by K. J. Emrick
She lit the first candle on her right.
Besides, he was a big boy now. He could take care of himself.
The second candle, and the third.
Not that Darcy couldn’t take care of herself, too, she just would have felt better if Jon had been here to watch over her while she entered the exorcism.
The fourth candle, and then the fifth.
The last of the candles was behind her. With a deep breath, she turned where she sat, using her off hand to support her weight as she leaned in with the match.
“Darcy!”
The shout echoed through the halls like a thunderclap, an impossibly loud thing that almost had a life of its own. She startled as it slammed into the door to the office and made the walls shake and the match fell from her hand, extinguishing in the line of salt circling her.
She was on her feet in the next instant, carefully out of the circle with its five burning candles. The other matches were still in her pocket but she was stuck now. She couldn’t extinguish the already burning candles because she couldn’t stop the ritual once it started. And she couldn’t light the sixth candle because there wasn’t time.
That hadn’t been Jon’s voice calling to her. It had been Helen’s.
Chapter Ten
It hadn’t actually been Helen’s. It had been mostly hers, but it was like her voice had been mixed together with someone else’s. A masculine voice with jagged edges to it that cut against her ears.
Darcy swallowed, her throat suddenly dry and tight. Her mind raced in a thousand different directions at once. Where was Jon? Why was Helen here, and why was she calling for Darcy? What was that other voice talking through Helen?
Well, she actually knew the answer to that one. Nathaniel Williams had ahold of Helen again, using her as his personal mouthpiece, and maybe worse. If Helen had been taken over—again—then Jon could be in serious trouble.
Darcy left the circle as it was, careful not to disturb the curving lines of salt and spice as she swept out of the office into the hallway, looking up and down the short passageways. She wasn’t very familiar with the layout of the Town Hall. To her left there were a few minor offices and the stairs the led to the basement, she thought. Way down to her right was the main room where all of the town meetings were held. Ahead of her the entryway doors beckoned.
Which way, she asked herself over and over.
Which way?
“Jon?” she called out for him. “Jon! Where are you?”
Laughter flowed through the halls, a mocking and coarse sound, made up of Helen’s voice and that other combined. “Jon can’t answer you right now, Darcy. Why don’t you come down here and see for yourself?”
The voice was coming from the hallway on her right. She raced down to the door at the end, not worrying about traps or tricks, even this close to Halloween. Nathaniel Williams wanted her to come to him. He wanted her and Helen together to wreak his revenge. He’d told them to leave Misty Hollow or there would be more death. Darcy just hadn’t realized the deaths he meant would be theirs.
If Darcy had anything to say about it, they wouldn’t be.
The door at the end was already open, all the way open, and the lights in the room inside shone brightly instead of on low dim like the rest of the building. They illuminated a wide space that usually was filled with row after row of folding chairs. Tonight, it was empty. A low stage at the far end was where the mayor would stand behind her podium and tell the townspeople all about the important events affecting them.
Helen stood there now, without her podium, arms spread wide. Beneath her, on the floor below the edge of the stage, Jon lay sprawled on his side. His back was to her. She could see a dark stain of red at the collar of her shirt, at the base of his skull, but she couldn’t see his face.
She heard herself gasp, and took two quick steps toward him.
Helen moved one hand, just a few inches, and a soft blow like some big invisible slap rocked Darcy back. The air, she realized. Helen had forced the air itself to collect and swirl and strike at her. No, not Helen. The ghost within her. The Pilgrim Ghost was having his fun.
“Helen, why did you come back here?” Darcy asked, inching her way forward instead of running, hoping that the ghost would ignore her long enough to get close, or that she could distract Helen enough to break his hold over her. “Why didn’t you stay at the house where you would be safe?”
“I couldn’t,” Helen said miserably, in her own voice, her face slack even as her eyes sharpened. “He was calling to me. I could hear him in my mind, over and over, telling me that I had to come here.”
