Phantom Heart

by Kelly Creagh

  He’d taken us straight to the library. And though Ms. Geary had eyed us with as much (if not more) suspicion as the hallway teacher, she didn’t try to stop us on our way past the circulation desk. Maybe that had something to do with the fact that Lucas and I were holding hands—a stark contrast to what she’d observed the last time we’d both been here together.

  Lucas took us all the way to the last row of computers. He claimed a seat in front of one of the desktops, drawing me into the seat next to him. As far as places where we could talk went, there had to have been better. But, when Lucas drew his backpack into his lap, I got the impression he hadn’t brought me here for conversation. His real reason became clear when he produced from his bag a DVD case, which he handed to me.

  So. Here it was. The documentary.

  Paranormal Spectator, the title read.

  A bald man in his thirties glowered at me from the cover, his meaty arms crossed over his bulging chest, black T-shirt straining against his biceps, his too-serious and war-ready eyes chiseling through me. Behind him, my house lurked like a monster, ready to pounce and devour.

  So. This was the guy who had died three months after filming. He looked too fit and, as Lucas had cited, too young to be the victim of a heart attack.

  I flipped the DVD over and found a kinder face waiting on the back.

  “That’s Rastin,” said Lucas as I studied the man. “He lives in LA and travels all over the world helping with cases.”

  Rastin had thick, black, and short-cropped hair; a neatly trimmed goatee; and glasses. His dark eyes had a warm, soulful essence to them. He struck me as more genuine somehow than the Hulked-out guy on the front.

  I trailed a finger down the episode descriptions until I found the one for Moldavia.

  Episode 6: “Phantom Fury”

  Joe Boq investigates one of Kentucky’s most notorious Victorian mansions. Joined by special guest, renowned medium and clairvoyant Rastin Shirazi, Joe attempts communication with the spirits haunting the allegedly cursed estate of Moldavia. But things take a shocking turn when a malevolent entity attacks, resulting in the only instance thus far in Paranormal Spectator history of a lockdown being aborted.

  “What?” I blurted, ice water flooding my veins as my gaze snapped up to find Lucas freeing a pair of earbuds from his bag. He said nothing, but tapped a finger against his lips, shooting a furtive glance toward Ms. Geary.

  Lucas took the case from me and loaded the disc into the CD-ROM tray. He plugged in the earbuds, handing me the right bud while he inserted the left in his ear, an action that forced us to lean in toward one another.

  After a goofy and overdramatic intro with spliced, static-slashed images and ominous voiceover narration, Joe Boq appeared on my front lawn. He started talking at the camera WWE-wrestler style, restating some of what Lucas had said about the mummy-unwrapping party. All the while, Rastin stood quietly to the side, his eyes fixed on the camera until, at one point, he slowly turned his head toward the house.

  The scene cut away then and showed the team inside, asking dumb questions to the air while holding digital recorders like interview microphones. Lucas paused the video. He turned toward me, an action that nearly brought our foreheads together.

  “Whenever Paranormal Spectator visited a place,” he whispered, “they tried to gather evidence like EVPs or anomalies on camera. Sometimes, they even tried to take action against a spirit, with the hopes of clearing a property. Shortly after the team entered the basement of your house, Rastin attempted to perform an exorcism . . .”

  He fast-forwarded, stopping when the clairvoyant, Rastin, emerged in the doorway of our cellar. Limp and addled, Rastin leaned against Joe Boq, one arm looped around the other’s shoulder for support.

  My unease ratcheted even tighter as, cast in the eerie, greenish-gray tint of night-vision, the segment played out like a scene from one of those low-budget, shaky-camera horror films.

  Blood started to stream from Rastin’s wide eyes, which had rolled into the back of his skull so that only the whites showed between fluttering lids. The blood gleamed black in the night-vision and leaked from Rastin’s nose, too, smearing his upper lip.

  “Tell us your name, demon,” commanded Boq.

  The rivulets of blood ran into Rastin’s mouth, staining the teeth around which writhed lips that then formed words.

  “I am Zedok,” Rastin growled at the camera, a hundred voices seeming to issue through his throat while his blood-smeared fingers reached for the lens. “I am he who enters through darkness and takes leave by the same route. To come for me is to find me. To strike against me is to fuel me. To invoke my name is to invoke my wrath.”

  The camera tilted, the lens dropping from Rastin’s face.

  “No!” shouted Boq. “Keep rolling.”

  “He’s bleeding, man,” said the camera guy even as the screen righted itself on Rastin once again. White foam now began to issue from one corner of Rastin’s mouth, mixing with the blood.

  Boq stumbled out of the basement doorway, tripping on the top step. Rastin went down then, to the floor. The camera followed him there, where he began to convulse, a seizure wracking his body. He arched with a silent scream.

  “There’s something in his mouth,” the cameraman said, and I shuddered as I focused in on Rastin’s parted lips.

  “Shut off the camera,” Boq said. “Call 911.”

  “There. Look! There’s something in there, man. It’s coming out!”

