by Apryl Baker
Something snapped in me that day. I broke in ways I’m not sure I can explain. It’s also when the ghosts started showing up. I still secretly wonder if I’m not just a little insane. My Mama was crazy or so they told me. Paranoid schizophrenia. She heard voices. Ghosts maybe? Did they drive her to do what she did? I want to rationalize it, to find a reason for why she’d try to kill her own daughter, but I can’t. Maybe I never will. I just don’t know.
Since then, I haven’t ever really been afraid of anything. Defense mechanism, that’s what the psychologists called it. I was closed off with trust issues. Yeah, well, let their moms try to kill them at the ripe old age of five, and then tell me if they don’t have a few emotional roadblocks.
But Mirror Boy? He scared the bejeezus out of me. I’m lying here in a bed, afraid to open my eyes for fear of what might be standing next to me. I so do not like this feeling, but I’m not sure what to do about it yet. It’s new to me and I hate it!
“There has to be something wrong!” I hear Mrs. Olson shout. “She was screaming her head off and her nose was pouring blood!”
She’s near enough I can hear her shouting, but not so near that she’s close. Hallway maybe? I can’t hear what I presume is the doctor’s response, but I hear the door shut then. My irrational new fear raises its ugly head and my muscles tense up at the sound, Oh, no, please not another ghost.
“Hey kiddo,” a soft voice whispers tiredly.
Nancy. Thank God. I relax and start to say something, but am interrupted when the argument in the hallway moves inside my room.
“Her tox screen is negative,” a male voice says. “She has no alcohol or drugs in her system. The CAT scan showed no abnormalities. There’s nothing physically wrong with her that we can find.”
Well, that’s good. Thanks for that, Doc. The ghost didn’t do any permanent damage. Kudos for me.
“Doctor, I understand that.” Nancy sighs. “I saw her clothes from when she came in, though. They were bloody. I have to agree with Mrs. Olson. Something is wrong.”
“And I agree with you both, I just don’t know what is wrong.” Even the doctor sounds frustrated. “We are going to keep her a few days for observation and more tests.”
Oh, just great, leave me here in the ghost hang-out. Not what I want to hear.
They move away, still arguing, but that’s okay. The loud voices are making my head hurt worse anyway.
Fingers smooth my hair and I flinch, the memory of the mutilated ghost breathing on me is hitting fast. Please don’t be a ghost. And no, I still can’t open my eyes.
“Mattie?”
Whew. Nancy, just Nancy. My breathing slows and I calm down just a bit. Man, I hate this. I will not let this fear-stuff control me. I am stronger than this. Taking a deep breath, I open my eyes. Nancy’s worried blue eyes stare down into my hazel ones. She looks tired, much older than her early forties tonight.
Nancy Moriarity. What a great lady. She was and is my saving grace. She’s the social worker who got stuck with my case when I landed in North Carolina. She and I had a long talk about what I’d been through and what I needed to make things better. Nancy is the reason I’m not just another statistic. I don’t know where I’d be without her.
“You’re awake,” she sighs and smiles. “I swear if you scare me like that again, I’m going to beat you black and blue.”
I wince, and hope she’s kidding. Right now, even her soft tone feels like knives stabbing me.
“What’s wrong?” her voice takes on a worried tone.
“Head hurts,” I whisper and she leans over and dims the lights, which brings a small amount of relief to my aching noggin. “Thanks.”
“What happened?” she whispers.
That question makes me remember what I need to do. The ghost had caused all other thoughts to flee. Sally! Oh Lord, how could I forget Sally? She’s the reason I talked to the stupid ghosts to begin with. “Nancy, you have to call the cops.”
“The police? Why, honey? Did someone do something to you?” Anger creeps into her voice. I love Nancy. She’s the only person who’s ever fought for me. She fights for all her foster kids.
“No,” I say. “It’s Sally. She’s missing. Mrs. Olson was supposed to call the police, but I don’t know if she did.”
A chair scrapes and I yelp. The sound reminds me of that awful noise. This has got to stop. I refuse to go around jumping at noises.
