded like her mother right before an
explosive ‘nag session’.

“Well, not that it matters since my dad
still hasn’t paid the phone bill, but he took away my phone.” I
shrugged. “He doesn’t want me talking to the cops if they
call.”

Her brows dipped into a frown. “Why?”

I exhaled a heavy sigh. “He’s mad at me for
telling the cops about Sunny’s boyfriend.”

Although he pretended he was worried about
me, I knew the
real
reason he was angry. It was much harder to
ignore me when I was a witness in a murder case. This was cutting
into his girlfriend and beer time.

“But you had to come out!” AJ barked, her
face draped in her infamous heavy scowl. The kind of face she used
whenever a ref made a bad call or an obnoxious cheerleader was
bugging her.

“Yeah, I know,” I groaned. “It’s not like I
told them about dead Sunny telling me he did it.”

Jaw dropping, she looked ready to piss her
pants. “Will you tell them about dead Sunny?” she breathed.

“Are you crazy?” A nervous laugh escaped my
throat.

AJ gripped the side of her bed so tight her
knuckles turned white. Leaning forward, she spoke in a heavy
whisper. “What if they can’t prove he did it?”

“I don’t know what to do, AJ.” I shot a
glance at Ed and Gertrude. “Maybe the old people and I will come up
with something.”

AJ tilted her head in confusion. “The old
people?”

“Yeah, they’ll be staying with me.” I
pointed to their hovering spot on the ceiling. “I hope you don’t
mind.”
How strange
that they like to float. Why can’t they hover four feet
lower?

AJ’s deep golden tan started taking on the
ash- white hue of Ed and Gertrude. “Uhhh,” she said through a
frozen smile.

“Ed, Gertrude, this is AJ.” Holding out my
hand, I motioned from the ghosts to my friend.

The ghosts waived to AJ with their silly
grins, acting as if she could see them.

“They say ‘hi’.” I waved to AJ for them.

AJ swallowed, eyes bulging, her skin turning
even whiter. “You brought ghosts to my house?”

“They’ve got nowhere else to go.” I
shrugged. “The mall developers tore up their cemetery.”

“Okay, I’m a little freaked out right now.”
Throwing up both palms, her arms visibly shook.

Why was she acting so weird? She knew I
could channel spirits way before this. She should have known this
was going to happen one day.

“What’s the big deal, AJ?” I groaned. “You
can’t even see them.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she spoke
through a squeal. “How am I supposed to sleep knowing there’s
ghosts in my bedroom?”

I rolled my eyes. “I do it all the
time.”

I’ve had to put up with ghosts in my bedroom
almost every night of my teenage life, so why couldn’t she just
deal with it for a few days?

“Yeah, well, you’re used to it.” With her
arms still folded across her chest, AJ raised her shoulders,
leveling me with a glare.

“Fine,” I spat before turning my gaze
upward. “Ed, Gertrude, you have to go.” I waved them away.
“Sorry.”

They didn’t budge. Instead, they folded
their arms across their chests and mimicked AJ’s panic- stricken
expression.

For the first time in a while, I laughed out
loud. These dead people were hilarious.

AJ’s brows rose so high, they could have
scraped the ceiling. “They didn’t really leave, did they?”

I looked into her direct gaze. Sometimes the
living could be such a pain in the butt.

“Look.” I shook my head. “It doesn’t really
matter. I’m sneaking out tonight and they’ll go with me.”

“What?” Arms flailing, AJ jumped off her
bed. “Are you crazy? My mother will kill us!”

Sighing, I rubbed the back of my head,
trying not to let her get me too worked up. Unlocking my jaw, I
reminded myself not to grind my teeth. “She’s not even going to
know, AJ,” I said in the calmest voice I could manage.

“Duh, yes, she will.” AJ’s head roll
followed the direction of her eyes. “Have you forgotten that woman
can see through walls?”

Crap
.

AJ’s mom had the power to see people
anywhere, anytime. Usually, she used her power on her daughter.
Last summer, I turned to alcohol in order to deal with my mom’s
abandonment. I was having a bad life trip and I took AJ with me. We
were busted when we went to the gas station and asked an undercover
cop to buy us beer. AJ’s mom showed up moments after our arrest. It
didn’t dawn on me at the time how she found out so fast, but over
Christmas break, she revealed her power to AJ. She could watch AJ’s
softball game without ever leaving the house. Or spy in her bedroom
without us knowing. Kind of like Superman, but more nosy.

I had to take the chance though; Sunny had
no one to talk to.

“Look, AJ, I’ll wait until she’s asleep, but
I need to go talk to Sunny.”

“Can’t you send the old people to talk to
her?” AJ waved to the ceiling, about two feet from where Ed and
Gertrude were hovering.

