Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
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Copyright
The Spirit Key
By Parker Williams
Lock and Key: Book One
When he was eight years old, Scott Fogel died. Paramedics revived him, but he came back changed. Ghosts and spirits tormented Scott for over a decade until, thinking he was going mad, he did the only thing he could.
He ran—leaving behind his best friend, Tim Jennesee.
Scott’s had five normal, ghost-free years in Chicago, when the spirit of Tim’s mother comes to him and begs him to go home because Tim’s in trouble and needs him.
He isn’t prepared for what he finds when he goes home—a taller and sexier Tim, but a Tim who hasn’t forgiven Scott for abandoning him… a Tim whose body is no longer his own. The ghost of a serial murderer has attached itself to Tim, and it’s whispering dark and evil things. It wants Tim to kill, and it’s becoming harder for Tim to resist. To free the man who has always meant so much to him, Scott must unravel the mystery of the destiny he shares with Tim.
To all those people who need their spirits lifted.
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU to all the usual suspects, and a big thank-you to Becca Waldrop, Hurri Cosmo, Sheena J. Himes, Becky Condit, and LM Somerton for helping me get this book written!
Plus a huge thanks to Dreamspinner Press for taking a chance on the book, and to Tricia Kristufek and her editing team for making it sound good!
Prologue
Summer, 2002
WHAT MEMORY stands out most in your mind from when you were a kid? For many of my friends, it was getting a good grade on a test they were sure they’d fail, making a catch during a football game, or finding out the person they were crushing on liked them back. For others, it was more physical, like their first kiss or having sex for the first time.
For me, the one that topped that list was in the summer of 2002. The memory? Me dying. Well, almost dying. I mean, technically, I was dead for twenty-seven minutes, at least according to the paramedics and doctors.
See, I had gone down to the quarry with my brother and some of his friends. I was eight at the time, and to be invited to go along with the “big kids” was a heady thing.
Okay, fine. My mom told them they had to take me, but they weren’t supposed to let me know.
That’s not the point of the story, however. Still, between us, when your brother tells you that Mom said he had to take you and that you ruined his day by dying? That kind of sticks with you.
Anyway. The whole week had been hotter than hell—upper nineties, heat index topping a hundred, with no breeze at all. What made it worse was the humidity. Everyone complained their clothes stuck to them, and we all would have given anything for a bit of cool air. Those were the days you wanted to do nothing more than stretch out in front of the air conditioner and fantasize about being in the arctic.
Of course, those are also the times that drive Mom mad, like when we’re there, whining about how hot it is, and my brother announces he’s going swimming with his friends, and she tells him to take me along to the quarry with him.
Fine. I’m a little hostile over that memory, but in my defense, I died, so I think I have a right to be a tad grumpy.
Moving on….
There were a few old trees that stretched out over a pit of water. In the seventies, the place had been used to mine rocks that were crushed to use in gardens and the like. When the company that owned it shut down, it left a huge hole in the ground. Over time, it filled with water, which attracted kids from all over, wanting to swim. That was our destination for the day.
By the time we got there, all of our T-shirts had soaked with sweat. I distinctly remember looking at Cole Turner and seeing wisps of dark hair on his chest and wondering to myself what it would look like once he took his shirt off. I wasn’t sure why that thought flitted through my head, but it was gone just as quickly, because I saw Tim Jennesee sitting on a rock, taking off his shoes.
“Tim!”
He turned and smiled at me, waving like a freak. I took off running. Tim had been my best friend forever—which at the time was probably a few months, but in my eight-year-old mind, that qualified as a really long time—and seeing him there was a surprise. Normally he preferred to stay inside and play on the computer, indulging in game worlds like the Sims. Later he graduated to MMORPGs like EverQuest, with the promise that one day he would be creating them instead of playing someone else’s.
I got to where he sat and took my spot at his side. He nudged me with his shoulder. “I didn’t know you were going to be here!”
“Ryan asked me to come along.” See? I thought my brother was all cool and stuff. Shows how much I knew.
“Really? My mom said I had to get out of the house. I figured I’d come swimming for a while. I tried to call, but—”
“We were already on our way here.”
I hadn’t thought to call him, and I felt bad… for about three seconds. I was with Tim and the day had gotten a thousand times better. His dark hair shone in the sun, and his brown eyes sparkled. Being with him was enough to make me smile, and having him there with me made the day perfect.
Okay, here’s where things go to shit, so you’ll have to indulge me a bit. I don’t often discuss my death with people, because they ask all kinds of inane questions, and I’m so over that shit.
There was a big tree that stretched out over the watery pit. Someone had climbed it, tied off a rope, then knotted it at the other end. See, the idea was to grab hold, push off, and soar out into the nothingness, then arc high in the sky before letting go and plunging into the water, sinking, then rising once again until you broke the surface, then rushed to have another turn.
Doesn’t that sound idyllic? Like a Norman Rockwell painting or something?
