I collided with him, the backpack nailing him in the chest, and I knew what was going to happen, even as I hurled myself to the side, spinning away from him and falling to the ground.
He screamed—a really freaky scream—a someone-being-brutally-tortured-scream.
When I looked up he was bending over me, clutching his chest and gasping for air, his eyes staring wildly down at me through his bangs. I was just glad to see he wasn’t unconscious. Or dead again. Though it certainly would have been a convenient location for it.
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I said, struggling to my feet and reaching out to touch his shoulder.
He flinched away, and I couldn’t really blame him.
“What—the hell—is in there?” he asked, wheezing between each phrase. Then, “Don’t ever touch me with that bag again,” his eyes gleaming dangerously.
Voices. The CAMFers’ voices. Louder and closer now.
“Fuck!” Marcus said. “They definitely heard that.” He straightened up even though it obviously pained him. “We have to get moving.”
“This way,” I gestured, carefully skirting the grave.
I led us to a small grouping of maintenance sheds. The biggest one had two padlocked barn-style doors to accommodate the riding lawnmowers. It also had a smaller locked back door we could use to make our escape if we were discovered. Neither of the locks would be a problem for my ghost hand.
While I was picking them, I heard the voices again, not too far behind us. Whether by special device or old-fashioned means, we were definitely being tracked.
Once inside the shed, we both crouched near the door. I reached my ghost hand through and fiddled with the chain and padlock until it was neatly locked up again on the outside. See, it’s still locked. No one in here. Go away and leave us alone.
“What’s that noise?” Marcus whispered in my ear, close enough that I felt his breath on my cheek.
“The sound of you panting like a Labrador?” I whispered back.
“No, that buzz.”
“It’s—from my backpack. They won’t hear it.”
“God, what do you have in there?”
“Shhh,” I said. I really didn’t want to answer that question.
Maybe he didn’t like to be shushed either, because I could feel him move away from me. I listened at the door, peeking through the crack, but I couldn’t see anything useful. I glanced back, trying to find Marcus in the dark, and I could just make out the vague outline of a riding lawnmower with his shadowy frame perched on the seat. I crawled quietly across the cold cement floor, reached out, and touched his leg. He didn’t flinch away this time.
“Quiet,” he whispered. “They’re close.”
And he was right. If the blades hadn’t been telling me, the shuffle of feet and the rumble of male voices from outside the shed would have.
“We’ve lost the trail,” one of the voices said.
It was so close and loud I pressed against the lawnmower and Marcus’s leg, willing myself imperceivable.
“And both these meters are on the fritz,” the same voice said in frustration. No accent, so it wasn’t the Dark Man.
“I told you.” That was definitely him though. “Something is jamming the signal.”
“I thought these things couldn’t be jammed.”
“So did I,” said the Dark Man, not angry, but cold, hard, emotionless. “And I thought this girl knew nothing about us, but it seems we were wrong on both counts.”
“She doesn’t know anything. No one in this backwater town has any idea what’s going on in the real world.”
“And yet,” the Dark Man countered, “our monitors recorded a major PSS flare in this town just this afternoon. And now the only defective living here has evaded us, and apparently she has something that can jam technology you claim she had no knowledge of.”
I did not like that voice. It was not a nice voice. And had he just called me defective?
“She’s not jamming them,” the other voice argued. “They’re just broken. I’m telling you, I’ve been watching this girl for years, and she’s as clueless as they come.”
Watching me for years? Did I know that voice? Someone in Greenfield had been watching me for years. What the hell for?
Marcus must have sensed me tensing up because he put a hand on my head and patted me like I was a spastic dog.
The voices were moving away. “She’s not in here. It’s locked tight. All these buildings are locked.” That was the spy’s voice. So I was clueless, was I? At least I had enough sense to know someone with a PSS hand could pick a lock and close it up again from the inside.
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Dark Man’s voice, receding. “There are other ways of getting—”
Of getting what? My hand? What perfect timing for them to move out of ear-shot. I felt myself begin to shake, but I didn’t know if it was from fear, or anger, or what.
“The buzzing stopped,” Marcus whispered.
“I know,” I said. “It’s some kind of reaction to those devices. I think it’s what’s jamming them.”
“Wait, you mean the thing you pulled out of that girl in Math class zaps the hell out of people and jams minus meters?”
“How did you—Did you see me pull it out?” I demanded.
“No,” he mumbled. “I heard you say it, here in the cemetery.”
“You were listening in on my private conversation with my dead father?”
“I was trying to warn you that a CAMFer was stalking you.”
“Right,” I snapped. “By falling on me and making my backpack torture you. I almost forgot.”
“Oh, give me a break! I just saved you out there.”
“You saved me? You have got to be kidding me. You spent most of the time playing dead. If anyone saved anyone, I’m pretty sure I saved you.”
“Saving someone you’ve just killed hardly counts.”
“Hey! I had no idea it would do that.”
“Exactly! You have no idea about anything. You have no idea what your hand can do, or what it pulled into the world. You’re walking around with something in your backpack that can torture people on contact. Something those CAMFers would kill to get their hands on. You need to come with me,” Marcus insisted, but he didn’t grab me this time, and I knew why. He was afraid of getting zapped again. “I can help you keep that thing from falling into the wrong hands,” he said, glancing at my backpack warily.
