The scene’s dark, mostly shades of gray and black, illuminated only by one small bobbling flashlight and a beam of light from the video cam.
I can recall every detail of the next few seconds when I reached up to push aside a curtain of cobwebs and walked into the dim chamber. Click. Click. Click. The doorknob behind me rattled, all by itself. And a heartrending whimper swished past, riding on a breath of cold air.
“What was that?” Wyatt asks. I shush him. He turns back to the screen and stares in silence.
I’m standing still, inside the hellish room, where someone chose to shelter disabled children. I pull a thermometer out of my pocket and hold it up. “The temperature in room 209 is thirty degrees, fifteen degrees colder than it is outside tonight. Look. There’s a thin layer of frost on the floor.” Meg points the camera down and I continue. “You can see my footprints in it.”
Two beds lie at opposite sides of the dimly-lit room. Tattered sheets and blankets splotched with mildew cover them. At the head of each bed rests a filthy pillow.
That night I saw something I’ve never spoken about to anyone.
As I peered into the gloom, I could barely make out the shape of a huddled figure in one dank corner. I stepped closer and my flashlight revealed something which appeared for only a few seconds, but that was enough.
I glimpsed a shadow that wasn’t dark as nature intended, but suffused with a pale glow. A quick, sideways glance at Meg’s calm face told me that only I could see him. The camera didn’t record the shimmering form.
He sat in one dark corner, on the cold floor, with his skinny knees tucked up under his chin. And spoke no words. But wept endlessly. As I watched, his closed eyes opened. I saw the madness within them and the solitude that caused it.
Then a flash of something else lit up those extraordinary eyes. Recognition. He knew I could see him. During that incredible moment, the Lonesome Boy realized he wasn’t alone anymore.
I blinked my eyes once and he was gone.
Wyatt stares in amazement as the camera zooms in on one of the cots. An impression appears on the pillow, as if a heavy-headed person is lying there. The large, rounded dent deepens. We hear voices, but no words, just the groans of people who appear to be engaged in a struggle. The sounds grow louder and the ratty blanket shifts and tears. Spellbound, Wyatt continues to watch and listen.
Eventually, the noises fade into silence and the bedding stops moving.
My voice booms out of the surround sound speakers. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I bolt and Meg follows as we plunge through the darkness toward the stairs.
Meg tracks the hare-brained path of my escape with the camera as she jogs along behind me, struggling to keep up. I glance back a few times to make sure she’s still there. We scramble up the chain link fence like chimpanzees on crack. When we land on the other side, our frantic pace resumes.
Finally we can see my old Chevy Prizm. Wishing out loud that it had keyless entry, I grope in my pocket for the keys. Panting, I open the passenger side first and Meg jumps in. Then she turns, points the camera at me and follows my flight around the front of the car. Quickly, I unlock the driver’s side door and yank it open. Leap inside. Slam it. Lock it. Click my seatbelt in place. Safe! Revving up the engine, I shift into reverse.
Behind us in the back seat, someone cries out. Meg looks at me. Her mouth drops open. I didn’t make that noise and neither did she. I shift into drive, flip on the headlights and pull out onto the deserted road. Meg switches off the camera.
In real time, in my basement, the screen on the TV is black and the surround sound speakers are silent for about two seconds.
“It was so cold in there,” I whisper to Wyatt.
Suddenly, the screen lights up again. My friend Jen filmed the closing scene for us, right here in this room: Meg and me sitting on the couch, talking quietly. For once in our lives we’re totally serious. Meg speaks first. “I’ll never go back to Wild Wood again.”
“Why not, Meg?” I ask as if I really want to know, although we wrote and rehearsed her answer.
“Because I’m too young to die of a heart attack and I almost had one on that horrifying evening. I still wake up in the middle of the night screaming sometimes.”
“I have nightmares about it too. Will these memories ever leave us alone?”
“I don’t know, Annabelle, will they?”