“Sorry, honey,” Nancy soothes. She must think the sound made my head worse. True, it hurt like nobody’s business, but that’s not why I yelled. “Let me go check with Mrs. Olson to see what’s going on.”
I’ll bet the old lady forgot about Sally, especially if she had to rush me to the hospital. It’s only a minute before they are both back and yup, I’m right. She didn’t call the cops. Nancy, being Nancy, makes her call home to see if Sally came back from the party. It only takes a few minutes before she comes back with a worried expression to report that Sally never came home. Why couldn’t she have just listened to me to begin with? The cops would already be looking for Sally and I wouldn’t be here suffering from a headache worse than death.
“She’s supposed to be at the same party Mattie went to,” Mrs. Olson frets.
“I told you she wasn’t,” I snap and wince. Ow. I need to learn to not yell when I have a sledgehammer pounding inside my head.
There’s a hurried whispered conversation and they disappear out into the hall. It’s a good long while before Nancy comes back in, a frown marring her features. She sits back down and her frown makes me nervous. Questions I can’t answer are coming.
“Mattie, Mrs. Olson said you came home adamant Sally was missing. How did you know that if she wasn’t at the party?”
See? Stupid questions. It’s not like I can say I saw her ghost.
“I just had a feeling.”
“Mattie…” She stops speaking when a knock sounds and then two uniformed police officers come in. One is older, in his forties, the other very young, barely twenty if he’s a day. The older cop who introduces himself as Officer Rogers asks me the same question that Nancy did.
“Look, I just had a really bad feeling something was wrong,” I tell him. “Then when Mrs. Olson told me she was at the party, I knew I was right. Sally hates those kinds of parties and I know she wasn’t there.”
“A feeling?” the officer’s eyebrows shoot up and I sigh. “Was there a lot of drinking going on at this party?”
“I can tell you for a fact, officer, that she’s not been drinking,” Nancy says in a clipped, warning tone. “They ran a tox screen on her for drugs and alcohol when they brought her in earlier. She’s clean.”
He gives Nancy the stink-eye, as I like to call it. It’s a look that’s meant to cower people into shushing, but that won’t work with Nancy. She just glares back at him.
“I’m just trying to get the facts,” he says with his most deadpan voice. “Now, aside from this feeling, what made you think Sally was missing?”
I sigh in frustration. I knew this was going to be hard. “Well, the fact that she wasn’t home when I got back seems like a big indicator she’s missing don’t ya think?”
“Let me tell you what I think,” he says. “I think you knew that your friend was going to run away.”
“What? No!”
That makes Nancy turn thoughtful. I don’t want them to peg Sally as another runaway. She’s lying somewhere with a hole in her head for crying out loud. I just don’t know how to tell them that.
“Mattie…”
“No, Nancy,” I interrupt her. “She did NOT run away. I swear.”
I can tell she doesn’t believe me. This is so not how I planned this.
“Can I speak to you for a moment in private, Ms. Moriarity?” Officer Donut Hole gestures for her to follow him. I want to scream in frustration when they leave.
“You’re really worried about your friend aren’t you?”
My attention snaps to the other officer, the young one. Warm b
rown eyes shine with sympathy from a face made for smiling. His wavy brown hair falls loosely around his face. He takes Nancy’s seat and I sigh. Here we go, good cop, bad cop.
“Well, duh.”
“You always this sarcastic?”
I snort and wince. Dang it, my head hurts.
“What landed you in here?” he asks me.
“Headache.” He sighs and looks down. Yeah, I know I can be a smartass, but I really don’t like cops. The uniform just brings out the mouth in me.
“My name’s Dan Richards. Mattie, right?”
I give him my best how-stupid-are-you glare which he ignores.
“I know you’re worried, but if your friend did run away, pretending she’s missing isn’t the way to help her. I know you don’t want her to get into trouble, but…”
“Look, Officer Dan,” I say, hearing the sarcasm rolling off my tongue. “I know you don’t believe me, and I don’t care. She’s missing and the longer you guys stand here making the wrong assumptions about her just because she’s a foster kid, the more time her killer has to cover his tracks.”
