Amanda got up and moved seats.
“Now, first thing we have to do is what, class?” Mr. Marks turned around and Brea screamed.
The right side of his face was gone—blown away. His mouth was a half-hinged, dripping maw and the chalkboard was covered in teeth, in muscle, in tissue, in brains.
“Brea, that’s the last straw.”
His shattered tongue wagged as he talked and a few more teeth fell on the white linoleum floor splattering it with blood.
She squeezed her eyes closed and tried not to cry.
“Brea, come on. I’ll take you to the nurse myself.” Mr. Marks tried to help her out of her desk, but she slapped at him and shouted.
“Get him off me. Get him off me.”
The class broke into hysterics and the riotous laughter was deafening.
She covered her ears, hooking her legs around her chair legs, refusing to move, until a wave of pain moved through her and she blacked out.
* * * * *
Brea woke up on the hard, old cot in the school nurse’s office. She rolled over and the paper runner crinkled under her weight.
Mrs. Johnston, the nurse, was calling parents to come get the kids on the two cots next to her.
Her own mother was just walking through the door.
Joan’s heels clacked on the tile floor and she was dressed in a conservative, gray skirt suit. She had been at a town planning breakfast with Mitchell, Jaxon’s father, all morning; a fact she reminded Brea of several times as if she was fishing for what Jaxon might have told him about the dinner at their house. Joan walked past Mrs. Johnston with a wave and approached Brea coolly.
“Come on, Brea. I’m taking you home.” She squat down next to her the best she could in a pencil-length skirt and spoke softly. “I made you an appointment to deal with this.”
Brea sighed, still a little groggy from class. She knew the appointment was with Dr. Frankel, the shrink her mother took her to when her father left. Brea had no doubt that her mother needed it a lot more than she did.
She rolled up to sit on the cot and a deep wooshing noise filled her ears. The room momentarily pixilated in shades of gray and then came into focus. She reached out for help standing and her mother ignored it.
“Where do I sign her out?” She asked Mrs. Johston.
“Right here, Mrs. Miller.”
Joan signed the logbook and waited impatiently in the doorway.
Brea stood and her head felt split open. A remembered flash of Mr. Mark’s face blasted apart made her tense and nauseous.
“Are you coming?”
Brea held it together long enough to get to the car.
“I saw Mitchell this morning,” Joan said. “I asked how Jaxon was feeling. He said he didn’t know he was sick, but that he was a little down about something going on with you two.”
“Mom, please, my head is killing me.”
“He’s a good boy, Brea. He’s the kind of person you should have been hanging out with all along.”
“Mom!” Shouting made the pain worse.
“I know you’re going through some stuff now, but it’ll all be for the better. I know you don’t believe that, but it will. Harmony was a bad influence. Her family…”
Brea started to cry. “You’re such a heartless bitch. No wonder Dad left.”
“I warned you about your language.” She gave Brea a stern look of warning. “And there’s a lot more to that story than you’ll ever know.”
“More riddles. Always the riddles. You hated Harmony and her family and you’re glad she’s gone, I get that.” Her head was pounding. “But here’s a question for you. What’s 6 Maple?” I saw your face when I said it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She denied it, but looked shaken.
“If you don’t know, why did you call Dad that night? I heard you talking to him.”
“I…” She pulled into the garage without answering. She was flustered and angry. “Go to your room, Brea. No T.V., no iPod, nothing, got me?”
“Fine.”
Brea ran off to her bedroom before her mother asked for her cell phone.
29.
Tired and wanting to avoid her mother, Brea slept off the first several hours of her grounding with her cell phone in her pocket. It vibrated late in the night and woke her up.
“Hello?” She whispered, listening in total darkness for any sign that her mother was still awake.
“Brea, I need you to come with me.” It was Adam and the urgency in his voice set her immediately on-edge.
She sat up in bed, fully awake. “What time is it?” She hadn’t looked before answering her phone and her alarm clock was unplugged.
“3:00. I’m sorry. I don’t know who else to call.” He sounded desperate. “Please come outside.”
His monstrosity of a truck was parked a couple doors down.
“I’ll be right out.”
Brea brushed her teeth, put an oversized teddy bear under her comforter as a decoy, and shimmied down the tree out front. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
She hadn’t even asked what the emergency was that he needed her for.
He went around and opened her door. “I really am sorry it’s so late.”
“What’s going on?” Frozen leaves stuck to her shoes and pant legs and the melting frost soaked through her white canvas sneakers. She tried to scrape them off on the running board.
“Charity’s in trouble.”
The closing door echoed down the empty street. The neighboring houses were dark except for the widow Johnson’s house which was always lit up for security.
Brea wrestled the tangled seat belt. “Charity’s always in trouble. As far I’m concerned, she can crawl in a hole and die for what she did to Harmony.”
“It’s not that simple and you know it. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was riding the medication see-saw. She needs help.”
“What’ll she do if we don’t go?”
“Not going, for me, is not an option.”
He picked up speed, careening a little recklessly down the gravel back roads to the most desolate part of Reston. By the time they pulled up to the broken down house, she was completely lost.
