by Blythe Baker
It was easier for me to not be so caught up in his good looks in those moments. I found myself wanting him to be good, wanting him to be on my side. But that didn’t mean he really was. He could turn out to be all honeyed words, and nothing more.
And even though I knew Cain Blackburn could have me as a snack whenever he wanted, somehow I was more inclined to trust his indifference and slight interest in me as more genuine half the time.
It was making my head hurt, and I didn’t think I’d be able to resolve it any time soon.
My first decision was to check out the site of Olivia Foster’s death. The idea of going back to the cemetery certainly gave me the chills, but like Dr. Valerio and Cain Blackburn, there was a part of me that wanted to find out exactly what was happening in Faerywood Falls. And something deep down inside told me that what happened to Olivia was tied to it all somehow, some way.
Dr. Valerio had made me think that, at least. When I moved to Faerywood Falls, it was like something changed. Bliss and Aunt Candace had said there would certainly be a shift in the balance of magic now that a faery was around.
As I walked between the wrought iron gates into the cemetery after my shift at the antique shop, I wondered with a lingering sense of guilt if it was my appearance in this town that had lead ultimately to Olivia and Burt Cassidy’s demise.
Was it because of my own magic that things had started to change? Was there some unknown power at work, trying to work against me, even though I had no clue what being a faery really meant?
These were the sorts of questions that were starting to keep me up at night.
So what exactly did you hope to find here? Athena asked from her perch on my shoulder. She’d insisted on coming with me. She was the only one who had seen Olivia’s body like I had, and so she reminded me that if anyone was going to have the ability to spot the differences, it would be her.
Besides, I have a better nose than you do, she’d kindly reminded me. You’ll need me anyways.
She wasn’t totally wrong, I guessed.
The cemetery looked less menacing when the sun was still out than it did at night. Darkness was still a few hours off, but the sun was hovering near the tops of the trees, and the shadows were long and stretched out.
Everything was completely still. Even the air seemed too frightened to move through the rows of graves.
Do you remember where it was? Athena asked as I stopped at a crossroads, looking up and down along the road leading to other parts of the cemetery.
“I think so,” I said. “I remember that we took a left up here, and that she appeared somewhere on the right…”
We headed in the direction that my memory seemed to be drawing me toward. I recognized that maple tree, the leaves of which were already starting to turn red even though it wasn’t all that late in the summer yet.
Something does feel different here…Athena said, her black nose pointed up into the air, sniffing with enthusiasm.
“I know,” I said, my skin covered in goosebumps. I was chilly despite the warm temperature, and even though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was I was feeling, something was making me jumpy. It was like eyes were following me from a distance, or there was a subtle electric current running through the air. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a tingle ran up and down my spine. “Is this…magic?” I asked, running my fingers through the air in front of me as if it was water.
Yes, Athena said. And for some reason, there are trails of it through here, almost like paths that someone, or something, has taken over and over again.
“Dr. Valerio said that his pack saw a ghost pass from here back to the forest,” I said. “That’s what made me wonder if the ghost had something to do with this…”
That thought hadn’t struck me until I’d woken up from a nightmare about this specter that so many people had spotted. And since it had been seen at the cemetery, it wasn’t exactly a hard jump to make.
How a ghost could be connected with the death of a human, though, I had no idea.
We kept walking back further into the cemetery, and I became more anxious. “I don’t remember riding this far back here,” I said. “Did we?”
I don’t imagine you would have noticed the distance when we were as frightened as we were, Athena said. You simply put it from your mind in order to help the poor woman who had screamed so loudly.
My heart ached as I thought back to that night. Her scream had been awful. The fear was palpable, and that, more than anything, was why I refused to believe the idea that she’d just died of natural causes.
Which brought my anger back around to Evan. If he was the one who’d hurt her…
Stop!
I stopped in my tracks.
Athena was leaning forward, all four of her paws gripping onto my shoulder as she pointed with her nose directly out in front, her eyes narrowed, and ears straight forward.
I swallowed hard. “What is it? What did you – ”
Athena dug her sharp claws into my shoulder, silencing me.
The ghost. It’s here.
I ducked down behind the nearest gravestone. I peered over the top of it and stared into the distance.
There was a glimmer of something, like a cloud of mist gathered around some of the stones. But it wasn’t just that. The longer I looked, the more it began to take shape.
It was hovering just above the ground; I caught a glimpse of the grass underneath it as it floated between two headstones.
The specter was moving further into the graveyard, but it wasn’t moving smoothly or slowly like the late Mr. Bickford’s ghost. He was quiet and subdued, even downcast. That could’ve been because he couldn’t speak to his wife anymore, but even before that, Mrs. Bickford had said he was kind of a sad man. He was harmless, though.
I’d never heard her say anything about him being twitchy or unpredictable like this ghost was.
As it drew nearer, I realized it was a woman. She had long hair that hung around her as if suspended in water. Her clothes, which consisted of pale denim overalls and high-top sneakers, looked as if she’d gone swimming in them; there was a constant stream of ghostly water trailing after her as if she’d just pulled herself out of a pool.
