Gone Ghost

by Sara C. Roethle

  My jaw dropped. “And what if they are just wanting to screw me over? They might hurt him instead.”

  “Better me than you,” Chase stated.

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “Says who?”

  Jason raised his hand.

  I snorted, not surprised that Jason would rather sacrifice Chase than me. “This is my deal,” I stated, “so I decide who the witches draw from, and I choose me.”

  “We're summoning my brother,” Chase argued.

  “Then you should be the one at full-strength to deal with him,” I argued right back.

  Chase shook his head. “The whole point is to convince him to work with us on the grounds of making amends with you. He'll want a guarantee that you won't try to kill him. If the spell takes enough energy for you to lose consciousness, my promises won't be very convincing.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but couldn't think of a way around the point he'd just made.

  “You know he's right,” Jason added, rubbing salt in the argument-losing wound.

  I crossed my arms, then cringed at the pain of pressure on both my stomach and arm bandages. “I can't believe you both worked against me to sort this argument out beforehand.”

  Chase's expression softened. “I don't view it as working against you if we're trying to keep you from harm.”

  Jason rolled his eyes. “But Xoe does.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, then the power went out and everything went dark. I sat perfectly still, wondering what happened since there were no storms in the forecast.

  I sensed movement, then a hand found mine, though I wasn't sure whose it was.

  “Do you hear that?” Chase said from beside me, confirming whose hand I held.

  “It's like a high-pitched whining,” Jason answered from the general area he'd been when the lights went out.

  I squeezed Chase's hand tightly in anticipation. I could feel an electric buzzing in the air that seemed to be mounting. Suddenly, I was deafened by the sound of shattering glass. I hunched over and covered my face reflexively. It sounded like every window and mirror in the house had exploded simultaneously. As the glass settled, I could hear my mom screaming. Something must have still been happening in her room.

  “No,” I whispered. I stood and pulled away from Chase to blindly stumble toward the stairs. Footsteps raced up the stairs ahead of me, letting me know that Jason had beat me to the punch. At least, I hoped it was him and not some unknown intruder.

  My mom screamed again, propelling me forward. The stitches in my stomach strained as I threw myself up the stairs, but the tearing pain wasn't enough to stop me. I couldn't lose another parent. Not now.

  I felt like I was moving in slow motion, even though I knew realistically I reached the top of the stairs in a matter of seconds. I ran down the hall, using my memory more than spacial awareness to keep from running into anything. As I neared my mom's room, a green glow became apparent. Jason stood in to doorway, silhouetted by green light.

  Chase reached my side and we both stepped forward to peer around Jason in awe. The smaller pieces of furniture in the room floated on their own, occasionally popping and crackling with currents of static electricity. The green glow wasn't emanating from anywhere in particular, but was more intense around the floating objects.

  I pushed past Jason and stepped into the room, too panicked to worry about the possible repercussions. My mom was nowhere to be seen.

  I distantly felt tears dripping down my face, but I couldn't seem to focus. Chase walked up behind me. I felt his hands land on my shoulders as Jason walked further into the room. He reached out to touch the floating lamp, then recoiled in surprise as it shocked him with a loud zap.

  I pulled away from Chase, desperate for some clue to where my mom might be. My foot landed in something slippery and thick. I crouched down to look at the substance as my mom's cell phone floated by in front of my face. The stuff was dark and almost glittery, and somehow familiar.

  I looked out across the carpet, illuminated by the green glow. There were more globs of the substance, some as large as my mom's slightly hovering bed. It also coated some of the furniture, seeming to radiate in intensity from a central point.

  Suddenly it clicked. “The dream realm,” I muttered, not fully understanding my own conclusion.

  Neither Chase nor Jason seemed to hear me, too mesmerized by the odd scene.

  I stood and cleared my throat, “A portal was made to the dream realm here. I've seen this slime before, the first time I went looking for my grandmother.”