Darcy cursed at herself. She should have thought of that. She should have realized. Helen had played host to Nathaniel Williams. Possibly for a very long time. His spirit would have ingrained itself in her mind like ruts in a muddy road. He would be able to communicate with her now over vast distances, even across barriers meant to keep him physically out of places. For that matter his spirit could have stood right outside one of the windows at Darcy’s house and yelled into Helen for as long as it took to get her attention.
“Helen, I’m so sorry. I should have protected you better. I should have kept you safe.” Darcy shuffled forward just a little bit more, hardly moving at all. “You need to trust me now. You need to listen to my voice, okay?”
“Stay where you are!” Helen’s auto-tuned mix-up voice said. “Do not come any closer. Your boyfriend won’t be hurt if you do as he says. He doesn’t want Jon. He wants us. He wants me, and he wants you.”
Darcy concentrated on breathing for a full ten count. “Helen, you know you don’t want to do this.”
“I don’t want to do this,” Helen agreed, her voice a little bit more her own again when she said it. “I don’t want to. I don’t…have any choice. He’s making me, Darcy. I don’t have any choice. I…I’m sorry.”
Tears spilled over and coursed down Helen’s cheeks. Darcy knew her friend was still there. Helen was still in control, at least a little. Probably more than she realized.
Taking one more step was a risky gamble. Darcy took that gamble.
“Stop!” Helen screamed, making the fluorescent lights overhead on their metal supports shake and sway. “I’ll hurt him, Darcy. I don’t want to, but I will.”
“He can’t make you do that if you don’t want to,” Darcy pleaded with her friend. She was frantic now to get to Jon. Obviously, no matter what Helen promised, he had already been hurt. Obviously, Helen had done that hurting. She needed to protect him. “Don’t do this, Helen.”
“I have to,” she said again, more tears flowing. “He says…he says if we offer ourselves to him he’ll let it end with us. His revenge will be over. No one else will have to get hurt. If we don’t…then he’ll hurt everyone. Starting with Jon.”
“Helen, why? You don’t have to do this!”
“Yes I do! I don’t have a choice. I’ve already committed murder!” Helen’s body began to shake. Her hands came forward, towards Jon’s motionless body. The temperature in the room dropped until Darcy could see her breath frosting and swirling in currents of air that had no source. “He told me. He told me what he made me do. I know what I am! I’m his. I’m lost. I’m a murderer, Darcy. He made me kill that poor girl!”
Bonnie Verhault. Dead on Helen’s lawn.
That wasn’t the whole story, though.
“Helen,” she said, “listen to me.”
“No! I know what I did. I know what I did!”
The ghost was telling Helen just enough of a lie to make it sound like the truth. Just enough to keep his control over her.
Darcy knew the truth.
The real truth.
“No, Helen. That murder wasn’t done by your hands. Do you hear me? I know who killed that woman, and it wasn’t you.”
Helen’s eyes blinked rapidly, like she was coming out of a pitch black room into the light, adjusting to the sudden illumination. More of herself, her own spirit, came to the surface. Her expression c
hanged and twisted. “Darcy…? What?”
Darcy dared another step closer. “You didn’t do it, Helen. It wasn’t your hands that Nathaniel Williams used.”
The air in the room swirled and built up into a physical push that rocked Darcy nearly off her feet. At the same time, it lifted Helen off the floor, holding and suspending her a full foot or more off the stage. “Shut up!” she screamed at Darcy. “You don’t know anything!”
“Yes, I do.” Darcy had to brace herself and push into the wind to keep from falling over. No small feat, since it kept changing direction, tearing at her from this side or that side. From behind. From in front. “Helen, it wasn’t you. Do you hear me? I know you’re actually here. I know Nathaniel Williams isn’t in complete control of you. You’re my friend, Helen! Listen to me!”
“How do you know?” Helen asked, even more of her own voice in the words now. She was coming out of her trance, thanks to Darcy’s constant prodding. Out of the control of the Pilgrim Ghost. “How can you know that? You can’t know!”
