The Ghost Host: Episode 2 (The Ghost Host Series)

by DelSheree Gladden

  “For the best doesn’t mean you can’t be upset about losing him as more than your Keeper. Are you upset?”

  Echo frowns. Confusion bunches her features. “I think I should be but…maybe I was prepared for it to happen or…there’s something wrong with me. My emotions haven’t been right lately.” She sighs. “Nothing has been right.”

  Her assessment is accurate, on both counts. I decide to back off on making her talk about it. I decide not to take her home as well. She doesn’t notice until we’re parked at a trailhead I haven’t seen in years. It feels good to be back.

  “Where are we?” Echo asks. Her eyes scan the tall poplar trees and heavy undergrowth of ferns visible in the car’s headlights. Curious more than fearful, her hand waits near the seatbelt buckle.

  “Bear Creek Trail.”

  “It’s ten at night,” Echo says skeptically.

  “Afraid of the dark?” I ask with a wink.

  Echo huffs. “Of what’s in the dark maybe.”

  Reaching below the seat, I pull out the locked case containing Dad’s spare handgun. Even with my credentials, I had to leave my service weapon at home. I’m supposed to be on vacation, though that hadn’t exactly worked out. Echo pulls back when she sees me withdraw the SIG Sauer. Glocks are the standard, but Dad has always preferred the SIG, and knows I borrowed his for tonight—though he’d been plenty irritated I allowed Echo to leave her apartment in the first place.

  “Why do you need that?” Echo asks.

  “Just a precaution,” I say. “Do you keep a flashlight in your car?”

  She reaches for the glove box. “Your dad insists.” She extracts the heavy duty, long handled flashlight and hands it to me, but I wave her off.

  “You carry it so I can keep my hands free.”

  Freezing for half a second, she puts her worry aside in favor of practicality. “Okay, I’m not much good against anything living anyway.”

  At first I think she’s just devaluing herself, but then I realize she means it. “Dad hasn’t started training you in hand-to-hand combat or weapons?”

  Echo rolls her eyes. “When would he do that? During the mountains of free time we both have?”

  I shake my head. “That’s going to change, for several reasons.”

  I don’t expound before stepping out of the car. Echo follows, moving quickly around the car to stand near me. “Why are we out here?” she asks.

  “You’ll see.”

  Echo wastes no time switching on the flashlight when I lock the car and the lights wink out. She turns it toward the trail, holding it with two hands, as though it were a sword and her only defense against the darkness. Making it obvious to her, I tuck the SIG Sauer into the waistband of my jeans and gesture for her to follow me onto the trail. She hesitates for a moment before quickstepping up next to me.

  “How did you know about this place?” she asks.

  “Dad used to take us biking here on weekends when we lived here. Brit complained incessantly about having to be outdoors in the sticky heat, but Cas and I loved it. Dad worked a lot, but the weekends he was home were devoted to us.”

  That seems to satisfy Echo, but only on the surface. “Can I ask you about…your mom?” Her gaze darts up to mine, checking my reaction, then drops to the swath of light showing us the way. “If it’s too personal, I understand. Your dad never talks about her.”

  “He doesn’t like to talk about her. Too many painful memories.”

  “Oh,” Echo says quietly. “Did she die?”

  Part of me wants to let her think that, take the easy way out of this conversation. Echo deserves better. “No, she left us.”

  Echo flinches in surprise. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not as hard for me to talk about as it is for Dad. I was young. I don’t remember her very well.” Sometimes I wonder if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I have less emotional scars, but I have only a handful of memories of my mother. Good ones. Memories that are sometimes hard to reconcile with the truth.

  “Why…did she leave?”

  Even knowing the question is coming, the words stick in my throat. It takes a moment before I can respond. “She knew what my dad did. She didn’t believe in any of it, but she understood the basics about the area he specialized in. To her, it was a dead-end job, and she pushed him to get out of it, move up. When he refused, Cas and Brit remember them fighting a lot—when Dad was home anyway. She demanded he either quit or transfer, but he refused and tried to prove what he was doing was important. It didn’t go over very well.”

  “How did he…?” Echo trails off. “You’re not gonna tell me that, are you?”

  I shake my head. “Dad’s secrets are his own. I’m sorry but—”

  Echo waves me off. “It’s okay. I understand.” There’s no bitterness. Few people truly can understand, but she does. “What happened after he tried to prove the paranormal stuff was real?”

  I remember wondering why she’d put a suitcase in the car that morning. The thought only lasted a moment before being distracted by something else. There are times I still blame myself for not understanding, not trying to do anything to stop her. It’s idiotic. I know that. Most of the time that helps.

  “Dad went to work the next day after sleeping in the den. Mom put my sisters on the school bus, dropped me off at preschool…” I shrug. “That was the last time any of us saw her. They had to call my dad to have him come pick me up when my mom never showed. From then on, it was just the four of us.”

  Echo’s eyes are wide and bright, reflecting moonlight and flashlight. “Preschool? She abandoned you at preschool?”

