Chapter 17 #2
“Sounds like a real catch.”
Nico stares at me. I’ve never talked to anyone else who makes me feel so much like I’m having a conversation with a piece of furniture.
“None of the entities down here want to talk to you about their feelings,” he says.
“They will do anything to avoid talking about what you want to talk about. That includes trying to crawl inside your consciousness and play with your brain. They will dig into your head for fun. See what they can convince you to do. Some of them can even erase things.”
“Things like memories?”
“Of conversations, or even people.” He rolls his lips. “Billy can do it.”
Imagining Billy erasing my family from my memory makes me want to throw up.
“So, when you interview them,” I say slowly, “you have to keep them out of your head the entire time?”
“One slip, and they’re in. Then they can do anything they want with you.”
I can’t help but think of Bonnie, stuck in an asylum, asking for a husband who doesn’t exist. What was that like for DJ and Nico? Finding their teammate with all parts of who they were taken away, leaving a husk of the person they knew?
“Close your eyes,” Nico says.
“Seriously?”
“I’m always serious.”
“I don’t believe that.” But I close my eyes. “If this is your plan to murder me and hide the body, just know Bob will avenge me.”
“I’m… not going to murder you,” he manages. “But if I were, I wouldn’t need you to close your eyes to do it.”
I peek one eye open. He’s looking at the floor, but I catch a small curve in his mouth.
So he does still have a sense of humor. A dry, slightly murdery sense of humor, but still.
“Did you just make another joke?” I ask.
“I’m very funny,” he says. “I joke all the time.”
He does. He just delivers his jokes with the enthusiasm of someone reading assembly instructions.
“Imagine a place where you feel safe.” Nico’s voice settles back into that instructional tone. “Somewhere you can control.”
I try to think of somewhere. Anywhere. My childhood home? I don’t feel safe there anymore. My car? I wouldn’t say I feel exactly safe there, especially given the week I just had.
“What if I don’t have anywhere?” I ask.
“Everyone has somewhere,” he says.
I wonder which place he chose. What I wouldn’t give for a peek inside his head. I open one eye to find him staring at me, and quickly slam it shut again.
“Where are you from?” I ask, keeping my eyes closed.
The pause is long enough that I almost stop hoping for an answer, but one comes. “Maine.”
“Is that where you go? In your head?”
“Build your walls, Eden.”
Shaking the tension out of my shoulders, I turn my attention inward. I try to imagine a place, any place, but my mind keeps circling back to the back seat of my car. Bob and me, windows up, doors locked, engine running in case we need to escape.
I guess it’ll do for now. “Got it.”
“Good. Picture it in your mind.”
I concentrate as hard as I can, focusing on the smell of my car, which usually smells like mildew, wet dog, and old French fries mixing together, and the feel of the rough fabric covering the seats, but it doesn’t feel right.
The car isn’t safe. People can get in. It’s nothing more than a rolling metal coffin that’s only better than sleeping beneath an underpass.
Not exactly the impenetrable fortress Nico’s asking me to build here, but what other place do I have?
The answer hits me all at once.
The stage at my middle school. I can picture it exactly as it was on opening night of The Addams Family.
I can almost feel the warm light on my face—hear the chords of the piano booming from across the room.
Dad told me, if I got nervous, to find his eyes in the audience and sing just to him.
I was so scared I was going to mess up the high notes in front of everyone that my voice started shaking, but I found him sitting in the first row, smiling up at me with all the love in the world, and I knew right then I could do it.
I picture his eyes when I hit that note, filled with pride and crinkled at the corners. Clouded and glassy behind the plastic.
Stop.
I close my eyes tighter and focus only on what I need. The solid stage under my feet. The glow of the spotlight. The way my voice sounded when it filled the auditorium, strong and clear and mine.
“Okay,” I say, and this time I mean it.
“Now build walls around it,” Nico says. “Real or metaphorical. Whatever makes sense to you.”
I picture the wings of the stage sealing, and the curtains turning solid. The piano begins playing itself. The doors disappear. The audience empties except for Mom, Dad, and Rosie.
“Your walls should feel natural,” Nico says, his voice soothing. “You’ll sit inside these walls when you talk to any entity, and you’ll be able to hear their voice, but they can’t get in. You need to practice enough to keep your walls up when you stop thinking about them.”
“That’s it?” I ask. “I just imagine the walls and ghosts can’t get into my head?”
“Yes. But it’s easier said than done. You need to practice maintaining those walls while holding a conversation with something trying to break through.”
I hear Nico stand, and my eyes snap open to see him walking over to the control panel, flipping switches.
The words catch up to me a second too late. “What?”
Nico’s already moving to one of the cells in the wall. “You’re going to practice against a weaker entity. One that doesn’t have the strength to manipulate you the way Billy did. You need to practice on something real. Or else you’ll never learn how to keep your walls up while talking.”
A hiss of air escapes the compartment as Nico opens the drawer and extracts a metal box the size of a small microwave. Swirling gray mist presses against the glass viewing window.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
“Richard Fenton.” Nico carries the container to the chamber. “He stabbed five women in the Chicago area from 1988 to 1995 and has been in storage for six years. Strong but predictable. A good training ghost.”
“You’re just going to let him into my head?” I ask. “I feel like that’s a terrible idea.”
“I’ll terminate the session if something goes wrong,” he says.
“Out of curiosity, what counts as ‘something going wrong’? Spontaneous combustion? My head spinning three hundred and sixty degrees? Do I need to start levitating before you step in?”
His fingers pause over the keypad. “In your case, I’d be more concerned if you stopped talking.”
I roll my eyes at him, and he passes me a pair of goggles, which I pull onto my face, blinking as the world takes on that signature puke-green hue.
“I just want to put it out there that I’m not comfortable doing five minutes of practice and jumping into the deep end,” I say.
“Good thing you didn’t do five minutes of practice.” He glances at me. “I was only there for two.”
Oh, he’s funny. A real comedian.
I’m about to tell him exactly what I think of his teaching methods when he yanks on a heavy lever. The cold curls around me, as if I’m standing in the mouth of an open freezer. The lights embedded in the base flash red. Then green.
Smoke pours into the chamber.