“It can’t hurt her if she’s really Robin.” Adam pivoted around with the camera.
Wilhelmina fussed at the bracelets on her right wrist while gazing at the wall where the bloody writing had been. “She is quite territorial and protective.”
“Sounds like Mia’s taking on a bit of that protectiveness as well.” Adam smiled. “Mama bear.”
Mia smirked. “I’m no mama.”
“Sure you are.” He put an arm around her. “Timothy? You’re more a mother to him than your mother was.”
“I guess.” She rested her head against his shoulder.
“Well.” Wilhelmina clasped her hands. “Let me do a little preparation. I’ll be ready in a few days, then we can try a cleansing.”
“Sounds good.” Adam nodded.
“We’re not trying to get rid of her.” Mia noticed the plush rabbit she’d left on the bed sat on the floor. She picked it up and replaced it on the pillow.
“Of course not. Merely whatever is giving off the dark energy.” Wilhelmina glanced sideways at Adam and stepped backward out of the room.
He took Mia’s hand and they followed her down to the living room.
“Thank you both very much for dinner. I shall have to return the favor soon.” Wilhelmina made her way to the front door. “Alas, I’m afraid these old bones aren’t terribly good for late nights anymore.” She took her coat from the pegs on the wall, but paused with one arm in, glancing past them for a moment before she finished putting her coat on. “Mia, I do believe someone wishes to speak to you.”
17
Psychic
Friday, August 31, 2012
Mia twisted to look back.
Robin stood near the top of the stairs, staring at her. Other than faintly transparent, she appeared reasonably normal: no blood or trace of injury, her legs didn’t stop existing below the knees. The child’s expression appeared mostly neutral, though had a hint of sternness.
“You see her?” whispered Mia.
“No,” said Adam.
Wilhelmina shook her head. “I don’t, but I can feel her. Thank you again for a lovely night. If you’ll excuse me, I must be off.”
“Of course,” said Adam. “Can I offer you a ride?”
“It’s not that far.”
Mia couldn’t bring herself to look away from Robin. “It was great to meet you, Wilhelmina. Thank you for the wonderful pie, too.”
“You’re too kind. It’s only a blueberry pie.”
“I don’t mind.” Adam grabbed his coat. “It’s dark, little chilly…”
“And I’m old. You can say it.” Wilhelmina chuckled. “All right. If you insist.”
Mia turned back toward the door and smiled at her. “Thanks for coming.”
“Oh, you’re welcome dear.” Wilhelmina hugged her. “And don’t let that old pastor get on your nerves. He’s like a rusty weather vane. Unsightly and makes a lot of noise, but won’t cause any real damage.”
Adam and Mia chuckled.
He left to drive her home.
Mia looked back at the stairway, but the girl had disappeared. “Robin?” She ran upstairs, finding the hallway empty. “Robin? Where’d you go?” She peeked into the child’s room, also empty. Realizing she still wore her work clothes, she went to the bedroom, changed into her T-shirt and shorts, then returned to the girl’s room. “I promise I won’t let her do anything that will harm you. I know you’re really an innocent little girl, and I’m not trying to make you leave. This is still your room, okay?”
She waited for a minute or two, but nothing happened by the time Adam came in downstairs. With a sad sigh, she headed downstairs to watch TV.
Mia snapped awake from a dreamless sleep and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. Adam lay on his side next to her, one arm across her chest.
Distant thumps came from downstairs. The alarm clock read 1:04 a.m. Ugh. She reached out from under the blankets and rubbed her eyes. That stupid crash had likely been loud enough to knock her out of sleep. Mia figured Vic had learned of Evelyn’s intention to leave him while at work, stopped by that dive bar on the way home to slurp down a few cans of artificial courage, and stumbled in the back door. Whether he dropped the toolbox or slammed it down in anger, she couldn’t tell.
Evelyn had gone to work… was Robin home alone while that bastard drank himself into a stupor? Wow, she worked at one in the morning? Guess she had the late shift.