The way she moved…it was like she was a DVD filled with scratches, which caused the image to keep skipping. One moment she was blank, and the next she cackled. That cackling would be cut off in less than a second, only to be replaced with unadulterated screaming. The scream would fade into sobs, which would then morph into snarling.
Her arms flailed, her body twitched, and her teeth gnashed together.
That is a troubled spirit if I ever saw one…Athena murmured in my mind.
I swallowed hard, not daring to speak in case the ghost spotted us. I barely had the strength to breathe, despite the fact that my heart was racing as fast as it was.
The ghost cackled again, throwing her head back in a way that shouldn’t have been possible, her hands frantically pulling and tugging at the front of her overalls.
And just as quickly as the laughter came, it was gone, her head snapping forward, her eyes darting back and forth across the cemetery as if she’d heard a noise.
I clamped my hands over my mouth to prevent her from hearing me.
This had to be the same ghost. The ghost the wolves had seen, the ghost the hikers at the lodge had seen…
Was this ghost involved in Olivia’s death? It seemed to be hovering near where we’d found her body.
The ghost suddenly lashed out with her hand, cackling again, her hair flying out from behind her.
It was just a spirit. It couldn’t hurt me.
Could it?
The ghost took one last look around, at one point leaning her head back so far that her neck surely would’ve snapped if she were still living, before she turned and started back through the cemetery toward the forest, her body twitching along the way.
Athena and I waited in the shadows until the ghost was long out of sight. The su
n had gone down, and the last blue light of day clung to the skies.
Are you alright? Athena asked me, nuzzling my cheek with her head. Your heart is beating really fast.
It sure was.
“I think I’m okay…” I whispered.
Shaking, I got to my feet. I grabbed onto the tombstone in front of me for support. I hoped its resident would understand.
“I want to go look at the grave where she stopped,” I said, starting over toward it. “It’s almost exactly where Olivia died…”
Athena hopped down onto the grass beside me, peering up into my pale, sweating face.
It’s okay, it’s gone now, she said.
“I know,” I said. “But that ghost…it wasn’t normal, was it?”
Athena didn’t respond, but I could sense her own unease.
“What if this ghost killed Olivia?” I asked. “I wouldn’t put anything past it if it could somehow do that.”
I haven’t ever heard of a ghost killing anyone, but I guess there are a lot of things with magic that shouldn’t be possible, Athena said.
“Could she have attracted the ghost somehow?” I asked. “Would the ghost have sensed Olivia near her grave? Maybe thought she was trespassing?”
All good questions, none of which I have the answer for, Athena said.
We reached the grave, and I knelt down in front of it. The words were etched deeply into the stone, and even though the face was a bit weathered, it still looked somewhat new.
Isabella Delvin
1967 – 1988
“Wow…” I said, my heart aching as I reached out to touch the stone. I resisted the urge, afraid of the ghost’s return. “She was only twenty-one when she died.”
That’s rather young for a human, isn’t it?
“Yeah…” I said.
I felt a chill, and looked up, afraid of the ghost flying back toward us.
But there was nothing there.
“Come on, Athena,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before she decides to come back.”
10
“And through all this, you didn’t think it was relevant to come and tell us what happened?”
Aunt Candace was standing across the room with her back to me, her arms folded across her chest. Her long, dark hair was drawn into a loose braid that she’d tied as she was getting ready for bed. She was staring out the window, but I could see from her reflection that she was glowering in the same way that my mother sometimes would.
Bliss, however, was pacing back and forth across her bedroom floor, staring at the shaggy rug that her toes were lost in with every step.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I said. “I went against my own better judgment, and just decided to go…”
I picked at a loose thread on Bliss’s bedspread. It was a lovely down comforter in snowy white, but her cat lay on it more than Bliss did most days and pulled snags in it. Said cat was stretched out luxuriously behind me, purring like a fiend, content despite the obvious hostility from my aunt toward me.
After leaving the cemetery, I’d hurried over to the lodge. I had to get what happened off my chest. I needed someone to bounce ideas off of, and I realized that I had been hiding what was happening from those who cared most about me here in Faerywood Falls.
“You could’ve been hurt,” Aunt Candace said to her own reflection. “And going over to that Dr. Valerio’s house all by yourself, without telling anyone where you’d gone…what if something happened to you, hmm? Do you expect me to write to your mother and have to be the one to tell her –”
“She was fine there, Mom,” Bliss said. “Dr. Valerio has a thing for her.”
I nearly fell off the bed in my haste to look up at her.
She didn’t change her pacing. She didn’t even seem fazed. In fact, I wasn’t sure that she even realized what she’d said.
“He does not,” Aunt Candace said, finally turning around to glare at her daughter. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Because it’s true,” Bliss said. “But that’s not the point. The point is that we still don’t know who or what Evan Foster is, but we do know that his wife died in a cemetery where there’s a rather unhappy spirit floating about.”
