by Leanne Leeds
Aidan tried to muffle a laugh.
“How dare you talk to me that way?” Mr. Drake raged. “Do you have any idea who I am? What I’m capable of?”
“Oooh, scary ghost. So loud. Eeek. Someone help me,” I deadpanned as I rolled my eyes. “You’re a ghost! You’re dead. You have no power over the living. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Ze—”
“I get it,” he cut me off. For the first time since I had the unfortunate displeasure of meeting Anthony Drake, I saw a flash of fear pass behind his sparkling eyes. “No need to rub it in.”
“Go out of the house, follow the path, find a big house that looks like it’s all broken down and scary, but it’s really not. That’s the haunted house,” I told him pointing. “Your daughter’s probably in there making everyone’s life miserable. Well, everyone’s death miserable.”
“What have you done to my daughter?” he barked at me again.
I sighed.
“Go. Follow the path, find the haunted house, talk to her yourself. She’s a ghost, you’re a ghost. I’m sure you guys have lots to talk about with regards to what you’re going to do with the rest of your eternity,” I told him.
The specter of Anthony Drake blurred as he flew out the door.
“Well, that wasn’t very nice, Charlotte, but thank you for getting him out of my bedroom,” my mother said. “Your father and I tried talking to him, but that man just doesn’t want to listen to anyone.”
“Welp, he’s got an eternity to learn, doesn’t he?”
We hugged goodnight, and my parents’ bedroom emptied out of all the middle of the night visitors. As Aidan, Kyle, Gunther, Fiona, Ningul and I made our way back down the path, I heard a squeak.
“What was that?” Kyle asked.
“Opossum?”
“That was a bat,” Gunther said as he stopped walking. “That’s not good.”
“There’s a lot of bats in central Texas,” I told him, confused at his concerned reaction. “They don’t really bother you unless they’re sick. It sounded like it came from up there.” I pointed to the tree along the path.
“I’m not sick,” a squeaky little voice responded.
“That’s really not good,” Gunther said again.
“Who’s there?” I called.
“Just me,” the squeaky voice responded. It was followed by the sound of leathery flapping. I felt a rush of wind along my cheek. “Name’s Cama. Don’t worry. I’m not here for you. Or you. Or you,” I felt a slight pressure on the top of my head, and the rush of wind disappeared. “The reader knows why am here. I’m not here for any of you. I’m here for the new ones.”
“Is there a bat sitting on my head?” I asked Gunther as he stared just a bit above my face. He nodded yes.
“Is the bat talking?”
He nodded yes.
“Wow. That’s really cool,” Kyle marveled as he also stared at the top of my head. “That’s a huge bat.”
“How big?”
No one answered me.
“How big?”
“Wait,” Cama chirped. I felt gentle scurrying at the top of my skull. “That’s better. Not as big, and it makes the hair a little softer because I’m not as heavy.”
“Someone please tell me how big this thing is…”
“I don’t have to be big so now I’m not big. I was just having a hard time wrapping my feet around that branch. That’s a thick branch.”
“Why are you sitting on my head?”
“Because you have the softest hair,” Cama squeaked. “And it smells the best. Don’t worry, though, I won’t take any strands. I’m not here for that.”
“Why would I care if you took a strand of my hair?”
“Because if Cama takes a strand of your hair, Charlotte, it could portend your death,” Gunther told me quietly.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m a horse, and you think a murderous bat is ridiculous?” Kyle asked me.
“First of all, you’re not a horse, handsome,” Cama squeaked and then clicked at Kyle as if chastising him. “Second, I don’t kill anybody. I just… pull threads. Of hair sometimes. And, okay, often people die terrible deaths after I do it. But I don’t kill anybody.”
“Often?” Gunther asked.
“I think he means always,” Aidan told him.
“Often, always, same thing,” Cama said. “And I am a lady bat, thank you very much.”
“While all this is fascinating, I have a bat on my head,” I pointed out as I looked to each person most emphatically not moving to help me get the bat off of my head.
