The Ghost Files (3 page)

“Why not?”

“Janey tried to tell,”
he whispers
. “She got caught and now she can’t never tell no one.”

Who is Janey? Another victim maybe? “Will you tell me where the cold, dark place is so I can find my friend?” Holy crap. I can see my breath. Frost appears on the mirror, working its way up like a vine and then splinters to cover the entire surface in white.

“NO!”
the little boy yells.
“We can’t tell!”

“Please…”

“NOT EVER!”
he screams and the lights go out.

I plunge into an icy black abyss. Terror chokes me as I slam open the door behind me and flee into the hallway. I stand there shaking.
Calm down, Mattie
, I tell myself.
It’s just a ghost, it can’t hurt you
. Then I concentrate on evening out my breathing and letting my heart rate fall back to normal. Whew. The fear is still there, but at least I’m not biting my knuckles to keep from screaming.

Well,
that
didn’t turn out the way I hoped. The kid disappeared on me. I probably scared him as much as he scared me. What now? I could go looking for clues in Sally’s room, maybe. But even if I find something, I can’t do anything. Mrs. O has the phone….wait.

Duh, idiot.  Can you say laptop?

I run up the stairs to my room, lock the door and hit the power switch on my one-and-only possession. While waiting for it to boot up, I grab a new shirt and kick off my shoes. In the time it takes for me to pull the shirt over my head, the room turns into a freezer.

Well, fudgepops.

I hear a choked gurgle and that’s when the lights go out.

Chapter Four

I nearly break my neck trying to dodge my desk chair as I fumble for the lamp switch. Bright light blinds me while I search the room with my eyes. I
knew
this was going to happen. Talk to one ghost and the whole lot of them come out.
So
not fair.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’m creeping myself out for no reason. It takes me a second to remember what I was doing. The laptop. That’s what I was going to do. I need to contact the police and I’ll do it via Google Talk. Thank you, Google.

Shaking my head, I turn around and come face-to-face with the little girl I’d seen in the bathroom earlier tonight. She’s sitting on my
bed
!  ON MY FREAKIN’ BED!

Come on! This is my
room
for cripes’ sake. Can’t they stay in the bathroom or somewhere that’s
not
my room?

“Can you help me, please?”
Her puppy-dog eyes plead with me. Why am I sucker for puppy-dog eyes? She looks so normal compared to the little boy. At least she wasn’t mangled, just shot.

They all have a bullet wound in almost the exact same place. I know, I know. That doesn’t signify a lead, but it’s all I have to go on. Detective Stabler wouldn’t dismiss it and neither will I.

“Look, kid, I don’t know if I can help or not.”

“I just want my Mommy,”
she says.
“She told me to stay by the swings and I didn’t. I wanted to see the balloons.”

“The balloons?”

“They were floating,”
she whispers
. “Red balloons just floating in the wind. They were pretty and I wanted one. I asked Mommy to buy me a balloon and she wouldn’t. I just wanted a balloon.”

“Did you get a balloon?” I ask her, afraid of the answer. Hmm…lured away from her mom with balloons? The kid was at least nine or ten – old enough to know better than to go off by herself. I knew that even before entering the foster care system at five years old! Really, how stupid can you be?

“I don’t remember,”
she shakes her head.
“I woke up and it was cold and dark and…and…”

“And what?”

“I don’t know!”
she wails. Tears, real tears, make wet tracks down her face.
“It hurt and then I was in the dark place. Please, please, just find my mommy! I want to go home.”

The pain and confusion in her voice twists my stomach. I know how that feels. No, no, can’t go there. Just push those feelings aside. I need her help. “Do you remember my friend Sally? She came into the bathroom when I left.”

Her eyes go wide and she nods.

“Did you see where she went?”

The room takes an even worse temperature dive and I start to shiver. The kid is shrinking in on herself. She’s drawing away from me, fading I guess you could say. She looks terrified.

“She’s in the dark with us.”

That much I already know, but I need to know the location. “Where is the dark place?”

“Can’t tell,”
she shakes her head.
“Can’t ever tell.”