  Chase's shocked expression looked strange illuminated by the green light. “How can that be possible? The only two demons that can make portals are you, and-”

  “My grandmother,” I finished.

  “But she's dead,” Jason argued.

  I shook my head. “If she's the one haunting me . . . ” I trailed off.

  “You think she took your mom to the dream realm?” Chase asked, confused.

  I shook my head, feeling numb. “I don't know what I think, but something either came from, or went to the dream realm from this room. There's no other way this goop could have gotten here.”

  Chase walked up to me and grabbed my hand. “Then let's go.”

  I looked around my mom's room. Everything was in disarray, but not the kind of disarray it would be in if I made my own portal in there. I couldn't use the same form of travel that I used between the underground and the human world. Traveling between realms required portals.

  “Not here,” I stated. “We need to go outside where I won't destroy anything more than trees.”

  Jason came to stand on my other side. “I'm coming too.”

  I looked up at him. I was nervous enough going back to that place myself, and actually didn't mind the extra company. “Are you sure?”

  Jason nodded, though he really didn't look sure.

  Not wanting to waste any more time, I took his answer at face value, and turned to leave the room. Jason and Chase followed me out into the hall and down the stairs, like tall, solemn shadows in the green light.

  I didn't bother checking the electricity on my way down. The light bulbs were probably all toast anyhow. Instead, I felt my way blindly through the living room toward the front door.

  We let ourselves outside. The night was peaceful and dark, with just the barest sliver of moon visible outside. The air was cold, but no colder than the icy pit of my stomach. As we walked across the yard, memories of my first dreamworld experience came flooding back. I shivered as I recalled the dark, ominous creatures, only visible in reflections, that preyed upon visitors.

  Next my thoughts jumped to the demon I'd met who'd originally owned the ring that was stolen by my grandmother, passed on to my dad, then passed to me. The ring that still resided on my finger. The demon had tried to kill me, and Dorrie had come to the rescue, shoving her so hard that she went through a wall. Dorrie had done the same thing to my grandmother, only there was no wall to go through, and the fall had broken her neck.

  Really, it would have been a good idea to bring Dorrie with us, but I couldn't risk anyone finding out that she'd left the dreamworld.

  We left my yard and continued walking until we reached a more remote part of the woods. We stopped to look around, surrounded only by trees and the sound of chirping crickets. It was lucky that my mom's house was on the edge of the forest, so we didn't have to go far for such seclusion.

  I took a deep breath, then lifted my hands away from my sides. Jason and Chase each took one, squeezing way too tight. I couldn't blame them for being nervous. We weren't just traveling to another place, we were traveling to an entirely different plane of existence.

  “I'm going to aim for the correct plane,” I explained, “but the dream realm is really confusing. We may end up somewhere else, in which case, we'll have to find a driver.”

  Not waiting for anyone to protest, I closed my eyes and thought of the eerie place in the dreamworld that looked like a scene out of Dra
cula, hoping that it was the only place that had the sparkly slime that was left in my mom's room.

  I gritted my teeth as we were all flung upward. We popped out of existence, only to land in a jumbled heap on hard asphalt. I groaned and turned my head to see a lonely bench next to a flickering streetlight.

  10

  Chase crawled out of the dog pile we'd formed to sit a few feet away on the asphalt while he caught his breath. “You've gotten rusty at portal making,” he observed.

  I shrugged as I rubbed a sore shoulder. “It was never a very comfortable journey.”

  Jason, who'd moved to sit off to my other side, looked around warily. “Did we make it? This place doesn't look particularly dreamlike.”

  I looked over my shoulder at the empty bench, framed by the dark silhouette of the depot. The last time I'd seen the depot had been right after my dad died. I'd never figured out if it had been a dream, or if I had really been there, saying goodbye to my father.

  “This is it,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady, “though we want a different realm.”

  Jason got to his feet and offered me a hand up. “I thought this was all one realm.”