Then the credits start rolling to the eerie melody and lyrics of Death Cab’s “I Will Follow You into the Dark.”
As Wyatt and I listen, our eyes abandon the screen and we turn toward each other. Huddled on the far end of the couch, with my arms wrapped around my body, I tremble. Because I can feel the cold again, like I did that night. Wyatt clicks off the TV with the remote and slides closer to me. Gently, he pries my arms apart and holds both of my hands in his. Lowering his face so he can look into my eyes, he says, “We have to go back there together, Annabelle. I can help.”
“I never want to go back.”
“You have to. And I have to come. You need me.”
“How can you possibly help?”
“I can stop the nightmares.”
“How?”
“I’m not like everyone else, Annabelle.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re the same, you and me. We’re not like other people.”
I pull my hands away and turn my head so I don’t have to look into his chameleon eyes. “Your eyes are doing that thing again. What the hell is that?”
“It started happening when I was about thirteen. I can’t control it. They change color when my emotions change. They darken.”
“Why are your emotions changing?”
“Because I’m with you.”
I stand up. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m not talking about those kinds of emotions. And I’m not talking about us, being together. Not really. Not yet.” His face reddens. “Sometimes I can’t look at you and talk at the same time. My thoughts dive into another time and place where nothing’s clear, nothing’s in focus. It’s hard to explain.”
“Is that why you always stare at me in History class?”
“You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen but looking at you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You told me it wasn’t about you and me getting together.”
“It is and it isn’t. I have to tell you something, Annabelle, but I don’t know how to say it.”
“Wyatt, this can’t get any more awkward. Just tell me.”
“When I look at you I see something else.”
“What do you mean, ‘something else?’”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“We need to talk about room 209. What you heard. What you saw.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to. What did you see, Annabelle? I know you saw something. Please tell me.”
I don’t want to tell him but I lose my grip on the words and they tumble out. I say it for the first time. “A ghost.”
Then I say it again. “I saw a ghost.”
Now I can’t stop talking. “The camera didn’t capture his image. Meg didn’t see him. Only I did and now I can’t forget him. He won’t leave me alone. I dream about him. A lot.”
It feels good to tell someone and I’m weirdly glad that it’s Wyatt. It feels so good that I keep going. “In my dream, the door knob rattles and he opens my bedroom door. It sounds like the doorknob did that night, in room 209. When I wake up, the door’s still open and my room’s freezing. He brings the winter with him.”
“We have to talk about it, Annabelle. He’s not going to go away.” Wyatt stands up and faces me. He takes hold of my hands again and his hands feel big and warm around mine. His irises darken into shards of smoky gray crystal. “I don’t know if we can get him to go away, even if we try.”
Suddenly an Arctic blast of cold tingles across my scalp, travels down the back of my nec
k and then my spine, all the way to the soles of my feet. Tears spring to my eyes and one trickles down my cheek. “Get who to go away, Wyatt?”
“The ghost. He followed you back.”
“What the hell!”
“When you left room 209 at the hospital, Annabelle, he followed you back here.”
The light bulb on the floor lamp behind the couch sizzles and explodes. The lamp crashes over, onto the rug. A surge of electricity snaps on the TV. The screen fizzes with static. An avalanche of meaningless noise hisses all around us. I jump into Wyatt’s arms and they tighten around me, but it isn’t romantic. We’re scared out of our minds.
My mother comes racing down the stairs. “What’s going on, you two?”
I push Wyatt away.
He thinks fast. “I sat on the remote and the TV came on really loud. Then Annabelle jumped up and knocked the lamp over. It’s okay, though, only the bulb broke.”
“You gave me a heart attack. Honey, you look all pale.” She touches my cheek. “You’re so cold, Annabelle. It’s freezing down here. That’s so weird. It’s warm outside and upstairs. Close to seventy degrees still.”
I attempt to explain why I’m shivering and Wyatt’s lips are blue. “It’s always colder underground.”
“Not this much colder. Come upstairs, you two. I’m going to make you some tea. Let’s go.”
