K.J. Emrick - Darcy Sweet 13 - Ghost Story (7 page)

Her hand rose of its own accord, against her will, and slammed palm first into the mirror.  Nathaniel Williams’ hand slapped against it from the other side of the reflection.  She heard the glass stress under the blow, and knew if she hit much harder it would break, sharp edged slivers cutting into her flesh.  The ghost smirked at her.  That was what he wanted.

There were ways for a spirit to hurt someone when they had control of them.  Possessing spirits had been known to kill their victims, in rare cases.

She was in a bathroom full of chemicals and sprays and razors and other common household items that could be turned deadly with the flick of a wrist.

Her right hand pulled back and slammed forward again even as she grabbed for it with her left.  This time her palm stung with the force of the blow.  Tiny hairline cracks appeared around her fingers.

Blood dripped from the pad of her thumb.

Darcy had to act fast to get the entity out of her.  She might never have done an exorcism of another person before, with all the complicated techniques that were involved with that—the method and the way—but Darcy knew the simple method for getting a ghost out of herself.  She’d only had to use it once, when she was young and stupid and invited someone into her without realizing it, but a person didn’t easily forget that sort of thing.

She heard Jon running up after her.  Everything was happening so fast.  Only a few seconds had passed since she’d come up here, but a few seconds was all it would take for Nathaniel Williams to end her life.  She needed Jon’s help now. 
Right now.

“Jon!” she called down to him.  She couldn’t leave the bathroom.  The image in the mirror was holding her fast.  Her feet felt like they had been cemented in place.  “Jon, I need you to go downstairs and break the salt lines!”

His footsteps stopped halfway up the stairs.  “You need me to…what now?”

Her right hand pulled back again, struggling against the grip of her left.

“I need you to break the salt lines!” she repeated.  “Use a broom or your foot or your hand or whatever but break the lines!  Swipe through them!  As many as you can!  Do it now!  Do it
now
!”

She was screaming, and she was scared.  When she had put down those salt lines she had thought she was building a wall to keep ghosts out.  Checking Jon, finding nothing in him anymore, she had just assumed the ghost had left him and gone somewhere else.  But, it had still been here.  Right here inside of her.  In putting down the salt, by building that wall, she hadn’t protected them.  All she had accomplished was to box the ghost in.

With them.

Forcing the ghost out of her wouldn’t do any good if it was still trapped in the house.

Jon stumbled down the stairs with a loud thumping, and then she could hear a lot of banging down there.  Hopefully he had understood her hasty directions, because she couldn’t keep her arm back anymore, and she could tell this time her hand would go straight through the mirror.

There was no more time.

Locking eyes with Nathaniel Williams there in her own reflection made her feel cold and slithery inside but she found his gaze, and held it.  “There you are,” she said to him.  “I see you.  I feel you.”

Her hand curled into a fist, and jerked forward, then back, then forward.

It was now or never.

“Get.  Out!”

She put all of her life force behind those two words, pushed from deep within herself to force anything that was not her…
out
.  There was a heavy rush of foulness that collected right in her chest and ballooned and the pressure was terrible but she kept pushing on it and exerting her will against it until in the mirror she started to see the strain on the ghost’s face and she knew she was winning.

Nathaniel Williams opened his mouth, and screamed loud enough that Darcy heard it across the barrier between life and death.  The lights in the bathroom dimmed.  One of the energy efficient bulbs popped in a cloud of chemical dust.

Then the balled up mass of the entity that had taken up residence inside of her rushed away, leaving her dizzy and disoriented, stumbling backward and grabbing the shower curtain to keep from dumping herself into the tub.

The sound of the ghost’s scream dissipated like faint echoes in the distance, and it was gone.

Darcy needed to sit down.  She needed to lie down, and sleep for a week, and her stomach growled so hard that she doubled over in pain around it for a moment.  Self-exorcism.  It took a lot out of a girl.

There was no time to stop and rest, though.  She needed to know that the ghost was actually gone, and not still in the house.  If Jon had done what she asked, then they were fine.  There had been enough force behind that shove she’d given Nathaniel Williams’ spirit to send it half way across the spectral plains.  If it wasn’t still trapped in her house.

That was a big if.