“Her killer?”
Holy crow. Why did I say that? It has to be this freaking headache. Officer Dan is staring at me with speculation now. Dang it.
“Look, she’s gone. Last I saw her she was in her nightclothes getting ready for bed. When I get home, her bed was rumpled, and she’s wasn’t there. Something happened. She didn’t run away. Someone had to have taken her.”
“What makes you so sure she didn’t run away?”
“Because she wouldn’t do that!” I shout and then shrink back into the pillows, hands gripping my head as streaks of sharp pain cuts through it. Ohhh, crap, crap, crap. Soften it up, Mattie. “Sally has never had a decent place to stay. The Olsons aren’t perfect, but at least the place is clean and we get enough to eat. That’s more than Sally’s ever had. She wouldn’t just run away from that. I know you don’t understand. You probably grew up in a good home, but to us, that’s something pretty special. None of us would just throw it away.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“Somebody shot her.” Fudgepops. My eyes go completely round and my hands cover my mouth. What in God’s name is wrong with me? It has to be the drugs they have me on. This is not helping. Now he’s going to think I’m just jerking him around.
“What aren’t you telling me, Mattie?” He leans forward, his eyes searching. “Why do you think she was shot?”
“You won’t believe me,” I tell him with a sigh of my own. “It’s crazy.” What’s crazy is that within five minutes of being alone with Officer Dan, I’ve come close to telling him my secret several times when I’m usually very good at hiding it. I am a professional liar, have been since I was five. Drugs, Mattie, I tell myself. It’s the drugs.
“Try me.”
I’m saved from having to answer when the nurse comes in and shoos him out. I ask her if she can give me anything for my headache. She isn’t paying too much attention to me. Her eyes are on the machine I’m hooked to. I look over at it, but can’t figure out what has her so freaked. It’s just numbers to me.
She leaves and gets the doctor who comes in and declares all visitors for the night are done. He has the nurse shoot something into my IV and I start to get sleepy almost immediately. I hear him mumble something about my blood pressure.
My eyes droop and as they close, I can hear the screaming nails in my head again, but before I can freak, I’m out.
Chapter Six
The musty damp smell assaults me. My nose crinkles in disgust. I hate anything that stinks. I religiously clean my room and invest in air fresheners. When I was little, we lived in a rundown apartment on the ground floor of a decrepit old building in New Orleans. Whenever it rained, we got flooded. The place would stink like stagnant water and mold for days. It made me sick to my stomach on a daily basis. It’s a smell I never forgot and that’s what I smell now.
My eyes blink open and there’s very little light in the room, only the slightly-cracked-open hallway door. At least the headache has eased up a bit. The smell is killing me though. It’s gathering at the back of my throat and I want to gag. It’s so bad, my eyes start to water. I reach out, looking for the switch to the lights above my hospital bed. The minute I turn them on, I can see what is causing the smell.
Sitting in the chair beside the bed is a girl about my age. Blonde hair, matted with blood, hangs limply down her back. Her jeans and tee-shirt are caked with mud and splattered with blood. She smells of dirt and stale standing water and she’s blindfolded.
Fear claws its way up my spine, fast and hard. I keep expecting the pain to come back, but it’s just a dull ache now. I’m afraid to move, afraid she’ll do something. My hand searches for the nurse’s button, but I freeze when she turns her head in my direction. What’s she gonna do?
“Am I dead?”
“I… guess, maybe, I don’t know,” I whisper. And I didn’t know. She still has color in her cheeks and her complexion isn’t pasty or waxy. She doesn’t really look like a ghost, but I get that same cold feeling from her I get from the others.
“I’m scared.”
No kidding, I almost snort aloud. It’s something I’m getting used to myself.
“I thought when you died you were supposed to see this bright light and then you’d go to Heaven. I didn’t see it. Does that mean I’m going to hell?”
Do I look like Dr. Phil? I have no clue.
“No one else can see me,” she says. “I’m cold, so cold.”
