Ghostsitter

by Shelly Brown

  Lisette turned and screamed, her shriek harsh and shrill. I backed away as fast as I could while Justin had her distracted. We all had to get out of there.

  I slowed in horror as I saw Lisette reach her arms toward my friend, slamming him with wind so hard that he rolled like a tumbleweed. She repeated the act with even more force and an oak swayed and cracked. She thrust her arm one last time and the massive tree groaned and fell.

  The tree crashed into the ground and I screamed. Justin was nowhere to be seen—smashed under the oak.

  Chapter 40

  Not in the Plan

  Tiffany

  I turned to run but hit an invisible wall of wind. She hadn’t forgotten about me. She flickered in and out as she moved towards me, slowly. Slower than I had ever seen a ghost move before. As if each time she disappeared and reappeared she took one calculated step closer to me. And then she stopped, raised her hand, and gestured with one finger. The air inside me obeyed. It was as though she had pulled my breath straight out of my lungs. I tried to gasp as it went. I tried to inhale, but couldn’t.

  Asthma had nothing on this feeling.

  I struggled for air as she blinked in and out only to appear a foot away. Close enough to feel her fiery heat. She signaled with her hand. My air came back and I gasped. She could kill me at any time. She could blow me away or take my breath from me. She could do whatever she wanted, but she chose to reach out and grab my shoulder.

  I expected her hand to melt my skin with her diabolic acid, but it just felt like an abnormally strong human hand. She held me firm and reached the other hand out to me palm up. I gave her the papers.

  They were only photocopies. But what would a dead woman from the 1910s know about that kind of technology?

  She took them and held them far out to her side. Keeping her eyes steadily on my own, she burst all of the papers into flames and shook the ash from her hand.

  Through the smoke I saw something. I saw hope. I caught a glimpse of Justin emerging from the tree. The branches that hit him must have been small enough that he lived.

  Of course it was only a temporary hope. I still had a ruthless monster holding me and lighting things on fire.

  Her hand went forward, palm up, again asking for something. She must have seen the confusion on my face because she pointed at my pocket.

  The bone.

  “Hey Tiffany!” a voice said. “Where’s Justin?”

  It was Kori, looking for her brother. That was who he was talking to on the phone! I tried to respond but Lisette only tightened her grip making my response sound something like, “He’s rii-ii-oowww.”

  “What are you doing?” Kori asked, obviously not seeing the Lady of Wicked Shoulder Pain. To her it must have seemed like I was squirming for no reason.

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Oh, there he is,” Kori said and walked away.

  Lisette tightened her grip on my shoulder and I writhed at the pain. She put out her hand insisting that I give her the bone.

  I considered it. I really did.

  She was crazy scary, could suck away my breath, and could blow my body a few states away. The pinching in my shoulder shot pain down my chest and back.

  But the bone wasn’t mine to give. It belonged to . . . whomever it belonged to . . . and that person wasn’t Lisette.

  Angry, she took her empty hand and put it firmly under my chin, wrapping her fingers around my neck. She forced my chin upwards so that I looked into her dark eyes. I swore they were getting more and more black as I stared into them.

  Then she head-butted me.

  An unexpected move.

  Especially considering how gently she did it. It was perplexing until she released my chin entirely, reached around her back, and pulled Patrick off of her by his clothes. It was an attack from behind.

  He grimaced at her and tried to bite her arm.

  She shook him loose and he went right for her leg, pulling and pounding.

  Releasing me she turned her energy on Patrick and sent him flying through the air to land twenty feet away.

  The sight of his small body being flung like that was heart breaking. He didn’t get up but rolled over into a ball. I tried to run to take care of him but Lisette grabbed me and pushed me to the ground. With her knees holding down my chest she tried to check my pocket for the bone.

  But before she could find anything, Ruby came out swinging. Not being particularly skilled in battle, Ruby’s punches were ineffective but it inspired other kids to come out and join the fray. Soon all of the kids were hitting, biting, pounding, climbing on, and kicking Lisette.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Justin blow out the sage flame and start running towards Lisette with the smoking herb.

  He was alive!

  My smile slipped when I realized that he about to make a terrible mistake.

  “Stop!” I shouted at him. Where did she go when she disappeared? Probably right back to the Hacienda where all of our friends were working. And the sage wouldn’t just send away Lisette. They would all return to the Hacienda. “The children!”

  He seemed to understand and dropped the sage.

  The children were pushing Lisette towards the cemetery entrance. Were they going to burn her on the invisible barrier? The kids were ferocious, but Lisette was stronger. The best they could do was distract her, but they weren’t winning. Kid after kid wailed as they were jettisoned out from the fight.

  We couldn’t win. We were nothing against Lisette. Maybe if we had an . . .

  Then I got an idea. We were by a cemetery after all.

  And, oh, how I needed an idea.

  I yelled into the night, “If there is anyone here who can help us, any ghosts I can’t see, anyone who doesn’t feel that kids years ago should have been sold, or kids now killed, help us!” I screamed. “Please help us!”

