The Ghost Files (7 page)

“Please, please, help me.”
She’s crying, voice ragged and rough, like it would be if she’d been screaming for countless hours.
“I just want to go home.”

“I swear Mary, I’m trying,” I whisper. I’d told Officer Dan about her, given him clues. Why didn’t he follow up on it? Because he thinks I’m crazy. He’s going to have to do something, dang it! If Mary really is still alive, we have to find her. This guy is slowly killing her. Who knows how much longer she can last? Or how long before he gets tired of his game and just offs her?

“It hurts so much,”
she whispers.
“I’m scared. I think…I think he has a gun. I keep hearing a click, click, click that sounds like my Uncle Steve’s gun.”

A gun?
Can
it be the same person that killed Sally? Why would he just shoot Sally and then turn around and torture Mary? That makes no sense. No, what really makes no sense is the fact that Mary is here and
I
can see her, but I’m pretty sure she’s
not
dead.

“Ohgodohgodohgod,”
she whispers.
“I hear him coming back…”

“Mary, stay here, stay with me!” I jump up. “Can you tell me anything about him? Does he talk to you?”

“He never talks,”
she says. I can see her jerk at her arms, like she’s trying to free herself. I remember her saying that she was sitting up, but she couldn’t move. Maybe she’s tied down to a chair?

“Please stop,”
she begs
. “Please don’t….”
She screams and I cringe. Tears gather in my own eyes as she screams. She’s terrified. Whatever he’s doing to her hurts.
“Please, please, please, no more!”

“Mary, I swear to God, I’m going to find you.”

“NO, DON”T!!!!!”

Pain hits hard and fast. I fall hard, doubling over as my stomach explodes in white-hot pain. Not again, not again. I’d felt what happened to Mirror Boy and I can’t do it again, but it doesn’t stop. He’s either kicking her or using his fist, but either way, I can feel it. Every blow she takes, I take. I crawl to the bed and manage to drag myself up onto it. All I can do is lay there. I can’t stop the pain or block out Mary’s screams.

The room gets cold; the lights flicker once, twice, and then go out. My blinds are closed and the curtains pulled so there is no light at all in the room.

Please, please, please don’t be Mirror Boy.

Oh, crap. It’s something worse.

“Shhhh….”

Chapter Nine

Hot, rancid breath assaults my nostrils. I panic. I don’t remember hearing the door open, but there is someone in my room. His weight settles on the bed, and I try to turn over, but then a sharp pain lances my side. I gasp at the force of the blow to my stomach and for a second I can’t tell if the person on the bed hit me or if it’s Mary getting hit. A feeling of helplessness overwhelms me. I want to just give up, to beg for death in that moment. Mary, its Mary that wants to give up. She’s in so much pain. She’s been hurt so badly, she wants to die.

“So pretty,” he whispers and big beefy hands start to stroke my hair. My own reality leaks back in with the touch of those hands on me. The thought of getting raped on my own bed snaps whatever bond I share with Mary. Her pain goes away and my head clears. The helplessness vanishes and my fighting instincts kick in. Oh, no you don’t you freak! I roll, pull my legs up and in, then hit him squarely in the chest with both feet, all the while screaming at the top of my lungs. He falls backward and hits the floor. I jump to the other side, so that the bed is between us. The only weapon I can grab is the bedside lamp. Not much, but it’ll do.

My door bursts open to reveal Officer Dan and Mrs. O.

“Mattie?” Mrs. Olson stares at me, alarmed.  Then her eyes fall on my attacker in the floor.  “Stevie?”

Stevie?

“Stevie, are you okay?” Mrs. Olson actually bends down and helps him up. What?

“Him?” I shout. “He’s the one who attacked me!”

“Attacked you? What are you talking about, Mattie? Stevie wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Really?  Then why did he just attack me?”

“Everybody, let’s just calm down,” Officer Dan says. “Mattie, what happened?”

“This, this person came into my room and attacked me!”

“I just wanted to help,” Stevie piped in. “You were crying.”

“Help me?” I shriek. “You were touching me!
Nobody
touches me!”

“Pretty hair.” Stevie smiles at me. That’s when I get a good look at him and I understand why Mrs. Olson is not reacting the way
I
am. Stevie has Down syndrome. I calm down, but only slightly.

