Free Spirits (10 page)

“It’ll take us about half an hour to walk to Possum Creek Road,” I say, looking at Adam. “We’d better get moving if we’re going to be back here by ten.”

I take the mirror out of my purse, and Adam says, “Hi, Abigail.”

“Oh, I also brought these.” I take out two small flashlights. “These country roads are gonna be awfully dark before long.”

We walk away from the school, away from the streetlights and car sounds until all we can hear are the chirping crickets and bellowing bullfrogs and the rustling of little creatures in the brush. We’ve been walking for around twenty minutes when my flashlight spots the sign reading Possum Creek Road.

The dirt road opens up into a clearing, and even by flashlight I can tell it used to be a beautiful spot. There’s a rolling meadow, now overgrown, and a two-story, tin-roofed farmhouse, its paint chipped and its windows broken. “Strawberry Fields,” I say.

“Yeah, but not anymore,” Adam says. He shines his flashlight on a sign tacked up on the wooden fence: Private Property No Trespassing. “Should we risk it?” I say.

Adam shrugs. “Might as well. We’re here now.”

“Abigail?” I say. “Are you willing to trespass?”

“I’m dead,” she says. “In the world of the living, I’m already trespassing.”

“Fair enough.” I yank up my skirt in a way I’m sure Abigail finds unladylike and climb over the fence. Adam climbs right behind me.

The porch steps creak under our feet. I try the front door but it’s locked. “Wait,” Adam says. “Let me crawl in the window and maybe I can let you in.”

“Uh…are you sure you want to do that? I mean, we’re breaking some laws here,” I say.

“But it’s for a good cause, right?” Adam says, trying to find a good angle to climb into the window.

“Be careful of broken glass,” I warn.

“This window probably hasn’t had glass in it since before we were born.” Adam disappears into the window, and seconds later he swings the door open. He sneezes three times in a row. “Dusty,” he says. “And spooky. It reminds me of that movie
The Old Dark House.”

I’ve never seen
The Old Dark House
, but there’s no doubt that this house is old and dark. I walk inside, the flashlight in my right hand and Abigail’s mirror in my left. I move the flashlight around, spotlighting different parts of what was once the living room. Cobwebs and spiderwebs. A filthy couch, now probably a condominium for mice. The rag rug on the floor puffs up a cloud of dust when I step on it, and Adam sneezes again.

“There is a spirit in this house,” Abigail says. “I can feel her.”

“Mrs. Boshears?” I call. “Hello?”

“She’s not in this room,” Abigail says. “She’s upstairs, I think.”

We hold our flashlights so we can see the rickety stairs that squeak with each step we take. I try to steady myself by holding onto the rail, but it’s rickety, too.

Once we’re upstairs, Abigail says, “The room at the end of the hall.”

Walking down the hall, the flashlight captures jittery images of the old flowered wallpaper because my hand is shaking.

The door creaks as we open it, and Adam, as nervous as I am, whispers, “Oh, man.”

When we step into the room it’s at least thirty degrees colder than it is in the rest of the house. Holding the flashlight in front of my face, I can see my breath. The room contains an old iron bed, a chest of drawers and a cane rocking chair. But that’s all I can see. “Mrs. Boshears?” I call. “Ma’am?”

Nothing.

“Let me try,” Abigail says. And then she makes a sound I’ve never heard before, like a high-pitched song, sad and beautiful and not quite human. The sound fills the room, and then the shape of an old woman appears in the rocking chair. She looks about Granny’s age, but she’s fuller figured and is wearing a homemade-looking flowered dress. Her hair is pulled back in a bun. She’d look like she could be anybody’s grandma if you couldn’t see right through her. “Who’s there?” she says like she’s not sure she wants us to be there.

“Abigail,” she says from the mirror. “A spirit. And my living friends Miranda and Adam.”

“Hmm,” the old lady says, starting to rock, and I remember that while I can see her, Adam can only see the empty chair going back and forth. “Young’uns come here all the time trying to scare theirselves, but I never let ’em see me. Nobody’s ever come with a spirit before.” She squints and leans forward. “Are you in that mirror?”

