The Ghost Files (24 page)

The archway leading into the kitchen is blocked. A man is standing there watching me. He’s wearing a dark hoodie and I can’t see his face, but I don’t need to. There’s only one person it can be –Mr. Olson. There’s only one place to go. The back stairs go to the second floor. I grit my teeth and run.

He’s whistling as he follows me. He’s not running, just walking steadily and whistling. How weird. Why run though? Not like I have anywhere to go now is there? Just upstairs to where Mrs. Olson’s lurking, waiting to find me and put me back in that chair. Not if
I
can help it.

The second floor has about nine bedrooms and the third floor about six as well and three bathrooms. I bypass the second and head for the third. All the rooms are locked except the bathrooms and none of them have windows big enough for me to get out of. The attic stairs are at the end of the hallway. I can’t go back down. He’s searching and I don’t trust my ability to slip past him on the stairs, either.

“He’s on the second floor checking bedrooms,”
Emma whispers and I nod.

The attic door is slightly ajar and I hesitate. Is Mrs. Olson up there?

“She’s not
,
”
Emma tells me and I go in, pushing the door shut, but it springs back open as I knew it would.

The attic is huge, but not dark. I can still see daylight streaming into the windows. How long have I been here? I look around quickly and don’t go for the corners. They’ll look there first. Instead I look at the middle of the room. There is junk everywhere from broken toys to office furniture. The desk draws my attention. There are two trunks sitting in front of it. If I can duck under it…

“Don’t you watch horror movies?”
The sarcasm in Eric’s voice is heavy.
“It’s always the idiot girls who get killed first! Putting yourself in a place you can’t run from is the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

“Yeah, well, you got any better ideas?”
I snarl at him and limp towards the middle of the room, my eyes searching frantically. I need a place to hide.

“Over by the door,”
Eric tells me.
“Hide behind those boxes stacked up. When one of them comes in, you run out the door and downstairs as fast as you can. We’ll do our best to help you.”

Like that’s any better than my desk idea? I roll my eyes at him, but hobble over to my new hiding place. It’s not like I have a lot of options. My head feels like it’s gonna explode, my hands are on fire, and my ankle is past the point of pain. God knows what kind of damage I’ve done to it on top the sprain.

How did I get myself into this situation? Dan’s right. I’ve gone soft. I ignored my own rules about ghosts. When I saw Sally, I should have just ignored her like I did every other ghost. I should have… I sigh.

I need to get a handle on this situation. Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve… none of that will get me out of this. I take a slow, deep breath and take stock of my situation. Okay, I’m hurt. I have two psychos trying to kill me, and oh yeah, I’m surrounded by ghosts. I want to laugh. It’s either laugh or cry. Mathilda Louise Hathaway doesn’t cry.

Footsteps on the stairs interrupt my tirade. I tense. Each heavy thud brings him closer and closer. I have to be ready. The cold closes in around me. I don’t see them, but I can feel their terror. It only magnifies mine. I’ve seen what Mr. Olson has done to them, what he plans to do to me. What he’s already done to me with his knife. My body starts to shake. No, no. No more of that! Don’t obsess about the knife.

“Calm down, Mattie,”
Eric whispers.
“I’m right here. Just calm down.”

“Easy for you to say,”
I grouch in answer.
“He can’t hurt you anymore.”

“What?”

“You’re already dead, Eric,”
I say
. “He can’t do anything else to you.”

“But I can feel him hurt me every day,”
Tina whispers brokenly.
“I’m back in that chair every minute of every day.”

Oh, God, like I have time for a Dr. Phil session? But if I can make them understand that he can’t cause them any more pain then maybe they will fight harder. I frantically search my memory for all the things I’ve read on why ghosts linger.

“No, he can’t hurt you,”
I tell them softly
. “You died a horrible death and that is your last memory. It’s the clearest memory you have and that is what you focus on. You relive it every day, but that’s all it is, a memory. He can’t see you, can’t touch you, can’t talk to you. He can’t hurt you anymore. I promise.”

I turn to look at Eric, one ear to the door listening. Mr. Olson is almost up the stairs.
“But,he can hurt me! I need all of you to help me.  Please don’t let him hurt me.”

