“Look,” I said to Abigail, trying to sound as strong and authoritative as possible. I didn’t think she’d listen to me, but she did. She turned and stared, openmouthed and speechless.
James reached out a tentative hand. “Abby, my dear…Please. You’ve been unwell. I understand that. Mary and I both do. But we can’t go on like this forever.”
“But you…You and she…” Abigail sounded suddenly uncertain.
James shook his head. “We would never do such a thing. I love you, Abby. I’ve loved you since before this horrible sickness took control of your mind. You can be free of that now. This anger, this violence…It’s not you. It never was.”
“Please, Mrs. Riley,” Mary chimed in, stepping out from behind James. “Please believe us. I would never, ever betray you.”
Abigail stared at them for a long time. Then she turned back to me. “What have I done?”
“It’s all right now,” Mom said, reappearing beside me. “The illness that made you think these awful things was a part of your life, but it couldn’t follow you into death. What you feel now is only the echo of the anger you felt when you were alive. It doesn’t exist anymore. All you need to do is let it go, and you’ll see.”
“But all these years…”Abigail put her hands to her face and sobbed. “How could I have hurt them? They must hate me!”
“I never could,” James said, stepping forward. “Neither could Mary.” Behind him, the girl nodded her agreement.
A change came over the three of them then. It was like the change I’d felt in Dirk after Isobel and I found the painting. They were filled with peace.
Again, James reached out for Abigail. This time she stepped forward and took his hand.
“We’ve been here long enough,” he said, offering his other hand to Mary. She accepted it. He offered Mom and me a grateful nod, and the three of them disappeared.
Mom watched them go. Then she turned to me and said, “I’m so proud of you, I could just about burst.”
Still feeling kind of dazed, I stepped up to her. I wanted to hug her. I wanted that so bad. But I couldn’t. I could see her, but I couldn’t put my arms around her.
She solved that problem, though—she hugged me instead. Even though I couldn’t physically feel her arms around me, I felt her warmth and love in that hug. There was no cold spot around her, just that warmth. That joy.
But I felt something else, too. Peace. The peace that had arrived for James, Abigail, and Mary hadn’t disappeared with them. It came from Mom, too, and it made me panic. I’d just found her, and now I was afraid she was going to leave.
“Mom, don’t go!” I said. “Not yet.”
She smiled and reached out to smooth my hair, and I could almost feel that, too.
“Shh, Violet. I’m not going anywhere. Not yet. We have time.”
Tears spilled from my eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Oh, sweetie. I’ve missed you, too. You’ve grown up. You’re so tall, and so beautiful.” Her voice was wistful. “It’s so hard to keep track of time when you’re.…well, when you’re like this.” She gestured toward herself. “I’ve thought of you every single day. I wondered how you were, what you were doing. You and your dad both.”
I wiped at my tears. “Then why didn’t you ever come see me? I waited and waited, and I tried so hard to sense you. I figured that if anyone would know you were nearby, it’d be me. But you never came.”
She smiled sadly. “You don’t know how badly I wanted to. I’ve been stuck here with Abigail and James and Mary. They were my unfinished business—I came here with the intention of helping whoever was haunting this house, and that was Abigail. Her anger was strong enough to trap me here, too.”
Deep down, I think some part of me had suspected and feared this all along. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
Near my feet, I heard a groan.
“Omigod! Isobel!” I’d forgotten all about my friends. I ran over to Isobel, who was struggling to pull herself into a sitting position. Carefully, I helped her to her feet.
She held her hands to her head, as if she were dizzy and needed to steady herself.
“What happened?”
“Let’s go find Tim, and then I’ll tell you everything.”
I turned to Mom. “Can you help us find Buster? I brought him here, too. I hope he’s okay.”
Mom nodded.
“Who are you talking to?” Isobel asked, squinting at me in the darkness.
“Let’s just find Tim,” I said again, ignoring her question.
