"Sean Carmickle. His nickname is Okra. He's next, Patrick! We've got to warn him."
Without another word, Patrick grabs my car keys and heads for the door.
Loreen shouts, "Go!"
I just hope we're in time.
I drive my Honda Fit away from the restaurant like I'm hell-bent for election—something Mr. Rorek said that I picked up—not even stopping to thank Father Mass for the lunch.
"Go, go, go," Patrick says as the light turns from green to yellow.
"That's the second one I've run!"
"Who cares?"
My hope is that the Radisson police aren't out to make an example of me today. Probably not, since it's not the end of the month and they don't need to make their ticket quota yet. I downshift into third gear and punch through the next light as it's turning yellow as well.
"That's three!" I say, more flustered than ever.
"Don't you have Sean's cell phone?" Patrick asks.
"We're friends, but we're not like close or anything, not enough to swap digits."
God, please don't let anything happen to him.
As I approach my house on Main Street, I see Celia standing on the sidewalk waving her long, gangly arms at me to stop. I don't really have time, but girlfriend literally runs out into the street in front of me.
"Hold on!"
I slam on my brakes, throwing Patrick forward a bit until his seat belt pulls him back.
"Are you crazy, Celia?" I scream through the open window.
"Unlock the door."
I press the automatic lock button and she jerks the back passenger door open. "What's going on?" I ask.
Before she can answer, two Radisson police cars come roaring by me with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. I jam the car into first and move out of the way just in the nick of time. The ladder truck and fire engine are fast on the heels of the police, an ambulance in close pursuit behind them.
My psychic headache begins to pound in the middle of my forehead. I glance at Patrick. "Oh no—are we too late?"
"Too late for what?"
"We're trying to stop something before it happens." Then I go into mother-hen mode. "Nichols, what on God's green earth were you doing running out in front of me like that?"
She leans between the front seats. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. Shelby-Nichole was at the fire station with Mayor Shy doing some sort of Sunday potluck-lunch thing for publicity when the call came in."
I snap my fingers. "Point. Make it. Quickly."
Celia's not offended. She knows me by now. "One thirty-four Sycamore Lane."
Patrick's eyebrow lifts, as if to ask me whose address that is.
"I don't know who lives there."
Eyes bulging, Celia shouts, "It's Sean Carmickle's house!"
I floor the gas pedal.
Chapter Ten
I SMELL THE FIRE before I see it.
Acrid gray smoke billows up over the crape myrtles lining Sycamore Lane. Ironic ... why didn't they name it Crape Myrtle Lane?
Patrick fusses. Does that really matter now, Kendall?
I shake out of my funk and park the car a block down the street from Sean's where all of the emergency vehicles have gathered. The three of us climb out, and Patrick reaches for my hand. Celia quirks her lips into a smile at the act, then focuses on the house up ahead.
Orange and yellow flames crawl out of the upstairs windows of the two-story house, daring the firemen to douse them. Clouds of black smoke plume from every crevice of the structure, as if it's weeping at its own destruction.
"Over there." Celia points.
I see Sean, his little sister, Penny, and his parents huddled together by the ambulance. Sean is doubled over coughing, and an EMT is trying to keep the oxygen mask on him. The house is engulfed in flames, snarling the message that it will not go down without a fight. When we get closer to the yard, a local policeman holds us at bay.
"Are you part of the family?" he asks.
I point at Penny. "She's my sister's best friend."
Surprisingly, these credentials seem to do just fine, and the officer lets us pass. Penny turns and sees me, her big black eyes shiny with tears. She breaks away from her mom, who is talking to a fireman, and comes over to us.
Bending down, I feel the need to hug her, and it looks like she needs it. "Penny, what happened?"
She shakes her head, her long hair flying. "I was upstairs. All I heard was Daddy screaming to get out of the house."
Sean and I make eye contact, and we head over to him. He's sitting on the back of the ambulance, covered in soot and smoke. Celia and I both hug him, and Penny cries even harder.
He lowers the oxygen mask and smiles at his little sister. "I'm okay, squirt."