I see the shadow fall across the floor.

He has the knife.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I take a deep breath. My first and only thought is escape. He just needs to get far enough into the room so that I can slip by him and back down the stairs. Mrs. Olson is down there, but I’ll take her over the knife in his hand any day.

He stops in the doorway and looks around. His head moves slightly from side to side, the face still buried in the shadow of the hoodie. He takes a step inside and I freeze, doing my best to be quiet. I can hear my heartbeat pound away.

Come on, just come in already, I think to myself. Why doesn’t he move faster? I need him to walk around so I can sneak out.

My wish comes true in the next second, but he closes and locks the door behind him.

Fudgepops, fudgepops, fudgepops. How am I going to get out now? My hands can’t unlock and open the door in enough time to run from him even if he walks all the way to the end of the room. I’ll bet good money that’s what he’s banking on. He knows how badly I’m hurt since he was the one who caused the injuries.

“You can’t get the door open,”
Eric’s whispered words are full of defeat.

“Well, duh,”
I say in my mind, knowing he and the other ghosts can hear.
“We just have to figure out something else.”

“What?”
He sounds almost desperate.
“You can’t hold a weapon even if we could find you one.”

I frown. He has me there. I can’t hold anything that would do damage.

Mr. Olson starts to whistle softly as he moves further into the room, unhurried. He knows I’m good and trapped. I can feel the ghosts cringe. It hurts my skin. His whistling scares them more than anything else. What had he done to them while whistling a jaunty little tune? Their fear presses in on me and for a moment, it’s hard to breathe. The cold invades me, invades my lungs.

The whistling stops and he turns in my direction. My eyes widen when I realize what caused the reaction. He can feel the cold. It’s centered here, around me. Oh crap. The ghosts are going to get me killed yet, the little buggers. I feel bad almost as soon as I think it. They have been doing everything they can to help me. Still, though, they need to stop with the freeze-fest.

He stops about ten feet away and cocks his head. I can make him out between the crack s in the stacks of boxes I’m hiding behind. The knife is clearly visible in his hand and my breathing quickens at the sight. I’m terrified at just the thought of it on my skin. I hate my mother more than I ever have in this moment.
She
caused this terror and it’s going to get me killed. I giggle. I can’t help it. What she failed to do when I was five, she’ll accomplish now.

Oh crap. He heard the giggle. He’s coming this way. How stupid can I be? Eric is right. I am going to get killed because I’m doing everything wrong. I’ve seen enough scary movies to know better than to let my emotions get the best of me. You forget the basic rules of a scary movie and you die. I could so be Rose McGowan in Scream right now. I remember thinking ‘How stupid can you be when she went out into that garage?’ and here I go and giggle of all things.

Before I can blink, the boxes I’m hiding behind go flying in all directions and I stumble back, falling. The ankle I’d sprained twists at an odd angle and I hear a crack. Pain lances up my leg and I cry out. Tears spring to my eyes, but I force myself to focus on getting away from that knife coming down at me. I roll away and land against an old chest. I use my forearms to maneuver my way up. My ankle is broken. Each step tells me that, I push the pain to the back of my mind and concentrate on moving one foot in front of the other. 

Icy waves of cold wrap around me, trying to comfort me. I want to snarl at the stupid ghosts. It’s
their
fault he found me to begin with. I don’t though. The cold actually helps. It gives me strength. Dr. Olivet said my energy was a beacon to them, that my aura was made up of ghost energy. Maybe theirs can give me strength? Could mine give them strength too? Can I use that? My mind races with the possibilities.

Hands catch my hair and yank hard. I fall, screaming as my ankle can’t handle the fall. It isn’t a pain I can push back this time. The knife catches me in the shoulder and sinks deep. My throat closes off as panic seeps in. The knife is ripped away and I try to roll, but it catches me in the side as I try to escape. I can see my Mom bringing a knife down towards me, stabbing me over and over. Her face takes the place of the man standing above me. I see her bright blonde hair and blue eyes smiling as she tries to kill me. I hear her humming and telling me she loves me.

