Spookygirl: Paranormal Investigator

by Jill Baguchinsky

It made me feel sick. The touch was horrible—so much worse than anything I’d felt in the locker room. The air around us went icy and stale, and a terrible sense of death and darkness rose up and drifted around us like a mist. Something hissed near my ear, something that might have been a voice. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been active when we’d arrived. Our intrusion had woken it up. I glanced over my shoulder as we fled, expecting to see the translucent blue form of James Riley, Jr., but only darkness lay behind me.

  In the back hall Isobel dove for the doorknob and tried to turn it. It rattled uselessly in place, refusing to move. None of us had locked it. It wasn’t locked at all. It just wouldn’t budge.

  “Window!” Tim said, rushing toward the nearest one, which was in the kitchen. He slid the latches, unlocking it, and tried to pull it up. The glass stayed put.

  No longer caring whether we got caught, I said, “We can break it.”

  Tim was already looking around for something to use. In the far corner of the room he spotted a sawed-off scrap of wood left over from the house’s half-done renovations. He hefted the scrap in his hand, then heaved it at the window.

  When the wood was a few inches away from the glass, its arc slowed. It stopped, drifting as though caught by invisible hands—but if someone really had caught it, I couldn’t see who. Then, with blinding speed, it flew back at Tim and smashed into his forehead. He crumpled.

  “Tim!” Isobel yelled, falling to her knees next to him and turning him over. He blinked up at her. A thin trickle of blood seeped from a gash above his left temple, but the damage looked otherwise minimal. Isobel and I helped him to his feet.

  A sudden, bitter wind picked up inside the house. It whirled and moaned around us like an ice storm, the coldness almost sharp enough to slice through flesh.

  “We just want to leave!” Isobel hollered into it.

  Unseen hands reached for us, grabbing and shoving. Again I felt the clutch of fingernails against my shoulder; this time they dug in until I yelped in pain. Isobel reeled back as if she’d been slapped in the face. Tim was wrenched away; the wind literally picked him up, throwing him out of the kitchen and into the hall. He bounced against the far wall and slid to the ground, dazed.

  I remembered then what I’d read about the nature of the Riley Island haunting—the wrath seemed to focus more on women. This thing had tossed Tim out of the way so it could get to us. I grabbed onto Isobel, hoping we’d be a little safer together. She seemed to understand; as the freezing storm picked up around us, she clung right back onto me. Something pinched and slapped at us, pulling our hair, and a white mist rose around us, cutting us off from the world.

  Through the howl of the wind, I heard Tim yelling. His voice seemed to come from far away, as though he was shouting through a canyon, but I understood one word well enough.

  Buster.

  I’d almost forgotten about the little box in my front pocket. The wind made it impossible to fiddle with the necklace, so I threw the entire box toward the sound of Tim’s voice. Through the mist I heard him yell, “Got it!”

  A horrible scream, echoing with wrath and hate and anger rang out, emanating from everywhere in the house at once. I knew that sound, and as deafening and terrible as it was, I felt tears of relief pricking my eyes. It was a louder, more pissed-off version of the cry I heard every time I threatened to punish Buster.

  Instantly, the icy whirlwind and mist disappeared. I couldn’t see much in the dark, but the house was filled with a series of screams and wails and brutal screeches. Some were Buster’s, others were from a source I didn’t recognize. Bangs and crashes resonated throughout the house; the entire structure shook on its foundation. Somewhere on the second floor, glass shattered.

  “What’s going on?” Isobel said as Tim ran up and grabbed our hands. It felt safer to be together.

  “I think they’re fighting,” I said, and my explanation was punctuated by a mighty howl from Buster.

  “Maybe we can get out while Buster’s distracting the ghost!” Tim tried to drag us toward the back door. Isobel followed readily, but I hung back.

  “I can’t go without Buster. You guys go.” I was worried about my poltergeist. Some of his screams were victorious and taunting, but others sounded like he was in great pain. I wondered what kind of damage two ghosts could do to each other in a situation like this. Neither could be killed, obviously, but could one somehow destroy the other? Buster had protected us without hesitation; I wasn’t about to leave him behind.

