by K. J. Emrick
She had performed too many communications to count. Some with greater success than others. Ghosts could be very reluctant conversationalists. A few had tried to hurt her rather than offer up the secrets they held. Up to this point, she'd been careful, or blessed, or just plain lucky that nothing serious had ever happened to her. That didn't mean it never would.
The effort was exhausting even when the spirit participant was willing, like she was hoping Chloe was going to be. A little bit of herself went into each effort. If she had to put too much effort into the conjuring, there was a risk she might not recover.
Ever.
Sighing, taking a last drink from the soda bottle she had bought from the vending machine outside the motel's office after Lorne had dropped her off, she settled cross-legged into the center of the ring of candles she'd laid out on the floor. They were already lit. The room smelled of hot wax and the incense stick she had burning on the dresser. Everything was ready.
So why was she still hesitating?
Emotions weighed her down like a lead balloon tied around her. She was getting in her own way, she realized. Her feelings were just too heavy for her to ignore them and center herself. Anger. Sadness.
Guilt.
There it was. There was the real reason it was so hard for her to call on her friend's ghost. She felt guilty. Guilty that she hadn't been here when Chloe died, that she hadn't stayed closer to her best friend, that all of the paranormal abilities at her fingertips couldn't bring Chloe back.
But they could do one thing to help ease her own emotional burden, and to help bring some peace to Chloe. They could help Darcy find Chloe's killer. Catching hold of that thought she put it front and center in her thoughts like a burning torch. It let her breathe a little easier.
"Okay," she said to herself, "we're going to do this. Now. Right now."
Her pep talk fired her up and she clenched her teeth and took a few more slow, deep breaths, and told herself it was now or never.
Never wasn't really an option.
Usually, in order to call to someone on the other side like this, she would need a personal item of theirs to help make the connection. She'd used coins and photos and stuffed animals and live pets and just about anything else she could get her hands on when the need arose. In this case, she didn't have anything of Chloe's. She didn't need anything, either. The connection they shared as friends would be more than enough to bridge any gap between this world and the next.
Clearing her mind out, imagining a rolling fog covering every thought and every concern and every…well, everything, she peered into those mists, and called upon the spirit of—
Chloe.
She was there instantly, the curling tendrils of fog twisting into each other and rising up to create the shape and then the substance of her friend. Just like that. Usually she'd have to call on the spirit and guide it down a figurative pathway to where she waited, or pull it forward kicking and screaming. Chloe practically leapt into her vision. It was so sudden that Darcy felt herself rock backward where she sat, even though the sensations of her real body were a distant hum like a pestering insect.
"Hiya Darcy," Chloe said to her. "Long time, no see."
She was wearing a long, flowing white dress in Darcy's vision, a pair of matching shoes held in her hand by their straps. Standing barefoot, she pushed the long tresses of her golden hair back behind an ear. It was out of its usual braid now, loose and wispy. She smiled at Darcy, and then winked. "If it ain't true, don't fix it," she said.
Darcy couldn't help but laugh out loud. The private language they had come up with in college. It was something she hadn't used in years, but she remembered every word of it. "If it ain't true, don't fix it," had been their way of saying you can't worry about the things you can't change. It was the Serenity Prayer for girls like they had been. Girls with the world in the palm of their hands.
Don't worry about the things you can't change. Chloe was dead. Darcy couldn't change it.
"But I can help," Darcy argued. "I can bring your killer to justice. Just tell me who it was. Was it Veronica? Or Sami? Someone else?"
Chloe put a finger to her lips. Then she pointed off to the left, through the gathering of mists.
Darcy turned her attention to that part of the vision. In the plane of the communication, distance and time meant nothing. The spirits she talked to here could show her anything that they had personally witnessed. Something from ten years ago, or ten minutes ago. Something that had happened in the comfort of their living room, or else from halfway around the world.
