by Val Crowe
I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
This girl… there was something about her. She was pretty, but it wasn’t about that. She had blond hair, which she’d pulled into a ponytail, and she was wearing tight jeans and a pair of boots with a tiny t-shirt over top. All of it looked painted onto her curves. But it wasn’t about that.
It was as though the air was parting for her, letting her through. She caused a disturbance when she walked. I could almost see it, as though the fabric of the universe had to get out of the way to allow her to pass.
I gazed at her, heart thudding against my throat.
Everyone else was staring at her too.
No one was moving.
She approached, unhurried.
We all waited.
No one said anything.
Finally, she was close. She stopped, just at the edge of one of the makeshift benches. She unslung her backpack and set it down. “Hi,” she said, and her voice had a rich timbre, something smoky, like a lounge singer. “I’m Dominique.”
No one said anything.
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. I swallowed. I licked my lips. “Uh, hi,” I finally croaked out.
Rylan got up and hurried over, waving. “Hey, hey. You’re here!”
And then conversation started again, soft at first, but then filling in. I didn’t speak, though. I sat still and watched Dominique. I needed to talk to her, but I wasn’t sure what it was that I would even say. She intimidated me. I had a bad feeling that I was over my head with that girl. There was a reason that Negus had been obsessed with her, even though she’d only been a child at the time. She was… power. I wasn’t even sure how I should approach her or what I should say.
Dominique and Rylan started to chat, and Rylan introduced her to everyone, including me. I might have imagined it, but I thought that she gave me a more penetrating look than the others, as if she knew something about me.
“Hey,” said Alice. She pointed at the space next to me on the bench. “Anyone sitting here?”
I shook my head wordlessly.
“Cool if I sit?”
“Uh…” I sucked in a breath. “Yeah, of course. No problem.”
She sat. “So, how do you know Rylan?”
I was surprised Rylan hadn’t told her that I was the resident ghost-seer. “Uh, just from Thornford.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” said Alice. “I don’t go there. Cat does. Scout used to.”
“So, that’s how you know Rylan?” I said.
“Well, actually, we met online,” she said. “I have a blog. It’s all about American hauntings, especially in rural areas. It’s kind of my specialty. I’m trying to monetize it. I was thinking that collaborating with Rylan on this would help people find me. I really need to find some way to make money. At this rate, I’m never going to pay back my student loans. I spent the whole year after I graduated looking for something in my field, but I couldn’t get a job anywhere.”
“What is your field?” I said, because it sounded narrow.
“Well, I could work for historical societies or in museums or that sort of thing,” she said. “My degree seemed versatile when I was getting it.” She was rueful. “But now I’m a career waitress who blogs, apparently.” She sighed.
“Oh, sorry.” I wasn’t sure what to say. I wasn’t exactly ambitious myself. Apparently, everyone else was. Even Wade had decided to graduate from college. He’d given me some speech about wanting a real relationship and to settle down and stuff.
“What about you? What do you do?”
“Oh, uh, a little of this, a little of that.”
“Is that your silver RV thing?”
“Yeah, it’s an Airstream trailer,” I said.
“You take that out and camp a lot?”
“I live in that,” I said.
“Oh, wow.” She smiled. “That’s awesome.”
I grinned. “It is, yeah.”
“I’d love to do something like that. I mean, part of the reason I want to blog is to be able to do my job anywhere. I don’t want to be tied down. I want to be free. I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I get that.” What I didn’t say was that my life was still full of disappointment. Either the ghosts stopped me from getting what I wanted or the lack of money or something else. People thought that if they got away from their commitments, they’d be free, but it didn’t really work that way. Of course, I had to admit that I didn’t want to give up my nomadic lifestyle.
“Was it hard to set that up?” she said. “I mean, is it expensive? What do you do for money?”
I got these kinds of questions a lot when people found out how I lived. Normally, I didn’t mind answering them. But now, Dominique was making her way over to me, and she was looking me right in the eye.
It felt as if the volume on everything else had been turned down, as if it was all insignificant. Nothing was as important as Dominique. I stood up.
“Deacon?” said Alice.
I could barely hear her. “It was, uh, nice talking to you, Alice,” I muttered. I took a lurching step toward Dominique.
Dominique continued her approach. I realized that she was carrying two red plastic cups. She held one out. “Hey, I see you don’t have a drink. Thought I’d bring you one.”
“Hi,” said Alice. “You’re Dominique, right?”
“Yeah, and you’re Alice.” But Dominique was only looking at me.
I took the cup from her. “Thanks.”
Dominique and I were quiet, just eyeing each other.
“Uh, okay,” said Alice. “Well, I’ll just, um… yeah.” She got up and wandered away from us. I could hear the annoyance in her voice. Maybe she was a little hurt too. I felt a little bad about that. Alice seemed nice and all. But I had come here because of Dominique, after all.
“You’re different,” said Dominique.
I raised my eyebrows.
Dominique laughed, breaking our gaze. “I mean… that came out wrong.”
“No, it’s all right,” I said. “I’ve been thinking the same thing about you.”