“Where are you?”
“I… I… don’t know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mary,” she says. “I just wanted to go see Jimmy so I snuck out of the house. My mom worked a fourteen hour shift, so I knew she’d sleep all night. Jimmy and I got in this huge fight and I needed to tell him I was sorry. He only lives a few minutes down the block and I took my bike instead of the car so I wouldn’t wake Mom. I remember it started to rain and then I saw headlights coming when I turned the corner. I tried to get out of the way, but it all just happened so fast I couldn’t stop.”
Aw man, she died in a hit and run? That sucks. No, wait. Why does she have a blindfold on if she got hit by a car? It makes no sense.
“Why are you blindfolded?” I ask her softly, my finger firmly attached to the nurse button. She seems nonviolent so far, but I’m not taking any chances.
“I woke up and tried to open my eyes,” she tells me. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t move at all. I think I’m sitting up, but I can’t be sure. I’m scared. He hurts me.”
She got nabbed by a killer, maybe even the same one who got Sally. Then again maybe not. Time to find out.
“How did you find me?”
“I’m not sure. They were talking about you…”
“They?” I interrupt her.
“I can hear them talking softly, whispering. They leave me when he comes. They said you could see them and I don’t know, I just thought about you and… and here I am. I don’t know how.”
Well dang. She just thought about me and poof, here she is? So very, very not good. Mirror Boy can just pop in whenever he wants to? The fear, which had been subsiding hits me full force and before I can stop myself, I hit the page button. The beeping on the monitor goes a bit crazy the more I think about that mutilated ghost. My heartbeat is going into overdrive and it makes me a little dizzy.
The hallway door pushes open and the night nurse hurries in. She takes one look at my monitor and then my face and hurries right back out. I have no clue what it must look like, but I feel very bug-eyed and my breathing is a bit labored. Shock. I think I’m in shock.
I blink rapidly and look again at the chair where the girl sat not more than five seconds ago. She’s gone. That doesn’t mean I’m safe though. She or Mirror Boy could pop in whenever they want to. How are they finding me? How do any of them find me?
The nurse comes back and shoots something into my IV. Ten
seconds later, I’m drowning in darkness, scared and fighting to stay awake. It’s a battle I can’t win.
The next time I open my eyes, sunlight streams through the windows. I furtively search the room, but don’t see any ghosts. Okay, good. I’m a little shocked that I haven’t seen more of the little buggers. Hospitals are a breeding ground for them, but I’ve only seen the one girl. Not that I’m complaining, but I don’t know why they’re leaving me alone.
Ghosts are just one reason I hate hospitals. My first experience with hospitals traumatized me beyond repair. I woke up hooked to more machines and tubes than I could count. I remember it hurt to take a breath. They said one of my lungs had been hit when Mom took the knife to me. Anyway, I associate hospitals with that awful day. It’s not something I think about, but being here, surrounded and hooked up to machines, the memories of that…that attack really haunt me today.
Five. I’d been five freaking years old and my mother tried her best to kill me. And not just kill me – she’d done it in a way that caused lots and lots of pain. There are hundreds of ways to kill a person with little to no pain. Trust me, I checked. I don’t know why she did it. Typically, a woman kills by way of poison or overdoses. But not my mom. She went into the kitchen, found the biggest butcher knife she could get her hands on and proceeded to plunge it into my little body not once, not twice, but eight times. The doctors said it was a miracle I’d survived. If it hadn’t been for the nosy woman next door, I wouldn’t have. She’d heard me screaming and called the cops. I was lucky that there happened to be a patrol car close and an ambulance even closer.
It was a cop that told me my mom was dead and I’d survived her attempt to kill me. I’d been devastated and all he’d done was stand there like it was nothing for a parent to try and kill their child. To me, it had been something. It shattered me. I was alone. No one had come to hold my hand or tell me it was okay, that it had been a mistake. I’d spent several weeks in the hospital before being shipped off to my first foster home. To me, hospitals and cops are a glaring reminder of the worst day of my life.
Speak of the devil and so shall he appear…