We all stopped to look at him. I must have been hit harder than I thought not to think of that one.
“I’m blonde, what’s your excuse?” Monica asked a stunned Becky, while I pulled out my phone and dialed Eve’s number. A few seconds later, she answered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just, ah, checking to see if you needed a ride home.”
“Thanks, got it. We bailed an hour ago. I was hot, and Trevor was kind enough to take me out for ice cream.” She put the emphasis on ice cream to let me know I owed her ten bucks. I hung up.
“She’s with Trevor, having dessert.” At the look Richard and Monica both shot me, I clarified, “Ice cream. They’re having ice cream.”
I felt a hand on my arm and saw that Becky had come up beside me. “C’mon, let’s get you home. You need to rest up before your next cage match.”
“Next time try focusing on the dude you’re fighting, and not the hot chick in the stands,” advised Richard, winking at me.
I sent a fake punch towards his arm and he skipped away laughing. Then, before Becky could stop him, he hopped over the side of her car and into her back seat. She gave him the evil eye and mumbled something about the leather interior.
We dropped off Monica first. She lived in a rundown trailer crookedly perched in the middle of a small bit of land just outside town. When we stopped, Richard jokingly offered to give her an escort to the door. Monica stared at him for a few seconds like she was considering it, then she blew a bubble and told a disappointed-looking Richard she thought she could make it solo.
Next we dropped off Richard at his house, which, as it turned out, wasn’t too far from where I lived. I was confused, figuring Becky would want to bring me home before him, but it must have meant backtracking.
Richard jumped out, catching his foot on the inside of the car, causing him to hop on one leg and flail his arms about wildly before finally regaining his balance in an ungraceful recovery. Becky rested her forehead on the steering wheel, shaking it from side to side.
“See ya, Becky. Later, dude. Try not to run into any more fists.” We waved and sped off.
A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of my house. I noticed the light in the window opposite mine. Rose was home.
“Thanks for the ride.” It occurred to me that Becky hadn’t asked for directions. Then I remembered I lived in the infamous haunted house. I bet every kid in town knew where it was.
“Once you get your license, you can make it up to me.” She had turned off the car, and for a few moments we sat silently, listening to the engine ping in the still night.
“I had a good time,” I said. “Well, except for that last part. That could have gone better.”
She laughed. “He was pretty drunk. You might have had him if…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
I swallowed. I wanted to lean over and kiss her, but I stopped myself. I wasn’t as worried about Richard anymore, but if I guessed wrong and she didn’t like me, I didn’t think that what little rep I had acquired could survive it. Nothing makes you look like a bigger idiot than a failed pass at the captain of the cheerleading squad. Eve would never let me live it down.
I blinked. “I’ll try to stay focused next time. Thanks again for the ride.” I undid my belt and immediately opened the door. Becky must have noticed the awkward moment, because she gave me a funny smile. She restarted the car, waved, and turned the car around to head back in the direction we had come.
I wondered if she was going back to Richard’s. I turned around.
I should have expected what was coming.
Chapter 9
“Jesus! Seriously, how do you do that?”
Rose just looked innocent, standing in the shadows a few feet in front of me, rocking back and forth in her three-inch heels. As always, she was wearing a vintage dress. This one was red with a low v-neck and a couple of rows of buttons running down the front.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“Friend from school.”
“Were you two out at the party? The one they were having after the football game?”
“Actually, yeah. Hey, why weren’t you there? Or at school, for that matter? Don’t you go to school?”
“Not anymore.”
“Oh.” Rose didn’t look old enough to have graduated, but who knows. Some people just look young, or maybe she dropped out.
“Who did that to you?” she asked, reaching up to touch my face, but then stopping inches away.
“A guy from school. It’s no big deal. Hey, you want to come on over? I was going to get online and see what I could find out about Charlotte Monroe.”
She looked over my shoulder and said, “I better not. Maybe later.”