This seems to placate the thirteen-year-old.
"What happened, Okra?" Celia asks. Since she's known him a lot longer than I have, she uses his nickname.
He shakes and scratches his head at the same time. "Dude, I was working on my physics assignment when something sparked in front of me and then..." He points to his burning house. "Then—this."
Celia the scientist takes over the questioning. "What exactly were you working on that would spark out of control?"
"That's just it," Sean says, gulping in air. "I wasn't using anything flammable. I don't understand what happened."
"Okra, tell me what kind of test it was."
"I was using litmus paper to test the acid levels in three different samples of water. And the whole damn thing just burst into flames in my hands, right there at the kitchen table."
I glance at Celia and then Patrick. Neither is buying it.
"That wouldn't cause an explosion," Patrick says.
"Are you sure you didn't put any sodium in the water that might have caused some sort of flare-up?" Celia presses.
"Honestly, Celia," Sean insists. "Litmus paper was the only thing I was working with."
One of the firemen walks up. "That's a very important question, son. You weren't using bleach or something that would promote a flame?"
Sean puts one hand on his heart and the other in a Boy Scout salute. "I swear on a thousand stacks of Bibles and on my grandmother's grave. Nothing but water."
"Yeah," I harrumph. "Water that ignited a destructive flame."
Patrick asks a question that's on the tip of my tongue. "Did you see anything, man? You know, anything out of the ordinary?"
Sean's dark eyes dart downward and he lifts the mask for another hit of the oxygen.
"Come on, Sean. You can tell us," I say. "We're ghost huntresses. We'll believe anything you tell us."
He laughs cynically. "Yeah, well, y'all won't believe this."
"Try us," I say.
"I swear, I saw that ugly-ass doll with the teddy bear from the fair exhibit. Standing right in the corner of the kitchen, laughing at me through the flames. That's not possible, right?" His eyes beg me to say it isn't.
I give him a halfhearted smile and say, "I'm afraid it might be."
A few hours later, Patrick's car is packed and we're standing in my driveway saying goodbye.
"This has been one hell of a weekend, huh?" he asks.
"Quite." I wrap my arms around him and lay my head on his chest. I hear his heartbeat ticking like a well-wound clock. "I hate that you have to leave."
He kisses the top of my head and cuddles me to him. "I'll be back Friday afternoon."
"I know. It's just there's so much weird shit going on."
"You've got your friends and fellow ghost huntresses here with you."
Celia, Becca, and Shelby-Nichole are sitting inside at my dining-room table waiting to tackle whatever it is that's going on. Just because I'm psychic doesn't mean I understand everything.
"Call me when you get home."
"You know I will."
I dig my bare toes into the pebbles of my driveway as I watch the red taillights of Patrick's car disappear. I'm so glad he was here through the weekend while all this crap was going on. And more
important, I'm grateful that he's on my side and patient with what I'm dealing with. Unlike someone I won't mention whose initials are Jason Tillson.
Back inside, I see that Mom has doled out lemonade and popcorn for the ghost huntresses. She's really come a long way in her belief in my abilities and in allowing me to investigate the paranormal.
For the next hour, we all sit at the table with our laptops, scouring the Internet, doing Google searches, and finding any information we can on that damned (literally) doll.
Celia rubs her eyes and laces her fingers together in front of her to stretch. Her knuckles pop, and Shelby-Nichole cringes.
"That is so not good for you."
Ignoring the chastising, Celia says, "The history on Xander is pretty much what we know already. It's cut-and-dried."
"Just like what Mr. Pfeiffer told us at the fair," Becca adds. "A present to the son from the slave nanny, Althea; after her death, strange things happened that were attributed to the doll."
"It doesn't add up," I chime in. "First Dragon's accident and the vision Patrick and I had of what he saw, and then the whole thing with Sean seeing Xander in his kitchen."
"Ooo! Look at this," Celia exclaims. "I found a website that has a collection of obituaries dating back to the eighteen hundreds."
