Brimstone

by Rosemary Clement-Moore

  Gran bustled into the kitchen, carrying a load of laundry. “I want to hear this. Since it’s the only way I’ll know what my granddaughter is up to.”

  Sighing, I took a chocolate chip cookie for fortification. While Gran folded towels and Justin made notes, I told him about my frustratingly vague dream, and the unease I couldn’t shake. I described the strange awkwardness of Karen’s fall, and the smell I might have just imagined. I related her glimpse of a shadow moving over the water. When I finished describing my impromptu detective work, they both stared at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m just stunned,” said Justin. “Because yesterday you seemed very, um, resistant to the idea that you might have some extrasensory perception. And now you’re tracking down a ghost.”

  “First of all, I don’t have ESP. I don’t bend spoons or see dead people, or any of that freaky stuff. I just have good intuition.” From the corner of my eye I saw Gran roll hers, but she didn’t say anything. “Second, I’m not tracking a ghost. I’m investigating the possibility it might be a ghost.”

  He gave me a look I was starting to recognize. It meant he thought I was funny but didn’t want to piss me off by laughing. “Okay. Let’s be logical about this, then. What makes you think it’s a ghost?”

  “Well, the shadow, I guess.” The evidence seemed sparse, once I tried to lay it out. “And the spooge it leaves behind.”

  “Which we don’t know is related.” He wrote down “shadow” but not “spooge.” “It could be nothing more than a strange sort of mold or mildew.”

  I snapped, irritated at his skepticism. “You’re the Mulder here. I’m the Scully.”

  “I’m just helping you be objective.” He tapped his pen on the pad. “What else?”

  “The smell,” I said. “There’s that awful smell.”

  “Okay.” He jotted it down. “That’s good. What about a feeling of cold or dread?”

  “No cold. And I was faced with a bottomless well of dark water, so I wouldn’t have noticed any extra dread.”

  “A sense of another presence?”

  “Lots of people were around when Karen fell.” I thought a moment. “But I did have a weird feeling later, when I went back.”

  “You can’t be more specific?”

  I raised my hands in a shrug. “It’s not like telling if the lights are on or off. It’s ambiguous. I was nervous about getting caught.”

  Again the pen tapped, an aggravated rhythm. “Your perceptions aren’t a lot of help.”

  “Sorry. Next time I’ll bring my spectrometer.”

  Gran spoke up, preventing an argument. “What about history? Has there ever been another incident or accident in the pool, or even the gym?”

  “I didn’t find anything in the school newspaper about the pool, but the online records only go back five years. I’m going to check the city paper archives tonight, and the microfiche at the library tomorrow.”

  “Good plan.” Justin closed his notebook and started gathering his books. “Strange that those other girls were able to dive without anything happening. Karen must have been the unlucky number.”

  I must have reacted to that, because he looked at me closely. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. Gran had taken the plates to the kitchen a few feet away.

  His expression said I hadn’t fooled him, but he let it go. He said his polite good-byes to Gran and as she saw him to the door, I took our cups to the sink, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher. By the time I’d finished, Gran had returned. She put her arms around me and kissed my hair.

  “I am so proud of you.”

  “What for?”

  “For opening your mind to the possibility of things you cannot see with your eyes.”

  The praise embarrassed me, since I hadn’t so much flung wide my mind as cracked open the door with the safety chain still firmly in place. “It’s no big deal, Gran.”

  “It is a very big deal.” She cupped my face in her hands. “You have so much potential to do good things in the world. But you be careful. Listen to that intuition and be smart.”

  “Yes, Gran.” I hugged her back. “I will.”

  I told her I’d keep in touch, then grabbed my stuff and let myself out the front door. I wasn’t surprised to see Justin MacCallum still outside, leaning against the fender of my car and looking serious.

  “So, what happened?” he asked, in a tone that didn’t allow any arguments.

