Black Wave

by Devon Glenn

  Elerick looked serious for a moment. “I had a dream on my first night staying here. There were ghosts who were talking about someone named Edgar. They seemed worried about him finding someone else—a woman—who was still in this house. I’m wondering now if Edgar is the same Gray Man from your séance.”

  “It’s possible,” Emily said. She pulled out her phone and typed the name Edgar for the Orbiters who had asked about the picture. She could be wrong, but she wasn’t about to channel a creepy, anonymous ghost to find out. Hopefully they’d leave her alone now.

  “Have you seen Edgar here in the inn?” Elerick asked.

  “No.”

  “Let’s keep it that way. If something ever happened to you…” His cheeks flushed, and he looked away. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  Emily had to catch her breath. She didn’t know what he meant, but she knew what she wanted it to mean—and that involved lifting her up lifeguard-style and putting her in his bed with him to sleep off her fright from ten years ago.

  “Weren’t your parents worried?”

  “Not really,” she said. “They believe me now, I think, but at the time, they assumed I had just learned some parlor tricks from Madame Selena. She used to hold séances at our old place.”

  This point was suggested by the child psychologist at Emily’s school, who had given Joan another word to use to help her cope with Emily’s unusual gift: mentalist. Her theory was that watching Selena night after night had taught her to read people’s body language to find out what they wanted to hear and then use the power of suggestion to make them believe it. But she was the one who was the mentalist. That therapist was so full of it.

  Elerick laughed. “So, what happened after I left? Were you grounded?”

  Emily looked at Sadie and smiled. “We were, as my mother liked to say, transferred to a better learning environment.”

  After the séance debacle, Joan and Burt, along with Jenna and Brandon, had conspired to enroll the two girls in the Summer Citizens program, which taught American history, culture, and etiquette to elementary school children. The thought that one of their guests might have brought hard-core drugs into their home had motivated them to get the girls out of the house.

  Two days later, Emily and Sadie were sitting in matching leather armchairs and staring at a woman with gray hair whose khaki pants seemed to ride all the way up to her chin. “Here we are, children, in Congress Hall, which served as our nation’s temporary capitol before the capitol was moved to Washington, DC,” the woman said.

  Until that moment, Emily and Sadie had no idea they were being punished. They saw the permission slips and thought they were going to some kind of summer camp. The field trip to Philadelphia had seemed like a good idea at the time, but the girls were less thrilled after sitting on a school bus for nearly two hours only to be put into what seemed like an old-timey classroom. There was nothing to look at but a desk with old papers and feathered pens.

  “You think this room is boring,” said the tour guide, as if she could read their thoughts, “but this is one of the most important rooms in American history.”

  Sadie kicked the balcony wall in front of her chair, but Emily sat forward, curious to hear of the room’s importance.

  “Congress Hall is where John Adams was sworn in as the second president of the United States of America,” she said. “Does anyone know why that was so important?”

  None of them raised their hands. The children knew that Presidents’ Day was celebrated for Presidents Washington and Lincoln. Sadie could tell by the clothes of the men in the portrait on the wall that John Adams was from the same time as George Washington, but she didn’t know what he did that was so special.

  The tour guide continued, somehow pleased to have stumped a room full of elementary school children. “This inauguration marked the first time that a leader came into power and no one had to die. Before John Adams, leaders were either born into their positions or they had to kill the person who was—bloodletting and bloodlines, they used to say. But John Adams was elected by the people, just as our presidents are now. Everyone who was in the room that day must have felt the tremendous significance of that moment.”

  Emily looked at the desk surrounded by empty chairs. The feeling she had wasn’t tremendous; it was the same boredom she felt at her mother’s arts commission meetings. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something stirring in the painting above the fireplace to the left of the podium. One of the men in brass-buttoned coats and cropped pants had turned his head in Emily’s direction. “I’m not sure if they were angrier that Washington was leaving or that Adams was taking his place,” he said, and resumed his two-dimensional pose. Emily thought she heard creaking on the floorboards, followed by a squeak, as if someone had just sat down in one of the chairs by the fireplace.

  Emily raised her hand and waited until the tour guide turned to her and smiled. “Was that his chair?” she asked.

  “Actually, that was James Madison’s chair. Most of the chairs in this room are period pieces, meaning that they are the same types of chairs that would have been in this room at the time, but this chair has a ribbon on it because it’s authentic. This chair actually was here in this very room when President Adams was sworn in.”

  Emily sighed. Old furniture, whether “period” or “authentic,” usually brought people into the room whom Emily couldn’t talk to in front of her classmates.

  “What do you think James Madison would say to us if he were here right now?” the tour guide continued.

  “He’d say that people didn’t really want George Washington to leave,” Emily answered.

  The tour guide furrowed her brow. “Well, he was a popular p…president,” she stammered, adding under her breath, “precocious child.”

  One hour later, Emily and Sadie were thoroughly charmed by their nation’s former capitol. The street clacked with horse-drawn carriages filled with waving tourists. All around them street performers playing patriotic songs blasted the excitement of the Fourth of July into their ears. By the time they finally got through the line at the visitor’s center to see the Liberty Bell, the girls were calling everything macaroni.

