Dust to Dust (13 page)

Carson starts awake. “Callie! What are you doing? Slow down! There's another red light ahead!”

I'm panicking—my foot is tingling like mad, like it's surging with blood, and I have no control over its movement. It's pressed to the floor as if there's a cement block on top of it. I watch our speed climbing: 20 mph . . . 30 . . . 40.

“Callie!” Carson's scream rings out over the rev of the engine as she grabs the wheel and steers us around the car waiting at the red light in front of us. A van to our right skids to a stop and spins out
to avoid hitting us. “I can't lift my foot!” I shout, and I see Carson's face flash with fear.

And then, as quickly as it happened, I'm free. My knee flies up under the pressure I've been exerting to lift it, and I immediately slam down the brake, tires screeching in protest as we skid to a stop just before we reach the next intersection. Carson and I are thrown forward by the sudden move—I feel my seat belt tighten around me, digging into my shoulder sharply.

My breath is coming in rapid bursts, and I look over at my best friend. Her face is white.

“Carson.” I reach out my hand to her.

“Let's pull over,” she says, taking it and squeezing. “I'm okay. I'll drive.”

I carefully get us into the closest strip mall parking lot and we pull up in front of a floral shop. I look at the display of hydrangeas and peonies, all blue and pink and white in the window.

We open our doors and switch seats, shaking as we walk.

Once Carson's behind the wheel, she starts the car. But then she cuts off the engine and turns to me, her eyes watering a little.

“What the hell was that?” shouts my best friend, who never swears.

“I don't know,” I say, but a half second later I realize that of course I do.

This is it. The moment when Carson finds out, and it all becomes real.

“I haven't told you everything,” I say.

She frowns. “Okay, so tell me now.”

“It was the poltergeists.” When I say the
p
word, I know she understands what I mean: evil ghosts.

“They exist too,” she says, nodding like it makes sense.

“Yes. And I've really pissed them off.”

She looks at me, trying to read my face in the way she's done since we were little. As usual, she's good at it. “Why didn't you tell me you were in danger?”

“I guess I didn't want to freak you out,” I tell her. “You're so into the afterlife and there's so much that's beautiful about it. I just didn't want you to see the dark side.”

“You thought I couldn't handle it,” she says, looking away.

“That's not it,” I say to her, putting my hand on her arm and making her turn back to me. “I wanted to protect you from it. As long as I could.”

“Well, the whole speeding-through-stoplights thing has got me involved now,” she says. “So tell me what's going on.”

“I'm not entirely sure,” I tell her. “But I do know that just now they were here; they were using energy to somehow hold my foot down on the accelerator. I felt it.”

“Ghosts can
do
things like that?”

“Not ghosts,” I say. “Poltergeists. Carson, you don't know what they're capable of.” I bite my lip and stare out the windshield. Sunlight reflects off the glass of the flower shop and I lower my sunglasses to avoid the glare. I sit back against my seat and tell her all about my relationship with Reena and Leo, how they tried to lure
me into their group and turn me against Thatcher. It was all part of their plan. “When I was in the Prism, they . . . they tried to use possession as a way to live again.”

“Possession?”

“Taking bodies. They get inside a body and force out the soul that was there—”

“I know what it means,” she says, a bit flustered. “But how do they take the bodies?”

“Through me.” I explain that my energy was unique in the Prism, that I had extra to spare and it was so much that when other ghosts shared it they obtained powers beyond the normal realm. “I think it was because I was in the coma, caught between two worlds.”

“But you're not anymore . . . ,” says Carson.

“It doesn't matter; they're still after me for some reason,” I tell her.

“So that thing in the hallway yesterday?”

“It was them,” I admit. “Look, I'm not safe, and it's pretty clear neither is anyone around me. So maybe you should stay away—”

“Callie, if you think I'm going to ditch you just because some poltergeists are messing with you, you're wrong,” says Carson defiantly. She smiles. “But I'll drive from now on.”

I try to smile back. I appreciate her bravado. But there's more I have to tell her.

“Oh no, what else?” she asks, reading my face again.

“You've been taken,” I say, my voice wavering a little. I lock eyes with my best friend. It hurts so much to tell her this, but at the same time it's also a little bit of a relief, being totally honest with
her finally. “Reena targeted you.”

Her mouth opens slightly in surprise, but I see the wheels turning in her head, trying to figure out when and where.

“It was at Tim McCann's party this summer,” I say.

Carson's face goes blank for a moment, but then realization dawns in her eyes. “That was the night I—” She stops, looking at me to see if I know.

“The night you kissed Nick,” I say, filling in the blank so we can move past this awkward point.

“I—” Carson starts.

“It was Reena.” I say it loudly and clearly. “I know that.”

Carson's face blanches anyway, but I barrel ahead. “The point is that you're vulnerable—you've been possessed once already, and Reena only has to take you two more times in order to get permanent control over you.”

The car goes silent as this information sinks in. I can hear the bang of someone shutting a car door near us and the echo of someone's footsteps in the parking lot.

“So you're telling me Reena was
inside
my body,” says Carson, whose face color is returning to normal. She seems way more rational than I thought she'd be right now.

I nod.

“Where was I?”

“In the peach room,” I say, remembering Tim's parents' prettily decorated guest quarters.

“I know
that
!” she says. “I mean where did my soul go? And what happened while I was gone . . . I mean besides . . .”

She grins sheepishly.

“I don't know,” I tell her.

“But there's not, like, a piece of me missing?” asks Carson.

“I don't think so. But another possession could be more severe. And a third . . .” I try to finish this horrifying sentence but I can't. Actually, I don't have to.

Carson's eyes widen. “The rule of three.”