  Tim broke away long enough to check the door. “Never mind,” he said after giving it a few yanks. “It’s still stuck.”

  Just then, the most horrific sound I’d ever heard rang through the hall. It was strangled and screaming…and it was Buster.

  “No!” I yelled. I tried to run down the hall, even though I didn’t know what the hell I’d be able to do for him. Isobel and Tim held me back.

  The house fell silent. Not just quiet, completely dead and still. The fight was over. Tears rose in my eyes again, making my vision shimmery and unfocused.

  Then the storm bounced back. Tim’s hand flew from mine as he was once again thrown across the room. When he hit the far wall this time, he fell like a rag doll and didn’t look up.

  Something shoved me hard from behind, making me stumble forward. I lost my grip on Isobel’s hand, but I could see she was being similarly propelled. It felt like a thousand hands were pushing and pulling me at the same time, forcing me down the hall.

  Don’t go with it, I thought, feeling strangely detached. Do whatever you have to to fight back. Resist. I let myself go limp and fall to the floor. Unfazed, the hands grabbed my legs and dragged me. My shirt rode up in the back, and my bare back scraped across the roughness of the unfinished wood. Ahead I could see Isobel being half dragged, half carried in the same direction, toward the stairs. She was screaming. It took me a second to realize I was screaming, too.

  She was the first up the stairs, lurching up each step before slamming into the wall in the upstairs hallway, where she fell to her knees. I came second, still on my back. The edge of each step was torture on my body; I felt like one enormous bruise. I strained my neck, holding my head up to keep it from bouncing over the stairs. At the top of the staircase, I was tossed onto the ground next to Isobel. I could barely see her in the shadows, but I could hear her crying.

  The second floor was freezing. Every inch of me hurt. I wanted to run. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t move at all. It was like I’d been tied up and anchored down. No matter how I struggled against my invisible bindings, I was stuck.

  Finally I gave in and stopped fighting. I lay still.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  the foot of the stairs

  I heard it in the distance. Thunder. The late-night storms were blowing in as predicted. What time was it? How long had I been lying there? It felt like minutes, but it could have been hours. Somewhere nearby, Isobel was still crying.

  I thought of my messenger bag, which was still downstairs with Tim. I thought of Tim, of how he’d just lain there after hitting the wall. I thought of my mother and her black tourmaline. I thought of Buster, who hadn’t made a sound since that last terrible scream.

  It was so cold it hurt to breathe; the temperature was freezing my lungs from the inside out. My eyes were used to the darkness, and I could see my breath each time I exhaled.

  The thunder rumbled again. Lightning flashed through the windows. Isobel’s cries grew quiet and weak.

  I was exhausted and frightened and hurting.

  Outside the rain began to fall. I heard it pattering on the roof as I stared up at the ceiling. It fell hard and fast, the kind of rain that hurts like needles. The storm was moving closer. Now when lightning struck, thunder roared at the same instant, shaking the walls and floor. It was directly overhead.

  The air warmed, and the weighted feeling slowly dissolved from my limbs. I flexed my arm experimentally; yep, I could move again. I sat up and looked at Iso
bel, who was no longer crying. The lightning ruined my night vision, but each time it flashed I could see her sitting against the wall. Her knees were tucked up to her chest, and her head was down. Her hair had come undone; it hung limp and snarled over her face. If I hadn’t been terrified out of my mind, I might’ve made fun of her for looking like a reject from one of those Japanese horror movie remakes.

  Everything downstairs was quiet. Too quiet. I wanted to hear some sound from Tim. Anything, just to know he was okay.

  I turned back to Isobel. She wasn’t moving.

  “Isobel?” I asked quietly.

  She didn’t respond. She didn’t even lift her head.

  Fighting off the pain that tried to seize me, I scooted closer to her and put a hand on her shoulder. When she still didn’t respond, I gave her a shake. Her head tilted to the side, and her body shifted and fell, sprawling and limp. Like a doll. Like a corpse.

