“God, I really don’t like this guy. That kind of crap always made me sick. Nobody ever does anything about it. Might makes right.”
“Not this time. We got it covered,” said Cameron.
He smiled at Cole, who nodded to Darby, who unfurled a fire hose. Zipperhead spun the valve wheel. Water exploded out of the nozzle and Magar was blasted off his feet.
“Hey! Aaaack! Shit!” he wailed.
He got back up, fiery mad, and they hit him again. The water pressure was so strong it slammed him backward into a locker. Denny’s eyes went wide.
“Cool.”
Denny took off running. I smiled at Cole.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No sweat,” he answered.
We watched as Gary Magar crawled away on his knees all the way to the bathroom. Looking eager to get into it, Darby rubbed her hands together.
“That was sweet!”
“I can think of a bunch of other people who need to be taught a lesson…” I said.
“Let’s get on it!”
“No,” I said. “It’s probably better if we stay on task.”
The group looked disappointed but they followed as I led them down the hall toward Mike Walker’s office. As we passed the art room, I spied Denise Wiggins moving around furtively inside. She was the only one in the room and entered a closet, then emerged holding one of my art projects, a garish papier-mâché head with more than a passing resemblance to reality TV star and omnipresent “celebrity” Kody Cosmenkian. My artistic expression had included a meat cleaver sunk in her skull. A nice touch, I’d always thought.
“What is she doing?” I asked no one in particular.
Denise covered my artwork with a pillowcase—indicating this act of thievery was premeditated—and slithered past us into the hallway and out a side door. We followed her to a Dumpster. Now I understood. Denise worshiped Kody, and she’d taken it upon herself to rid the world of my art. That so wasn’t going to happen.
Feeling in full control of her life, Denise approached the long line of metal Dumpsters and ceremoniously lifted the head out of the pillowcase and stood holding it like she was Perseus having just beheaded Medusa. I tried to imagine Denise ripping the Saint Christopher medallion from my neck and murdering me with a knife, but the image wouldn’t stick. Then she opened her stupid mouth.
“You want the real eulogy, Echo? Okay. You sucked. I never liked you. In fact, you made me want to puke my guts out every time I saw you. You were ‘amazing,’ all right—amazingly skanky, you little whore. You got what you deserved for disrespecting Kody. That’s why I spoke at your stupid funeral. It was irony, get it? I was pissing on your grave. And oh, by the way, David never really liked you. He only hooked up with you because you put out, you sleazy bitch.” She was talking about her boyfriend, David Petterson. The memory hit me like a wave you turned your back on at the beach. Time froze as I remembered:
It was night. I was in the back seat of David Petterson’s Mustang. The images were hazy and fragmented, but I knew we weren’t studying anything except anatomy. We weren’t going all the way or anything, but I wasn’t on my best behavior, either. I was shocked. At myself. Obviously my self-image was being called into question. I dug deeper, concentrating, and I remembered why I was doing this. It wasn’t to piss Denise off; I was trying to make Andy jealous. We’d had a fight and this was my response. It had worked. Andy had become angry and possessive and had come to me, telling me he wanted me all to himself or not at all. I pretended to think about it, then fell into his arms. I’d been Machiavellian. Echo, the manipulator, doing anything to get what she wanted. My sense of self-worth dipped. I rationalized what I’d done by telling myself that fear made people do strange things.
I let that memory go, gladly, and I was left wondering if it was possible that Denise’s rage had compelled her to jam a knife in my ticker. Not to mention that she was obviously incensed that I’d defiled the great Kody Cosmenkian’s iconic image.
Could anyone be so sick with jealousy and celebrity worship that they would do such a thing? I had to consider the possibility. Denise had always held a deep dislike of me, and last fall when someone keyed her car, she accused me. I was innocent, but that didn’t stop her and her acolytes from pouring bleach into my locker.