  “Karen switched places with me in line at the diving pool,” I said, giving in without a fight. “I’ve been convincing myself it was just random luck.”

  He thought for a moment, then said, “That’s probably all it was.” Another considering pause. “But …”

  I groaned. Was there any more ominous word in the English language?

  “But,” he continued, ignoring my drama, “you should keep your guard up. There’s a theory in science that the very act of observation can influence a situation. Once you start looking closely at something, it might start looking back at you.”

  Last night’s installment of the subconscious creepshow came slamming back into my brain so hard that I flinched. Justin didn’t need any ESP to interpret it.

  “Something looked back at you, didn’t it.” He didn’t bother to make it a question. “When? At the pool?”

  “Last night. I saw the fire again, but this time the smoke thing … It looked at me, just like you said.” I shook my head. “It was a dream, but it feels like it really happened.”

  “We should assume it did.”

  I liked that “we.” Justin had a steadiness that made me glad to have him on my side. “Maybe your vision was a warning, that the spirit has noticed you. Or maybe you met in some kind of dream plane. I don’t know.”

  I rubbed a hand over my eyes. I’d had a sort of buzzing in the back of my brain all day and the thought of wearing a supernatural bull’s-eye ratcheted it up to a head-splitting volume.

  Justin’s hand touched my shoulder. “You okay?” I shot him a what-do-you-think look, and he lifted his hands in surrender. “Stupid question. Sorry.”

  I sagged into the driver’s seat, half in, half out of the car. “Four days ago my life was simple. All I had to worry about was avoiding the prom and living through graduation.”

  He ignored my whining and cut to the heart of the matter. “What happened four days ago?”

  “I had the nightmare.” I ran my hand over the leather-wrapped steering wheel, the rough bumps and tears keeping me anchored, and away from the deep water of fear and supposition. “And something inside me … woke up.”

  “Woke up?”

  “That’s what it felt like. I hadn’t had a dream in years. At least not one I couldn’t ignore.” I sighed. “They ought to come with an instruction manual.”

  He didn’t give even a courtesy laugh. He was deep in thought. “Weird.”

  “That’s the understatement of the century.”

  “No, I mean, I wonder which woke first, the spirit or your visions?”

  What kind of ghost-hunter has to put the spirit world on hold while she finishes her homework?

  The outline for my English paper had been unfairly disapproved by my teacher. Jonathan Swift was over two hundred and fifty years dead, so unless Ms. Vincent had a direct pipeline to the afterlife, I couldn’t see a reason for her to call my well-annotated suppositions bunk. Then again, if she did have the ability to communicate with the dead, maybe she could actually be of some use to my current situation, which would definitely be a novelty for Ms. Vincent.

  An instant messenger window popped up while I was knee-deep in Lilliputians.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Where did you go after civics? You shot out of there before I could ask you about the English homework.

  I clicked over to the IM window and typed back:

  MightyQuinn: We have English homework?

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Five paragraph essay question on the last Act of Julius C.

  Might
yQuinn: :P I didn’t want to sleep tonight, anyway.

  We kept the chat window open while we worked, which probably wasn’t very efficient, but I felt less lonely in my room. The sound of my parents puttering around downstairs made the house seem normal and safe. Even the sheer mundane boredom of homework settled my nerves and made my fears seem a little foolish. When I finished my paragraphs on J.C., I was even able to pick up the book Justin had lent me and thumb through it with a certain detachment.

  It seemed weird that I hadn’t talked about all this with my closest friend. Despite the D&D thing, Lisa was a rock of unflappable logic. I’d never told her about the dreams I’d had as a kid, never talked about my intuition. I didn’t want her to think I was a flake. Even though I was beginning to admit that I was, quite possibly, exactly that.

  MightyQuinn: Hey Lisa … Hypothetical question.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: ?

  MightyQuinn: Do you believe in ghosts?

  There was a long pause. Maybe she was just analyzing Julius Caesar and not deleting my name from her address book or marking it: “Nutjob.”

