by Tess Lake
“Wait till you see the electrocution ones,” Molly said.
“What!” Luce said and kept scrolling through the list, her face turning pale.
“Are our mothers crazy? Half of these have electrocution. Then we have climbing logs while people try to shoot you off with fire hoses and there’s one where you go down a pipe into water and there’s a cage over you and then… oh my Goddess, we have to climb a Terror Tower and jump off into a muddy pool!” Luce said, her voice moving up through the octaves until she was practically squealing at the end.
“It won’t be that bad,” I said.
“We’re gonna die!” Luce wailed.
“Well, you’re the one complaining you wanted a day off. Now you have it. Besides, we’ll all be together. It will be fine,” Molly said.
We spent a bit more time talking about the various obstacles and looking up tips on how to survive plunging into icy-cold water (hold your breath, get out as fast as you can, start running to warm up) before I finally told them about Franklin being arrested and Sheriff Hardy searching his room.
“That’s amazing! So they got the guy,” Luce said.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Something still feels wrong.”
“Justice isn’t always satisfying. It can seem random or arbitrary. It’s not as though there will always be some crazy confrontation and shoot-out,” Molly said.
“Yeah, I guess.”
We talked a bit more about the Gold Mud Run. Molly and Luce decided they’d only work a half day tomorrow so they could rest up. By the time we were ready to go to bed, Luce had retreated from “we’re all going to die” to “okay, maybe we’re not going to die.”
I took myself to bed. While I was getting changed into my pajamas, a wild pig from the past ran straight through my bedroom and out the other wall, a tree appeared and disappeared, and a stream of red bugs crawled across the floor.
Adams tried to pounce on a bug but couldn’t touch it.
“You can see those?” I asked, looking down at the floor.
“Shh… more are coming,” he said, crouching down behind my shoes.
I lay back in bed and hoped to all that was good in the world that this Slip witch power faded soon.
Chapter 17
I woke up with Adams’ paw in my mouth.
“That dead girl is here,” he said.
I pushed him off me and sat up but I couldn’t see anything. Well, that’s not entirely true. Everything was brown. I blinked a few times and then my room appeared, Holly standing next to my bed, watching me.
“You were inside a tree,” she said.
“You saw it?”
Holly nodded, her hair bouncing up and down. Whatever was going on with my Slip power had made Holly look as real as real could be.
The only thing that gave it away that there was something screwy going on was that she was standing on a fallen log that had emerged from my bedroom floor. It looked real too. As I watched, a snake slithered over it and disappeared into the floorboards.
“You caught the man who killed us,” Holly said.
“We hope so. Have you been listening?”
“I heard you yesterday. Can we see him? I want to see if I know who he is.”
I hedged around it as I got out of bed and dressed.
“We might not be able to visit if the sheriff doesn’t let us. I’ll call him, though.”
“I’ll walk through the wall if he doesn’t,” Holly said.
I went to the kitchen to find a note sitting on the counter from Molly and Luce. They’d already left for work and said they’d see me at my office at lunchtime. I checked the time. Nine o’clock! I’d slept in ridiculously late.
“I’ll call Sheriff Hardy, have something to eat and then we’ll go, okay?” I said to Holly.
“Sure,” she said and sat on the sofa. She picked up the remote and turned the television on as I stood there, barely believing my eyes.
She was solid enough to interact with the real world in a real way. Did that mean that people could see her too? Non-witch people, I meant. I really hoped not or I’d have to get out to that cave before people saw chained-up children walking the streets.
I called the police station and got put through to Sheriff Hardy. He was out on Truer Island. I asked if I could visit Franklin Cordella.
“Go right ahead. He won’t say a single word to anyone. Maybe you can get him talking. I’ll let Mary know.”
I didn’t want to give away that I was already aware there had been a photo of Holly in Franklin’s room, but I wanted to know whether the sheriff had found anything else that tied him to the murders. I had to be careful not to tip him off and needed to find some way of working him around to answering the question without him suspecting I knew a thing.
“So did you find anything in Franklin’s room?” I said and then face-palmed myself.
“Sorry, what? I can’t hear –”
The sheriff’s voice started cutting in and out. Probably the reception out on Truer Island. I heard a few more broken words before the phone went dead.
I turned to Holly, who was flicking through the channels like a standard five-year-old.
“We have permission to go and visit the man they caught. I’ll have a shower and grab some food first.”
“Okay,” Holly said, now watching a cartoon show featuring magical space bears who had umbrellas that shot lasers for some reason.
I rushed off to the shower, only to find a dense jungle where the bathroom should be. I could see glimpses of the shower base and the soap between the trees but not much else. I reached out to touch the tree and my hand went straight through it. There was no sensation, no cold, no hot, no pressure of any kind. I was merely seeing the past in full living color.
I did the blinking-a-few-times routine to see if the trees would disappear, but they wouldn’t move, so I was forced to have a shower with my eyes closed, operating mostly by touch.
