by Susan Vaught
Forest and Levi looked at each other, and a few seconds later, Forest added, “Levi’s grandmother keeps track of what goes on around Lincoln, and she tries to take care of problems.”
Mama didn’t seem as surprised as I was, because she didn’t miss a beat. “I remember seeing Miss Imogene when I was little. The midwife, right? The one half the town called Granny back in the day?”
Levi nodded.
“I heard a rumor she was born the day that hospital opened,” Mama said, “to the first woman ever admitted to Lincoln. I figured she had to have passed on, but since she’s still kicking, can she tell us how my father came back from the dead?”
Levi’s frown made me wish I had a sharp stake to defend myself, but his voice was calm when he answered, “He’s not back from the dead. Not exactly. He just moved what’s left of his energy back to this side to cause trouble. He’s a shade.”
I gave that some thought, then came up with my own question. “Can he be killed—again?”
Levi met my eyes. “Anything can be killed, if you’re strong enough to do it.”
For now, I didn’t want to think too much about the fact that my grandfather wasn’t only a serial killer, but a real-live monster now, too. “Bad blood” was taking on a whole new meaning for me. “If your grandmother Imogene made his spirit cross over when he died, then how did he make himself a shade?”
Something flickered across Levi’s face. He twisted his fingers in the black dog’s fur. “Shades either have a lot of power in them when they die, or something strong helping them get up to no good.”
“Spirits usually can’t move back and forth without help.” Forest pushed her dark curls behind her ears. “Levi and Imogene have to do it, or me. I’m learning how. But we didn’t do this.”
Mama folded her hands in her lap. “So someone with some terrible power got hold of Eff Leer’s energy or spirit or whatever and brought what was left of it back to this side? Who would do something that awful?”
Fresh fear crossed Levi’s face. He pulled his arms low over his belly.
Forest glanced at Levi like she wanted to put her arm around his shoulders. “My guess is, somebody or something even more awful than Eff Leer. There are a lot of strange things in Imogene’s records.”
“Strange like the tree?” My question came out louder than I intended, and the officers outside my door turned to see what I was saying and doing.
Forest raised her palm to them and gave the air a slight push. They turned back to the hallway as if they had been hypnotized.
“There’s a tree,” Levi said. He wasn’t asking a question, and the dread in his voice turned my insides to icicles.
“A big one.” My fingers lifted on instinct, and I touched the thorn pendant I still wore. “It had roots that moved and an eyeball and a mouth, too. You know what it is?”
“That’s a witch tree.” Levi closed his eyes. “We need to get to Lincoln and go after it before anybody else dies.” He took his hand off his dog and told it, “Cain, go.”
As Forest started walking toward the hospital room door, the giant monster-dog turned and leaped straight into the air, vanishing without a sound. Meanwhile, Mama rolled her chair between Levi and me, blocking my path. “You can’t do this, Darius. You’re already under arrest—and whatever’s in that tunnel, it meant to hurt you just like it tried to hurt that little boy.”
“I know.” I got to my feet, knowing that Levi and Forest would handle the police, and Mama, too, if I couldn’t get her to back down. “That’s why I have to go.”
She opened her mouth to argue with me, but for the first time ever, I interrupted her and admitted, “I didn’t tell you everything Grandma Betty said the day she died.”
You always see the truth ...
Look hard ...
This time, it’ll be hungry ...
Mama went still in her chair, her mouth half-open, her eyes wide and mad and sad. She waited me out until I found enough courage to tell her the rest.
“Grandma Betty told me I had to finish what she started,” I said. “And I think you know what that means.”
Mama shook her head once, then shook it harder and covered her ears. I caught her wrists and pulled her hands away from her face, then squatted low enough to look into her eyes. “There’s no option here, Mama. If I don’t do what I’m meant to do, more kids might get killed—and who knows what kind of evil will get loose in the world?”
“Darius,” Mama whispered, “what if you come back wrong in the head like my mother did? What if you don’t come back at all?”