“What’s your name?” I change tactics, not wanting a repeat of what happened with the little boy. I don’t want her running away from me just yet.

“Emma.”

“That’s a pretty name, Emma.” I smile at her. “You want me to find your mommy and bring her to you?”

She nods, her face brightening.

“I can’t do that if I don’t know where you are. I need to know where the dark place is so I can show her where you are.”

An ugly rattle floods the room and the little girl jumps off the bed, terrified.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”

The lights flicker and the temperature plummets past freezing. Oh, this can’t be at all good. The rattle seems to be everywhere, coming from nowhere, but surrounding us in its awful gurgles. Emma is crying and I almost feel like doing the same thing. I haven’t been scared since that awful day with my mom. I hate the feeling and as usual, when I get scared, I get mad.

“Emma, what is that?” I demand.

“I won’t tell,”
she whispers.
“I promise I won’t tell.”

Something’s not right. The kid’s not talking to
me
. That much I know because she’s not even looking my direction. She’s looking in the mirror. My eyes focus on the mirror and I fall backwards trying to get away from the image there. Bloody, broken bits of flesh make up what I think is a face, but it’s hard to tell. It looks like someone carved it up with a cleaver. I don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl staring at me and I’m not sure I want to know, either. The bullet hole in its head is there, but it blends in with the sticky black and red of the shredded face. Whatever got Emma got this… person, too.  But why is it stopping her from telling me where they are?

“Look here buster,” I fume, working hard to sound confident and angry. “I’m trying to help. I can’t do that if I can’t
find
you!”

I blink and that bloody mess of ragged flesh is now standing in front of me, breathing heavily. I can smell its hot, putrid breath in my nostrils. For the first time in ten years, I know true terror. If it touches me, all bets are off. I’ll scream like a girl and run.

“No.”

The sound of its voice is painful; the screech is soft, but intense. Cold grips me and I want to run, but can’t. This broken mess of flesh, one eye missing, and the other bloodshot-blue, now towers over me. I feel so much anger rolling off it:  anger at me, anger at whoever hurt it, and anger towards everything in general. Oh, crap. If a ghost
could
actually hurt a person, it would be
this
one. Not that I begrudge it the anger part, I just don’t want it this up close and personal with
me
.

“Back off, ghostie,” I snarl and hope anger masks my fear.

“You first.”

Pain explodes in my head and my hands automatically cover my ears. As I fall to my knees, the screeching intensifies with the cold burning all the way to the bone. Make it stop! The screech is even louder, like a power saw cutting through a wall of nails, each one twisting and screaming as they die. It’s what I’d imagine a banshee to sound like. I can’t see and can’t breathe past the pain grinding away at my ears. Only then did I hear myself screaming.

Somehow I feel the vibrations of feet thudding on the floor, but that’s it.  Shapes blur as I try to blink away the tears.  It hurts
so
much! I just want it to stop.  Please, please make the pain stop.  Hands shake me, but I can’t talk.

The mutilated mess of flesh swims up in front of my face and it’s the only thing I can see clearly.  Its death rattle is the last thing I hear before a white-hot pain rockets through my head and I fall into a dark pit, screaming as I go.

Chapter Five

The steady beep, beep, beep wakes me. My eyes slam shut as soon as I open them. The bright light shoots pinpricks through my head and the slightest movement causes spirals of fresh pain to ripple through my skull. My stomach rolls and bile rises up into the throat. I don’t ever remember hurting
this much. Holy crap. If
this
is what a hangover feels like, I swear I will never again even contemplate sipping a beer.

It takes a minute for my fuzzy mind to remember what happened. What exactly did Mirror Boy do to me? At least I think it was a guy. Anyway, I didn’t know that ghosts could physically hurt people. Scare them sure, but actually cause harm? That’s new to me. First order of business when I feel better is to do some intensive research into ghosts. Even if I never speak to one again after this, I want to know what they can and can’t do.

