by K. J. Emrick
How was she supposed to stop him?
Chapter Five
Jon drove straight to the police station. He wanted to help Wilson with the case, both to pitch in for the department and to find out if they had learned anything more about Bonnie Verhault.
He had been very insistent that Darcy stay with him. As much as she wanted to do exactly that, she needed to get home. She wanted to call and check on Grace and Aaron, not to mention Helen and Andrew. Then there was Smudge to take care of. Well, he could take care of himself, pretty much, but she hated leaving him alone for so long. They were best friends, after all.
Jon had argued with her, but in the end she won out. With an exasperated sigh he drove her to their house, insisting that she call him if anything at all happened. She agreed, kissing his forehead to seal the promise.
Mostly, she wanted to get home to consult with her books and see what would be involved in exorcising a two hundred year old ghost from the town. No doubt there would be a lot involved in it. Whenever she did a communication, calling on the ghost of someone who had passed on, it took something out of her. An outpouring of her personal energy. A piece of her soul, kind of. What would a full on exorcism cost her?
The house was quiet when she got back. It was close to eleven o’clock now, and the day had been exhausting. Especially for one that had started out so lazily with just her and Jon hanging out together. Darcy sighed as she poured a cup of tea for herself, standing in the kitchen. When she and Jon got married they would have to honeymoon far, far away from Misty Hollow if they expected to have any time at all for just the two of them. Australia seemed nice. Maybe they could go there.
The phone calls themselves had taken over an hour. Grace was very matter of fact in asking questions and getting information, but then had choked up a little when she talked about how scared she had been for baby Addison. Darcy remembered the little voice in the back of her mind while Nathaniel Williams’ ghost had railed at them, and had no problem admitting that she was worried for Addison, too. The sisters promised to watch out for the newborn child, no matter what.
The conversation with Helen had taken a lot longer. She was an emotional wreck, terrified by what had happened and what might happen and unsure what to do about either. As the town’s mayor, she needed to make sure the citizens of Misty Hollow were safe. She had a certain image to uphold for the community, as well, and dead bodies showing up on her lawn didn’t exactly help her with that. Not that her image was anything more than a minor concern.
Her real concern, was who had killed Bonnie Verhault.
That was Darcy’s concern, too.
After promising to call Helen the minute she knew anything else, Darcy had finally been able to relax a bit. After locking both doors and all the windows. She’d had her experiences with ghosts trying to break into the house before, and with human intruders as well. She had told Jon she was a big girl, and that was true, but she wasn’t stupid.
After changing out her jeans and her shirt for a pair of pink fleece pajamas, Darcy took her tea to the couch and curled up on the one end, with her feet tucked up underneath her.
Smudge came around the corner of the couch and jumped up next to her. She reached down to stroke the top of his head between his ears. “Hey there,” she said to him. “Guess what? I saw Twistypaws today.”
He blinked up at her, nuzzling his face against her fingers, as if to say, “Sure. I know.”
Darcy smiled at him. “Of course you know. You always know.”
The tea had a warming, soothing effect on her, just like her tomcat’s comfortable presence did. Before long, she felt herself drifting off to sleep. It was late. She should be researching in her books, but sleep sounded so good right now. Jon would be home soon, she hoped, but he had his own key to get in. Right now, she had just a few moments to herself, and she wanted to spend them catching as much of a nap as she could.
“Don’t sleep too long. You’ve got a lot to do.”
She looked down next to her, where the familiar voice had come from. Smudge smiled up at her with his tail flicking gently against the couch. “Sorry,” he said to her. “I know you just want to sleep.”
“I really do, Smudge,” she said, her voice heavy and drowsy. “I’m really tired.”
He rubbed his head against the side of her leg. “I know. You should be like me. Sleep during the day. That way you can stay up at night.”
“That’s fine for you. I’ve got things to do during the day.”
“So do I,” he agreed. “Sleeping is one of them.”
Darcy scratched his ears again. “I’m glad you’re always here for me, Smudge. I don’t mind telling you, I’m scared this time.”
“You deal with ghosts all the time,” Smudge reminded her.
“Not like this. This ghost…he’s already killed once. He’s going to kill again if I don’t stop him.”
“Are you sure about that?”
That was an odd question, she thought to herself. “Of course I’m sure. Smudge, I saw the body.”
“What did you see?” he asked her, regarding her in that way that cats did so well whenever they knew something you didn’t.
“It’s a fair question, Darcy,” said a kindly voice. A woman’s voice.
She sat in the chair opposite the couch, across from Darcy, her long dark dress matched with a pearl necklace this time. Her floppy hat with its wide brim sat at an angle on her head, her white hair tucked neatly inside. Aunt Millie had taken to wearing that hat all the time now. Darcy kind of thought it suited her.
“You did tell me there would be worse coming,” Darcy said to her.
Picking up her own cup of tea, Millie winked. “Sweetheart, did you think I’d leave you all alone to face this? I’m always here when you need me. You know that.”
Darcy couldn’t help but smile. She wasn’t at all surprised to see her dead aunt coming to visit. After all, this was a dream.