"Eww, who'd want to be the webmaster of that site?" Shelby-Nichole asks.
"What is it?" I ask.
"A very short obit on Robert Townsend Farnsworth, who died in 1899 from an apparent suicide. Ate a bullet. The contents of his suicide note were never made public."
"That's creepy," Becca says. "Are you saying Xander the Doll killed him?"
"Who knows!" Celia says.
"Maybe it was something in the house plaguing him that he couldn't take anymore," I suggest.
Celia continues. "The first mention of the doll historically is when Farnsworth House and all of its contents became the property of the Radisson Historical Society. They used to have him in a chair in the main room back in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies, when they actually allowed visitors into the house. But there were too many complaints that Xander would go missing or would spook the visitors, so he was put upstairs in the room that used to be his. Even then, staff said he would relocate, thus his eventual encasement."
"So where does this thing about taking his picture come into play?" Becca asks.
"I asked Mr. Pfeiffer about this," Celia explains. "Sorry, forgot to tell you. It goes back to the sixties, when people would come to the house. Anyone who took a picture of Xander the Doll had something happen to them. A flat tire on the way home, illness from something they ate that day, a broken arm from a clumsy fall, you name it. Everything started getting attributed to Xander." Celia pauses for a moment. "You know, there's a tribe of indigenous people in Africa who believe if you take a picture of someone, you steal a part of his soul. I wonder if that's the case with Xander the Doll."
Becca snickers. "Dolls don't have souls, Celia."
I gnaw on the end of my index finger. "Maybe this one does."
"That's absurd," Shelby-Nichole says.
"We have to think of all possibilities."
"There is a legend that if you write an apology letter to Xander the Doll, your troubles will stop," Celia informs us. "Mr. Pfeiffer said they have a whole box of letters that they used to display ... until they closed up the house."
"Why did they do that?" I ask.
"He wouldn't say."
"I don't understand why Xander the Doll has been so quiet all these years and is now striking out," Becca notes.
"Oh, the fair was his first appearance since 1999," Celia says.
I scrunch up my mouth and then let out a sigh. "It seems a history display may have unleashed an evil, unhappy entity that could be charming this doll."
Celia's eyes grow wide. "You may be right!"
"In any event, we've got to go on Facebook and look at all the pictures that were taken that night. We've got to warn everyone who snapped a picture with that damned doll."
***
At lunch the next day, Celia, Becca, and I are—strangely enough—sitting at the cheerleader table.
"How did you guys get sushi?" I ask, looking at the spread of California rolls, spicy tuna maki, and shrimp tempura that Stephanie and Farah have divided between them.
"Jim Roach does a co-op off campus two days a week, so I texted him our lunch order," Farah says with a laugh.
I glance across the caf to where Jim is sitting with his buddies Kyle and Sean and holding up a large piece of caterpillar sushi. Bleck ... eel. That stuff is nasty.
Courtney Langdon picks at a salad with no dressing, and I'm just too upset to eat, although the turkey potpie I got does smell delish.
"How is Sean doing?" Celia asks.
Courtney looks over at him. "He's staying with Jim for the time being, but he's still majorly bummed. The house is pretty much ruined from top to bottom. What wasn't destroyed by smoke and fire has massive water damage."
Mr. and Mrs. Carmickle are staying in a hotel; their kids opted to stay with friends who offered them rooms. Like my parents did. Penny Carmickle is bunking with Kaitlin. I'm sure it'll help her heal from the fact that she just lost everything, including all of her precious video games that she and Kaitlin perfect every day after school.
"That sucks big-time," Becca says.
"His parents have awesome insurance though," Stephanie says between bites of spicy tuna roll. "The fire department said it had to be a wiring problem because of the age of the house. Sean said they're going to demolish it and build something brand-new with the insurance payout."
"At least something positive will come from it," Farah adds.
I stare at Farah. "It wasn't bad wiring in an old house. It was Xander the Doll. He is out for revenge."
Farah's eyes twinkle at me as she laughs hard. "Oh, Kendall, you're so cute with your psychic senses. You know I don't believe in any of those curses and stuff."