I wanted to stay there with Mom, but I’d brought my friends into this mess, and I needed to make sure they were okay.
Tim was sitting where he’d fallen, leaning against the wall. He was dazed and bloody, and his eyeliner was hopelessly smeared, but he was otherwise all right. I helped him up, and the three of us sat on the staircase. While we waited for my mom, I filled them in.
“You seriously saw your mom?” Tim asked.
“Yeah. She’s looking for Buster.” My stomach twisted at the thought. I hoped she’d be able to find him.
“And I…I was, like, attacking you?” Isobel looked horrified.
“You went totally Exorcist on Violet,” Tim informed her as though he’d been there.
“It wasn’t you,” I told her. “It was Abigail.”
Isobel shook her head as if to clear it. “I don’t even remember going up the stairs.”
“That’s probably for the best.” I grimaced at the aches peppering my back from where the edge of each stair had bruised me, then glanced at the curved welts on my wrist from where Isobel’s long nails had dug in.
A sudden squeal and a chilling gust from behind caused all three of us to jump. I recognized the screech immediately—it was a little weaker than usual, a little weary, but there was no mistaking its origin.
“Buster!” I felt like a kid in one of those lame animal movies, where the faithful lost dog comes limping over the hill at the end, and everyone’s happy, and you can’t help crying even though you feel like a tool. I wished I could scratch Buster behind the ears, but since he didn’t have ears, I promised him lots of cookies once we got home instead.
A blue mist formed in front of us then, slowly taking on Mom’s shape and appearance. “Are your friends all right?” Mom asked with typical motherly concern.
I nodded. “They’re fine. And you found Buster!”
“When I realized he was here and fighting with Abigail, I called to him and gave him a place to hide. He was safe.”
Tim and Isobel tried to follow my gaze, but to them it looked like I was talking to an empty space. “Is it your mom?” Tim asked quietly.
“Yeah. It’s my mom.” Being able to say that made something inside me swell and glow. It really was her, standing right there in front of me. Okay, so she was a ghost. But after seven years of missing her, a ghost was more than good enough for me.
While I relayed her words to Isobel and Tim to keep them in the loop, Mom explained more about the true history of the Logan Street house. It was all much clearer from the other side, she said, especially since she’d had years to chat with James and Mary. James Riley, Jr., was a gentle, harmless man, and he and Abigail had been happy at first. They originally hired Mary as a live-in maid, but they grew to love her like a daughter.
Over time, though, Abigail got sick. Without access to modern psychiatric treatment, she suffered as her delusions became worse and worse. She grew insanely jealous, assuming every woman who entered the house, or even passed them on the street, had an eye on James. Eventually, her jealousy extended to Mary. Abigail saw the girl as competition for James’s affection.
One night, during a raging thunderstorm, Abigail confronted Mary. Abigail became violent; the two tussled, and Abigail flung Mary down the stairs. James heard the struggle; when he left his study to investigate, he found a crazed Abigail screaming horrible things down the staircase at an unmoving Mary. To Abigail, James’s horrified concern
for Mary was further proof of her suspicions. She rushed at James, shoving him down the stairs as well—but the force of her effort was so great that she lost her footing and went tumbling after him. James and Abigail both broke their necks on the way down and died almost instantly. Mary was only left unconscious, but eventually succumbed to head injuries five days later.
As a ghost, James witnessed the last days of Mary’s suffering and was heartbroken. He vowed to protect her in death as he had been unable to in life.
“We never knew about Mary when we were investigating,” Mom said. “She had no family, and she was a servant, so her death went undocumented.”
The violence of that evening tied all three of them to the house. Abigail couldn’t move on until she let go of her irrational anger and acknowledged what she’d done. Mary and James couldn’t leave because their fates were too intertwined with Abigail’s.