“I think she wants you to congratulate her,” Cama told the men surrounding me. “It’s a great honor to have a bat nest in your hair. You people are treating it like it’s no big deal. It’s a huge deal.”
Suddenly, Aidan jumped and smiled at the top of my head.
“Charlotte, Cama can help you cross,” he said.
“Help me cross what?”
“The boundary into the Magical Midway,” he said as his eyes unfocused just slightly. “Cama is a paranormal bat, and her powers in the night are very strong. Bats have the power to find ways around almost any boundary, and because of what they do they can take someone with them. I think she can get you into the Magical Midway.”
“Well, of course I can,” Cama clicked and chittered.
“How?”
“Why do you care?” Cama asked. I heard the leathery flap of tiny wings and felt movement on top of my head. “I just can. I need to go in. Do you want to go in with me? If you do, let’s walk. Walk, walk, walk. You people talk too much. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To the haunted house? What have we been talking about?”
I… just walked. After dealing with Samson for months, I’d learned when to ask questions and when to just give up understanding and do what I’m told.
16
The sound of Tiffany Drake and Anthony Drake arguing was loud, obnoxious, and it made my teeth ache from the pounding vibrations. Finding them in the haunted house was easy. You just had to follow the shouting.
No other ghosts were in the room with them. Everyone must’ve given up on consoling the new arrivals and hid.
“Well, I see that I was sent to the right place,” Cama muttered as she flew from the top of my head and circled around the two ghosts.
“Ahhhhhhhhh! A bat! It’s a bat!” Tiffany screeched as she swung her sparkly, translucent arms at Cama. Her hands and elbows passed through the little animal's body repeatedly, but Tiffany kept striking out.
The bat flew in a circle around the two and then slowly picked up speed. Cama flew faster, and then faster, and then quicker still as black lines of dark light appeared as if the bat was wrapping the two ghosts in a cocoon made of shadows. The more circled lines appeared, the more muffled their shouting and screams.
“There,” Cama said as she flew back to admire her handiwork. Hovering in the air, she clicked and squeaked a few times. “Time to call Mom.”
“Step back,” Gunther said urgently as his hand flew across my body and pushed me toward the wall. “As far as you all can against the wall. Do it, now!”
“Why?” Kyle asked as Aidan grabbed him and pushed him back. In the corner across the room, Ningul had placed his body in front of a pale Fiona.
“Should we leave?” I asked him, worried.
“It’s too late,” Gunther whispered as he nodded toward the center of the room.
A dark swirl of shadows seemed to spin into being out of nothing in front of Cama. In three blinks of an eye, the shadows and elongated and grew tall. Finally, they coalesced into the shape of a woman.
The two ghosts stared in horror at a face I couldn’t see.
Arms moved animatedly, but we heard nothing.
Tiffany and Anthony pointed to each other, their mouths moving and fists raising. Despite watching what looked like a lively conversation I could hear only silence.
The silence was like a thing, so thick and so heav
y I was afraid to speak, so dense that it seemed like its own sound. The shadows swallowed everything other than the flapping of Cama’s tiny, leathery wings.
What is that? I thought to Gunther.
Death, he thought back, and I could hear the awe and fear in his mind’s voice. One form, in any case. A form of it reserved for those that die with no repentance for the evil they have done. I didn’t even think it was real. I thought it was just a story used to scare children.
The shadows swirling around Tiffany and Anthony moved faster and faster, spreading over them and filling in the gaps between the lines. They shook their heads no, apparently begging for some reprieve that the silent shadow woman decided not to give them.
The inky darkness circling them suddenly swallowed them both whole. It then contracted and disappeared. Only the shadow woman and the bat remained.
Why couldn’t we hear what they were saying? I asked Gunther.
I don’t know. I think it’s because we're not dead.
The shadow woman remained to stare at the spot that Tiffany and Anthony had disappeared from. The sound slowly returned to the room. While I could still hear Cama’s wings flap, I could also hear the cicadas from outside the haunted house, the creaking of the wood. Despite sound and feeling returning to normal, the shadow woman remained.