This time, Chloe was showing her a freeze-frame moment from her mother's house. Darcy was surprised to recognize herself in the scene. She remembered it. This was from earlier today, when she had first met Veronica and Sami and Danson and Lorne. Chloe's dad sat in his easy chair at the far end of the room. Betsy had been out in the kitchen at that point.
Chloe's ghost had been trying to scream out her frustrations, kneeling in front of everyone, invisible to all but Darcy. The scene moved forward slowly in time, and Darcy watched again as Chloe's hand swept around the room, palm up, fingers spread…
Wait.
The scene backtracked, and played out again. Backtracked, and played out again. From where Darcy now stood watching the whole thing, she saw something she had missed earlier when she'd actually been there. Chloe's spirit hadn't just been acting out in rage and frustration. This had been a deliberate action. It meant something.
Chloe wasn't just moving her hand. She was indicating everyone in the room. She wanted Darcy to take special notice of the five people seated there.
One of them was her killer.
Darcy took a rushing step forward, hoping to study the scene closer, but it disappeared back into the mental mists around her. "No," she complained. "Oh, come on Chloe, you can show me. You know you can. You know what I can do. Let me help you."
Chloe's spirit reappeared beside her again, the long white dress flowing in a breeze that wasn't there. "I knew you'd come when I needed you," she said.
Pink froth dribbled out form the corner of Chloe's mouth. Darcy tried to ignore it.
"I came when you died," Darcy said miserably. "I should have been here more. I should have come to visit like I promised all those times. If I had…"
Chloe took Darcy's hand. "Not your fault. Hey, remember when Lorne tried to ask you to the movies but you had to study for a final so I went with him instead?"
Darcy nodded. That had been a pattern for Darcy in college. Studying had come first.
"Well. Thank you for that," Chloe said with a big grin. "We wouldn't have known how much we liked each other if you hadn't ditched him."
"I didn't ditch him!" Darcy said, then laughed at herself. Chloe had done it again. She had managed to make Darcy laugh even when there was no reason to feel anything but sad. She'd always done things like that in college.
This wasn’t college, though, and Darcy knew she couldn't afford to get sidetracked. "Chloe. Who killed you?"
"North and south," Chloe said.
Darcy blinked. That didn't make any sense. It wasn't part of their old code. It certainly wasn't an answer to her straightforward question. "Come on, Chloe. Don't give me the same runaround every ghost in creation gives me. Please? Tell me who killed you, okay?"
"North and south," Chloe repeated, saying the words quickly enough that they ran together like northandsouth. "That's the way I've always understood it."
"Understood what?" Darcy asked in frustration.
"North and south. North and south."
Darcy desperately tried to think of some other way to ask the question. There had to be some way to come at this sideways, some way that the ghost would respond to. "Look, Chloe, I know it wasn't your mom. I know it wasn't your dad. I don’t think it was Lorne. He's a good man, by the way. I think you two would have been very happy."
"Magnetism," she said with a nod. "We had magnetism."
Was that supposed to be confirmation that Lorne wasn't her
killer? Or some cryptic way of saying he was?
"All right. Chloe. Let's try this. Can you at least tell me when you died for sure?"
Chloe drifted, laying down on her back, the mists around her solidifying into a bed with a big, fluffy purple comforter. An entire room sprung up around it. Chloe's bedroom, Darcy figured. Where she died. On the nightstand, distorted and huge, sat a white porcelain clock with unicorn figurines on either side. It ticked louder than was realistically possible, like the sound of a hammer striking rock in some bottomless cavern. The clock read six twenty-seven, a little picture window on its face showing a moon to say it was night.
Almost six-thirty, but not quite. The coroner had been pretty accurate with the time of death.
"Okay, Chloe. That's good. That's good. Now, how did you die?"
Darcy figured it was a safer question for Chloe than asking who killed her. Less chance of the answer including cryptic messages.
