Chapter 12
Devon and Camden parked, got out, and Devon walked toward Toby. He saw her coming and could have run if he wanted to, but he didn’t.
He frowned at her. “So, now I suppose you want me to stop doing this, don’t you?”
“I didn’t say that,” she began. He looked at her and then narrowed his gaze as he now saw Camden. “Why did you bring him?”
“Because he also sees these things that you are seeing, and he has experience with people who deal with these things.”
“These things,” Toby repeated, “they’re people, you know?”
“No,” she stated firmly, “they were people. I’m not even sure what we call them now.” She sighed. “But they’re no longer in a physical form.”
“What? So that means they’re not people?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s probably what I’m saying. They’re technically not people anymore. They’re ghosts. Or,” she added, taking a moment, “maybe remnants of who they used to be.” He frowned at that. “I understand you were trying to contact your mother.”
He shrugged, but his back stiffened as she intruded in his life, thinking now he would get in trouble.
“It makes a lot of sense to try to speak to your mother,” she shared. “God knows I’ve talked to her a million times since she died.”
He looked over at her and asked, “Why?”
“Because my world has changed, and lots of days I don’t think I can handle it. I’m not proud of this, but I berate her sometimes for leaving me. And I cry … because she left me. We were friends, but she also left me in the position of looking after her kids, who don’t want anything to do with me.”
He flushed at that and then turned to stare off into the distance. “It’s not that,” he whispered.
“No, intellectually I know it’s not that.
You don’t want anything to do with anybody, and you want to do what you want to do.
I imagine it’s partly your age because there’s nothing quite like realizing you can’t do a good share of what you want to do, and all these rules bind everything in your life,” she explained.
“But it’s also difficult for those around you who are just trying to keep you safe. ”
“Yeah, but your idea of staying safe,” he scoffed, “is to do nothing.”
“I don’t know about that,” she corrected.
“But, from your perspective, wouldn’t I need to say no to some things?
Although I haven’t had to say no to very much, at least not lately.
I guess we’re just coming from two different places.
I’m trying to make good on a promise I made to your mother. And you’re just trying to find her.”
He nodded at that. “I haven’t had any luck either.”
Such a woeful tone filled his words that her heart broke. She sat down beside him and added, “Neither have I.”
He looked over at her sideways. “Do you think she still loves us?”
“I know she does,” she declared. “That is something I can absolutely guarantee. She didn’t want to leave you. She never did.”
“She didn’t fight very hard at the end though, did she?” The words came rushing out in a flurry, as if he’d been holding them back, and even now he looked ashamed that he’d said it.
Devon sighed. “I think she was tired. I think she was in so much pain at that stage of her treatment that she just wanted peace,” she shared in a mild, soothing tone.
“And it wasn’t a case of leaving you and Tabby.
It was knowing that her fight was done and that she didn’t have anything else to give.
So, maybe, to you, it felt as if she was giving up or not trying hard enough.
But I think for her, considering the pain that she was in and the fact that she had exhausted all the treatment options the doctors had offered her, she just realized it was time to let the disease take its course. ”
His feet swung back-and-forth, as if matching a silent tempo of his thoughts.
“I don’t think we can judge her for that because we weren’t in the same position.”
He didn’t say anything and just stared off in the distance.
“And one of the worst things you can do,” she stated, “is feel guilty for anything that you feel about all this because you’re allowed to feel angry, mad, sad, pissed off, … all of it. There’s no right or wrong here. There are no answers, good or bad. It just is what it is.”
He frowned at her. “But I shouldn’t say those bad things about her.”
“Should?” she repeated. “Should is one of those words that’s really tough because, if we were to do everything that everybody says we should or shouldn’t do, we wouldn’t do anything. And for every person who has an opinion one way, somebody else has an opinion the other way.”
She continued. “We can’t trust all of them—or any of them for that matter.
Sometimes we have to do what feels right for ourselves.
I had a lot of people, a lot, tell me not to take you guys on, not to give you a home.
They said it would be too much work for me, that I would lose my privacy, and everything else in my world. ”
His face scrunched up at that.
