The Forgotten Child

by Melissa Erin Jackson

  But, if you’re up for it, a group of us conduct séances once a month. I’m the acting medium, so you wouldn’t need to do anything other than offer your energy. If anything comes through, they’ll speak through me, not you.

  Orin might be the only person who knows what this “dark room” is—he manifested himself to speak to you for a reason. Don’t you want to know what that reason is?

  Think about it and let me know,

  Nina

  Xavier had mentioned séances during introductions at the ranch. Nina had made contact with Xavier’s mother. Had known things she couldn’t have. And Xavier had been so impressed with her that he’d gotten her to join his team. That all had to point to Nina’s abilities, didn’t it?

  But a séance? That was basically the same as using a Ouija board—and sometimes mediums used them during séances—except the medium herself sometimes became the board. The crash of Becca’s shelf hitting the floor of its own volition replayed in Riley’s head. The word “Mariah” written over and over on the walls. The stories about whatever had come through hitting and scratching and bruising Becca to the point that the Greens moved to escape it.

  Maybe that all happened simply because Riley and Becca had been too young to know what they were getting themselves into. Or maybe it had something to do with Riley herself.

  On her drive home, her mind filled with questions about séances. She ran through every scene in a movie or TV show she’d seen that featured them. There were sham séances and terrifying ones. Possessions by malevolent spirits and visitations by friendly ghosts.

  If Nina did them regularly, it couldn’t be that dangerous, right?

  But then Riley recalled the look on Nina’s face when they’d been in that cellar. How the exploding bulbs had sent Pamela out of the room as fast as her feet could carry her, while Nina looked as if she’d just found nirvana. Nina’s séances were likely tame. The type of séances where deceased loved ones simply came by to impart messages to those left behind. But was it possible to have a tame séance if the spirit in question was a convicted serial killer?

  When had her life turned into this? That was what she needed to know.

  Still lost in thought, she headed up the stairs to her apartment. She almost tumbled back down when she finally snapped to and spotted a person sitting at the top of the staircase near her door.

  It was Michael.

  “Jesus!” she whisper-shouted, hand to her chest.

  Startled, he looked up from his phone, face awash in the blue glow of the screen. “Hi. I’m staying with you or you’re staying with me until this whole tracker thing gets sorted out.”

  He clearly had that one ready.

  Taking a few more steps up, she said, “Michael—”

  He stood, sticking his phone in his pocket, the only light now the dim bulb by her door. A small duffel bag sat by his feet. “If you say no, I’ll just sleep on your doormat. It’s your choice if you want me to be eaten by rats in the night.”

  “There are no rats!”

  “I saw one the size of a small car scurry by here while I was waiting.”

  She sighed dramatically.

  He frowned, hands in his pockets. “I mean … if you really don’t want me here I can—”

  “No, it’s not that. I just don’t want you to totally disrupt your life over this.”

  “Being around you isn’t disrupting anything. You’re stuck with me until you tell me to go kick rocks.”

  She joined him on the small landing. “You sure?”

  “Yes,” he said, stepping out of her way so she could unlock the door.

  “Okay then. Because I’m thinking of attending a séance.” She walked into the apartment, leaving him standing on her mat with his mouth hung open.

  He cursed softly to himself as he grabbed his bag. “You’re really lucky I like you so damn much.” It was his turn to sigh dramatically. Closing the door behind him, and dropping his bag, he said, “All right. What the hell is a séance, exactly?”

  “An invitation sent to the Other Side or the Great Beyond or another dimension or whatever to allow spirits to manifest and speak through a medium.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me,” she said. “But Nina will be conducting it.”

  “Do we trust that Nina knows what the eff she’s doing?”

  “She was good enough for Xavier.”

  “True. But how … safe is it?”

  “Jury’s still out.”

  “So there’s a possibility that it’ll be like the Mariah-Ouija board episode all over again?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re probably going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

  “I’m seriously considering it.”

  “Even though the last time Orin talked to you, he made shit explode.”

  “Yeah.”

  He sighed again. “I would like to start drinking now.”

  Another week passed with no word from the detective, so Riley rang him to check on progress. He assured her that he was looking into it, but the paperwork end of things always slowed things down. Plus, he had current cases to work on. Last week, he’d emailed back to say he’d pass the information about the stalkery email on to a local officer he knew. Riley hadn’t heard anything since.

  “I promise you I’m working on it,” he told her. “It’ll just take time. This isn’t an episode of CSI. The Santa Fe PD doesn’t have a homicide division. We have our daily cases and we get to these older ones in the spare moments. Renee is still a priority.”

  “He’s following me.”

  The detective sighed. “My guy is on it. Have you received anything beyond the email you forwarded?”

  She rehashed all of it: the surprise work visit, the tracker on her car, and how she’d called an officer. “The woman said to bring the tracker in and maybe they could figure out where it came from.”

  A choked sound came out of Detective Howard.

  “Are you … laughing?”