Every time I opened my eyes. I couldn’t see anything because I was literally standing inside a tree. I really hoped this didn’t get worse. If it didn’t I might not be able to drive or find my way back home.
Once I was done showering inside a tree, I grabbed some toast for breakfast and left the house, with Holly close behind me. She pulled big surprise number two out of the bag when she opened the passenger-side door and hopped in. Big surprise number three was when she clipped the seat belt over herself.
I got in and started the car, turning the air conditioning up to high.
“Can you feel the seat belt?” I asked.
“Of course I can,” Holly said.
I left it at that and drove down the hill, gently quizzing Holly on anything she might remember. She didn’t know the name Franklin Cordella nor the names Schapelle and Jason Greenway. That wasn’t surprising, however.
I made it most of the way into town before I was suddenly driving in a forest. Luckily, I was on a virtually empty street. I could still see flickers of the sidewalk and shops between the trees. I pulled the car over and we got out. I stood next to the car while I prayed for this bout of Slip witchery to pass quickly.
“Why do you keep making the trees appear?” Holly asked. She was sitting on a fallen log again. I looked around, but not only could I not see the forest for the trees, I couldn’t see any people for the trees or anything else either. I hoped no one was standing nearby listening to me talk to a ghost.
“It’s not me, Holly. I mean, I’m not doing it on purpose. It’s sort of a magical condition I have. I’m hoping –”
The forest vanished, leaving me talking to Holly and being eyeballed by old Mrs. Osterman and her equally elderly terrier Rum Tum, who were standing a few shops away.
I gave them both a weak wave. Mrs. Osterman nodded to me and went on her way.
“That dog is wearing a jacket,” Holly said.
“Yes, he is,” I said.
We were only a few streets away from the police station but I was seriously considering bailing on t
his idea. If a forest appeared while I was driving I could have a serious accident. I looked across at Holly waiting for me and decided I had to gut it out, at least for her.
We continued on. I had my left hand out, lightly touching the fronts of the shops as we passed, in case the forest appeared again. I got to the corner when the past suddenly reasserted itself.
No trees this time, just Harlot Bay a very long time ago. I could still feel the building under my fingertips, but I couldn’t see anything except empty and cleared land.
Nothing had been built here yet, although I could see that someone had laid a foundation for a building. The streets were mostly empty of people and certainly empty of cars. The few buildings around me were clumped together and very small compared to their modern counterparts. The only building I recognized was the Hardy Arms. It had a large sign with “The Merchant Prince” painted on it. There were a bunch of men hanging around out front, and leaning from the windows were women in very low-cut tops, talking to them.
“Why are they wearing hardly any clothes?” Holly asked.
Okay, quick. How do you describe men and the women they pay for fun to a five-year-old?
“That’s a place where men go to drink. Some of those women should be wearing more clothes,” I said.
“They look like prostitutes to me,” Holly said, matter-of-factly.
Okay, so this kid knows more than I think she does.
“Yes, you might be correct,” I said. A man in a white coat emerged from a building across the road from us and headed towards The Merchant Prince. As we watched, a stunning woman in her early twenties wearing a vivid red dress opened the front door and walked out to kiss him on the cheek, wrapping her arms around his neck.
I couldn’t be sure at this distance but I swear she was wearing Hattie Stern’s face (if you took about forty years and a million frowns off her). An ancestor, perhaps?
I’m sure Aunt Cass would love to know one of Hattie’s relatives worked at a brothel.
The Hattie Stern youthful duplicate and the man in the white coat went inside.
Holly and I stood there for about five more minutes watching a few random men gather around The Merchant Prince, talking and drinking, before the past vanished and the present returned. With it came Michaela Swinton, who worked in one of the cafes down the street.
“Hello? Are you okay, Harlow?”
“Oh, hi, Michaela. Sorry, didn’t see you there.”
“I’ve been trying to get your attention for the last minute. You aren’t drugged again, are you?”
“No, sorry… really sleep-deprived. With all the renovation going on at the mansion and work and some other things I haven’t had very much sleep lately.”
“Well, okay…” she said and continued on her way down the street.
“Holly, we have to hurry,” I said.
We got to the police station with the past staying firmly in the past and Mary buzzed for one of the officers to take me down to the cells.
Franklin was the only person they had in there. Probably the only person they’d had for quite a while. The cells are mostly used to give people picked up drunk and disorderly a chance to dry out.
The officer wouldn’t let me in the cell with Franklin for safety reasons. So he gave me a chair and I sat outside the cell. He told me to give him a yell when I wanted to come back out and then went around the corner to give us some privacy.
Franklin was pale and unshaven, which was strange given Jack told me he had been traveling beachside towns for the past few years. He was wearing a green T-shirt with a square of ones and zeros on the center of it.
I hadn’t really gotten a good look at him at the Festival of Lights. He was skinny but with a little potbelly and he looked like he was about forty years old. He didn’t look up at me, even when I cleared my throat.
“Is that him?” Holly asked. I couldn’t answer her aloud so I nodded.