The modest ranch was all but devoured by a row of overgrown oak and pine trees. The entranceway was barely visible. An inverted six like a misshapen nine hung from a nail on the door trim. Brea gasped when she saw it.
“What street is this on?”
“Maple, why?”
“6 Maple.” It was an address.
“Whose house is this?” Brea moved into the truck’s beaming headlights and kicked her leg free of the creeping vine wrapped around it.
All but one of the house’s windows were smashed and a tent of splintered boards rose from a hole in the roof’s middle.
Adam forced the front door. “I don’t know whose it is. It’s a flop house or something. Charity’s always coming here.”
Brea followed him inside where Charity’s crying echoed.
Adam held his hand up. “Be careful, the floors are rotten through in some places.”
The time-worn wood creaked and groaned and Brea moved carefully across it. The living room was empty except for a wadded up tarp and a shadeless lamp that she wished there was power to work. There was no heat, so the place was freezing.
“Charity?” Her name floated from Adam’s lips in a puff of white air. “Charity, it’s Adam. Where are you?”
Charity’s sniffling replaced her all-out bawling and Brea and Adam moved toward the sound.
One squealing rat chased another under a tilted stove that had sunken like an aquarium treasure chest into the sodden floorboards. Putrefied dishes spilled out of the sink on to the broken counter. Brea gagged on the smell and taste of airborne mold.
“Charity, it’s Brea. Will you please answer us?” She reached for Adam’s hand. “I really want to get out of here.” The nightmare came back to her in pieces. The hallway, the noise…
/> “She’s always down here.” Adam went two doors down the hall and stood in the doorway on the right.”
…The bedroom
“Holy shit.” Brea froze.
The brass frame of a child’s twin sized bed reflected Adam’s lighter’s flame. It looked recently slept in and the faded Strawberry Shortcake sheets spilled on to the floor. On the wall above the bed was a latch-hook carpet of a puppy’s face coated in dust so thick Brea could barely see through it.
“Come on,” Adam said, “help me get her out.”
“I c-a-n-t.” The word came out staccato.
Adam tried to coax Charity out of the built-in bookshelf cabinet, but she wouldn’t move. He moved the lighter closer to see her. Charity shivered and wiped the dripping snot from her nose, smearing blood across her chin.
Brea couldn’t move.
“They know,” Charity said. “They know about everything. That’s why they did it to her. They killed my Harmony.”
Adam shooshed her soothingly. “It’s going to be all right. Are you hurt? Why are you bleeding?”
“Don’t let them take me, too.” Spit strung between her top and bottom lip and her bloodshot eyes looked up at Adam, imploring.
Brea felt someone standing behind her and quickly turned.
“Help me.” It was the voice from Math class.
“Adam…someone’s here. Did you hear that?”
“They’re coming,” Charity said.
Two loud bangs rang out in succession and Brea dropped to the floor. “Please tell me you hear that.” She curled up into a ball on the floor. “Please…please…”
“Brea,” Adam shook her by the shoulders, “what the hell are you talking about? There’s nothing. I need you to help me.”
“I need to get out of here. Please get me out of here.”
Adam lifted her to her feet. “It’s all right. Breathe. God, you’re burning up.”
Charity let herself out of the cabinet and walked over to Brea. “You hear it, too?” She was ghost white, her face smeared with blood, her breath foul and her teeth rotting.
Brea nodded as Adam wrapped a dusty blanket around her.
“Come on, both of you. It’s not safe in here.”
Charity shambled past them, shaking her head and either crying or laughing, Brea couldn’t tell. “There’s so much she didn’t tell either of you.”
30.
Adam dropped Brea off at home before taking Charity to the Emergency Room for stitches. The blood on her face was from a cut on her hand that she got knocking into one of the broken windows.
Brea thought about what she had said, how there was so much Harmony didn’t tell them, and she couldn’t believe it was true. Harmony told her everything. At least she thought she did, but as she crept back into her bedroom, she wondered.
She changed into pajamas in case her mother woke up and sat down on the new beige carpet her mother just had installed. She tore out the side of the bag where the Ouija board had punched a hole. The board was now hidden between her box spring and mattress where her mother wouldn’t find it and where it couldn’t do anything on its own.
She emptied the rest of the bag's contents and sorted through laundry both clean and dirty, through make-up, and crumpled up papers. Everything smelled like smoke.
“Come on, Harmony. I know there’s something in here.”
She shook the clothes out piece by piece until Harmony’s journal fell out of a wadded up sweatshirt.
“Bingo.”
Brea held it open and when nothing fell out, flipped through page by page.
There were journal entries dating back almost a year as well as snippets of stories and poetry. One poem in particular stuck out:
Autumn leaves bring with them
Incomprehensible cold-weather conversations
As I walk down the Ave
To a place in my life
That I'd rather not go
Challenging death
Sparse leaves stand proud
And Dream of April's rain
As life suspends
Amidst this frost that is my breath
I hold his hand for one last time
Embracing life
Before I succumb
To the plague of this season
It was dated two days before her suicide.