  The thing—obviously alive—emerged from the back of Rastin’s throat, a pair of probing antennae coming into view first within the dark cave of his mouth. Two twitchy front legs followed, popping out over Rastin’s bottom lip. A glossy black head and a pair of shining milk-white eyes glowed in the glare of the camera light.

  “I said turn the damn thing off!” shouted Boq, his hand closing over the lens—blocking out the sight of the bloodied moth just as it freed itself from Rastin’s gurgling, foaming mouth.

  By then, I’d had enough. Jerking the earbud from my ear, I scooted back from the table, bending forward at the waist, and tried to breathe.

  Nausea churned my stomach, threatening to have me upchucking all over Lucas’s oh-my-god-are-you-for-real black-and-white saddle shoes.

  “What did I just watch?” I asked at last, hoping against all hope that Lucas would confirm what Charlotte had said about the episode being fake. Because, more than anything, I wanted to believe that was true. But the moth. It had been the same kind I’d been seeing all over our estate. And that name. At least now I knew why Charlotte had assumed I’d gotten it from this DVD. Unless another kid at school had told Charlie about this documentary, and I was seeing things, then all of this was real.

  Our house had a demon. And it had Erik, too.

  Erik. He’d told me from the start that I needed to leave. He’d been trying to protect me—my family, too. What had he endured because of that?

  And how the hell was I going to tell Dad we needed to move?

  If he refused, it would be impossible to convince him we could never go down to the basement.

  “That’s why the moth worried me so much,” Lucas said. “Charlotte thinks that Paranormal Spectator planted them on the estate when filming the episode. But some people say that Rastin inadvertently bridged to an alternate dimension—where the moths come from.”

  When I didn’t say anything, Lucas laid a warm palm on my spine.

  “Why did you show me this?” I asked.

  “So . . . so that you would know what I know,” he replied.

  “That can’t be the only reason.”

  “Stephanie,” he said, like the answer was beyond obvious. And it was. But I still wanted him to say it. “We need to get in there. We need to start documenting solid evidence.”

  We? He was talking about SPOoKy. But Erik had told me explicitly not to let Lucas o
r anyone else like him onto the property. That had to mean paranormal investigators. I didn’t want to consider the repercussions if I did have Lucas back. But then, hadn’t I just seen what could happen if I didn’t?

  “I don’t need evidence,” I said. “I need help.”

  “Stephanie. In this field, evidence is the only way to get help.”

  I could read between the lines. He was trying to tell me, as gently as he could, that what was going on in my house required more help than he, or SPOoKy, could offer. He was telling me we needed professional help.

  “You . . . you said Joe Boq died,” I said. “But what about Rastin? What happened to him?”

  “They wouldn’t have aired the episode if he hadn’t lived,” said Lucas. “Actually, Charlotte’s main reason for believing it was a hoax is because they did air it. That, and Rastin came out and said it was a hoax. But, clearly, that was just to keep people away.”

  “So . . . he’s okay?” I sat up, though my eyes remained in my lap, as if that could protect me from the answers I didn’t want.

  “W-well,” Lucas replied. “He’s purported to have a heart murmur because of the incident, but . . . that’s all hearsay. He’s never confirmed that.”

  “What about the piano guy?” I asked him. “Wes mentioned a piano guy.”

  Lucas sighed. “I guess you and your dad didn’t wonder too much over why there was still so much stuff in the house.”

  I shrugged. Dad made a habit of swooping in to buy places that had gone into foreclosure, or from sellers who were eager to liquidate properties. That was one of the reasons why, so often, the homes came with extras—junk the previous owners couldn’t be bothered to clean out. Moldavia, in that respect, had been no different. Except, of course, that a lot of the antiques seemed as though they could have been original to the house. Including the piano.

  “Someone tried to remove it,” I guessed. “And then what?”

  “Heart attack,” Lucas replied. “Died on the spot. Left the property in a bag.”

  I balled my hands into fists, shutting my eyes again—eyes that had gotten no sleep last night and might not again tonight. Because, in going to Lucas, the only thing I’d accomplished was making this all worse, just like Erik had said. And not just for myself.

  “Then you know why you guys can’t come,” I said.

  “If I can’t come,” he replied, his tone soft and, remarkably, unafraid, “then you can’t stay there.”

  I looked up to him, a sad smile tugging at my lips. “So then are you going to tell my dad why we have to abandon his newest investment?”

  “N-no,” he said, as he glanced away from me. “I’d like to still be allowed to see you.”

  For a moment, the storm inside me calmed by a degree. The words “see you.” The way he’d said them. It suggested that he was pursuing me. But, again, the urge to ask about Charlotte rose within me. More than anything, I wanted to fast-forward to the moment when she wasn’t constantly hovering between us—just another ghost in a world that had, for me, become populated with far too many. But, in this moment, I had a bigger problem on my hands.

  Frowning, I bit my lip, wanting to tell him about Erik now, too. But I was still hesitant to hand him that part of the puzzle. Because if Lucas learned any more about what was happening in my house, he’d insist on coming over with SPOoKy.

  “What am I going to do?” I whispered, almost more to myself than Lucas.

  “There is one thing . . .” he said.