“Really?” She grinned, and it was like her whole face lit up. “Okay, so Rylan says you have a connection with the supernatural, so let’s cut the crap, right? Let’s be honest with each other. Let’s stop pretending like the other person’s going to think we’re crazy.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Whenever I look at you, it’s like… I can see something inside you, something shimmering and bright and leaking out everywhere. You’re…” She shook her head. “What are you?”
“I could ask you the same question,” I said.
She lifted her chin. “Do you see the same thing with me?”
“No, not the same. You’re… it’s as if you disturb the air.”
“Did you know I was coming? Did Rylan tell you?”
“Yeah.”
“So, how do you know about me?” she said.
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure how much to tell her. “I’ve seen your videos, that’s all.”
She raised her eyebrows. “How?”
“Uh, from Rylan,” I said. “She showed me.”
She pursed her lips.
I sighed. She could probably tell I was lying.
But she seemed to decide to drop that line of conversation. “So, I think this place is extremely intriguing. And it’s a true haunting. I can feel it waking up. Can you feel it?”
I shook my head. “I don’t really feel anything.”
“The two of us here at the same time, it’s going to be something else.” She looked up at the sky, as if she expected the stars to come streaming down on us.
“Why?” I said.
“I asked you what you were,” she said. “You never answered.”
“That’s only because I don’t really know,” I said.
“Well, maybe I don’t know either,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
We sta
red at each other again.
She drank beer.
I drank beer.
She looked away.
I sighed.
“All I know is that the supernatural seems to follow me,” she said. “When I’m around, ghosts and spirits are stronger.”
“That’s true for me too,” I said. Were we the same? Was that why Negus looked at her? Maybe she had been his next target. After he drained me dry, he would have gone after her. Or maybe he did go after her. Maybe after he got cast out of my mom, he went looking for her. But she seemed like she might have been tough enough to fight him off. Could I ask her that?
No, not yet. I still couldn’t be sure I could trust her. Maybe she was only feigning ignorance. Maybe she knew more than she was letting on.
CHAPTER FOUR
Later, the campfire raging, we roasted hot dogs and sausages and veggie dogs (for Scout and his girlfriend). As we munched, Rylan asked Alice to tell everyone about the history of the place.
Alice set down her hot dog on her paper plate and leaned forward eagerly. “Oh, it’s such a creepy story.” Then she turned to Mundy. “Hey, sorry, this won’t bother you, will it? I know it’s your family, isn’t it?”
“Distantly related,” said Mundy. “The truth is, my mother’s side of the family was cast out because they weren’t religious enough or something.”
“Well, yeah, the Symonds family was crazy religious,” said Alice. “Emphasis on the crazy.” She turned to Mundy. “No offense.”
“Oh, none taken,” said Mundy. “Believe me, I’m not attached to them at all. And I have to admit I’m a little fuzzy on the details. So, carry on, tell us everything.”
“Right,” said Alice. “So, Josiah Symonds was the head of the Sunny Days Ministries, which was supposedly just a regular church, but really was basically a cult. Maybe a kiddie cult. No child raping or murder or mass suicides or anything. But it was starting to get weird. I guess the ministries were first formed as a kind of evangelical thing. A little weird, but not too weird. They homeschooled and they didn’t have Christmas and they didn’t believe in birth control and all that kind of jazz, but it was pretty much harmless. Josiah Symonds was the leader, and they thought he was a modern-day prophet. So, all the ingredients for creepy cult stuff were there.”
“Wow, so then he went off the rails and killed his family?” said Mundy. “And the cult died out?”
“Not exactly,” said Alice. “So, with most cults, what happens is that the main guy in charge slowly gets weirder and weirder, and people start leaving the group, but a core membership stays, and they are very devoted. So devoted that when the cult leader gets extremely weird, they just go along with it. Anyway, with Josiah it didn’t quite go down that way. He started to say that he should have sexual access to more women than his wife, which is basically Cult Leader 101. I mean, they do it different ways. Like Joseph Smith was all, ‘All guys can have a bunch of wives!’ But Jim Jones was like, ‘I’m just special and need more sex.’ I think David Koresh made it so no other men in the group could have sex at all. He was the only one who could have sex with the women. Josiah was trending more toward that same idea: that he was special and needed to sleep with all the women. Which didn’t go over well with the other men in the church. Instead of them leaving, though, they all got together and kicked him out.”
“Well, of course they’d do that,” said Jonah. “No way are a bunch of guys going to let some jackass sleep with their wives.”
Alice shrugged. “I don’t know. In a lot of cults, that’s how it all works. Anyway, they forced Josiah out of his home, and they said that his family was welcome to stay, but Josiah, being a dickish male sociopath who thought of people as his personal property, was definitely not going to let that happen. So, he packed up his family and they came to live here.” She gestured around at the campground. “Because the Symonds family owned this land. The campground had been used for the church. It was like a summer camp for kids.”
“I thought it had that kind of feel,” I said.
