by Hunter Shea
“I’m so sorry, Daddy.”
They talked and hugged in a way that told Eddie it had been some time since they had shared a close moment. It happened all the time when daddy’s little girl transformed into a young woman. Most fathers hadn’t a clue how to adapt to the brave new world a teenage girl brought them kicking and screaming into. Sometimes, it took a crisis to restore their special bond. He’d spoken to many mournful spirits over the years that lamented not having the chance to hold their grown-up daughters one more time. Their experience, their knowledge, the wisdom of the dead, in turn made Eddie an old soul.
Lessons from the dead. He could teach a four-year class on the wealth of material he’d been given from the other side.
He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
Jessica said, close to his ear, “Great, they’re all here, but so am I. What should I do now so I don’t put them in any more danger?”
They walked into the kitchen. They could have set off a cherry bomb and none of the Leighs would have noticed their presence. At its essence, that was a good thing.
Eddie said, low enough so his voice didn’t carry into the living room, “I need to make one more connection with the EB so I can pinpoint its ground zero. Once I do, and if it’s as close as I think it is, we can jump in the car and get it before it gets her. It’s not ready yet, but it’s building like a tsunami. The key is that I need you there, right where it lives, so to speak.”
“And what about Selena?”
“Like I said, we need to strike right now. I’m going to go to her room and do my damnedest to get into its head. You stay here and keep them together. It should take me five, ten minutes, tops. It’s like driving. Once you’ve been to a certain place, getting there the next time is that much easier. Just be ready to dash when I come back down.”
“That I can do.” She patted the car keys in her pocket.
Before he headed back up to Selena’s room, she said, “Hey, be careful.”
He smirked. “I didn’t know you cared.”
She rolled her eyes and shooed him out of the kitchen.
He was glad she couldn’t detect the dread he felt about the prospect of connecting with the EB again. This time he would have to go deeper, and there were things in its soul better left unseen. He kept an image of Selena and Jessica in his mind to keep him strong, to push him further than he would ever want to go, and with that, settled into the lotus position on her bed in the dark room and closed his eyes.
Selena told her parents she needed a drink so she could go to the kitchen and speak to Jessica.
“Thank you,” she said. It was difficult to keep her voice from fluttering. She’d screwed up big time and Jessica was her only hope now. Every time she thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.
Jessica leaned in close and whispered, “Promise me right here and now that you’ll never, ever mess with a Ouija board again. You may have just made things worse.”
Hearing that from Jessica made her knees weak. She nodded. “I promise.” She looked back to make sure her parents weren’t listening in and added, “It said that I should be afraid and I would belong to it. Then the planchette-thingy went crazy and smashed into the door like a dart. We weren’t even touching it when it did that. I wanted to face it down, tell it I wasn’t afraid, and now I’m more scared than ever.”
Jessica lightly touched her face. “I know. You didn’t ask for any of this to happen and to tell you the truth, I may have done the same thing if I was your age and in your shoes. I never was one for taking things lying down. For the rest of the night, though, I need you to do exactly what we say, you got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now get something to drink or your parents will be suspicious. Your little secret is safe with me.”
Selena felt an ache in her bladder that had started when she was in Crissy’s car, both girls driving nowhere in particular and frantically recounting what had happened with the Ouija board.
Jessica said, “I also have to ask you a couple of questions that may help us pinpoint the source of the EB that’s attached itself to you. We think we can track it down tonight.”
Relief swept through her body. They could track it down…tonight! She was starting to feel as if she would be trapped forever between an entity that wanted to attack her and a double walker that wanted to scare her.
Jessica asked, “Do you remember someone in a red classic car driving next to you, maybe even stopping to talk to you, when you walked home from school? Can you recall that person’s face?”
Selena twisted a bottle of water in her hands and thought. Guys stopped to hit on her all the time, and it wasn’t always unappreciated.
Then she remembered the old guy.
“Yes, I do. There was this guy, maybe a little older than my dad. A couple of times he pulled up to ask me directions. The first time it happened, I didn’t think anything of it. When he asked the second time, I just figured he was an old creep. I didn’t see him after that, though, so I kinda forgot about him.”
“Can you tell me what he looked like?”
Selena shook her head. “Not really. I remember he had tinted windows and the interior of the car was dark, so it was hard to make out his face.”
Jessica was about to ask another question when she cut in.
“Can I go to the bathroom? I gotta pee.”
Jessica took a moment to mull over her request. Considering all that had happened, Selena couldn’t blame her for the hesitation. With obvious reluctance, she said, “Yes, but you have to use the bathroom down here. I don’t want you any farther from us.”
“Will do.”
The small bathroom was just off the kitchen and was her father’s sanctuary. A magazine basket filled with well-thumbed copies of Sports Illustrated and Newsweek sat between the toilet and sink. She took a moment to lean against the sink and calm her nerves. Even if Jessica and Eddie somehow managed to make everything go away, she wasn’t sure she could ever spend another night in this house.