Well, what goes around comes around. She wasn’t going to get away with trashing my artwork, and if she was the one who killed me, she wasn’t going to get away with that, either. My crew would make sure of that.
Denise opened the Dumpster. Her eyes went all gooey when she saw a black cat inside.
“Aw. What a cute kitty … Come here, baby…”
Lucy started coughing.
“Oh, you poor thing,” said Denise, leaning closer.
Lucy hacked up a slimy hair ball that splattered against Denise’s face.
“Ewwww! Ohmigod! Ohmigod! You little piece of shit!”
Lucy leapt out of the Dumpster, howling. Zipperhead ignited a can of solvent that burst into flames. Darby, ever so creative, conjured up a ghostly image of me, then morphed it into a rotting corpse, mouth open in a terrifying scream. The eyeballs fell out of the sockets and hung on the cheeks, dangling by gory veins. The blood drained from Denise’s face and she screamed. Boy, I had to give Darby credit. Denise was about to toss Kody’s head into the trash when Zipperhead used his sparks to sizzle a message on the front of the Dumpster. The words appeared slowly, ominously.
Do this and you die…
“Oh … my … god.” Denise went ashen. She put Kody’s head back in the pillowcase and stepped quickly back from the Dumpster.
“I’m sorry, Echo! I didn’t mean it! I swear!”
For a girl who was dead, I was feeling pretty damn good. Log it in the books. Kick-ass haunting number two.
Ten minutes later, Denise was crouched in the main hallway near the front entrance to the school. She had my Kody head placed on the ground, had pilfered flowers from the teacher’s lounge, and had made a sign that she taped to the wall above it that read,
WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU, ECHO.
Nearby, Mr. Hemming was crouched with his ever-present camera, capturing Denise’s reverent display.
Our little fright fest seemed to have done the trick. Denise had pulled a one-eighty and created an altar to me. But still, although she appeared outwardly shaken, in my book she was still wearing her guilt like a butt-ugly prom dress. I concluded that she was definitely a prime suspect and would remain so until vindicated. I decided I would delve into her world later. For the time being, I wanted to check out suspect number one. Mike Walker. It was time to go Grody Toad hunting.
KNIFE
In the hallway, Zipperhead again gazed longingly at a couple of girls. He looked so sad that I took him aside.
“Listen, don’t worry about it. It’s going to happen for you.”
“I’m short, my head’s the size of a basketball, I have two massive scars on my head, and to top it all off, I’m dead. I’m kind of having a hard time being optimistic.”
“Number one, you don’t know what the future brings. You might come back. And let me tell you something about girls. Sure, they say they like hot guys, but what they really like are guys who are sweet and funny and make them laugh. So no matter what you look like, there’s always, always hope.”
Zipperhead closed his eyes like he was thinking about what I’d said. When he opened them again, he looked a little less sad.
“Thanks, Echo. Let’s go scare the crap out of this creep,” he said.
“You got it.”
* * *
As we passed Mr. Hemming, he stopped taking pictures and glanced around as though he’d felt something. He had. Us. I paused. I’d always had a soft spot for him. He was divorced and rumor had it that his heart had been broken. He was handsome and polite and always talked to us like we were peers, not just a bunch of dumb kids. Memories of Hemming momentarily flooded my brain. He’d always made me laugh and—just like I’d told Zipperhead—
that’s the thing I liked most about him. I wanted to stay and be with the memories—something was definitely pulling me toward him, like maybe he could somehow help me. But I decided I shouldn’t linger; I had to move on. We had another haunting to get to.
Walker’s office was way at the back of the lunchroom and we passed through the kitchen, watching as the despondent staff prepared sad-looking trays of chicken nuggets and mozzarella breadsticks alongside bins of broccoli and carrots steamed into mush and iceberg lettuce salads dumped out of twenty-pound plastic bags. The food at Middle House was looking better every day.
