She stopped moving and looked down at me in outrage, and then she screamed louder than she had when the salt had hit her face — louder than I thought possible — and raced toward me like a rocket.
But I had already fallen far, too far for her to catch. My back broke the surface of the water with a mighty splash. I nearly released the orb but managed to hold on to it as I held my breath and sank deeper.
The Wisp dove through the surface above and glided toward me. The fog that always trailed her continued to swirl around her body.
She spoke a few words in Saancticae and reached desperately for her orb. Her fingers nearly touched its glassy surface …
But then a shadow passed within it.
“No!” the Wisp said, and she sounded scared. Not scared and disinterested or scared and at ease or any other odd, contradictory combination. Just straight-up scared.
And I knew then that all of this — the plan to have the Wisp disarm us, fly me out over the harbour, to shock her with the salt and make her drop me into the water, all so that the orb would be submerged and the Wisp would be sent back to the Netherrealm — it was all going to work.
“Give me that,” the Wisp said, pleading. “Without it, I—”
A small crack appeared on the surface of the orb with a ping, then started to spread.
I needed air but I couldn’t surface just yet. I had to see this through, even if it killed me.
I thought of the Grey Lady, the Sergeant and the Cuckoo Girl. I thought of the Netherrealm ghosts. I thought of Tie-Dye and his followers. I thought of my grandmother. I thought of Harold. I thought of Leda. I thought of the Wisp. But most of all, I thought of my parents.
If I could have spoken, I would have told the Wisp, “You lied about my parents, you—” followed by a not-so-nice name that my parents wouldn’t have approved of. But given the circumstances, I think it would have been justified.
As if she had read my mind, the Wisp said, “Your parents passed through the Netherrealm after they died. They didn’t stay. I lied. Give me that back before it’s destroyed and I’ll find them — I can bring them back to life.” She sounded desperate and unnerved, but more than anything she still sounded straight-up scared.
I’d be lying too if I said I didn’t consider her offer. I never dreamed it would be possible to have my parents back.
In fact, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
If I actually believed her, that is.
Ping! Another crack appeared on the orb’s surface and I pulled it as far out of the Wisp’s reach as possible.
She made one final lunge for the orb, but it shattered into a thousand disintegrating pieces, and the murky harbour water was illuminated by the brightest light imaginable.
When the light faded, a man floated between me and the Wisp. He was a small man with a bony face and long, stringy red hair. Like the Wisp, the water didn’t appear to have any effect on him.
“I’m free!” he yelled with a mad laugh.
My vision started to fade, I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears and my lungs burned. I needed air. I swam up but looked back down just before reaching the surface, where I saw an awesome sight.
Without the orb to give her power, the Wisp’s face split in half. It started at the salt scar and quickly spread right down to her feet. Her body ripped itself apart and the pieces swirled deep down into the bottom of the harbour, out of sight.
One small ball of light, like a flame or a jewel, remained of the shattered orb. The man — whoever he was — plucked it out of the water and slipped it into his pocket. He looked up at me and said, “Thank you.” Then he flew straight past me and into the sky.
I followed him to the water’s surface and sucked in a lungful of air as I treaded in place, but he was gone.
The afternoon was quiet and calm. The fog had lifted.
I waited until I’d caught my breath, then swam to shore.
Air had never tasted sweeter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Your lips are blue,” Harold said. He’d arrived just as I was pulling myself out of the water.
I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering, and water was pooling on the wharf around my feet. I felt like I might never warm up but I didn’t care.
We’d done it. We’d actually beat the Wisp — and, if that wasn’t enough, an army of evil spirits too. It sounded nuts, but we’d actually saved the world. If I could do all that, maybe it was time to take Coach up on his offer to rejoin the soccer team. What else was I going to do? Sit around waiting for Kill Screen 2 to be released?
I laughed weakly and Harold narrowed his eyes and stared at me like I’d finally lost it. Maybe I had.