The hands of the clock rolled backward, but not far, to ten minutes after six. Chloe was standing now, at the foot of the bed, raising a glass of dark amber liquid in a toast with a shadowy, indistinct figure. Then she drank the glass to the bottom. Beer. Darcy was sure it was beer. Yet, there was clearly a white powdery substance all over the bottom of the glass when Chloe had emptied it. In the vision, the powder sparkled and drifted in the glass like snow. The drug. The epilepsy drug.
"Chloe, don't!" Darcy cried out, but it was already days too late to warn her friend. This had already happened. In the past.
Alcohol and any drug was a bad combination, Darcy knew. With something as strong as an epilepsy drug the mix would be worse. Depending on how much of the drug had been slipped into that drink, death was a certainty.
She watched Chloe laugh at something the shadow figure had said. Then her eyes went wide and her expression turned to shock. The figure had told her what was happening. Chloe knew she'd been poisoned. Knew she was about to die.
Before she could do anything about it, she collapsed onto the bed and lay still.
The clock sped forward again as the shadow figure zipped around Chloe, arranging her on her bed, spilling a single pill onto the nightstand from a bottle, then crushing it partly to powder. Enough to test but not enough to identify by any markings that might have been on the pill.
Darcy tried to strain to see the label on the prescription bottle. She couldn't, though. Everything buzzed by too fast. That wasn't surprising. Unless Chloe had seen the pill bottle clearly, she wouldn't be able to show it Darcy.
Then the clock struck six twenty-seven, and the scene went still. Chloe was dead.
The shadow figure turned away. Darcy got the impression that whoever it was, they were satisfied and happy about what they had done. Try as she might, Darcy couldn't see a face. It was all just a blur.
The mists tore themselves apart silently, and then Chloe's spirit was standing beside Darcy again. This time, when Darcy turned to her, her expression was sad.
"Help, me Darcy," Chloe said. "Help me."
"I'm trying, Chloe. You have to tell me who killed you. Please. Tell me the name."
Chloe looked at her, then leaned in closer, like she was going to impart a secret. Darcy tensed, ready for the worst.
"North and south. Follow the line of north and south."
Then she stepped back from Darcy, spinning in a circle with her arms held wide, dancing to music only she could hear. Darcy had seen her do this any number of times in the dorms back in college. Chloe had always been a happy, exciting girl. She had been able to make any sad day happy just by being in Darcy's life. And, she had always heard music. It wasn't right that she had been killed.
"I don't know what that means," Darcy said to her. "North and south. Tell me what it means."
Chloe stopped spinning, and rushed close to Darcy. Spirits weren't restricted by the laws of reality like distance or speed. One moment Chloe was off in the mist, the next she was right up in Darcy's face. It wasn't scary, though. Chloe's spirit emanated a sense of warmth and love around her. Darcy wanted, desperately, to hug her good friend again.
"You know what it means," Chloe said to her, rather than answering the question. "You were always smarter than a teddy bear."
Darcy laughed, even though she wanted to cry. "I miss you, Chloe."
"Miss you too," Chloe responded. "Miss you like peanut butter."
With that, everything in the vision faded away and was gone. Darcy woke up from her trance sitting in the same place she had been, cross-legged on the floor in a ring of candles. Thankfully she had used the plastic butter dish lids from her kit, placing them upside down under the candles, because they had all melted halfway down. The wax had pooled down the sides and collected in the lids. No sense in burning holes in the motel room rug or risking a fire that might kill her before she came out of a trance.
Carefully, she tried to extend her legs. They were prickly with pins and needles, numb and rubbery. Had she really been sitting there that long? It took her a few tries to get up again and then she carefully blew out each candle. The clock on the nightstand told her it was after midnight. Yikes.
She'd been sitting here for hours, even though to her it only felt like a few minutes. From inside the trance, there was no way of knowing how much time went by. She blew a strand of hair out of her face with a sigh. She needed to get to sleep.
She had too much to think about, though. Chloe had told her things that had seemed to make no sense. North and south? Follow the line of north and south? What in the world did that mean? Did it mean anything?
It had to. Chloe wouldn't have said it over and over as an answer to who killed her if it wasn't important. It was going to be up to Darcy to figure out what it meant, and how important it was.