“The six of you are pure of heart,” a raspy voice echoed from within and around the shadow woman. “As long as it remains so, you have nothing to fear from me.”
With a roar, the darkness dissolved and disappeared.
“Oh, I am totally going with you guys,” Kyle said with wonder. “Talking bats? Shadows of death? Divine punishment? This is like the best Dungeons & Dragons game ever.”
I stared at Kyle Roberts and marveled at his little boy excitement. With a sigh, I buried my face and Gunther shoulder and took comfort as his arms wrapped around me.
“Oh, come on, you guys didn’t find that just a little bit cool?” Kyle asked.
“Ya, that will wear off, ya ‘kin?” Fiona told him as she leaned against the wall trying to catch her breath. “Just hope that wears off before yer a ghost yerself.”
“I’m glad you’re going with us,” Aidan told Kyle.
“Yeah, me, too,” Kyle smiled.
“Me, too,” Cama said excitedly. “We are going to have such fun!”
“Wait, what do you mean?” I reluctantly pulled my head from Gunther’s muscular chest and looked at the bat. “You’re going with us?”
“Yeah. I like you guys,” Cama said as she flapped excitedly.
“You can’t,” I told her as I wracked my brain for any excuse I could think of as to why the prelude to eternal doom couldn’t just hitch a ride with us. “I mean, I have a cat. So does Gunther. Not for nothing, but my folks are nervous enough as it is. A death bat at the Magical Midway? They’re never going to come out of their yurts. Come on, you don’t really want to go with us, do you?”
“I do want to go with you, and my mom said I could go with you,” Cama singsong as she flew around the room. Pausing to hover, her inky eyes stared at me. “Should I get my mom so you can talk to her?”
The six of us shouted no with such incredible pitch and precision it practically sounded like a chorus.
“Good, that’s settled, then,” Cama pronounced as she flew up and settled down in my hair.
A bat, Samson said as he glared at Cama. The little bat was flying around the great room of the yurt, knocking things over. You decided to adopt a bat.
“I didn’t, like, decide to adopt a bat, Samson,” I told the cat as we sat on the bed. “I told you, Cama showed up because of Anthony and Tiffany Drake, and she just decided that she wanted to stay.”
A flying rodent, Samson observed coldly.
“Bats are not rodents,” I corrected. “They are not even remotely related to rodents.”
Let’s find out if they taste different, the cat said as he stood up and bared his teeth and tensed to pounce on Cama.
“No! Bad cat! You are not going to eat the bat!” I told Samson as I shook my finger at him. The black cat slowly turned his head. If he had eyebrows, I was sure he would be raising only one.
What did you just call me?
“Samson, come on. There’s nothing we can do about it, and since it happened on the Magical Midway and you probably know more about that bat and that shadow woman than I do you probably also know that. So quit giving me guff,” I told him.
First, the stupid kitten. Now the silly bat. It’s like I’m living in a circus, Samson grumbled as he made his way over to his favorite bookcase and pillow.
“You are living in a circus,” I called after him.
I’m not talking to you right now.
Ethel Elkins door opened, and she walked out. Devana followed a respectful distance after her and smiled.
“We almost have the whole coven,” she murmured as her eyes scanned the crowd.
“What are you talking about?” I asked her.
“Three from the human world, three from the paranormal world,” she said as she waved her hand in our direction.
I looked at Gunther in confusion. And then I realized.
Kyle, Aidan, and I were from the human world.
Ningul, Fiona, and Gunther were from the paranormal world.
“The balance, Charlotte,” Devana said with a smile. “I told you that the world seeks balance. The universe is bringing it together here.”
“Or not,” Cama tittered and did a loop the loop in the center of the room.
“Why is that death bat here?” Ethel Elkins snapped, her eyes narrowing.
