by K. J. Emrick
Chapter 7
It was several long hours later when Jon finally got back to their house. Colby had come home from school on time and had done her homework and helped make dinner. When her bedtime had rolled around she bartered for a half an hour more, and then stretched it into an hour, and Darcy hadn’t minded because after all it was Friday. No school tomorrow. Plus, her daughter was being super helpful tonight.
Eventually she had to send Colby off to sleep. She kept Zane downstairs, here with her. With this stupid cast she wasn’t going to be able to carry him upstairs safely. Not that she didn’t think Colby would have tried to carry her brother up to his crib if Darcy had asked her to, but Zane was still a very wiggly baby boy when he wanted to be. No sense taking chances when she could just tuck Zane into his playpen with his blankie and then sack out on the couch herself.
She was exhausted, mentally and physically, but she’d discovered that she couldn’t go to sleep anymore until she knew her own children were in slumberland. She was wide awake and yawning until she heard Zane’s breathing become slow and rhythmic. He was finally asleep.
Then her eyes fluttered shut, and she was out.
“Darcy. Darcy?”
She rolled her head against the couch cushions to look up and find Jon standing there. He looked bizarre, all covered in dirt and holding one of the fold-up shovels over his shoulder. For a moment she expected him to start singing, hi ho, hi ho. “Are you here?” she asked. “You’re not a dream?”
He kissed the top of her head. “Does that feel like a dream?”
“Mmm. No. That feels nice.” She sat up higher, dragging her broken leg up on the cushions next to her. “Um. Wow, I’m tired. What time is it?”
“Just after eleven o’clock. I think you’ve only been asleep for an hour or two. You look beat.” He was whispering, and when he pointed over at the playpen Darcy realized why. “Zane is still out. Why don’t we get you up to bed, and then after I’ll come down and sit with Zane until I know he’s ready to go upstairs to his crib. How’s that sound?”
She yawned and smiled dreamily. “That sounds wonderful. I feel like I could sleep for a week… no, wait. That’s not fair. You’ve been awake just as long as I have. Are you just getting back from Rose Lake?”
“Uh, no not quite. Tell you what. Let me get you into bed and I’ll explain it all to you, okay? I’m going to need to take a shower before I get to lie down, too.”
“Yeah,” she giggled softly. “You stink.”
Holding onto the railing, she let Jon support her other side and leaned on him, step after step, until they were in their room and he was laying her down in the bed and taking off her clothes and brushing her hair back from her forehead with his fingers. Darcy felt so warm and comfortable with him taking care of her like this. This was what love felt like.
While he got her ready to go back to sleep he told her everything that had happened after they found Marcia Faber’s body. They’d had to contact the state police of course, because they were way outside their jurisdiction with no real explanation for being where they were, with shovels, digging in the dirt.
Thankfully, the state troopers had looked the other way for the sake of them finding a three year old murder victim.
There had been an endless stream of paperwork after that, and the body had been removed to the morgue, and then there was a search of the woods for evidence. By the time they were ready to wrap things up there, the sun was beginning to set.
“Did you find anything else?” Darcy asked, lifting her arms up so he could take off her shirt. “Any evidence in the woods?”
Jon shook his head. “No. It’s been too long. We’ll just have to see what Marcia Faber has to tell us.”
She looked at him quizzically. “You want me to do another spirit communication?”
“No, sweetheart. I meant, we’ll have to see what the coroner can find out when he examines her body.”
“Oh. Right.”
He handed her a nightgown and helped her sit up to get it on, and then settled her back down on the bed again. The next part of the story was about how he and Grace and Wilson had come back to Misty Hollow to get together everything they needed to apply for an arrest warrant. The paperwork was all in the hands of the judge now and they should know by tomorrow morning if the arrest of Matthew Courson was going to go ahead as planned or if—
Colby’s voice cried out to them from down the hall. “Mom! Come quick!”