  I eyed him, reluctant. Because surely whatever his suggestion was, it would involve something that I’d already forbidden.

  “I think I know someone who can help,” he replied. “Someone we can talk to who won’t need evidence. If . . . if it’s okay with you, I’ll try to contact him.”

  I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone being hurt because of the thing in my house. But if Lucas knew someone who might be able to do something . . . Well, that was better than any other alternative.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “That still doesn’t solve the problem of what happens in the meantime,” Lucas replied.

  “In the meantime?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t . . . I’m really not sure how soon this guy will get back to me. I’ve only met him once. It could be right away. But. If it isn’t . . .”

  His unspoken question hovered in the air between us. What would we, or at least I, do until then?

  “In the meantime, I’ll do what I’ve been doing until now,” I said simply.

  “You mean . . . just sit tight?” He folded his arms like it was the last option he himself would have proposed.

  But to that, I could only shrug. Because I still wasn’t quite ready to tell him that I also had someone I could, so long as he showed up again, ask for help.

  “I don’t like the idea of your going back in there,” he said.

  “I don’t think I have any other choice,” came my reply.

  “You’ll call me this time,” he said. “If anything else happens. Whenever. Even if it’s the middle of the night?”

  “I’ll call you,” I said.

  And though I meant the promise, I also hoped I wasn’t going to be given any reason to keep it.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Zedok

  Remaining on my side of Moldavia, I reemerged from the conservatory, making my reverse trek to the rear door of the house, this time with steps that sank into deep snow.

  As I approached, I scanned the darkened yet still somehow eyelike windows of the house that once, so long ago, had been a home. An unquiet mausoleum now.

  As I crossed the threshold, my hand itched to draw my weapon.

  But as I made my way through kitchen and hallway, foyer, and, finally, parlor, I found no single other version of myself lurking in the gloom. After all that had happened, should I not have been beset by them? One at least?

  Anyone who knew less about their own deeper nature might have found comfort in such seclusion after so much fear of waylay.

  What this ominous solitude brought to me, however, amounted to just the opposite.

  Because if no mask appeared to stop me in my plan or even to advise me against it, did that not suggest the plan itself—the only one Valor and thus I had concocted—was somehow . . . faulty?

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Stephanie

  Roses. Everywhere.

  Their aroma, so distinct, pervaded the space, potent enough to make my head spin.

  I drew a breath, sharp and short, recognizing my impossible surroundings for what they were. The conservatory. Not the old and ruined one behind our house. Instead, I’d been transported to a replica of its past, one resplendent with greenery and studded with innumerable buds, all different colors, each in various states of unfurling. And my presence here. It could only mean . . .

  I turned to find him standing at the opposite end of the room. A dark figure against a flower-dotted backdrop, he regarded me with an unreadable expression. For a long time, I just stared back, awed all over again by that face, which never stopped being arresting.

  That night, after I’d gotten home from school, I’d taken care to try to keep my family together in the house. I’d done homework with Charlie in the parlor while Dad continued chipping at the wallpaper. When bedtime had rolled around, I’d sent Lucas a requested all’s-well text before curling up in my bed again with my little sister. This time, I hadn’t wanted to fight off the sleep that I likely wouldn’t have been able to anyway.

  And this—he—was the reason why.

  Still, I hadn’t been sure he would come. I’d started to worry that my encounter with Zedok meant something terrible had happened to Erik.

  “You . . . you’re okay,” I said, breaking the silence. “After yesterday, I wasn’t sure what to think.” He didn’t say anything, which made me nervous. Becau
se he hadn’t been this quiet in any of our previous meetings. And that expression he wore, like I was the ghost here, suddenly made me anxious that I’d misread him. “Are you okay?”

  “In truth,” he replied at last, without a trace of any of the coldness he’d shown before, “I am not.”

  I frowned and took a halting step toward him. I wasn’t 100 percent certain what to do, either. Especially now that there was so little room left to doubt that Erik wasn’t just a dream.

  “Something’s wrong,” I guessed, my heart speeding up. “Besides the curse, I mean. Something happened.”

  “Something has . . . happened,” he conceded.

  I started toward him. His brows lifted slightly in surprise as I approached, but he didn’t continue. Not even when I stopped right in front of him. Instead, his eyes searched mine.

  “Erik,” I prompted when his answer never came.

  He started. Then his expression darkened. Immediately, though, he banished the scowl behind a mask of indifference, and with a halfhearted gesture to the walls surrounding us, he strode away, moving toward the pillow-piled wicker furniture that occupied the center of the spacious room.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  “Like what?”

  “The conservatory,” he said. “I thought you might take pleasure in seeing it.”

  “It’s . . . beautiful,” I admitted, though cautiously, still baffled by his words, not to mention this sudden and near-total shift in him.

  “I could not help but notice how rarely in this house—large though it is—you manage to enjoy moments that are wholly your own,” he went on to say. “Though I possess time in abundance, as commodities go, it’s rather ill-suited for lending, wouldn’t you agree? It is true as well that I cannot bring you roses, but . . . as you can see, it is well within my means to transport you to them.”