  “Sorry,” he said, coughing now. “Honestly, unless he escalates or there’s a record of his behavior or a witness to the harassment, your file will be pushed to the bottom of the pile until someone has a light day and has time to wade through paperwork. We can’t come down on a guy just because he’s a disgusting human being. Half the population would be locked up in that case.”

  Riley pursed her lips. Some disgusting human beings did nothing more than leer and make people uncomfortable. Some pushed that boundary and hurt people. How did you know which it would be? And how did you stop it before it happened, rather than just punishing them after the fact?

  “I’m not telling you to skip the step of filing a report,” he told her. “I probably shouldn’t have said any of that. I think the psychic thing makes me a tad nervous. Like you’d know if I was lying.”

  “Aren’t detectives supposed to be stoic and hard to crack?”

  “Maybe I’m getting too old.”

  She managed a laugh. “I’m a medium, not a mind reader.”

  Clearing his throat, he said, “What are your interactions with him like now?”

  “Nothing, really,” she said. “We email each other occasionally under the guise of me being a journalist working on a story about him.”

  “But you haven’t seen him? He hasn’t made in-person contact other than the night he came to the restaurant? Five weeks now since he put the tracker on your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Keep doing what you’re doing. If you avoid contact altogether, he might escalate. Avoid meeting him anywhere, especially alone. The second he starts to act shifty, call me. I’ll reach out to my guy in your area again.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding.

  “You have pepper spray?”

  Riley swallowed, thinking of Renee. “I’ll get some.”

  “Good,” he said. “Stay safe.”

  So she played eager journalist and sent drafts back and forth with Francis. He seemed happy with how the article
was shaping up.

  The day after she parked her car in Albuquerque Life’s lot—and then took a taxi into a nearby shopping area to run errands, before taking a taxi back to her car later—Francis was even more chatty in emails than usual.

  In fact, the more her behaviors—based solely on the movements of her car—matched up with a good little girl keeping her nose out of things that weren’t her business, the more flirtatious Francis got. He’d email her out of nowhere just to ask how her day was, or to tell her he’d been thinking about her all day, or to say he couldn’t wait until the story on him was finished so they could “explore what else their relationship had to offer.”

  Relationship. He was insane.

  While she didn’t out-and-out flirt back, she didn’t discourage him either. She needed him to think their arrangement was as shallow as possible so he didn’t ask too many questions.

  One of Riley’s exhaustive searches led her down a rabbit hole about stalking victims. They had few protections, and once the police really got involved, it was usually because things had turned violent—if not fatal—for the victim, just as Howard said. And with Francis’ past, she was too scared to poke the hornet’s nest.

  She understood now why so many victims just kept their mouth shut and their head down. Knew why Mindy would much rather lock herself up in her house and not come out unless absolutely necessary. Then she stumbled on a Dateline episode about stalking victims—one featuring an actress from a popular primetime show. If celebrities couldn’t get help from the police, how could she?

  Riley just hoped that this meant Francis was backing off the in-person surveillance and starting to trust her again. That his paranoia was ebbing.

  But no matter what she told herself, she was antsy. What if it took months to hear back from the detective about reopening the case? She’d heard countless stories about evidence sitting in storage even with active cases.

  She couldn’t leave the tracker on her car forever. Couldn’t always feel the need to look over her shoulder when she left the house, worried Francis lurked out there, waiting for her to do something he deemed suspicious.

  Which was why, almost a week after she first received the email from Nina, she wrote back and said, “I’m in. When and where?”

  Then she called Jade.

  “Hey, girl,” Jade said. “What’s up? It’s Sunday. Isn’t Michael usually cattle-prodding your oyster ditch with his lap rocket by now?”

  Riley damn near fell off her couch. “What?”

  “I heard that the other day! Isn’t it great? I’ve been waiting to use it!”

  “Where the hell are you hanging out? Seedy taverns by the harbor?”

  “Ugh, I wish,” she said. “No, really, what’s up?”

  She’d almost forgotten. “Wanna go to a séance?”

  Jade squealed. “This is the happiest day of my life!”

  CHAPTER 23

  On Friday evening, Riley and Jade sat in Jade’s car outside Nina’s small corner house on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

  The mostly brick house had been painted over white, the door and window trim a faded red, likely similar in color to the bricks beneath the layers of white paint. Four red steps led to the small porch where a pair of black Adirondack chairs sat, a small table with a flowering cactus between them.

  “Looks normal enough,” Jade commented from the driver’s seat.

  Then a pair of women in all black—one wearing a short cape—rounded the corner. They had pale skin, wore thick black lipstick, and had dyed jet-black hair. They both wore combat boots with heavy buckles on the sides. Riley watched them walk up the steps to Nina’s house and let themselves in.

  “Oh hell,” said Jade.

  “They do monthly séances,” Riley said. “They probably aren’t going to look like investment bankers.”

  Jade blew out a long, slow breath. “They just look like they’re ready for this shit. I’m not sure I’m ready. Pamela still has nightmares.”

  “You said you were excited!”

  “I am! But I also feel like I might crap my pants,” she said. “You’re sure contacting Orin is a good idea?”

