Haunting the Night

by Mara Purnhagen

“Trisha answered most of the calls, but sometimes I did, too.” He shrugged. “And you’re right. He was concerned about what we would tell the police and if we were going to include anything about him on the next DVD.

  “But he was also dealing with Marcus’s death and his own injuries.” Mills poked his fork into his half-empty dish of grits. I had thoroughly devoured mine.

  “When he told me there would be a memorial service, I offered to go so I could represent your family.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Good.” Mills nodded. “You were all going through so much. I wanted to handle something, you know?”

  He talked briefly about the service itself. Zelden was there, of course, along with his new assistant. A few friends from the area had shown up. Marcus’s older brother was also there, but not his father. There were some prayers and a few readings from the Bible. It lasted less than an hour.

  I leaned forward. “So where is he buried?”

  Mills smiled sadly. “He’s not.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Charlotte, he was cremated. His ashes were scattered.”

  Why hadn’t I considered that possibility? All this time I had been looking for a gravestone. What could I do now that there was no final resting place? How could I get the shadow creature to leave me in peace if I couldn’t pay my respects?

  “You told me you could take me to Marcus,” I reminded him.

  “I know where some of his ashes were scattered.” Mills said that while his brother had taken an urn home to be buried in Michigan, Zelden had kept some of the ashes. The small group attending the memorial service had traveled to the Charleston Harbor, near the aquarium, to scatter those ashes on the water.

  “If you’re ready, we can go right now,” Mills offered. “It’s not a long walk.”

  But I wasn’t ready. I wanted to arrive prepared, with a bouquet of flowers and a few nice words to say. I wanted to do this right, so the shadow creature would have no excuse to keep tormenting me.

  “Tomorrow,” I decided. “Can we do it tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely.” As he opened his wallet to pay our bill, I caught a glimpse of the shiny silver fragment of balloon he kept there. Maybe that was my sign that I was doing the right thing, the necessary thing. I hoped so.

  “I miss you.”

  I smiled into the phone. “I miss you, too, Noah.”

  It was just before dinner. I had stepped out of a hot shower and into a fluffy robe when my cell phone rang. I rubbed a towel to my wet hair as Noah talked about his day. I loved the little details: the pop quiz in history, the chicken tenders served at lunch. I loved his voice. He could recite the phone book and I would like it.

  “What about you?” he asked. “How’s Charleston?”

  “Wet.” A quick glance toward the window showed me that the storm showed no signs of letting up. The sky had deepened from a pale gray to a deep granite. Black clouds moved fast across the sky, as if they were being chased by something even darker.

  “Tell me more about school.” I wanted to simply listen, without having to talk too much in return. Everything I needed to say to Noah felt like it had to be done in person.

  “Prom mania has gotten worse,” Noah said. “It’s like a disease around here. The freshmen girls are basically wearing bathing suits trying to get a junior to ask them to go.”

  I laughed. “I hope they’re not coming after you.”

  “I think they know that the only girl I want to see in a bathing suit is you.”

  “Yeah, well, I doubt I’ll get a chance to wear mine. This rain isn’t supposed to let up until Saturday night.”

  “Prom night.” He said it quietly, almost like he hadn’t meant to say it aloud at all.

  “You didn’t want to go, did you?” I felt a twinge of guilt. Was Prom more important to him than it was to me?

  “No, not at all.” He gave a short laugh. “I really didn’t want to rent a tux.”

  “Okay.” But something in his voice struck me as being off.

  I didn’t have a chance to ask him anything more. Annalise came home, dripping wet and cradling a soggy bag of groceries. “Sorry I’m late. It’s awful out there.”

  “Noah? I have to go. Talk with you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure. Say hi to Annalise for me.”

  I said goodbye, dressed quickly and joined my sister in her little kitchen. “Special dinner for us tonight,” she said as she unloaded the grocery bag. “You like rainbow trout?”

