Ghost Girl

by Torey Hayden

  Hugh and I got along far better when we only saw one another every few weeks. The arguments and agitations that had marred our relationship previously never arose during these short visits. We had the best of one another and made the most of it.

  I spent the break in complete contrast to my normal habits. Hugh loved the honky-tonk bars down near the stockyards on the southern fringe of the city. He could play a pretty mean bit of guitar himself and enjoyed the smoky, crowded rooms and the country-western music. So we went bar-hopping every evening, staying well into the wee hours of the morning. The snow and the holiday had thinned the crowds, but there were still plenty of people left making good music and the dance floor was roomier.

  I had desperately needed such a change, and it wasn’t until early Sunday afternoon that my thoughts strayed back in the direction of Jadie and Pecking. Hugh and I had stayed out outrageously late the previous night and hadn’t gotten up until after eleven. We’d then made muffins and bacon and taken these, along with a jug of orange juice, into the living room, where he sprawled across the couch and I across the floor, both absorbed in the Sunday papers. The sun had finally put in an appearance, and it shone brightly through the French windows, making the whole room pleasantly hot.

  I’d already read the papers once and was lolling in the sun, browsing through the advertisements, when for no particular reason Jadie came to mind. “Is that occult bookstore open today?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I suppose so. Why?”

  “Do you think we could go down there before I have to leave? I’d like another look around.”

  “Still pursuing that issue, are you?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sort of, I guess. I was thinking I’d like to talk to that girl again. You know. The witch.”

  “Hey, Brenda!” Hugh shouted as we came through the doorway of the bookstore. There were two or three other people amidst the crowded shelves in the tiny shop, and they all turned to see what the commotion was about.

  “Hi, you guys,” Brenda said cheerfully when she saw us. “How’d you like your books? Do the trick for you? Back for more?”

  “Yes, they were okay. Pretty interesting,” I said, then paused a moment, “but what I was really wondering was if I could have a quick word with you. I had something happen to me the other day; and I’ve been curious about it ever since. I was hoping maybe you could tell me if you’d ever heard of such a thing in connection with the occult.”

  “Yeah?” she asked, her eyes lighting up with interest.

  “I mean, it might not be. It might very well be someone just acting silly, but … well, I’m still kind of interested in this occult business, and I was just wondering …”

  I turned my head to see if the other customers had left yet. Hugh was browsing through the section on New Age material, but there was someone else around the corner still.

  Brenda sensed my reluctance to talk there, in front of everyone. She jerked her head toward a curtained-off area behind the cash register. “Come back here,” she said. “I can still hear from here, if anyone wants anything.”

  The place was narrow, no more than a walk-in closet, with a teapot, a couple of stools, and what appeared to be account books. It was heavy with the musty scent of sage tea.

  Brenda pulled over one of the stools for herself and pushed the other in my direction. “Yeah, so what’s going on?” she asked.

  “I gave someone a doll,” I said. “The doll does look somewhat like me. Certainly, the person concerned has used it to represent me, and I guess I did encourage that. It’s a child we’re talking about; she’s got emotional problems, and I thought she’d be able to deal with them better if she had something to symbolize the stability of our relationship.”

  “Yeah?” said Brenda, curiosity brightening her expression. She leaned forward on her stool, putting her elbows on her knees.

  “The other night after work, I went out to my car to go home. It had been snowing heavily, and the tires started spinning when I tried to back out of my parking space, so I had to dig it out some. As I was coming around to shovel out the front tire on the passenger’s side, I found this doll I’d given to the little girl. It had been placed right under the tire, like so,” I gestured, “so that when I backed the car out of my parking space, I would run directly over its head and break it.”

  Brenda’s eyes widened, the pupils expanding.

  “Now, I’m not exaggerating when I say this girl has emotional problems. She does, and I suppose the logical conclusion is that she put the doll there herself. Certainly, I feel positive it was placed there and hadn’t fallen accidentally into that position, if for no other reason than that the snow would have kept it from rolling. But I guess what I’m wondering is if there might be an occult connection to all this. I’m wondering if perhaps someone else beyond this girl might be involved.”