  “Jade!”

  “Sorry! She was in a cape. Now I’m panicking.”

  “It’s been two and a half weeks since I contacted Detective Howard the first time and he just tells me he’s working on it. Creepy-ass Francis has had a tracker on my car for almost six weeks now,” Riley said. “In the meantime, I’m going to go broke paying for a ride every time I go somewhere I don’t want Francis to know about. I’m sick of waiting for something to happen.”

  “Good enough for me,” Jade said. “Let’s go.”

  Instead of letting themselves in as the Goth Twins had, Riley knocked.

  Nina pulled the door open a few seconds later and grinned. “Yay! I’m so glad you could make it. Come on in. Nice to see you again, Jade.”

  They dropped their purses on the little bench seat by the door. The small, tidy living room had a white-and-blue-striped two-seater couch resting against one wall, framed on either side by low bookshelves. One held books on everything from ghosts to Wicca, the other lined with framed photos. Several featured Nina with a young boy. Her son, she guessed. A couple were of her and a handsome, smiling man. Current husband? Ex?

  On the opposite wall sat a TV stand, flat-screen TV, and a set of built-in bookshelves—these crammed with novels. The mantel of the bookcase was covered in owl figurines. Wooden ones, ceramic ones, tall ones, short ones—a few made out of odd materials, like pine cones. Their eyes followed her everywhere she went. It gave her the heebie-jeebies.

  To the right of the living room, a small hallway led to the bathroom and at least one bedroom. To the left, Riley could make out the edge of a dining table.

  “Come meet the gang,” Nina said, and ushered Riley and Jade to the left. A doorway led to the kitchen where the Goth Twins and a middle-aged man stood, each holding a glass of wine.

  Riley wanted seven of those.

  Nina promised she would be back in a moment, then left the way she’d come.

  The five of them made awkward introductions and managed idle chitchat about what part of the city they all lived in. The Goth Twins were Megan and Charlotte; Megan wore the short cape. Theodore—who went by Teddy—poured wine for Riley and Jade.

  By the time Nina returned a minute later, Riley had drained her glass.

  “Ready?” Nina asked the group, though her focus was on Riley.

  Riley managed a curt nod in response as Jade looped her arm through hers. The wooden floorboards creaked slightly beneath their feet, especially Megan’s thick black boots. The wine hadn’t dulled her nerves as much as she’d hoped.

  They turned right down the short hallway on the other side of the house. The sparsely furnished room had a round table that ate up most of the space, covered in a dark purple tablecloth. A single recliner sat in one corner and a small table rested against the wall in another. On top, a small stereo played soft instrumental music—Celtic, maybe—and incense stuck out of a flat, wooden burner that had been lit in front of it, a thin, curling snake of lavender-smelling smoke rising from the tip. Nothing hung on the white walls. A candelabra in the middle of the table holding four flickering candles provided the only light.

  “Everyone have a seat and get comfortable,” Nina said.

  Riley and Jade sat next to each other and Megan sat on Riley’s other side. Nina wound up directly across from her.

  Charlotte closed the door, causing the shadows thrown around the room by the flickering candle flames to become even more pronounced. The lavender incense left Riley vaguely lightheaded.

  Once seated, Nina said, “Everyone hold hands, close your eyes, and breathe. I will say a quick prayer before we get started.”

  The prayer, whispered more to herself than to the group, featured the word “goddess” a couple times, and Riley wondered if Nina was Wiccan.

  “Okay. You can open your eyes now, but keep the li
nk going with everyone’s hands,” said Nina. “I want you all to think of someone you’d like to hear from today. Don’t tell me any details until something comes through.”

  Their silence stretched on for long minutes, the soft, plaintive cry of wind instruments the only sound. Riley had come in hopes of getting answers from Orin, but the thought of the events in the cellar repeating themselves made her stomach clench painfully.

  It felt as if something was in her stomach, actually. It knocked around, bumping into the walls. Then stilled.

  What the actual hell?

  Blowing out a slow breath, she tried to imagine Orin’s face. The smiling, younger version of him, rather than the dead-eyed man from his mugshot.

  The sensation in her stomach returned. It thumped once, twice, three times. Then stilled for several seconds. Thump, thump, thump. Every time it happened, it came in threes. It felt like being kicked from the inside.

  By the sixth time, she felt compelled to say something. It drove her slightly mad. As if it would never stop if she didn’t acknowledge it. “Is someone here pregnant?”

  Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. She didn’t realize what she’d said until the words left her mouth.

  Megan, who held one of her hands, tensed at the question, but didn’t speak.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “Three months pregnant?”

  The reply was a shaky, “Me. Three months today.”

  “What?” Charlotte asked. “Why haven’t you told me? I’m your sister.”

  Megan, tears in her eyes, stared at Riley a moment before glancing at Charlotte across the table. “We wanted to be sure before we told anyone. After the miscarriage … I couldn’t … the thought of telling anyone I was pregnant again and then having to tell them I wasn’t …”

  “But this time everything is—”