  “I think so.” Truthfully, I couldn’t tell most fish apart. As long as it was served with sauce and lacked tiny bones, it was fine with me. I grabbed a pot for the rice while Annalise arranged ingredients on the counter.

  “What did you do today?”

  I measured three cups of water and turned on the stove. “Besides trying to avoid drowning? I went to the library and had lunch with Mills.”

  She smiled. “That’s nice. He’s stopping by later with dessert.”

  The water was boiling, so I dumped in the box of rice pilaf and placed a lid on the pot. Annalise hummed as she sautéed butter and chopped some parsley.

  “This is a special dinner,” I said. “When did you become so fancy?”

  She shook her head. “Using fresh herbs does not make me fancy. Tell me more about your day while you cut this into wedges.” She handed me a ripe lemon.

  “We had lunch at the Courtyard Café.”

  “You did?”

  I cut the lemon in half and pried some of the seeds out with my knife. “Yeah. It was nice, actually.”

  “I know. I’ve been back there, too.”

  This surprised me. It was less than a year ago that Annalise had declared she would never, ever return to the place where she had once felt overcome with sadness. In fact, her experience at the Café resulted in a serious threat to leave my family’s paranormal investigations behind forever. At the time, I didn’t understand her fierce fear. But now, I knew exactly what it was like to want to turn away from our family’s work. With Mom absent, I had no desire to return to the occupation that had made up so much of my life. That part of me was also absent.

  Satisfied with my lemon wedges, I leaned against the counter to watch Annalise finish preparing dinner. “Why did you go back?” I asked.

  She flipped the fish filets with a spatula. “I wanted to know that it was over. I wanted to walk through those doors and not feel anything.”

  “And?”

  “And it was fine. A nonevent. I walked in, ate a meal and left without ever once feeling anything strange. Case closed.” She turned to me. “Grab some plates. Dinner’s almost done.”

  As I set the table, I mulled over Annalise’s words and my brief visit to the Café. I hadn’t felt anything, either. And if the occurrences we had experienced there could fade completely, so could my encounters with the shadow. Still, I wondered what the shadow was, exactly.

  My family believed that people could leave behind an imprint of intense feelings after they died. Fear or terror was sometimes strong enough to echo for years, and so was simple repetition. We had investigated places where a rocking chair would move nearly every day at the same time, or a window would open and shut almost on a schedule. It fit with our theories that someone experiencing profound regret or guilt could also leave a trace of that emotion behind. Was the entity that was haunting the night simply the residual energy of my own remorse? Or was it more connected to Marcus’s energy?

  The shadow creature’s presence in my life was tied to Marcus. It had to be. But if my search for answers led nowhere, what would I do? Was I destined to be followed by the eerie, unpredictable being for the rest of my life? Maybe pursuing Marcus was a bad idea. What if it was better to leave his ghost alone?

  Annalise brought dinner to the table. “Smells great,” I said.

  “I feel bad that our plans have been derailed.” She scooped rice onto her plate. “I had our entire weekend mapped out, but between this weather and my class paper,
it’s fallen apart.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t mind having the apartment to myself. It was kind of nice to be alone. I missed Noah and Avery, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had hours of quiet time, away from my house and the memories it held.

  Mills arrived as we were finishing dinner. He carried a bouquet of white lilies in one hand and a key lime pie in the other. Annalise beamed as she took the flowers from him and kissed his cheek.

  Mills took off his wet jacket and began slicing the pie. Annalise went to find a vase for her flowers. “I haven’t said anything to Annalise about our plans for tomorrow,” he said to me. “But I don’t like keeping secrets, so I’m going to tell her after you’re back home.”

  “Okay.” I appreciated his discretion. I didn’t want my sister to worry.

  Annalise returned with the vase. “I have to meet my study group at noon tomorrow. Do you have plans?”

  “I’m off tomorrow.” Mills slid slices of the dark yellow pie onto plates. “I thought Charlotte and I could go to the aquarium.”

  Annalise kissed his cheek again. “Have I told you lately that I think you’re the world’s most amazing boyfriend?”

