Spirit Seeker (15 page)

“Why do parents do it?” he’d asked.

“Do what?”

“Try to run their kids’ lives?”

I had been surprised at the bitterness in his voice. “It’s not running their lives,” I’d said. “It’s giving kids advantages and trying to prepare them for when they grow up.”

“Growing up won’t come soon enough for me,” Cody had said. He put a CD in the entertainment center and held out his arms. “Right music, right girl. C’mon, Holly. Let’s dance.”

I could hear the music swirling throughout the
room. It was the same soft sound Cody had chosen that night, but now it seemed harsher and louder.

Uncomfortable at the memory, I shifted in my chair. The vision of Cody faded, but the music went on relentlessly, pulling me into the present.

My eyes shot open as the music pounded inside my head. The room was filled with a suffocating, possessive greed, so intense that the air grew red, and the horrible smell of death was sickening. A whirlpool of horror and evil swirled around me, hot against the back of my neck and prickling up and down my arms. I sensed that someone was coming … coming from the hallway … coming closer … and closer …

I knew that at any moment someone I had good reason to fear was going to step through the doorway and meet me face-to-face.

T
he telephone next to my chair rang shrilly, shattering the vision. I leaped to my feet and screamed, holding my ears as the telephone’s jangle beat against them.

Heedlessly I ran through the front doorway, tripped over the brick edging on the walk, and fell facedown on the lawn. I didn’t even try to get up. I just lay there and sobbed. I had come so close—so very close—to receiving the answer to my question, but I hadn’t had the courage to stay in that room another minute.

As my sobs became dry shudders, Glenda spoke, and I raised my head to see that she was sitting cross-legged next to me, her hands clasped calmly in her lap. “Lock the door,” she said. “We must leave the house exactly as we found it.”

I scrambled to my feet and did as she said. The street was quiet. Either away at their jobs or safely
wrapped in the insulating hum of their air conditioners, no one had heard the commotion I’d made, and I was grateful.

I slowly walked back to Glenda and sat beside her. Nervously plucking at the long blades of grass, I asked the question over and over in my mind. Finally I was able to say it aloud. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” she said. “You were the one who asked to be shown the answer. I was there simply to guide you.”

I looked up quickly, but her features were soft and blank. “Didn’t you feel something … anything?” I asked. The fear returned, and I shuddered.

“It was your experience, not mine,” Glenda said. “Tell me—what did you learn?”

I drew up my knees and rested my arms and head on them. “Nothing!” I groaned. “I really blew it. The music was loud and horrible. Then the room got red and hot with a sickening, evil greed, and I knew that someone was coming. I could feel him coming from the den toward the room, and soon I’d see his face. Then the phone rang, and it was like someone screaming at me to run! Run away! I was never so scared in my life. I couldn’t take it.”

I looked up into Glenda’s dark, impassive eyes and groaned again. “I might have found out what I wanted to know, but I ruined everything.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “Maybe deep inside your mind you know who was going to come into the room.”

“No! I don’t!”

“You said you could ‘feel him coming.’ How do you know the person you sensed was male?”

Stunned by her question, I tried to think. Slowly the answer came to me. “Footsteps. I heard footsteps. They were measured and heavy—at least heavier than a woman’s would be.”

“You used the word
greed
.

“Yes.”

“Greed is a loathsome thing. It chews at a conscience until it has devoured it, because it is desperate for possessions it does not have.”

Cody? No! I quickly told myself that it wasn’t greedy of Cody to want a new car. His Thunderbird was so old it constantly needed repairs. Wanting a new car was just a normal feeling. It wasn’t greed. It wasn’t!

Glenda’s question broke into my thoughts. “What else did you learn?”

“Nothing.”

I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t, so I got up and brushed some grass from my jeans. “I’ve got to get home,” I said. “I might have to wait awhile for the bus.”

As Glenda rose gracefully, I searched for the right words. I’d choke on saying, “Thank you.” It would be weird to thank her for giving me the most awful experience of my life. “It was … uh … good of you to come with me,” I finally said.

“You have proved to both of us that you are receptive,” Glenda told me. “If you wish, we’ll try the experiment again.”

