Suddenly Psychic: Glimmer Lake Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “Sage.” Val put down a book she’d picked up from the library. “I’m pretty sure we need sage.”

  “Are we going to cook his spirit out of the house?”

  “No, for burning.” Val turned the book around. “It’s called smudging. I’ve read about it in a couple of different places now. I think we definitely need sage.”

  Monica said, “I read about the sage thing too.”

  “Is it the same sage you use for cooking?” Robin asked.

  “If it is,” Monica said, “I’ve got a whole bunch of that. I dried it from the garden this summer.”

  “I think it’s different.” Val looked at the book again. “I’ll keep reading.”

  “I feel like salt keeps coming up too.” Robin stood and stretched her back. “Is anyone else reading a lot about salt?”

  “Yes,” Monica said. “Salt in doorways and windows. But that’s supposed to keep ghosts out I think, and we already have one in.”

  “Josh got Andy one of those salt guns last summer,” Val said. “Maybe that would work. We could shoot the ghost out.”

  “Salt gun?” Monica frowned. “What—?”

  “It’s for bugs. The boys think it’s hilarious. They shoot mosquitoes, flies—”

  “With salt?”

  Val shrugged. “I mean, is it any worse than those electric zappers?”

  “Look at this.” Robin held out her phone. “Apparently, amethyst will dispel negative energy. Do you guys have any amethyst jewelry?”

  “Do we really believe in crystals now?” Val asked. “Are we those people? Are we going to start putting crystal eggs in our vaginas next?”

  “Good Lord!” Robin stared at Val. “Do people do that? Why?”

  “I have no idea, but it seems like the same people who put crystal eggs in their hoo-has might be the same people who wear amethysts to dispel negative energy.”

  “So we’re judging folk wisdom about gemstones now?” Monica just looked at her. “How’s your headache from the last telepathic vision, Val? You need any more aspirin?”

  “Fine, point taken. Apparently we are the people who believe in crystals.” Val muttered, “I’m not putting anything in my vagina though.”

  Robin said, “Considering how tense you’ve been, I’d say that’s pretty obvious.”

  Monica snorted.

  Val looked up with a smile. “Yeah, but you and Mark seemed to have made up, so I can’t say the same to you.”

  “Thank God,” Monica said. “You are so much more relaxed.”

  “No comment.” Robin glanced at Val, then at Monica. “You know who I’ve been thinking we should bring in on this?”

  “Who?” Monica asked.

  “Sully.” Robin didn’t miss the look of alarm on Val’s face. “Don’t you think he’d be helpful?”

  Monica immediately picked up what Robin was doing. “You know, maybe. I don’t think he’d be as skeptical as he seems.”

  “Both of you shut the fuck up. I know what you’re trying to pull,” Val muttered. “Just stop.”

  “What we’re trying to pull?” Monica batted her eyes at Val. “What would that be?”

  Val slammed her book down. “Okay, we had one… thing. A few months ago.”

  “I knew it!” Monica said.

  “And you didn’t tell us?” Robin asked. “What the heck, Val?”

  “It didn’t go well, and we’re just trying to forget about it, okay?”

  “I don’t sense things being forgotten.” Robin’s eyes went wide. “Monica, you’re Catholic!”

  “Uh, yeah. Have been for years. What does that have to do with Val and Sully?”

  “Nothing, but that means you know priests!”

  “I know a priest. Father Frank.”

  Val narrowed her eyes. “Neither Sully nor I are Catholic. What does that have to do—”

  “I’m not talking about your love life anymore,” Robin said. “I’m thinking about priests.”

  Neither Monica nor Val said anything.

  “You know, priests who can do exorcisms.”

  “Uh, Robin, I don’t really think Father Frank is trained in exorcism or anything. I mean, he doesn’t even teach the catechism all that well. Gil was the one who had to help the boys with—”

  “But maybe he knows other priests who do exorcisms.”