Being scared or anxious always made her have to pee, and she was surprised she had lasted this long without letting off the mounting pressure on her bladder. She unbuttoned her shorts and pulled them down with her panties.
“Oh my God that feels good.”
It felt as if she hadn’t gone to the bathroom in weeks and the stream came out in a never-ending rush.
As she went to pick up a Newsweek, the light suddenly went out, immersing her in total darkness. The bathroom had no window, so she didn’t even have the weak glow of twilight to see by.
There was a soft tap on the tile floor, and she gasped when air in the cramped room changed, becoming icy and thick. It was like trying to draw a breath through a cold, wet towel. Her heartbeat burst into high gear until she could hear the pounding of its overworked valves in her ears.
She bent down to pull up her shorts and shrieked when a pair of arctic hands clutched her wrists, pinning them to her sides.
She barely managed to cry out, “No!”
The rest of her words were cut off. She was being suffocated. Something blocked her nose and mouth and she struggled to draw a breath while the cold, invisible hands moved to her thighs, slowly creeping inward.
Chapter Forty-Eight
This time around, finding the EB was much easier for Eddie. It was as simple as a bloodhound tracking the scent of a ripe, decomposing body. That’s how strong and repugnant the essence of this EB was, and in its growing confidence, it no longer felt the need to exert its efforts to mask its presence.
He had managed to yank the planchette free from the door and used the psychic residue left on it to amplify his own abilities at locating spirits beyond the veil. The broken triangle of plastic sat in his upturned hands.
In his mind, he sat atop an old milk crate within the doorway of the open barn, his psychic talisman. He felt like a farmer, waiting for the cows to come home, except this would be no ordinary night on the farm. Even the flie
s on the wall would shriek by what they saw. Groping for the tether that had fabricated between them from their brief encounters, he merely had to pull, dragging it into his realm.
It came, and it was awful beyond measure.
“Got you,” he said aloud, keeping his body still, his eyes closed.
The EB was startled at first, much as a rat would be when disturbed in its lair, gnawing on a stolen scrap of food. It appeared to him as a dark, purple blob where occasional sparks lit up within like firing neurons. Eddie tried again to get a sense of what it had looked like in life. It was impossible. What it had become could no longer remember the contours and facets of its earthbound shell. When the man had died, his soul had exploded from his body, reveling in the freedom from limitations and the overall weakness of the human condition. In death, it had, for the first time, found true life.
Everything about this EB made him recoil, but he had to stay focused. This wasn’t an experiment in The Rhine, or the cry of a helpless spirit in the night when he was alone in his room. For once, he had been the seeker, and he didn’t like what he’d found.
He felt the EB turn its full attention on him.
“You’ll never get me,” it said in a low, scratchy tone. It was like listening to an old, worn record.
“I guess that’s why you keep running from us.” As much as it repulsed him to do it, he needed to maintain contact as long as he could. Each passing second would bring him closer to the EB’s source.
The EB laughed. “You’re the one who should be running now.”
The planchette jumped from Eddie’s hand and smacked into the opposite wall. Eddie didn’t flinch. He knew it could see what he could see, so he opened his eyes and found the plastic piece on the floor.
It began to vibrate like a ball bearing on a drum skin, then lifting until it was balanced on one corner. With an outward push from his mind, Eddie made the planchette go airborne, drifting across the room until it was nestled back in his hands.
“See, I can do it, too, and I didn’t have to die to make it happen.”
The EB reacted by emitting a pulse of fury that washed over him like low tide in a diseased ocean. Again, he didn’t react, which only added to the EB’s anger.
Its defenses were crumbling. He needed to prod it just a little bit more, like Jessica had done with the EB back in New York. This was new territory for him. He’d always been passive, open, understanding. Prodding a spirit to make it angry could be dangerous, but it had to be done.
“Do you have any other tricks? I love magic shows.”
“I can show you what I want as a treat.”
Eddie’s mind was overpowered with a burst of images along with a painful thrumming of emotions and impulses, each one more horrifying than the next. He saw the undefined shadow of a man, hiding in a darkened room by a solitary window. The shadow wore women’s clothes. It moved about the room, mimicking the walk of a woman. Eddie delved deeper, until he could see through the EB’s eyes. Dear God, no. It was watching Selena, blissfully unaware that a predator watched her every move as she walked home from school. He experienced the abominable impulses that had controlled it when it was alive.
“Ungh!”
Eddie reeled back on the bed. His back arched and his arms and legs were splayed as if tied to stakes. The shard of the planchette dropped to the floor. Every pore in his body opened up, releasing a torrent of cold sweat on his clammy skin.
It was worse than he could have imagined.
The man, though monster would have been more appropriate, had lived in another country until his forties. Eddie saw snow and close city streets, heard people speaking in English and French, and knew it had been Montreal when he saw the deep emerald dome of St. Joseph’s Oratory. Eddie had stayed with a friend in Montreal one spring break and remembered clearly the magnificent holy sanctuary.
Images melted into one another until they formed a pattern. A parade of young, underage girls, some walking home from school without a care in the world, others in darkened rooms, reduced to quivering balls of terror and confusion.
