I focus my energies on the task at hand. "Are there any spirits here with us tonight?"
The rose quartz begins to dance, spinning counterclockwise, which is my indication of yes.
"Is there more than one spirit here?"
The answer spins to no.
"Is the spirit of Sherry Biddison here?" I ask, watching the pendulum intently.
"That's your yes, right?" Celia asks.
I nod.
Taylor starts snapping pictures all around us with her digital camera.
"Sherry, my name is Kendall. We met the last time I was here." I gulp down the knot of foreboding in my throat. I keep reminding myself that I'm a professional and this investigation is no different from the dozens before it, visions, dreams, warnings, and expectations aside. I'm a psychic and I have to help this family by crossing Sherry Biddison into the light.
"Sherry," I begin. "Can you please talk to me?"
"I've got a hit on the DVR," Becca says.
When Becca rewinds and hits Play, I hear hissing and crackling and the distinctive whisper of a disembodied voice saying, "I puuuussssssh you next."
"Holy crap!" Celia exclaims. "Roll that back."
We listen a few more times and, sure enough, the threat of "I push you next" sounds out to us.
I fist the pendulum and lift up to my knees. Ahead, near the railing, in front of the antique Tiffany hurricane lamp that sits on a maple bureau, I see the formation of a mist. I motion with my head to the area, and Celia is on it, scanning with her meter.
"The needle's buried at ten-plus milligauss," Celia reports.
Taylor's mouth falls open. "That's, like, wicked high, right?"
I stand and take a few deep breaths for courage. "Sherry Biddison—are you here?"
Loreen tugs on the jean fabric of my left knee. "Proceed with caution, Kendall."
Another nod from me.
The wispy mist begins to take shape: a head ... an arm ... a wide skirt. Tentatively, I walk forward, as if I'm preparing to pet a wild animal. Sherry Biddison may be as volatile.
Unexpectedly, I hear Jason's voice in my head. I don't know if it's really him or merely my memory of him. Whatever the case, the words are distinctive: You're on your own.
Yes, I am. Emily's disappeared, Jason's walked away, and no one else can see, feel, or experience what I do, so it's up to me to face off against Sherry.
After I take about eight steps, I halt. I spread my arms wide and toss my head back a bit. "Sherry Biddison, this is no longer your house. You are hurting the occupants—Donn and Shelby-Nichole. You're terrorizing the help and causing them to leave their jobs. Why are you doing this?" The mist shifts and dives around, swirling at my feet before forming into the shape of a woman. "That's you, isn't it, Sherry? Please talk to me. I can help you."
A boom as deafening as thunder roars out. I clasp my hands over my ears and recoil.
"Gooooooooo away! I rid this house of you once. I'll do it again."
"Sherry, I don't know what you're talking about."
Loreen moves behind me. "She's here, Kendall. I can sense her. Be careful."
"Do you want to use me again, Sherry? Do you want me to channel your spirit? Or will you just talk to me? Tell me what's bothering you and let me know how I can help you cross into the light."
The voice bellows out once more. "You're no good for him."
"For who?"
I spin to the left and right, trying to make out the ghostly apparition. The figure sharpens into focus as I squint at the darkness. Moonlight streams in from the nearby window, illuminating the anticipation on the faces of my team. I can see that Celia, especially, wants to see Sherry Biddison for herself.
So do I, for that matter.
And I get my wish. Standing one foot in front of me at the top of the stairs is an older woman, haggard with time and hatred and a war gone wrong. Her hands tightly grip the sides of her gray skirt. Her hair is neatly bunned and pinned, yet the intense fire in her eyes is anything but ladylike or in the vein of true Southern hospitality.
"Let me help you, Sherry."
She speaks through cracked lips and aged teeth. "No one can help me."
"I can. My friends can as well."
She tsk-tsks at me, as much as a dead person can. "It all went wrong. Nothing can change what happened to me."
My pulse accelerates under my skin, itching at me like a case of poison ivy. I tamp down the dread threatening to erode my skill as a psychic. My tongue dashes out to wet my dry lips. "What happened to you, Sherry?"