“Jon!” she called out, weakly, forcing herself to move her feet and shuffle to the stairs, holding her right hand still, her life’s blood leaking out of a dozen little tiny cuts.  It wasn’t as bad as it looked, she decided.  Like a bunch of paper cuts really.  That was all.  She could wrap it in a towel later.  Right now, she needed to know if they were safe.

Struggling downstairs, leaning heavily on the railing, she found Jon waiting for her.  His face was pale.  His eyes were wide as he stared at her, searching her face.  Darcy knew what he was looking for.

“Is he…?” he started to ask.

Darcy swallowed and nodded.  “Yes.  Did you break the salt lines?”

“I think so.  I’ve never done this before.  I scuffed my feet through the lines in front of the doors.  Then I wiped away some of the salt from the windows.  Is that okay?  I didn’t know what you meant.”

She made it to him, and fell into his arms, loving how he held her.  “That’s what I meant, Jon.  Thank you.  You probably saved us both.”  The next part was harder for her to get out of a throat dry like desert sand.  “I’m sorry.  Jon, I was so sure it was you.  I never thought to check myself.  It was me.  It was me, Jon.”

“Shh,” he comforted her, combing her hair back from her face with his fingers.  “It’s all right, Darcy.  I know it was you.  You got rid of him.  You beat him.  It’s over.”

“No, Jon.  You don’t understand.  It was me, here, in this house.”

He scrunched up his eyebrows.  “Darcy, I know.  It was you.  You just got rid of him.”

“That’s not what I mean!”  She was trembling, and she held up her right hand, the sight of the blood making her nauseous.  Or, maybe that was because of what she was trying to explain to Jon.  “Nathaniel Williams was in me.  He was possessing me.  If he was in me now…”

Then maybe it was her that had killed the woman on Helen’s lawn.

She saw in his eyes that he understood her, even though neither of them could say it out loud.  He held her tighter, and stroked her back, and tried to keep his voice from being all choked up as he said, “It will be all right, Darcy.  We’ll figure it out.  Won’t we?  That’s what we always do.  We figure it out.  You and me.  We’ll figure this out.”

“He’s not gone,” she told him.  “I didn’t get rid of him for good.  Just got him out of me.”

Somehow, that fact made everything worse.

“What are you saying?” he asked her, suddenly very still against her.

“I’m saying, we didn’t stop him.  I have to do the exorcism still.  Oh.  And we need to redo the salt trails here before his spirit gathers itself back together and comes at us again.”

“How?  You destroyed that page in the book.  Or, he destroyed it, I mean.  All I’ve got is the last four sentences.  I checked.”

She nodded against his chest, not sure if she had ever felt more scared or more safe than she did in that moment in his arms.  “I tore it up to little pieces because I couldn’t stop him.  But, I read it first.  You brought me out of my haze long enough for me to see the page.  I read every word.  I know the method we need to use.  Thank you, Jon.  You probably saved my life.”

“Uh, no problem,” he muttered.  Then again, what do you say to someone after you’ve helped them break free of a vengeful spirit?

So.  She knew the method of the exorcism.  Even though Nathaniel Williams had tried to keep her from it by blurring her sight and clouding her mind, she had seen it and memorized it.  It was complicated but she had done harder rituals before.

All she needed was the way.  What was the way?

Darcy thought back to her dream.  What had Millie said about the way? 

Something that didn’t make any sense.  Something about how the way was right where it belongs and it was better off where it was.  No.  Not better.  That wasn’t the word she had used.

“Are you okay, Darcy?” Jon asked her, which she thought was a stupid question under the circumstances.  “Your hand is bleeding.  Let’s take care of that.”

“Shh,” she said.  “Hold on.  I’m trying to remember something.”

Not better.  Aunt Millie had said something else.  Millie had said, and it was where it needed to be now.

That wasn’t it, either.  Not exactly, anyway.  In a dream like that, one that connected her to the realm of the dead, anything that was said could have a very specific meaning.  She would need to remember the exact words if she was going to figure out what Millie had been trying to tell her.

She held up her right hand, saw the blood.  There didn’t seem to be any glass in the cuts, which was good, but she was right handed and it was going to be a pain to have it wrapped up while she was performing an exorcism or whatever else she would need to do.  Why did it need to be her right hand?

Wait.