He took his jacket off and told me to do the same. Normally I’d wave off such an offer but not that day. I handed him my waterlogged jacket and slipped my arms into his warm, dry coat. As my upper body started to warm up, I realized how cold I really was. I’d been numb to it before, but now my bones ached, my skin burned and my blood felt like ice water.
“C-c-cold,” I said. It was all I could manage.
But I could still feel a smile pulling the corners of my mouth upwards.
“Let’s get you some dry clothes,” Harold said. As we walked three blocks south to the Maritime Mall, I filled him in on what he’d missed.
“Do you think the Wisp is actually dead?” Harold asked. “Like, dead dead?”
My teeth chattered as I said, “D-d-don’t know. I hope so.”
“I don’t think I ever truly believed we could do it,” Harold said. “But we did it. We won.” He sounded shocked.
“Th-thanks t-to you,” I said, trying not to bite my tongue in half as I spoke.
“Thanks to you,” Harold said with a smile that faded as he added, “and Leda.” He was silent and solemn for a moment, then said, “Not much farther.”
I felt better inside the mall, and Harold told me to wait in the women’s bathroom as he went to buy me some clothing from a thrift shop. I checked my phone while I waited, but it was toast. Harold returned a few minutes later and knocked, then handed the clothes through the door as I cracked it open.
I went into a stall and examined the clothes. He’d bought me a pair of baggy purple sweat pants, a blue sweater with HALIFAX NOVA SCOTIA INTERNATIONAL TUNA TOURNAMENT SOCIETY printed on it, and a plain white T-shirt that was three sizes too big for me. But I couldn’t have cared less because he also got me a pair of new socks; there’s no better feeling than putting on dry socks after you’ve spent some time treading water in Halifax Harbour in the middle of May.
I was about to leave the washroom when I heard someone whisper my name.
“Who’s there?” I spun around but I was still alone. “Who said that?”
After a tense moment, the voice finally responded. “It’s me, Evie. It’s Leda.”
I opened the stall door. The washroom was empty.
“Leda?” I asked. “Why can’t I see you?”
Silence followed, but I had a feeling I knew why I couldn’t see her. I’d lost the ability to see ghosts. Easy come, easy go.
“I can’t stay long, Evie,” Leda said, “but I just wanted to tell you that I won’t stop looking for your parents. And when I find them, I’ll tell them what I promised you I would: they have an incredible daughter who loves them very much.”
“Thank you, Leda,” I said, fighting back tears. “Thanks for everything.”
“Thank you, Evie, for helping me right the wrong I created when I added that summoning chant to Kill Screen.”
There was a gentle touch on my cheek, as if five thin threads of wind had cupped the side of my face, and then I felt a cool breeze rush past. I was alone once more.
I felt human again when I left the bathroom, although I must’ve looked like an alien from another planet.
Harold took one look at my clothes and groaned. “Sorry, V … I was in a rush.”
I gave him a hug and said, “It’s perfect.”
He
looked at me skeptically. “You sure?”
“Well, maybe not perfect, but close enough.”
He laughed and we started to walk back through the mall the way we’d entered.
I didn’t know the best way to bring up what had happened in the bathroom, so I blurted it out: “I don’t think I can see ghosts any more, but Leda is okay.” Tears welled in my eyes and I quickly wiped them away. “I’ll, um, tell you about it later.”
Harold thought about what I’d said for a moment and then nodded and said, “Okay.”
Not much fazed him.
“What time is it?” I asked. “My phone drowned.”
He looked at his phone and said, “Five fifteen.”
“Shoot, we’re late to meet Grandma at the Split Crow. Can I borrow that?”
We stopped walking in front of a used book store. He handed me his phone and I dialed my grandma’s number. She picked up on the first ring.
“Evie?” she said in a shout. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Grandma, it’s me. I—”
“Where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone? I’ve been worried sick!”