Just then I heard the front door open. I turned to see my mom stick her head out. She must have heard Becky’s car pull up. “Christopher? Is that you?”
“Yeah, just a sec.” I turned back to Rose, “Sorry, I have to—”
I stopped. Rose was gone. I looked around and didn’t see her anywhere. The front of the mansion was deserted save for the Stanley- and Oliver-shaped lumps sleeping on the porch.
I walked back to where my mom stood holding the door open, wondering if I needed to see a doctor about a concussion.
“It’s almost one o’clock,” Mom said, backing into the house. I followed her into the muggy foyer; the AC was out of commission again.
“What about Eve?”
“She got home a few minutes ago, and she wasn’t the one at a party. She—Oh my goodness, Chris, your eye! What happened?” She had spotted the damage now that we were in the lighted room.
“Nothing.”
“That is not nothing. Who did that? Tell me. We can file a police report.”
Oh yeah, that was just what I needed. “It was nothing. Just got into a fight. It’s over. You should see the other guy.” Who was probably with Savannah right now, having a great time.
My dad had heard the commotion and came out from the kitchen to see what was going on. He might have sounded casual earlier when he said I could go out, but he was normally in bed by ten. They didn’t usually wait up for me; I think it was the new town. Plus maybe I shouldn’t have told them about the disappearances.
“He’ll be fine, dear. Some things a guy just has to work out on his own.” He paused when he saw the severity of Mom’s expression and tried to recover by adding, “But Chris, if you can’t handle it, let us know, okay?”
“Yeah, all right,” I said, inching toward the staircase.
My mom wanted to keep going, but my dad gave her a look that cut her off. She glared at both of us, then stormed past me and stomped up the stairs.
Dad approached me and said seriously, “Chris, do me a favor—next time you come home late from a party, try not to smell like beer and have a black eye, okay?”
“Um, yeah, will do.”
“The alcohol is bad enough, but what were you thinking getting in a fight?”
I thought about telling him the truth about Tim’s dad losing his job and blaming me for it, but I didn’t see the point. “I guess I wasn’t.”
“Obviously. Look, Chris, I understand this is a new place, and you’re trying to fit in, but maybe getting drunk and getting into fights isn’t the best way.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Oh? Well, it looks exactly like that.” He paused, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before continuing. “Chris, all new shoes take some time to break in. You can’t force it. Give it time and you’ll fit in here, I promise.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ugh, a shoe metaphor. When he pulled those out, I knew it wasn’t worth trying to argue. Sometimes I wished my dad made something else for a living.
“Did you at least have a good time?” he asked.
“Except for the fight part, it was great.”
He shook his head, gave me a sad smile, and followed Mom up the stairs.
It was late, but I wasn’t tired. I went to the kitchen to get som
e ice for my eye before heading upstairs to see what I could find out about Charlotte.
I powered up my laptop, but it was too stuffy in my room to work. I opened up the windows while my machine booted. I sat back down, ice pressed against the side of my face, waiting for the cool night breeze to hit. Of course, this being a summer night in Texas, it didn’t.
Resigned, I queued up some old-school punk MP3s, turned down the volume so I wouldn’t wake anyone, and tried to think cool thoughts. Typing with one hand was a handicap, but I was used to it, so I kept the ice pack on anyway. If I were lucky, the eye wouldn’t look so bad when I returned to school on Monday.
I opened a search engine and went to work finding out all there was to know about Miss Charlotte Monroe.
There wasn’t much. The only real information was from a couple of haunted-house sites. It was kind of cool seeing my house online, with titles like “The Witch’s Ghost” and “The Haunting of Pico.”
Charlotte was born in 1928 and died in 1952 of an alleged suicide. According to the police report, late one night she climbed ten feet up an oak tree in her yard—my yard—bound her hands behind her back, and hanged herself.
I glanced out at the crooked branch through my window. Fantastic. I wondered if the rope marks were still scored into the bark, but decided against looking. I valued what little sleep I was getting.
