Ghostly (Darkly Devoted Book 1) (8 page)

“I didn’t.” Not really.

“Well, I thought we had an understanding.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” I said. “Tell me what to do.” My words were sad and pleading. If he had an answer, I would be glad to hear it because I didn’t. Tears stung at my eyes as I looked back at him.

He took my face in his hands and leaned over to plant a quick kiss on my lips before resting his forehead against mine. “You’re gonna make it through this. I won’t leave you alone, okay? I will stay here as long as you need me.”

I nodded in agreement. I didn’t want to hurt myself; I wanted to be better than that. Stronger than that. My past couldn’t have control over me; I wouldn’t let it. But it was so hard to fight. Maybe with him by my side I could be strong. He joined me on the bed and wrapped his arms around me.

“My mom killed herself. Like mother like daughter, I guess. I’m just as messed up as she was,” I explained.

“You’re not messed up. You’re perfect.” His words were comforting, but I didn’t believe him. If that were true, she wouldn’t have left us. If that were true, my father would trust me. If that were true, we wouldn’t be stuck in some God forsaken haunted house with nowhere else to go.

Chapter Ten

I couldn’t seem to wipe the smile from my face the next day as I walked into the cafeteria and took a seat at the corner booth.

Meredith slid in across from me with an even bigger smile on her face. She leaned over the table and looked me straight in the eyes. “So, is Cade as sexy without his clothes on as he was in that black t-shirt at the party?”

My mouth fell open in shock as my face darkened.

“Don’t even try to deny it, Briar. It’s written all over your face. That smile hasn’t faltered since you walked into the school. You’re freaking everyone out.”

“Do I have a weird smile?” I asked, insecurity coming over me.

“No, but you don’t share it. Ever.”

I didn’t respond to her questions because I wasn’t ready to open up to her yet. A part of me was still convinced that she couldn’t be trusted, especially after inviting all those people to my house.

Let her think what she wanted. He’d stayed the night, and I had spent it wrapped up in his arms. It was nice and different from what I was used to with boys. He didn’t make any moves on me, which made me feel as if he respected me. No one had ever been able to comfort me like Cade had, and I couldn’t seem to keep my thoughts from roaming back to him.

Ryder joined us. “Hey, guys.”

I tried not to smile and to act normal, but it wouldn’t happen. “Hey.”

“You, uh, you have a good night?” He raised a suspicious eyebrow at me.

“Decent.”

Celeste eyed me curiously as she sat down beside Meredith. She was quiet as she watched me with a contemplative look on her face. “Ryder, could you get me a Coke?”

“Sure.” Without another word, he got up to retrieve it.

When he was out of earshot, she snapped her head around and looked at me. “Mer thinks you had sex with Cade. Is that true?” Anger laced her words, which surprised me. I wasn’t sure why she would be upset over something like that.

“Really?” I shot a glare at Meredith. “I never said that.” I plopped my pathetic “hamburger steak” down on my plate and relished in the disgusted look on Celeste’s face. If she was going to be a bitch, I would too. I hadn’t done anything to her.

“Uh huh…does Ryder know you’re seeing someone else?”

“No, and he doesn’t need to. We’re not together, and it’s none of his business.”

She shook her head. “Dude, he’s really into you.”

“Well I don’t know what to tell you.” I shrugged, but on the inside I was surprised at my own words. Even I couldn’t deny the fact that I broke out in chills around Cade and my heart beat as if it would burst when I was around him. If I was honest with myself, I had never felt that way before about anyone. Not even with either of my previous boyfriends, and I had thought I was in love with them.

“Wow, this neighbor of yours must be something special. If I’d have told you that about Ryder a few days ago, you’d have flipped.”

“Cade g
ets
me. I can’t say that about many people. It doesn’t matter though; I don’t want a boyfriend.” He knew I lied to the world about who I was. There was more to me than I let people see. It kept me safe. I pretended to be fine when sometimes all I wanted to do was cry. No one seemed to understand it, so I hid it from the world—except from him.

“Well, you have to tell him something.” Her voice dropped lower as Ryder neared the table.

“I don’t have to tell him anything. He’s not even told me he likes me.”

“It’s a pretty well-known fact.”

“One that he hasn’t told
me
,” I hissed under my breath.