She exchanged a look with Jon, suddenly very awake and worried. Colby hadn’t called out for her mother or father to come save her from a nightmare since she was five. She wasn’t afraid of thunderstorms anymore. For her to be calling for Darcy now meant there must be something very wrong.
And she really sounded scared.
“Go,” Darcy told Jon. “I’ll be right behind you. Go see what’s wrong.”
He didn’t argue, he didn’t wait for her to get back out of bed. He just went, out the door and down the hall, like a good father would.
Darcy was a lot slower in getting there, especially once she realized that she and Jon had left her crutch downstairs and she was going to have to lean against the walls for support and hop her way to Colby’s bedroom.
Jon had turned the hallway light on. The hallway was just a straight line from one end to the other but Darcy was glad the lights were on to make it easier for her to get there. Just outside of Colby’s door she found Smudge and Tiptoe, sitting one to either side, both of them watching her with the same expression on their cat faces.
Hurry.
“Darcy?” Jon’s voice was insistent. “Darcy, we need you.”
She turned the corner into her daughter’s room, into a nightmare.
Colby was sitting up in the middle of her bed with the blankets thrown back, her bare little feet sticking out of the pink pajama bottoms that were getting way too small for her now that she’d finally hit a growth spurt. The top was all twisted around with one sleeve hiked way up past her elbow, like she’d been wrestling with herself in bed.
Or, with something else.
Next to the bed was the ghost of Marcia Faber. Translucent and hazy, floating three feet off the floor, the ghost looked straight at Darcy.
Her eyes flared with an unearthly flame.
“Mom please,” Colby said, her voice tight and upset. “The lady is real mad, but she won’t tell me why. Can you make her tell us why? Maybe she won’t be so mad if she just tells us.”
Colby kept her eyes on Darcy while she spoke but there was no doubt that she was watching the ghost out of the corner of her eye as well. Her hands were fisted into the sheets, and every time the ghost made the slightest move, she flinched.
Ghosts had been a part of Colby’s life for a few years now. She had come into her abilities early and never once had she ever been afraid of the things she could see. Even when they were truly horrific. Ghosts were just people to Colby, like anyone she might run into on the street or on the playground. She’d never been afraid.
She was afraid now. Something about Marcia Faber was scaring Darcy’s little girl.
“Mom?” Colby asked her.
“It’s all right, baby,” Darcy promised, although at the moment she wasn’t really sure she could keep that promise. “I’m going to make it all right.”
Jon stayed very close to her, sliding her arm around his waist and letting her lean all of her weight on him. “What is it?” he asked. “I came in here and Colby was just like this and I can tell something’s wrong, but what? Is it a ghost?”
“Yes,” Darcy said. “It’s Marcia Faber’s ghost.”
“What? Darcy, I do not like her ghost being here.”
“It’s not like I invited her!”
Jon was looking all around the room, unable to see the ghost, but maybe feeling her presence. “We found her body. We’re going to arrest her murderer. What more could she possibly want from us?”
“I don’t know,” she had to admit. “Some…unfinished b
usiness, or something.”
“Well that’s helpful,” he muttered. “What do we do now?”
“Um. Let me just try…” She held out a hand toward Marcia, a gesture of goodwill, as the ghost continued to glare daggers at everyone in the room. “Can you tell us why you’re here? We found your grave today. We’re trying our best to help. Please, can you just tell us what you need to be able to leave…?”
Wind rushed through the room from an unseen source, and Marcia lunged at Colby.
The specter was screaming across the distance between living and dead at a pitch that hurt Darcy’s ears. It was a sound beyond hearing, and as the wind grew stronger and pulled at Darcy’s nightgown and hair, she saw Jon put a hand up to cover his ear against the noise of it.
“What is happening!” he shouted above the howling.
Colby cried out and threw herself under the covers. Darcy limped forward, her hand still stretched out, and when she touched Marcia’s form there was a spark of brilliant light and the ghost was hurtled backward, getting caught in the storm that was racing around Colby’s bedroom now, swirling like a leaf caught in the wind until Darcy was dizzy from trying to watch her.