  “Isobel!” Frantically, I turned her onto her back. No resistance, no acknowledgment, no reply. Only dead weight. Her face was still; her eyes were closed. I said her name again, grabbed her by the shoulders, gave her another jostle. When she still didn’t respond, I put a hand to her throat and checked for a pulse. It was there. A little weak, maybe, but there.

  But I didn’t have time to be relieved. Suddenly she gasped, raised her arm and wrapped her hand around my outstretched wrist, her fingers digging tightly into my skin, her long black nails pinching. Her eyes opened and focused on me.

  “Isobel! Thank God.” I winced and tried to pull my hand away from her neck. “Can you let go? You’re hurting me.”

  She stared at me, her eyes narrowed. “Home wrecker.”

  I froze. “What?”

  “Home wrecker,” she repeated. “Thieving, corrupting little bitch. How dare you try to take my husband from me?”

  “Isobel, it’s me. Violet.”

  She sat up, still not letting go of my wrist. Her nails dug deeper. Her grip was hot and burning, with a sharp, slick wetness that meant she’d drawn blood. Her face twisted, looking entirely un-Isobel-like. Which made sense, because clearly she wasn’t Isobel any longer. Something else had taken hold of her. When I looked closely I could see it—a weak blue glow surrounding her. The ghost was inside of her, and Isobel was just a puppet. She stood, dragging me to my feet with her.

  “My James is a weak man,” she hissed in a voice lower than Isobel’s. “What he did was wrong, but it wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t so willing.” Her normally brown eyes burned blue with spectral hate.

  Okay, this obviously wasn’t James Riley. “Abigail?” I gasped.

  “Don’t feign stupidity with me,” she growled. Her breath was freezing against my face.

  This was all wrong. Abigail was supposed to be the victim here. Her husband had killed her, then himself, all in a violent, abusive fit, and—

  And none of that had ever been proven; the Riley Island records had been destroyed in a flood before the case was resolved. All Mom had known—and all I knew from her notes—was that James and Abigail died under suspicious circumstances. No one knew the details. I assumed, as had Mom’s team before me, that James was the aggressor. But what if it was the other way around?

  Abigail Riley jerked me toward the staircase. I held back, digging my Chucks into the floor, trying not to let myself be dragged.

  “Isobel!” I said. “I know you’re in there! Push her out! Don’t let her do this!”

  Heedless, Abigail gave an especially strong tug and dragged me stumbling after her. She was much stronger than Isobel would have been on her own.

  “I won’t have you in my home,” she snarled. “Not anymore. Not after what you did. You and my weak, spineless husband.” She glared at me, her face a mask of betrayal and wrath. “How could you do this to me? I trusted you! Both of you!”

  “I didn’t do anything!” I shoved at her, trying to loosen her hold. When that didn’t work, I kicked out at her legs, landing a couple of good hits. She didn’t even notice.

  “I trusted you, Mary!” she said again, almost sobbing.

  “Mary? Who’s Mary? It’s me! Violet!!” If only I could snap Isobel out of it, maybe she could fight back against the thing controlling her.

  As Abigail pulled me closer to the stairs, I remembered the tourmaline in my pocket. I didn’t think it would do any good, but I grabbed for it anyway. My fingers closed around it; it was warm from being so close to my body. I took it out, clenching my closed fist against my chest. I wouldn’t let Abigail win without a fight.

  Just then another voice sounded from the foot of the stairs.

  “Abigail Riley! You stop this nonsense right now! That’s not Mary, and you know it!”

  Abigail froze. So did I.

  I knew that voice. There was no way I could’ve forgotten it. Its tone made my chest hitch and my stomach seize with hope.

  I craned my neck to see down the stairs.

  “Mom?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  the other way around

  There she was. Except for the blue translucence, she looked exactly as I remembered—so pretty and graceful, with her longish auburn hair pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail. She wore the same blouse and jeans she’d worn to the Logan Street investigation all those years ago.

  She charged up the stairs and reached out toward Isobel. She seemed to pull the blue ghostliness right out of her; Isobel instantly let go of my wrist and fell to the ground, limp and unconscious again. I knew I should check on her, but I couldn’t stop staring at Mom, standing there holding a woman by the front of her long, old-fashioned blouse. The woman’s hair was a disheveled bob; her dress was dirty, her eyes wild and glaring.