“Why didn’t you say something before it was too late?” she said as if Harmony could hear her.
She flipped past the random scribbling about Tom and was almost to the back cover when she noticed a page that felt too thick. It was two pages stuck together and when she pulled them apart, she gasped. They were held together by a bloody partial obituary. Tom’s obituary. He died at 6 Maple. She hurriedly called Adam.
“Oh my God, oh my God.”
“Brea, calm down. What’s wrong?”
“Did you know Charity was married?”
“I don’t think so, why?”
“I have something I need to talk to you about. Can you pick me up?”
“When?”
“In about a half hour.”
“Sure, no problem.”
“Adam, one more thing. Do you mind if I stay?”
31.
Adam’s living room was somewhat under-furnished: a dark blue couch, a big screen TV and a couple of gaming systems stacked on a box on the floor, but it was clean and Brea felt safe. She set her bag down at the door and said, “Thanks for this.”
“I still can’t believe Charity was married. Harmony said she didn’t even know her father. How is that possible?” He was still dumbstruck from their conversation on the ride over.
“I don’t know. I have to, uh, go to the bathroom.”
She closed the door before he told her where it was.
“Do you want me to make some coffee?”
“Please.”
The bathroom light flickered and a hazed feeling settled over her. She felt like she was channeling someone, Harmony, seeing things through her eyes, remembering her memories. Brea picked a piece of pink, plastic razor blade out of the garbage can and dropped it when a pain tore through her head. Flashes of Harmony crying and cutting herself blinded Brea and, for a moment, knocked her off her balance.
“This can’t be happening.” Details of Adam’s apartment Brea couldn’t know were suddenly clear. She held her hand on the vanity drawer and said, “Nail clippers and Q-tips.” She pulled the drawer and inside was nail clippers and Q-tips. “Toothpaste.” She opened the next drawer with the toothpaste. “Whoa, what is going on here?” For a minute, she was channeling Harmony.
She opened the door and almost ran Adam over, tripping and falling into him.
“Everything ok?”
“Yeah, fine. The lights flickered and I got spooked.”
“Happens a lot in there lately.”
“I bet,” she said. “Coffee ready?”
It took him a minute to answer, like he was thinking about something else. “Coffee, yes.”
She sat across from him at the kitchenette table, contemplating how to tell him about the ghost.
“Sugar?” Adam slid a glass bowl across to her and handed her a teaspoon. The silverware was mismatched and most of what was in the kitchen looked second hand.
“Thanks.” She waited for him to hand her the creamer. “Did Harmony ever tell you what happened that day you dropped us off at Oakwood?”
“The day you left before I got back? No. I asked, but it made her mad and I dropped it.”
“We had a fight.”
“I figured.”
“Did she ever mention Tom?”
“Don’t tell me it’s another boyfriend. I knew about that Lance asshole.”
“It’s not a boyfriend. It was Charity’s husband’s name, Harmony’s father’s. He’s a…ghost.”
“A what?”
“I know this is going to sound crazy, but she said he wanted to kill her. We used a Ouija board because she kept telling me how things were happening to her and around her�
��things moved by themselves, broke into pieces spontaneously, she was seeing and hearing things—she wanted to find out who or what was causing it…”
“Hang on a second.” Adam went to the bedroom and came back with a piece of paper. He laid it out on the table. It was an encounter form from her last visit with Dr. Reed. “She left it in a sweatshirt pocket of mine.”
“What, exactly, am I looking for?”
“Here.” He pointed. “Hallucinations, circled, paranoid schizophrenia, circled.” They were the diagnoses Reed marked down for billing. “Don’t you get it, Brea? She was seeing things and hearing things because she was a paranoid schizophrenic like Charity. And why would a father want his daughter dead? Does that make sense to you?”
“She never…” Brea held the paper.
“She never told me, either.”
“But the ghost is real, Adam. He’s after me, too.”
“Brea, come on.”
“I’m telling the truth. It was with me at the house and look, here.” She handed him the dried blood-covered obituary. “Gerald Thomas Shippee, Tom, died in that house. Why do you think Charity keeps going back there? I found that in Harmony’s journal in the bag of stuff from the funeral home.”
“I don’t know, I mean…”
“1996, Harmony would have been two-years-old. No way would she remember this. She was trying to track him down. I think that’s why he killed her.”
“It was an overdose of pills, Brea. What murdering ghost does that? You know Harmony was sick. She tried before. She was paranoid…”
“That doesn’t make her wrong and if we don’t figure this thing out, I’m next.”
“Let’s just suspend disbelief for a minute here and say that this ghost, Tom, really exists. If he wanted you dead, he would have done it, right? If he somehow forced Harmony to take a lethal dose of pills, he could have done the same to you or worse. Let me ask you this, has he ever once tried to hurt you?”
There was the time with Jaxon at dinner, but what if that wasn’t Tom? Harmony hated Jaxon. It was more likely her than him and she had lashed out at Brea before. Looking back, that explanation made more sense. “I don’t think so, no.”
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