  Feeling shaky enough to actually need the offered hand, I took it, then slowly rose to my feet. “It is, but there are realms within the realm, or I guess they're more like sections, divided by massive barriers. The sections aren't actually right next to each other, but the barriers make it seem like they are. Each time you go through a barrier, you end up in a place completely unlike the previous one.”

  Jason shook his head. “This is all beyond me. Just tell me how we find your mom.”

  I looked at the empty benches again and had a thought. “Normally, we'd need to wait for a cab, operated by a driver like Dorrie, but my grandmother could travel between sections of the dreamworld without portals, maybe I can too.”

  “How do you know that?” Chase asked, since he knew just about as much about my grandmother as I did.

  “When I first met her, she found me in the section we're going to,” I explained. “She poofed in, just like I can do between the demon underground and the human world.”

  “So you think you can poof us into the correct section?” Chase asked.

  I nodded. “Maybe. I've been there before, so it's worth a shot.”

  Chase took my hand. “That's good, because I think something is creeping up on us.”

  I looked around quickly, then remembered the type of creatures that stalked the bus stop. Instead of looking at what might be right in front of us, I looked into the reflective glass of the depot. Sure enough, a huge shape loomed there, growing smaller in the reflection as it made its way toward us.

  I held out a hand to Jason, shaking it in the air for him to take it quickly. Just as the shape closed in, I shut my eyes and thought of the place with the sparkly slime. We poofed out of existence, just as the creature lunged, narrowly missing us. Almost instantly we reappeared in the dark place I remembered from my adventure with Dorrie.

  Chase released my hand and crouched to poke at a pile of goo on the ground. “You were right, Xoe. It looks the same as what was in your mom's room.”

  I nodded to myself as I dropped Jason's hand. We had ended up right in front of the house where I'd met the demon who'd tried to kill me. The mansion looked just as dilapidated as before, with its gate mostly overgrown with brambles and vines, barring the way inside.

  “Where do we go from here?” Jason asked, looking around warily.

  I shrugged, the slime was everywhere. There was no way to tell which part of the current realm the portal had come from.

  “Mom!” I called out, cringing as my voice echoed throughout the barren canyons around us.

  The mansion was the only house in sight, and I wasn't about to go inside to ask the crazy demon if she'd seen my mother. Instead, I walked away from the structure, calling out for my mom as I went.

  Within a moment, Chase caught up to my side. “Are you sure yelling is such a good idea?”

  I shrugged as I tried not to cry. “I don't know how else to find her.”

  I stopped and looked around the desolate landscape for some sign that my mom might have been there. If I ever got my hands on my grandmother for this, I'd kill her all over again. Hopefully then she'd stay dead.

  I was just about to give up hope when I saw a green light in the distance, illuminating the inky black sky.

  “Look!” I shouted in excitement, pointing in the direction of the light.

  I began to jog toward it, though the terrain was uneven and often slippery with the shimmery slime. A moment later, Jason caught my arm, halting my momentum. I looked up at him with a mixture of shock and annoyance.

  “It could be a trap,” he warned, still gripping my arm.

  I scoffed. “You know we have to go anyway.”

  He sighed, then in the blink of an eye was gone, running off ahead of me toward the light. I glared after him, then turned all of my focus to the light. A moment later, I was standing right beside it in a cloud of red smoke. The smoke looked ruddy and ugly against the green light, but did nothing to dampen my satisfaction in beating Jason to the finish line.

  My satisfaction was short lived, however, as something shoved me to the ground, straight into a puddle of slime. I tried to get my arms underneath me, but the slime was incredibly slippery, and I only managed to lift myself up to my elbows so I could look over my shoulder. There was nothing in sight, except for a giant, slime-covered boulder hovering toward me, surrounded by the green light. The boulder's stony surface glistened, and would have almost been pretty if I couldn't guess at the boulder's intent. If it landed on me, I'd be crushed.