Ryder sat the soda down in front of Celeste and eyed me peculiarly. “So, algebra was awful today.”

“Yea, I would have rather had my eyes ripped out of my head,” I said.

“Isn’t that what happened while we were in there?” he asked, smiling at me.

“Possibly.”

“Mr. Watson likes to torture his students. I hear that he kidnaps them and reads math problems to them until their brains explode.” A smile curved at the edge of his lips.

Ugh,
now
I felt guilty. He was flirting with me, with no idea that I was interested in someone else. 

“I heard he makes them solve equations until their fingers bleed,” Celeste chimed in, her voice full of fun as she looked to Ryder for approval. He smiled at her.

I laughed. “I hear he carves mathematical formulas into their bodies in the basement.”

“Ew,” Meredith responded.

“That was a good one,” Ryder said and continued with our new game. “I heard…”

But I tuned him out. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Celeste glaring at me. Her eyes moved over to Ryder and then back to me. They widened as if to tell me to say something to him. I shook my head and dug into my food. If he brought it up, we’d talk about it. Until then, I was going to savor every moment of my meat eating habits, much to the disgust of the others.

Chapter Eleven

Later that week, I sat in my room waiting for Cade to show up, so he could teach me all about the secret passages in my house. Kirk Cobain sang into my ears as I stretched.

“You should kill yourself.”

I paused and looked around, trying to find the source of that faint whisper. Maybe I was hearing things. It wouldn’t be the first time. There were always weird whispers through the house, flickering lights, and things moving around. The activities had slowly increased over the past few weeks.

Moving to the center of the room, I stretched up to the sky and closed my eyes. My muscles relaxed as I bent over and let my body give enough to touch my toes. Afterwards, I walked over to change the music. Fear shot through me, my body freezing as my eyes settled on the razor blade sitting on my notebook. It should have been in its hiding place because I hadn’t moved it.

How’d that get there?

Carefully I picked it up and tossed it in the trashcan. I retrieved my bag from across the room and came back to sit down at my desk. I pulled out my algebra book and went to set it down when I noticed the razor back on my table.

“Just do it.”

There it was again—a whisper in the empty room, but there was no one around to have spoken it. It was a young girl’s voice, trying to coax me into slitting my wrists. Reaching down to the razor, I considered it for a moment. Then I remembered my conversation with Cade and walked over to my bedside table to put it back where it belonged. He’d told me to watch my thoughts. I slammed the drawer shut. Cade kept me accountable now, and I had to respect that.

“There are other ways to kill yourself.”
The voice was louder, audible like a human’s would be, and it was closer. 

I whirled around and found the origin of the voice. A thin girl in a doll mask stood across the room. Her black hair hung loosely from her head and bloody scratches ran down her arms. The marks reminded me of the girl from the party. Her eyes stared back at me, empty and evil.

“Who are you?” I asked and stepped toward the doorway. “Did you possess that girl?” Was she going to try to possess me? I’d never seen a ghost before, and I didn’t know they could appear so real.

She tilted her head to the side and took a few slow steps toward me without a word.

I screamed and ran out of the room, down the hallway. I raced into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, cursing as soon as I realized that a
ghost
was chasing me. A door wouldn't stop her. Maybe I could get past her and go outside into the open.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My face was paler that I’d ever seen it; my blue eyes looked duller than normal.

Do it.

The girl’s voice sounded again, that time inside my head. My reflection in the mirror twisted, and my lips turned up into a scary smile, one that I was not making. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing would come out. I felt my body step forward and reach for the mirror, opening it and pulling out my dad’s anxiety meds. I tried to fight it, but my fingers popped the bottle open. I couldn’t stop it. The voice encouraged me again and somehow controlled my body. It wanted me to take them. All of them. 

The first pill plopped out in my hand and then into my mouth. My reflection laughed evilly as I poured out another pill to take. I tried to stop myself, but nothing would happen. My father would think I was trying to kill myself again. Maybe they wouldn’t even find me, and I would be dead. Just the thought made me quiver uncontrollably until the bottle fell out of my hands and into the sink. As they crashed, my body was back in my control.