  “That is enough, Abigail,” Mom barked, fully in Mom mode. “How many times have we been through this?”

  Abigail ignored Mom completely. “You don’t belong here!” she seethed at me. She seemed to glow more brightly for a moment, and she twisted out of Mom’s grip until she was free. Then Abigail turned toward me again.

  “Get out!” She lunged forward, her rage so palpable that it crushed against me. I stumbled back to keep from falling, and she pushed again, this time at an angle, so that I had to turn. I was being herded.

  Toward the stairs.

  Mom tried to get to Abigail, but the woman’s anger seemed to shield her from any interference.

  “Violet!” Mom called. “I can’t get through to her. I’m not strong enough. It has to be you!”

  “But I don’t know what to do!” I cried as Abigail forced me back another step.

  “Just trust your gut. You can do this, sweetie. I promise!”

  “How?” I couldn’t look away from Abigail’s snarling ghostly face. She was practically vibrating with anger.

  “Abigail was sick! She had delusions. She thinks she knows what happened here, but she misunderstood. You have to reason with her!”

  Reason with her? Seriously? It was one thing to try that with a grumpy but reasonably harmless ghost like Henry or two teenage girls with serious angst, and quite another to try to appease the crazy-eyed wraith, the seething fury of Abigail.

  But then Mom said my name again, and I heard the helplessness in her voice. That was something I’d never, ever heard from her when she was alive. She’d always seemed so strong, so able to do anything. But now she was stuck, and she couldn’t even reach out and save me.

  I would have to save us both.

  While I struggled against Abigail’s shoves, I concentrated on putting together all the pieces I had of her story. She, not James, was the aggressor. And she’d been sick, according to Mom. Delusions. A mental illness—something that probably wouldn’t have been diagnosed or treated correctly when she was alive. It had to have been terrible for her. It had to have been torture.

  I remembered then how she’d attacked me when she’d possessed Isobel.

  “Abigail!” I said. “Who’s Mary?”

  “She tried to steal my husband.” Abigail’s face tw
isted even more with hatred. “She wanted to take him from me!”

  I couldn’t see Mom anymore, but I felt her close to me. She spoke quietly, her voice near my ear, so that only I could hear her. “Mary was their maid. She had no interest in James, not like that. He was practically a father to her.”

  “Abigail,” I said, “you misunderstood. No one wanted to take James from you. Mary was innocent!”

  “I saw them!” Abigail said. “I saw them with that book.” She pushed again, and this time when I stepped back, the ground wasn’t there to meet my foot. I was at the edge of the stairs. I screamed a little and clamped both hands down on the handrail to keep from falling.

  “What book?” I yelled.

  It was Mom who answered. “James gave Mary a book as a birthday gift,” Mom said, her voice trembling. “Mary hugged him to express her gratitude. It was innocent.”

  I repeated what Mom said. Then I tried to appeal to Abigail’s softer side. “Abigail, you were sick. You didn’t see what you thought you saw, but that wasn’t your fault. You need to accept that. You need to let all of this go.”

  “I know what I saw,” Abigail said, but for the first time, her voice faltered with a hint of doubt.

  “They’re all stuck here,” Mom prompted. “Abigail, James, and Mary. Help her to realize that.”

  “Abigail, your anger is keeping you here. It’s keeping James and Mary here, too. You’ve trapped them here with you because you won’t let go of your rage.”

  “Stop lying!” Abigail said, and I felt her wrath growing again. “James left me long ago.”

  “Maybe you’ve just been too caught up in your own rage to realize they’re here,” I said.

  “Call them,” Mom said.

  I finally pulled my gaze away from Abigail and looked around the shadowed hallway.

  “James? Mary? Are you here?”

  Two other blue shapes appeared down the hall. Slowly, timidly, they made themselves visible, assuming the forms of a small, balding middle-aged man, and a girl just a few years older than me. The man stood a little in front of the girl, as if to protect her, but he looked as terrified as she did.