  “I haven’t heard of people doing that precisely, but I know what they’re up to.”

  “What?”

  Brenda paused and studied my face a long moment before continuing. “I’m not sure you’re going to want me to say this. I mean, like, I don’t even know you and I don’t know what you’re into.”

  “I’m not really into any of this on purpose, but if there is a definite satanic connection here, it would be very helpful for me to know.”

  “They’re not wishing you well,” Brenda said cautiously.

  “I gathered that much myself. But is this satanic?”

  “I don’t know for sure who’s doing it to you, but I do know what it is: black magic.” A pause. Brenda scratched her head, then dropped her hands between her knees. Several moments passed, as she contemplated them. “See, I’m not really in that scene,” she said at last. “Mine’s white magic. I just want sort of to be one with the Mother Goddess and that kind of thing, you know? To be in tune with the earth. With the natural spirits. I don’t mess with any of the black stuff.”

  “But it is definitely black magic? You know that? What kind? What does this mean?”

  Brenda took a deep breath. “Well, see, they … them … well, in doing black magic … they’re usually doing it for power. Power to get the things they want. Power to influence people. Power over their enemies. And part of getting the power means having to call up the forces of darkness. See, that’s how we’re different. In white magic, you never call upon the forces of darkness.”

  For a brief moment, I pulled myself back from this conversation and the absurdity of it struck me. Here I was, in some decrepit back room, having an earnest conversation with a witch over magic. Me? What immediately followed was the depressing realization that I wasn’t dreaming. This was real life and I couldn’t get out of it.

  “In doing black magic, they’re going to make sacrifices. That’s all part of calling the dark forces, and if … well, if they have an enemy they want to get rid of, especially if the enemy is strong and has a lot of power, they’re going to have to do a lot of magicking. They’re going to need to make a sacrifice to get help …” Brenda’s voice faded and again she contemplated her hands. “There’s this thing, see, about sacrifices,” she said, her voice quiet. “A willing one gives you a lot more power than an unwilling one.”

  “You’re saying this is sort of like a voodoo doll, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  I smiled reassuringly, because I could see she was uncomfortable telling me I was a victim of this kind of activity. “I think I’d already sussed that out, and it doesn’t really bother me. It’s not very nice to think about, but I don’t believe in that stuff. They can’t really frighten me with it.”

  A pause.

  “There is one thing that bugs me, however,” I said, “one thing I can’t figure out. And that’s the fact that the doll was placed with its head under the tire and its body back under the car. In ordinary circumstances, I would never have discovered it was there. It was only by chance that there was enough snow during the day for my car to get stuck. In any other instance, I would
have simply driven away, smashing over the doll and being none the wiser for having done so. Was that just lack of sophistication, placing it there? Had someone just made a mistake? Because if they were trying to warn me off or frighten me, it would have made more sense to put the doll somewhere that I would have been sure to see it. The way it happened seems pointless to me.”

  “I don’t think they were trying to scare you,” Brenda replied. “Like, I suspect the doll was deliberately hidden. This is black magic, not just some game. The point of it was to get you to destroy the doll, which you wouldn’t have done, if you’d known it was there.”

  “But why?”

  “The doll’s in your image, isn’t it? If you destroy your own totem, you’re destroying yourself. They will have put a very powerful spell on that doll. To invoke a willing sacrifice. They want you to commit suicide.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The drive back to Pecking on Sunday evening was a depressing one for me. I hadn’t been totally honest with Brenda when I’d said I wasn’t frightened by what had happened. I was. It was an insidious, creeping sort of fear, oozing into unoccupied corners of my mind; whenever I stopped actively thinking, I became aware of it. Four hours alone in the car made keeping it at bay hard work.