Yeah, you’d think that.
It was my turn. I’d hedged about it all day, because I hated the idea of being so high in the air and falling. Ryan openly mocked me, and his friends teased me to no end. When Tim got up and announced he was going to do it, well, that raised the bar right there. How could my best friend do it, while I was too chicken?
Wrapping his hands around the rope, Tim ran and leaped off the edge, soaring into the air with a loud cry. Then, as he reached the apex of the arc, he let go. For a moment everything stopped, as he rose a little higher, then hung in the air before he dropped like a stone, laughing all the way.
When he broke the surface of the water a few seconds later, my heart started beating again.
“So, nerdy Tim can do it, but little Scotty is too much of a baby.”
It’s funny how you don’t remember how much of an ass your brother was when you were a kid, isn’t it?
“I’m not a baby!”
“Then prove it, chicken.”
“Fi
ne!”
I stormed over to the rope and took hold of it. I glanced down into the murky pit, and my heart stuttered once more.
“Come on, Scott. It’s fun!”
Tim came jogging over, water sluicing down his chest, his hair matted to his forehead. Weirdly, that stray thought about Cole? Yeah, so over it. Now it was Tim that I was staring at.
“Okay.”
I was going to make Tim proud of me. I didn’t understand why, but thinking of him running over and hugging me, telling me how great I’d done? It became the only thought in my head at the moment.
I turned back and set myself, ready to do it. One quick glance at Tim, who nodded at me, and I rushed to the edge, jumped, and flew.
It was amazing. One second gravity has been conquered, and you’re flying up, up, up. Then you remember that everyone is gravity’s bitch, and you’re jerked back down. I hit the water, flush with pride over having done it.
When I flapped my arms to go back to the surface, though, that was when shit got real.
I couldn’t move my foot. Something had wrapped around it and held me below the surface. In my mind, a shark had grabbed me and was dragging me down. I struggled, trying to swim up, and my lungs burned.
You have to know, at this time, my mind had refused to believe I was going to die. It kept screaming for me to fight, to do whatever the hell I had to in order to get back to the surface. And I fought as hard as I could. Only….
At one point, I thought I’d gotten free, and my struggles to swim back to the surface intensified. I pushed hard against the water, trying to get up, back into the sun, but then I knew I was still stuck, and I had no more breath in my lungs.
I remember opening my mouth to scream for Tim to help me, but the murky water rushed in, and I choked, which led to more water being drawn into my body. Everything sort of went hazy and then shifted to black.
I’d died.
Now, before you ask—no, there was no white light to go into. I don’t recall seeing my grandma or grandpa, who had died years earlier. No flashes of past lives. Nothing. Not until my eyes fluttered open and I found myself in a room with a rather stern nurse standing over me.
My lungs burned like they had lava in them. I coughed and tried to sit up, but she put a hand on my shoulder.
“You need to lie still. You’ve had a bad accident, and you’re in the hospital.”
Accident? No, I died. Hadn’t I?
It only took a few moments before I drifted off to sleep again, her words playing through my mind. An accident. Hospital. Accident.
When I woke up again, my mother was sitting next to me. She looked awful. Her hair, which she always had stylishly done, was stringy and shiny. Her eyes were red and puffy. It definitely wasn’t her best look. I wanted to ask what was wrong, but just like before, I was pulled back under before I could say anything.
This went on and on. I’d wake up, see a bunch of different people, and open my mouth to speak, only to go back to sleep almost immediately. It frustrated me because I wanted to know what was wrong and why I was there. I mean, I was dead.
Unless….
Holy shit, I was a zombie! That was the only explanation. I’d died and come back as a brain-eating zombie like in the comic books.
Hey, I was eight. No one said I was logical.
Finally came a day when I woke and stayed awake. My mother still sat at my bedside, looking worse than she had the last time I remembered seeing her. I reached out, my hand shaking, and touched her arm. Her eyes popped open, and her gaze locked on me.
“M-m-om?” My throat ached, and I couldn’t stop the cough.
She leaped out of her chair, the exhaustion of a moment ago replaced by elation. She wrapped her fingers around my hand and leaned in to kiss my face, murmuring my name.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have sent you out swimming. I’m sorry, Scotty.”
She cried, bawling onto my chest. I’d seen her cry before, but never like this. I had no idea what to do. A couple of moments later, hands wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her away. My dad stood there, and she spun around and threw herself at him.
He turned his attention to me. “How you feeling, Scotty?” His voice, with a confusing bunch of emotions in it, cracked when he spoke. “Doing okay?”
There were tears in his eyes. My dad never cried.
“Dad?”
At the sound of my voice, he buried his face in Mom’s neck and sobbed. The door opened, and Ryan stepped in. His attention flicked in my direction, and then Dad opened an arm, and he ran to our parents.
“What’s going on?”
“We’ll let the doctor tell you.”