“Stevie, honey, go on to your room now.” When he shuffles out, she turns to me. “Mattie, that boy doesn’t have a mean bone in his body. I’m sure he wasn’t trying to hurt you. He’s special.”

“I can see that, Mrs. O. Anyone who looks at him knows that, but it doesn’t give him the right to come into my room and TOUCH me! He comes near me again, and I swear he won’t walk away with hands attached.”

“Of course it doesn’t, honey,” Mrs. Olson soothes. “I’m sure he was only trying to help. Why were you crying?”

“I wasn’t,” I deny. “I never cry.” It had been more whimpering, definitely not crying. I’m a tough girl, crying isn’t in my genetic makeup. Usually.

Mrs. Olson sighs heavily and I interrupt before she can try to expound upon the whole tears issues. I turn my attention to Officer Dan.

“Just what are you doing here, Officer Dan?” The sarcasm drips heavily. I’m still pissed at him.

“I know we already did a follow up interview on Sally, but I wanted to come by to check on you,” he says and eyes me nervously. He’d better be nervous, the jerk.

“You have time to come and check on me but not return my calls?”

“Mrs. Olson, may I talk to Mattie for a few minutes alone?” Officer Dan asks and gives her those warm friendly eyes. She smiles.

“Of course.  I’ll go make us all some lunch.”

“Thanks,” he says and closes the door behind her.

I eye the closed door with disbelief. Huh. Does she think just because he’s a cop he can be trusted? No way would she let any other guy close the door. Trust me, I’ve tried. She’s like a hawk circling the field watching for the mouse to pop up whenever Jake comes over. Last time I tried closing the door, she lectured me for an hour. Irritating as it had been, it’d still been kind of nice. No one’s ever cared enough before to lecture me on my virtue.

Still, just because he has a badge doesn’t make him trustworthy. No wonder there’s so much police corruption. Everyone thinks they’re infallible. They’re the police right? Protect and serve. Hah. Protect and serve themselves. Granted, the bulk of police aren’t crooked, but there are more than a few who are and I’ve met my fair share of them.

Come to think of it, Officer Dan is the least cop-like cop I’ve ever met. He doesn’t react like one and he doesn’t sound like one either. He has the whole deadpan face down, but I think he more or less mastered that before he became a cop. I can do the same thing. Dealing with social workers taught me to show no emotion when necessary. Sometimes they just shut up when you do that and you can ride to the new foster home in peace and quiet.

“Look, Mattie, I know you’re mad…”

“Mad?” I laugh. Yup, very non-cop-ish. “Question for you, Officer Dan. Just how long have you been a cop?”

He goes from nervous to extremely nervous. “Why does that matter?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Technically, eight weeks.”

“Technically?”

“Six weeks at the academy and two weeks on the job.”

Great, just great. He’s a rookie. No wonder he didn’t seem like a cop to me the last time I’d met him. I’d trusted him because he’d sounded more like
me
than a real cop. Kids identify with kids and even though he has the title “adult” attached to him, he’s still pretty much a kid at the ripe old age of twenty. It has nothing to do with his eyes, I tell myself. I must have been pretty drugged to imagine his eyes made me trust him. Not that I trust him anymore mind you, he did blow me off.

“Well, that explains a lot.” I put my lamp back down and then fall down on the bed.

“Hey, I’m the only one who’s listening to you!” he says defensively.

“Really, Officer Dan? I left you like three voice mails and you never once called me back!”

He runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “Yeah, about that, I’m sorry.”

So totally a teenage boy’s answer. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Look, Mattie, it was a lot to take in, okay? It took me a while to believe it, or at least believe
you
believe it.”

“So you think I’m crazy now do you?” I laugh. Sometimes
I
think I’m crazy so I can’t fault him for thinking the same thing. Not that I’ll tell him that of course.

“No, you’re not crazy Mattie. Can I sit?”

“Whatever.”

He rolls his eyes at me and then takes a seat on the foot of the bed, tucking his feet under him to mirror me. “Wanna talk about what just happened?”

What I did was a gut reaction. Hit first and ask questions later. It’s a rule I learned to live by when I got dumped into the foster care system. I spent years going from one foster home to another, watching my back every second of every day. Years and years of seeing kids that have been traumatized by their parents, left homeless because of deaths, and just plain messed up for no good reason.