  0v3rl0rdL15a: You mean cold spots in a room, or poltergeists, or what?

  MightyQuinn: I dunno. Either one.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Why do you want to know?

  MightyQuinn: I’m not going to publish it in the paper. It’s just a hypothetical question.

  Another long pause.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Do you?

  Put up or shut up time, I guess. I was surprised she hadn’t simply fired back a flippant reply. If she was entertaining an honest answer, I should offer a little trust.

  MightyQuinn: Yeah. I guess I do.

  What was with the pauses? Was she polishing her toenails between responses?

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Interesting.

  MightyQuinn: Is that all? Just “Interesting”?

  0v3rl0rdL15a: I’m just entering it into my mental files.

  MightyQuinn: Look. I’m reading about ghosts, and how many people believe in at least the possibility of a spiritual imprint of some kind. Maybe not stacking furniture or—

  I was out of window space, but not out of steam.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Chill. I’m teasing. Why are you reading a book about ghosts?

  MightyQuinn: There’s a guy.

  That was honest, at least.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Not Brian Kirkpatrick.

  MightyQuinn: No! O-O

  0v3rl0rdL15a: Good.

  MightyQuinn: B.K. is The Hotness, but he’s a Jock.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: So why’d you let him carry your books?

  MightyQuinn: He’s bigger than me, and I wasn’t getting them back without a fight.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: lol. Okay.

  I went back to work. My essay was proofread and my outline revised to Curriculum Conformity when a new window pinged open.

  0v3rl0rdL15a: I do believe in ghosts. Don’t tell anyone. It would destroy my frightening reputation.

  MightyQuinn: My lips are sealed.

  Now what was so hard about that?

  I had figured out this much about my dreams: If I wake with a sense of clarity, it was just random neuron firings, or my subconscious working out my fears or something. But if I wake with the dream still clinging to me, like I’d walked through a spiderweb and my brain was covered by sticky threads of night memory, it was more than that.

  I had been dreading sleep, but when I couldn’t resist my bed any longer, all I’d dreamed of was talking horses. Nightmare free was a wonderful feeling. I turned on the radio while I showered and dressed. I may have even danced around a little. When the rising sun warmed the gaps between my curtains, I flung them open to welcome the day.

  The filthiness of my bedroom window startled me. The morning light had to struggle through the murky glass. It was depressing and simply wrong somehow. True, I wasn’t the neatest person in the world, but the grime coating the window was just gross.

  I opened the study curtains, and had to squint against the light. Slowly I turned back to the bedroom and realized with a sinking feeling that one window was much dirtier than the other.

  Not dirty. Sooty.

  Leaden feet carried me to the window. With shaking hands I flipped open the latches and raised the sash, then ran my index finger through the greasy, powdery film that coated the outside glass, leaving a streak of sunshine in the grimy shadow.

  I drew my hand in and closed the window. Locked it. Then I got the little blacklight out of my backpack, went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  My fingertip glowed a bright, spectral blue.

  12

  i arrived at school early for the third morning in a row. I had searched the online city paper archives for any news from the high school. Except for budget cuts, there wasn’t much of suspicious malevolence. But there were sixty yearbooks in the school library, and a couple of decades of school newspapers archived as well. After my visitor last night, I was extremely motivated to get to the bottom of this.

  Was that why I hadn’t dreamed last night? Had the smoke specter decided to get a look at me in person?

  Balancing an armload of textbooks and a venti vanilla latte, extra shot, extra foam, I climbed the front steps, wondering why Brian Baywatch was nowhere around when I could actually use a hand. Then, as if the thought itself had conjured him, I saw him standing just inside the glass doors.

  He broke off from his friends and opened the door for me, an act of necessity rather than chivalry; my hands were completely full. The Jocks were not the only ones loitering around the foyer. There was a mixed bag of cheerleaders, band geeks, and drama nerds. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” Brian glanced toward his buddies, who were staring at him with a kind of astonished contempt. “Jessica called Brandon and told us to get over here.”