Mia slipped out of bed and trudged to the bathroom. Two glasses of wine and a large cup of iced tea had filled her bladder to the point she couldn’t fall asleep again. On the way back to bed, she paused in the hall, staring at the door to Robin’s bedroom. An ephemeral sense hung in the air, a noise she couldn’t quite hear that sent tingles down her arms. The feeling reminded her of her grandmother’s old-fashioned giant television set, the way she could just tell it was on even with a blank screen and no sound.
Someone’s in there…
Worry that the girl might be hiding from Vic—or worse, re-living her death—urged Mia down the hall. The door hung a hair shy of halfway open, the room beyond dark. She hesitated and knocked twice on the doorjamb.
“Robin?”
The child appeared out of thin air in the doorway, staring up at her with a blank expression.
Mia jumped back, clutching her chest, and nearly landed on her ass. A hint of a smile played upon the girl’s lips, as though startling her had been a fun game. Mia took a few breaths to calm down. At least she’s not stuck being killed over and over.
“Hey. Are you ready for pancakes tomorrow?”
Robin smiled again, wider, her eyes sparkling with eerie intensity as though she could cheer about breakfast as easily as burn down a house. She stepped into the hall, her right shoulder and arm passing through the door. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry if I made you worry when I was talking to Wilhelmina. I don’t want you to go away. There’s something else here that feels dark. It probably scares you, too.”
Some of the eeriness in the girl’s presence faded. She swished side to side making her nightgown flare.
Mia tried to take the girl’s hand, but her fingers met only cold air. “Do you know if you’re trapped here? Is something holding you?”
“I don’t wanna go away.” The girl’s glower returned.
“Oh, sweetie…. I’m not saying that.” Mia tried to ignore the part of her that wanted to react with fear to the unnerving presence in front of her. “What I mean is, if something is hurting you, I want to help stop it. My husband was confused why an innocent child would still be here.”
“This is my room,” said Robin in a matter-of-fact tone. “I like it.”
“I like my room, too.” Even after what happened in there, it doesn’t seem to bother her.
“Mommy sometimes bought me dolls or friends for Princess Rabbit, but I had to hide them. Daddy would get mad.”
“Aww.”
“I know I’m a ghost. Don’t be sad. It’s fun to run through walls and make mean people scared. I’m not dead… I’m just”—she poked her fingers into her chest a few times—“squishy.”
Mia almost laughed. Despite the girl giving off a bizarre mixture of sinister cuteness, like dealing with a seven-year-old holding a loaded gun, she found her adorable.
Robin resumed swishing side to side. “He yelled a lot ’bout money. That’s why Mommy always had ta go to the work. Like you go to the work. Sometimes she’d stay all day, not come home ’til after I’s in bed. Daddy was mean to both of us.”
“I’m sorry he treated you like that.” Mia brushed a hand over the girl’s insubstantial hair. “My daddy yelled a lot, too. He hit me sometimes, too.”
“Like in the face?”
“No… he’d hit me on the backside with his belt, yelling the whole time.” Mia shivered at the echo of the voice telling her how disappointed God was with her for being such a disobedient daughter. Eight times out of ten, she hadn’t even done anything wrong, merely her father assuming
she had and not believing a word out of her mouth. Perhaps he’d merely enjoyed hitting her and Timothy, their screams begging him to stop giving him some kind of power rush.
Robin blinked. “Daddy yelled a lot, but he only hit me once. Mommy an’ me was gonna leave. He got angry an’ hit me with a hammer. My head went smush.” A lone trickle of blood ran from the girl’s left nostril.
Mia cringed. “I’m so, so sorry…”
“It didn’t hurt, but I got all cold and stuff. Daddy went away. Mommy came home an’ screamed a lot. I tried to talk ta her at night, but she didn’t talk back… just cried. Every time I talked, she got upset. Mommy made herself a ghost, too… but she went away.” Robin narrowed her eyes. “Some people came to the house. They had a funny TV set like yours. Looks flat like a painting, but it’s a TV. The other people who came to the house went away, too. I wanted them to stay, but they went away. I didn’t like that.”