Tea is my mother’s cure-all for everything.
Are you feeling down? Have some tea; it’ll cheer you up. Feeling happy? Let’s celebrate with a cup of tea. Are you feeling sick? Maybe some tea will make you feel better.
Suddenly there’s nothing I want more than to sit in my mother’s warm, bright kitchen and drink a cup of her hot, sweet tea. She matches teas with moods and circumstances, her special talent, and she’s always spot-on, too.
Mom grabs a small bag of dried-up flowers from the cupboard and empties it into a round-bellied, ceramic tea pot. “Chamomile, it’s very soothing.” She smiles at Wyatt and me, as we sit silently watching her. “Let’s add a pinch of lavender for luck and some lemon balm to calm us down.” My mom releases handfuls of herbs and flowers into the opening at the top of the teapot. Next she pours steaming water over the fragrant mixture. Then she replaces the lid with a gentle clink.
Six minutes of steeping makes the perfect cup of tea. My mother never uses store-bought teabags and she won’t pour anyone a cup until the six minutes is over. The two of us wait silently while Mom putters around the kitchen. Wyatt and I send each other meaningful looks over the steam feathering up out of the teapot’s spout.
Finally, when the six minutes is up, she pours the steaming liquid through a small, hand-held metal strainer, into three mugs. My mother’s tea smells beautiful, like a sunlit meadow, but it doesn’t taste all that great. If you put enough honey in, though, it helps. Then the tea smells like a flower garden and just tastes really sweet.
I scoop spoonfuls of honey into my cup. Our neighbor, Mr. Long, is a beekeeper and my mother always sweetens her teas with his honey. Using plants she grows in her garden, she makes the wildflower and herb mixtures herself. Tons of drying plants hang upside down from the hooks in our pantry. She won’t pollute her tea with some impersonal honey from the supermarket. Only Mr. Long’s will do.
I smirk at Wyatt as he blows on the steaming concoction and then takes his first sip. Grimacing, he rolls his eyes at me. I reach over and grab his cup, spoon in four blobs of honey, stir and hand it back to him. He sips again, nods and smiles, signaling that it tastes way better.
The scent of chamomile, lavender and lemon balm fills the kitchen and calms me down. In addition to the fragrant tea, two white pillar candles, with their flames flickering, sit on silver pedestals, infusing the air with their flowery smells. My mother always lights candles after dark. She makes them herself, from Mr. Long’s bees’ wax and the flowers and herbs in her gardens. You can see the soft colors of the leaves and the flower petals embedded in the wax.
“I’m going to send Daddy down to replace the light bulb. I don’t want either of you cutting yourself on the glass.”
“Mom, we’re eighteen, not five. We can clean up a little glass,” I argue.
“Wyatt may be eighteen, but you’re still only seventeen, and you will be until March. Besides, I don’t care how old you are. You’re both a couple of klutzes. I’ve had enough excitement tonight. I don’t need any more surprises.” She rummages in the kitchen closet for a minute and then bustles out of the room, calling to my dad and waving a box of light bulbs.
As soon as she’s out of earshot, Wyatt speaks. “Your mom’s the best. She’s all kindness and love. He quivers and shrinks in her presence. I think she intimidates him.”
I know immediately who Wyatt means by “he.” But I’m afraid to talk about what happened down in the cellar. Only Wyatt dares to mention it and he’s whispering, as if he’s afraid he’ll stir up the ghost again if he speaks too loudly.
“He’s still here, but he’s hovering, over in that dark corner. I have this weird feeling that he doesn’t like the candles. He’s always with you, but sometimes closer than others. I saw him the first day I noticed you in History class. I was staring at the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and she wasn’t alone. He follows you everywhere.”
“You’re creeping me out.”
“It’s true. You need to face up to it, Annabelle. He followed you back and he’s not going to go away.”
“What does he look like?”
