Just as I opened the shower and stepped into its warm billowing steam, I heard the distant jingle of the living room phone. It stopped midway through the second ring. My mother must have picked it up.
Hot water pummeled my back and ran down my arms. Wherever it hit, the scratches, scrapes and wounds burned, but in a good way. Until I picked up the soap. That stung like hell, but there was no getting around it.
I hadn’t been in the shower five minutes when there was a knock on the door.
“What?” I yelled, hot water cascading down my face and into my mouth.
“I have to go,” came my mother’s muffled voice. “Client emergency.”
“Okay,” I sputtered. That was weird. I couldn’t remember the last time my mom had been called away at night, even after she’d started working part time at the hospital in addition to her private practice. People in a small town like Greenfield tried very hard not to call one of their neighbors away from home and family after hours.
“Don’t wait up,” she said. “We’ll have to talk later,” and shortly after that, I heard her shut the front door on her way out.
I turned off the shower and stood for a moment, listening to the water drip off my body. I was home. Alone. A state I normally reveled in, but it was dawning on me that my mother probably hadn’t locked the door on her way out. And there were men out there who wanted to take me, or my PSS, or whatever. And one of them had been watching me for a very long time, which obviously meant he knew where I lived.
9
A SLIGHT BREACH OF SECURITY
I clambered out of the shower, pulled my robe off the door hook, and threw it on. Dripping all the way, I raced down the hall into the entryway and locked the front door, both the handle and the deadbolt. I’d never locked the deadbolt in my life. On the way to the back door, I checked windows, making sure they were locked, but throwing the final bolt in place on the back door didn’t make me feel any better. My heart was hammering in my chest. I had to take deep breaths on my way back to the bathroom, telling myself to calm down. I was locked up safe in the house. Besides, the blades would warn me if the CAMFers were coming. I just needed to stay calm.
I grabbed the backpack off the bathroom floor and went to my room, tossing it on my bed while I dug in my dresser for some clothes. As I pulled on my panties, I noticed a nasty looking scratch on my thigh. Something back in the cemetery must have gouged me right through my jeans. I marched back to the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet, looking for the antibiotic ointment and the Band Aids. There was plenty of ointment, but the box of Band Aids was out of everything except small circular dots. I applied ointment and a line of dots to the scratch, then stuffed the Band Aid box back in the cabinet. Wiping the steam from the mirror, I checked my face now that it was clean. It still looked like a cat had tried to climb it. I swabbed ointment on a few of larger scratches, and frowned at my reflection.
What was the deal with Passion’s blades? They just kept getting weirder and weirder. How could something like that even come out of someone? Obviously, they hadn’t come out of her body. They had something to do with her cutting—with her psychological issues, and they’d come out of that. A few months ago, when I’d been grounded and dying of boredom, I’d read an article in one of my mom’s psych journals about something called burdens. A burden was a negative thought or experience you carried around inside you, almost like a souvenir. I guess the common term for it was “baggage.” Anyway, according to this article, the author had developed a new therapy model to get rid of burdens. All you had to do was imagine your negative thought or experience as a physical object, like a heavy chain weighing you down, or an ugly purse, or a tangled ball of string. Once you imagined the object and it felt right, you went somewhere in your mind, like to the edge of a cliff or something, and you threw the thing off of it. And Voila! Problem solved and burden gone.
My mother had hated that article, probably because if people could just throw their problems off make-believe cliffs in their minds, they wouldn’t need her. But I’d thought it was a pretty cool idea. What if the blades were Passion’s burden, and for some reason my hand had reached in and snatched them out of her? Maybe they’d been in a plastic baggy because she’d wanted someone to see her pain and discover her cutting, and so that’s how she’d imagined them. It was an interesting theory, but it certainly didn’t explain why the blades could jam the CAMFers’ minus meters. Or zap someone unconscious.
And what was I supposed to do with them? Marcus had told me to keep them safe and close to me because they could warn me of the CAMFers. But he had obviously wanted them, even though he couldn’t touch them.