  Monica rolled her eyes. “Dude, do you think exorcism is covered in Being a Priest 101? I don’t think they really deal with that much. Also, that’s for people who are possessed, not weird, murdery grandparent ghosts.” She winced. “No offense.”

  “I’m over it.”

  Val said, “You know what I think?”

  “That you need to bone Sully?”

  “Are you twelve, Robin?” Val glared at her. “Just forget I said anything!”

  Monica was biting her lip, clearly trying not to laugh.

  Robin cleared her throat. “You were saying?”

  “I think” —Val shot her a dirty look— “there are two people in this house who’ve probably run into more spirits and ghosts and all sorts of weird things than any of us ever have.”

  Monica frowned. “The… kids?”

  “Teenagers are hormonal, not possessed,” Robin said. “Not that it doesn’t feel like the same thing sometimes.”

  “The nurses,” Val said. “Think about it.”

  “Oh, that makes sense. They’re hospice nurses.” Monica kept her voice low. “People die around them all the time.”

  Val cringed. “Wow, that sounds so bad.”

  “You know what I mean! If there are people who have been around spirits—”

  “I’d be willing to bet every single nurse you’ve ever met has a story or two,” Val said. “Didn’t they have one in the hospital in Bridger City with that ghost Robin saw there?”

  Monica asked, “Robin, what do you think?”

  “I don’t know.” She thought about sensible, kind, and thorough Lily. The last thing she wanted was to make her grandmother’s caretaker think she was nuts. Then again, they weren’t likely to spend that much time with her after Grandma Helen passed.

  “Sure,” she said. “Let’s ask Lily first.” Robin glanced at the clock. “It’s two now, she usually comes in at three.”

  “Okay.” Val nodded. “And I’m getting some sage.”

  “Grab the salt gun too,” Monica said. “Just in case.”

  Chapter 27

  Lily frowned. “Are you asking me if there are ghosts in the house?” She looked between Val, Monica, and Robin. “I mean… I’m your grandmother’s nurse. I don’t—”

  “I know it sounds completely bizarre,” Robin said. “Just… I’m so sorry. Forget we asked.”

  Lily kept her voice soft. “I was going to say I don’t usually encounter spirits of the deceased until after they are, in fact, deceased. Your grandmother is not.”

  The library was dead silent for a few awkward minutes.

  “So you don’t think we’re nuts?” Val asked.

  “Not at all,” Lily said. “I think anyone who’s worked in palliative care has at least one or two stories about spirits of the recently deceased doing strange or unexpected things. It’s not uncommon. I had a patient a few months ago who showed up in her sister’s room shortly after she passed; then her prized flock of chickens all went insane for about a half an hour, squawking and making a horrible racket even though it was the middle of the night.” Lily shrugged. “There’s a lot about the world we don’t really understand. I accept that.”

  Monica put her head on her folded hands. “We thought for sure you were going to think we were the crazy granddaughters.”

  Lily frowned. “Are you all granddaughters to Helen?”

  “Not technically,” Robin said. “But she was a big part of all our lives. And thank you for not thinking we’re crazy. I guess you could say that we recently went through some fairly big life changes that we weren’t expecting.”

  Lily nodded. “Menopause can surprise anyone. I kn
ow when I was going through the change—”

  “Not exactly menopause,” Robin said. “Though I’m definitely sweating more at night, so that’s probably coming too.”

  “Don’t forget the chin hairs.”

  “I found three yesterday!” Val huffed out a breath. “What is that about?”

  “No one understands chin hairs,” Monica said. “I feel like I’m always finding new ones.” She turned back to Lily. “But we’re not talking about hormones. We’re talking about being a little bit psychic for the past couple of months.”

  “A little bit” —Lily’s eyebrows rose sky-high— “sorry, did you say psychic?”

  “Just for the past couple of months,” Robin said. “And regarding what you were saying before, it’s not Grandma’s spirit we’re worried about. It’s my grandfather’s.”

  Lily looked even more confused. “Did he pass recently?”

  “No, it was about thirty-five years ago.”