“He’s wearing ragged pajamas. And they’re too short; I can see his bare feet and thin, white ankles. I think he was about our age when he died; he’s almost as tall as I am, but thinner. I can’t see his face clearly, but it’s pale and transparent.”
“Have you told anyone else about him? Did you tell Oliver?”
“Yes. And then he told me about the film. We watched it together. I thought I could find out more if I watched it with you. And I was right. When I saw your face, as you entered the room at Wild Wood, I knew immediately.”
“Knew what?”
“I knew that you saw him. And Meg didn’t. Annabelle, he wants something from us. He feels a connection to me, but he’s obsessed with you. It’s difficult to figure out. I can only get impressions of feelings, not words, but I can see some unclear images, in my mind’s eye, not in front of me, with my physical eyes. He’s angry about something and I don’t know what. Maybe he’s upset because you could only see him that one time, at the hospital.”
“You’re right. I haven’t seen him since. I only heard him, tonight and in my dream.”
“He’s cringing over there now, in the corner of the kitchen, hating that he can’t come closer. I think maybe he used up some of his energy with all that drama down in the basement. I’m not really sure. Everything’s confusing and nothing’s obvious.”
“What else do you know about him?”
“He’s been dead a long time.”
“And he’s obsessed with me?”
“Yes, I’ve seen ghosts before, Annabelle, but never like this.”
“What? You should have told me that!”
“How could I? You haven’t been very friendly and talkative. You wouldn’t even give me a chance until tonight.”
“This might be the only chance you get. Tell me what you know about ghosts.”
“Usually, spirits stay in the same place. They don’t stray far from where they died or where they’re buried. They don’t have enough power to leave and follow someone unless that person was with them when they died. But your ghost is different. He left the scene of his death and he’s following you. He refuses to go away. My presence seems to make him stronger. The closer we get to each other, the more trouble he causes. Leave it to you to bring out another facet of my unusual talent.”
“I’m scared, Wyatt. I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Evidently you did, when you trespassed over at Wild Wood. It’s been closed down for years and they have a security guard there rou
nd the clock to keep people away. You’re lucky you didn’t get tased or something.”
“We didn’t go anywhere near the guard. His trailer’s next to the gate and we climbed the fence about a quarter of a mile away. It’s a big place. Besides, the guard doesn’t have a taser. We checked before we went over. Meg’s mom knows someone who works for the state; she looked into it for us. The guard just carries a flashlight and a cell phone. And he stays in his trailer all night. I think he’s afraid to go into the hospital.”
“I think he’s smart.”
“We just wanted to investigate, get some spooky footage for our film. I never thought we’d find him. I never in a million years imagined that he’d follow me home.”
“Not just home, Annabelle. He follows you everywhere.”
“I’m never going back to Wild Wood.”
“We have to. Otherwise, he might never leave. We need to find a way to send him back where he belongs and keep him there.”
Wyatt barely finishes speaking these words when one of the candle flames grows taller, first a few inches, then more than a foot. The slender thread of fire stretches higher and higher. When the flame reaches the ceiling it disappears in a wisp of smoke, with a hiss that raises the fine hairs on the back of my neck. We both look up. There’s a tiny black scorch mark on the ceiling where the flame touched it.
Wyatt’s voice wavers. “I made him mad. He wants to stay here with you. There’s nothing he’s ever wanted more.”
A whoosh of cold air blows past my face and extinguishes the flame on the other candle. Wyatt jumps to his feet; the chair clatters against the wall behind him. I shout out the first word that comes into my mind, “Mom!”
She comes running, just like when I was little and yelled for her in the middle of the night.
“What is it, Annabelle?”
“Nothing, Mom, I thought you and Dad had the door closed so I yelled loud. Can Wyatt take some tea home to his uncle? Mr. Finn’s had trouble falling asleep lately.”
She shakes the confusion off her face with a quick nod and then begins one of her favorite tasks, matching the tea to the person and his problems. “Hmm, does he have indigestion, Wyatt, or just insomnia?”
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