  Did I believe in this kind of stuff? Might it be true? I could hardly ignore the fact of June Harriman’s suicide the previous year, and, while there was in all likelihood no connection, it still made a chilling backdrop to the implications of the ruined doll. What I couldn’t deny was the fact that a turning point had come for me. I could have accepted that Jadie had put the doll there; if she denied it, I could have even accepted that, knowing that if she was suffering from a multiple personality disorder, she might genuinely not remember having done it. What I couldn’t accept was the obscure placement of the doll under the tire. It implied someone else. Even if Jadie had put it there herself, it implied someone else’s instructions.

  Over and over and over I pondered the various points of the case. It occurred to me that what I’d like to do was just keep driving, to go past Falls River, past Pecking, and on along the freeway to someplace different, someplace new. I had visions of reaching New Mexico, if I kept going long enough, emerging from the winter darkness into sunshine and heat.

  Monday morning I took the blond-haired Sasha doll into school and carefully laid it out on one of the benches in the cloakroom. Jeremiah, the first to arrive, shrieked when he saw it.

  “Wowie! Lady, come look at this!” he called from the cloakroom. “Some boog’s come in here and fucked up one of your dollies. Come here, quick!”

  “I know about it already, Jeremiah,” I called back from the classroom.

  The other children arrived then, clattering into the cloakroom with their schoolbags and lunch-boxes.

  “It was you!” I heard Jeremiah say. “It was that girl!” He came running out to me in the classroom. “It’s that boogy girl in there. You just ask her. She done it. You let her have that nice doll of yours, and just look what she done to it. Boy, bet you’re sorry now. Bet you’re never gonna let her have something nice again, huh? And it’s gonna serve her right.”

  “Jeremiah, calm down.”

  “Man, lady,” he said and leaned close to me, his eyes round, “what you gonna do to her?”

  Reuben and Philip emerged from the cloakroom, their eyes huge with the drama of it all. Then out rolled Brucie, oblivious, as usual. But no Jadie.

  “Time for morning discussion,” I called. “Come on, everybody.”

  Still no Jadie.

  “Coulda told you not to give her nothing. Coulda told you that girl’s no good. Bet she’s gonna say she didn’t do it. Fucks up your doll and bet she thinks you’re gonna believe her little pussy face, when she says she didn’t do it.”

  “Jeremiah, please.” I turned him physically around and pushed him gently toward the reading area, where we held morning discussion. Then I stalked to the cloakroom door. “Jadie? Come on, now.”

  Jadie wasn’t in there. The doll remained, but the room was empty.

  “Jadie?” I went into the cloakroom, then to the hallway door. I stuck my head out. No Jadie.

  I returned to the classroom. “Was she here? Did you actually see her, Jeremiah?”

  “Yeah, sure she was here. But when she seen what she done, she got the fuck outa here.”

  I held off morning discussion as long as I could, hoping Jadie would venture back, but she never did. At recess I went down to Alice’s room to see if Amber was there. Sure enough she was, but there was no sign of her sister. Had Jadie come to school this morning? I asked Amber. Yes, she apparently had. When lunchtime came and she was still missing, I reluctantly had to admit the need to call her home and let her mother know I’d somehow lost Jadie.

  “Jadie’s not there?” her mother said over the phone. “Well, no, she’s home. Didn’t she tell you? She got feeling sick, said she puked in the school toilets, so she came home. Didn’t she say nothing to you first?”

  I hung up the phone in dismay.

  “I didn’t do it.”

  Startled by the unexpected voice, I jumped. There, in the classroom door, stood Jadie. She wore no outer clothes whatsoever, only a saggy, well-washed jogsuit and bedroom slippers.

  “Does your mom know you’re here?”

  “I didn’t do it. I didn’t hurt that doll. Cross my heart.”

  I closed my plan book. “No, I know you didn’t. I did. Because I didn’t see it there in the snow.”

  Closing the classroom door gently behind her, Jadie crossed the room to stand on the opposite side of the table.

  “But I think you know how it got there. And why.”

  Jadie’s mouth drew down, her face puckered with tears.