I’m sure there are good places out there, places where people honestly care about the kids they are supposed to be looking after, but I hadn’t found one yet. The ones I ended up with only cared about the checks that came from taking us in. My first set of foster parents kept the fridge and the pantry door padlocked to make sure we only ate when we were supposed to. We got a bath twice a week so that we wouldn’t run up the water bill. We
did
get fed. Grits every morning, a piece of bread and water for lunch, and then dinner was beans and cornbread. We got fed just the minimal to keep us alive. Real nice folks.

The Olsons aren’t so bad though. They are by far the best foster parents I’ve been placed with. They aren’t nosy, they feed me, and they make sure I have the stuff I need: a hot bath, clean clothes, and a warm place to sleep every night. I know it doesn’t sound like much to most people, but to me, it’s the best thing since I discovered Dove chocolate. They don’t pester me about where I’m going and they leave me alone for the most part. They get their check and I get a decent roof over my head. The other foster kids that live here, six in total, feel the same. It’s not a bad place. Doesn’t mean it’s great either. It has its ups and downs. They can be a little odd sometimes. One minute they are nice as pie and the next, they can scream at you for not moving fast enough. Just weird.

“Mattie?” Dan prompts when I don’t answer right away.

“I really don’t want to discuss it,” I tell him.

“That’s not a normal reaction, Mattie,” he says patiently. 

No, I guess a normal person wouldn’t react like that, but I’m not normal. I’m a kid that grew up in the system, fighting off one thing or another, including the men I call Mr. Feely Hands. I was six the first time I came across one of them. I was on my third foster home. He came into my room about an hour after all the kids went to bed. There were eight of us and I was the only one who had my own room. I didn’t know what it meant at that age, but I learned fast.

I was almost asleep when I heard the door open and then he shuffled over to my bed. Before I could ask what he was doing, he clamped his big beefy hand over my nose and mouth. I can still remember the stench of the liquor on him. He was all sweaty and his brown eyes were bright. They reminded me of a rat’s eyes, small and shiny. He told me to be quiet if I didn’t want to get hurt.

Even at the tender age of six, I wasn’t stupid. My mom had some pretty seedy boyfriends and she’d told me exactly what I was supposed to do if any of them ever scared me. Scream my head off. If I couldn’t scream then I was supposed to fight, bite, scratch and kick until I could scream. That’s exactly what I did. He went away bloody and I was hustled off to the ER. That was the only good thing my Mom ever did for me. She taught me to fight.

“Just drop it, Dan, okay?” I sound tired.  Feel tired. I don’t want to have a heartfelt talk about my past.

He nods and changes the subject. “So, I checked out your story about your friend Mary…”

“OHMYGOD MARY!” I shoot straight up, how can I have forgotten Mary? The whole being fondled incident, duh. “She’s alive.”

“What?” Officer Dan frowns at me.  “How do you know that? I thought you only saw ghosts?”

“I don’t know, but she
is
alive. I think. You said you did some digging?”

“Yeah.  I found a girl named Mary Cross that went missing about a week ago in Meyer’s Park. Her mother said she woke up and Mary was gone. Her bike was missing too.”

“Was her boyfriend’s name, Jimmie?”

“James Mason,” he says.

“Still think I’m making it up?”

“I don’t know what to believe. It’s… slightly insane.”

“She’s alive. You have to help me find her.”

He gives me one of those deep, probing looks I’ve only ever read about. It’s the kind of look that goes straight through you, like he’s trying to see my soul or some such nonsense, but instead of making me nervous, it makes me more resolved than ever. I need him even if he’s a jerk and he doesn’t believe me. He has access to things I don’t. Rookie he might be, but he can use the police resources available to him and not me.

“Can I ask you a question, Mattie?”

“Sure.”

“Why did you throw such a fit over finding Sally? From what Mrs. Olson said the two of you weren’t even that close. You barely knew her, but you’re talking to ghosts for her?”

“I’m not sure you’d understand, Dan. You grew up in a good home with parents that love you, right?”

He nods.

“We didn’t. Mostly the foster parents are just about the check they get every month. We’re a means to an end for them. The only people we have to rely on are each other. If
we
don’t take care of each other, then no one else will. Sally and I weren’t that close, but we kind-of are too.”