  “Wow, okay.” Lily cocked her head. “Um… I guess I did notice that she has no pictures of him in her room. No mementos that look like they belong to a man. She doesn’t even wear a wedding band.”

  “She told us years ago that she lost it,” Robin said. “We never questioned her. It wasn’t a happy marriage.”

  “But you think he’s still…” Lily’s gaze moved around the room. “…hanging around?”

  Val took a deep breath. “Gordon Russell was known to be kind of controlling.”

  Understatement of the decade. Robin said, “We’ve removed most of his things from the house and they’re in storage now, but the third floor and the attic are still kind of… cold.”

  Monica said simply, “There’s something not right.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lily nodded. “And you think it’s his ghost?”

  “Is that” —Val narrowed her eyes— “too weird?”

  Lily opened her mouth. Closed it. “I don’t know. I guess not. Something other than biology animates us, I know that. I’ve seen too many cases where even when a person is still living, I can touch them and know that they’re already gone. Many people in comas or vegetative states are like that. But others aren’t. And I don’t know how to explain the difference, but I can always tell.”

  Robin asked, “Is Helen—?”

  “She’s still here.” Lily’s smile was sweet. “She became much more content when all the children and grandchildren arrived. She loves your father especially. She’s tired. I can feel that. But she’s working through things in her mind. That’s why she’s in and out so much.”

  Monica raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you might have a little bit of the slight psychic-ness we’re talking about.”

  Lily shrugged. “I’d call it intuition. I don’t really look much past that. I’m sensitive to my patients. It’s part of what allows me to help them and their families during this transition.”

  “Okay,” Val said. “So I guess what we’re asking is, what would you do if you felt like someone’s spirit… wasn’t very excited about moving on?”

  “You want my advice on how to banish a ghost?”

  “Yes,” Robin said. “I know it doesn’t exactly fall within your job description, but that is exactly what we’re asking for help with.”

  Lily looked thoughtful. “You know… I actually do have an idea.”

  * * *

  “Do you really think this is going to work?” Mark asked under his breath.

  “I have no idea, but Lily said it’s worked for her in the past, so who knows?”

  Mark nodded and closed the door to the attic, pouring the salt in a thick line at the baseboard. “Okay, so Monica and Val are already up here?”

  Robin shivered. “Yeah. Sheesh, it’s cold.”

  Monica peeked her head over the railing as they climbed the steps. “That’s because we opened the window. It’s not just the ghost.” She looked at Mark. “You brought it?”

  Mark took the knife Gordon had used to kill Billy Grimmer from his jacket pocket. “Yeah. I’m not gonna lie, I felt weird stuffing a knife I know was used to kill someone under the seat of my truck.”

  Val said, “It’s not exactly like you’re hiding evidence of a crime or anything. Everyone involved in it has been dead for decades; it’s barely even a cold case.”

  They reached the top of the stairs, and Robin wrapped her sweater around herself. It was midnight and the attic was freezing. Freezing and dark. Everyone in the house—save for the nursing staff and Uncle Raymond, who was sitting with Grandma Helen—was sleeping.

  Val and Monica had uncovered the table and placed four chairs around it. They’d lit white candles and placed them around the room. The air smelled like frost and pine. The earthy smell had dissipated, but it wasn’t entirely gone.

  “You know what I was thinking about the other day?” Monica asked. “Gordon killed Billy Grimmer and nothing happened to him. Seriously. Not legally. Not personally. Not even karma caught up with him. It’s kind of depressing. He killed a man and married the woman that guy loved. He got to have a successful business and a family and everything.”

  “He died young,” Mark said. “I guess there’s that.”

  “Sixty-five isn’t that young,” Val said.

  “It’s not that old either,” Robin said. “Think about it. That’s only twenty years from now.”

  Val made a face. “Good point. Sixty-five is very young.”

  “Did he have any friends?” Monica asked. “There’s all sorts of stuff in town named for the Russells.”

  “No, he just gave people lots of money,” Robin said.