The mini-cyclone caught at pages of her daughter’s drawings piled neatly on top of her white desk, lifting them up and sending them spiraling around the room. Books rose off shelves. Jon ducked as one came close to hitting him in the head.
From under her sheets they heard Colby’s muffled voice. “Mom! I can’t make her go away. Just tell her to go away. Go away, lady, go away!”
Spinning to a stop at the far side of the room, Marcia’s spirit opened her mouth to scream again, pointing down at Colby.
Then she pointed to herself, to a spot right in the center of her belly.
“Stay away from my daughter!” Darcy yelled, the sound of her voice a dull roar over the wind. “Stay back from her!”
“Darcy?” Jon asked. “What is all this? What is going on?”
“We need to make the ghost leave,” Darcy explained, raising her voice and talking right into his ear to be heard. “This isn’t right. I don’t know what she’s doing but I don’t want to find out, either.”
He nodded, his forehead furrowed with anxious worry, but he trusted her. “Tell me what you need me to do.”
“Just hold me up.”
“That I can do.”
Exorcisms were an art, and one that Darcy had to admit she was not very good at. Removing a spirit from a home when they didn’t want to go was never easy. Although in a pinch, anyone could do it. Movies and television had made it seem like you needed to recite some powerful ritual and sprinkle the right herbs and all this other junk. While it was true that certain spices like salt could help repel spirits, it was more true that a person’s own intentions were the important thing.
If you used your own life energy to repel the dead, they had to leave. It was just a matter of giving up a part of yourself to make it happen.
Stepping closer, Darcy raised her hands, and prepared to call on the inner strength she would need to force a ghost out of their house.
Marcia screamed again and the wind whipped up to a crescendo that knocked both Darcy and Jon a few steps back. Colby’s sheets were tugged away from her and she scrambled off the bed with a squeak to latch onto Darcy. “Do it, Mommy, do it!”
It had been a while since Colby had called her mommy. She must be more frightened than Darcy knew.
She raised her hand up to the ghost.
Marcia pointed at Colby again.
And then she disappeared.
The wind stopped. The books dropped with soft thuds to the floor. The pages of drawings fluttered randomly down everywhere.
“Well,” Jon said, clearing his throat, “I guess we’ll be tidying up in here tomorrow.”
Darcy gave him a decidedly unamused look.
He shrugged. “Too soon?”
Downstairs, Zane began crying. He’d woken up in the living room with no one there. Poor kid, Darcy thought. Jon was supposed to be down there already but then all this had happened. “Jon, do you think you could go and let Zane know we haven’t abandoned him?”
He smiled at her, and kissed her cheek. “Yup. I’ll spend a little time with him before I bring him up, I think. He hasn’t seen me all day.” Ruffling his hand through Colby’s hair, he added, “Help your mom get back to bed, okay?”
Colby nodded, her eyes still wide as she looked at the mess in her room.
Jon gave Darcy another kiss before he left, like he didn’t want to leave them alone in here, but truthfully, she thought that maybe he was just happy to have something to do that didn’t involve ghosts. Taking care of Zane was something he knew he was good at. Even if there was a diaper to be changed down there, at least it was something he could see and feel. And smell.
“Mom?” Colby said after they’d been standing there for a moment just holding onto each other. “There’s something wrong with the angry lady.”
“You mean the ghost?” Darcy asked her.
Colby nodded, looking up into her mother’s eyes.
“Well, yes,” Darcy almost laughed. “I think there’s definitely something wrong with her if she’s acting like this. Don’t worry, honey. We’ll go around the house tomorrow and lay down some salt lines and put up a few other little things to help keep ghosts away. At least for now.”
That might make Aunt Millie a little upset, but since it was for the good of the family she’d understand if her spirit got banned from the house for a few days, too.