“Then others were like, Of course you’ll take them home. They’re practically half yours already, and you’ve looked after them since they were little. Why is there even a discussion? So, every person has to decide for themselves what is best.”
Camden hadn’t moved, but she could see how intently he was listening and watching their interactions.
“In your case, you very much want to speak to your mom, to see your mom, and to know that she still loves you. And I really want that for you, but I’m not sure how to make it happen.” She turned and looked over at Camden, one eyebrow raised in question.
Camden stepped closer and asked, “Do you realize that you may be bringing in a lot more of these energies?”
“I know,” Toby muttered, “and I wasn’t trying to. Yet, once I opened a door, I can’t stop them. Sometimes I hear them in the backyard at night.”
Devon nodded. “So do I, and I can’t sleep. Hearing them is not a great feeling.”
Toby winced. “I know. I just didn’t know what to do about it. When I first saw this house, something made me desperately want to be here, as if Mom would be here too. But everything I did kind of … happened all at once.”
“When you first saw the house?” Camden repeated.
Toby nodded. “When we first came to look at it, … it felt as if it was ours already.”
That’s when she remembered the weird things he had said to her at the time. She studied him carefully. “Do you feel you can be yourself at the house?”
He looked at her, startled, and then shrugged.
“No, not really. I don’t know what I feel like,” he admitted.
“Everything’s off these days. Everything’s different.
But anytime I try to figure out what it is, everybody just tells me that it’s hormones and that I’m hitting puberty and that it’s normal.
” He snorted. “Nothing is normal about any of this.”
“Agreed.”
He looked at her. “I figured you would be the first one to tell me to go see a doctor.”
“Not at all,” she stated. “I’m sick of doctors myself.”
He nodded. “Yeah, me too. Mom was forever at the doctor’s and the hospital. I’m done with hospitals too,” he declared. “I don’t think they did her any good at all.”
“I don’t know that they did her any harm either,” she pointed out. “I mean, when the disease had ravaged her so badly, I think the only thing anybody could do for her was to manage her pain so she could get through each day until it was over.”
“But why did it have to be over?” he yelled at her, his voice gaining in volume. “It shouldn’t have to be.”
Thankfully the park was empty. She stared at him and sighed. “Because that’s life … and death. Where there is life, death is a part of it, Toby. I can’t change that, and I gather that’s what you’re trying to do.”
He glared at her. “I just can’t accept that there’s nothing else, that she’s gone,” he snapped. He got to his feet. “I have to believe she’ll come back.”
“What is it you would say to her if you had another chance?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” He just glared at her and snapped again, “You never do.”
And, with that, he took off running in the opposite direction.
*
Camden drove Devon home, after they mutually decided to let Toby run wild, fulfilling his need to escape at the moment.
As they got home, she stared at the front lawn. “Oh my gosh.” The entire front yard was full, … full of shimmering energies. She stared at it, then looked over at Camden and asked, “What the hell is this?”
“It’s exactly the same thing as before,” he explained, “but now we have an open doorway.”
Devon shook her head. “That open doorway has become a highway.”
“I know,” he agreed. They hopped out.
Devon asked, “Do you think the neighbors can see them?”
Camden shook his head. “Nope. No way. If any of our neighbors took a gander out their window and saw all these ghosts, you don’t think they would call me immediately?”
“Or,” Devon added, “be too scared to admit it to anyone for fear of landing in a mental hospital.”
Camden grimaced. “Yeah, that could happen as well.”
When she walked up to the first one, it shifted and shimmered. She muttered, “This needs to stop. Why do they look so odd?”
Camden frowned, staring around, as if trying to sort out what he saw. “I think the term you used before is decent. I think these are remnants.”
“Remnants of what?”
“Remnants of the people they used to be.”
“So, ghosts.”
“No.” He frowned as he turned to her. “It’s more about remnants of ghosts. All I can tell you is that I’ve never seen it before.”
“I don’t want to see it again,” she declared, turning to look.
Just then the front door opened, and Tabby came running out. “Did you find him?”