“No, they can’t talk to her.” I held up my
palm to silence her next question. “Don’t ask—long story.”

Hand on hip, AJ started the attitude head
bob. “Why do
you
need to talk to her?”

“She’s in a dark place and I need to see if
I can help.”

“Okay, this is getting creepier by the
second.” AJ paced her plush white carpet while chewing on her
fingernails.

I squared my shoulders, hands fisting at my
sides. “This is something I
have
to do.”

“You know what?” Stopping mid-stride, she
turned to me, pointing a finger at my chest. “Do whatever you want,
but don’t blame me if my mom catches you. She might already know
your plan.”

“Sunny, where
are you?”

Oh, God, what was I doing here in the
darkest, spookiest corner of Pyramid Lake? The old people had led
me to this spot through a narrow trail in the woods after I biked
over an hour from AJ’s house. Bending down, I rubbed a cramp in my
leg. I wasn’t used to this kind of exercise. With exaggerated
movements, I stood up, shooing away bugs that swarmed around my
head.

Gross. This place totally sucked.

Why a lake, anyway? I’d thought Sunny would
still be hanging out at the café, but I guess she thought a lake
was a better place to haunt. It sure was creepy enough. Even Ed and
Gertrude looked a little weirded out as their apparitions appeared
to be shaking above me.

Thankfully, I managed to break through AJ’s
hard-coated shell of stubbornness and convince her to sneak me a
flashlight out of her dad’s garage.

“Sunny, please come out. It’s me, Krysta.”
Shining my little beam into the bleak wall of overgrown trees, I
could barely see a few feet into the forest.

A sudden breeze at my back sent shivers
racing up my spine.

“I’m here.” The voice was hollow and
strangely dark.

Gasping, I turned toward the rocky beach
behind me.

It was then that I saw her, hovering above
the water; an eerie, pale aura reflected off her body and
illuminated the lake.

The bruises on her neck were even more
noticeable beneath the pale lantern of her body. Her gaze, though
fixed on me, was lifeless and lost.

“Sunny?” I rasped, barely breathing the
words through frozen features. Had this been my first ghost, I
would have crapped in my pants. Even though I’d seen plenty of dead
people in my life, this chick looked pretty scary.

“What do you want?” she asked in a cold,
even voice.

Gone was the venomous sarcasm of the Sunny I
knew. This shadow was just an empty Sunny, a dark Sunny.

“I want to help you,” I stammered, as my
veins turned icy cold under the weight of her lifeless eyes.

“You can’t help me,” she said evenly.

“Sunny, you’re in a dark place. We need to
get you out.”

Her gaze trailed off behind me. “Someone is
coming.”

“What?” Jerking my head around, I thought I
heard a voice in the distance. My flesh crawled with fear.

“You should not come here.” Turning her gaze
down, she focused on her hands as she folded them in front of her.
“This is where he used to take me.”

The icy cold terror that swept up my spine
was nothing like the fear I had felt before. My limbs were frozen,
my brain numb from fear.

Who was coming? Was it him?

Ed and Gertrude floated down beside me and a
sudden warmth seeped into my bones. For a moment, my flesh stopped
crawling.

Weird
.

How were they able to do that?

“We needs ta leave,” Ed said gruffly.

“Yeah,” I nodded, unable to say any
more.

Turning back toward the water, my shoulders
fell.

Sunny was gone.

Maybe coming out here wasn’t such a hot
idea. With brisk movements, I took off and stumbled over a tree
root as I desperately searched for the trail. “Do either of you see
the way out?”

“I don’t think we should go that way. What
if we run into him?” Gertrude’s bulging eyes made her look like she
was afraid she’d die all over again.

Shining my flashlight, I scanned a long
length of rocky sand before it disappeared behind a canopy of
trees. “If we follow the shoreline, maybe we can find another trail
and walk around to my bike.”

“We better get a move on.” Ed made a shooing
motion with his arms. “I think I hear him.”

Just as I’d taken my first step, the glare
from another flashlight appeared from the darkened forest.

“Let’s run,” I called as the air rushed from
my lungs.

I wasn’t a runner. I didn’t care for high
impact exercise, but I couldn’t exactly yoga my way out of there.
As fast as I could, with my feet sticking like suction cups to the
ground, I darted through the sand. I had to make it around the
trees before he found me.

“Krysta!” A familiar female voice called
behind me. “Come back here right now, young lady!”

Oh, crap.

With a slow turn of my body, I faced AJ’s
mom. One hand on a flashlight and the other cocked on her hip, she
glared at me through slitted eyes.

I was so busted.

“Mrs. Dawson?”

Go figure, AJ was right. Her mom really
did
know
everything.

Even though I knew I was going to be majorly
punished by my dad, I had to stifle a laugh at Mrs. Dawson’s pink
fuzzy pajamas and matching slippers.