“I—I can’t.”

“You feel this way now, but when the memory is not as vivid, you’ll change your mind.”

“I won’t! Believe me, I won’t.”

I broke into a trot and made it over to the boulevard in time to catch my bus.

Exhausted, I leaned against the window. I knew I should think about what had happened. Maybe something else would come to me, but I pushed away the thoughts. I couldn’t take them. Not now.

When I finally arrived home, I carefully locked the door behind me and pulled the amber barrette from my hair. I wanted to destroy it, to stomp on it, to throw it far, far away. But Mom had given it to me. It had been a special gift, given in love.

Frustrated, I ran to the living room and shoved the barrette deep down inside the back of the sofa. Nobody would ever find it there. I’d never wear it again.

I jumped at the sound of the front-door bell, but I could see Sara trying to peer into the window next to the door, so I hurried to the door and opened it.

“You look terrible,” Sara said. Then she stepped inside and hugged me.

I hugged her back. “I’m sorry I was such a dork,” I told her.

“You weren’t a dork. I was coming down too hard on you.”

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

She stepped back and smiled. The smile was just what I needed.

“Your hair’s a mess. It’s all over your face,” she said. “Where’s that barrette you usually wear?”

I looked away. “Gone,” I said.

“Well, get your hairbrush and another barrette, and I’ll fix your hair for you.”

We ran upstairs. I pulled a large white plastic barrette from my drawer and sat on the bed while Sara brushed my hair.

“Where have you been?” she asked. “I saw you leaving early, and when I got home after school, I phoned everywhere I could think of trying to find you.”

I shrugged. “I went to see Cody’s lawyer.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t like him, Sara. I don’t think he’s going to help Cody at all.”

“You were there a long time. Did he talk about what he can do for Cody?”

“So far he doesn’t have any plans.” Sara closed the barrette with a snap, so I twisted around to face her. “He only let me stay a few minutes.”

“Then where have you been? I’ve been worried about you.”

Sara’s my best friend
, I told myself.
She’ll understand. But I can’t talk about what happened. I only want to forget it
.

Then, all of a sudden, I broke down and the whole story poured out, from the moment I entered the Garnetts’ house with Glenda.

As she listened, wide-eyed, Sara grew pale.

“Someone was coming to the doorway,” I said, “and I waited. I couldn’t move. But then the phone rang.”

“Oh!” Sara said. She looked sick.

“I screamed, and it all fell apart—the music, the horror—it disappeared. All I wanted to do was get out of that house, so I ran.” I sighed. “One minute more—just one minute, and I might have seen the murderer’s face. Oh, Sara, I came so close and ruined everything because I was such a coward!”

“You weren’t a coward.” Sara got to her feet and stared out of the window, her back to me. “Will you get mad at me if I tell you that I don’t think anything happened in that house, that Glenda Jordan just used the power of suggestion, and you fell into it?”

“Sara, I know what I saw and heard.”

“You saw and heard the things you wanted to see and hear.” She turned to face me. “Holly, you’ve got a good imagination, and Glenda used it. She’s weird. She’s probably harmless, and that’s the only reason she hasn’t been locked up. This awful thing she did with you had to have been some kind of great ego game for her. You’re probably the only person in the world who believes her. I bet her ego’s puffed up like a balloon.”

“No, Sara.”

“Yes, it’s true. Tell me, what did you really see?”

“The room with the bloodstains.”

“Didn’t you see the same thing when you came into the room, before you had your so-called vision?”

“I guess. But the vision was different.”

“How?”

“This time the air was red, like when you’re under a red sunlamp, and I felt … well, I felt all around me a kind of horror and greed.”

“Greed?” Sara’s eyes narrowed and she stared at me unbelievingly. “How can you feel greed?”

“I can’t explain it.”

Sara came to sit beside me and took my hands. “Of course you can’t explain it. Your mind was full of strange ideas that crazy woman put into it.”

“She didn’t.”

“She did.” Sara’s eyes filled with concern. “You’re so desperate to prove that Cody’s innocent, you’re not stopping to think. You’re ready to jump at anything that might help him—no matter how weird. You have to admit that this séance kind of thing you got into was
really
weird.”