  The auditorium entrance was closed. I saw no sign of any of the Jessicas—I assumed Brian meant Prime—but I caught a glimpse of the prompter from backstage and beckoned him over. “Is something happening in there?”

  “I don’t know, man. I heard some dude over there say they may be canceling the play.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  The guy shrugged his slumped shoulders. “I don’t know. Sure would suck, though, after all that work.” He slouched off with one last “Dude” and a shake of his shaggy head.

  Visions of Phantom of the Opera filled my head as I left Brian and elbowed my way through the crowd. I had reached the front when the doors opened and the Three Original Jessicas emerged. Thespica was crying great inconsolable tears, supported by her friends, Jessicas Prime and Minor—their feud apparently forgotten in the crisis. They bore her limp and sobbing form toward the office.

  Brian caught my eye. I shrugged, as clueless as he was. Then his pack leader beckoned and they trailed after the girls. Brandon, the alpha dog, gave me one last, long stare. It was almost territorial, which, gladiatorial subtext aside, seemed to say he thought I was a threat to his pack.

  With a Nancy Drew determination to satisfy my curiosity, I ignored the closed doors and went into the auditorium.

  I expected scenic carnage. Maybe not a smashed chandelier, but the state of artistic chaos seemed the same as ever. The director’s hair was standing on end, as if he’d been trying to pull it out, but I think that was status quo.

  “Mr. Thomas?”

  He stared blankly for a moment before recognition dawned. “How did you get in here?”

  “Through the door. Look, everyone outside is saying you’re going to cancel the show tonight. I just wanted to get the real story.”

  A huge sigh rattled his chest. “I hope we won’t. The female lead, Jessica Jordan”—Thespica, obviously—“has come down with laryngitis. She can’t make a sound.”

  My brows shot up. “Really.”

  “Yes. No amount of tea and honey is going to fix that by tonight.”

  “What are you going to do?” I didn’t have to fake my concern. I’d been making fun of the drama nerds, but I knew how much wor
k they’d put into the project, how important it was to them. Even if I wasn’t sympathetic to Thespica (and I wasn’t, really), I felt bad for the rest of them.

  Then someone called from the stage. “She’s here, Mr. Thomas.” The choir teacher stood alongside a vaguely familiar, very nervous-looking, brown-haired girl.

  Mr. Thomas excused himself. “That’s the understudy. If she’s up to it, then we’ll open as planned.”

  He scurried down the aisle. I watched him talk earnestly to the girl, then gesture to the choir teacher, who went to the piano. Understudy Girl started to sing the chicks and ducks song, and though she lacked a fraction of Thespica’s confidence (and by that I mean rampant egotism), she had a pretty voice with nice inflection. It sounded like the day was saved, and the show would go on.

  All praise the Greek god Thespis.

  “It’s just like Phantom, isn’t it?” Emily Farber gushed, turned around in her desk to chatter at Lisa and me. It was English class and we were—big surprise—working on our papers.

  The understudy’s name was Suzie Miller. She was in the afternoon AP English class, as well as AP Calculus with Karen and Stanley. Her ascension to stardom was seen as a score for the smart kids, and a much more interesting topic than grammar and subtext.

  “Where the phantom sabotages the prima donna so that Christine could have a chance at the limelight …” Emily sighed. “That is so romantic.”

  “I don’t get that movie.” Lisa slumped in her chair. “What’s so hot about a homicidal psychopath?”

  “Well, those eyes, that voice, that face—the part not all melty and gross, I mean.” Emily looked prepared to go on at length.

  “Those shoulders,” I added.

  “Girls!” snapped Ms. Vincent. She really ought to set up a subroutine for that. “You’re supposed to be working on your themes. They are due in a week.”

  Lisa groaned and slithered lower in her seat. “Wake me up when the term is over.”