At the edge of my vision a shadow fell across the bathroom’s frosted window. By the time I turned to look, it was gone. But the feeling wasn’t. Someone was outside, in the dark, walking past the windows, looking in. The bathroom and my bedroom were at the back corner of the house which bumped up against the wooded outskirts of Greenfield. No one from the street could see someone lurking in my back yard. I lived in a small Midwestern town. No one was supposed to be lurking there.
I crouched down on the floor. The doors and windows were locked. No one could get in easily. Still, I glanced around the bathroom, looking for some kind of makeshift weapon. A hair straightener. Cosmetics. An eyelash curler. Toilet paper. Not exactly a deadly arsenal, but I grabbed my mother’s hairspray from the bathroom cubby. It wasn’t mace, but a shot of hairspray to the eyes was nothing to laugh at.
Think, Olivia. Get yourself out of this.
There had been two CAMFers in the cemetery. If they were both out there, they were probably each covering a door. If I made a run for it, they’d be all over me.
If I stayed inside, they might try to come in after me, but that would make some noise.
I needed to get to a phone and call 911 before they got that desperate. My cell phone was dead, and besides, it was in the backpack with the blades. The blades—Oh shit! They were still in my room.
I got down on all fours and tried to crawl down the hall, thinking it would be stealthier. It might have been, if I hadn’t been clutching a can of hairspray and wearing a bathrobe. My knees kept catching the edge of the robe and making me fall on my face. So, I stood up, jammed the hairspray in one of the pockets, cinched the tie tightly around my waist, and ran down the hall to my room. I scrambled toward my bed and grabbed hold of my pack. The blades inside were making a noise like a broken lawnmower. They were loud, louder than they’d ever been before. How many CAMFers were out there?
Glass shattered, and a brick came sailing through the window and landed at my feet. My bedroom curtains billowed inward, curling away and smoking strangely at the edges, as something else followed the brick—an orange, blurred blob that landed on the throw rug next to my bed with a muffled thump.
I stared down at it—a flaming, wooden torch, its end wrapped with a burning rag. The overwhelming stench of gasoline hit me like a smack in the face. A torch. Really? What kind of anachronistic bastards were these CAMFers?
I reached out my ghost hand, grabbed the flaming end of the torch, and chucked it right back out my window.
10
OUT OF THE FIRE
The torch sailed beautifully, end-over-end, its flame furling in the air as it hit the man standing outside my window. I heard the satisfying thump, his oomph of surprise. The burning end of the torch had smacked him low in the gut, but the momentary glow hadn’t reached high enough to illuminate his face. Whoever he was, he wasn’t as lean as the Dark Man. He must be the spy, or some new CAMFer sent to ruin my life.
The torch fell to the ground, or went out. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it grew dark for a moment just before the man’s shirt caught fire.
He tried to beat it out with several quick slaps of his hand, but the impact of the torch must have doused the shirt with gas, or the material was fairly flammable. Whatever the case, it didn’t work. The flames flared. The man cried out and dropped like a rock out of
sight below the window ledge. That should distract him for a while.
My legs felt prickly, and I glanced down to see the cotton rug I was standing on go up in a blaze. I danced away from it. Apparently, it didn’t matter how old-school a torch was; it was as effective as it had ever been. The fire at the window had consumed the curtains and was licking its way up the wall to the ceiling. The flames on the rug greedily climbed to my bedspread. I needed something to beat it out, or douse it, or contain it, before it devoured the whole house. There was a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. I ran for it.
The smoke alarm in the hallway was shrieking in disapproval. When I made it to the kitchen, I tried to yank the extinguisher off the wall but it refused to come out of its metal bracket. I yanked harder, but it still resisted. Finally, I realized that I had to lift it up and out, but once I did, it was way heavier than I’d expected. I hefted it in both arms like a fat baby and ran back to my room.
The far end of my bed was a pyre.
