Nightmare (5 page)

As we began walking again, Jordin suddenly tossed the scrapbook she'd spent countless hours compiling into a nearby trash
bin. "Fine!" she shouted. "I don't know anything about ghosts
or paranormal research. That's why I need your help! Teach me!
I don't care if I don't have iron-clad evidence. I just want to experience it for myself."

Again I examined her carefully. "Why?" I asked. "Why are
you so eager to do this?"

She held my gaze steadily. "Why did you give it up?"

I suddenly felt like a coiled tiger ready to pounce. I knew my
stance had taken on a threatening posture as I narrowed my eyes
at Jordin, but I didn't care. I hated this girl for realizing that my
publicly stated reasons for leaving the world of the paranormal
behind were only secondary and superficial.

"We're done," I said.

I had already spun on my heels and begun walking away,
flipping through a stack of envelopes I'd picked up that
morning in the mail, when Jordin approached me again from
behind.

"Not easy affording tuition these days, is it?" she said in her
best innocent voice.

I shot her a simple glance but said nothing as I sorted through
the mail and continued walking.

"You paying for it all on your own? No help from Mom and
Dad?"

I stopped. If it was possible, I liked this girl even less than
before. "What's it to you if I am?"

"Nothing," she replied with an innocent face. "Just surprised
your parents aren't paying for your studies. I'm sure they could
afford it."

My eyes slid downward to the bills again, but my defensive
tone of voice never wavered. "Who says they didn't offer?"

"Of course.. ."Jordin put it together. "You insisted on doing
it yourself. What better way to make a clean break and declare
your independence than to put yourself through college, launch
your own destiny..."

"Don't you have some frivolous shopping to do?" I asked,
wanting to be elsewhere. Any elsewhere.

"I could hire you, you know,"Jordin said. "You need money.
I need your expertise. I'm offering you a job that no one else is
more qualified to perform. You pick the destinations, based on
your knowledge of the field. Anywhere in the world. I'll cover the
expenses. We go on weekends or breaks from school."

My ears were burning now. I couldn't believe this girl's audacity. This wasn't my first request to be taken on ghost hunting adventures, but it was certainly the most outrageous. "You think
you can get whatever you want with money?"

"It's just a job," Jordin replied, keeping exceedingly cool.
"So what if I'm willing to pay obscene amounts of money, more
than the job's worth? It's my money, and I can throw it away if
I want. You could pay off your entire tuition-with money you
earned entirely on your own, fair and square. And we'd both get
something we want...." She paused. "Maybe even something
we need."

How I hated this girl. Hated, hated, hated.

I wanted nothing more than to smack Jordin Cole across
the face. Instead, I clutched my multiple envelopes full of bills
tighter, grimaced, and looked Jordin in the eye. "What's the
catch?"

"No catch," she said, a sparkle in her eye indicating that she
knew she'd hit a nerve at last. "Just one requirement. I want to
see a ghost. I want to touch it and interact with it. So when you
pick our destinations ... I'm not interested in going to places
that might be haunted. I want to go to the places where we're guaranteed to see or experience something real. The most haunted
places in the country. Or the world."

"There are no guarantees in this," I replied, angry at myself
for even continuing this conversation. "The dead don't perform.
They aren't here to humor the living."

"Whatever. I just want my chances of actually finding something to be as high as possible."

Again I couldn't help wondering why she was so eager-no,
desperate-to go on a paranormal investigation. I'd encountered
overzealous paranormal junkies before, butJordin was different.
Smart, confident. She'd quickly realized exactly which buttons of mine to push, and she pushed them like a pro. On the other
hand, I still had the impression that all of this might have been
nothing more than an odd whim for her, a curious indulgence.
A new adventure for someone who was rich enough to have done
just about everything else.

I told her I needed some time to think about it, and we parted
ways. It wasn't because I did need time; I just didn't want to seem
eager.

And I wasn't eager, after all. I had lived and breathed this
world Jordin wanted to enter so badly for most of my life. It
wasn't that I'd gotten sick of it or anything. But investigating the
paranormal was always my parents' thing, and while I couldn't
deny that it was a rush on those rare occasions in the field when
you found something genuinely amazing ... it was still like something I was born into rather than a path I had chosen for myself.
My parents were cool about it; they never pressured me to enter
the family business, always willing to accept whatever choice I
ultimately made.

So I had left that life behind. There was no "good riddance"
or anything on my part. I just kind of... graduated. I became
an adult, and my passions were now elsewhere.

I waited a few days to call Jordin and give her the answer I
had known I was going to give that day she made her sales pitch.
Even later, after hands were shaken and terms were agreed to, I
still couldn't believe I was going through with it.

But Iget to pick the locations....

All right, then. She wants to go someplace already proven to be
haunted? Someplace she's guaranteed to encounter actual ghosts?

I'd give her an adventure she would never forget. And it might
even be enough to end Jordin's weird little quest before it got
out of hand.

I knew exactly where I would take her first.

And hopefully, last.