“I know I can always ask you for help, Millie,” Darcy told her, honestly grateful that she was here now. “I just don’t understand why you stay around. The other side must be calling to you. You lived a good life. You deserve your rest now.”
“Oh, tish tosh,” Millie tsked. “I have a few more things to check on. Maybe a skeleton or two in my own closet to work out. Nobody is perfect, you know.”
Darcy had trouble believing that her Great Aunt had any dark issues still holding her to this mortal coil. There was a question here, about why Millie’s spirit had yet to cross over. A mystery to be solved. Darcy knew she was the only one who could do it.
“Now, you let that be,” Millie scolded her. “We’re not worrying about me. Not when there’s something worse to worry ourselves over.”
“She’s always been like that,” Smudge said with a yawn, turning over onto his back and stretching. “Darcy thinks about everyone else’s needs first. It’s just one of the many reasons why I love her.”
“Aw,” Darcy said. “I love you too, Smudge.”
“Darcy, I’m serious,” Millie continued. “You’ve seen what Nathaniel Williams can do. You’ve got yourself one dead woman to worry about already. There might be more, if you don’t put a stop to him.”
“I know, Aunt Millie. It’s more complicated than that, though. One of us killed that woman. I need to figure out which one. But if I do, then whoever it was will be facing a murder charge. I’ve got no way to defend my friends from this, but I still need to figure it out. I have to.”
“Do you?” Millie seemed surprised by that idea. Then, with a shrug, she set her cup of tea down on the coffee table between them, next to Darcy’s. “I suppose. Finding out who killed that poor woman won’t necessarily help you stop Nathaniel Williams.”
“I know he has to be stopped. I want to stop him. No. I need to stop him.” Darcy heard the conviction in her voice, felt the heat in her face. She had rarely been this sure about anything in her life. “I don’t know how, is the thing. I’m not an exorcist.”
“Oh, neither was I,” Millie said with a smile. “But I did my fair share. There’s a method, and there’s a way. The method is in a book. Spelled out for you all nice and neat. It’s right up there, sweetheart.”
She pointed up at the wall behind the couch. Darcy turned to find Smudge up on the shelf Millie was indicating, pulling a book with a red cover out with his teeth. “Thif if it,” he said around a mouthful of book spine.
“Hey, don’t you ruin my books!” Darcy scolded him. She knew which book Millie meant. She’d read through it last night in her search for clues about Nathaniel Williams’ ghost. Exorcism 101, basically. “Okay, Millie, that’s the method. You said there was a method, and a way. If that’s the method then what’s the way?”
Her Great Aunt reached out and took her hands, holding them in her own, studying them closely. “Oh, my. What pretty rings you have.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “You’ve seen my rings before, Millie. I wear them all the time in the shop. One of them was yours, remember?”
The world around her, the dream world, violently rocked sideways as lines blurred across her vision like something was trying to tear it apart.
It hurt. A lot.
“Millie,” Darcy said in alarm, “what was that?”
“Hm. I was afraid he’d find you here. I just thought we’d have more time. I always wish there was more time.”
She shook her head sadly and reached for her tea cup again.
The table bounced up on two legs and then thumped back down to the floor, knocking both cups off with enough force to shatter them, tea spilling out across the rug. Darcy gripped the arm of the couch, holding on tightly against a sudden invisible force trying to pull her away.
“Millie!” she screamed.
“It’s right where it belongs, you know,” was her aunt’s calm reply. “It’s where it’s always been, right where it belongs. It’s right—”
The world turned upside down and Darcy was looking at the floor above her and the ceiling beneath her as she fell upward. The dream was being shredded around her. Some dark force that she couldn’t see had ahold of her and would not let go.
She was being attacked.
“It’s right where it belongs,” Millie said again, as her image smeared and drifted away into nothing. “It’s where it’s always been. It’s right where it belongs.”
Then Darcy woke up.
***
She was on the floor, a warm, dark liquid seeping out under her. A dark form hovered over her, shadows that might have been someone or no one or nothing at all. Darcy could feel the pain of the beating she had just taken, the attack that had woken her up from her sleep. Everywhere hurt. Was she bleeding? She reached up with her hands to ward off her attacker.
His hands grabbed hers. He held her down, held her in place, and shouted at her.
Darcy screamed.
“Hold on!” he said. A very strange thing for an attacker to say. “Calm down. Darcy, calm down. It’s me.”
Her eyes finally managed to come back into focus and she forced herself to concentrate on the face that hovered so close to hers, on the man who was holding her down on her own living room floor.
Jon. It was Jon.
Sobbing, breaking down into hot tears, Darcy allowed him to scoop her up into his arms and hold her. “Ow,” she managed, sucking in a breath between her tears. “Jon. Careful, it hurts.”
“What happened?” he asked her, loosening his grip but not letting go. “I came in the house and I found you here on the floor. What happened?”
She remembered feeling the warm wetness under her and in a panic she reached up to feel the back of her head, her neck, her shoulders…there. Her fingers came away wet and she brought them up in front of her face and for a moment she was sure it was blood until she smelled the bittersweet aroma and realized she had landed in the spilled tea from where it had been knocked off the coffee table. She looked down now and saw the broken teacups.