I pulled the extinguisher’s pin, aimed it, and squeezed the handle. It sputtered, a white glop of foam dribbling out of the nozzle. I squeezed the handle again and again, shaking the thing, begging it to work. For a moment, I considered lobbing the entire red canister into the fire, but I was afraid it would explode or something. Instead, I set it down, and it rolled away like some giant, sentient hot dog.
Fire crept up the walls now, devouring the wallpaper and quickly changing the decor of my room to monochrome black—a color I’d once wanted to paint it, which had caused a huge fight with my mother that I had obviously lost. Lower down, the flames were licking at my backpack, which I’d left on the floor near the bed when I’d run for the extinguisher. I kicked out my foot and snagged one of the straps, pulling it toward me.
When I had it in my arms, I backed out of the room. Out in the smoke-filled hallway, I slammed my bedroom door shut, as if that might keep the monster at bay a little longer.
I had to get out of the house now, CAMFers or not.
The smoke was getting thick. My lungs were burning. Fire and heat and smoke went up. I needed to get below it.
I got down on my knees, but I couldn’t crawl in the damn robe. The air was better though. I took a careful, sipping breath between coughs and tried to think. I had to ditch the robe. It was either that or die of modesty. I undid the belt, threw the thing off and slung the backpack on to my bare back. It hummed between my shoulder blades, warning me what I already knew—the CAMFers were out there.
Wearing just my underwear, I crawled down the hall and into the kitchen. The cold, hard tile felt like soothing water flowing beneath my knees. The back door was so close. It was right there. All I had to do was open it, run out on to the porch and into the back yard, and I’d be safe. Or would I?
The house was beginning to make strange groaning noises. If I could just hold out until the fire department arrived, surely the CAMFers would be gone, but I didn’t even hear sirens yet. Hadn’t anyone noticed my house was a raging inferno?
The kitchen was filling with smoke. My eyes were a watery blur, and I squeezed them shut. It didn’t really matter. I couldn’t see anything anyway. I needed to get below the smoke, but I was already sprawled on the floor. What was lower than the floor? That was it. There was a place lower than the floor, a place to escape the smoke and possibly get out past the CAMFers unseen.
I felt my way around the butcher block island that my dad had made my mother for their fifteenth anniversary. I crawled until my head hit the wall, then felt along the baseboard to the basement door. Reaching up, I turned the knob and opened it. Cool, fresh air hit me immediately, and I gulped it in. Quickly, I slid onto the cool top step of the basement stairwell and pulled the door shut behind me. I took a few deep breaths, coughing the smoke out of my system, and forced my stinging eyes open. My ghost hand cast a blue glow down the steep stairs.
I stood up, grabbed the railing, and started down. The wooden steps felt worn and smooth under my bare feet. About halfway to the bottom, I hit a distinct line of even cooler air, the point at which the staircase descended below the insulated ground. I was crossing into another world—the underworld—and a chill traveled up my body as I went down, making things perky and alert that didn’t need to be.
In the world above, something fell with a thundering crash, rattling the stairwell and raining dust down on my head from the basement ceiling above. I squealed and leapt the last few steps to the frigid cement floor.
Laid out before me, by the glow of my hand, was the strange jumbled landscape of the basement—mountains of crookedly stacked boxes, foothills of carefully labeled storage tubs, and the occasional strange architecture of abandoned, dusty exercise equipment. Somewhere, there were probably boxes of old clothes, but I didn’t have time to look for them. Hanging from a nail on one of the support beams was my mother’s old rain poncho. I grabbed it and threw it over my head. It was big enough to go right over the backpack and cover most of my important parts, but it was short enough not to impede me if I had to crawl again. And I was pretty sure I’d have to.
Grey moonlight streamed in the basement’s side windows, but not through the two at the back. That was because my mom and dad had added the back porch after they’d bought the house, and now those two windows opened to the underporch, a small area now enclosed by the porch’s sides.
