Sweet Nightmare (Caldor)

Chapter Forty-Eight Don’t Ghost There

But he doesn’t, and all my worst fears come true in an instant.

I fought as hard as I could. Tore myself open—laid myself bare—and none of it mattered.

I’m still walking home through the pouring rain…alone.

Only now it’s worse—so much worse—than it was before. Because now I can’t stop thinking about what Jude said about ruining everything three years ago. Can’t stop wondering if somehow, he was referring to so much more than just us. If somehow, maybe, he was also referring to what happened to Carolina.

I’ve always thought it was so strange that the night Jude kissed me, the night I went to bed thinking that, for once, everything was right with my world, is also the night everything fell apart.

I woke up the next morning happier than I could ever remember being only to find Carolina gone.

I had the hugest fight of my life with my mother over it, and we both said things we can never take back. Things I’m still not sure I want to take back.

Then I turned to Jude for comfort and he turned me away, just cut me off completely, like the kiss—and the seven years of friendship that came before it—didn’t exist.

And now, here he is, doing the same thing again…and telling me it’s all linked together.

Is he right? Are our kiss and Carolina’s disappearance somehow tied together, after all? Was it not just my traumatized, fourteen-year-old brain putting them together? Or maybe it’s just my traumatized seventeen-year-old brain doing the same thing right now.

It’s been a hell of a day. I’ve lost Serena, and in some ways, it feels like I’ve lost Jude all over again.

At this point, I honestly don’t have a clue what’s real and what’s just my tortured imagination. All I know is that I’m going to figure this out. No matter how much Jude obfuscates, no matter how much my mother lies, I’m going to find out the truth. About everything.

Just…not tonight. Tonight, I’m tired and broken and sad. Really, really sad. So I’m going to take a shower, climb into bed, and try to sleep for a few hours before we have to evacuate.

Normally, I’d be excited about the evacuation—not the storm part, obviously, but the chance to finally, finally, get off this damn island. But between Serena and all these new questions I suddenly have, now seems like the absolute worst time for it to happen. How am I supposed to get any answers if we’re locked in a warehouse somewhere?

Then again, this is Calder Academy. Whenever you think things are as bad as they’re going to get, look out. Because they can always get worse.

The wind picks up, snarling and circling me like a wild beast, but I bend forward against it and keep going. I was so upset I ended up leaving my poncho on Mozart and Ember’s porch, but there’s no way I’m going back for it now. Instead, I hunch lower into the T-shirt Mozart gave me and walk as fast as I can while the wind continues to push against me.

Lightning cracks the sky in half, but at this point I’m so used to it I don’t pay much attention to it—or the thunder that comes after it. And when it happens again, seconds later, I don’t even bother to look.

But then it happens again and then again, and I realize two things simultaneously. One, the lightning is getting much, much closer to me. And two, despite that fact, there’s been absolutely no thunder.

Shit.

I whirl around at the next flash, only to realize my instincts were right. The last few flashes haven’t been lightning at all.

Dread pools in my stomach as a huge guy in a prison uniform appears right next to me. He lumbers forward, a haunted look on his face as he reaches for me.

I jump out of the way, but when he turns to catch me, I realize the left half of his face is covered with a giant tattoo that reads You Should Run.

Is that his actual tattoo or another warning?

Before I can figure out the answer, he disappears.

And if it is a warning, what the actual hell? It’s the second one I’ve gotten in less than twelve hours, which is a little bizarre considering it feels like I’ve done nothing but run for those same twelve hours.

Too bad there’s nowhere for me to go.

I take a deep breath, but I barely have a second to try to figure things out before there’s another blink of light on the path. It’s to my left this time, and I turn just in time to see a woman—half human, half feral animal—flicker onto the path.

There’s blood dripping from her fangs, and I have one second to wonder if she died unmeshed—a terrifying thought considering what happened to me earlier—before she lunges for me.

I stumble backward, screaming. She disappears, and another flicker—a little boy of around seven this time, with mismatched eyes and spiky black hair—takes her place. He clutches a worn, brown teddy bear in his arms as he sobs.