“You weren’t there,” I said. “You don’t understand. It was all happening the way it was supposed to. If I’d just stayed … If only the phone hadn’t rung when it did …”

That strange, sick look flashed over Sara’s face again, and I gasped as I realized why. “
You’re
the one who phoned, weren’t you?” I demanded. “You said you were calling everyplace, trying to find me! It was you!”

“I did call the Garnetts’ house,” Sara said. “I was worried about you, Holly. I was terribly afraid you’d really do what you said you’d do and go into that house with Glenda. And you shouldn’t.”

“How could you do this to me?”

“I told you—because I was worried about you.”

“But you ruined it!” Tears began rolling down my cheeks, and I wiped them away with the back of my hands.

“I’m sorry, Holly,” Sara said, and she looked as miserable as I felt. “But believe me, please! I honestly don’t think there was anything there to ruin—just Glenda’s power of suggestion that had you going. You went there because you were desperate to help Cody. I called because I was desperate to find you.”

Under a stack of notebook paper on my desk, I found a box of tissues. I mopped my face and blew my nose before I turned to Sara. “We didn’t get very far, did we? Either of us?”

“I don’t know,” Sara said quietly. “Maybe my phone call stopped you from seeing something you shouldn’t have seen.”

“I thought you didn’t believe that—”

“Let me finish,” she said. “I was going to say that it stopped you from seeing whatever Glenda Jordan wanted you to see.” Sara paused. “Are you mad at me now?”

“No,” I said as I sank down on the bed. “I’m too tired inside to be mad at anybody.”

Sara reached over and touched my barrette. “I’m glad your amber barrette’s gone. See, it proves that Glenda was wrong when she said that stupid stuff about your being an amber girl.”

I slid off the bed. “Let’s go downstairs and get some Cokes.”

As we settled into the glider on the screened porch, Sara said, “Sherry’s mother is giving her a birthday party. It’s supposed to be a date party, but
right now there’s nobody I like enough to ask. Why don’t we go together and just hang out?”

“I wasn’t invited,” I said.

“You know you will be. You probably left school before Sherry had a chance to ask you.

“The problem is that the kids don’t know how to act around you or what to do with you, Holly. Maybe if you could talk to people or joke a little bit, like you normally do, they’ll relax. You’re just so … well, obsessed with Cody that you’ve shut everybody out.”

“Obsessed? That’s a strong word to use,” I said. “I’m just trying to prove that Cody’s innocent.”

“Why can’t you leave that up to the police—to your dad?”

“Because he isn’t keeping an open mind. He thinks this kind of killing fits a pattern.”

Sara was silent for a moment. Finally she asked, “How much do you care about Cody?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She sat up, hope in her eyes. “Then you aren’t in love with him?”

“We’ve been friends for four years, and before all this happened, I liked him a lot. That’s all.”

“Before?”

“I mean, I like him. But that’s not why I’m trying to help him. It’s a matter of fairness. A person is supposed to be thought of as innocent unless proven guilty, but everyone has taken it for granted that Cody is guilty, right from the beginning.”

“Face facts, Holly. You don’t know for sure if he’s guilty or innocent.”

“He said he didn’t do it.”

Sara nodded. “I understand how you feel,” she said. “But please, Holly, please don’t take chances! Let your dad handle the investigation without your help.”

D
ad showed up at the house before Mom, who had some errands to run after school. It was my night to make dinner, and, when he walked into the kitchen, I was busy stirring a Stroganoff sauce to pour over the meatballs that were browning in the cast-iron frying pan.

Dad sniffed the air and smiled. “Smells wonderful. When do we eat?”

“In about half an hour, when Mom gets home.”

“You’re a good cook, Holly. Almost as good a cook as your mother.”

“Tell her that sometime,” I said.

As Dad slipped off his gun and shoulder holster and laid them on the counter, he looked surprised. “What?”

“When’s the last time you told Mom she’s a good cook?”

He didn’t answer, so I said, “So, tell her. She’d like to hear it.”

Dad gulped down a long drink of water. “It’s hot out there,” he said. “Another month, at least, before it’ll begin to turn cool.”