“I do,” Darcy promised. “I know. You didn’t kill Bonnie Verhault.”
“Then who?” Helen demanded in a screeching wail.
“She did it herself, Helen. Bonnie Verhault stabbed herself to death!”
Helen’s eyes widened. Color came back into her skin and for a moment, she was herself again. Only her.
Nathaniel Williams had lost his grip on her. At least for now.
Darcy knew it might be her only chance. She ran to Jon and knelt by him. He was breathing. That was what she noticed first. She sobbed in relief to know it, and then she rolled him on his back, careful of his neck, to try and wake him up.
He moaned, and his hands spasmed once, but then he was still again. She couldn’t leave him here. She had to get him out. But how?
“Darcy.”
Looking up she saw Helen at the edge of the stage. Her eyes had no focus. Her expression had gone slack again and Darcy knew her friend was lost back into the grip of the Pilgrim Ghost.
“Help me,” Darcy begged her, hoping to reach through to her once more. She had gotten her arms under Jon’s, and she planned on carrying him all the way out of the Town Hall all by herself if she had to. Dragging him, was more like it. Still, she wasn’t looking forward to having to do that under the murderous eyes of Nathaniel Williams. “Helen, please, I know you’re in there. Help me!”
The moment hung suspended between them as Darcy tugged and pulled and managed to move Jon ten feet toward the door. Helen stayed where she was, watching, her mouth working to say words that would not come out.
The air in the room stirred again, circling, coiling, plucking at Darcy’s hair and clothes as it passed her by, slowly building stronger and stronger, flowing like the mists that snaked their way through the town in its darkest moments. Tension was mounting at the back of Darcy’s skull like an invisible hand grabbing ahold of her to twist her emotions.
Three more feet. Four, maybe. The door still seemed so far away.
“Helen, help me!” she cried out, panicked and scared for both herself and for Jon. “You don’t have to let him do this!”
Silently, Helen shook her head. Slowly, at first, but then faster, and faster, until she was practically spasming.
Then she stopped.
Staring at Darcy she said one, single word.
“Run.”
Darcy was finally at the door leading out of the room. Jon was so much dead weight in her arms. The tumult in the room was building and expanding outward, the lights dimming further and then coming back up, the wind whipping past her to howl down the hallway with a banshee’s moan. She took what Helen had said as the threat it was meant to be. There was no reason to think it was anything but.
Run, the ghost of Nathaniel Williams had told her. She had every reason to do exactly that. Every reason, save two. Jon, and Helen.
Darcy would not let this monster kill her friends. She had to do something to save them. The ghost wasn’t interested in Jon. Helen had told her so. It was interested in the descendants of the men who had killed him. It was interested in her and Helen.
Sweating, breathing heavily, cold fear twisting her belly into knots, Darcy knew what she had to do.
Propping Jon up with his back against the wall in the hall, stealing a quick kiss, she began walking backward. Away from the meeting room. Away from Helen, and away from Jon.
It was what she had to do, if she was going to get the ghost to focus on her.
“Hey, Williams!” she called out. It came out as a frightened squeak, and she cleared her throat to try again. “Nathaniel Williams! You want me? Come and get me!”
Then she turned and ran as fast as she could.
All the way down to the mayor’s office she raced without looking back. At her heels the wind hissed and grabbed at her, trying to hold her or tear her leg from its socket or snap the bones in her ankles.
An impossible thing for wind to do, except it was doing it anyway.
She made it to the door and grabbed at the handle and turned it and pulled and yanked on the door and slammed her fist against it and cried out in frustration when it wouldn’t open until she remembered it opened in, not out.
The wind struck her across the back as she got it worked out and the extra shove pushed her into the room, pain blossoming across her shoulder blades. The strike was harsh enough that she reached back to feel for blood, sure she had been cut to the bone.
Her fingers came away dry. No bleeding. Her shirt was torn but that was all. She’d lucked out.