“Jude?” I whisper, because—with the exception of the green T-Rex pajamas—he looks just like him at that age.

But that’s impossible. Jude is alive—I just saw him. I just fought with him. This boy has to be a ghost, right?

Still, when he walks right up to me and lifts his hands like he wants to be picked up, I’m startled enough to drop down to one knee. “Are you okay?” The words come out before I can stop them.

“I need Daddy,” he tells me, eyes wide. “I had a bad dream.”

“Oh, baby.” Even though I know he can’t hear me, the words come out before I can stop them. “Where is your daddy?”

“I need Daddy,” he repeats urgently, his little fingers patting my cheek. And that’s when I realize—just like the toddler in the dungeon—he can hear me. More, he can feel me. “Go get him, please!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know who your daddy is,” I whisper, and he starts to cry. I pull him to me, and a strong electric shock runs through me as he buries his face in my neck. It’s not as bad as it usually is, though, so I do my best to ignore the pain.

“What’s your name?” I ask him as I slowly rock him.

But he doesn’t answer. He just shakes his head and says, “You have to find Daddy! He’ll keep the monsters away.”

I start to ask him what he means, but he disappears as suddenly as he came.

There’s a hitch in my throat now, a weight on my chest that wasn’t there before, though I don’t know why. That doesn’t stop me from feeling awful that I couldn’t help him.

As I turn down the last path that leads to my cottage, I’m half walking, half running. The wind and rain continue to pummel me, and I’m determined to get inside before the storm gets worse—or another flicker appears.

But I’ve barely taken more than a few steps toward my dorm when a Calder Academy student appears out of thin air. I don’t recognize her at all, so I blink a few times to clear the rain out of my eyes. Once I do, I realize the reason I don’t recognize her is that she’s not a student at all. Or at least not a current student. She’s a ghost.

Like the spirit I saw earlier in the floral nightgown, her skin is the translucent gray I’m used to seeing. But also like that woman—and the little boy I saw just a few moments ago—her clothes are in color. And so is her shaggy brown hair, which throws me off completely.

She’s wearing the very same red plaid Calder Academy skirt I’ve got hanging in my closet right now, as well as the same black polo shirt. But she’s got a large, black beanie on her head, mirrored oval sunglasses perched on her face, and an oversize plaid shirt wrapped around her waist. Not to mention the dozen or so rope bracelets that adorn both her wrists.

Also, she’s got a wide smile on her face, which definitely isn’t the usual for the Calder Academy I’m used to, as she half walks, half skips straight toward me like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

Considering this is all unfolding in the middle of a storm, as rain she can’t see pours down on her and wind she can’t feel whips through her hair, it feels extra weird.

Especially since there’s something familiar about her face and about the way she walks that lulls me into a false sense of security. Instead of backing up, I stay right where I am, watching her even as a bunch of flickers appear around her.

Men, women, and children flick all around her as she walks—here and then gone, from one moment to the next.

As they get closer, I finally turn to look at them. And that’s when the girl strikes. Her eyes sink into her head, blood drips in rivers down her face, and her mouth opens in a silent, jagged scream as she morphs from the nineties student I’ve been staring at into the hideous ghoul from earlier in Aunt Claudia’s office. As she does, she throws herself straight toward me, and I end up falling backward onto my butt as I try desperately—and futilely—to avoid her.

One bony hand latches onto my forearm, electric shocks surging through me the moment it connects. Every nerve in my body lights up in the worst way, and images pour through my mind like icy raindrops—there for a moment and then swept away in the floodwaters of emotion that threaten to drown me a little more with each second that passes.

Calder-blue eyes.

A newborn baby, crying.

Tentative hands.

A rocking chair.

A grave.

Fear.

Grief.

And pain.

So much pain it swamps me. I try to fight through it, but it’s impossible, even before she lowers her distorted face to mine. “Look!” she rasps, even as she pins me in place. “I need you to see.”

“I’m trying,” I gasp out, yanking desperately against her grip.