“Come with you? Come with you where? You’re in high school, just like me. How in the hell are you going to keep me safe from militant CAMFers?”
“I just can,” he said, stepping off the lawnmower and moving past me toward the door. “Trust me. There’s a place in the woods—”
“No,” I said. “I can’t go with you. Don’t you get it? My mom expected me home like an hour ago. She’s going to be seriously pissed, especially after I tell her some guys were following me in the cemetery.”
Marcus’s silhouette stopped in its tracks halfway to the door and turned toward me. “That is a really bad idea,” he said.
“Why is that a bad idea?”
“Because,” he sputtered, “she’ll probably call the cops. Someone in this town has been watching you for years. Might just be one of your friendly neighborhood officers.”
“It could be anyone,” I argued, but I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Someone in Greenfield, someone I knew, someone I had known and trusted for years, had been spying on me.
“The point is you don’t know who you can trust,” Marcus was saying.
“No,” I said, getting up and moving toward him, “the point is I need answers, and you have them, and you’re using them to try and get me to disappear into the woods with you. How am I supposed to trust that?”
“I can’t tell you what I know unless you come with me,” he said in frustration.
“Why, because you don’t trust me?”
“No,” he shot back. “Because as long as yo
u’re within their reach, they won’t give up. And if they take you, they’re going to find out whatever you know, and I can’t risk that.”
“I don’t know anything! I’m clueless remember?” I said, struggling to keep my voice down. “And take me?” I blinked at him. “I thought they wanted to take my PSS, not me. Where would they take me?”
He just stared at me, his arms crossed.
“At least tell me how you fixed my hand in Calc today.”
“Come with me, and I will,” But he couldn’t even look at me as he said it. He knew it was a cheap shot.
“Oh. Wow. Thanks for nothing,” I said, pushing past him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him step back, moving well clear of any contact with my backpack. At the shed door, I slipped my ghost hand through and popped the lock.
“Olivia,” he said, half-plea, half-warning.
“What?” I said, looking back at him as I pushed the shed door open a crack.
“That thing in your bag. If it can block their minus meters, keep it close to you. And don’t let them get their hands on it.”
“I get it. I’ll be careful,” I said, before I turned and slipped out, heading toward the south gate of the cemetery and home, leaving Marcus alone in the dark, which seemed appropriate, since that was exactly how he’d left me.
8
MY MOTHER
On the way home, I kept looking over my shoulder, but if Marcus or the CAMFers were following me, I didn’t see them, and the blades had fallen completely silent, which seemed like a good sign. At the cemetery’s south gate, I made quick work of the lock, then jogged up North Elm Street and turned onto Durley. My house was the two-story, second on the left. The lights were on, and my mom’s sky blue VW bug was in the drive. Now, all I had to do was face the onslaught of her anger and get to my room where I could hide the blades until I figured out what to do with them.
I walked up the path to my front door and turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. No one locked their doors in Greenfield unless they were going out of town. Even then, sometimes they left them unlocked so their neighbors could feed the cat and water the plants. I opened the door and walked into the entryway.
The overhead light was off, but a sconce on the wall illuminated one of my favorite paintings by my dad. He had painted it when I was four, around the time my parents had informed me that I was never going to have a little brother or a little sister to play with. It was an oil-on-canvas of a pale, glowing girl on a deeply black-blue background. The girl was ethereal and ghostly, except for her right hand, which was the most realistic, fleshy hand I had ever seen. It looked like you could reach out and take that hand in yours. Everyone who saw the painting said that. My father had titled it The Other Olivia, and I had fought long and hard to keep that painting in the entryway after my father had died. My mother had packed up all his other work and stored it in his old garden studio out back.
I smiled at The Other Olivia and pulled the front door closed, making sure to lock it behind me.
“No, she isn’t home yet,” my mother’s voice was saying to someone on the phone, and then, “Olivia, is that you?”
“Hey,” I rounded the corner into the room’s arched doorway, the brighter lights blinding me for a second.
“I have to go,” my mother murmured into the receiver and hung up without even saying goodbye.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour,” she said, staring at the phone, her voice tight and throaty. “I can’t believe you’d disrespect me like this.” She looked up and her mouth dropped open in surprise. “What on earth!” She jumped up from the brown leather couch. “Olivia, you’re bleeding.” She didn’t sound concerned as much as she sounded annoyed, but I was pretty used to that. My mother wasn’t great at personal empathy. She was paid to be professionally empathetic but, apparently, she used it all up on her clients.
“I had a little accident on the way home,” I said. “It’s just a few scratches.” I’d realized that Marcus was at least right about one thing; telling my mother that CAMFers had been chasing me was not a good idea.
“Little accident? You’re bleeding and you’re filthy,” she said, taking my left hand and pulling me further into the light.
I gasped and jerked my hand away.
“What—?” she grabbed my wrist and turned my hand palm up. It was bright red, and oozing blood and dirt. “How did you do all this? It’s not that difficult to walk home from Emma’s.”
