Until It Sleeps

by Val Crowe

  I pulled out of the parking lot and drove around for a while, trying to think about what I should do. I wasn’t even sure I had any right trying to help Cheyenne’s spirit anymore. Besides, it wasn’t just about Cheyenne. It was about Kadan. Who was Wade’s kid.

  This was Wade’s child I was talking about here. If there was any chance that it could go badly—and it seemed like everything went badly for me—maybe I should simply let it be.

  I drove back to the Airstream, and I called Rylan.

  “I need a favor,” I said.

  “Well, nice to hear from you too,” she said. “Sure, I’m fine, and the weather is lovely. So nice of you to ask.”

  “Look, I’m in a shit mood right now, Rylan, and this is important. There’s a newborn baby that could be in danger if I get this wrong, so could you cut me some slack?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” she said.

  I asked her and Mundy to go and spend the night in the Sanford house, one of them in the nursery, and one of them in the basement. I would have gone myself, but I couldn’t risk that I would attract other spirits to the place.

  I told her that I was pretty sure that nothing would happen, but that if anything did, they both needed to get out right away and call me.

  When she heard about Wren and Philip and their baby, she agreed to help me out.

  That taken care of, I went and got the gun out of the glove compartment in my truck. I turned it over in my hands. What the hell was I going to do with this thing? Anyplace I put it, it would unleash a powerful haunting. The longer I kept it with me, the stronger the energy surrounding it would get. If I could resolve Cheyenne’s concerns and get her to release her energy, that would be ideal.

  She might release her energy if I showed her that Kadan was safe and happy.

  Or maybe not.

  There was no way to know.

  I couldn’t put Kadan in danger.

  But not trying to resolve things for Cheyenne, well that maybe put even more people in danger. I didn’t know what to do.

  So, I didn’t do anything. I started drinking instead. It was still early afternoon, but I didn’t freaking care.

  I sort of hoped that Mads would show up, but she didn’t.

  I polished off a six pack and more bourbon than I should have had, and I ended up passing out early. I woke up to the sound of a woman screaming and something breaking.

  I sat straight up in bed.

  Cheyenne was standing at the end of the camper next to my table. Her wounds glistened and dripped and her skin hung away, revealing the bones of her skull. She had knocked the bottle of bourbon off the table, which hadn’t been empty, and now there was liquor all over the floor in addition to shards of glass everywhere.

  “What the fuck?” I said to her. “You going to clean this up?”

  She started writing on the wall, Murderer took my son.

  I groaned. I had a headache. The inside of my mouth felt fuzzy. I really shouldn’t have drunk so much last night.

  Cheyenne screamed at me while I cleaned up the glass and the liquor. It was a bad sign that she’d affected something in the physical world. It meant that she was crazy strong. I didn’t know if she’d siphoned that from me or if she simply had it because she was channeling a mother’s rage, which was a pretty powerful thing. Whatever the case, I didn’t have a lot of time to sit around and stew over what to do about her.

  The way I figured it, I only had two options.

  One was to take the gun somewhere that no one would ever find it. I didn’t know where exactly, but maybe I could take a boat out into the middle of the ocean or something and toss it. Or go to the North Pole or something. I didn’t really have the means to do either of those things, but I could figure something out. And hopefully before Cheyenne got strong enough to do real damage.

  Or I could take the gun to Kadan and see where the chips fell.

  The more I thought about it, the more that it wasn’t really a choice at all. There was no way I could put Kadan in danger, not again. I’d hurt the kid too much during this entire escapade. And I wasn’t sure what kind of damage I’d done to Philip and Wren and their baby. I sure as heck hadn’t helped them.

  So, that was that. I was going to the North Pole.

  But then I thought first I’d try throwing the gun in a fire. I didn’t think it would work, because I thought that burning things tended to release energy only because the thing that I burned was destroyed. But in the case of, say, my mother’s old camper, it hadn’t been burned to ashes or anything. There had been a whole lot of it left behind and charred.

  So, I made a campfire outside and tossed the gun into it.

  I let it stay in there until the flames died down and then I fished the gun out and brought it into the Airstream.

  Maybe that had worked.

  I’d think about it later. Now, I had a hangover to sleep off.

  * * *

  Someone was banging on the door of the Airstream.

  I came awake with a start and sat straight up.

  “Hey, Deacon, you in there? We’re coming in.” It was Wade’s voice.

  “Wait, what?” I said. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  The door opened. Kadan stepped up into the Airstream. He’d been here once to see it and had pronounced it “neat.” What the hell were they doing here now?

  “Hey,” said Kadan. “My grandma’s sick, and Dad says you can watch me while he goes to class.”

  Wade stepped into view behind Kadan. “You’re not doing anything, right?”

  “He can’t be here,” I said. “Because—”

  Cheyenne flickered into view in between me and Kadan.

  Okay, well, that answered that question. The burning had not worked. I hadn’t thought it would.

  Wade screamed.

  “You can see her?” I said. Damn, she was strong.

  Kadan backed up, whimpering. He turned and buried his face against his father’s shirt.

  Wade’s arms went around Kadan, but he was still staring at Cheyenne.