I should have been scared or worried or pissed or something, but I still felt nothing much besides relief that I wasn’t as crazy as I thought I was. I kissed Mama’s cheek and spoke into her ear, where she had to listen to me even if she didn’t want to. “I have to go to Lincoln Psychiatric, take care of that tree, and kill my grandfather for good. I’ll come back any way I can.”
Chapter Seventeen
We left Mama in the hospital room, pretending to be asleep so she could plead ignorance when the police officers realized I was gone. The police never glanced in our direction, and neither did anyone else as Levi and Forest walked me out of the hospital, into the moonless darkness that had swallowed Never whole. There was no breeze. The stifling air smelled like mown grass and tar and fertilizer, everything Southern and summer and alive, even though death was sneaking around under the ground just a few miles away.
The parking-lot lights shimmered in what was left of the day’s blistering heat. The farther we got from the hospital’s front door, the more my nerves started getting to me. It was one thing being tough for Mama’s sake. It was another to actually face my grandfather and his bloody, mangled body, never mind that awful tree.
The officers who arrested me apparently hadn’t noticed my thorn pendant, but they had taken my phone. I couldn’t call Jessie or Trina to tell them anything, like that I was on the run, or that I’d try to come back, or good-bye. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though, when they met us in the parking lot as we headed for what Levi and Forest said would be a shortcut to Lincoln. Trina was wearing jeans and a blue polo, and she looked good as ever when she jumped out of Jessie’s car and ran toward me, and for a second, I thought I was dreaming.
Then she was in my arms and kissing my neck, and I buried my face in her thick, sweet-smelling hair and just stood there, holding her.
“I knew you didn’t do anything to that kid,” she murmured into my chest. “They let you go, right?”
It hurt having to push back from her, let her go, and shake my head. “No, baby. I’m sorry. I just escaped from being chained to a hospital bed.”
Trina’s big, dark eyes welled with tears, and she started poking her finger in my chest. “Then you turn right back around, march yourself inside, and give yourself up before you get in more trouble.”
“Dude,” Jessie said, nodding his head in agreement. “The police could start shooting. You have to be smart about this.”
I glared at Levi and Forest and kept glaring until they let Jessie and Trina see them. I knew when it happened, because my best friend and my girl jumped at the same time and gaped at the people who seemed to have popped into existence right beside me.
“This is Levi, and this is Forest,” I said. “They’re going to help me get rid of my grandfather for good.”
Trina didn’t say a word back to that. Her pretty face seemed shadowed and hidden despite the parking-lot light right above us.
Jessie folded his scrawny arms and stared at me, his heavy red eyebrows pulled together over his freckled nose. “You need to explain,” he said. “Spell it out, because that sounds totally nuts.”
I gave them the short version: my grandfather was a ghost, haunting the basement and the tunnels under the hospital and getting more dangerous by the second, a crazy tree was giving him power or something, and I had to take him down like my grandmother had tried to do before me.
Jessie blinked a couple
of times, but true to everything I knew about him, he shuffled through it in his head, and he believed me. “Your grandfather almost killed your grandmother, though.” His frown reminded me of Mama’s. “She got her eyes burned out of her head and went nuts.”
“This can’t be for real,” Trina muttered, but she couldn’t quit looking at Levi, and I knew she realized that he wasn’t anything she’d ever run into in the normal world. “You’re confused. Something’s wrong.”
Her words got softer and softer, like she was trying to convince herself and failing. I wanted to put my arms around her, but I wasn’t sure she wanted me to touch her right now. The light from the lamp finally seemed to reach her, and it showed me the wild expression on her face, how she had gone from girl to terrified animal, and might bolt if I made any fast moves.
“I wish it weren’t real,” I said, mostly to her, but I could tell she didn’t hear me. She was lost in her own head, disbelief and shock showing in the tight lines of her body. The sudden distance between us hurt me deep inside, but I couldn’t blame her. This was weird and wrong, and she shouldn’t have to be a part of it. Maybe Trina had always been too good for a guy like me. Even if she didn’t walk away over all this, how could we have any future together? She was normal and good and sweet.