That was it.  That was what Millie had said to her.  Right.  She had told Darcy that the way was where it had always been, and it was right where it belonged.

On her right hand, the antique silver ring that Millie had passed down to Darcy sat in its place on her finger. On her right hand.

It was right, where it belonged.

The way.  This was the way.

The ring had an odd geometrical design of curves and angles circling it, and a tiny rose crafted by some master metal smith to look so real it was like a tiny blossom had been caught in the metal itself.  Darcy had often wondered at the designs on the ring.  There was nothing in Millie’s journal or any of her other books about it.  It had simply been a unique piece of jewelry, a stunning memory of the aunt who had raised her for most of her formative years.

Only now, looking at it again in light of the communication method she had read through, she could see the ring for what it was.  It was a sculpted path, a representation of the way the exorcised spirit had to be forced away from this mortal coil so that it could not find its way back.

It was the way.

Clenching her hand into a tight fist, she breathed a few silent words.  “Thank you, Millie.”

She knew how to do it now.

She was ready.

When Darcy had told Jon that she’d never performed an exorcism, she’d told him the truth.  There had been a few people in town or as far away as Inglesburg who thought their houses were haunted and thought they needed an exorcism.  Sometimes, to make them feel better, Darcy had made up a ritual cleansing on the spot.  She would throw some salt, walk through the house reciting Latin or gibberish even, and then walk away declaring the house clean.

A bit dramatic, but every time she’d done it the families in those houses never had a problem with their “ghost” again.  Probably because it had only been the product of an overactive imagination coupled with the sounds of a house settling.

Doing a real exorcism, on a specter as powerful as the Pilgrim Ghost, would require a lot of energy and willpower.  Which was why she opted to go to bed before she fell asleep on the floor.

After repairing the salt lines and making sure all the windows and doors were locked, Darcy had stumbled.  Jon had been exactly two steps behind her the whole time and had been there to catch her.  In actuality, her knees had buckled from exhaustion, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.  He was worried about her enough as it was.  She also wasn’t going to argue with him when he told her to take her clothes off and get in bed.

Dreams came and went, and she knew some of them came from her Aunt Millie even though she didn’t appear in any of them personally.  There were some about her childhood, her mother and father and sister.  Smudge walked through several of them as his normal cat self.  A few were close to nightmares, made up of worries about what would happen if they couldn’t stop Nathaniel Williams.

If he killed anyone else.

She was watching Williams’ hanging in one of the dreams.  It was the scene from the painting in Benson’s book, only it was so very real.  She saw Williams swinging from his gallows rope.  She saw the look of satisfaction on the faces of the people around him, heard the insults they hurled at him.  Over in the corner, the grandfather clock ticked its way toward midnight, the second hand moving steadily around until it was right at the cusp of striking the witching hour.

Then it stopped, and the clock’s mechanisms broke with a loud
sproing
.

11:59.

Nathaniel Williams stopped kicking.  His body lay still and limp where it hung.  He was dead.

Through the crowd came Whitmarsh Grace.  Darcy had never seen a picture of him but she knew instinctively that this was her distant ancestor, the man who had sent Nathaniel Williams to his death.  He was tall and lean, with the hard look of someone who would just as soon shoot you now and ask questions of your corpse.  He tipped a wide black hat to another man in the crowd, a portly gentleman in a black coat with long tails who gave the impression of being the leader of the group.

A wooden ladder was brought forth and Whitmarsh climbed up to the beam that supported the dead man on his rope.  From his belt he unsheathed a long, thick knife and Darcy thought the dream would show him cutting Nathaniel Williams down.  Instead, he began carving into the beam.  Intricate designs that matched the ones in the painting.  The same pattern in her ring.

“What art thou about up there, Whitmarsh?” the portly man asked.

“Can’t risk that his spirit might hold us ill,” Whitmarsh answered.  “I know a bit of spellwork from my mother.  This will keep his spirit from finding his way back and haunting us here.”

In the dream, Darcy looked down at the ring on her hand.  Whitmarsh’s carvings were close.  Close, but he had missed a vital line.  Without that one part of the way, Whitmarsh’s ghost would be free to come back.  Darcy’s ancestor had made a mistake.

Now they were dealing with the results. 