  Cheyenne tried to move her ruined mouth, but she couldn’t talk. She reached out a hand for Kadan.

  “Cheyenne,” said Wade in a throaty voice. “Holy hell, what he did to you.”

  Cheyenne stared at the two of them together, Wade holding onto Kadan and Kadan clinging to his father. Her form wavered. And then reformed. And then exploded like the Fourth of July, sending shimmering sparks everywhere. There was a loud booming sound.

  We all winced, covering our eyes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  “So, what just happened?” Wade was saying. He and Kadan were sitting at the table in the Airstream, and I was getting coffee for me and Wade and hot chocolate for Kadan.

  “Don’t you need to get to class?” I said, bringing over the mugs.

  “I’m not going to class after that, are you kidding?” said Wade. He had an arm protectively around Kadan, who was still staying close to his father. Kadan hadn’t said a word since seeing the ghost of his mother. “What happened?”

  “I’m pretty sure that was Cheyenne letting go and releasing her energy,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Wade. “Why did she do that?”

  “She, uh…” I sat down. I guessed it was okay to talk about in front of Kadan. He’d been there, after all. He’d seen it. “When I was in the house, I had a vision of the murder. Right before she died, Tex told her that he was going to keep Kadan and hurt him. So that was why Cheyenne refused to let go. She was trying to say that her son was in danger. Once she saw that Kadan was safe with you, she knew that her little boy was going to be all right. It released her.”

  “Well, hell, yeah,” said Wade, grinning at me. “You did a good thing, Deacon.”

  I looked down into my mug of coffee. Not so much, not really.

  “So, my mom’s okay?” said Kadan in a small voice. “She’s finally okay now?”

  “I think so,” I said to him. “I really do.”

  “I
’m glad I told you to go to that house,” said Wade. “If it hadn’t been for you, she’d still be there.”

  “Yeah, but no one would be able to see her,” I said. “She wasn’t strong enough to manifest until I showed up.”

  “She would have gotten stronger,” said Wade. “But she would have gotten twisted and dangerous. No, you fixed it all. You did good, man.”

  “I don’t do good,” I sighed. “Whatever happened in that house…”

  “Did you try to ax people this time?” said Wade.

  “Well, no,” I said.

  “See? There you go,” said Wade. “You said you wanted to balance the scales, and you helped my kid, and you helped Cheyenne. I think you’re on the right path now. This is what you were meant to do.”

  I didn’t think so, but I didn’t want to argue with him about it. I just said thank you and left it at that.

  Wade did end up going to his afternoon class, and I hung out with Kadan, but we didn’t stay in the Airstream. We went to the library in Thornford instead, and he checked out some books. Then we went to the coffee shop in town where Rylan used to work. We got drinks and cookies and sat in a corner booth to wait for Wade to be done.

  I tried to think of the right thing to say to Kadan about everything that had happened, but I couldn’t.

  It was him that brought it all up. “Hey, can I ask you something?” he said, breaking his cookie into pieces.

  “Sure,” I said. “Anything.”

  “You said that you saw what happened to my mom.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “I saw that you were there. You saw it all. That must have been really horrible.”

  He nodded.

  We were quiet.

  “Do you know why he wouldn’t just let us go?” said Kadan.

  “Tex, you mean?”

  Kadan nodded.

  I licked my lips. “He’s, um…” A psycho piece of shit. “A jerk.”

  “But he didn’t have to hurt her,” said Kadan. “He didn’t get what he wanted anyway. He killed her for no reason.”

  “Some people are like that,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I shook my head. “Some people like hurting other people for no good reason. They’re just… broken. No one really knows why.”

  “No one?”

  “Not really,” I said. “People have theories, but no one can get inside someone else’s head. No one knows why another person does anything.”

  “Yeah,” said Kadan. He popped a piece of cookie in his mouth. “I miss my mom. I wanted her back, like all the time. But when I saw her this morning, and she was all…” He gestured to the side of his face. “Messed up, I just wished she would leave. I think that’s bad.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. It wasn’t your mom. It was just a piece of her, something that was left behind.”

  Kadan ate more of his cookie. “I’m not glad she’s dead, but I’m glad she’s not a ghost. Is that okay to be glad about?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Whatever you feel is okay.”

  “Anything?”

  I nodded. “Look, I know that you’ve been through hell, and you’re just a kid, but you’re going to pull through, and you’re going to be okay. I know that you are, because your dad and me, we had some bad stuff happen to us when we were kids too, and we made it all right. You will too.”

  * * *

  I heard from Rylan that there hadn’t been any activity in the house when she and Mundy had slept there. I thanked her for helping me out, and then I felt brave enough to check on the place myself. I went through it, but nothing happened. I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t see anything. I would have liked Mads to give me the final go ahead, tell me that the place was clean.

  But Mads still hadn’t come back.

  So, I told Wren and Philip they could move back in.

  The baby had been born, a little girl they had named Rachel. Wren invited me to go and see the baby, but I decided it would be best if I stayed clear. I told her to call me if anything ever seemed weird, especially with Philip.

  She wanted to know what had happened in the house, and why he had gaps in his memory. I told her that I wasn’t even sure myself.