I read the introduction to my psychology textbook four times
without retaining a single word. The entire tome might as well
have been filled with four words, written over and over and
over....

The nightmare is coming. The nightmare is coming.

What did it mean?

And what was going on with Jordin? Was that really her I
saw Saturday night?

I looked around my solitary dorm room, thankful that Jill
wasn't there to talk my ears off. This year I'd splurged and reserved
a room at the highly sought after Hogan residence hall, where
only seniors were allowed. No roommates in my private room,
though I shared a common area and kitchen with a few other girls. I even had my own private bathroom, so there was rarely a
time when I ventured outside of my glorious privacy. I preferred
solitude as a rule, and thanks to my unusual employment the
last year, I could afford the indulgence.

The nightmare is coming.

The nightmare is coming.

I glanced down at my spiral-bound notebook and saw for
the first time that I'd filled an entire page with a column of that
sentence.

I snapped my textbook shut, unable to focus. This wasn't
like me, and it was annoying.

My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. I slid
out of my desk chair feeling like a slug and wondering why I
couldn't shake off my experience from Ghost Town amusement
park. The first day of classes was tomorrow, and I had a lot to
do.

I yawned as I opened the door. "Yeah?" I asked mechanically.

"Have you seen Jordin?"

I blinked. Standing just outside my door was Derek Hobbes,
with his thin build, wavy blond hair, and impossibly piercing eyes.
Those eyes were usually bright and sharp, but today they were
clouded by anxiety. Dark circles and a haggard expression made
him look like he hadn't slept in days. Maybe weeks.

"Derek?" I asked, a little uncertain that this was really the
young man I knew as Jordin's fiance. His standard college wear of
golf shirt and plaid shorts hadn't been ironed, there were traces
of dark circles under those keen eyes of his, and he had a day's
worth of light-colored stubble coloring his rosy face. I couldn't
remember ever seeing him so disheveled.

Derek Hobbes was an undergrad student in Columbia's Religion Department, preparing to eventually seek his master
of divinity degree. He was kind natured and soft spoken, possessing an utterly brilliant mind. Just like his father, he was expected
to someday become one of the most influential and respected
ministers in America. Everybody said so.

He wasn't my type in the slightest, but he was one of the
nicest guys I'd ever met.

"She's not here," Derek said with a kind of desolate panic as
he took in my small solo room. "She's not anywhere."

My mind screeched to a halt. Any processing of Derek's words
seemed to be happening in slow motion.

"Jordin's missing?" I asked, feeling like a complete dullard.
I turned slowly in place, reeling, and ran a hand through my
black hair.

I had turned to keep Derek from seeing my reaction to this
news, but he interpreted it as an invitation to step inside, so
he quietly entered and closed the door. "When did you last see
her?" he asked.

Jordin's missing, I thought, my mind and heart both racing.

jordin's dead.

"Maia?" Derek tried snapping me back to the present. "Have
you seen Jordin?"

My hand was now covering my mouth because I feared I
might vomit, so my reply was a little muffled. "Not since last
semester..." I said, planting myself on the edge of my bed because
my knees felt weak. "How do you know she's ... ?"

His words came out in a practiced rush, making it easy to
imagine that he'd told this story several times already. "Every
summer before classes start, Jordin takes this group of friends
on a back-to-school vacation thing. About six weeks ago, she left with the usual group of about ten or twelve girls, and she took
them all up to Martha's Vineyard. A couple weeks after they got
there, she stopped calling me and answering my emails. I figured
she was just having fun, relaxing and losing track of time-she
does that sometimes-but it got to be longer and longer.... And
before she left, we had this big conversation where we planned
this really romantic meet-up at a restaurant near campus the first
day we were both back in town for school. But she never showed,
and now it's been almost a month since anyone's seen her."

I looked down at the floor, absorbing Derek's story. Jordin
had gone missing around four weeks ago. And no one had seen
or heard from her since.

Not true. I saw her last night.

My thoughts rocketed back to the here and now as I realized Derek's deeply worried eyes had locked onto mine and were
anxiously awaiting a response.

"I don't know what she told you," I said quietly, "but the last
trip she and I took, it didn't-"

"Didn't end well," he said, finishing the phrase. "That's the
same thing she said. But she didn't say why."

A question was implied, and it was the one question I feared
more than any other. I deflated a bit as he looked at me, something akin to accusation in his eyes.

"It was ... intensely personal. For both of us." I grappled to
find the words. How could I explain to jordin's fiance-the person
she was close to more than any other-that I couldn't possibly tell
him what I knew, when it was somethingJordin had not chosen
to tell him herself.

Derek was about to mount an argument, but I spoke first, changing the subject. "Has she been reported missing to the
authorities?"

"Some of the girls she went to the Vineyard with tried to
report it, but they said they didn't get very far."

"Why not?"

"Does it matter?" asked Derek, growing more agitated by the
second. "She's vanished without a trace, and God only knows
what's happening to her right now!"

He immediately looked remorseful, even apologetic, for his
outburst. But you could see the worry and frustration boiling
up inside him. His anxious expression never wavered.