by Jack Massa
Ghosts of Bliss Bayou
Jack Massa
Published by
Triskelion Books
www.triskelionbooks.com
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Ghosts of Bliss Bayou
Copyright © 2016 by Jack Massa
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any means now known or hereinafter invented, electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
ISBN 978-0-9976461-1-5
Ebook Edition published November 2016
Cover design by Ida Jansson, http://amygdaladesign.net/
Table of Contents
1. That awkward feeling when you wake up and the nightmare is with you in the room
2. I’m not the only one with an apparition problem
3. Have you ever heard of a curse on the Renshaws?
4. Drowning six or seven times an hour
5. Magic is not what you think
6. Your mother and I were best friends
7. I’ve never seen anyone as scared as I just saw you
8. Unless you know my name, you cannot pass
9. Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of strange?
10. Occult forces seem to be converging—and I’m one of them
11. A slight change in plans
12. How was Florida? Did you get in any surfing?
13. Violet is through messing around
14. Renshaw and Quick, ghost hunters
15. He feeds on fear and rage. He is formed of human evil.
16. Blood on the ground, and watermelon
17. True magic is never an easy road
18. Her fashion sense was retro, that’s for sure
19. Just a night in the graveyard
20. …And a day in the emergency room
21. I’m a zombie sponge of magic power, that’s what
22. The Book of Lebab
23. Exactly the thing I planned not to do
24. So, is Guardian of the Springs a viable career choice?
Author’s Note
And thank you!
1. That awkward feeling when you wake up and the nightmare is with you in the room
My eyes fly open, and I stare at the clock: 5:13 a.m.
Something is on top of me. It presses down on my shoulder and hip. Cool, slimy breath brushes my ear. I hear my own breathing, loud and frantic, and over it, a whisper: “Abigail Renshaw…we have found you.”
My terror changes to blind panic.
“Get off me!” I mean it for a scream, but it comes out a pathetic whimper. I try to push and struggle, but the bed hardly moves. I feel the thing’s breath on my cheek, a wet, decaying smell like a stagnant pool in a swamp.
The same smell as in the nightmare. I remember it now. Running through dark, muddy woods. Something chasing me. I tripped over a fallen branch, and the something picked me up, carried me, flung me into the water. Then I was sinking into a freezing blackness, my arms and legs paralyzed so I couldn’t struggle.
Paralyzed like now.
“This cannot be happening!” My voice sounds grim, sharpened by outrage. I suck in a deep breath, get both hands under me, and push with all my strength.
I spring up in the bed and turn to look.
The thing is still there.
I see it now, a floating deep, deep blackness with strands of gray mist. It streams across the room to the corner. There it swirls and thickens.
Now a shape hovers in the corner: a blond middle-aged woman. She’s tall and stiff, in a long black dress, a necklace of white pearls. She has thin lips and proud, glaring eyes. She stares at me with…recognition. Not hate, but a kind of contempt, like I’m some insect she’s found in her kitchen.
“No,” I whisper. “You can’t be here. You are not real.”
For several moments we just stare at each other, Abby Renshaw and the woman in pearls. The room is freezing, and I get angrier and angrier. I pull off the covers and climb out of bed, my eyes never leaving her eyes.
“You are not real. Go away!”
I take a step toward her, then another. The woman’s expression never changes. I force myself to go closer and closer, afraid, but also furious. This is my room, the only place in the universe that belongs to me, where I can be myself without pretending or trying to please everyone else. No crazy hallucination is going to take that away.
I reach toward it, thinking that if I can just touch it, it will disappear.
I touch it, and it disappears.
Now I’m blinking like an idiot, waving my hands in the dark corner. Nothing. The room’s no longer cold, but now I shiver.
I crawl back to the bed and pull up the covers.
The clock shows 5:20 a.m.
I lie with the covers up to my chin, checking every few moments through half-opened eyes in case it comes back. This is the third time in the last week I’ve had the nightmare about the swamp and drowning. And I’ve dreamed of that woman before, somewhere in the mix.
But this is the first time she leaked out of the dream world into my room. My room. And that thing on top of me, with the slimy breath and creepy voice? Was that her or something else altogether?
This is getting seriously scary.
I’ve had hallucinations before. Heard voices in my head, saw people and creatures that couldn’t possibly be there.
But that was years ago. That was twelve-year-old Abby Renshaw, the geeky, lonely girl with no friends and too much imagination. Too much fear.
I’m supposed to be the new, improved Abby now. I get good grades, I run on the track team, I go to parties. I’ve kissed a few boys. Okay, I’m a little slow in the boyfriend department, I admit. I’m still shy and weird. But like Franklin, my friend in the drama club, says: where’s the line between weird and interesting anyway?
I like to tell myself I’m not weird, just interesting—that I’m not so different from everyone else.
But then why am I so afraid?