An alarming amount of dread rolled off the tiny apparition, enough that even Mia leaned back against the wall. “It’s okay, Hon. I’m not going to go away. Most people don’t know how to be around ghosts. They were probably afraid.”
The girl’s scowl darkened further. “I didn’t like the old people. They always said mean stuff an’ called me bad names. I made them go away.”
“What did you do?” whispered Mia.
Robin tilted her head forward, a dire stare shadowed under furrowed eyebrows. “I played bad games on them.”
Mia blinked. Adam said that woman almost suffocated in her sleep… is this girl capable of killing people?
“Are you scared?” Robin relaxed, leaning back and once more looking at her with innocence. “I don’t want to scare you. You’re nice.”
The kid’s just acting creepy because it amuses her. She’s old enough to be my grandmother. Is she still a child, mentally? Was this entity ever a child? Mia gazed into the girl’s huge brown eyes. The spirit’s current appearance seemed so far removed from any sense of malice, the thought of her hurting anyone was laughable.
“Is there anything we can do to help you?”
Robin nodded, smiling. “Don’t go away.”
Adam groaned.
The girl jumped, startled. At the soft thump of his feet on the floor, she ran into her room, disappearing into thin air after three steps. He emerged from the master bedroom, heading toward the bathroom, but stopped and peered back at Mia.
“What are you doing up?”
She bit her lip. “Had to pee.”
“The bathroom’s over here. You’re halfway down the hall.”
“I saw her.”
Adam turned the rest of his body to face her. “Robin?”
“Yeah. We, talked.”
His eyebrows shot up. All traces of sleepiness fled from his eyes. “Actual conversation?”
Mia nodded.
He rushed over and grabbed her hand. “Intelligent responses?”
“Adam, it wasn’t like an EVP session. She was literally standing in front of me having a conversation like any normal kid.”
“Whoa…”
“Yeah, whoa.” She wrapped her arms around him and let her head fall against his shoulder. “Guess I’m psychic after all… or she manifested.”
“Could be either. Won’t know that until we’re in a situation where you can see her and no one else can. If everyone sees her, she’s manifesting.”
“That happened a few hours ago when she was at the top of the stairs. I saw her; you and Wilhelmina didn’t.”
“Oh… right. Ignore me. I’m not fully awake.”
Mia considered asking the girl to come back out, but didn’t want to annoy her. Again, it felt as though she had to cope with a situation as dangerous as an armed child. Her gut said Robin was—or had at one point been—a real child, not a demon or some other malign spirit. But, what effect did spending forty-some-odd years as a ghost have on her? Could her and Adam’s lives be in danger?
Nah. Can’t be. She’s just a child playing creepy. Those people probably only had accidents when she scared them.
“So what did you talk about? What did she say?” He held up a finger. “Hold on. Tell me after I deal with this…”
She headed back to bed while he hit the bathroom. Once he climbed in beside her, she explained what they’d talked about, though she omitted telling him about the subtle sinister air Robin had given off at times. If Adam became too worried, he might start thinking about giving up on the house and she didn’t want to leave the girl alone.
“That bastard of a father of hers… It’s tempting to start believing in Heaven and Hell just so I can fantasize about him down there. Is it crazy that I hate someone who died before I was born?”
“Given the circumstances, it’s understandable.” He kissed her. “We should at least try to go back to sleep.”
“Yeah…” She stared again at the ceiling. Easier said than done.
18
Latent Energy
Friday, August 31, 2012
Attempting to fall asleep lasted about ten minutes.
“Do you think Vic is here, too?” asked Mia.
“Mmm?”
“Sorry.”
Adam yawned. “No, it’s okay. What?”