  Mills blushed and adjusted his glasses. “Um, no.”

  “Well, you are.”

  I looked away as Annalise nuzzled his neck. Their intimacy made me long for Noah. After dessert, I left Annalise and Mills in the living room so they could have their privacy.

  I flipped open my phone. Still no call from Zelden. Not that it mattered now, but it would have been nice if he could have acknowledged me. I hated being brushed off. I looked out the rain-streaked window in Annalise’s bedroom. Night had fallen while we had been having dinner, and a soft amber glow from the lamp posts outside filled the room. I stood up and went to the window so I could gaze out onto the empty street.

  The glass was foggy with condensation. I wiped my hand against it, smearing the cold water in an arc. The fuzzy orange light of the lamppost illuminated the wet street but nothing more. I focused on the slender black steel, an elegant reminder of Charleston’s history.

  And then I saw the shadow.

  Like a swift animal, the black shape sailed past the light. I should have been expecting a visit, should have known it would still be there. Again, it looked up at me and pointed toward the harbor.

  “I know,” I whispered.

  My ragged breath fogged the window, and when I wiped at the glass, the shadow was gone, vanished into the curtain of night. I hoped it would be the final time I would ever see the thing.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday morning arrived wrapped in a blanket of fog. I liked it. There was something strangely graceful in the way the white mist curled itself around the streetlights.

  Annalise had prepared pancakes for breakfast. She was slicing strawberries onto the warm golden discs when I entered the kitchen.

  “You seriously didn’t need to go to all this trouble.” I sat down at the table. “I’m fine with cereal.”

  “Well, I’m not.” My sister set a plate in front of me. “This is my way of trying to apologize for abandoning you again today.”

  “No apologies necessary. Besides, I’m hanging out with Mills today.” And hopefully saying goodbye to the shadow creature. I had spent half the night going over the words I would say when we reached the harbor, a final goodbye to Marcus that combined my sincere apology with hope for an end to things.

  After breakfast Annalise hurried off to her first class while I got ready for the day. Mills had offered to pick me up, but I told him that as long as it wasn’t raining, I preferred to walk to the harbor.

  It was a good decision. The air was fresh from days of rain, and I loved walking through the thick fog. Even though the harbor was located over a mile away, I was early.

  Mills had said he would meet me outside the aquarium. He hadn’t arrived yet, so I looked out over the pale brown water of Charleston Harbor and enjoyed my moment alone. It was still early enough that the city hadn’t been invaded yet by eager tourists, and I was content to stare at the gently moving waves and bobbing boats. Was I also looking at some of Marcus’s ashes? Realistically, I knew it wasn’t possible, but it was interesting to think about. Or maybe simply sad—I wasn’t sure.

  “Am I late?” Mills pulled me out of my quiet thoughts and I turned to greet him with a quick hug. He handed me a bouquet of white tulips. “I thought these would be appropriate,” he said. “We can toss them onto the water.”

  I was glad he had thought of that detail. It would make everything more formal, more official, in a way. “Is this the spot?”

  He gestured down the harbor, at the other end of the aquarium. “It was this way.”

  We walked side by side, with me cradling the tulips. It was our own little funeral procession, in a way, and I tried to focus on what we were here to do. I had found a few poems online that I could read, somber and respectful. I hoped it would be enough.

  We reached the other side of the harbor. Away from the aquarium, there were fewer cars and people. Even though it was still early, I could see bright yellow school buses pulling into the aquarium’s parking lot. Soon there would be crowds of tourists and eager children. I wanted to be done with our task by then, done with everything.

  “We scattered most of his ashes right here,” Mills said. I looked out at the calm water. White gulls drifted above us. I breathed in the seaweed-scented air and tried to focus. I wasn’t sure where to begin. Mills seemed to sense my uncertainty.

  “Why don’t I give you a few moments by yourself?” He smiled. “That way you can say whatever you need to say. I’ll wait over there.” He nodded toward the aquarium parking lot.