  “Maybe it was penance,” Mark said. “Maybe deep down he knew he was living another man’s life and it was a life he’d killed for.” His eyes lit on the yellow plastic gun on the table. “Ooh, is that a salt gun?”

  Robin felt something move in the room, but she couldn’t tell if it was supernatural or a gust of wind from the open window.

  “Yeah, I brought it from the house,” Val said. “And I think I bought out the boxes of kosher salt at the market.”

  “I brought some holy water from the church.” Monica held up a water bottle. “Just in case.”

  Mark looked around the room. “Okay, so I salted the door, and you got the corners of the room, right? But not the window?”

  “No, we want to give him some place to leave,” Val said. “So we’re hoping that Lily’s advice and then the sage will do the trick.”

  “Okay.” Robin grabbed her sketchbook and sat at the table. “Are we ready to try this?”

  Monica, Val, and Mark all nodded. They sat around the table. Mark placed the knife on the table; Val had the salt gun. Monica had her holy water, a rosary, and was lighting the white candles in the center of the table. They’d gathered a few pictures of Gordon Russell from the newspaper and found a few lying around the house. They were sitting in the center of the table with the candles.

  Robin began to draw. She’d refreshed her memory with the pictures, but she tried to draw more than that. She started out with a rough outline of the hard man she’d known, but that gradually morphed as she filled in the drawing. The eyes were unlined. The hair was dark and parted in a severe style.

  A twisting feeling turned in her belly as she sketched. The image on the page became clearer, and she concentrated on the memory of a young girl wandering into the library long past her bedtime.

  “You should be in bed, Robin Marie.”

  Robin looked up. She blinked. Her memory of the old man in the library overlapped with the image of the man standing near the window.

  “You should be in bed.” Gordon Russell’s ghost turned toward her, arms crossed over his chest, a severe frown set between his eyes. “Just what do you think you’re doing in the library?”

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” Robin said quietly. Her heart raced, and she felt the darkness swallow her voice. She forced the words past her frozen lips. “It’s not the library. I’m not ten anymore. And you’re not supposed to
be here, Grandfather Russell.”

  He towered over her, glowering. “I think you forget who you’re speaking to, young lady.”

  “Robin.” Mark put his hand on her shoulder. “What are you seeing?”

  “He’s here.” Something pressed against her chest. He didn’t want her to speak.

  Children should be seen and not heard.

  “Back to bed, young lady.” The scowl on his face never wavered.

  Robin felt like she was a child again, punished for sneaking down to the library past her bedtime to look for the next Narnia book. She didn’t have the books at home, but Grandma Russell had them. She’d even painted a picture of Aslan for Robin’s room.

  “Robin?” Mark squeezed her shoulder. “Talk to me.”

  “She can see him.” Val was speaking. “Robin, remember what you’re supposed to do.”

  Grandfather Russell never wavered, not even for a minute. “Do I need to get your mother?”

  No, not her mother. Mom didn’t have any patience for Robin, and she’d do exactly as her father wanted. Robin always knew that. If it was a question of taking Grandfather Russell’s side or Robin’s, her mom would always stand with her grandfather.

  “Robin, he’s dead.” Monica’s hand was in hers. “Remember that. He’s dead. He is not here. He cannot hurt you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Grandfather Russell scoffed. “I’m too busy for this nonsense.” He started to walk back to the corner, into the shadows.

  “NO.” Robin gripped her pencil in one hand and cleared her eyes. “You are the one who doesn’t belong here.”

  Her grandfather turned. “Mind your manners, Robin Marie.”

  Robin stood and walked to her grandfather. He wasn’t as tall as she remembered. To a child, the domineering man had seemed like a giant.

  “You don’t belong here,” she said again. “You need to leave.”

  Gordon lifted his chin defiantly. “This is my house.”

  “Not anymore.” The weight on her chest lifted, and the choked feeling left her throat. “This is Helen’s house. You need to go away.”

  Robin felt Val and Monica flank her on either side. Mark stood behind her.