“Hi, Franklin, I’m Harlow. I’m a reporter for the Harlot Bay Reader,” I said.
No answer. He didn’t move in the slightest, kept his hands in his lap and his feet flat on the floor, staring into nothing.
“I’ve been reporting on those remains they found out on Truer Island. Did you hear about that?”
Again, no response.
Holly walked through the bars and stopped directly in front of him.
“I don’t think this is him. The monster who killed us was a lot bigger.”
“So, Franklin, you’re a computer programmer?”
Same response: none.
I was going to ask him some other random questions when the cell filled with prisoners from the past. Men in ragged clothes were sitting on the ground, others sitting on the bench that was bolted to the wall. A few more were sleeping. An enormously fat man wearing stained clothing appeared over half of Franklin’s body. I looked around me. The chair I was sitting on was invisible. There was a skinny guard sitting a few feet away, holding a large club that could only have one purpose.
When they didn’t vanish, I decided to ask one more question.
“You know someone called Holly?”
At this, I finally got a response. Franklin looked up at me, though not in alarm. His face was still dead flat with no expression.
“You’re the one who broke into my room,” he said.
I had no idea how he knew that but there was no point in denying it. There was no one else around (except for the past) so I didn’t see the harm in confessing.
“I’m trying to help my friends. A daughter and her father.”
“I had cameras in my room and I saw you on the camera opening my bag and you messed up my bag and then you took out my photo and then you took a photo of my photo and then you put all of my stuff back in but I knew that you had touched it because it wasn’t the way that I had put it,” Franklin said in a steady stream without inflection.
“So why did you have a photo of my friend in your bag?”
“I saw a video on the Internet and the Internet said that you shouldn’t talk to the police and you shouldn’t talk to anyone else and you should get a lawyer and this is the only person you should talk to and you’re not my lawyer and you also know the police I don’t think I should talk to you.”
Again, a steady stream without inflection. It was like he was reciting from a book.
“You’re right. Do you have a lawyer? Because they need to ask you questions.”
Franklin frowned at me and then looked down at the ground.
“Is there any way I can help you?” I asked. I saw one of the sleeping men on the ground wake and sit up, apparently startled. He started looking around. Could he hear me?
Franklin gave no answer. He returned to staring into nothing.
“He reminds me of my dad,” Holly said.
“Please, let me help you!” I said in frustration.
The men in the cell, overlapping each other from the past, all started moving like an ant hill that had just been kicked. The sleeping men woke up. Those who were sitting stood. The skinny guard jerked out of his seat and then started creeping down towards the cell.
Then they all started talking.
Help me. Help us. Please help. I’m innocent. Help.
Behind the babble of their pleading I heard the guard call out that anyone playing a trick would be sorry.
This wasn’t happening. It was an image of the past… not the actual past.
But… it seemed I could affect it.
The past vanished, leaving us in the modern police station. I couldn’t ask Holly what she meant until we were outside.
“Okay, it’s time to go now,” I said, more for Holly’s benefit than Franklin’s.
I called to the officer and he let us out. Soon we were walking away from the police station, heading back to my car.
“How does he remind you of your dad?” I asked.
Holly looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What are you talking about?”
Great. Ghostly amnesia strik
es again.
I’d started the day late and it was almost lunch already. I decided to head to my office to wait for my cousins. Holly and I returned to my car and drove to the office without any further manifestations of the past appearing. Jonas wasn’t in and neither was John Smith (who would sometimes hang around). Holly sat on the sofa and turned the television on again. I sat down at my computer to think about what was going on.
There was definitely something strange happening with Franklin Cordella, but I didn’t get the feeling he was a murderer. He had at least talked to me, which was more than he’d done with Sheriff Hardy.
What was with the way he talked? A flat stream, no inflection. Perhaps he sat somewhere on the autism spectrum? Holly said he reminded her of her dad. Maybe there was a connection there.
Holly providing a bit of information when she saw Franklin led to only one logical outcome: taking her to the creepy house to see what she would say. If I took Molly and Luce with me, it would be safe, surely.
It wasn’t long before Holly started fidgeting on the sofa and told me she was bored. She might be a ghost, but she was still a kid.
“My cousins will be here soon and then we’ll investigate a house that I found. I want you to come along to see if you recognize anyone. Is that okay?”
“I guess so. I’ll be back later,” Holly said and promptly vanished, the remote bouncing on the sofa.
I hit the Internet, looking up what caused flat speech while I waited for my cousins.
Chapter 18
I was deep in the world of autism, Asperger’s and ADHD when Luce and Molly arrived.
“So… is Jack’s brother here now?” Luce asked.
“You already have a boyfriend, what do you care?” Molly said.
“I’m curious is all. Besides, Alba asked me if I knew anyone good.”
“You cannot introduce Alba O’Brien to Jack’s brother, because if Harlow marries Jack and then Alba marries Jonas then we’re going to be related to Alba and then I have to kill myself,” Molly said, crossing her arms and sitting down on the sofa.