The ghost growls and moves forward, hands in the air like misty claws bent on swooping down and maiming me. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
A gusty breeze blows me back into my group. Taylor screams. Celia yelps. Becca tugs off her headphones and says, "What the frig was that?"
I catch my breath. "We're about to find out."
Chapter Thirteen
THE GHOST OF SHERRY BIDDISON makes another lunge toward my girls.
"What is your problem?" I ask tersely.
"You're just like her," the spirit says. "Always back-talking and spouting your opinions. A woman's place is supporting her man, not trying to upstage him."
I'm totally perplexed. "Who are we talking about?"
"Virgilian."
"Your daughter-in-law?"
"You're a smart one, girlie," Sherry says.
I relay all of this information to my team. Although they're at a safer distance than I am, they're following along with their meters, recorders, and camera equipment.
Celia's face glows in the light of her laptop screen. "The barometric pressure dropped severely just now and there have been two cold spots recorded as well."
"What does all of this mean?" I hear Donn ask.
"We've got a shitload of paranormal activity going on," Becca says. Then she catches herself. "Oops, sorry, Mayor. I meant—"
Mayor Shy snickers. "I think shitload is an accurate description."
I can't be bothered with the scientific report behind me, though. Sherry Biddison's energy is off the charts, my central nervous system is on high alert, and I'm definitely connected to this woman. A melancholy washes over me as I sense her pain and feel the suffering she experienced when she—
OMG!
Bones breaking. Organs battered. Spinal injury. Blood ... blood ... blood...
"Oh, Sherry," I say sadly. "You fell down the stairs, cracked your skull, broke your back, and then bled to death. That's how you died."
The woman lunges at me again. "She was supposed to go down the stairs!"
My left shoulder aches, and unexpectedly my back feels as if several vertebrae are cracked. I'm empathizing with what the spirit suffered when she plunged down the stairs. Hitched breathing clogs in my throat, and I struggle to suck in a solid gust of much-needed air.
"Kendall, are you okay?" Celia asks from over my shoulder.
I can't respond. The images that Sherry is feeding to me are so vivid. So hurtful. So intentional.
"You ... you tried to kill Virgilian? Your own daughter-in-law?" I double over and grab hold of my belly. "And she was pregnant. Oh my God. What kind of horrid person were you, Sherry Biddison? You purposely plotted to kill the woman who was carrying your grandchild!"
Bile rises in my throat; the burning sensation eats away at my esophagus. How could anyone be so cruel? I envision Virgilian Biddison, seven months pregnant, fighting off her mother-in-law as she attempted to toss her down the stairs. But Virgilian was strong and she did everything she could to protect her baby from the vicious attack.
"You're a horrible person!" I eke out. "I don't want to help you pass into the light. You deserve to burn in hell!"
Father Mass screams out at me, "Kendall! What are you saying?"
I twist around with tears stinging my eyes. "She tried to kill her daughter-in-law and her grandchild!"
Father Mass crosses himself. "Lord have mercy on her soul."
"You ain't kidding!" I shou
t.
Suddenly, I think of poor Emily trapped in the burning car, struggling to get out and doing all she can for her unborn child. A child who might not have lived after all that. Or, a child who might be out there with no clue of who its mother is or what happened to her. At least Virgilian Biddison fought off Sherry, so the joke was on her.
Sherry shows her teeth to me like a she-wolf in the wild. "That Yankee had no business joining my family and ruining our good name. I didn't want that child. I didn't want her in our lives. She deserved to die!"
All the emotions I'm feeling jam up like rubberneckers on an interstate highway, and I lose my shit. "Virgilian didn't deserve to die, Sherry. You did!"
With that, the spirit whirls around me like a tornado, filling the air with her abhorrence of not only her own family but also—me. I'm stricken with a sense of vertigo; I feel myself falling out of control, tumbling, in fact, head over heels. Holy crap! I'm spiraling down the stairs as shouts of Kendall sound out, like I can do anything about it. My right hip hits the banister, my left knee the stair. My head cracks against the wall. Arm into the railing. Head—bam! Other knee—crack! Someone help me! Stop this!