Most of the sites speculated that she was killed by the people of the town for practicing witchcraft. Charlotte’s mom had been some sort of local midwife and healer, and Charlotte apparently took up the reins after her mother died, when Charlotte was at the ripe old age of nineteen.
The house had been in her family since her grandfather had built it in the late 1800s. He had been a carpenter and entrepreneur, with a successful home construction business. After Charlotte’s death, a cousin took possession of the house, but sold it off soon after. The procession of tenants began.
Each new occupant left soon after moving in, many citing strange noises and other weird occurrences as the reason. Appliances turned on and off, voices moaned, and floors creaked. The house had been vacant since the last occupants moved to Florida several years ago, just in time for the housing bust.
I couldn’t find much else. Only one death had occurred, and it wasn’t horrific enough to warrant attention on the web. The library looked like my best bet.
The clock on my computer read two a.m. I leaned back to stretch and almost fell out of my chair when I saw Rose sitting sideways in the windowsill. She faced me, legs bent, arms wrapped around her knees. She smiled and gave a little wave.
“How did you—?”
“You said I could come over. I climbed the tree.”
“The tree is over in that window.” I pointed to the one on the left.
She glanced back through the window she was sitting on, as if to confirm the fact, and then gave a shrug. Turning, she dropped her legs onto the floor and stood up.
I closed my eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Something dawned on me that I should have seen earlier. Charlotte was supposed to be in her early twenties. Pretty. Died in between the two houses in the fifties. Everything fit, except for the hair color. Charlotte was brunette and Rose was a blonde. Of course, you could change hair color, but I wasn’t sure ghosts bothered with dye jobs.
“So when does she come?” At the sound of Rose’s voice, I opened my eyes to find her leaning over my shoulder, reading my computer screen.
I was still a little disoriented. Between the blow to the head and the view she had given me while sitting in the window, I was functioning at less than one hundred percent.
“When does who come?”
She looked at me with raised eyebrows. “The ghost. You must have been hit harder than you thought. Tell me who did that. What was his name?” She reached over and brushed a cool hand against my cheek. I looked into her concerned eyes. For an apparition, her touch sure felt real – and kind of nice.
“A guy at my school named Tim Peterson. He was ticked that my dad took his dad’s job. And the ghost usually comes in the middle of the night. Around now, I guess.”
“Good; I was worried I might have missed it. We can wait for her while you tell me all about the girl who dropped you off.” She sat on my bed, crossing her legs and leaning back to put her arms slightly behind her, palms down.
“Um, if my parents find you in my room, on my bed, they’ll—”
“They won’t,” she assured me. Her clear blue eyes were fixed on mine. She patted the bed beside her and I went over to sit where she had indicated. She scooted my way until we were touching.
“Tell me about your family.”
I told her about growing up in California. What it was like being adopted. How my sister and I used to be inseparable, but not so much anymore. I described my parents, and what it was like being brought up by them. I didn’t know why I found myself telling her all of the stuff I did. I couldn’t stop myself; it seemed like the right thing to do.
“How about your friends here? Tell me more about this girl you like, the one that brought you home. Becky.”
I didn’t remember telling her Becky’s name. “She’s just a friend.”
“One that you obviously like.”
“I never said I liked her; she’s just a friend from school.”
She clucked, shaking her head. “Don’t lie. I can tell you like her.”
“Yeah, maybe, but she’s interested in someone else.”
“Tell me about her.”
So I did. I couldn’t help myself, even though I knew discussing one girl with another was not the brightest thing to do. I told her everything, from how we met to how I felt.
After I finished, she said, “I don’t know about her liking someone else, but it sounds like she’s using you to get at her dad.”
“You think so?” When she said it, it made a lot of sense.
She shrugged. “It sounds like bringing home a boy like you to her parents might be something she would consider. She seems to put a lot of effort into trying to get a reaction from them.”
