K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 13 - Ghost Story (11 page)

Only, it had.

“Darcy?” the voice called, sounding closer.

Digging into her pocket, Darcy sat down in the circle of salt and spice and flame.  She crossed her legs.  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Darcy!”

Then she took another match out of her pocket and turned to the last candle.

“Don’t you make me come in there!”

A loud thump against the door made it shake in its frame as she lit the last of the six candles.

The circle was complete.  Turning inward to herself, tapping in to a little bit of her own energies—a tiny piece of her soul—she reached out for Nathaniel Williams.  His presence was everywhere here in the Town Hall.  The place was saturated with his spirit.  Finding him with her sixth sense wouldn’t be the problem.

Forcing him off this mortal sphere would be a different matter entirely.

The door crashed inward with a heavy bang just as Darcy slipped into the inbetween space that hovered between the worlds of the living and the dead.  The winds rushed at her, grabbing, tearing, whispered noises that could have been curses directed at her life and her sanity.

That coiling mass of air struck with the sound and force of a thunderclap but it never touched Darcy.  It slammed into the invisible barrier, the expression of her own spirit, created and held in place by the completed circle. 

It was the last thing Darcy heard before she lost all contact with her senses.

***

In her mind she envisioned a dark landscape.  A flat surface with nothing on it except her, sitting cross legged like she had been in the circle of candles.  Those came into existence next, one at a time around her, their flames unnaturally motionless like they had been frozen in time.

Then Darcy added the mists.

Rolling across the emptiness came the billowing curls and tendrils of white fog that she always used as a mental backdrop for communing with the spirits.  It wasn’t real, just like nothing here was real, but it helped her focus and gave her a surface to project her thoughts onto.  Spirits came and went in the mists.  They could find her, and she could find them.

Today, the usual clean feeling of her mental landscape was tainted with dark colors of filth and corruption.  Something was tainting her connection to the spirit world.  She knew what it had to be.  It was the same thing that had kept every other ghost away from her perception for the past few weeks.

All of them, except Great Aunt Millie.  She could never be forced away from Misty Hollow.  Not while Darcy was still here.

Not even by the Pilgrim Ghost.

“Show yourself,” Darcy said into the gloom.  Her voice fell short, the dank fog absorbing the sound and keeping her isolated.  “I know you’re here already.  You wanted me, I’m here.  Show yourself.”

It wasn’t silence that met her words.  It was the impending presence of something foul and evil.

Sitting up straighter, Darcy clenched her hands into fists on her knees.  “I said, show yourself!”

A rushing presence like a collection of pure black force slammed into her from behind, knocking her forward to her hands and knees.  Darcy gasped, throwing her arms forward to keep herself from falling flat on her face in a place where there was no physical reality to anything.  Even so, it still hurt.

Two of the candles in the circle were knocked over, their little flames suddenly very animated.

The presence coalesced in front of her, dark matter forming a shadow that blurred and smoked and slowly became a distinct shape.  A person, wearing dark trousers and a plain white shirt with string ties at the neck and puffy sleeves.  Boots that went up to his knees clumped against the imagined floor of Darcy’s conjuring.  Sharp angles gave his face the appearance of chiseled pride, and his eyes were dark and brooding under a length of black hair held back in a short tail.

Nathaniel Williams bent over at his waist, his hands held together behind his back.  He regarded Darcy with his head cocked to the side.  “Well, well, well,” he said in a pinched accent, his smile twisted and sardonic.  “Thou hast some skills, at the least.”

“Enough to take care of a murdering dead man like you,” Darcy spat at him as she scrambled back to her feet, putting distance between them.

Williams chuckled and stood up to his full height, six feet tall and then some.  Winds swirled through the mists around him whenever he moved.  “Murdering dead man?” he repeated.  “That was the best thou couldst manage?”

Deep breaths, Darcy reminded herself.  Don’t let the ghost-figment-of-your-imaginary-world bait you into doing something stupid.  You’re in control.

The winds buffeted at her, pulling her, pushing her, rising to a fever pitch, but she was in control.

Repeating that, over and over, helped her to calm herself down.  I am in control, she said.  I am in control.  I am in control.

She was in control.

Do the ritual,
said a voice whispered faintly on the roaring winds. 
Start it now.

How her Aunt Millie had managed to get through to this place that Darcy had conjured was impossible to say.  Her words gave Darcy the push she needed, and with her aunt’s strength added into her own, she locked herself into her struggle with the Pilgrim Ghost.

“Desirest thou to fight with me?” he asked her, walking in a circle around where she stood. “Marvelous!  I should like thou to be demoralized before I kill thee.”

Darcy thrust a hand forward, grabbing at his energy, mentally trying to make him yield to her.  It was like trying to hold an ocean’s worth of water in her arms as she extending her own spirit, enfolding it around his, wrapping him into her.  Or, trying to at least.  She felt him twist, saw the look of surprise on his face that she would be able to do that to him, and then saw his expression turn ragged with hatred.

“Get off me!” he shouted, throwing up his arm like a blade cutting through the mental ropes Darcy had entangled him in.  His words were like knife thrusts of their own, sharp and abrupt and painful.

His spirit struck at hers, and she lost her grip on him entirely.

The world around her turned upside down and for a moment she was sure there was no up and no down.  Until she found herself on her side and sliding with her feet up over her head.  Then she was very sure there was a down.  The pain lancing in long lines through her spine and ribcage told her there very definitely was a down.

“Don’t worry, Aunt Millie,” she groaned softly.  “All part of the plan.”

She just wished the plan didn’t hurt so much.