Two cups. Hers… and Aunt Millie’s.
“I was attacked,” Darcy told Jon. “Somebody…somebody broke into the house and they were…hitting…beating me…” She couldn’t remember what had happened, now that she was trying to. There had been the very vivid dream with her and Smudge and Millie and then there had just been this topsy-turvy feeling of being dragged off the couch and thrown around and now everything hurt.
Jon was looking at her very intently. “Darcy. There’s no one else in the house but us. The door was still locked when I got here.”
“But Jon, it was real. It happened.”
“Okay, okay. I believe you.” His tone didn’t sound all that convinced. “But if you were attacked, where is the guy? How could he get by me? Do you think he’s still in the house?”
Darcy wasn’t thinking that at all. She was thinking about possessing spirits and how the people who were possessed rarely remembered what the ghost had done through them. She was thinking how she had woken up being beaten and then seen Jon standing directly over her.
No. Oh, God no.
“Jon,” she said slowly. “Can you stand over there? For just a minute. Please?”
His brows knitted. “What’s wrong?”
“Just go over there. On the other side of the living room.” She pushed at him, gently but firmly, and he let her go. She stepped back, slowly, wishing she wasn’t thinking what she was thinking.
One of the people at the party had been possessed and forced to kill a woman. Now Jon was here, right here, while she was being beaten. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t.
The pain in her arms and legs and all the rest of her said otherwise.
“Jon, please don’t panic. I need to check your spirit.”
“You need to…what?”
“Your aura, Jon. You need to let me see if Williams is still in you.”
His eyes practically bugged out of his head. “Darcy don’t be stupid. I’m fine. I didn’t do anything.”
“You wouldn’t remember if you did. Just stand there. Right there, no closer. Please, Jon? Just for a few seconds.”
While he was trying to stutter an argument Darcy raised her hands towards him and closed her eyes and reached out with her own spirit, the energies of her soul, and felt for his. She found it easily, the familiar warmth of his character that she had experienced so often, when he would hug her in the morning or walk with her at night or listen to her talk about her day. It was him. Purely him, and no one else.
“He’s gone Jon. He’s not in you anymore.”
“Darcy, he was never in me! I was not possessed. It wasn’t me.”
She ran to him and threw herself in his arms. They held each other tightly, and she didn’t bother arguing with him. She was hurting. Someone had attacked her, and there was no one else here but Jon.
And if Nathaniel Williams had possessed Jon just now to do this to her, then the prime suspect in the murder of Bonnie Verhault had just become her own fiancé.
Chapter Six
“You don’t think you’re being just a little ridiculous?”
“No,” Darcy said to him honestly. “I don’t.”
She was still sore all over, but it was only a dull throbbing now and a twinge that tweaked her back whenever she reached up above her head.
“Ow.”
Like that.
The book that Millie and Smudge had shown her in the dream was heavier than she remembered it. Sitting at the kitchen table, she opened it up to read. The red cover was soft in her hand like old leather got sometimes. It was too bad, in her opinion, that all books weren’t still bound in leather like this. Aside from how hard that would be on the cow population, she enjoyed the heft and feel of a book like this. Then again, her bookstore was only making money now because of how she was able to sell e-books.
Technology was wonderful, but it sure made life confusing.
“What’s in that book?” Jon asked.
“The instructions to do the exorcism.” At least, she hoped that’s what was
there.
“Hmm.”
His tone was still offended. No matter what she said or how she explained it he refused to believe he had been possessed by a ghost. She didn’t blame him for the attack. If anything, she figured she hadn’t been hurt worse than she was exactly because it was Jon doing the…what was done to her. He probably had resisted whatever Nathaniel Williams had made him do because of how much he loved her.
“Jon, just trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
Looking over at the windows, then back at her, he raised one eyebrow.
“It works!” she protested.
“I’m sure. Listen, putting salt across the windowsills is one thing, but I’m going to be tracking it through the house for a week from where you laid it in front of the doors.”
There were certain rules that remained constant when dealing with ghosts. They were rarely easy to understand even when they managed to contact the living. They could not be seen by most people. They were annoyingly evasive. They missed their loved ones. Things like that.
Then there were a few truly weird facts about ghosts. Like they could not cross a line of salt.
Maybe one day Darcy would have the chance to write a book on the science of spiritual visitations. They were as immutable as the laws of physics, really. People had just as much use for knowing how to protect their home from ghosts as they did for knowing the periodic table of elements, and there were a ton of textbooks about the elements. So why not one on ghosts?
There had been two round containers of household salt up in the cabinets. Darcy had used everything in both of them to lace the windows and the doors, too. No way was she going to let the Pilgrim Ghost back in here for round two.
She looked over at Jon. Then looked away quickly.
“Stop that,” he said, pointing at her. “I saw that.”
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. She couldn’t help it, though. The thought that someone so close to her could have been taken over so easily scared her to death. What would have happened if she hadn’t woken up when she did? Or, worse, if it had been someone besides Jon who had been available for the possessing?