“I took the cemetery shortcut,” I said, “and I tripped on a tombstone in the dark. I tried to catch myself with this hand, but I ended up landing face-first in a bush.” I wasn’t a great liar, but I could usually pull one off when I had to.
“The cemetery,” my mother said, shaking her head. “This is getting ridiculous, Olivia.”
“What is ridiculous about the cemetery?”
“Oh come on. We both know you just go there to be dramatic and get under my skin.”
“Really? Because I thought I was going there to visit Dad,” I said, yanking my hand out of hers.
“For clarification, you visit his grave. You don’t visit him. He’s gone. But that’s not what I was referring to, and you know it.”
“What were you referring to then?”
“I was referring to your unhealthy, romanticized attachment to the idea of death.”
“The idea of death? Don’t you mean the reality of death? People die, Mom. Dad is dead. It isn’t just some crazy idea I have.”
“Yes, death is a reality, but obsessing over it isn’t mentally healthy.”
“Don’t analyze me. I’m not one of your clients. And at least I’m not wallowing in denial.”
“We weren’t talking about me. We were talking about you. And what you just did is called avoidance. Rather than face your own issues—”
“Oh please, save it for the office! You and I both know I’m not the only one in this family with issues about death.” So, we were fighting again. We always fought. It was one of the few things I could count on.
“Again, that’s avoidance,” she said. “As long as you keep putting your grief and anger back on me, you’re never going to be able to deal with it.”
“Deal with it? You think I’m not dealing with it? I visit him. I talk to him. I miss him. And yes, I’m extremely pissed at the universe for taking him away. But that is NOT avoidance. Avoidance is constantly analyzing your daughter’s feelings so you never have to face your own. Avoidance is hiding his life’s work in a shed in the back yard. Avoidance is refusing to mark your husband’s grave and never visiting it because you’re afraid if you face that reality you’ll end up being the mental patient, instead of the doctor. Oh, believe me, Mom, I know all about avoidance. I see it every day. I live with it, and eat with it, and talk to it, and fight with it. It’s practically my mother!”
Her eyes widened with shock. I saw pain, for a moment, tremble at the corners of her lips. For a split second, I thought she was going to slap me. And I wanted her to. I wanted her to hurt and cry and break into a million pieces with me. I didn’t want to be alone anymore, feeling everything for both of us. I wanted it so badly, I could feel it in my face, my throat, my chest, my arms, my hands.
“Olivia!” my mother yelped, looking down at my hand.
“It’s fine. I told you. It’s just a scrape,” I said dismissively, looking down too. But my mother wasn’t looking at my injured hand. She was looking at my ghost hand and the PSS that was seeping out of the tattered satin glove in spiraling tendrils.
“What is that?” she asked, backing away a step.
I turned and ran down the hallway into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind me.
“Olivia, are you all right?” my mother’s voice came through the wooden door. “What is wrong with your hand?”
I leaned against the door, panting and looking down at it. “Um, I’m fine. Yeah, it’s fine. I just need to get cleaned up.” She wasn’t going to
buy it. She was majorly paranoid when it came to my hand. How was I going to explain this?
Beyond the door there was a long silence.
“Well, don’t make a mess,” she said. “And after your shower, we still need to talk.”
I heard her walk away, her footsteps receding down the hallway and back to the living room as if nothing had happened.
She had seen my hand whacking out right before her eyes, and she had just walked away. Something was seriously wrong with me, and she knew it, and all she had said was, “Don’t make a mess in the bathroom.”
I grabbed at my wrist and ripped off the tattered satin glove, the glow of my hand reflecting off white tile like cold starlight. I could tell it was already on its way back to normal. I was beginning to get a feel for its new weirdness. But this time it hadn’t given me any warning of heat or warmness before it had changed, and that was bad.
I crossed to the sink and looked in the mirror. My face was scratched and bloody. I lifted my ghost hand and watched its reflection move and twist, coming back into shape. It almost looked like it was doing sign language, like it was trying to tell me something.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked it. “What do you want?”
But it didn’t answer back.
I flipped on the light over the mirror and took a better look at my face. The scratches were long, but not too deep. Blood, now mostly dry, made maroon tear-tracks down my cheeks. One of the tracks curved, running right into the seam between my black lips. Wow. The Manic Black lipstick I’d bought online was really as long-lasting as they said it was. Several other blood trails went all the way under the curve of my chin and down behind my neck because I’d been lying on my back as I bled. Lying on top of Marcus. Don’t think about that. Don’t think about him.
There was a twig, jutting like a single antenna out of my dyed-black hair. I reached up and pulled it out, watching dirt, leaves, and grass rain down into the sink and on to the tile floor. My shirt was torn a little at the shoulder. And my whole body was beginning to ache, but it was nothing compared to the stinging of my injured hand.
I shrugged off my backpack and tossed it in a corner. What I needed was a nice hot shower. After that I could deal with all the other stuff—my mother, my ghost hand, the bag of blades, and the CAMFers. While I waited for the water to get warm, I undressed, more forest debris raining down on the bathroom floor. So much for not making a mess.
Ghost Hand Page 5