“Because Mom decided you needed some balance, old woman,” Cama told her as she flew by her face. “You know Mom hates when things are decided. Everyone gets a chance. You’re making it sound like nobody does. No more of that.”
Ethel Elkins’s fists balled as her shoulders tensed. The old lady’s mouth worked open and shut like an angry fish again. Pulling her mumu straight she leaned forward and stuck a finger out toward the flying bat.
“Your mother is—”
“Yeeeeeeeeeeeees?” Cama asked as she flew straight up to Ms. Elkins face and hovered. The bat's inky eyes looked amused.
Ethel stared for a moment gritting her teeth.
“Wise,” she hissed through clenched teeth.
“I’ll tell her you said so!” the bat said as she flew backward and zigged. “I won’t tell her what you were gonna say! She’ll like the wise better. Yep, very much so.”
“Everyone fancies himself a weaver of fate today,” Ethel mumbled.
“No fate! No fate, no prophecy, no for sure! It’s also severe, and also not very serious. That’s why it’s so much fun!”
“I. Hate. Bats,” Ms. Elkins groused.
“Oooh, hate isn’t perfect,” Cama cooed as she danced around the great room. “You shouldn’t do that. Hate is bad. Just ask Anthony and Tiffany Drake!”
“Who are Anthony and Tiffany Drake?” Devana asked.
“Nobodies. A waste of time,” Ethel Elkins told her.
“No one’s ever a waste of time!” Cama called. “And you wonder why mama wants me to come here! Silly old woman!”
Ethel Elkins turned around and stomped back into her room. Devana moved to follow her, but the old woman slammed the door in her face. The huntress sighed quietly and turned back to the room with a sad smile.
“I really want to understand what happened here,” I told the room. “But I’m tired. I’m tired, it’s three o’clock in the morning, and I just don’t have the energy to parse through whatever drama this is. Let’s all get some sleep. It will all be here tomorrow.”
“Not me, I’m going to go explore,” Cama said as she raced toward the door. Aidan opened it for her, and out she went.
“Um, we don’t have enough bedrooms in here,” Gunther pointed out. “There another yurt?”
“Ningul and I are going to head back to his house. Charlotte can add Kyle’s house tomorrow in the centaur
village after she’s got some sleep,” Fiona said as she grabbed Ningul’s hand. She was almost to the door before she turned and smiled. “Welcome to the family, Kyle. And Aidan. It’s good to have you here.”
They smiled warmly back at her, and then she and Ningul left.
“The centaur village?” Kyle asked.
“Tomorrow,” I told him. “I’m tired. You and Aidan go bunk in Gunther’s room. There are a few places to sleep. Gunther and I can sleep in my room.”
“Let me grab my kitten,” Gunther said as he walked briskly toward his door. I could feel an excitement flowing off of him, and it was making me blush.
Moments later he exited his room carrying a sleepy kitten wrapped in what looked like pajamas. The guys all murmured good night.
“I don’t know what you’re so excited about,” I told him as we walked toward my door. “Remember, we can’t even kiss without severe bodily injury, so whatever’s making you super happy right now? It ain’t gonna happen. Like, ever.”
“Do you want to know what’s making me happy, Charlotte? It’s that I get to be near you,” he said softly. He walked across my room and transferred Delilah to an overstuffed chair in the corner. Samson hopped up on the same chair Delilah slept in and curled himself protectively around Gunther’s kitten. The two began to softly purr.
“That’s so sweet,” I whispered.
“Don’t say it too loud, they’ll realize they’re cute and start fighting,” Gunther whispered back. We both chuckled.
Each of us took turns brushing our teeth and changing behind the privacy panel into our pajamas. I was in a T-shirt and sweatpants. He emerged wearing blue proper PJs with teddy bears on them. I giggled.
“My mom,” he said as he spun around to show off his sleepwear. “She loved teddy bears, and she always used to put a different one in bed with me each night. I guess it makes me feel… I don’t know, not so alone. And it seems vaguely better for a grown man to wear these than to actually sleep with a teddy bear.”