The door opened once more, and an older man walked in. He smiled at me and strode toward the bed. “You’re awake. That’s a very good thing.” He looked at my chart, then followed that up with a cold-as-hell stethoscope on my chest, back, and stomach, murmuring as he checked me over from head to foot. When he finished, he stepped back and winked. “I have to admit, in all my years, I have never met someone I would classify as a miracle, but you definitely qualify.” He put the chart back on the bed, then drew closer. “What do you remember about what happened, Scotty?”
I scrunched up my face. There were snatches of memories, but nothing tangible I could grab hold of. “I… I died.” Then, since this was the perfect opportunity to ask, I turned a hard stare at the doctor. “Am I a zombie?”
Mom gasped, but the doctor chuckled. “No, you’re definitely not a zombie. What you are is a boy who got incredibly lucky. We’re going to have to run some tests, but right now, it seems you’re perfectly healthy. Are you hungry? The kitchen has pudding.”
“Chocolate?”
He grinned. “Of course. Is there any other kind?”
I scrunched up my face and told him about Mom’s tapioca, a thick, lumpy mess that tasted like I was eating dirt. Not surprisingly, he grimaced.
“Yeah, you need chocolate, and lots of it.” He reached out and ruffled my hair. “But before you can have your dessert, you’ll need to eat some dinner. Do you feel up to it?”
“What is it?”
“Oh, that’s going to be a surprise. But only if you think you can eat.”
My stomach rumbled. “Yeah, I’m hungry.”
So, before I bore you to death about the stay, let me tell you that dinner was some kind of gross meat patty with potatoes, smothered in gross gravy, with this rank corn that didn’t even have butter on it. And the promised pudding? Mom’s tapioca would have been better.
It turned out that I had been in the hospital a few weeks. There were times, especially during the first week, when they thought I wasn’t going to make it. Guess I showed them. They did their tests, which took place over several days, then announced that I was good to go home.
I was dubbed the miracle child. Personally, I liked “the boy who lived,” but that would have probably gotten me in trouble over a copyright from that book that came out a few years before. Anyway, my life slowly went back to normal. Ryan, after telling me how I ruined his summer by dying—remember that?—had gone back to his obnoxious self. Mom and Dad still coddled me, but they were finally letting loose of the reins once more, and school was starting again.
Oh, and the most important thing of all: I spent a lot of time with Tim. And even though I couldn’t put a word to it, having him near me became the most important thing in my world.
It wasn’t until much later that I realized I was in love with him. Which made what I had to do years later so much harder.
WHEN WE returned to school, I was famous for, like, fifteen seconds. Kids don’t really have a grasp on the concept of death, and I wasn’t much for talking about it. As the months went by, the memories of the event surged back into my mind. The terror of drowning left me with debilitating issues when it came to standing water. Even something as shallow as a puddle set my heart thumping, because in my mind, it was that pit again, and when I saw it, I couldn’t breathe.
&nbs
p; Mom and Dad took me to see a psychologist, who worked with me for a few years, all the while reminding me that there was nothing weird about having issues, especially with the trauma I underwent. She also said that, overall, she considered me to be a very normal kid. I was never sure if that was a compliment or not, but I chose to take it that way.
So, by now I was nine years old, and things were going well. Ryan had hit puberty, and the cool guy I thought he was had vanished in a haze of BO and Axe body spray. His every waking thought was girls. Morning: Girls. Afternoon: Girls. Night: Dinner, followed by girls.
It got old fast.
Tim was still my best friend, and being with him always suffused me with a strange euphoria. With the help of Dr. Trainer, I was finally dealing with my “death,” and things were looking up.
Until the day came that I saw my very first ghost.
Winter swamped Milwaukee with a vengeance. In January of 2003, we got nailed hard with hail, frigid winds in excess of fifty miles per hour, and snow that left drifts high enough that they covered the front windows of our two-story home on the city’s south side. About the only good thing was that Ryan had been at a friend’s house when the blizzard hit, so he wasn’t home.
The bad thing? I was lonely. Mom couldn’t take me to see Tim, and he couldn’t get to me, so I sat in my room, letting my imagination run wild. And doing it quietly so as not to bother Mom.
Schools were closed—not that it was a hardship—and travel was snarled throughout Milwaukee and the surrounding suburbs for days. The plows couldn’t keep up with what Mother Nature had been dumping on us. I heard my dad tell my mom that the old bitch was probably looking down at us and laughing.
Anyway, I was in my room, playing with my action figures—Superman was kicking the butts of the alien Legos—and wishing Tim was here with me. He always built the best Lego monsters and never got upset when I destroyed them.
“Can I play?”
The voice startled me. I jerked my head up and found a boy sitting across from me. He looked… weird. He had on blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and these thick glasses. His blond hair stood up in tufts and seemed to sway in a breeze that wasn’t there. What made him stand out, though, was he had a veritable ocean of freckles. I had never seen anyone with that many, and it was way cool.
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