In death, Abigail had directed her anger toward anyone who entered the house. She focused the worst of her harassment on women; given the strength of her wrath, I was surprised she hadn’t physically injured some of the place’s past owners. She’d been able to lash out so violently at Mom, shoving her down the stairs, because Mom was able to sense her. After that night, Mom had been stuck in the house, too. She spent years trying to reason with Abigail and help the three ghosts move on. Nothing worked; Abigail was too disillusioned.
“What was so different about tonight?” I asked.
“I think it’s because you were here. Arguments from a ghost just don’t have the same impact as those from a living person. You were fantastic back there, the way you reasoned with Abigail and got her to stop raging and listen to you.”
“So in a way,” I said, “I really helped you out by coming here.”
“You sure did. But don’t think you’re getting off that easy, young lady,” Mom said, making me groan. She might’ve been a ghost, but she was still my mom, and I could feel a scolding coming on. “What on earth were you thinking, coming here by yourselves without a proper team?”
From the remnants of broken ghost-hunting equipment littering the floor, I figured it was pretty clear why we were there.
“I wanted to finish your file for Logan Street.”
“I appreciate that,” Mom said, her voice softening. “But how much experience do you have with investigations? I’m sure your dad’s taken you on a few, but—”
“He hasn’t.”
“What?” Mom frowned.
“He doesn’t do that anymore. He won’t even talk about ghosts…or about you.” I raised my chin a little, happy to tattle.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Surely he knew I’d want him to work with you. I wasn’t sure how much you could handle when you were younger, but I certainly intended for your paranormal education to continue before now. You deserved that.”
“That’s how I feel!”
Quickly, I told her a little more about the last seven years—being shuttled back and forth between Dad and Aunt Thelma, being bullied into pretending the whole ghost thing wasn’t true, living with Dad over the funeral home.
The more I talked, the more Mom grimaced and shook her head. “This is just ridiculous. Your father and I are going to have quite a talk about this, Violet. Honestly, I die and disappear for a few years, and I can’t even trust him to make sure you’re receiving a proper education. And…Aunt Thelma? I’m sorry, sweetie.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” I said quickly. “He did the best he could. Besides, how are you going to talk to him?”
“With you acting as translator, of course.”
“So…you’re coming home with me? You’re not going to vanish and go, like, into the light or wherever?”
“There’s not really a light,” Mom said conspiratorially. “That’s just a rumor. When a ghost is ready to move on, he just…does. But I’m not going anywhere yet. At the very least, I have to set things right with you. We’ve missed out on too much. There are so many things I need to tell you. You’re going to be stuck with me for a while.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
a tap on the nose
Before we left for home, Mom fussed over Tim and Isobel for a few minutes. She knew I was okay except for the bruises, but she thought my friends should go to the emergency room, just in case their encounters with Abigail had caused unseen damage. She was especially concerned about Tim and the possibility of a concussion, since he’d hit his head hard enough to lose consciousness and draw blood. Both of them argued otherwise; Isobel used the sleeve of her torn and ruined shirt to blot the congealing blood from Tim’s forehead, proving that the cut there was minor. After helping Mom wrestle a reluctant promise from Tim that he’d see a doctor right away if he felt dizzy or sick over the next few days, I packed Buster back into his box. He was surprisingly agreeable this time, probably because Mom was there. Or maybe he’d just had a rough night and wanted to go home.
“That was ingenious,” Mom said, indicating the box. “I managed to crate-train him, but I never would’ve thought of transporting him like that.”
I beamed, extremely proud that she would compliment one of my ideas so highly.
Mom didn’t ride home with us, but now that she could leave the Logan Street house, she promised she’d meet me at the apartment.
“Are you sure you can find it?” I asked.
“You’ll be there, and I can always find you now,” she said.
Isobel dropped off Tim, then me. In the funeral home’s driveway, I offered to let her stay over. It was late, and her parents already thought she was staying at my place.