“How quaint,” Williams sneered, circling her again, slowly.  “Thou callest upon the spirit of thine aunt?  I knew her.  Not well, of course, but enough to know she couldn’t have beaten me either.  She can not help thee.  No one can.  Death comes for you this day, Darcy Sweet.  I need not even lift my hand.”

He leaned into her, his face hovering over hers, the light in his eyes painful to look at.  “I need not lift my hand, but I shall nonetheless.”

His hand rose up in a fist, and into it the mists collected and solidified and became a sharp edged dagger with a wicked curve to it.  It was aimed for Darcy’s chest, and if it came down she knew she would die.  Even if this place wasn’t real, her death would be.

The wind swirled around them at a gale force, gathering every scrap of Darcy’s own conjuring, turning it into a tornado around them, and as Nathaniel Williams smiled down at her it all collected behind him into a funnel with the knife at its apex.

“Die, Darcy Sweet,” he said in a voice full of heated desire and centuries old hatred.  “Die!”

His arm came down with the knife, the mists following, racing to tear into her.

A single word passed through Darcy’s mind. 

Now
.

Holding up her right hand she concentrated on her Aunt Millie’s ring.  The ghost, the embodiment of all things malevolent in the town of Misty Hollow, gasped when he saw the piece of jewelry shining before him, shrieked when he realized what she had done, and tried to stop his forward momentum.  He was too late.

The image of his body stretched and lengthened, sucked into the ring as Darcy watched, the horrid and fetid mists following after.  There was no way that something so small could contain so much.  Possible or not, her aunt’s ring caught hold of the evil that was Nathaniel Williams and held him trapped within the way.

Darcy spasmed like someone had punched her in the gut.  It was a lot to take in, more than she had ever tried to do before.  Even forcing Nathaniel Williams out of her body hadn’t taken this much mental and physical strength.

The method of exorcism was simple.  First, chant the right words to create the rhythmic vibrations that opened the portal between the two worlds.  She had done that, just now when she had told herself over and over, “I am in control.”  It didn’t have to be those words.  They could be anything that had the same meter and cadence.  The book Aunt Millie had led her to—the one Nathaniel Williams had tried to keep her from seeing—had suggested using that phrase because of its positive energy.

Next, the doorway to the other side had to be opened forcefully, and held open.  Most spirits of the dead went to the other side because they wanted to.  Some needed a little help to go and were happy to take it.  For those few ghosts who didn’t want to leave the world of the living at all, the only way to get rid of them was by force. 

The door was open and waiting for Williams.  Now she needed to show him the way out.

Unable to make it to her feet, Darcy rose to her knees, keeping her focus on her ring the whole time.  The Pilgrim Ghost was lost inside.  Not literally, of course, but everything here was symbolism.  With a little bit of her own spirit used as a push, Darcy moved Williams along the etched lines and intricate maze design around her finger.  She tilted her hand this way and that, flipping it over, rolling it sideways, forcing him down the way against his will.  She heard him railing against her, swearing and cursing, and she didn’t take those curses lightly but it didn’t matter anymore.  When she got him where she wanted him, this would be done.

The wind rose up hard against her, lifting her hair straight up and stinging her eyes.  As she blinked rapidly to clear her vision, she lost sight of the trapped spirit on her finger.

He laughed, a harsh and bitter sound, thinking he had won at the last moment.  She caught her right wrist with her left hand, held it steady, focusing every scrap of energy she had left in her into keeping her hold on Williams’ ghost.

“No way,” she told him.  “No way do I let you out to cause trouble in my town again.  Misty Hollow belongs to the living.  You need to go now.”

Never!
he shrieked in her mind. 
I am eternal!  I am Nathaniel Williams!  I will have vengeance on the descendants of those who did me harm!

“Not where you’re going.”

She concentrated, searching for him down along the way, reaching out to feel for him…searching…

And then she found him.

The little dark bit of energy was moving backward along the line of an angular arc, a line that intersected three others right there.  Tilting her finger down, then up, moved him back into place. 

Still he struggled, and fought, and used the winds against her.  It was a struggle, and she was exhausted already.

With one final turn of her wrist, the spirit of the Pilgrim Ghost rolled down a last twisting curve and into the beautifully worked rose on the ring.

She felt his scream in her bones.  It was a painful and terrified sound, the sound of someone who knew they were going to die…for good.

It almost made her feel sorry for him.  Almost.

No.  Not really.

The ring had been cloudy with the mists dragged into it with Williams’ spirit.  Now, at the end of the exorcism, it shone brightly.  More brightly than mere silver ever could.  It was a celestial light, a light of purity and peace, pulling the evil that was Nathaniel Williams to his final rest against his will, kicking and screaming against Darcy’s spirit.

It hurt.  A lot.  She held on to the bitter end, feeling everything she had draining away from her.  Everything that was left in her.  If this didn’t end soon, she might get sucked in, too, and be lost forever.

It was a price she was willing to pay.  She didn’t want to, but if that was what it took to keep her friends safe, then so be it.

Even as that thought came to her mind, the rose on the ring flared.  It shone of its own accord, separate from the ring.  It was a red light that Darcy saw, and as she watched the petals of the red rose blossomed to their fullest, like a living thing.  Flecks of light lifted away from it, an effervescent glow, and Darcy knew she would never see anything so beautiful ever again in her life.

The light on the band slowly faded, ebbing away, leaving only the light of the rose.  Then even that lessened by degrees until all that was left was the ring.  A simple, beautiful silver band.

Nathaniel Williams was gone.  Darcy had won against the darkness.

Collapsing face first against whatever passed for ground here, Darcy shook her head and managed a faint smile.  “I am never, ever doing that again,” she said.  Then after a moment, she shrugged.  “Well.  Unless I have to.”