I grabbed for the doorknob and twisted it to no avail. It wouldn’t move; it just wiggled under my hand. I grabbed it with my second hand and tried again to scream for help. Still nothing would come out. My voice had left me, just like my self-control had earlier. I regretted speaking out loud in the house of my fears and my struggles, because now it knew and was using it against me.

A loud chuckle echoed throughout the tiny space, reverberating off the walls and into my very soul. My body began to shake as I realized I was not alone. I turned around slowly, hoping not to see anyone else in the room with me. I didn’t see anything until I looked up at the mirror.

My hand flew over my mouth. There was a reflection of the girl in the mirror. She laughed as she eyed me. Water from the tub’s faucet began to run. 

“Who are you?” I asked and took a couple of steps towards the mirror. Maybe if I hid my fear she would leave.

“Your worst nightmare.”

“Yeah, what she said,” a similar voice sounded behind me. I turned around to see a smaller girl who also wore a creepy, old mask. “The house wants you.

Water continued to rise in the tub as the mirror girl laughed. “And we’re going to give you to it.”

There were two of them.

Shit.

I ran over to the tub and grabbed the knob, turning it until it clicked, but the water continued to spew from the spout.

“Damn it,” I mumbled, fiddling with the other one to try and make it stop. The girl moved over to where I was, looming over me and continuing to laugh.

A loud clank caused me to look over my shoulder and see the other girl standing in the room with my roaring hair dryer in her hand.

“Here, catch!” she said and threw it to the ghost by the tub.

My heart dropped. She caught it and looked at me. When she saw the fear, she cackled and threw it back to her friend.

“Stop it! Stop it!” I screamed as she caught it.

She shook her head and threw it back toward me, that time at my face. The second girl giggled and disappeared as I ducked out of the way.

Hands grabbed my waist and pulled me away from the tub. I screamed as we slammed into the wall and the hair dryer screeched in anger. As if nothing had happened, water stopped flowing from the faucet.

We were alone again.

My whole body started shaking uncontrollably as the realization of how close I’d come to dying hit me.

“Shit, I thought I’d lost you.” Cade turned me in his arms, grasping me to him and holding me tight.

I buried my face in his t-shirt, unable to respond because I couldn’t seem to get my breathing under control. I almost died. A ghost tried to kill me, and I’d come seconds away from dying. If he hadn’t grabbed me, I would have been quickly transported to the land of the departed. I would be dead. It was in that moment that I knew I wasn’t ready to die.

“I am so sorry I wasn’t here to protect you. My mom had to talk to me about family stuff, and then I had trouble getting into the house. Damn house was trying to keep me away, so it could have you.”

“There…there were two of them,” I whispered, still clinging to him as though he were grounding me in the moment and keeping me from going insane. The adrenaline slowly left my body as he held onto me. He continued to apologize as if there was something more he could have done.

“They said the house wants me.”

Cade froze. “They said what?”

I pulled back to look at him. “That the house wants me. What does that mean, Cade?”

He ran his hand down my hair to smooth it. “Nothing, Briar, don’t worry about them. They are just brats and have nothing better to do.”

I wasn’t sure he was being honest, but I was trying to trust him. His words terrified me. “How do I keep my family safe?”

“You don’t. I will deal with it. I will make sure they all know not to touch you again or I’ll…”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What are you going to do? Kill them?” I was being sarcastic, but I was irritated. “You don’t live here; you can’t be here all the time with me. There’s no way you can keep us all safe. I’m getting an exorcist.”

“No!” he exclaimed quickly and jumped back from where he stood. He shoved a hand into his pocket and pulled out a necklace. The chain was long and black, and at the end of it was a gothic old-fashioned cross. “Take this.” Before I could respond, he placed the necklace around my head. “I want to make sure you are safe.”

“This is just jewelry. No offense, but I don’t think it’s going to keep me from dying. I’m terrified here, especially after ghosts tried to kill me!”

“My mother had this made for me. It’s spelled.”

“By who?”

He shrugged. “I don’t fucking know, nor do I care. It works though; I’ve used it.”

“What do I do? Just wear it?”

“No.” He laughed. “You have to close your eyes and hold onto it while wishing them away. If you don’t believe in them, they can’t hurt you. I think that’s how it works at least. Maybe it just wards them off. I don’t know.”