“Yes, we did,” she said, giving her a pat on the cheek. “And, yes, he has been trying to contact your mother. And, yes, he’s the one who somehow opened a door to let all these things in.”
At that, Tabby saw the lawn and freaked out. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” She looked around, horror on her face. “There’s hundreds of them.”
“I don’t know about hundreds,” Devon clarified, “but definitely dozens.”
“And you can see them, right?”
“Yes, I can see them,” Devon confirmed. “So can Camden.”
“That’s a good thing,” Tabby noted, “because you guys have to fix this.”
“Oh, do we now?” Devon asked, turning to Tabby. “You guys go and open this doorway without telling us, and then we have to fix it? How do we go about doing that?”
“I don’t know,” she wailed. “I didn’t do it.”
But Devon heard that odd note in her tone, so Devon turned to her and asked, “Are you sure about that?”
Tabby flushed and added, “Not on purpose.”
“Right, not on purpose, but you still did it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t really cut it right now,” Devon stated, as she eyed Tabby sternly. “We need the truth here. This is past being a joke. We have a serious problem now.”
“I know,” Tabby admitted, throwing up her hands. “Toby was so upset, so sad about losing Mom, and he wanted to talk to her again. I think—I think he mentioned something to her before she died, … and it’s been tearing him apart ever since.”
“Ah, crap,” Devon muttered under her breath.
Camden gripped Tabby’s shoulder firmly. “Do you know what he said?”
Immediately Tabby shook her head. “No, no, I don’t know.”
“You’re not telling the truth at all.” Camden stared at her, not giving in until she flushed.
“I think it was something mean,” she replied sadly. “And I know he’s been pretty upset about it.”
Camden added, “You need to tell us the whole story.”
“I was mad at him at the time, but he just told me how I didn’t understand either. And that he couldn’t live without her and that she wasn’t even fighting, or something like that.”
Devon and Camden shared a knowing glance.
Tabby added, “And now he feels horribly guilty and wants to fix it.”
Devon nodded. “I can see that.”
Tabby continued. “Yeah, I think that’s also why he’s been so miserable because, once these ghost remnants started showing up, he didn’t know how to stop it, but I figured he was bringing on a third world war or something. Although I don’t know what the ghosts have to do with a war.”
“Unfortunately,” Camden replied, turning to Devon, “in a way Tabby and Toby may have done just that.”
Tabby stared at him, the color fading from her cheeks. “But we didn’t mean to.”
“It doesn’t matter if you meant to or not,” he stated. “You’re meddling with things that aren’t to be meddled with.”
“We didn’t know,” Tabby wailed.
Devon stepped up and added, “Okay, so we understand that you didn’t mean to, but this is the reality of where we’re at right now.
The question is, what exactly did you do to bring them in?
And did you use any equipment, tools, anything?
” It was obvious that Tabby didn’t want to say something.
“Come on, Tabby. This is serious business.”
With a sigh, her shoulders dropped. “Mom gave us a book before she died, and she told us that we could use it to try.”
“To try what?” Devon asked.
Tabby flushed, then whispered, “Try to contact her.”
“Oh, good God. Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Camden snapped, “I need to see that book.”
She frowned. “Technically it’s Devon’s, … or maybe it’s Toby’s.”
Camden shook his head. “When you start messing around with this kind of stuff, none of that matters. This is now very serious.” He looked around and pointed.
“In case you don’t believe me, take a look at the yard.
” Even now, so many entities were out here that there was no way to move without encountering one, and a few more were added every time he looked up.
Turning pale, Tabby faced Camden. “I don’t even know where he keeps it, and he might even have it with him.”
Devon turned to her. “He had his bag with him when we found him earlier,” she shared. “Would it have been in there?”
“Probably,” Tabby replied. “He’s very careful with that bag, at school and stuff. And … he’s pretty determined to do this,” she whispered. Just then, one of the entities brushed up against Tabby, and she shrieked and bounded toward Camden and Devon. The entity almost seemed to follow her.
Camden glared at it and in a harsh tone declared, “Go away.”