  “That’s a big crack,” Sadie said, standing before the historic bell.

  “Your butt has a big crack,” Emily retorted. She and Sadie doubled over in a fit of giggles.

  “You kissed George Washington on the lips,” Sadie said, gasping for air.

  “No way,” Emily replied. “He had wooden teeth—I’d get splinters in my mouth.” She and Sadie fell on the ground. Sadie was rolling happily with laughter. Emily rolled onto a pair of buckled boots and stockings right next to her head.

  When she looked up, a kindly face was staring down at her. It was a younger man, but he wore a white wig that was curly like the ones in the paintings. “You were one of very few people who knew his secret,” he told her. “Darkness serves its purpose in time, but in the end, we only cast shadows when we’re blocking the light.”

  “Huh?”

  “The president’s teeth were made of ivory,” he said. “Among other things. You might have thought him quite fetching if you were older. He was a good dancer.”

  Emily sat up outside her body so she could talk to the man without being heard. “Wouldn’t his teeth have fallen out when he danced?”

  “Indeed,” the man replied. “They would have jumped right out of his mouth and bitten you on the nose.”

  Emily’s giggling took a turn for the worse. She was now laughing so hard she snorted.

  “What’s so funny?” Sadie asked. Her laughter had worn off, leaving her with a mild case of the hiccups.

  “Yankee doodle,” she said quickly. “It’s what they used to call horse poo.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Sadie argued. Her stomach felt weak from laughter, but the word poo was enough to set her off again. She
and Emily were still shrieking when their teacher finally pulled them off the ground and herded them back onto the bus to New Jersey.

  Sadie punched Emily’s arm. “You never told me you saw ghosts in Philly!” she said, sounding offended. “I wondered where you got all those weird answers from.”

  Emily shrugged. “We were in so much trouble already, I didn’t want to risk the story getting back to my parents,” she explained. “Plus, I didn’t want you to get all turned on by George Washington and his twinkle toes. He’s mine.”

  Elerick cleared his throat. “What was the secret he was talking about?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily replied. “I’ve never seen him before in my life.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Sitters, users, and orbs

  Morning burst through the bay windows and slapped Emily’s face with an unwelcome ray of sunshine. Emily vaguely remembered leaning on Elerick’s shoulder just before she fell asleep.

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why did I let Finn be the bartender last night?”

  Emily wasn’t much of a drinker. After who knows how much rum, the alcohol had passed through her system, leaving her fully awake with a dry throat and a strong urge to pee just as the sun rose.

  “Damn it,” she mumbled, stumbling into the bathroom to fill her water glass and empty her bladder. She flopped back into bed and tried to think happy thoughts: Christmas decorations blinking in the dark, snowflakes falling softly on the sand, Elerick’s T-shirt almost coming off…

  She supposed she was what Sadie would call a “lightweight” when it came to alcohol, but if she drank less than most people she knew, it was for good reason. Waking up at the crack of dawn meant that she’d eventually fall into a second sleep. When this happened, her body would be paralyzed, but her mind would be conscious—and usually stuck in what felt like a waking dream. She called it twilight sleep: she couldn’t move or talk, but with her soul halfway outside her body, she could see everything that was happening in her bedroom. That’s when they came: the sitters.

  One at a time, ghosts would enter her room and sit on her bed. They were as curious about her as she was about them—it wasn’t every day that they saw a living person who had come partially untethered from her body. Emily never knew who was going to show up or what they would say or do. All she could do was try her best to get into a good state of mind before she fell back asleep to show whoever came that she was friendly.

  That morning, Emily didn’t have enough happy thoughts to go around. The souls who drifted in to get a look at her came in large groups, and all at once. A man wearing a cap and light jacket had brought a black-and-white TV. He pushed the screen in front of Emily before she could see his face. “I got money on Chicken Dinner,” he said, pointing to a horse who was nearing the lead. “Come on, come on, come on…” Another man in thick glasses bent forward at the waist and cried. He turned his back to Emily and wiggled his fingers. His arms were tied together at the wrists. Emily looked away and up, where she saw just the feet of a woman in a long skirt with leather ankle boots dangling from the ceiling. Ahead of her, at the foot of her bed, was a girl with the hood of her sweatshirt cinched tightly over her face to show only her nose and wisps of blond hair. The girl had grabbed Emily’s dirty laundry and was tossing it on the bed, burying Emily in clothing.

  Who are all these people? Emily said to herself, since her mouth was frozen. It worried her that she couldn’t get a look at any of their faces. There were now dozens of ghosts in her bedroom—and their specters were as vivid as the bodies of living, breathing people. She could feel the weight of the sitters on her bed, and the ghosts who were talking sounded to Emily like they were right next to her ear. She glanced at the door, hoping that some dead person she knew would appear and explain why there were so many people in her room. The trapdoor rattled, and a long shadow slid in through the cracks as the door squeaked open. Emily saw neither a face nor a body—only a shadow—but it looked like…

  Emily opened her eyes to find Elerick holding her shoulders, shaking her awake. “Emily, wake up,” he said. “It’s OK. You’re OK. I’m here.”