“Please, Mamma,” I whisper. “Please don’t. It hurts.”

The knife stops mid-air. It hovers over me, but I don’t see it. All I can see is Mamma smiling while she kills me. 

“That’s it, Mattie!”
Eric shouts in my head.
“Keep talking, it’s making her think.”

Her? I blink at Eric’s screeching in my head. Her? I look up and see him standing over me, knife in hand. Why has he stopped?

“Mattie!  Keep talking like she’s your mother!”

“Mamma?”

I hear a choking noise coming from the figure above me.

“Why are you doing this, Mamma? Wasn’t I good girl?” I whisper, inching backwards just a bit. “Why do you want to hurt me?”

The man shakes his head, almost like he’s confused. I can see him inhale deeply then the tension drains away. He brings the knife down. I moved far enough away that the blade misses me and sinks into the wooden floorboards instead. He yanks, but it’s stuck. I don’t waste time. I roll and roll. There’s no point trying to get up. Best I can do is roll away from him. I roll into something and items rain down on me. I flinch, but I see a baseball bat. It’s an old wooden one made for a child. It’s small. I reach for it and grit my teeth as the pain swells up. I can’t get a good angle, so I’ll wait for my chance. I turn away, close my eyes and listen.

It only takes a moment before I hear the footsteps. Closer and closer they come until he’s right behind me. There is a movement in the air and I can guess its him raising his arm with the knife. I waste no time in rolling and swinging as hard as I can. It’s not my best work, but I hit him squarely in the kneecaps. He grunts and falls forward, landing on me. My breathe goes out in a whoosh, but I notice two things at once. One is that the person on top of me is not a man. I distinctly feel breasts squished against me. It is not Mr. Olson who is on top of me, but
Mrs
. Olson. The hoodie has come off and her muddy brown hair is falling around her face.

Mrs. O? No way. I knew she was seven kinds of crazy, but never did I think for a second that she was the killer.

The second thing I notice is murder in her eyes. My death. I try to push her off, but it’s no use. What little strength I had left was in that last-ditch effort with the bat.

Mrs. Olson gets up slowly, glares and grabs my hair. She uses it to pull me along. I know I’m crying at this point, but can’t help it.

“Mrs. O., stop, please.” I beg her as she drags me towards the attic door. “Why are you doing this to me? Please, stop, please.”

“You!” she snarls.  “Shut up! Be a good girl and shut up. You are going back to the chair. She won’t let you up again. I’ll make
sure
of that.”

I frown. What is she talking about? Who is ‘she’?

She starts down the stairs, dragging me with her. Each step causes agony. I blink back tears and fight the darkness around the edges of my vision. If she gets me back in that chair I am done for.

“Eric, help me!’

“How?”
He screams back.

“I don’t know, do something ghostly!”

It’s as if every ghost there just pauses and says ‘Huh?’ and ‘Duh’.

We are on the second floor by now. I can hear them whispering, but there are too many of them talking all at once. The air around us gets colder and colder; I see my breath in front of me as I breathe. Within seconds it is so cold, I am freezing. I wouldn’t be surprised if my lips were blue.

Mrs. Olson stops and stares at me. She’s frowning, but feels the cold. I remember how scared she was earlier.
I
can help too.

“Can you feel them, Mrs. O? They are all here, all of the kids you killed. They are standing right here with us.”

Her eyes move around the hallway and she snarls something incoherent before giving me a swift kick in the stomach. I grunt, but am not deterred. I look up and see the walls weep with a steady stream of what looks like blood. So cheesy. Eric sighs, but hey, if it works, I’ll take cheesy. She stops trying to drag me away when she sees the walls.

A boy about sixteen or so is standing a few feet from us. His ebony skin is marred by puncture wounds, big gaping holes. There are hooks in his chest, abdomen, arms and legs. I get the distinct feeling he was suspended from those hooks. He grins at Mrs. O. This is Ricky. I know it without having to be told. He walks toward Mrs. O and she backs up. Whoa, she can see him! He winks at me and I know he is using a lot of energy to make her see him.

“You remember, Ricky don’t you, Mrs. O?” I ask her softly.