“I asked if you thought Vic is haunting the house as well… or if he’s just a, umm, ‘ghost recording.”
“An apparition doing the same exact thing in the same way over and over again is most likely a latent impression. But that doesn’t mean the spirit isn’t around, too.”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“There’s a good chance I did… shadow figure in the kitchen. However, it didn’t look like anyone in particular, just a distorted human shape. Could have been Vic, a demon, a manifestation of pure evil… an IRS auditor…”
Mia chuckled.
“A few of the EVPs I caught sounded like a man, but I can’t make out what’s being said or even any tonality to the voice. Most of them aren’t much more than demonic growls.”
“She’s not a demon.”
“I didn’t say she was.”
“You implied it.” Mia rolled her head to the right.
He rolled his head to the left, making eye contact. “You inferred the implication… though I admit I left it hanging there.”
“I’m sure she’s real. Everything you’ve ever told me about dark entities pretending to be child spirits is based on fleeting glimpses of apparitions or distant giggles, sometimes playful behavior moving objects. Do you think one of those ‘pretenders’ would stand there for ten minutes and have a complete conversation?”
Adam looked straight up. “That does seem unlikely.”
“I hope she stops running away from you eventually.”
“That would be nice.”
Mia rolled her head straight again, staring up at the ceiling. “In your professional opinion, do you think she’s afraid of men because of what happened to her?”
“Either that or… nah. You’re probably right.”
“What?”
“If you’re certain she’s a real child, it’s just a wild outside thought that’ll only freak you out.” He squeezed her hand under the covers.
“Out with it.” She returned the squeeze.
“Well… it occurred to me that another reason she might be avoiding me is that she’s not really a child and is trying to work her way into your head, get you to trust her, feel bad for her, that sort of thing… then… I dunno. Claim you or something. Of the people who have lived here before us, only the women wound up being seriously injured.”
Mia laughed. “You’ve been watching too many horror movies.”
“Not feeling unusually drawn to her? I mean, you ran out and bought furniture for a ghost.”
“No more than I’d be drawn to any other little kid in a horrible situation. Robin just happens to be in our house.” She swished her feet back and forth. “Are you still ambivalent about kids?”
“What, like kids in general or are you going there?
”
She grinned. “What if I was going there?”
“If I recall correctly—which I probably don’t because this is a discussion about children and the mother is always right no matter what the dad remembers—the ‘it can wait indefinitely’ thing came from you.”
“Yeah, well… remember I only had my parents to go by for what a ‘family’ would feel like.”
“You are not your parents.”
“So…”
Adam looked at her. “Are you asking if I want to have a kid?”
“Let’s talk theoretically?”
“Hmm. Never really thought about it. It’s neither something I looked forward to or particularly wanted to avoid.”
Mia rolled onto her side and wrapped herself around his arm. “I’m still trying to cope with knowing a child died in this house. Maybe it’s that.”
“Could be. It’s beyond thrilling my estimation of your gift turned out to be correct. So glad I heard those rumors and picked this house.”
“Adam…” Mia pushed herself up to sit and glared at him. “Are you kidding? This is all just some kind of experiment to you? We’re talking about a real child here. She’s not some laboratory test for you to use so you can prove to the world that psychics and ghosts are real.”
“Hon I—”
A book tumbled from the shelf over the bed and nailed Adam in the face with a dull thump.
“Oof.”
Mia looked up at the empty space in the row of books. “I think you made her angry.”
He pulled the book away from his face. “That’s not what I meant. I’m excited you made contact. I’m glad I chose this house to suggest to you because it’s resulted in us making that contact. Robin needed us. Now that we’re here, we can help her. If we also wind up gathering enough evidence to change the world’s perception of existence after death, great. If not, it doesn’t matter.” He sat up, rubbing his nose. “Given a choice between earth-shattering evidence or helping that girl, we help the girl no questions asked.”
The Spirits of Six Minstrel Run Page 13