Thhhhwappp!
I land—frickin' hard—at the bottom of the staircase. I'm totally going to have one amazingly humongoid bruise, if not some broken bones. Son of a bitch! Sherry pushed me. She. Pushed. Me. That bitch.
As battered as I am, I feel no pain.
Warmth.
Comfort.
Wetness?
"Kendall! Oh my God! Holy shit! Kendall! Talk to me!"
Who's saying that? I can't tell if it's Loreen, Becca, Celia, Taylor, Donn, or Shelby-Nichole. All of the voices blend together in a dissonance of tones. Faces spin around my head as hands reach out to me, moving me, touching me, feeling my arms and legs.
Yet nothing.
Their touch is invisible. Ineffective.
I can't move. No matter how hard I try. Nothing's working.
Jesus! Please don't let this be my vision coming true.
I try to move my eyes, but they seem heavy and sticky. Are my eyelids even open? No, they're not. However, I still see what's going on.
Taylor ... don't cry.
Oh crap ... even Celia's crying. And Becca too.
"Call nine one one!" Father Mass shouts at the top of his lungs.
Donn responds. "I've called my security!"
Loreen grasps my hand. I can't feel it. Numbness skitters through me. "Kendall, please talk to me ... please ... can you hear me? Squeeze my hand."
Before I know it—hours, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds later—I seem to be floating above everyone else. The view of the house changes, and I see the wall portraits in closer detail. Dirt covers the tops of the frames, years of thickness. Oops—guess the maids don't clean there. I'll have to remember that little detail.
Am I flying? I'm at least floating.
Holy Mother of God ... I'm floating.
Then it hits me like a wet noodle across the cheek.
"I'm having an out-of-body experience!" I say to no one.
Sure, I'm an investigator. I've read about OBEs. Celia's talked about how awesome it would be to have one and I've always pooh-poohed her. And here I am, actually having one.
Okay. I need to remain calm. I need to think.
Celia, the science geek, had prattled on to me about a month ago about this book called Journeys Out of the Body, by Robert Monroe. He's apparently some old dude who made up this stuff forever ago, in the 1960s. Yet Celia treats his book like it's her paranormal bible. I tap into the corner of my brain that's slightly photographic in memory and try to think hard on Celia's obsession about this book. Oh yeah ... I'm remembering this: there's something about the astral body or state of being out of the body that is affected by gravity. If I can relax and go completely limp, I'll drift back down to the floor like a feather or a bubble.
As I'm even thinking this, I feel myself descending and gingerly touching down on the carpeted hallway. My fingers thread into the fine hand-sewn Chinese rug, and I can sense every fiber passing through my palms as if I'm pushing through a bed of a thousand needles, yet there's no pain. There's just this weird tingly sensation.
Okay ... that's sort of cool.
Next, I push all of my weight downward until I press into a solid surface. Jiminy Christmas! Are those the floorboards underneath? At first I'm totally wigged until I remember Celia preaching on about that Monroe guy's talking about penetrating surfaces depending on their density. Whoa—this is too much for my nonscientific mind to comprehend. So much information and knowledge seems to automatically be there for me. Does this mean Celia's part of my brain? Or I absorbed all of her chitter-chatter by some sort of osmosis?
So, yeah ... the wood floor, more dense, more difficult to penetrate. Makes sense. With a firm nudge of my hands—at least, I think these are still my hands—I begin passing through the floor as well. Are my arms really dangling all the way through? I mean, if someone went down to Shelby-Nichole's basement and looked, would my arms be hanging out of the ceiling?
Holy Freakasaurus! This is too much. I jerk back up, and I'm floating in the center of the room again. Riiiiight—like that's normal.
Normal? What exactly is normal now?
Wait! Celia talked about some silver cordy thing that tethers your soul to your body. If I'm truly having an OBE, that cord has to be there, keeping me attached to my physique. I feel around the back of my head. Other than my knotted and twisted hair, there's nothing there. No string, no thread, no cord. Frantic, I shove my hands into my curls, tugging and searching for a sign that I'm still one with my body.