"Obviously," Celia says. "Since you were the one who snapped the pictures of the doll. Didn't you listen to Mr. Pfeiffer's stories of people who were cursed after that?"
"I did," Stephanie says.
"Me too," Courtney agrees.
Farah snickers. "Whatever. Pass the wasabi, Steph."
Frustrated, I lay my elbows on the table and shove my hands into my scalp, rubbing at the headache—a real one—that's developed as I try to get through to everyone.
"How do you explain what happened to Dragon?" Becca says.
"Maybe he hit an oil patch," Farah suggests.
"Maybe something distracted him and freaked him out," Celia says. "And what about Sean's house? Bursting into flames from testing water with litmus paper? I don't think so. That's not how it works."
Courtney's face becomes ashen. "Y'all, we should listen to them. They know their stuff."
"Tru' dat," Stephanie says.
Rolling her eyes, Farah asks, "What am I supposed to do to remove this alleged curse?"
"You need to write a letter of apology to Xander the Doll."
She waves a chopstick at us dismissively. "I love y'all and I know you're, like, all into the paranormal and stuff, but I don't believe it." She uses her chopsticks to emphasize her points. "First off, I have a paper on Lord Byron due Monday, my opera recital is Saturday—and I have the lead solo—and I have to get my nails done." Farah puts down the chopsticks and spreads her fingers for emphasis.
I've never heard anyone who can sing like Farah. She's like an opera diva at seventeen. But that doesn't excuse the fact that she toyed with something dark and refuses to deal with it.
"You've got to do it, Farah," Celia begs.
"I don't have time, hon."
"Everyone who took a picture with Xander the Doll has had something bad befall them," I say with great passion in my voice. "Dragon, Sean..."
"Not Jim," Farah says.
At that precise moment, across the caf, there's a horrendous clamor around Jim Roach
's table. Roachie stands up and grabs at his throat, coughing and gagging while his face turns beet red.
"Someone help!" Kyle screams out. "He's choking!"
"Oh my God!" Courtney yells.
"I don't know the Heimlich, do you?" I ask Celia and Becca.
Both shake their heads.
Roachie's face is getting redder and redder and he's trying to breathe.
Chaos ensues in the lunchroom as people run around trying to help. Lucas Hesse, a football player, tries to hoist Jim up from behind, but he's not doing it right. He's only making matters worse.
Then I hear laughter over the screaming and yelling. A squeaky high laugh with a disturbing tone to it. I swear it must be Xander the Doll. He's here. Out of his case. He. Is. Here.
One of the lunch ladies pushes everyone aside and comes to Jim's rescue. She laces her hands around his middle and gives the heave-ho several times, finally dislodging the wedged sushi. Jim collapses onto the table, huffing and puffing, gasping in the precious air.
I turn steely eyes on Farah. "You were saying?"
"I didn't even do anything and I'm going to write a letter," Stephanie says. She had previously been the victim of some pretty nasty paranormal activity that threatened her house and her home life.
"Me too," Courtney says. "We'll do it at study hall."
"Fine ... whatever," Farah says. She turns to Stephanie. "Write the letter and sign my name to it as well. I'll be on the computer researching Lord Byron. Someone who actually existed and something I'm being graded on." She gathers up the remnants of her lunch and snags her giant Coach bag. "And, y'all, don't forget my recital Saturday. I'm doing an aria from Madama Butterfly and I totally rock."
I smile at her, somewhat relieved. "I'd love to come. And I'll bring my boyfriend."
"You do that," Farah says. "He's a cutie."
Shelby-Nichole stops by the table before Farah leaves. "Hey, y'all. Remember we're doing yearbook group pics on Friday. We'll do individual ones as well."
"I'll e-mail the squad a reminder of what uniform to wear," Courtney says.
"Awesome," Shelby-Nichole says. "Oh, and Kendall, I'll need your help after school today."
"Sure thing."
Good.
Ghost Huntress 5 - The Discovery Page 8