  Lisette looked frantic, flailing her arms at the children and letting out sporadic screams.

  Then I saw them.

  A mob of ghosts, fainter than I had ever seen ghosts before. More white, more translucent. They appeared to be shouting and shaking their fists, though I didn’t hear anything. They crowded the entrance and clustered along the fence line. They appeared to be unable to leave the boundaries of the cemetery.

  I frowned. I needed help on my side of the cemetery gate. I guess I should have been more specific.

  Patrick had returned to fight Lisette, but she grabbed him by the head.

  No. Not again. I wouldn’t watch this. The angry mama bear in me was back, big time.

  “We have to help them!” I shouted at Justin just before letting out a guttural, primeval roar and charging at the demon woman.

  I rammed my head hard into her stomach and she stumbled a little but didn’t fall. But it was enough to force her to drop Patrick. Yep, I head butted the freaky-scary ghost demon.

  Justin reached us and started wailing on her, flinging his arms as hard and fast as he could.

  “Push her towards the cemetery!” I ordered Justin since he couldn’t see what any of the children were doing. “She needs to go into the cemetery.”

  Lisette heard what I said and crouched down. I thought it was an interesting technique to keep us from being able to move her until I felt it. The anger was so intense there was actual heat in my chest. She was radiating fire from somewhere within. Then, like an explosion, the next thing I remembered was flying through the air, farther and faster than she had ever thrown me before.

  I landed hard and to my right, and my left, ghost children hit the ground. Justin was way on the other side of the clearing.

  Lisette was fuming.

  She wasn’t done with us.

  Robert!

  It was Ruby’s voice and it took me a second to find her. She was pointing at the boy with the messy hair. He flickered a few times then
disappeared—hat and all.

  Robert! she cried brokenhearted.

  Chapter 41

  Following the White Witch

  Justin

  I recognized the white form on the other side of the fence. Silently it beckoned me with both its hands. Under normal circumstances I would never respond to the White Witch’s pleading for me to enter the cemetery. Nope, no way. She would certainly have been trying to trap me to make me miserable like she is. To put some curse on me or suck my soul dry. But these were not normal circumstances. I swallowed, took one last look at Lisette and bolted for the black iron fence.

  Lisette saw me running but wasn’t fast enough to catch me before I was over the fence. I waited for her to thrust me into the sky and send me plummeting to the ground but she did nothing of the sort. She just gave me an ugly angry face.

  Not too dissimilar to her normal face.

  “No, it’s good, Ruby,” Tiffany said then turned her attention to the demon woman. “Lisette, they did it.” She was sore and badly bruised but she forced herself to stand. “My friends found the skeletons in the backyard and they’re digging them out as we speak.” I was always impressed with Tiffany’s ability to talk her way through, in, and out of anything. Even if she started to repeat herself, she would never be at a loss for words. “Even if you kill us there are others who already know what we know.”

  I heard a short scream behind me and whipped around to see the White Witch pointing to a corner of the cemetery that had a few trees but very little grass.

  She looked different than I had seen her before.

  She had eyes. Real eyes. They looked kind.

  And she wasn’t screaming. Without the anger pulling at her face she looked young. Kori’s age.

  But she was still the White Witch and she still made the hair on my arms shoot straight up.

  She pointed again and again until I followed her to the spot. She crouched down and started pretending to dig, or pull at the dirt, or collect rocks . . . I had no idea what she was trying to say.

  I bent down and grabbed a dirt clod.

  This delighted the White Witch and her charades got more animated but not more clear.

  “Take the dirt and . . .” I started guessing. “. . . Bathe in it? Throw it around? Dig?”

  Tiffany cried out.

  I looked up to see Lisette kneeling atop Tiffany, her hands raised like claws.

  Forget charades. I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed a second dirt clod with my other hand and chucked it as hard as I could at Lisette’s head.

  I was never that good at throwing. Even in P.E. kickball where you just had to roll the ball in a straight line they didn’t let me pitch, but this dirt clod hit its target beautifully.

  She reacted like it was acid. Screaming in pain, holding her head. Much longer than I would have anticipated. I guess I threw harder than I thought.

  She tumbled off of Tiffany, pushed by what I can only guess were the orphan children and clasping at the spot I hit her. Tiffany was still stuck though so I let the next dirt clod fly.

  I didn’t get her head this time, like I was aiming at. The dirt hit her in the back and the second that it touched her she grabbed for the wound like she had been shot by a bullet.

  Something wasn’t making sense. I had been hit by dirt clods before and they didn’t hurt that bad. My goal had been to distract her but it looked like I was doing some real damage.

  Was she allergic to dirt?

  The White Witch was pointing to the dirt again. Begging me to get more.

  Magic dirt?

  I ran over and grabbed as much as I could carry and ran to the fence where I would get a good shot at her. Tiffany had rolled out and was not only standing again but pushing on the monster from behind. I hesitated for fear that the magic dirt would somehow hit Tiffany and hurt her, but I realized that I was touching the magic dirt and it wasn’t hurting me, so I hurled it and only brushed Lisette’s arm with my bad aim. But she felt it and her hands went immediately for the new wound.