  I nod and we both fall quiet. My attention is still half on the environment, but the rest is split between shoving away memories of standing with my teacher in the pick-up line for a mother who would never come, and watching Echo’s reactions. Her anger isn’t unsurprising. Neither is the sadness that follows, but I realize I’m mistaken about the source when she speaks.

  “My dad almost left once.” She glances into the trees, the darkness hovering there just outside the beam of the flashlight. “I’ve never told anyone, and my parents have no idea I know.”

  Strangely, her confession doesn’t surprise me. Even though Echo and her mother have been at odds most of her life, she’s tried to help Echo. The help she forced on her hurt more than it helped, but that hadn’t been her intention. From what Dad had told me, it was Mrs. Simmons who always backed off when the risk of losing Echo grew too great. Her father seemed less forgiving.

  “When was that?” I ask.

  “I was nine. Things were really bad then. I was scaring them. I was scaring myself. The ghosts were terrorizing me and I had no way to stop it. Mom tried therapy, medication, meditation, herbal remedies, spiritual cleansings, anything she could think of to fix me. All of us were at our limits for different reasons, and he was the first one to snap.”

  Abuse accusations had cropped up against Echo’s parents several times during her childhood. It wasn’t surprising. The Simmons managed to convince doctors and social workers that the bruises, cuts, and broken bones were self-inflicted. Given her psychiatric history, they bought it. As far as I knew, no domestic abuse allegations had ever been made, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t happened.

  “By snapped, you mean…”

  “Nothing violent,” she says, then frowns. “Not…I mean, he pushed her away from the door when she tried to stop him from leaving their bedroom with his suitcase. It didn’t hurt her. Mom was hysterical, Dad was angry and blamed her for all the trouble I was causing. Neither of them saw me standing in the doorway of the bathroom with a bloody towel pressed to my head.”

  “What…?” I start to ask but she shakes her head, dismissive of the question.

  “Just another ghost trying to get into my mind. Fell off the bed. Cut my head.” Her free hand scratches at a spot on her scalp and I wonder how many scars her red hair hides. “Anyway,�
� she continues, “he got past her and started walking out, but he stopped when she told him she was pregnant and slid down the door to the floor.”

  She tries not to let the admission reveal how much this memory devastated her, but she can’t hide it from me. Not only had her father being ready to leave her, in the end, she hadn’t been enough to convince him to stay. I could imagine her wondering every day of her life what would have happened if her mother hadn’t announced the impending arrival of her twin little sisters that night. I could imagine the anxiety she must have lived with, never feeling certain her father wouldn’t still leave when things got bad again.

  “I love my sisters,” Echo says, “but until they were born, I kind of hated them, but felt like I owed them at the same time. When they came home, the hate went away, even though they were a double boatload of trouble. Some days, I still held it against them, but other days I was grateful they took the focus off me. Mable and Azalea never begrudged me anything—aside from making them clean up after themselves. They’re better than me.”

  I scoff and put my arm back around her shoulders. “Nobody could ever fault you for struggling to forgive the people who’ve hurt you, even as inadvertent and your sisters’ injury might have been. Give yourself a break.”

  We walk the rest of the trail in silence until we reach the reason I chose to bring her out here. Surrounding us on both sides of the trail are slender tree trunks pushing upward from the forest floor. In the middle of everything is one massive tree whose trunk is wide enough for three or four people to stand in front of at the same time.

  Echo tilts the flashlight upward, scanning the length of the towering giant. “Wow,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

  “The Gennet Poplar is one of the few that survived massive logging ventures in this area during the last century.”

  “It’s neat. Reminds me of visiting the Redwoods.” She frowns, though. “I’m not sure why you brought me out here.”

  “When was the last time you were alone to think?”

  Echo shrugs. “I’m alone all the time. Zara’s always off doing stuff, and I spend a lot of time in my room or your dad’s office to do homework. I—”

  I cut her off with the shake of my head. “I asked when you were last alone to think, to take some time for yourself.”

  For a moment, she doesn’t understand the question, or at least why I’m asking it. “It’s too dangerous. Malachi would flip if I came out here alone. Your dad has to be able to reach me at all times.”

  Excuses like that won’t fly with me. “You can’t survive like that. Look at what it’s doing to you.”

  “I’m fine,” she argues.

  “You’re not fine.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  I shake my head. “When? After you take care of Francis, or the boy, or the next ghost who shows up wanting something? How many cases and hauntings can you hold up against before you lose control?”

  “Walking through trees is going to help?” she snaps. “Really?”

  “Stepping away from it all is.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I won’t let her. “Don’t tell me you don’t have time. You have to make time or you’re going to spiral out of control. Then how are you going to fight the Devourers or save souls?”

  Echo fumes, fingers clenching around the flashlight. “I can’t stop! I can’t waste time, Griffin!”

  “You’re not wasting time. You making sure you’re ready and able to fight when one finds you.”

  “I…” Her argument dies away and something regretful passes through her mind. It’s not hard to figure out what.

  “When the tortured soul attacked, you panicked, right? Malachi sent it away?”

  Scowling, she makes it clear she doesn’t appreciate me being right. “I didn’t have anything with me to fight it.”