She thought about it for a second, then shook her head. “Nah. You and your parents probably have a lot to work out. If my folks ask about tonight, I’ll make up some excuse. Maybe I’ll tell them we had a fight and that you’re a total bitch.”
I grinned. “That would explain the bruising, too.” She and Tim would both be making up a few excuses for their injuries.
Isobel drove away, leaving me with a bag full of equipment and a box full of Buster. As I let myself in the front door, I felt a sort of calming, pleasant breeze in the air. A blue glow materialized in the front hall as Mom appeared beside me.
“Dad’s probably asleep,” I said, although I wasn’t sure. Funeral directors work weird hours, and since he’d had a body to tend to early that evening, he might have still been in the back, finishing up the embalming process. Just in case, I crept back past the viewing rooms and peeked in. Sure enough, the desk lamp in Dad’s office was on, and although the office itself was empty, I could hear sounds coming from beyond the embalming room door. He kept a small television in there; it sounded like he’d broken out his classic Star Trek DVDs.
“You really live here?” Mom asked, sounding undisturbed and merely curious.
I nodded. Then I knocked on the door to the embalming room.
“Violet?” Dad called. Captain Kirk stopped making entries in his captain’s log as Dad pressed pause. “Is that you? What are you doing home?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Can we talk?”
“Of course. Give me just a minute,” he said, his voice muffled by the door. “I’m cleaning up the chemicals.”
He emerged a moment later, smelling like the strong soaps and cleansers he used to disinfect bodies. He frowned a little in concern.
“It’s so late. I thought you were staying at your friend’s house. Did something…” He paused and trailed off. His eyes narrowed. He looked down the hall one way, then the other, glancing right through Mom without seeing her. Somehow he sensed she was there, even if he didn’t realize it right away.
“Violet,” he said, his voice soft with wary concern, “what’s going on?”
“You can feel her, can’t you?” I asked, excited. “Even though you can’t see her, you can tell she’s here!”
Dad was silent for a very long time. He stood, unmovin
g, in the doorway. Slowly he raised a hand to his forehead, as if he thought he might pass out. He looked like he wasn’t even breathing.
Then, quietly, he said, “Robin?”
As it turned out, Mom and Dad didn’t even need my translation services.
“I’m here,” Mom answered, her voice wavering with emotion.
That was when Dad really did pass out. He sprawled back into the embalming room.
“Ack!” I jumped forward and managed to catch him before his head conked against the industrial tile floor. He was only half conscious, but I guided him into a sitting position before he could crumple again and hurt himself. He leaned against the door frame for a minute with his eyes closed. When they finally opened, they blinked rapidly a few times, as if he were trying to wake himself up. Then he focused on me.
“Dad? Are you okay?” I wondered if I should ask how many fingers I was holding up.
“I could’ve sworn I heard your mother’s voice,” he said sadly. “It was the damndest thing. Sounded just like her. Maybe I’m working too hard.”
“Dad, she’s here.”
“Peter?” Mom asked gently, crouching beside me. “It’s all right.”
Still bewildered, Dad shook his head. “That can’t be,” he said to me, still clinging to the idea that the voice he’d heard was a delusion. “Your mom would’ve moved on years ago. Even if she were here, I can’t hear ghosts the way she could…The way you can.”
I remembered what had happened when I’d reunited Isobel and Dirk; there were no hard and fast rules when it came to the spirit world.
“Sometimes there are exceptions. You and Mom loved each other more than anyone else in the world. Why wouldn’t you, of all people, be able to communicate with her if she’s still here?”
“Because if I could, she would’ve come to me a long time ago.”
“She wanted to, Dad, but she couldn’t,” I said. “She was trapped.”
Looking a little pained at his reaction to her presence, Mom reached out. She tapped a translucent finger lightly against the bridge of Dad’s nose. It was a sign of affection I remembered from when she was alive. Dad jumped, looking startled, and touched his nose.
Spookygirl - Paranormal Investigator Page 18