  “Sure.” Mills had gotten me this far. I needed to do the rest on my own.

  After waiting a few moments until I was sure there was no one near me, I pulled out the slip of notebook paper tucked inside my jacket. On it I had copied a poem I liked, but as I began reading softly, the words felt wrong in my mouth. Was I really here to read poetry into the breeze? No. I was here to ask for forgiveness, to beg for it. I closed my eyes.

  “I’m sorry you died because of me,” I whispered. “I’m sorry you had to die like that, surrounded by violence. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I’m sorry—” I looked down at the tulips. They were so flawless, so perfectly white. I stretched out my arm and dropped them into the water below. “I’m sorry.”

  A few minutes later, Mills came up behind me. “How do you feel?”

  I stared at the tulips as they were carried by the water. More than anything I wanted to be able to tell Mills that I felt better. I wanted to have experienced some sense of closure and relief. But I didn’t. I felt absolutely nothing except for my guilt, which was still as strong and present as ever.

  Mills gave me a ride back to the apartment. Once inside, I tried calling both Noah and Avery, but my calls went straight to voice mail. As I debated what to do with my open afternoon, my phone buzzed. I answered it, expecting Noah or Avery, but it was Zelden’s assistant again. I cut her off before she could speak. “Tell him to forget it,” I said. “I don’t need him.” Funny how I thought Zelden would be the one with the answers, when it was Mills who had really helped me.

  I plopped in front of the TV. It began to rain again, so hard I had to turn up the volume on the TV to block out the insistent banging of raindrops against the window. Annalise called.

  “My study group will be over by four and then I promise it’s just you and me for the rest of the night.”

  “Great. See you then.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “I’m really sorry—”

  “Stop. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  It wasn’t, but that wasn’t my sister’s fault. It was mine. I knew somehow, in my core, that I had failed. My weak attempt at apologizing to the spirit of Marcus had not worked, and the shadow would be making another visit soon. Since I was going home in twenty-four hours, I would need to spend my last
day in Charleston tucked inside the library, searching for better ways to solve my problem. Maybe Mills would help me again. And Noah—I knew Noah would help in any way he could.

  Or maybe I should just leave. My brief vacation had gone badly. If Annalise wasn’t going to be away for most of the day, I would have asked her to take me home now. Then I could crash the Prom with Noah. Avery would be thrilled, and maybe I would end up with an evening of decent memories instead of a long weekend full of depressing ones.

  When Annalise got home we ordered a pizza and settled on the sofa to watch a movie. She fell asleep halfway through, though, so I cleaned up our mess and then woke her so she could go to bed. I knew I couldn’t go to sleep yet—not until I confirmed whether or not the shadow would be outside the window.

  I was betting it would.

  I forced myself to look out the window every half hour, convinced that I needed to simply get the encounter out of the way. It was my new abnormal routine, one that I was stuck with for the foreseeable future.

  By ten, I was checking outside the living room window every fifteen minutes. By eleven, I was pacing the room. Why was it taking so long? I felt a glimmer of optimism. Had my little ceremony actually worked?

  Another hour passed, and another. Outside, the rain had reduced to a soft drizzle. The streets were empty of people and cars and mysterious shadow beings. My eyes grew heavy and I wanted to go to bed, to slip under the blankets next to my sister and sleep until late morning or early afternoon. I would wait one more hour, I decided. If the shadow did not appear, I would know that I had been successful and I would rest better than I had in months.

  I crept into Annalise’s room. Judging from her heavy, rhythmic breathing was sound asleep. I quickly brushed my teeth, slipped into a T-shirt and got ready for bed. But it hadn’t been exactly an hour, so I returned to the living room to take one final peek out of the window.

  Nothing. There was nothing there. The streetlight glowed, illuminating a sprinkle of raindrops, not even enough to be called a drizzle. I breathed in, relieved. I had not felt anything during my goodbye to Marcus, but my actions had been enough to appease the shadow creature. I was free.