  I sat, watching her. “So, what’re we going to do about it?”

  Jadie began to cry.

  Rising from the table, I went into the cloakroom and picked up the doll. Then I returned to the classroom. Holding it out, I looked at it. “Well, what I think we ought to do is try to make it better.”

  Laying the doll on the counter beside the sink, I began to remove its soiled clothing. “It’s only the head that’s been damaged,” I said. “There was a lot of snow and I think that acted as padding. I expect we could send her off to a doll hospital to be fixed.”

  Jadie, who had come back to stand beside me, watched my activities intently.

  “Let’s wash her off. You get the bottle of dishwashing liquid from under the sink. The dirt makes her look much worse than I think she is.” I put the plug into the sink and began to fill it with warm water.

  For several moments, Jadie, still tearful, made no effort to retrieve the bottle of liquid detergent. Then, hesitantly, she knelt and opened the cupboard door.

  “When things go wrong,” I said, “we try to make them better. Sometimes we can. Sometimes we can’t. But trying gives us control over them, even if we fail.”

  I scrubbed the doll and then lifted it from the water. Strangely, it looked even more damaged clean than it had dirty. The broken face stood out in stark contrast to the smooth curves of its body.

  Jadie leaned against the counter and watched as I took an old towel out and started to dry the doll. Cautiously, she reached a hand up and with one finger gently stroked the doll’s arm.

  “If I tell,” she said, her voice soft, “will the policemen look for Tashee?”

  I glanced over.

  “Will they try and find her?”

  “Do you want them to?” I asked.

  “I always tried to take care of her. She wasn’t as big as me. She was my age, but she was little. I tried to help her best I could …”

  I continued drying the doll, running the soft fabric of the towel over the smooth limbs.

  “Would they believe me?” Jadie asked.

  “We won’t know if we don’t try.”

  Jadie looked up. “Would you stay with me? If I told? If I did it now?”

  I nodded. “Of c
ourse, I would. Shall we go talk to Mr. Tinbergen?”

  Jadie took in a deep breath and then, at last, she nodded. “Okay.”

  Once again. The Story. Jadie wouldn’t tell it. The moment we reached Mr. Tinbergen’s office, she went stone silent, her head down protectively between her hunched shoulders, so I recounted all the private moments that had passed between us. Sitting on the hard plastic chairs, bathed in the bright fluorescent lights of Mr. Tinbergen’s office, I reconstructed the world of the cloakroom.

  Mr. Tinbergen’s expression grew stricken as I talked. He paled. His eyes left my face, to wander restlessly around the perimeter of the room. He never looked me in the eye again that afternoon.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, when I’d finished. His voice harbored a plaintive note I hadn’t anticipated. Then again, he cast around the room, as if searching for something familiar he couldn’t find. “I think I’m a little out of my depth on this one,” he murmured. “We’re going to need some help. This isn’t a decision I’ll want to make by myself.”

  I glanced at Jadie, beside me. Hunched down, doubled over, she had the constricted rigidity of a cerebral-palsied person, her limbs pulled back against her, her fingers twisted in to grip the material of her clothes. Her head was so far down, I couldn’t see her face, but I didn’t need to see it to know her mouth was clamped shut.

  “You’re sure about this?” Mr. Tinbergen queried, looking at Jadie. “You’re sure she knows what she’s talking about?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to need help.”

  The first person Mr. Tinbergen called was Arkie in Falls River. Would she come down? Right now? he asked. After concluding the call, he paused a moment, the end of the receiver resting against his chin. Then he dialed Social Services. Explaining briefly that he had a case of suspected child abuse to report, he asked for a representative to come to the school.

  Since both people coming were in Falls River, this meant a half hour’s time lag before we could expect them to be in the office. I rose from my chair to go back to the classroom and get Jadie’s school file and my own notes. Did she want to come with me? I asked Jadie, but she remained silent and immobile on the red plastic chair. She couldn’t even manage a nod or a shake of the head.