  Seconds before the boulder finished its slow progress forward, Jason appeared. He grabbed my arm, tugging me to my feet and out of the way. The boulder lost its green glow and thunked to the ground. I had barely sighed with relief when a baseball sized rock lifted and sped toward us.

  If it was just me, I would have been hit, but Jason's faster reflexes allowed us to dodge as a single unit. Several more speeding rocks came our way, and we dodged each in turn. Suddenly something hit us from behind, knocking us down, just as a volleyball sized rock whizzed by where our heads had been. Chase rolled off of us, then more rocks came speeding right for my head. Not even thinking, I held both of my hands out in front of me to ward off the blow.

  Spurred on by my terror, energy gushed through my arms, erupting from my palms to form a solid dome of fire around our prostrate forms. I was so shocked that I almost let the fire go, but quickly refocused. The rocks bounced off the wall of flame like it was solid. It didn't stop whatever was controlling them, probably my grandmother, from trying, but we were temporarily safe.

  Once it became clear that the rocks wouldn't work, the thing attacking us switched to launching bursts of pure, green energy at the fire. The bursts all came from a central point, and I somehow knew that was where my grandmother's incorporeal form was standing.

  The green energy was repelled by the fire just like the rocks had been, yet each time another burst hit, I felt like it was scalding my skin. My arms began to waver as Chase and Jason huddled on either side of me, powerless to help.

  I knew I'd have to let the barricade down soon, and our only hope was if I could somehow hit the incorporeal form before one of the rocks hit us. Even then, I might not be able to hit her at all. I was about to try anyhow, when a cloud of gray smoke appeared and barreled toward where the energy bursts were originating. As quickly as it appeared, the gray smoke was gone, as was the green light.

  Not about to miss my chance, I let the wall of fire down, grabbed Chase and Jason by their arms, then made a portal back to the woods behind my mom's house.

  We landed in a heap again, and I had a few seconds to look up at the starry night sky before I lost consciousness.

  I woke up in my bed to the sound of voices downstairs. I sat up slowly, hurting everywhere. My arms hurt especially. I turned on my bedside lamp to
examine them. They were covered with long welts, some spanning several inches. The stitches were missing from my forearm, but the knife wounds were healed enough to stick together. The long cuts were no longer straight, deformed by the fresh burns. I lifted my shirt to examine my abdomen. It had healed as much as my arm, but the stitches were still present there, and the cuts were clean and straight.

  I shivered as I remembered the bolts of green energy hitting my shield of fire. Even though the fire had protected us, a measure of the energy had broken through to scald me. It was unnerving, especially since normally I couldn't get burned at all.

  I stumbled out of bed, hoping that it was still the night I had passed out on, and I hadn't slept through an entire day into the next night. I looked down to find that I was still covered in residue from the shimmery slime, then had to take a few steadying breaths to keep from losing control of my emotions. My mom was still lost in that place, and me breaking down would do her no good.

  I rifled through my closet in the dark, delaying the sting my eyes would feel when I switched on the lights. Without much thought, I grabbed a clean, charcoal colored, short-sleeve blouse and black jeans. I'd be forgoing sleeves and sweaters that day, as the burns on my arms were too tender for coverage.

  I went into the adjoining bathroom and washed the remaining traces of goop off my skin, using my nightlight to see. I dressed, then took a deep breath, preparing myself to tell Jason and Chase that I was going back to the dreamworld for my mom, whether they liked it or not.

  I left the bathroom, and was about to leave my bedroom as well, when I realized someone was sitting in a chair in the corner of my bedroom near the bathroom door. I about jumped out of my skin, until I looked a little closer in the dark. Max lounged in my desk chair, deep asleep in an uncomfortable looking position. Some watch-wolf he was.

  I left Max to sleep and let myself out into the hallway. I recognized Abel's voice and Jason's, and instead of going down the stairs to interrupt, I paused to listen. I didn't listen for long though as a woman interrupted what Abel was saying.