But she holds on tight as more visions flood my mind. This time they’re all of Carolina. My beautiful, lost cousin.

Carolina, in my mother’s office. Carolina, looking into a pen in the dungeon. Carolina, in the old root cellar. Carolina, in chains.

My roiling emotions collide like comets, sending sparks of agony showering through me as everything goes dim.

I gulp for breath as I struggle to stay conscious. I’ve never passed out around the ghosts—or the flickers—before, but something tells me doing so right now is a very, very bad idea.

I keep struggling, keep trying to free my arm as the shock waves burn deeper and deeper. Except she’s not letting go, and things around me have gone from dim to dark.

But I have one more struggle in me, and I do the only thing I can think of. I grab onto her shoulder with my other hand and pull my arm back as hard as I can.

Electricity slams through me as my hand slips right through her. I scream as I go down, face-first. Her hand finally—finally—slips off my wrist as she disappears. And thankfully, so do all the other flickers as well, vanishing as quickly as they came.

I’m left on the soaking wet ground, huddled in a ball and trying to drag a much-needed breath in my lungs as the rain continues to pummel me.

“Clementine!” All of a sudden, Ms. Aguilar is crouched down next to me, her ridiculous yellow-green umbrella shielding me from the storm. “What happened? Are you all right?”

I push to a sitting position, my body still trying to assimilate to the sudden lack of gut-wrenching pain. “I’m okay,” I tell her after a moment, but even as I say the words, I’m not sure they’re true. Because that was terrifying.

My mind is still racing, my heart beating way too fast. And my whole body is shaking—whether from fear or because I just had a shit-ton of electricity pumped through it, I don’t know.

Part of me wants to check for burns, because I can’t imagine feeling all that and not having some physical sign of it.

I blow out a long breath and try to get my shit together. But it’s hard because I am really, really freaked out right now.

The ghosts have never been like this before, so something has to have changed. I just need to figure out what. Because I’m not a fan of the flickering, and I’m damn sure not a fan of having thousands of volts of electricity pumped through my body.

But the only thing I can think of that’s different is the storm. Could it be the lightning that comes with it that changes the ghosts into flickers? That might account for that sudden, awful influx of electricity I felt when she touched me.

But there’ve been storms on the island before. None as big as this, true, but they’ve had a bunch of lightning and thunder, and this has never happened.

So what’s so different this time? And how can I fix it before I end up electrocuted for real next time?

“You don’t look fine,” she says, pulling on my arm in an attempt to help me up.

But pixies aren’t exactly known for their strength, so I push to my feet under my own power. If my legs still feel a little wobbly under me, she doesn’t need to know. No one does.

Besides, how could they not be shaky? That was a hell of a lot of electricity that just poured through me.

“I thought we told you to get to your room,” Danson growls, and I realize for the first time that he’s standing behind me.

“Sorry,” I tell him. “I’m on my way.”

“We’ll walk you,” he says, and I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t trust me or because I look as bad as I feel. No one wants the headmaster’s daughter to drop dead on their watch, after all…

Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t trust the Jean-Jerks not to come looking for me again. To be fair, neither do I.

Whatever the reason is, he and Ms. Aguilar walk me to my cottage, and she holds her umbrella over my head the whole time. I’m already soaking wet from the first half of my walk, but it’s still a nice gesture, one I thank her for when we finally get to our cottage.

“Don’t be silly!” she exclaims with a wave of her free hand. “I can’t let my fellow poetry lover catch a cold, now, can I?”

“Get inside,” Danson orders gruffly.

I nod, but when I turn to do as he says, he stops me with a giant hand on my shoulder. “You really shouldn’t be out here alone again tonight.”

I don’t know if he means for the words to sound ominous, but they definitely do. I want to put it down to the fact that he uses his very serious voice, but the truth is it’s more than that. He looks like he’s expecting trouble. Even before he turns to Ms. Aguilar and says, “Let’s go, Poppy. Something tells me, storm or no storm, these kids are going to make sure we have a long, long night.”