I had bad blood.
And I was suspected of trying to kill a kid.
I’d never get my life back. Not the way it had been.
I made myself shift my attention to Jessie, who was still frowning. “Grandma Betty went to fight one monster, but she found two. She never had a real chance.” I pointed to Forest and Levi. “I’ve got help.”
“We need to get moving,” Levi said. “The police could figure out you’re gone any second, and things’ll get complicated.”
“I don’t want you to do this,” Jessie told me.
“I have to.” I risked a glance at Trina, but her expression had turned to stone. I couldn’t see any feeling in her face at all, except for tears on her cheeks, glittering yellow in the glow of the parking-lot lights.
Levi urged me forward toward a huge oak tree at the edge of the parking area. I hated turning my back on Trina and Jessie, but I knew I had to go. I walked away from them, ten feet, then twenty, and as we got to the tree, Forest took my hand.
Night seemed to move around us, making wavy lines in the darkness. Energy crackled across my skin, and my nerves jumped.
“It’s okay,” Forest told me. “You have Madoc blood in you, so I’m going to walk you across the edge of the other side with us, to save time and to be sure the police don’t stop us on the way. It won’t hurt, and you won’t lose but a few seconds.”
I wasn’t sure I believed her.
But I had to do this, so I went forward, bracing as I struck the moving darkness. It buzzed around me like a thousand bees. My thorn pendant vibrated with it, and my stomach churned.
“Darius!”
Trina’s voice chased me into the humming void.
“Darius!” Closer now, like she was running toward me.
I tried to turn, to break away and go back to her, but Forest pulled me deeper into nothing.
Then, before I could do anything to stop it, Trina and my old life flamed away from me like a shooting star.
I almost fell on my butt as we dropped out of—of—what felt like living, moving, emptiness. My brain spun in circles as I staggered around, trying to breathe and get my balance and reach for Trina all at the same time. I kicked a red plastic horseshoe across the night-darkened grass, swore, and located the wavy image of Levi a few feet away from me, framed by the hole in the Rec Hall wall like some bizarre picture from a scary book.
“Forest is grabbing some stuff for us,” he said, but I wasn’t interested in listening.
“Take me back,” I demanded. “Trina was calling for me. She wanted to say something.”
He just stood there looking at me. You can’t go back, his expression said. That girl and that life are gone forever.
My stomach lurched. I doubled over, vomited, coughed a bunch, then went to my knees. Everything whirled in big, gutflipping circles. Levi came close to me, but he didn’t touch me, just like he had promised my grandmother. “I’m sorry,” I heard him saying. “Some people get sick when they touch the other side.”
Time lost all meaning to me as I fought not to puke again and tried not to pass out. My strength left me, and I shook like a scared kid. Seconds and minutes went by, and each one felt like an hour. I couldn’t stand even after I got my breath back. I felt too sad and too heavy, so I stayed on my knees and stared into the grass and dirt of the big field behind the Rec Hall.
“What are you?” I asked Levi, not expecting an answer. “A shade, like my grandfather?”
He sighed. “I’m not a shade. I died and went to the other side like he did, but all of me came back.”
If he hadn’t sounded so honest, if I hadn’t also seen the shade of a dead serial killer walking around and a tree with an eyeball and the ghosts of my grandmothers, I would have thought he was lying.
“You’re not, like, a vampire or anything, are you?” I looked up at him. “Undead, or some stupid crap like that?”
He shook his head. “Flesh and blood, and I like pizza better than burgers. Can’t really eat Slim Jims and peanuts, though. They remind me of the night I died.”
“How did it happen?” “I got murdered. The guy who killed me tried to burn my body, but my grandmother fetched my spirit back from the other side and pulled me out.” He touched the tears under his eyes. “But I got scars here that look like blood, and now I can do stuff like Imogene can. We don’t know why.”