Walker’s door was painted a bright red. It was slightly ajar, and I smelled something burning. He had a tightly tied bundle of some dried plant by his window, propped in a vase. It was a pale-blue color and the tips were glowing as it burned slowly, emitting thin tendrils of smoke. It was horrid. Within seconds, I was sick to my stomach.
“What is that? What’s he burning?”
“Sage,” said Darby. “The stupid scumbag.”
She spat and I looked at the Middle House kids. They were all sick to their stomachs, too. I had to swallow to keep from gagging. I was starting to feel weak.
“I take it we don’t like burning sage?”
“It’s not dangerous, just unpleasant,” said Cole.
I started forward, intending to step inside Walker’s office and have a look around. I felt a jolt of pain in my feet and Dougie stopped me and pointed to the floor at some kind of powder.
“Now what?”
“Sea salt, cinnamon, and garlic,” answered Lucy, hissing.
“It’s been used to ward off ghosts for centuries,” said Cole.
I looked closer and saw that Walker had a thick line of powder across his threshold and lining the perimeter walls. The only place there was no powder was the window where the sage was burning. His office walls were nearly covered in mirrors, small, large, round, square, rectangular, and he even had shards taped up.
“Same thing with the mirrors?” I asked.
“They don’t bother me, but some ghosts don’t like mirrors,” said Zipperhead.
“Hmmmm. Why do you suppose he’s afraid of ghosts?” I asked.
“Murderers always are,” said Dougie.
We stood and stared at Walker.
“He sure looks like a guilty jerk to me,” said Zipperhead.
“This sucks!” said Darby. “I can’t concentrate with all that crap all over the place. I can’t conjure!”
Walker looked up from his desk, his eyes fearful. He sniffed the air, as though trying to draw out our scent.
“Can he smell us?”
“No, he’s an idiot,” said Zipperhead.
Walker’s hairy hands began to tremble and he knocked over his coffee.
“Shit!”
“He senses us. And he’s getting nervous. That’s fantastic,” said Cole.
I was feeling less nauseous and growing stronger.
“What’s happening? Why is my stomachache going away?”
Cameron smiled knowingly.
“He’s afraid, and we feed off his fear. The more terrified he gets, the stronger we become.”
Walker stood now and though his voice was shaky, he tried to remain calm as he issued an edict.
“Depart, spirits! You are not welcome here!”
“And you, dipshit, are totally rude,” said Dougie. “How’d you like to freeze your junk off?”
With a wave of his hand, Dougie created an arctic zone and Walker shivered.
“Go into the light!” Walker said.
“So stupid. They all say that,” Lucy said.
“It’s pathetic. Duh, we would if we could, dumb-ass,” Darby said.
“There is nothing for you here!” There was a nervous warble in Walker’s voice.
“He’s wrong,” I said, growing bolder as Walker’s fear kicked up a notch.
“I think there is something here for me. I think he’s hiding something.”
“We’ll be able to go in pretty soon,” said Cole. “He can’t hold out much longer.”
Cole proved to be right as Walker, buckling under the frigid air and pressure of our presence, doused the burning sage and hastily exited his office, closing and locking his door.
“Follow me,” said Cole.
He led us outside and we entered Walker’s office through the window, bypassing the powder lines.
Splayed on a side table next to a small couch were copies of magazines: Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Bowhunting. On the wall between the mirrors hung kitschy paintings of twelve-point bucks and moose.
We searched the office from floor to ceiling. There was no trace of my Saint Christopher medallion. In the closet, we found an aluminum carrying case. But it was locked.
“Stand back,” said Zipperhead. He zapped the locks, which popped open easily. I lifted the lid of the case, revealing a set of hunting knives varying in lengths—they were neatly labeled—from four inches to thirteen. They sat nestled in tidy little foam inserts. The eleven-inch knife, the one that most probably found its way into the depths of my heart, was missing.
“God, it looks like it’s him. What do we do now?” I asked.
“We don’t jump the gun. He’s innocent until proven guilty. We have to find the missing knife,” said Cole.