“Yes,” Abigail says. “It’s the only way I can leave my house.”

“Let me see,” Mrs. Boshears says, reaching out her gnarled hands.

I’m a little nervous about handing over the mirror, but Abigail says, “Go ahead.”

Mrs. Boshears holds up the mirror and looks at Abigail. “Well, look at you! Ain’t you a pretty little thing? If you could get out of there, we’d have a big ole time plaiting that yeller hair of yours.”

“That would be nice,” Abigail says politely.

“Why don’t you set and rock with me a few minutes?” Mrs. Boshears says, and she holds the mirror like she’d hold a baby and rocks back and forth, humming an old murder ballad that’s also a favorite of Granny’s.

After Mrs. Boshears has had a few minutes to fuss over Abigail, I say, “We heard about you from a guy named Harrison Branch who used to live here when it was called Strawberry Fields.”

Mrs. Boshears smiles. “Harry and Kathy, they was sweet young’uns. All them young’uns that lived here was sweet. They was a queer-looking bunch, but they was good-hearted, and they kept the place up and kept me company. Not like now when it’s so rundown and lonesome.”

Since a lot of local folks didn’t care for the Strawberry Fields people, I’m kind of surprised that Mrs. Boshears was happy haunting a houseful of hippies. “So you were sad when the Strawberry Fields folks left?”

“Oh, I was real sad about it,” Mrs. Boshears says. “I’m still sad because the house has set empty ever since. And the saddest thing about it is it was my grandson that run everybody off.”

“Why did he do that?” Adam asks.

Mrs. Boshears shakes her head. “I can’t say for sure why Rick’s done all the things he’s done. Maybe his mother and daddy getting killed in that car wreck when he was little broke something in him. I truly believe there’s good in that boy’s heart, but something ain’t right in his head, and sometimes it makes him do ugly things.”

In my mind I see the rude yellow letters spray painted on the outside of El Mariachi.

“Rick was always the kind of boy who flitted from one thing to another,” Mrs. Boshears says, still rocking with Abigail. “When he was in high school he was all about being on the football team for a while, but then he soured on that and was all about being in the band. Then he soured on that, too. It was like he was always looking for a place to belong, and it was the same way even after he left home. He took up with the hippies till he turned against them too, and turned into…whatever it is he’s turned into.” She looks faraway for a moment, and sad. “I reckon he’d say he found the Lord, but the Lord he talks about don’t have a thing to do with the Lord I know.” She shakes her head. “It’s sad to see somebody you’ve loved your whole life turn out to be so hateful. If you want to know just how hateful Rick can be, all you have to do is go down to the river.”

“The riverbank here?” Adam asks.

Mrs. Boshears nods her ghostly head. “The one down the road apiece, but I don’t want to talk no more about it. I don’t want to get all upset when I should be glad to have company.”

A light floods into the bedroom window, and a car’s engine roars. Mrs. Boshears disappears in a cloud of vapor, leaving Abigail in her mirror resting on the seat of the rocking chair.

Adam says a word that kids our age aren’t supposed to say. A ball of fear knots in my stomach, and I look out the window expecting to see either a police car or Rick Boshear in his red pickup truck, getting the gun from the gun rack so he can shoot us trespassers.

What I see is almost as bad. It’s Mom’s car.

It stinks to be grounded for the first two weeks of summer vacation. Adam is grounded too, which for him means no computer, no DVDs and no video games for a week. At least with me, there’s less to be grounded from.

Mom and Granny showed up at the Boshears’ place because Granny had a vision that Adam and I were there and in danger. And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that she was right on both counts. As Mom was turning off Possum Creek Road, with Adam and me in the backseat like criminals in a police car, a big red pickup truck was turning in. Rick Boshears’ truck.

Mom took Adam home and spent what felt like a year talking to Mrs. So on her front porch. The rest of the ride home was silent, but I knew that as soon as we were in the house, I was in for it.