I looked back at him with disbelief in my eyes. “It can’t be that easy.”

“You can do what you want, but I’m trying to protect you. You’re mine, and I won’t let them hurt you.”

“Possessive much? We aren’t even dating.”

“That’s what you say.” He reached out to take my face in his hand. He looked at me wistfully as if I were the most important thing in the world. We hadn’t known each other long, but I couldn’t deny the feelings inside me when his eyes met mine. However, I could pretend they weren’t there. I shrugged and stepped back from him, which seemed to give me more willpower. If I let him kiss me, he’d know he was right.

As we stepped out of the bathroom, I froze. The scream of a desperate child resonated throughout the house. Fear coiled around me, even more so than when I was in the bathroom with those two ghosts. My heart pounded inside my chest as I recognized the voice. It was Dillon’s screams piercing the hallway, and I could hear my dad’s voice as he rushed up the stairs.

Without a word to Cade, I took off toward my brother’s room. It was across the hall from mine. I beat my dad to it and slung the door open, finding the room empty. My eyes searched frantically through the room, but he wasn’t there.

“Dillon?” I called out.

“Sissy! I can’t get out,” he screamed. His voice came from the direction of his closet. He banged on the door, and I knew he was in there.

I ran over to the door, unlocked it, and twisted the knob. It wouldn’t budge. It was stuck, just like the bathroom door had been. I pulled at the handle and jerked it repeatedly. My brother's desperate cries for help rang out.

My dad was right behind me, pushing me to the side and trying the door himself, all the while Dillon screamed and cried inside as if something had a hold of him. I was scared to death and worried about what was happening to my brother. So many terrible things could be happening or already happened in the time it took us to get to his room. I feared for his life. He was alone in there, in the dark, with something otherworldly. There was nothing I could do about it.

“Hurry, Dad!”

“I’m trying,” he said as he started to throw himself up against the door. “I can’t get it!”

“Don’t you have something to open it with?”

He looked at me as if I had grown a third head. “Not on me, Briar.”

“Daddy!” Dillon screamed. “She’s in here! Don’t let her take me, Daddy!”

In desperation I reached for the charm around my neck and closed my eyes. “It’s not a ghost in there with him; it’s just his imagination. Please, please, please work.” I continued to mumble and poured my very soul into it, until the pounding inside the room stopped. I feared for the worst as I yelled out my brother’s name, and my dad grasped for the doorknob again. It gave under his hand, and he threw open the door.

My brother sat there by himself with his head buried in his knees with his breath coming in large hard gasps as he cried. Dad reached down to take him in his arms and console him. I threw my arms around the both of them.

“It’s okay, Dillon; you’re safe now,” I whispered.

He twisted in Dad’s arms and grabbed for me, wrapping his limbs around my body. “Sissy. It was the bad woman. She wanted me to go with her.”

When I walked out into the hallway, Cade stood there with his arms crossed as he leaned against the wall. I raised my eyebrows at him. I wondered if he knew who was after Dillon. He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t know.

I turned to my dad and scowled. “Now do you believe me?”

He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry I didn’t believe you, Briar. I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately. I’ve felt like crap this week.”

“What are we going to do?”

He sighed. “I will look into it. Maybe we can find someone to cleanse the house.” I was appreciative of that, and the fact that he finally believed me. His eyes roamed over to Cade. “Who’s your friend?”

I sucked in a breath, ready for the lecture to come about boys in the house, but it didn’t. “This is Cade. Cade, this is my dad.”

Cade pushed off the wall and held his hand out, giving my father that charming smile of his. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Summers.”

My dad cocked an eyebrow and took his hand. “Same to you, kid.”

“Guess I’d better be going. Hope Dillon is alright,” Cade said and turned to me. “See you later?”

“Yeah.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed down the stairs. Dad didn’t ask any questions about him, so I took Dillon to get ready for bed. I sat in the bathroom with him as he took a bath and played with his toys, crashing them into each other and making sound effects. I didn’t want to leave him alone. With my e-reader in hand, I flipped through the pages of a recent romance novel while he played. I stayed until his fingers were pruney, and I had to pry him out of the bathtub. He dried off, put on his pajamas, and brushed his teeth. Then he took my hand and led me back to his bedroom.