“How?”
“There are ways. There are always ways,” Darby said.
We were feeling pretty smug and emboldened but then Walker came blasting back into his office wielding a fire extinguisher and sprayed me with a torrent of foam. He dropped the extinguisher and stared in disbelief. The foam had of course passed right through me but in the faint mist it left behind a vision, an outline. He could see me!
“Who are you?!”
Well, you should damn well know, I thought.
Cole grabbed my hand and we backed out of Walker’s office as he collapsed onto his couch, curling up and covering his ears as he moaned. “No … no…”
I watched Mike Walker rocking and moaning on his couch. He looked pathetic.
“Now what?” I said.
“Let him be with his fear for a while maybe?” Cole said.
“You’re right,” I said. “He knows my spirit is here and I’m after him.”
“When we come back, he’ll crumble like a cookie,” said Darby.
We were back in the hallway about to leave the school when I stopped. Andy was standing before the memorial Denise had erected on my behalf. I looked at him and for a moment I saw him so clearly it was as if I could see his lungs, his heart, his ventricles, his arteries, the veins that spread out through him like branches on a tree, as though I could see blood coursing through his body. Far from being gross or macabre, it was exciting. He was an amazing creature, a thing of beauty; he was alive.
But he was not, in this moment—while staring at my altar—in any way, shape, or form, happy. The aura of grief that surrounded him was so powerful that I wanted to cry. I’d caused my one true love so much pain.
I floated to him, whispering his name.
“Andy … I’m sorry; I’m so sorry.”
I tried to embrace him but he was upset and his body shuddered violently. I was thrown backward by his rejection. I wanted to go to him again but somebody beat me to it. It was Dani.
“Andy…”
Her voice trailed off.
“It’s pretty bad, I bet,” she said softly.
“Yeah, really bad,” said Andy. “Every time I close my eyes, I see her face.”
He closed his eyes. I imagined him seeing me and hoped that he was remembering me dancing with him or kissing or doing something other than lying in a coffin wearing dreadful makeup.
“Nobody expects you to forget her,” Dani said. “That would be weird if you did. But maybe you can work on keeping your eyes open.”
Andy opened his eyes and looked at her. She smiled warmly—not in a creepy way, just a nice, welcoming smile. It seemed to calm him down a little.
“Yeah
, thanks, that’s a good idea,” said Andy.
“I want you to know that I’ll always be here for you,” she said.
He nodded. He heard her loud and clear. Because she was alive; she had a human voice. This was so pissing me off. Death was currently not suiting me. And it got worse. Dani gave him a comforting hug that I judged to be not only too tight, but way too long. His arms hung limp at his sides. And then he did something that felt like a second knife being plunged into my heart. He hugged her back. He sobbed silently and she pressed her cheek against his. She couldn’t help herself and actually had a tiny smile on her face.
I was shaking. I wanted to jump between them, pry her from his arms, and shove her into the next state. But Cole and the other Middle House kids stepped between us.
“It’s time to go,” said Cole.
My brain was going into tantrum mode. I responded the only way I knew how. By screaming like a mental patient and running. Outside, I stopped and looked back at the school—my school—where my boyfriend was with another girl, and burst into tears. I covered my face with my hands. I thought to myself, Somebody please kill me again. I couldn’t allow this! I felt arms wrapping around me and I thought, Andy!
But it was Cole. At first, I resisted. But the heartache was so intense that I capitulated and allowed his embrace. He held me until I cried a few more tears, and then wiped them from my cheeks.
“Better?”
“No,” I lied.
His next movement was very deft. I thought he was brushing a tear from my chin but he lifted it. And then he kissed me. I was shocked and thinking two things. (1) What in the hell was he doing? and (2) boy oh boy was this guy a fantastic kisser. I let him kiss me for longer than I should have and then pushed him away.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Me all indignant.
“I’m … I’m sorry. I just thought…”
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