He had stalked them. The lucky ones only became part of the menagerie of his sick, masturbatory fantasies. But there were others, so many, where he could not be satisfied by mere stolen glances or surreptitious photos. He had to feel their perfect, unblemished skin, taste their tears, and so much worse.
Eddie shook his head back and forth, fighting now to break their connection. He couldn’t stand the perverted pleasure the man took from their pain, the innocence he claimed and devoured like a force of nature.
Still, the portraits of a demon in human form came. In his struggle to free himself, Eddie’s telekinetic abilities were let loose, and small objects throughout Selena’s room hovered in the air, waiting for his cue where to go.
“Get…the fuck…out of my head!” he shouted.
The reply was chilling. “Better to be in the house.”
With a heavy whoosh that could be felt, not heard, everything turned off at once. Eddie’s body relaxed as pens, a hair brush, papers, loose change and a pair of headphones crashed to the floor.
He sat up quickly, despite his mental and physical fatigue, because there was screaming coming from downstairs, followed by loud banging. The room was pitch-black and the hallway light had been turned off. His body protested as he forced himself to stand up, and he had to lunge and grab the door handle to keep from falling.
Cries of desperation rang throughout the house. He fumbled to the stairs as fast as he could.
Jessica was in the midst of telling Greg and Rita that they should remain in the house, together in the same room, once she and Eddie left when she felt a cold jab at the base of her spine. The jolt of pain was like being stabbed with an icicle. The sudden, shocked expression on Greg’s, Rita’s and Ricky’s faces told her they had felt it, too.
Jessica looked up and scanned the room. “It’s here.”
Greg pulled Rita’s and Ricky’s hands into his own. They jumped when they heard Eddie shouting.
“What’s going on?” Greg said.
“I don’t know,” she replied. Then it hit her. “Selena!”
As she ran to the bathroom, all of the lights in the house were extinguished. Two quick steps in the dark brought her crashing headlong over a kitchen chair. She spilled onto her stomach, her breath knocked out of her. Struggling for air, she brought herself to her knees. Greg brushed past her as he charged the bathroom door. They heard Selena shout, “No!” and nothing more.
“Selena, unlock the door!” Greg demanded, on the verge of panic.
Even though she was woozy, Jessica joined him at the door.
“Selena, are you all right?” she said. Her lungs ached from the effort.
The sounds of a struggle were their only reply.
Greg pounded on the door with his fists. He and Jessica both knew there was no way Selena could let them in.
“Hold on,” she said to him, taking a step back. She raised her leg and kicked as hard as she could at the door, right near the handle. Her leg jarred painfully into her hip. It felt as if the door had been reinforced with steel. She tried again, gaining nothing more than a sore leg.
Greg joined her, throwing his body into the door. The wood didn’t so much as creak.
“What the hell? The door is hollow. It should break just by blowing on it,” Greg said, breathless. “Selena, we’re coming!”
Jessica picked up her pace, interspersing her kicks with his body blows, and she would keep it up until her leg fell off. She knew with sickening dread what Selena was going through on the other side, and she would do everything she could to stop it.
“Let’s try it at the same time,” she said.
Deep down, she doubted they could break it if they had a steel battering ram. It wasn’t the door that was keeping them out. It was the EB. Fighting the metaphysical with the physical was like bringing a water pistol to a duel, but it was all she had.
A muffled cry escaped from Selena.
Don’t you dare touch her, she thought with panicked desperation.
Jessica reared back, then let loose with a war cry.
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Eddie motioned for Rita and Ricky to stay where they were on the couch. A dull sliver of moonlight parted the curtains, haloing their terrified faces. He tried his best not to show the fatigue that ran through his body like white water rapids. As he turned the corner of the kitchen, he saw Greg nursing his shoulder while Jessica repeatedly rammed her body against the bathroom door.
“What’s going on?”
His voice startled them both. Greg brushed past him without saying a word.
“Selena’s locked inside and the EB’s in with her. It’s doing something to make the door unbreakable.”
She gave the doorknob a vicious kick that should have sent it spiraling into the air. In reality, nothing happened to it at all.
He stopped her from making another attempt by grabbing her shoulders. “You have to get out of here.”
He couldn’t make out her expression in the weak light, but he could feel her studying him, sense the desperation that had overtaken her reluctance to give way to calm rationalization. Then she drew in a sharp breath, and he felt her shoulders relax.
“Crap, I’m making it worse, aren’t I?”
“I think so. I need you to—”
Greg came running back, snapping on a flashlight. The sharp beam of light made Eddie and Jessica throw up their hands to protect their eyes. He was also holding a hammer and pry bar in his other hand.
“I need one of you to hold the flashlight while I try to…to…”
The light wavered to their left and began to tremble. When Eddie and Jessica turned, they saw Selena approaching from the closed corridor.
Except, it wasn’t Selena at all.
The doppelganger’s cold, fathomless eyes looked through them, to the depths of their souls or the vastness of the infinity that lay beyond life. It stopped just short of touching Jessica, then turned to the door.