“Yep.” Alice nodded. “Josiah had let the church use the land, but after they kicked him out, he rescinded it, and he and his family holed up here. No one knows what happened. They apparently made it through a whole year. When they got here, it was in the late fall, and they lived through the winter and into the spring and the summer. But then when it started to get cold again, Josiah apparently lost it. The last time any of the family was seen alive, his wife and daughters had come down to town to buy some staples like flour and dry goods. They usually went to the store once a month. When they didn’t show up, people started wondering about them. Eventually, they sent the police to check on them, and they found the entire family slaughtered.”
“So, Josiah was dead too?” spoke up Kenelly.
“Yeah,” said Alice.
“How did he die?” said Kenelly. “Did he shoot himself?”
“Well, that’s the weird thing,” said Alice. “He was stabbed to death too.”
“He stabbed himself to death?” said Kenelly. “Can you do that?”
“Apparently so,” said Alice. “There are other theories, though. One is that they weren’t killed by Josiah at all, but by a drifter who came by and wanted to rob them. Of course, they didn’t really know if anything was missing. There was no inventory to check things against.”
Rylan spoke up. “Some people think it might have been revenge, right? One of the men from the cult wasn’t satisfied with kicking Josiah out? Had to come and kill him.”
“Yeah,” said Alice. “But that would have to be a pretty stone-cold person to knife the whole family too. The youngest little girl was only seven years old. Her name was Lydia.”
I made a face. That was horrible. I didn’t like hearing about kids getting killed. A lot of things bugged me a little, but I could hardly handle that. It was unfathomable violence. I couldn’t understand how anyone could kill a child.
“The thing is,” said Alice, “murdering your family is exactly the kind of thing a former cult leader would do. People like Josiah Symonds regard their cult members and their family members as possessions. So, if things were going badly for him, and he wanted to commit suicide, he’d take them with him, because they were just extensions of himself. He was a very disturbed individual by all counts. It had to be him.”
“So, how do ghosts come into it?” spoke up Dominique. “Who haunts the place? All of them? Just Josiah?”
“Josiah’s the one who gets seen, yeah,” said Alice. “Some kids throwing a party out here saw him once. He was a shadowy figure carrying a big, wicked-looking knife. Chased them all into the woods and scared the heck out of them. And some hunters have seen him too. And some hikers.”
“Eek,” said Cat. “We’re not going to see that kind of stuff, are we?”
“We’re here to investigate a haunting,” said Rylan.
“Yeah, but I mean…” Cat shuddered. “I’m starting to get freaked out. I’m glad I have you to cuddle with, Scout.” She leaned in close to her boyfriend.
Scout pushed his glasses up on his nose and grinned at her. “Yeah, I’ll fight off the ghosts, babe. You’ll see.”
“Okay, look,” said Rylan. “I know that Kenelly has been on a shoot with me before, and so has Jonah.” So, that was why they looked familiar. I’d probably seen them on Rylan’s youtube videos. “But this is going to be different than that, because of Deacon here.” She pointed at me. “Deacon wakes stuff up, okay? So, things might get a little heavy. I just want you to understand that ghosts can’t actually hurt you. But they can trick you into thinking you’re hurt. They can make you feel as though you’ve been stabbed or shot or something like that. You only have to remind yourself that it’s fake, and it will all heal.”
“Um.” Dominique raised her hand.
“What?” said Rylan.
“Ghosts can hurt people,” Dominique said. “Like really hurt them. Everybody needs to be careful.”
Rylan looked at me, as if
expecting me to contradict her.
I just shrugged.
Rylan bit down on her lip, looking worried. “Okay, everyone, promise me that you will not go wandering off into the woods by yourselves, okay? Use the buddy system.”
“The buddy system?” said Kenelly, looking bemused. “Where is all this coming from, Rylan?”
“She’s trying to freak us out,” said Jonah. “She’s going to knock on the back of our cabins in the night and then have me film you guys running around screaming.”
“I am not,” said Rylan. “This is going to be an authentic video. No tricks.”
Cat looked worried. “I don’t like this.” She leaned in closer to Scout.
“Don’t worry,” said Scout, grinning down at her. “It’s fine, I swear. It’s all good.” He yawned. “I don’t even believe in ghosts.”
“Um.” Dominique raised her hand again. “I think you should probably take that back.”
“What?” said Scout, laughing.
Dominique squared her shoulders. “In my experience, there’s nothing that makes spirits more likely to try to make an appearance than a challenge like that.”
“Good,” said Scout. “Bring it on.” He chuckled, and the fire danced over his face.
* * *
Everyone seemed subdued after that, and things broke up soon afterward. I helped Rylan clean up next to the campfire. We didn’t want to leave food out and attract animals. There was the possibility of bears in this woods, apparently. They were black bears, and they probably wouldn’t give us trouble, but you can never tell with bears.
We got everything packed up, and then Rylan and Mundy disappeared into their cabin together.
I stayed by the dying campfire for a while. I could have doused it, but I thought we might want the coals the next day, so I just waited while it burned low. As soon as it was down enough that it wasn’t likely to catch the world on fire, I’d go to bed.
Dominique had apparently only brought that bag with her for camping. She took one of the cabins on her own, disappeared inside.
I had a cot that I could set over the table in the Airstream for someone to sleep on. Maybe she’d want it for the cabin. I decided to go and ask her. I knocked on her door.