I didn’t reply. The thought started to bother me.
“So why not use her back? She’s pretty. You like her. Would you like pointers on how to get her?”
She pushed me down on the bed, then straddled me, putting one hand on either side so I couldn’t escape. Assuming I wanted to. She leaned over, smiling. The front of her dress billowed out to provide an eyeful and I quickly looked up to notice her impish grin.
“She won’t do for you long-term, of course. You need someone more… interesting. And much longer term.” She brought her face within inches of mine when a knock came at my door. I practically jumped up off the bed, unceremoniously throwing Rose sideways. I had just managed to stand up as the door opened.
“Do not tell me Becky is in there with you.” Eve stormed in, wearing the righteous look of an Inquisitor about to announce a guilty verdict and its associated terminal sentence. The menace was only slightly lessened by her pink Hello Kitty pajamas.
“Don’t you knock?” I whisper-yelled, trying to buy time to formulate an excuse for Rose being in my room.
“I did. Are you talking to yourself now?” Her mocking look changed to one of genuine concern as she noticed the bruising on my face. “Jesus, Chris, what happened to your face?”
I looked frantically around, but Rose was nowhere to be seen. “Tim Peterson. Seems he doesn’t like the fact that our dad took his dad’s job.”
“I’ll have a word with Trevor about that.”
“Eve, no. It’s under control. I can take care of it.” I did not need my little sister fighting my battles for me.
“By letting Tim work out his aggression on your face? I don’t think so.”
“Seriously, I’m okay.”
Her voice took on a manic edge. “Okay? Really? You get yourself beat up, then sit in your room talking to yourself, and claim you’re okay?”
I shrugged it off, trying to sneak sideways glances
around the room without looking too obvious. I was still wondering where Rose had gone.
Apparently I wasn’t subtle enough, because Eve bent down to look under my bed. “I could have sworn I heard someone else in here.”
“Hey, you didn’t even ask about Tim! Maybe I won.”
She just shook her head, then searched my closet.
“Why are you awake, anyway?” I asked, as Eve proceeded to check every possible place I could be hiding a girl.
“Something woke me up. I thought I heard someone crying, so I went to see what it was. That’s when I heard you in here talking to someone.”
“It was Charlotte.”
“Who? Where is she?” She looked around and walked to the open window.
“No, not who I was talking to, who you heard. The person that woke you up. It was Charlotte Monroe. The ghost.”
Eve stuck her head out the window. When she was satisfied no one was in the tree she turned to face me. “Not you, too! Trevor told me all about the witch when we were at the soda fountain.” She lit up, remembering our bet. Holding her hand out, she said, “Hey, you owe me ten bucks. Cough it up.”
I reluctantly grabbed two fives from the car fund I had stashed away in an old Cookie Monster cookie jar and placed them in Eve’s outstretched hand. The money vanished, and she returned to her search.
“Like I was saying, I heard all about her. How she was killed here and now haunts the place, wanting revenge on the town or something stupid. If he thinks he’s going to scare himself into my pants he’s seriously mistaken. And I’m going to remind him of that when he takes me to the dance in a couple of weeks.”
“I hear her all the time. She wakes me up just about every night,” I said, as Eve rechecked under the bed.
“Well, apparently you sit in your room talking to her, too. You need help, big brother.”
Finding no other place I could possibly be hiding someone, Eve finally gave up the search. She stood in the middle of my room, facing me with her arms crossed. I knew her, and I could tell she was chewing over the possibility of a ghost in her mind. She liked to hide behind snark, but she was smart, or at least shrewd.
“Anyway, the crying I heard didn’t sound like a woman,” she said. Then, shrugging, she turned away. “I’m going to bed. Say hi to Charlotte for me the next time you see her.” She gave me one last look before closing the door behind her. “Take care of yourself, Chris.”
The Haunting of Pico (Pico, Texas - Book 1) Page 7