  Over the next several months, I checked in with her, and she told me that Philip was doing better and better, that he was regaining his memory. I wasn’t sure how that was happening. But I knew that spirits could get stronger if they had access to energy, and that strength could make them more cogent. Cheyenne, for instance, had gotten better at communicating the stronger she’d gotten. So, maybe, with unlimited access to his own body’s energy, Phil’s spirit was growing stronger.

  He had gone back to work and he was doing fine. He seemed to have maintained a relationship with his parents, even though he had claimed not to remember them. Wren said he was himself again, and she thanked me for helping them, but I always told her not to, because I didn’t feel that I had helped.

  The last time I talked to her, three months after the incident, she didn’t spend a lot of time on the phone, only told me that things were fine and hung up.

  I had been back to avoiding ghosts for those three months. I hadn’t sought anyone out to help. I wasn’t sure that I was helping, not truly.

  I still didn’t know what had “gotten out” in that house, and I couldn’t talk to Mads about it, because she had never come back.

  She had always threatened to leave, but I’d never really taken her seriously. And now, she was gone, and she never came, no matter how I called for her.

  I missed her.

  I was lonely a lot of the time. I didn’t have anything to do with myself, and I was just aimlessly going from place to place in the Airstream. I stopped for nearly a month in a small town in western Maryland. I got a job as a cook in a diner, and I got up early to go in and scramble eggs and flip pancakes. A waitress named Annie sometimes smiled at me, and I was polite back, but I didn’t encourage her.

  Even if it hadn’t been for Mads, there was no point in it. I always had to keep moving.

  Sure enough, some ghosts started waking up in a nearby abandoned house. I could have left them—would have before all the business with Negus, I think. But I worried they’d do damage now that I’d given them some energy to feed on. So, I went in with the oil and managed to get them out. I was lucky the oil worked. Mads was the one who was the best at figuring whether or not a haunting was too strong for that.

  Anyway, after using the oil, I was knocked on my ass for twelve hours, and I missed my shift at the diner, and the owner told me not to come back.

  It was better just to move on.

  After that, I went west for a while. It was springtime. There were buds on the trees, and it was starting to get warm outside. I found a campground to stay in for a few days or even longer if I liked it there. I went to the grocery store and got myself some steak and charcoal and availed myself of the charcoal grills built into all the campsites. I made myself a steak dinner and drank good beer and wished I had someone to talk to.

  I almost called my mother. I was that desperate.

  I’d been in touch with her a few times, but she kept telling me about cases she knew of that she wanted me to check out. I kept telling her that I didn’t do that anymore, but she wasn’t getting the message.

  When it got cold, I went into the Airstream and drank more beer than was good for me. I shouldn’t have drunk so much, but I found it harder to stop these days. I knew it wasn’t good to drink alone or to excess. There were all kinds of reasons, but largely because I was going to get a beer belly and have to buy new pants.

  Someone knocked on the door of the Airstream.

  Who the hell could that be? I wasn’t even playing music or anything. Sometimes some retiree camped next to me objected to Motley Crue. He was usually pacified if I put on some Stones instead, though.

  I was probably breaking some obscure rule of the campground, and I was going to get chewed out by someone.

  Great.

&nb
sp; I stalked over and opened the door. “What?”

  A woman was standing there. She was pretty, probably in her mid-twenties. She had red hair—a pretty obvious mahogany dye job. Her darker roots were coming in. “Deacon!” she said.

  “Um… do I know you?” I said. I’d been drinking a lot lately, but doing it alone, not out at bars. I hoped I hadn’t somehow blacked out going home with this chick or something.

  “Oh, right, sorry.” She laughed a little. “You wouldn’t recognize me. It’s me.” She grinned widely. “It’s Mads.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I furrowed my brow. None of that computed. “What?”

  “Can I come in?” she said. “I hitched a ride out here, but he dropped me off at the entrance to the campground, and I had to walk all the way in.”

  “What?” I said again.

  “It’s a little cold out here, and I’m tired,” she said. “I could use a glass of water. Or a beer. Hell, I could really use a beer.”

  “What?” My brain was not making sense of any of this.

  “I’ll explain,” she said. “I’ll explain everything. Just let me in.”

  I opened the door wider.

  She stepped inside. She brushed past me, and I could feel that she was solid and real and human.

  I shut the door. “You possessed someone.”

  She nodded, bending over the refrigerator and sorting through it. “Ooh, River’s End Pale Ale,” she said, pulling out a beer. “You’re splurging?”

  “I had a job for five minutes,” I said. “Had some extra cash.”

  “Well, it’s perfect,” she said. “We can celebrate.” She shut the fridge and pulled a bottle opener magnet off of it to open the bottle. She sure knew her way around the kitchen. She was Mads. For some reason, I was having trouble processing that. She glanced at me. “You need a beer, or you have one open?”

  “Uh…” I turned to the table, where I did have an open beer.

  She held up her bottle. “Cheers!”

  “Just hold on a second,” I said. “You were really against the possession thing. You said we’d be violating someone’s body.”

  “Well, this person is dead,” said Mads. “I waited until she coded and then I hopped inside.”