It might be the key to everything.
Chapter Six
The Church of the Sacred Visitation was a narrow but tall stone structure not far from the Smithsville Town Hall. Darcy had noticed it last night when she and Lorne had walked around town. It had a tall spire on the front of its peaked roof with a bell in it that rang out loud, low tones now to mark the start of the services.
Chloe was being honored by a large part of the town, it looked like. Rows and rows of pews were nearly filled from side to side with people in suits and ties and black dresses. Even though it was a weekday, that hadn't stopped people from coming to say goodbye to Chloe.
Darcy sat up front with Lorne and Veronica and Sami and Chloe's parents. It was hard for Darcy to sit there and be friendly, knowing that one of the people she was sitting next to was a murderer. The look Lorne had given her as they sat down told her he was having the same problem. Thankfully it was a time to sit solemnly with a serious face and not talk much. It made it easier to hide her real feelings.
Darcy's gaze kept drifting to the polished brown casket set up on its expandable cart at the front of the church, just below the altar. Her friend's body was in there. Ready to be laid to rest in the ground. Darcy hoped she could lay Chloe's spirit to rest as easily.
The priest was dressed in a long white robe with a red silk stole over his shoulders. He was a young man, with straight blonde hair and thick glasses. His voice rang out through the church as he talked about the value of all life, and how sad it was when any one of us should be lost so early. He added in a few specifics about Chloe, things Darcy had heard him ask Chloe's mother about just before the service started. It gave his words a more personal quality.
After a few recited prayers by everyone gathered, the priest asked if anyone wanted to come up to the altar and share their stories of Chloe.
Chloe's mother stood slowly and made her way to the front of the church, up onto the altar, the priest smiling and showing her to the podium with its slanted top and microphone. She swallowed and gave everyone a weak smile, and then started telling a story about Chloe when she'd been just six years old and climbing a tree for the first time in her life.
Darcy had heard this story before, from Chloe, and she re
membered the ending. Chloe had fallen and scraped her knee up to the point that her mother had brought her to the hospital to get the bleeding to stop. Then, when they got home, Chloe had gone right back to that same tree and started climbing it again. This time, she made it up into the branches.
Behind Chloe's mother, a figure appeared. Darcy shook her head with a smile. She knew no one else would be able to see Chloe, standing close to Betsy, smiling at her mom, imitating what it looked like to climb the branches of that tree so long ago. And then, what it looked like to fall down.
An abrupt laugh escaped Darcy's lips, but thankfully it was a part of the story where everyone laughed out loud anyway. It was so good to hear the sound ring off the high church roof. It made Darcy's heart a little lighter.
Crying even as she smiled, Chloe's mother sat back down next to her husband. Others came up, one at a time, to tell a little story or share an interesting fact or just remember Chloe as she had been in life. Behind them all, treating the altar like her stage, Chloe acted out each story for the benefit of her audience of one.
Darcy put her hand up over her mouth at one point to hide her smile, as Chloe tried to take a note card out of one woman's hands, pointing at it like the details were all wrong. Another time, Darcy had to turn a chuckle into a cough as Chloe began dancing and spinning and jumping around a man, a neighbor, talking about how Chloe used to listen to this horrible alternative rock music that he absolutely hated.
"I realize now," the man said, "that the music I hated so much was beautiful in its own way. Just like Chloe."
Chloe stuck her tongue out at him, bent over at the waist, eyes tightly shut. It was a blatant raspberry she was giving the man, right here in church, in the middle of her own funeral service.
Darcy dug her fingers hard into her thigh, bunching her ankle-length black dress, to keep from howling with laughter. This was the Chloe she remembered. This amazing woman who could sparkle under the worst of situations.
Chloe came over to where Darcy sat, pretending now to sit on Darcy's lap. Then she stuck her tongue out at Darcy. Then when Darcy continued to ignore her, she played peek-a-boo with her hands over her face.