As Dead as It Gets

by Katie Alender

  “Kasey,” I whispered.

  “I know,” she said. “We were all out looking for her when Carter called me.”

  “It’s too late,” I said. Tears sprang to my eyes. “There’s no way…”

  “There is a way,” she said. “There’s a chance. The ghost was with you for a long time tonight, right? Like, hours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly what’s going on,” she said, “but I have some ideas. And one of them is that this ghost can’t be in two places at once. Which means that when it was with you, Kasey may have had a chance to stop and rest…or find water. Or even get help.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “I mean, what makes you think that?”

  “It’s based on what Kasey told me. She came to see me. She wanted to prove that you were innocent.”

  Carter came back with a bottle of Gatorade and two bottles of water. I chugged the Gatorade, then promptly leaned out the window and threw it all up. So I sipped the water instead.

  He turned to look at me. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I just need to drink more. Maybe eat. And then I need to find my sister.”

  I glanced at the clock and gasped.

  It was 4:45 in the morning. We’d lost a whole night.

  No way was I stopping until Kasey was found.

  “Did you tell my parents I was missing?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t. I didn’t want them distracted from their search.

  “No,” Carter said. “But they knew you left Harmony Valley. They called to ask if I’d heard from you—”

  “Me too,” Megan said.

  “And I said I hadn’t. Maybe I should have told them, but—I know you don’t want to go back there.”

  I nodded, then took another sip and closed my eyes—but this wasn’t going-to-sleep-forever eye closing. I was just resting.

  “What happened to you—it’s what happened to those other girls, isn’t it?” Megan asked. “Only they never woke up. How did you wake up, by the way?”

  “Lydia,” I said. “Lydia’s a ghost. She helped me.”

  There was silence.

  “Lydia’s a good ghost?” Megan asked dubiously.

  “One of the best,” I said. “Believe it or not.”

  “Not quite,” Megan mused.

  “Hey!” Lydia said, popping into view in the front seat.

  “So what now?” Megan asked.

  “We find my sister,” I said. And I didn’t care if I had to knock Kasey unconscious or break her kneecaps or tie her to a tree.

  Laina wasn’t going to take her away from me.

  AS WE DROVE, Megan’s phone rang. She glanced down at it and looked at me. “It’s Savannah.”

  “Savannah?” I asked. Levitating-tarot-card-charmbook Savannah?

  Megan shrugged. “I needed help. So I told her everything. She’s really smart. Kinda nuts, but…hello, Van?…Hmm…I don’t know. She’s right here; I’ll put her on.”

  She handed me the phone.

  “Hello?”

  Savannah was as chipper as a chipmunk. “Hi, Alexis! Long time no talk! How are you?”

  “Worried,” I said.

  “Okay, down to business.” I heard her flipping the pages of a book. “The girl ghost isn’t wearing the clothes she died in?”

  “No,” I said. “She couldn’t be. Nobody hikes in a fancy dress.”

  “Was it, by any chance”—more page flipping—“the dress she was buried in?”

  I blinked. “That seems really likely. Is that common for ghosts?”

  “Nope, not at all.” She was quiet for a second. “So, when she moves in your pictures, that’s not common for the ghosts you see?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Right,” she said, more to herself than me. “Very kinetic.”

  “Kinetic? Is that bad?”

  “Just weird,” she said. “Undead energy is usually passive. That’s why most ghosts wait until you find them before they start messing with you.”

  The way Sarah had left my sister alone until she’d found the haunted doll.

  “But this thing is lashing out, right?” Savannah said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s really aggressive.”

  “And it’s fixated on you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And the first time you ever noticed it, was that tied to any really charged emotional event?”

  I thought back to the nature preserve. Jared and I ran into Kendra.…But before that, I had the episode with the little boy ghost. And then—

  “We kissed,” I said, avoiding Carter’s glance in the rearview mirror. “Jared and I accidentally kissed.”

  “Huh,” Savannah said. “That could do it.”

  “And the flowers,” I said. “It’s weird that she’s holding flowers. Ghosts don’t usually do that. Although there’s this other one across town with the same thing—aggressive, bright light, moves in pictures…and he’s holding a trophy that his brother broke.”

  “So the flowers could be important.”

  “No, I’m pretty sure I know what her power center is,” I said.

  “You know about power centers? So you’ve read Sawamura?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think…it’s Jared.”

  “Ha,” Savannah said. “Typical. I mean, sorry, but I doubt it. Do you know how rare that is? Like, point zero-zero-three percent of power centers are living beings. Yet somehow, every amateur ghost hunter wants to think they’re the exception to the rule. Further evidence of our human-centricness.”

  Finally, I thought. Some good news. If Laina’s power center were just some object, then I would have no problem destroying it. Heck, I’d burn down her whole house if that would do the trick.

  “Keep thinking,” Savannah said. “I’ll call you back.”

  And she hung up.

  Megan was watching me. “Smart, huh?”

  “Scary smart,” I said. “I’ll have to apologize for stealing her book.”

  “Don’t worry.” Megan shook her head. “She’s got tons.”

  We were closing in on Surrey.