“How do you know about that?” I ask.

“It's always three on
Hallowed Hauntings
,” she says, like that's so obvious. “Three is a mystical number.”

“Well, you're right.” I'm amazed that there is something real on that “reality” show. And I clarify how if a poltergeist can possess a body three times, it will own the body and extinguish the soul that was there before.

She's silent again, staring down at her hands like she's inspecting them for flaws.

“Thatcher says they shouldn't be able use me for possession anymore,” I tell her, trying to ease her worries. “They can screw with my energy but they shouldn't have the ability to . . . take you. They haven't been back to the Prism and that means they should have less and less power as time goes on.”

“That's a lot of
should
s.” Carson looks up. “He's not entirely sure what's going on, is he?”

My stomach clenches. She's right, he isn't entirely sure. Again, I find myself struggling to find words, but Carson doesn't miss a beat.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” she asks. “I've got a ton of sage
at home. That might protect us for a little while at least.”

“Actually, there might be something better than that,” I say.

“What is it?”

And that's when I tell her about the ring.

Facing my father when we get home is not fun. As I walk toward our house, I see him rocking back and forth on the porch swing in a raging silence. Even from far away, I can see by the line of his mouth that I'm in for it.

I head slowly up our driveway—Carson went straight to her house because she has her own parents to deal with—and when I sit next to my father on the swing, when I look at his eyes up close, I notice that it's not quite anger. Maybe it's hurt.

“Daddy, I—”

He silences me with a hand in the air. “Lord, give me strength,” he whispers. Then he turns to look at me. “I shouldn't have let you go back to school so soon after the accident.” His voice is quiet, thoughtful. “Perhaps you need some more time to handle the pressures of an academic day.”

I shake my head no. “That's not it, Daddy. There was just . . . something I had to do.”

He puts his arm over my side of the swing. “Anything you have to do, you need to tell me about. It's only fair, Callie May. I don't even know where you were today. Can you imagine how scary that was?”

“I'm so sorry.” And I am. I see now that I've frightened him, that I've hurt my military-tough father.

“I can't risk losing you again,” he says. I notice his shoulders
are slumped, his face more lined than I remember, and it makes me tear up a little.

“You won't lose me.”

He stands and leans against the porch rail, facing me. “Where were you?”

I can't tell him anything near the truth. My father was reluctant for me to go off my meds; if I give him any reason to think I'm unstable, I might be back in the doctor's office, undergoing treatment that would prevent me from helping Thatcher and keeping the poltergeists at bay. I can't let that happen.

“Daddy, did you see the blue of the heavens today?” I gesture toward the open sky, where the blazing sun shines through a few perfectly cottony clouds.

“Callie, I don't know what the sky has to do with—”

“‘This is a day that the Lord hath made!'” I'm quoting a song we used to sing in Sunday school. “‘Let us rejoice and be glad in it.'”

My father looks confused.

“I'm so happy to be alive,” I say to him. “I felt that so strongly this morning. I just couldn't be cooped up inside a classroom. I felt called to spend the day outside. It was me who convinced Carson. She and I . . . we took a drive. We sat out in the sun, ate snacks. I just needed a day to be grateful for my life.”

It may be a sin to lie about this and use my father's renewed faith in God against him, but I can see it working. And I need it to work—for both our sakes.

He can't lose me again, so I have to fight the poltergeists with all I have.

His face softens. “That's what Saturdays are for,” he says. And then: “Don't do it again.”

“I won't. I'm sorry.”

He walks inside, and I marvel at the fact that I got off easy. But later that night, at dinner, he tells me I'm grounded for three days. I'm to go straight to school and come straight home. No Carson, no Nick—which shouldn't be too much of a problem, given the fact that he and I have seen or heard from each other in while.

I nod and head up to bed. I understand that Dad's doing what he needs to do. I just hope he understands that I have to do the same.

Carson had no issues with her parents because I told her it was okay to play the “Callie needed me and she's having a hard time” card. The next day at school, she tells me she was up all night trying to find a phone number for Wendy, but she only got a school email address. We sneak away at lunch and craft a message to send:

“Short and sweet so she can't misinterpret things,” says Carson. We leave my cell number in the PS and cross our fingers. Then I try to act normal for the rest of the week, which isn't easy when I'm looking over my shoulder all the time, either waiting for another
attack or hoping that I'll feel Thatcher near me. When I don't sense anything—like a threat of searing pain or his warm, inviting comfort—there's a part of me that's frightened that he's found the poltergeists and they've discovered a way to capture and hurt him somehow.

But on Saturday night, the fear subsides. My dreams come again, hazy and muted, like they're happening underwater. I hear Thatcher's voice, but it's muffled and unclear. What is he trying to tell me? Then my world sharpens, and I'm in more of a memory than a dream. It's the night we left the Prism and stood on the edge of the water, next to a carnival, watching fireworks pop in the distance.

And he's there, gazing at me. I take in the breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his stance, and I try to memorize every detail down to the arch of his top lip.

I smile, so happy he's okay.

The fireworks night was a gift, a small transgression. And even though I can sense that he came to me in this dream state because he knew I was worried about him, there's something in his eyes that lets me know he's here for himself too. Which is very much against the Guides' ethics.

But maybe, hopefully, true to his heart.

“I've done a lot of rule breaking since I met you,” he says.

My hands want to reach out to Thatcher, to hold him. But as always, he's out of reach—a whisper, a shadow.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Don't,” he replies. “Don't ever be sorry.”

I want to ask him what that means. If he's giving me absolution
for the whole spirit world falling apart, or if he doesn't want me to have any regrets about us.

Ding-ding!