  Emily swallowed, and by the pounding in her head and the pain in her throat, she knew that she had been screaming in her sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time—her night terrors were part of the reason her parents had put her in the bedroom at the end of the hall. She was pretty sure Elerick had just witnessed a full-on freak show. “Oh my god, please tell me you’ve come to smother me with a pillow. I want to die right now.”

  “I was lured by your siren song,” he said cheerfully. “I would never silence those golden pipes. Do you have aspirin in your medicine cabinet?”

  “Silver box on the sink.”

  As Emily wiped the sleep from her eyes, her visitors slowly faded out of sight. Emily reached over to her nightstand and picked up her phone, catching one last photo before the phantoms vanished completely. She uploaded the pic to Orbies and waited. Within seconds, Orbies had scanned the memorial pages to match orbs to people. Emily looked at the list of handles with a mix of curiosity and horror. The ghosts had come from all over the world. They weren’t related to her or the house or even to one another. They were from different time periods, too. And they were all here in her room. Only one orb didn’t have a match—and it wasn’t really an orb, but an angry blur. His name was written in all caps: EDGAR.

  A few moments later, Elerick handed her a pair of aspirin and a big glass of water. Emily looked at the two pills in her hand. They were a similar size and shape, but each pill had a different set of letters on it. Then again, Emily’s eyes were still blurry. She was too exhausted to think about it. She swallowed the pills.

  “Have you screamed in your sleep before?” Elerick asked, eying Emily guardedly.

  “Unfortunately, yes,” she admitted. “But not quite like this.” She told him about the anonymous sitters who had come into her room.

  Elerick nodded. “I hate when that happens.”

  Emily’s heart skipped a beat. “You know about sitters?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s called sleep paralysis. When you go to sleep, your body is paralyzed to keep you from acting out your dreams. And you pass through different stages of sleep throughout the night. If your body shuts down for a REM cycle before your mind does, you start to hallucinate. That’s the medical explanation, anyway. But it doesn’t mean that the sitters don’t exist. I used to see them all the time. Especially if I was in a new place or I was anxious about something.”

  “I know what sleep paralysis is, believe me,” Emily said, groaning. She sat up, suddenly processing what he had just told her. “What do you mean, you used to see sitters? How did you stop it?”

  Elerick brushed the hair away from Emily’s face and looked at her with such tenderness that she felt like a princess who was finally free to admit that she didn’t care for the pea under her mattress. If he leaned in any closer, their lips might touch. “I stopped sleeping on my back,” he said. “I’m kind of a fitful sleeper, but I noticed that the sitters only came when I was face-up on the bed. So I made an effort to sleep on my side.”

  “Really?” Emily replied, stunned by the simplicity of his answer.

  “That helped for a time. That, and massage therapy. I get all my aggression out during the day while I’m pounding on people’s backs so I don’t have to lie awake at night worrying about my life. Now when I have the dreams, they’re less frightening. I’ll be floating above myself instead of stuck in my bed.”

  “That sounds like lucid dreaming,” Emily replied, relaxing into her pillow. “It must be nice to have that kind of power over your dreams. I tried thinking happy thoughts before I went back to sleep this morning. Why didn’t that work?”

  Elerick paused. “You’re sweet and open and giving, and that makes you vulnerable to letting other people’s thoughts overpower your own.”

  “But I’ve been
clairvoyant my whole life. I’ve never seen this many sitters all at once. And they’re coming from places all over the world. Why now?”

  “You just moved into this place, right? Maybe moving around all that period or authentic furniture stirred up some new ghosts.”

  “All our furniture is new.”

  “Then who made you scream?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I shook you awake, you were having a night terror,” Elerick explained. “That’s the sleep disorder that makes you sit up in bed screaming, not the sleep paralysis. Night terrors don’t happen during a REM cycle; they happen during slow-wave sleep. But you might see something frightening moving toward you just before you wake up. It’s like being on an elevator and having the doors open between the floors—you were trapped and calling to be let out.”

  Emily was just about to tell Elerick about seeing Edgar when her phone nearly vibrated off the nightstand. She suddenly remembered all the invitations that she and Sadie had sent to the Haunted Happy Hour. They were all local to Cape May. But if ghosts could move from one location to another by attaching themselves to a piece of furniture, what could they do with the help of the internet?

  “Come to the spa later,” Elerick told her as she reached for her phone. “If anyone needs a massage, it’s you. All these ghosts are draining your energy.”

  “Maybe I will. And speaking of energy…” Emily paused to confirm that the scent of fried potatoes, bacon, and coffee was wafting up from the first floor of the hotel. “Want to join me for breakfast?”

  “Right now?”

  “Count to a hundred and then climb the ladder. I’ll meet you downstairs,” she said, and left the room.

  Using separate doors, Emily and Elerick reunited inside the restaurant, where Emily’s parents were gathered at the family’s usual table.