  “So where would Kasey go?” Megan asked. “If the other girls went to places they were familiar with…where does Kasey hike?”

  “She’s not much of a hiker,” I said. “I guess…she likes…”

  My stomach seemed to free-fall.

  “What?” Carter asked.

  “She likes the waterfall,” I said. “The little one at the middle of Stewart Canyon.”

  “Stewart Canyon,” Megan repeated, frowning. “That’s where Laina died.”

  Carter made the turn on the highway that led east of town.

  The problem was, how could I hike? I hardly had enough strength to stand.

  “I’ll go,” Carter said, as if he’d read my mind. “I know you can’t. I’ll go up the trail and find her.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Lydia said. “I can float.”

  “Thank you, Carter,” I said. “But I can’t not go with you.”

  “You need to find the power center for this ghost, right?” he said. “You and Megan take my car and go find it. Go to that girl’s house, wherever. Find it and get rid of it.”

  And leave him out there in the wilderness with Laina, to fight her alone?

  But what choice did I have? Besides—if Laina got the idea that her power center was in danger, she might leave Kasey and Carter alone and come after us.

  “Lydia’s going to go with you,” I said. “If you need her help, just ask her, and she’ll do what she can, okay?”

  “Sure,” Carter said. He sped into the parking lot and stopped the car.

  “I mean it,” I said. “She’s really great.”

  “Aw, shut up,” Lydia said.

  I got out to go around to the driver’s seat.

  Carter and I practically ran into each other at the front of the car. He pulled me into a hug.

  “You’r
e shaking,” he whispered.

  “Carter,” I said. “Please be careful.”

  “I’m not scared, Lex. We’re going to save your sister.”

  He turned and started for the path.

  “Wait—” I said.

  He turned back.

  I rushed forward and grabbed him by his arms. “Thank you.”

  It wasn’t what I’d wanted to say—but the words I wanted to say seemed impossible. There had never been a worse time.

  “Lex,” he said.

  I stared up at him. His blue eyes locked onto mine.

  And we kissed.

  It was a fast kiss, an efficient one. But it felt like rain on the desert.

  He pulled back first. “I love you, Lex. Whatever happens, don’t forget that.”

  I had to catch my breath. “I love you too.”

  “I’m going now.”

  “Okay—be safe!”

  “I will!” he called, jogging away toward the path.

  Lydia passed me as I walked toward the open car door.

  “Don’t try to kiss me,” she said. “See you later.”

  Megan didn’t say a word about the kiss. She was looking for Laina’s address.

  “There’s a Tim Buchanan on Albright Street…” she said. “And…yeah, Tim’s the name of the dad in the obituary.”

  “How do we get to Albright?” I asked, swinging out of the parking lot.

  “Go left. The turn’s in four miles.”

  Megan’s phone rang again.

  “It’s Savannah. Hello? You’re on speaker.”

  I knew immediately that something was up.

  “You guys, this is crazy,” Savannah said. She was about to burst. “It’s crazy.”

  Megan and I exchanged a wary glance. Crazy didn’t sound ideal. I would much rather she be exclaiming about manageability.

  “Your ghost?” Savannah said. “Is not a ghost.”

  “EXCUSE ME, WHAT?” MEGAN SAID.

  I had the presence of mind to slow the car down and pull to the side of the road.

  Your ghost is not a ghost.

  Did that mean that I was responsible?

  “It was the kiss,” Savannah said. “And the football guy’s trophy. So that got me thinking. If the dude’s brother broke the trophy, it’s not the ghost who’s upset. Ghosts don’t care as long as you don’t mess with their power center. But that Corcoran guy didn’t die your typical ghost death, right?”

  “Right,” I said. At least I could say that much with confidence.

  “So who’s traumatized? Who’s the one who can’t deal with the death?”

  The one who can’t deal with the death?

  “Randy,” I said. “His brother.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “And who can’t deal with Laina’s death?”

  I got dizzy and had to grab the steering wheel to keep from tipping over.

  “Jared,” Megan said.

  “Exactly,” Savannah said. “This thing that’s out there attacking people? It’s not Laina’s ghost. It’s a poltergeist. It was probably formed during what must have been one heck of a kiss, when Jared was suddenly overwhelmed by this tornado of emotions.”

  I sat back and rested my head against the seat.

  It had been a heck of a kiss.

  “So he’s controlling it?” Megan asked.

  “No. Probably not. He probably formed it and released it. Like when water boils over in a pot, you know? He had all this trauma and he couldn’t deal with it. So it boiled over and became this chaotic, manic energy. I mean, it’s still tied to him on some level—but not on a conscious level.”

  “So it’s a free agent?” I said. “It’s just acting randomly?”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, think about the football guy. He hates high school kids, right? Because the brother who lived hated his high school classmates. So when this energy came into being, it probably played off of what Jared wanted in that moment, which was…”

  I looked up at Megan. I could hardly breathe.

  “A soul mate,” I said.

  Savannah sighed. “And that would be you, my friend.”

  Poltergeists, it turns out, don’t have power centers.

  Poltergeists have sources.