“Unhappy isn’t even the half of it,” I said, deliberately pushing aside the thought that Dr. Valerio might actually have an attraction to me. I couldn’t think about that right now. I’d have to deal with that another time. “That ghost was murderous. Crazy. Like it wasn’t all there. I’ve seen Mr. Bickford acting far more like a normal human than this ghost was.”
“That’s the troubling part,” Bliss said.
“Do you know why that is?” I asked.
“Not really, no,” Bliss said.
She suddenly stopped and looked at me, her face long.
“I’m sorry that I can’t be more help,” she said to me, a sad look in her eyes. “I’m trying.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” I said, sliding off the bed and walking over to her. “I’m not upset. You have been such a huge help to me through all this, and I…” I sighed, laying a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry that I didn’t come to you with this sooner.” I glanced over my shoulder at my aunt. “I’m sorry, Aunt Candace.”
“Sweetheart…” Aunt Candace said, turning back toward me. “It’s alright. I’m sorry I got so upset. I just worry about you, and I’m afraid with all of these things going on that something’s going to happen to you and I just can’t bear the thought.”
I wished I could correct her and promise her that nothing was going to go wrong, but that wasn’t necessarily the truth…
And that thought was somewhat troubling.
“So, what was the name on the grave again?” Bliss asked. “Bella something?”
“Isabella Delvin,” I said. “She was only twenty-one when she died.”
“And her ghost was all wet, right?” Bliss asked.
I nodded.
“It’s strange, because it isn’t very common for ghosts to be exhibiting characteristics of their deaths,” Bliss said. “They’re generally described as being normal looking, often in various clothes they’d worn throughout their lives, whatever reflected their moods that day. But angry ghosts, ghosts that are dealing with some kind of enchantments or that were murdered sometimes resemble their bodies at their moment of death, constantly tormented by it and unable to move past it.”
I swallowed hard. “So that poor woman died in the water somehow?” I asked.
“What did you say her last name was?” Aunt Candace asked. She’d taken to walking around Bliss’s room and picking up her clothes that were strewn about on the floor.
“Delvin,” I said.
“That couldn’t be the same Delvin that…wait just one moment,” she said, and she hurried away out into the hall.
Bliss turned to look at me, and a smirk spread across her face.
“What?” I asked as I sat back down on the bed.
“You should’ve seen the look on your face when I said that Dr. Valerio likes you,” she said.
My cheeks turned pink. “What do you mean?”
“Just like that,” she said, laughing. “It’s funny.”
“He doesn’t like me,” I said.
“How do you know?” Bliss asked.
“How do you know he does?” I asked.
“Easy,” Bliss said. “It’s in the way he looks at you.”
My heart started beating more rapidly in my chest.
“And let’s not forget to mention Cain Blackburn among the men who like you,” Bliss said with a mischievous grin.
As quickly as I’d blushed, all the color drained from my face. “Now you’re just being mean.”
“Why?” Bliss asked. “Because you don’t like him? Or because you do?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but at that exact moment, Aunt Candace walked back into the room.
“Here we are,” she said, hurrying over to us, her cheeks flushed and little wispy hairs fluttering around her face. “I t
hought the name Delvin sounded familiar. Here’s why.”
She handed me her cell phone with a local news article. The face of a pretty young woman smiled up at me beneath the title, Tragedy at Faerywood Falls.
It started off as an exciting weekend with family and friends; Isabella Delvin was enjoying an Independence Day with her loved ones, with a picnic, games, and swimming. The weather was perfect, and there were fireworks at dusk.
It wasn’t until the next morning that the young woman’s body was tragically found floating in the lake.
Isabella Delvin was twenty-one years old at the time of her death. She had just graduated from the University of Colorado in Denver with a degree in early childhood education, and was lined up to start teaching in the coming fall at Faerywood Falls Elementary. Those who knew Isabella remember that she enjoyed horse-back riding, reading, and being with loved ones. Her family were not available for comment.
I glanced up at Aunt Candace, who was shaking her head sadly.
“It was such a shame,” she said. “I remember when this happened all those years ago. My parents knew her family. There was a horrible gloom over the whole town for weeks…”
“The article doesn’t say anything about how she died,” Bliss said.
“All we know is she drowned,” Aunt Candace said. “That’s all that was ever said.”
“Yeah, but was it an accident? Or did someone make sure it happened?” Bliss asked.
Aunt Candace narrowed her eyes at Bliss. “You’re awfully determined to see the worst in these situations, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Think about it, though,” Bliss said. “Her ghost is violent. If she died in an accident, methinks she wouldn’t be quite so vengeful from the other side of the veil.”
I sighed, scratching my chin. “You’re thinking she was murdered?”
“Must’ve been,” Bliss said. “But I’m pretty sure no one would want to go rooting through all that again. No reason to bother the family with something they can’t control now.”
“Regardless of how it happened, the ghost is angry now,” I said.