After that she slept soundly for hours.  The dreams were all done.  Whatever they had to tell her had already been told and she was left to herself for a while.  Eventually she woke up from that peaceful, dark oblivion, slowly coming around enough to realize it was one o’clock in the afternoon.  When it dawned on her that it was a week day, she sat up in a panic, thinking about how her store needed to be opened and she needed to check on Grace and Aaron and Helen and…

“Ohh,” she groaned, not sure if her stomach or her head hurt worse.  The aches in her muscles were just faint reminders of something she’d rather forget.  Her right hand had been wrapped in gauze that showed faint spots of red here and there.  Everything else was tolerable, but her stomach and her skull were holding Olympic tryouts to see which could cause her the most grief.  The judges were still conferring.

Darcy studied her hand, with the makeshift bandage on it, and smiled at Jon’s handiwork.  Not bad.  The cuts would heal over quickly and she still had use of her hand even though two of the fingers were bandaged up like a mummy’s.  She looked over her ring again, seeing the way etched into it even better now that her mind was clearer.

“There you are.”  Jon’s voice sounded relieved as he stopped to lean in the bedroom door.  He was wearing dark dress pants and a blue shirt with a stiff collar.  Work clothes.  He noticed her looking him over.  “I had to go into the station this morning.  I wanted to know where they were with the investigation.  Chief Daleson told me to take the rest of the day off, though.  I told him you weren’t feeling well.  He didn’t argue with me.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said, happy that she could provide him with an excuse to play hooky.  She couldn’t disagree with what he’d said, though.  She felt horrible.  “I need to check in with my job, too.  I have a bookstore to run, you know.”

“Izzy has it,” he told her, meaning her one and only employee.  “I talked to her this morning.  She’s got everything covered.”

Darcy knew she could trust Izzy.  She’d come to rely on her friend more and more since they’d started working together.  Now that she knew the store was covered, she could focus on other things.

Like how empty her stomach was.

A loud rumbling in her belly was followed by cramps that twisted her insides.  “Unh,” she complained.  “I need to eat.  Like, a lot.  But I want to check on Grace and the others first.  They need to know what’s going on.  About the ghost, I mean.  And, well, me.”

About her being moved up to number one on the suspect list, she kept herself from adding out loud.

“It’s okay,” Jon said to her.  He stepped away from the door and came to sit down next to her on the bed.  Darcy didn’t know if maybe he was speaking to her silent fears.  “I invited everyone here for dinner.  I figured that way we’d all be together in one place, and we could let everyone know what happened.”

“You didn’t tell them yet?”

He shrugged.  “It didn’t seem like the kind of thing to talk about over the phone.”

“Good point.”  Her stomach growled at her again.  “Um.  Maybe I could get a snack before dinner?”

Leaning in to kiss her cheek, he finally smiled.  “For you, Sweet Baby, anything.”

Her nickname from his lips made her feel a little better.  Even in the middle of a dangerous situation that none of them could tell anyone about, she and Jon could remain a strong team.

They had made it past their rough patch, when everything seemed to be going wrong for them.  Bad choices, egos, fate.  All of it.  Now that they were back together they could face anything.

“Come on,” he said.  “I’ll help you downstairs.  Then I’ll make you the best turkey sandwich you’ve ever had.”

***

Jon had asked that everyone meet at five o’clock, a little earlier than they usually had dinner but it seemed like a good idea to have everyone together before the sun started to set.  Darcy had to agree with him.  She doubted any of them would be comfortable out in the dark of night.  Not now.

Not that it mattered.  Grace and Aaron dropped by shortly after three o’clock.  Aaron looked a little sheepish, and Grace tried to explain it away by saying she was dying to know what was going on with the investigation down at the police station.  Darcy knew better, though.

They spaced themselves out on the couch and in the two comfortable easy chairs in the living room.  They’d replaced their old chairs just last week, and these new ones were gray suede, comfortable and homey.  Aaron almost fell into one, his eyes drooping heavily.

“He’s been up all night,” Grace explained in a whisper as she handed baby Addison over to sit in her auntie Darcy’s lap.  “He wouldn’t even come lay down in bed.”

“I was worried,” Aaron said.  “And I’m tired, not deaf.”

Grace rolled her eyes, but Darcy could tell that she loved Aaron for wanting to protect her and their new baby.