I pulled the phone back and held it a hand span away from my ear as she blasted me.
“I’m fine, Grandma, and I’m sorry. I just … dropped my phone in a puddle and lost track of time. We’ll be there soon.” I hung up and handed the phone back to Harold.
“She didn’t sound happy,” he said.
“You could hear her?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Well, if she knew the truth, she probably wouldn’t give me such a hard time.” A series of images flashed through my mind, all the close calls and near misses — a long string of moments that could’ve killed me throughout the day. “Then again, maybe she’d be even more mad.”
“I guess we probably shouldn’t tell people what happened,” Harold said. “They’d lock us in some asylum and throw away the key.”
“Lips sealed,” I said with a nod. I took a step, then stopped suddenly.
My blood ran cold, colder than I’d been in the harbour.
“V?” Harold said, looking me up and down. “What is it?”
I pointed a trembling finger at the book store’s display window.
Harold scanned the window but saw nothing. “What?”
“The book,” I said.
“Which one?”
“That one!”
A bunch of battered paperbacks and hardcovers were on display. One of them caught my eye.
Haunted Coasts, by Jeremy Alexander Sinclair.
The cover showed a creepy lighthouse on the left, an old schooner materializing out of fog on the right, and in the centre …
In the centre was an illustration of a man.
A man I recognized.
A man with long red hair and a bony face.
The man who had broken free of the Wisp’s orb, then flown away to who-knows-where.
I entered the shop, grabbed the book and flipped through the pages. Harold peered nervously over my shoulder.
“Talk to me, V,” Harold said with a quiver in his voice. “What’s going on?”
“The man on the cover …” My mouth had turned as dry as a desert. I continued to scan the contents of the book. I stopped on a page when I saw another drawing of the man. “He’s the same guy I released from the Wisp’s orb.”
Beneath the illustration was a caption:
Bill the Butcher, the Most Fearsome Ghost of the East Coast
“Harold?” The book nearly slipped out of my fingers. “What have we done?”
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“What was that?” Sophie whispered urgently. The door was closed so we couldn’t see inside.
I shook my head and shrugged, unable to answer. In the stillness that followed, my skin began to crawl.
“Do you hear that?” Sophie said, her panic rising.
I nodded. From behind the closet door, I could definitely hear whispering.
Matt and his sister, Sophie, are not thrilled to be moving to a boring subdivision an hour outside of Toronto. But when they see a horse in the field of the old farmhouse next door, things start to look up — especially for horse-crazy Sophie. That is until she ventures too close to the neighbours’ house. Then events take a nightmarish turn.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joel A. Sutherland is the author of Be a Writing Superstar, numerous volumes of the Haunted Canada series (which have received the Silver Birch Award and the Hackmatack Award) and Frozen Blood, a horror novel that was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. His short fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Blood Lite II & III and Cemetery Dance magazine, alongside the likes of Stephen King and Neil Gaiman. He has been a juror for the John Spray Mystery Award and the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy.
He is a children’s & youth services librarian and appeared as “The Barbarian Librarian” on the Canadian edition of the hit television show Wipeout, making it all the way to the third round and proving that librarians can be just as tough and crazy as anyone else.
Joel lives with his family in southeastern Ontario, where he is always on the lookout for ghosts.
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sutherland, Joel A., 1980-, author
Kill screen / Joel A. Sutherland.
(Haunted ; 2)
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4431-5712-4 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-4431-5713-1 (HTML)
I. Title.
PS8637.U845K55 2017 jC813’.6 C2017-901446-3
C2017-901447-1
Photo credits:
Cover photos © iStockphoto: red background (Stephanie Zieber); Dreamstime: main (Nomadsoul 1); Shutterstock: monster claw and throughout interior (ra2studio).
Illustrations by Norman Lanting.
Text copyright © 2017 by Joel A. Sutherland.
Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Scholastic Canada Ltd.
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First e-book edition: September 2017
Kill Screen Page 9