The future. It’s the first of May, and I turn seventeen in August. One more year at Hudson Heights High, and then…what? College applications. Where should I apply? What should I major in? What am I going to do with the rest of my life? I need to think about my future, Mom keeps telling me. As if I can think of anything else. I feel like I’m running, running, running toward the edge of a cliff, and then…
What?
Running makes me feel better though.
When it’s light outside, I climb out of bed and put on my workout clothes. Weekdays I train after school with the team, but weekends I usually go for a run in the morning by myself. The dawns are still chilly here in New Jersey, so I wear leggings under my shorts—bright orange leggings—and my royal blue track team sweatshirt with the Hudson Fighting Eagles logo. Extra thick white socks, and my neon blue and orange Nikes. Nothing’s more reassuring than a good pair of running shoes.
I have lingering shakes from the nightmare, so I’m very careful to make no noise as I tiptoe past Mom’s room. I still think of it as Mom’s, although she’s shared it with my stepfather, Jim, since they got married last December. Jim’s all right. He tries to be friendly while still respecting my space. No attempts to be “Dad,” which is good.
Downstairs I grab a bottle of Dasani from the pantry, then go out the back door. I sip the water as I do my warm-ups in the driveway. The sky’s pearly gray, and a cool breeze is sh
aking the new leaves on the oaks and sycamores. Perfect weather.
I jog down the driveway, then hit my stride at the street. I’ll head downtown, then over the highway to the nature preserve on the Palisades. With the route set, my brain flips into autopilot, and I can think about other stuff.
Like my hallucinations.
I’ve always been the sensitive, imaginative type. Hyperaware of other people’s feelings. Sometimes I can tell what they’re going to say before they say it. And I’ve always been prone to anxiety. But when I started to go through puberty, things got really bad. I was afraid all the time, and then I started to hear voices in my head. Scary voices, telling me I might as well just die, that I had no future, that I was cursed.
Just like my dad.
Then I started seeing things, nightmare things while I was awake: faceless people in black robes, goblins from video games, reptiles that walked upright on short, bowed legs. At first they were just shapes at the edges of my vision, and they skittered away as soon as I looked. Then they stayed longer.
It all got pretty horrible.
I tried to ignore it, to hide it from Mom, to pretend it would go away. But a few months after I turned thirteen, I had a breakdown. I was too scared even to get out of bed. Mom took me to a shrink, who put me on meds and recommended a therapist.
The therapist, Dr. Mark, was actually a good guy. He assured us that hallucinations in a kid my age were not all that unusual. He helped me work through my fears about the future and my feelings about losing my dad when I was seven and Mom moving us up from Florida to New Jersey.
Between the anti-anxiety meds and the sessions with Dr. Mark, the hallucinations faded away.
If they were hallucinations.
Of course they were. Now I’m being stupid.
I’ve reached downtown, and I’m running along Englewood Boulevard, almost to the one-mile point. There’s already some traffic, so I have to wait for the light before crossing Clinton Avenue. It’s uphill from here for a half mile, and I concentrate on my stride, trying not to think of anything. At the top of the road is a small park. An asphalt path takes me past the baseball field, and I cross pedestrian bridges over Route 9 and then the Palisades Parkway. I enter the nature preserve, where it’s all quiet and peaceful. I usually love running here, but this morning I’m wary. I check every tree, expecting something to jump out.
Nothing does.
When I reach the end of the path, I stop for a breather. No one’s around. I’m alone in the world, gazing down over the eighty-foot cliffs to the Hudson River. Downstream I can see the Washington Bridge, and beyond it the impossible megalopolis of Manhattan. The view is breathtaking, enormous, terrifying.
That’s the real world, Abby.
Sometimes I think it’s a dying world, that with overpopulation and the threat of environmental collapse, it can’t possibly survive another fifty years. Other times I think it will last forever, and it’s just me who can’t survive, that I’ll never find my place in the world.
Mom has. Mom and Jim drive into Manhattan every day. Mom’s made a great success of her life, coming up here after Dad died, tugging a lost seven-year-old daughter along. She started in a branch bank and worked her way up. Now’s she’s a financial analyst and makes a really good living.
I’m proud of my mom. She’s smart, and she’s a fighter.
And I’m a fighter too. I’ve shown it in the past, dealing with my “issues.” I show it on the track. I’m not going to give in to the fear and run off the edge of the cliff.
Even though the cliff is right here in front of me. Literally.
I think about that for a second. Then I turn and start for home.
When I reach the house, Mom and Jim are in the kitchen, having toast and coffee. They’re dressed in golf clothes, with their bags of clubs leaning nearby. Since early April they’ve gone golfing at the country club every Saturday morning. They’re not the type to sleep in on the weekends.
“How was your run?” Jim says as I open the fridge and grab a yogurt.
“Fine, thanks.”
“Abby,” Mom says, “we’re having dinner tomorrow at Trudi’s. You need to be ready to leave at one.”
Trudi is Jim’s sister. She has an apartment on Park Avenue and two daughters around my age—Julie a year older and Kristen a year younger. They go to an exclusive prep school on the West Side, and they are both beautiful and oh-so-polished. I feel like a nerdy ugly dumpling by comparison. Of course, they already know where they want to go to college—Yale and Smith, thank you very much.