The wind continued to lash out and swirl and gust and the candles still burning in their holders were in danger of being blown out or knocked over and Darcy did not want to start this ritual all over again. She wasn’t sure the Pilgrim Ghost would allow her to get even this far with things next time.
There couldn’t be a next time. This had to end now.
Using her back and pushing with her legs she was able to force the door closed, and lock it, as the cutting voice of Nathaniel Williams flowed down the hall to taunt her. “Where are you going to run, Darcy? I have your friend. I have your fiancé. I hold the cards. Come to me. Come to me now and I might spare their lives in exchange for yours.”
Darcy ignored him. He was a ghost. He could not hurt her.
That was what she kept telling herself, ignoring the more rational side of her brain that pointed out one girl was already dead, forced into it by a ghost who couldn’t hurt her.
Only, it had.
“Darcy?” the voice called, sounding closer.
Digging into her pocket, Darcy sat down in the circle of salt and spice and flame. She crossed her legs. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Darcy!”
Then she took another match out of her pocket and turned to the last candle.
“Don’t you make me come in there!”
A loud thump against the door made it shake in its frame as she lit the last of the six candles.
The circle was complete. Turning inward to herself, tapping in to a little bit of her own energies—a tiny piece of her soul—she reached out for Nathaniel Williams. His presence was everywhere here in the Town Hall. The place was saturated with his spirit. Finding him with her sixth sense wouldn’t be the problem.
Forcing him off this mortal sphere would be a different matter entirely.
The door crashed inward with a heavy bang just as Darcy slipped into the inbetween space that hovered between the worlds of the living and the dead. The winds rushed at her, grabbing, tearing, whispered noises that could have been curses directed at her life and her sanity.
That coiling mass of air struck with the sound and force of a thunderclap but it never touched Darcy. It slammed into the invisible barrier, the expression of her own spirit, created and held in place by the completed circle.
It was the last thing Darcy heard before she lost all contact with her senses.
***
In her mind she envisioned a
dark landscape. A flat surface with nothing on it except her, sitting cross legged like she had been in the circle of candles. Those came into existence next, one at a time around her, their flames unnaturally motionless like they had been frozen in time.
Then Darcy added the mists.
Rolling across the emptiness came the billowing curls and tendrils of white fog that she always used as a mental backdrop for communing with the spirits. It wasn’t real, just like nothing here was real, but it helped her focus and gave her a surface to project her thoughts onto. Spirits came and went in the mists. They could find her, and she could find them.
Today, the usual clean feeling of her mental landscape was tainted with dark colors of filth and corruption. Something was tainting her connection to the spirit world. She knew what it had to be. It was the same thing that had kept every other ghost away from her perception for the past few weeks.
All of them, except Great Aunt Millie. She could never be forced away from Misty Hollow. Not while Darcy was still here.
Not even by the Pilgrim Ghost.
“Show yourself,” Darcy said into the gloom. Her voice fell short, the dank fog absorbing the sound and keeping her isolated. “I know you’re here already. You wanted me, I’m here. Show yourself.”
It wasn’t silence that met her words. It was the impending presence of something foul and evil.
Sitting up straighter, Darcy clenched her hands into fists on her knees. “I said, show yourself!”
A rushing presence like a collection of pure black force slammed into her from behind, knocking her forward to her hands and knees. Darcy gasped, throwing her arms forward to keep herself from falling flat on her face in a place where there was no physical reality to anything. Even so, it still hurt.
Two of the candles in the circle were knocked over, their little flames suddenly very animated.
The presence coalesced in front of her, dark matter forming a shadow that blurred and smoked and slowly became a distinct shape. A person, wearing dark trousers and a plain white shirt with string ties at the neck and puffy sleeves. Boots that went up to his knees clumped against the imagined floor of Darcy’s conjuring. Sharp angles gave his face the appearance of chiseled pride, and his eyes were dark and brooding under a length of black hair held back in a short tail.