All right. Enough of this bullshit. An OBE was fun for a moment. Not enjoying it anymore. Ready to go home. I want my bed. I want Sonoma the bear. I want my mom. Damnit, I want my body.
Okay. One, two, three. Snap.
That didn't work.
David Blaine I'm not. I'm not even close to being David Copperfield, or any other David.
I need some magic now!
Here we go. Annnnnnnnd ... jump.
The sounds of Taylor screaming bloody murder make me glance down at the T-shirted and jeaned figure lying supine on the floor. Loreen is there holding one hand. Celia is cradling the head. And Jason ... oh, wow—Jason's here!
"Jason!"
He can't hear me, though. My sweet boyfriend, who said he wouldn't come on this investigation. Somehow he's here. Holding... me? Wait a sec. Crappity-crap! That is, like, my freakin' body down there. I'm up here taking a gander at it. How do I get back in there?
"Kendall—I begged you not to do this investigation. Oh, baby. Don't leave me." The plea in Jason's voice makes me want to cry. Yet I have no tears in my eyes. Do I even have eyes? I attempt to rub my face, but nothing happens.
The mayor's special security force bursts in with a medical supply kit. An oxygen mask is placed over my nose and mouth. Like that's going to do any good. I'm at death's door! Why can't anyone hear me?
Oh my frickin' God! It's happened. Sherry Biddison has made my vision come true. She has taken me to the brink of death.
You bitch!
I hear her sinister laugh. Now you know how I feel.
The ambulance arrives. I sit in a corner near the ceiling watching as the EMTs strap a blood pressure cuff on me and begin taking my vitals. None of this matters. I'm bleeding internally. My spleen is ruptured. One of my lungs is in the process of collapsing.
"Yes, this is Mayor Shy. Tell David and Sarah Moorehead to meet us at the hospital immediately. There's been a terrible accident."
I see Donn make the call, but I don't know who it's to. The details of the room are fading ... fading ... and I can't hold on. Oh, where is that stupid cord that's supposed to be attached to me? Was it severed when I took the header down the stairs?
A wall of blond hair sweeps into view. "This is all my fault," Donn says through tears. "I never should have allowed this."
Loreen is comforting her.
Massimo is comforting Loreen. Celia and Becca hold hands. Taylor grips her brother.
And I'm floating free ... free of this...
There's nothing I can do to stop it. The warmth embracing me permeates me with love and joy and happiness and peace and other words I fail to find right now. I start up this long, flowing staircase—oh no, not another one!—into a white light. Its glow beckons to me like nothing I've ever seen. I hear the sweet melody of a piano accompanied by a string quartet.
I cross a small wooden bridge over a rainbow stream. A lush garden with full blooms of every flower imaginable—roses, hydrangeas, baby's breath, and orchids—dancing in the sunlight cascading through the fluffy clouds.
A familiar meow catches my ear and I turn to face the sound.
From the bank of the stream, a flash of black and white comes at me, furry tail up straight in the air. Meow! he says again.
"Smokey? Is that you?"
He breaks into a run and bounds up to me, rubbing against my leg with his cheek, neck, and tail.
How can this be? This is my kitty Smokey. The one who was accidentally run over by the FedEx truck years ago. Yet he's ... here? Where is here? Is this the famed rainbow bridge I've read about so many times? Where your beloved pet greets you before you both cross over into...
No.
No.
No way.
A white lattice gazebo sits at the far end of the garden, a fountain of crystal blue water on the side of it. I see the back of a woman sitting in a rocking chair, the soft breeze ruffling her gray curls. Cautiously, I approach, trying not to disturb her.
But she calls out, "Come now, Smokey."
He begins to purr and runs up ahead of me, leading me down the path to the gazebo and the woman. I automatically follow, no questions asked. My feet aren't even touching the ground in this weird float-trot I've got going on.
I approach the three stairs, and I'm suddenly reaching my hand out to the older woman.
"May I join you, ma'am?"
Her charming beauty astounds me. Perfectly preserved and ageless. Yet exactly the woman I remember she was in her late sixties.
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