At the time of the porch addition, I had been ten, and I’d begged my dad to make the underporch into a clubhouse for me and Emma. He had even helped me draw up plans for it, but my mother had vetoed the idea based on the strong opinion that little girls shouldn’t be encouraged to crawl around under porches like disobedient dogs or trolls. That hadn’t stopped my dad from making a trapdoor into the underporch from the back yard, with a wink in my direction and an explanation to my mom that it was for “maintenance purposes.” The trap-door was barely noticeable from the exterior of the house, unless you knew what to look for. The CAMFers would not be guarding it.
Another groan and crash shook the ceiling over my head. The burning house seemed to be thinking of collapsing straight into the basement, and I really didn’t want to be there when it did.
I hurried to the right window on the farthest wall and tried to pull it open. It didn’t budge. The wooden frame felt damp against my fingers. Probably swollen shut by moisture. If the other was jammed, I’d be trapped, buried alive under a burning house. Don’t think about it. Solve the problem. Get yourself out.
Somewhere up above me, in the far-off land of Greenfield, sirens finally began wailing. The cavalry was coming, but I couldn’t wait for them. The house was burning down around my ears.
I abandoned the right window and crossed to the other one. It felt dry, and though it didn’t open easily, I could feel it give when I pulled. I pulled harder and was rewarded when the window suddenly swung upwards. It had a hook that fit an eyelet in the ceiling so the window could be secured open. I hooked the window, but the opening was too high for me to just crawl through. I shoved a couple boxes in place and stepped up on them.
Shit! There was no way I was going to fit through the narrow window with my backpack on. I yanked off the poncho and the backpack and pitched them both into the dark ahead of me. Then, I wiggled my way through the window headfirst, my cleavage bulldozing a pile of dust in front of me. When I had pulled my legs and feet through, I sat up and looked around.
There was the trapdoor, outlined by a lighter square of cracks. It was big enough. I could get through with the backpack and poncho, so I put them back on, careful not to make too much noise. I crawled over to the trap door and laid an eye against one of its cracks. I couldn’t see much, just a strip of grass and the dark backdrop of the woods behind the house, a strange orange glow flickering at the tops of the trees—the reflection of my house burning down above me. I tried looking through several more cracks with similar results. I couldn’t see anyone out there waiting for me. I couldn’t hear anyone either, because the sirens were getting close now, blocking out all
the more subtle sounds with their wailing urgency. My backpack was silent and still against my back. When had the blades stopped buzzing? I had no idea. It could mean the CAMFers were gone. Or it could just mean they had turned off their meters. Should I make a run for it, or hide under the porch until the firemen arrived?
The fire decided for me as the peaceful, cool underworld of the basement caved in with a deafening roar. Smoke and dust, and house shrapnel exploded through both the windows leading into the underporch, scouring me like an apocalyptic wind. I was thrown against the trap door. It burst open, and I tumbled out onto the grass.
The sirens were at the front of the house. The stars swam above me in their dark lake. I lay panting and hurting, curled in a fetal position as my house crackled and hissed into the night. My mother’s poncho was bunched up around my neck. Eventually, I sat up and pulled it down over my chest and lap. Why was my face wet? There was a medium-sized piece of glass embedded in my thigh. I pulled it out and held it in my ghost hand, watching my PSS shine through it.
Men’s voices called to one another. I knew I should get up and go to the firemen, but I just didn’t have the will or the energy. The heat of the burning house was so intense though, that I did crawl away and lean against my father’s old art studio. At least his art was safe. Except for The Other Olivia. She’d be gone forever. But all the rest of it had been saved by my mother’s refusal to face death. Maybe every cloud really did have a silver lining. I would have given anything for a sip of water. My eyeballs felt swollen. My tongue tasted like charcoal.
“Olivia,” called a deep voice as a figure stepped out of the smoke. Mike Palmer, the fire chief, strode toward me, his long, thick, fireman’s coat billowing out behind him like a superhero’s cape. When he crouched next to me, I saw that he hadn’t fastened it up all the way in the front, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath. He must have gotten geared up in a hurry.
Ghost Hand Page 6