While Grace and Jon discussed the details of Bonnie Verhault’s death, at least as far as the officers of the Misty Hollow Police Department understood them, Darcy rocked Addison gently in her arms.  Such a pretty baby.  Grace and Aaron had done a great thing in bringing this little life into the world.  She couldn’t help but think that maybe she and Jon could do the same, soon, if their plans for the wedding ever fleshed themselves out.

She was reminded again of that moment during Nathaniel Williams’ manifestation at Helen’s house when she had been sure that baby Addison was communicating with her.  There had been this sensation of hearing someone speaking, crying out for help, and it hadn’t been any of the adults.  Had she imagined it?

In the hospital, when Grace had just given birth and Darcy had seen Addison for the first time, there had been this instant sense of connection between them.  After considering that feeling from every possible angle Darcy had come to a single conclusion.  It seemed the family gift had been passed down to Grace’s baby.  Addison had a connection to the paranormal just like Darcy did. 

That little fact was something that Darcy was still keeping secret, waiting for a good time to let Grace know what her baby would become, but it was just as much a part of Addison as her ten fingers and ten toes were.  So, if this beautiful little baby had that gift, why shouldn’t she be able to communicate with Darcy?  Even if it was only telepathically.

“Can you hear me, Addison?” she whispered, looking into the child’s wide blue eyes.  “Can you talk to Aunt Darcy?”

“Sis?” Grace asked her, interrupting her efforts to reach out to Addison.  “You okay?”

“Sure,” she said quickly.  “Just having a moment with my niece.  What were we talking about?”

“What else?” Grace said wryly.  “We’re talking about that dead girl.  Jon says that the guys down at the station have notified her next of kin and touched base with her employer.  She was here in Misty Hollow on business, scouting a location for a client.  A land purchase.”

“Right.”  Darcy picked up the explanation from there.  “The whole deal with Nathaniel Williams is that he thought all of the area in and around Misty Hollow belonged to him.  He felt strongly enough about it to get himself hung fighting over it.  It makes sense that his ghost has the same unresolved issues.”

“Okay, fine, I’ll play along,” Grace said, nervously pulling at the tips of her fingers.  “This ghost has problems.  Big, major problems that make him homicidal.”  She saw the look Darcy gave her and quickly added, “This is your area, Darcy.  I’m not doubting you.  It’s just a lot to swallow.  Anyway.  The ghost wants everyone to pay for being mean to him and taking away his property.  Fine.  Why is he coming out now?  Why not a hundred years ago?  Or fifty or ten, or whatever.  Why now?”

“That’s a good question,” Darcy said.  “I’m not sure I know the whole answer, but I think it has something to do with history.  There are families in Misty Hollow who are descendants of the original settlers.  Williams’ group.  It turns out, the elected lawman who arrested and then hung Williams was our ancestor.  Whitmarsh Grace.  You know that whole thing about mom’s side of the family descending from the Streeters, who descended from the Graces?”

Her sister nodded along with the story.  “I remember.  Wow.  I didn’t realize law enforcement went that far back in our family tree.”

Darcy tickled baby Addison’s chin and managed a laugh.  “All the way back to the beginning.  Guess it’s in your genes.  So, if he’s coming out now, it might have something to do with our connection to the town’s history.  If enough pieces fall back into place, it can raise a troubled spirit.  Whitmarsh Grace was the lawman at the time, you’re in law enforcement now.  Plus I’m engaged to Jon, and I get myself involved in his work more often than not.”

“Thankfully for me,” Jon added.

Darcy stuck her tongue out at him before continuing.  “So there’s that, but also there’s how Williams believed the town was stolen from him way back then, and how someone is buying up land in the town now.  There’s a lot of parallels in play here and I’m betting there’s even more to it.  Another connection or two that tugged at the Pilgrim Ghost somehow.”

“That’s all well and good,” Jon said, “but it doesn’t help us.  For whatever reason, he’s here now, and we need to stop him.  Darcy has figured out a way to do it.”

He explained everything that had happened to them here as quickly as he could.  The book, Darcy’s possession, all of it.  When he was done, the room was as silent as a tomb.  Even Aaron sat up wide eyed, his exhaustion forgotten.

“Wow, sis,” Grace said at last.  “That’s…I don’t know what to call what that is.”

“Saying it sucks just about covers it,” she offered.