I thought about the way Levi had changed back at the hospital when he got mad. The weird stuff on the walls. The way he had healed me. The way my handcuffs had melted. Levi came back from the dead with way more than a few bloody teardrop scars.
“So.” I tried to focus. “You’re alive. And so is Forest, and so is your grandmother. Right?”
Levi nodded.
“Can you die again?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We can all die. Me and Forest and you, too. As for Imogene, I used to think she couldn’t die, but she’s ... fading. Getting weaker every day, so I think maybe she can die. I don’t think she’s strong enough to bring us back if we get killed. It’s because she’s getting weak that bad things are happening. She’s all that holds back the really crazy stuff trying to get out of Lincoln Psychiatric.”
“What is she?” I shut my eyes for a second, trying not to think about what could be crazier than the things I’d already seen. “Who gave her the job she’s doing?”
“Imogene’s actually my great-great-great-grandmother, or something like that.” Levi shrugged. “She took me in when my parents got killed in a car wreck. As for who set her to guarding Lincoln—God, I guess. Maybe the devil. I don’t know. She always tells me she was born doing what she does.”
“But you didn’t get your, um, abilities until after you ...”
“Died and got brought back. Yeah.” He looked sad for a few seconds, and it made me wonder what he’d been like before he got killed. “Imogene says that when you have skills, you’re supposed to use them.” He gestured in the direction of the hospital. “If you don’t do what you’re meant to do, then you got a good chance of ending up in a place like Lincoln.”
Something in his tone gave me a case of deep shivers, and I asked my next question quickly, before I could chicken out. “Are we going to die tonight, Levi?”
He thought for a time, then shrugged again. “Maybe. I don’t have psychic skills. You backing out?”
“No,” I told him, more sure than I had ever been before. “I’m in.”
“You okay?” Forest asked me a few minutes later, when she got back from wherever she’d gone.
I managed to nod, even though I didn’t want to. “I just need to know more about what’s going on. What’s that you said about a witch tree?” I asked Levi.
“I read
about them in Imogene’s records,” Levi said. “She’s seen a couple. Sometimes folks do blood rituals, and they store up the bad energy in trees and call them vessels.”
“So, bad energy, bad tree?” I glanced at him, but it didn’t seem like he was planning to say anything else.
Levi didn’t say more, but when Forest looked at him, he said, “I think your grandfather’s even older than Imogene. Like, way older. From back when people made sacrifices to trees all the time. His vessel must have liked children.”
I closed my eyes. “Like the evil tree in the Sleepy Hollow movie?”
“Yeah,” Levi said. “Like that.”
My brain flashed to that Tim Burton movie, to a scene with a writhing, screaming tree trunk full of skulls and blood. “Great.”
“I think your grandfather and his tree were waiting for your grandmother Betty to die,” Forest said. “They were afraid of her. So, now that she’s gone, the tree is—”
“Hungry.” I got to my feet and straightened to my full height. “So how do we kill it?”
“I don’t know.” Forest gave me an apologetic look as she held out a wooden handle toward me. “Levi and Imogene can’t even sense it, and when Imogene crossed your grandfather over before, the tree wasn’t there. It must have been hiding.”
My eyes fixed on the handle, and I took a shiny, brand-new ax from her. Still had a tag from the twenty-four-hour box store where she bought it. She had one, too, and so did Levi.
I guess this made it official. I was about to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps and add “deranged ax murderer” to the list of labels stamped on my soul. Without intending to, I shifted the ax in my grip and tested its heft and balance. It felt scarily natural.
My eyes drifted toward the Rec Hall and the entrance to the tunnels, and to the crisscrossed yellow police tape that reminded me of who and what I was. “So we try to chop up the witch tree. But what about my grandfather?”
“He might die when the tree does,” Levi said. “Or get weak. I’ll grab his spirit and cross it over.”