There’s that antiseptic smell – and the beep, beep, beep. It’s a big indicator, at least to me, that I’m in a hospital. Hospitals are a haven for ghosts. It’s why I never willingly go into places like this. They badger me with questions and it’s all I can do to pretend I don’t see the little buggers. Usually, it doesn’t bother me. They’re background noise like a TV or radio playing, just to eat up the silence. But since my encounter with Mirror Boy, I’m more than a little bit terrified.

Fear is not an emotion I’m not used to feeling. I’ve made myself fearless over the years – but when that ghost got in my face, all my defenses scattered to the wind. Blind terror was all I’d felt. I didn’t like it then and I certainly don’t like it now. Nothing has been able to make me feel helpless since the Mom incident. Being here, I can’t help but to remember that day.

We were in yet another run-down motel in New Jersey. I was five. The walls were an ugly shade of burnt orange and the stains in the carpet only added to the stink of the room. Mom gave me Spaghetti-O’s to eat and then turned the TV to the only cartoon channel the motel’s cable service offered. I remember watching SpongeBob and laughing as he and Patrick irritated Squidward.

Mom came in and sat down next to me a little while later. She stroked my hair absently. It was odd because she hadn’t done it in a while. She was usually jonesing for her next heroin fix and this was nice. I didn’t see the knife at first. I was too caught up in the fact she was acting like my Mom again. I remember she started to hum and I smiled. Mama could sing like nobody else I’d ever heard.

“Don’t worry, baby girl,” she’d whispered. “It’s all going to get better now.” She raised her hand and that’s when I’d seen the knife. By then it was too late. I pitched forward off the couch when she ripped the knife out of me. Pain lanced through my chest and I screamed. She brought the knife down again and again, her eyes calm and peaceful the whole time.

She kissed my cheek and told me to go to sleep. Raising the knife once more, she pushed it deep into her own throat before pulling it out.  She collapsed beside me, her face inches from mine. I had to lay there and watch her die. The last thing I remember seeing until I woke up in a hospital room was the life bleeding out of her eyes.

Something snapped in me that day. I broke in ways I’m not sure I can explain. It’s also when the ghosts started showing up. I still secretly wonder if I’m not just a little insane. My Mama was crazy or so they told me. Paranoid schizophrenia. She heard voices. Ghosts maybe? Did they drive her to do what she did? I want to rationalize it, to find a reason for why she’d try to kill her own daughter, but I can’t. Maybe I never will. I just don’t know.

Since then, I haven’t ever really been afraid of anything. Defense mechanism, that’s what the psychologists called it. I was closed off with trust issues. Yeah, well, let their moms try to kill them at the ripe old age of five, and then tell me if
they
don’t have a few emotional roadblocks.

But Mirror Boy?  He scared the bejeezus out of me. I’m lying here in a bed, afraid to open my eyes for fear of what might be standing next to me. I so do not like this feeling, but I’m not sure what to do about it yet. It’s new to me and I hate it!

“There
has
to be something wrong!” I hear Mrs. Olson shout. “She was screaming her head off and her nose was pouring blood!”

She’s near enough I can hear her shouting, but not so near that she’s close. Hallway maybe? I can’t hear what I presume is the doctor’s response, but I hear the door shut then. My irrational new fear raises its ugly head and my muscles tense up at the sound, Oh, no, please not another ghost.

“Hey kiddo,” a soft voice whispers tiredly.

Nancy. Thank God. I relax and start to say something, but am interrupted when the argument in the hallway moves inside my room.

“Her tox screen is negative,” a male voice says. “She has no alcohol or drugs in her system. The CAT scan showed no abnormalities. There’s nothing physically wrong with her that we can find.”

Well, that’s good. Thanks for that, Doc. The ghost didn’t do any permanent damage. Kudos for me.

“Doctor, I understand that.” Nancy sighs. “I saw her clothes from when she came in, though. They were bloody. I have to agree with Mrs. Olson. Something is wrong.”

“And I agree with you both, I just don’t know what
is
wrong.” Even the doctor sounds frustrated. “We are going to keep her a few days for observation and more tests.”

Oh, just great, leave me here in the ghost hang-out. Not what I want to hear.

They move away, still arguing, but that’s okay. The loud voices are making my head hurt worse anyway.