  As Savannah put it: “Say you have a faucet in your kitchen. Water’s coming out of it. You don’t want any more water, so you turn off the faucet.”

  “So we have to get Jared to turn off the poltergeist?” Megan said.

  “That’s one method,” Savannah said. “Unfortunately, this guy sounds cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs and I think you’re going to have trouble convincing him that this thing is just his loneliness and guilt manifested.”

  “True,” I said. “He believes it’s Laina. He’s glad it’s Laina. He’s not going to be turning off any faucets.”

  “So is there an alternative?” Megan asked.

  “Sure,” Savannah said. “If you can’t turn the faucet off, just…blow up the kitchen.”

  Megan glanced at me. “As in…”

  Savannah took a deep breath. “What I’m getting at is that Jared would have to die.”

  I’d gotten rid of ghosts. I’d seen death firsthand. But under no circumstances could I bring myself to kill a human. So I would just have to find a way to reason with Jared and get him to change his mind about Laina. There was no answer on his cell phone, so I drove by his house. Megan and I rang the doorbell and waited.

  It was five thirty in the morning—someone had to be home.

  After a minute, the door opened and Mr. Elkins stood there in a bathrobe, scratching his head.

  “Alexis?” he asked. “Jared told me you were…uh…out of town.”

  “Is he home?” I asked.

  “No. He was working late on a project at a friend’s house, so he just spent the night.”

  “Well, I think I left my mom’s computer power cord here. Can I come look for it?”

  He glanced at his watchless wrist.

  “She has a seven thirty flight to Los Angeles,” I said. “I told her it was too early to disturb you guys, but she insisted.”

  “Her mother’s priorities are totally out of whack,” Megan added.

  Mr. Elkins waved us inside.

  We went into Jared’s bedroom and looked around.

  “What are we looking for?” Megan said. “Don’t you think we should focus on finding Jared?”

  But I was staring at Jared’s closet door. It was unlocked. I grabbed the handle and pulled it open.

  And then I could only stare.

  It was plastered with pictures of Laina, newspaper articles about her, photocopied pages from yearbooks…and beneath all that was a small table covered in framed photos and small votive candles.

  Hanging above it, suspended from the clothes rod by a long lavender ribbon…was a bouquet of dried yellow roses.

  “Oh my God,” Megan whispered. “It’s a shrine.”

  I leaned in to look at the framed pictures, feeling like the Jared I thought I knew had just died in front of my eyes.

  They were photographs of Laina in her coffin. Her eyes were closed. She wore the purple dress. And in her hands was a small bouquet of yellow roses—the same one that hung inches away.

  “The poltergeist wears the purple dress because that’s how he remembers her,” I said, “the last time he ever saw her.”

  Jared never cared about me. I was just a substitute, a warm body…a stand-in.

  I set the first photo down and glanced over the rest of them. My gaze stopped on one in a shining crystal frame.

  It looked like a copy of the one of Laina in her casket. I almost didn’t look closer.

  But then I did.

  I got a nice long look at it.

  The frame slipped out of my hands, hitting the wood floor and shattering.

  “What?” Megan swooped over. “What is it?”

  I knelt and carefully plucked the photo out from the pile of glass shards.

  “That’s…” Megan covered h
er mouth with her hands. “Alexis…that’s…”

  It was me.

  Or rather, it was a picture of Laina’s body—with my face. Jared had Photoshopped my face on to her body.

  My eyes were closed, like I was asleep—or dead.

  When had he taken pictures of me sleeping?

  Then it hit me in a flash—the night I’d drunk the wine and passed out.

  The wine…

  Maybe if you take your wine with a shot of tranquilizers, the nurse at Harmony Valley had said. And I knew—that was exactly what happened.

  We thanked Mr. Elkins and left. He said he was going to go back to sleep. But as we pulled out of the driveway, I saw him on the phone, peering out the front window at us.

  “Who’s he calling?” Megan asked.

  “Probably Agent Hasan,” I said. “He thinks she’s my therapist.”

  But I’d been locked up when Kasey went missing. So by now Agent Hasan would have to know I wasn’t the one behind the attacks.

  Still, she’d be looking for me.

  “I don’t have much time,” I said. “They’ll realize Carter came to get me, and they’ll be looking for his car.”

  “Where would Jared be?” Megan asked. She’d taken over the driving, since I was getting a little woozy. “What friend’s house?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I realized that, even though Jared often talked about his friends, he’d never introduced me to a single one. Did they even exist?

  “Call him again,” she said. “Maybe his phone just didn’t wake him up before.”

  Just as I raised the phone to dial, it rang.

  “It’s him,” I said.

  “Answer!” Megan said.

  Suddenly, my mind went blank. What was I supposed to say? How did I explain what was going on?

  Jared didn’t just accept the idea that Laina was a ghost—he thought it was the best-case scenario. So how would he react when I told him she wasn’t even real? And that it was his fault that girls were dying?

  “Hello?” I said.

  “So you stopped by my house and woke up my father.…”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I think you really belong back at Harmony Valley, Alexis. It’s safer for you there.”

  His voice had an odd, paternal quality. Caring, but on the verge of outright ordering me around.