  “Weapons aren’t any good when you freeze up, or when you missed the signs of an attack in the first place because you’re too busy fighting with your ex-boyfriend over something you decided months ago.”

  The shock that floods her confirms I was right about being distracted, but her shock extends to my harsh critique, and makes me flinch. It wasn’t nice, but we both know it’s true. All of it, her decision about Malachi included.

  “I don’t know how to do what you’re asking of me,” she says quietly after several long, silent minutes.

  “What do you mean?”

  She gestures at the forest. “Coming out here is great and all, but turning off everything else is impossible. I carry it with me, everywhere. I can’t escape it. It invades my dreams, my thoughts, everything. I can barely sleep most nights, and focusing on school is harder than it’s ever been. How do I switch all that off?”

  When I reach for her hand, she doesn’t pull back. I clasp my fingers around hers and tug her over to the base of the huge tree. She’s annoyed when I motion for her to sit, but she does as ordered. I sit next to her and settle in.

  “Now what?” she demands. “Structured breathing? Yoga? Meditation? Trust me, I’ve tried all of those with almost no success.”

  “Be quiet.” The commanding tone of my voice makes her crinkle her nose in annoyance, but she closes her mouth and keeps it that way. Gently, I urge her to lean back against the tree and get into a comfortable position. I don’t speak until I feel her body begin to relax. “What did your mom used to do to put you to sleep at night?”

  Not expecting the question, coming up with an answer takes Echo longer than usual. “She used to run her fingers through my hair.”

  It isn’t what I’m expecting, but I can work with that. Tugging on her arm, I motion for her to move so she’s sitting in my lap. After rolling her eyes at me, she complies. She makes it perfectly clear she thinks this is stupid. I don’t care what she thinks at this point. Even in a calmer state than she was when she walked back into the club, the storm of emotions raging inside her are going to burst through her control if she doesn’t learn to temper them.

  “I once met a very strange medium,” I tell Echo.

  “Aren’t they all strange?” she grumbles, probably rolling her eyes again.

  “Some mediums are perfectly normal, actually.” I gather her hair so it falls down her back in lose waves. “This one, however, didn’t just communicate with the ghosts of people. She could sense plants as well.”

  Echo glances at me over her shoulder, incredulous. “Plants?” When I nod, she scowls. “Plants don’t have souls.”

  I stare at her, one eyebrow cocked. “You’re one to say something isn’t possible.”

  She turns back around and folds her arms. “Plants with souls sounds ridiculous.”

  I don’t tell her I agree, because she’s being a brat. I do say, “I never said she claimed plants had souls. She could sense their life force. Before you ask, no they didn’t try to communicate, but she could feel their presence. Tests verified her abilities.”

  “That seems like a very pointless ability. You can see plants. Why would you need to sense them?”

  Shrugging, I admit there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for anyone having that ability in a practical sense. Perhaps it was just a side effect of her more prominent talent. I have no idea. That isn’t why I brought it up. “I want you to try it.”

  “What? Why?”

  “If you’re having trouble clearing your mind on your own, focus it on something unrelated to your problems.”

  “This is stupid.”

  I yank her hair enough that she loses her balance and falls into me. “Do it anyway.”

  Huffing, she pushes herself back up and goes silent. I hide a smile and begin running my fingers through her hair. Echo immediately begins to relax against me. Brit hates people touching her hair once she has it done, but Cas is like Echo. She loves the sensation, often making me brush her hair or run my fingers through it for hours on end while we watched cartoons. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, but it’s an easy enough skill to pick back up.

  Echo gives no i
ndication of whether or not her search for plant souls is working. I don’t expect it to. I do expect her to exhaust her mind to the point of not being able to think at all. It won’t be quick, though, so I settle against the tree more comfortably and wait. Every minute that passes, every stroke of my fingers through her hair, her body relaxes and her wild emotions are forced back into containment. Hours pass, and I feel her body settle against my chest a moment before my eyes close.

  9: A Risk

  (Echo)

  I don’t know why I’m in a forest, or why it looks so weird. Instead of green leaves or ferns, everything around me is varying shades of grey. That’s not the only difference. The fallen leaves beneath my feet don’t crunch when I walk on them. They look brittle, but they’re unchanged when I lift my foot after each step. Nothing changes in this weird place. No breeze stirs the plant life, no noises disturb the silence, and no source of light casts shadows. There is light, just not a single source. The sky peeking through the branches is dark, yet I can see fine. It makes no sense, like everything else here.

  Wherever here is.

  I’m used to nightmares. I’m used to ghosts invading my dreams and trying to screw with my mind. This is different and I have no explanation for it. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I’m awake or asleep. Maybe Griffin was right and my head exploded, and now I’m in some kind of monochromatic purgatory. This could get boring real fast.

  Echo…

  Or not.

  I exhale slowly and begin to turn in the direction of the sound. Suddenly, I hope Griffin is serious about having me learn to fight and shoot a gun. Most likely that won’t help in this creepy place, but who knows. Ghost rules never make a ton of sense. I’m three quarters of the way through my slow turn when an icy chill runs down my spine and I freeze.