Mom isn’t the type to raise her voice to her kid, let alone raise a hand to her kid. Instead, like the social worker she is, she talks about feelings and reasons. And so as soon as the door to the house shut, Mom and Granny directed me to the kitchen, which is where all the serious conversations in our family take place. Granny put on a pot of chamomile tea and Mom sat down at the table across from me and said, “Miranda, I choose to stay out of your head because I believe young girls deserve both privacy and respect. But I have to say that your behavior tonight was worthy of neither of those things.”

I did what I always do when I get in trouble with Mom. I started to cry.

“I’m not even going to go into how it made me feel that you were dishonest with me,” Mom said, “because that’s not what’s most important. What’s most important is your safety, and how can I look out for your safety when you don’t tell me the truth about where you are? Who knows what would’ve happened if your granny hadn’t had her vision?”

Granny set a cup of tea in front of me. “When that vision come to me, I seen that you and your little Oriental friend wasn’t at the school.You was out in the dark alone,trespassing on private property. Private property that was full of spiritual activity.”

“We got in the car and came immediately,” Mom said.“But we shouldn’t have to use the Sight to know where you are, Miranda. We should know because you tell us.”

I told her she was right, which she was, and I was sorry, which I was. But sorry wasn’t enough to get me out of being grounded.

But that was thirteen days ago, and today Adam and I have finished our sentence. Our reward for good behavior was Mom taking us and Abigail in her mirror to Morgan for pizza and bowling, which it turns out, Adam and I are hilariously bad at. Now, in the car, on the way back from the bowling alley, I decide to take a chance. “Mom, is it okay if we stop at the riverbank for a couple of minutes?”

“Oh, would Abigail like to see her soldier boy?” Mom asks.

Abigail giggles.

“She’s giggling her head off right now, so I guess that’s a yes,” I say.

I’m happy for Abigail to get to see Virgil. But that’s not why I want to stop at the river.

Once we get out of the car, Mom slips off her sandals and sits on the hood. “You take Abigail to see her little friend. I’ll just stay here and enjoy the stars. I don’t want to interfere in the love life of the deceased.”

Once we come up on the riverbank, there’s Virgil sitting on the bank with the little Indian boy. They’re playing some kind of game with pebbles. As soon as Virgil sees we’re here with Abigail, though,he stands up and puts on an adult attitude.“Good evenin’,” he said. Then he looks at Abigail’s mirror. “Evenin’, miss.”

“Hello,” Abigail says, her voice broken by a giggle.

The other ghost, the woman, is pacing back and forth on the surface of the water. She wails and rubs her hands together fretfully.

“She’s right wound up tonight,” Virgil says, nodding in the ghost lady’s direction. I think of Mrs. Boshears’ words: “If you want to know just how hateful Rick can be, all you have to do is go down to the river.”

“Excuse me!” I yell in the direction of the pacing, weeping ghost. “Do you know Rick Boshears?” I yell. “Rick Boshears?”

Her eyes meet mine, then she skims the surface of the water like a high-speed Jet Ski headed straight toward me. Her face— her beautiful, sad face, like a grieving woman in a painting—is nose to nose with mine. “Rick?” she says, her voice choked with a sob. “Rick?”

“Rick Boshears,” I say. “Do you know him?”

Her ghostly hands grip my shoulders, making me feel like I’ve been splashed with icy water. “Rick! Rick!” she says, her brown eyes big and pleading, and then she lets loose a stream of words I don’t know but I recognize as Spanish.

I’ve never been so frustrated that nobody here teaches a foreign language till high school.“
No habla
,” I say, I’m sure, with a terrible accent. “
No habla español
.” I look to Adam in desperation. “Do you speak any Spanish?”

“We did some coloring sheets in Spanish in second grade,” Adam says. “I think I remember the word for orange.”

“Wow, that’s really helpful,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Abigail, do you know any Spanish?”

“My papa taught me some Latin,” she says.

“Leave it to a ghost to only know a dead language,” Adam says.

I don’t know what else to do, so I look into the ghost woman’s sad brown eyes and say, “We’ll come back. We want to help you.” And then, just because I know how to say it, I add, “
Buenas noches.”