I really don’t like visiting them. And it must be showing on my face.
“It’s important that you come with us,” Mom says. “Trudi and the girls are being nice enough to put you up for three weeks. The least you can do is try to be friendly.”
The three weeks are in June, right after school ends. Mom and Jim will be touring Europe on their long-delayed honeymoon, and I’ll be sleeping on a futon in Trudi’s den. This was the last-resort arrangement for little Abby. Mom wanted me to go to a camp in the Catskills for a combination of intensive track training and college prep classes. I just wanted to stay home by myself and chill. No way, not at your age, Mom said. We argued over it until the deadline passed for applying to the camp.
Mom’s parents might have been another option, but they live in an over-55 community and really don’t have the room. So I’m stuck with the futon. I thought I was resigned to it, though now the thought of being trapped in Manhattan for three weeks makes me panicky. What if the hallucinations continue? What if I really start to lose it?
As I’m lifting a spoonful of yogurt to my mouth, something catches my eye. I glance into the dining room and see Julie and Kristen and Trudi, all standing there plain as can be, smiling at me. Behind them is a floating image—the black cloud-thing from my nightmare.
I squinch my eyes tight and look again. Still there.
“Abby, are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine, Mom.” I toss the yogurt in the trash and rush out the other door to the hallway. As I run up the stairs I yell back, “I’ll be ready tomorrow at one. I promise.”
Upstairs, I lock the bathroom door and lean my back against it. Eventually the fear rush passes, and my breathing slows down. I turn on the shower and strip off my clothes. I step under the hot water and close my eyes.
This. Cannot. Happen.
I wish there were someone I could talk to about it. But Dr. Mark moved out of state sometime after I stopped seeing him, and I certainly don’t want to look for another therapist. I don’t want to put Mom through that. I don’t want her to know I’m in trouble again.
As for my friends at school…no way. They only know smart-student, track-team Abby. The girl who’s pretty much like everyone else. Show them crazy psycho Abby? Uh-uh. I can imagine it all over school and the internet: Abby Renshaw, freak of nature. Her eyesight’s so good, she sees things that aren’t there.
No. I’ve got to figure this out by myself.
The hot water feels really good, relaxing. I pour out shampoo and rub it hard into my hair and scalp.
I go back to the techniques Dr. Mark taught me. He saw the hallucinations as messengers from my subconscious, clues to feelings I was repressing. Figure out the clues, confront the feelings, and the creepies will go away.
It worked before, pretty much…
So what do Trudi and her daughters represent to me? They’ve got their lives together, and I don’t. That’s simple. Compared with Julie and Kristen, I feel inadequate, and it scares me. But I know this already. These feelings aren’t new, although they have grown worse lately.
What about Ghost Woman? There I draw a blank. I don’t know who she is. As for the feelings she brings up…just strangeness. I’m not really afraid of her. She’s just some dark, impenetrable mystery.
I’m not getting very far, Dr. Mark.
What about the dream of the s
wamp? That’s something. It reminds me of the woods around my Granma’s house in Florida, where I used to visit when I was little. It’s a place in the boonies: unpaved, sandy roads and weedy lawns and huge trees hung with Spanish moss. And there are springs nearby with fast-flowing crystal-blue water. Except Granma lives on a kind of backwater: Bliss Bayou. I couldn’t play near the water because there were snakes and sometimes alligators. Besides, the edges of the banks changed all the time, depending on how much rain there’d been. They were always slick and muddy, with shallow pools.
Just like in my nightmare.
I’m feeling nervous again, but it’s a good nervous, like I’m onto something. I finish rinsing off and step out of the shower. I put on my terry robe and toss my running clothes in the hamper. I don’t bother with the blow dryer, just wrap up my hair in a towel.
Back in my room, I close and lock the door—although Mom and Jim have probably left by now. I flop on the bed and think about my Granma.
In my first memory of her, I’m only two or three and I’m sitting on her lap, feeling warm and safe and…loved. When I got a little older, I would often spend whole days at her house. I would follow her around and watch everything she did—gardening, baking cookies, embroidery. She was always so calm and patient, explaining everything to me. Sometimes we’d sit on her porch swing in the afternoon, rocking back and forth and telling each other stories.
Her house was like a hundred years old, Victorian. Tall, arched windows to let in the Florida light, and creaky floors with dark wooden slats. As I picture those floors, another dream fragment sparks in my brain…
I’m standing in a room with high ceilings, like in Granma’s house. It’s dark, lit only by candles. The floor is painted with a white circle and weird symbols or hieroglyphs. People in white robes are standing around the circle, murmuring and chanting. The air is very cold, and there’s this powerful sense of an invisible presence.
I sit up on my bed and shudder.
Well, Dr. Mark. It seems pretty clear the dreams are pointing to my Granma’s house in Florida. And not just the house, but the woods around it, and the water.