“But Mom,” Colby said. “That’s not what I meant. I think there’s something… wrong with her. She has a hole in her tummy. It’s real bad. Maybe that’s what made her so angry.”
A hole in her stomach? Darcy thought about that for a moment, and then remembered when Marcia had first appeared in her kitchen, and had shown Darcy an open wound on her belly, just below her navel.
She remembered how Marcia’s ghost, right here in this room, had pointed at her belly.
And then pointed at Colby.
Could it be…?
What she was thinking was crazy, but she just might know why Marcia was still tethered to the land of the living, even after they had uncovered her grave.
“Um, Colby,” she said, turning herself around to face the bedroom door. “Can you help me down to my room? I think it’s time all of us went to sleep, don’t you?”
The little girl bit on her lower lip, an expression that she had copied from seeing her mother do it over and over. “Do you think… Would it be all right if I slept with you and Dad tonight? I mean, just until we know the angry lady isn’t coming back?”
Darcy could hear the hopeful note in her daughter’s voice, mixed in with the tattered remains of her fear. She could fully understand how an experience like this one could shake her up. “Sure. You sleep with us tonight. Just be careful of my cast, all right?”
“You bet,” was the cheerful answer. Now that she knew she wouldn’t have to be alone all night, Colby was back to herself. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”
Out in the hallway, Tiptoe and Smudge watched them intently. They were still standing at either side of Colby’s door and somehow Darcy got the impression that they would stay there the rest of the night, standing guard in case the angry lady came back.
Darcy was pretty sure that Marcia Faber’s ghost wasn’t going to come back tonight. She was even reasonably sure that they didn’t have anything to fear from Marcia, no matter how scary things had gotten in Colby’s room. The ghost had been trying to tell them something. Now that the message was delivered, they shouldn’t have to go through that again.
Because Darcy was almost one hundred percent sure that she knew what the message had been. If she was right, it meant the evidence against Matt Courson was now overwhelming.
It didn’t take long for Colby to fall asleep after all that excitement. She was snoring softly, curled up against her mother’s side, when Jon finally came in. He stopped t
o take in the picture of his daughter and his wife, a slow smile crossing his face in the low light from the bedside lamp. Darcy held her hand out to him, and he came and knelt at the side of the bed as he kissed her fingers.
“Wish I had my camera,” he whispered.
“Don’t you dare,” she told him, serious and laughing all at the same time. “I’m a mess.”
“You’re beautiful.”
Her heart melted, because it was exactly the right thing to say.
She pulled him down to her, and held her lips to his for a long, sultry moment. “You’re lucky,” she whispered when the kiss was done at last, “that I have one leg in a cast and a girl asleep on my arm, or I would have to show you just how much I love you right here, and right now.”
He kissed her again. “Raincheck?”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured.
“Good. Zane’s in his crib but I’m still wondering… Darcy, is Marcia’s ghost going to come back tonight?” Worry filled his voice for a danger that he couldn’t even see, let alone hope to stop. “Should one of us stay awake?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure that was the end of it for tonight. If I’m wrong, Smudge and Tiptoe are keeping watch. They’ll come and get us if there’s a problem.” She knew Smudge wouldn’t sleep all night if it meant keeping everyone in the house safe. “We’ll be fine, Jon. In the meantime… did you get the chance to look at Marcia’s body when you dug her up?”
He seemed very disappointed in the change in conversation. “No. She was all wrapped up in that plastic, like I said. It preserved her against decomposition so the autopsy should be pretty easy but no, I didn’t get a good look. Didn’t really want to, honestly.”
Darcy nodded, completely understanding.
Next to her Colby stirred, and Darcy waited until her daughter’s breathing evened out again. “We need to know if Marcia’s body had any wounds on it. Around her belly, specifically.”
“Why?” he asked.
“The ghost…” She hesitated when she felt Colby moving again, and lowered her voice even more. “She keeps showing us a wound. Right there on her stomach. I need to know if there’s actually a wound there on her body or if it’s something symbolic.”