  I threw it over and over and went back for more, while Tiffany and the kids kept trying to push her in through the cemetery gate. She was close but fighting hard.

  I grabbed another load, holding my shirt out and shoveling dirt into it like it was a basket. A stone caught my eye. The size of a grapefruit and buried neatly in the ground, it was engraved with the words; Fifteen days old, Unnamed.

  A grave marker.

  This was a grave. Some sad mother or father had carved this little stone for their baby.

  No. It was more than that. I had figured it out.

  This was a lot of graves. The paupers’ grave.

  Home to the body of the White Witch.

  And maybe even Lisette.

  Chapter 42

  What in the Heck is Going on Here?

  Tiffany

  Dang that dirt was effective!

  Let’s hear it for consecrated ground.

  I have no idea why, but the pain caused by the dirt made her terrible at the wind-throwing power thingy she was always doing to us. Occasionally I could feel a warm breeze or a child would be toppled over, but it was nothing like before. With Justin hurling dirt from the cemetery, the kids and I stood a chance. We were actually making progress. Lisette couldn’t get herself up on her feet again and any attempts at standing were met with dirt bombs and biting children.

  Inside the fence the ghosts were grasping the air in anticipation, and Rosaline, the White Witch, crouched at the entrance reaching for her sister.

  Lisette looked up and hissed at her.

  Traitor.

  It was the first time I had heard Lisette speak and it sounded so . . . normal. I had almost forgotten that she was just a woman at one time. The idea rocked me so hard that I almost lost my balance. Well, that and the dirt clod that Justin pegged me with.

  He had the worst aim.

  Rosaline looked hurt.

  No, love you, was her response.

  Ruby figured out that if she kicked Lisette’s feet that she would move them and as long as we all kept pushing her we could really get her moving. Patrick jumped on her back and she tumbled so far forward that one of her hands crossed into the cemetery. Her sister grabbed it and held on tight against Lisette’s pulling.

  Hate!

  I felt a huge wave of heat and anger as Lisette stared at her sister and the scary ghosts inside of the graveyard.

  Rosaline stroked her sister’s hand without letting go.

  Peace.

  Lisette screamed and tried to use her other hand to free herself, but Rosaline caught that hand too.

  “Yes! Keep going!” The kids and I pushed Lisette even harder. Justin came forward with his shirt full of dirt and just dumped it on the writhing woman. She arched her back and we heaved her in. Once her arms had passed the threshold, the other spirits all grabbed her sleeves and pulled her in.

  They flickered. All of them together.

  Rosaline wrapped her arms around her sister. To protect her, I would guess. Lisette stood as if numb to the whole thing. Then with another flicker, the Spanish sisters disappeared along with the others. Like they were all merely a hologram.

  The kids were still there though and they started screaming and dancing.

  We did it.

  I wiped my eyes.

  We actually did it.

  “The White Witch must really hate Lisette,” Justin said walking towards us. I had to read his lips but I was starting to get good at it.

  For once, Justin couldn’t have been more wrong but that wasn’t important. “I’m free!” I looked around at the kids who were smiling and skipping. “We’re free!” It was like this huge drenched blanket had been lifted right off of me. I felt like air and sunshine and all that was right with the world.

  And no, I ha
dn’t forgotten how wet my socks were or how muddy my sparkly shoes were, but life was still blissful. I started laughing.

  Justin started laughing too.

  The children were . . . kinda laughing, kinda wailing.

  And the only person who wasn’t laughing was Kori. She was still standing by the fallen oak tree with her lips parted and one brow raised.

  “What in the heck is going on here?”

  That just made us laugh more.

  ***

  Tuesday at school we were treated like rock stars. I wasn’t expecting that at all. Everyone was talking about the dig and the demon. Even Brett Lovell. Surprisingly when he put his hand on my shoulder to congratulate me, not only were there no butterflies in my stomach, I actually wanted to shake his hand off. He had lost all of his appeal.

  So did cherries.

  That morning there was a pile of cherries on my front step. No bag, no bowl. Just a stack. They weren’t in season but they looked fresh.

  I brought them inside but you had better believe I didn’t eat strange produce that I found on my porch. My mind drifted to Rosaline and the orchard owner but I really couldn’t imagine how the fruit ended up at my house. A thank you present from the dead? Exactly the kind of stuff you should think twice about before popping in your mouth.

  ***

  Throughout the day the children started disappearing.

  When we got to the dig site after school, it was unreal to see so many adults working and digging in the back of the Hacienda. Nellie was there making charts and drawing sketches with some other guy in a uniform. She showed me how they were recording where the bodies were found and taking DNA samples to find their families. I witnessed a child disappear at the same time his skeleton was carefully pulled from the ground. It was incredible. Justin and I stayed and watched until it got late and then my mom drove us home.

  The next day a lot of kids disappeared. All of the Pettersen kids were still with me, but it was only a matter of time.