CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A
ll at once, my soul crashed into my body.
I sat up in bed with a gasp, my muscles taut with terror, even as the iciness of the man’s spirit still shot throughout my nerve endings.
My short hair brushed the fairy lights above. If I were a taller person, I’d have knocked myself a return ticket right back into the land of dreams. The soft, light gray of dawn washed out the room, turning it monochromatic.
I was home.
The dream—nightmare? Reality?
Whatever it’d been, it still lingered, leaving an ache in my bones and adrenaline-fueled sweat soaking my sleep shirt.
“Willa?” Nick mumbled, ruffling the curtain around his bed.
I inhaled deeply, doing my best to adopt a front of calmness. “I’m okay. Go back to sleep.”
His semi-conscious state bought the paltry reassurance. Soon, the soft snores resumed from his side of the room, and I released the breath I’d been holding.
Only once I’d regulated my own breaths did I focus on what’d happened. While most concerning, the shadow creatures seemed self-explanatory. In other words, big, hazy obsidian things with terrifying claws equaled bad news. Words of advice: stay well away.
Yep, that was a no-brainer. No need to write it down.
The more pressing questions centered on the presences that hadn’t been slavering after my—blood? Soul?
Focus.
Who was the guy that—according to what he’d implied—pulled me there? Was he the reason I’d woken up at that abandoned construction site in real life, landing Ralph and me in some serious trouble? But why latch onto me, and why did he keep showing me that place?
Clips of the nightmare darted through my memory. The details faded, as they tended to do after waking, so I grabbed on with both hands to remember what I could.
On a hunch, I pulled my bedside drawer open, searching for the composition notebook I’d hung onto after joining a creative writing club in the fourth grade.
I skipped past all the embarrassing attempts at stories.
They’d been cringey at the time I wrote them.
Somehow, I doubted that poorly written stories aged like a fine wine.
Instead, they probably curdled and fuzzed like soured milk.
Once I got to a free page, I rushed to record every piece of information I could, adding five question marks at the end when I ran out of things to add.
My hand cramped. It wasn’t my usual neat penmanship, but the week of writing assignments, the extra practice, and the ceramics class had done wonders to improve my muscles and help reconnect the damaged neurons in my brain.
Not that I’d admit as much to my physical therapist.
My attention narrowed near the ending of the dream, focusing on what the man wanted to show me.
What had the mayor been doing there?
It hadn’t crossed my mind, but maybe it should have. Was George Orten connected to the construction site? How?
Since there was still room, I filled the page with information on the creatures. Who knew if something would ever happen where someone might need this information as well?
My hand knotted into a pretzel. I had to slow down and write deliberately. The crude drawing looked like a kid had sketched it, and yet it still sent a buzz of nervous energy skittering up my spine the longer I looked at it.
Seeking some levity, I penned my note.
If you see big, hazy obsidian things with terrifying claws… avoid at ALL costs!!
The joke helped lighten the weight pressing on my skull, so at the top, I created a lighthearted title: Willa’s User-Friendly Guide to Ghosts.
A cartoonish etching of a ghost finished the playful tone.
That was me, Willahelm Walker, combatting shadowy dark energy one emoji at a time.
After months, maybe years of denial, I’d acknowledged the ghosts to Manuel. Then, I’d admitted it to myself on the drive home. Still, jotting it down on paper seemed like a further step in the process to internalize the absurd reality.
I could see ghosts.
It lifted a fraction of the burden secrecy had been wreaking on my life, even if no one else but me would see the notebook, so I decided to repeat the title on the front cover.
I dug around for a red ballpoint instead of black.
It felt stronger. I crossed out the purple marker that read, “Story Journal,” and replaced it with the new title.
Yeah, that sounded good.
If someone murdered me before graduation, the police would have some explaining to do should anyone stumble across this notebook.
Officer Jones could take his cover-ups and send them on a short trip to hell. These notes would either share my story or make me sound crazy. Hopefully, Manuel would be the one to find them.
If I was sending out wishes to the universe anyway, I hoped the opposite in Agent Veritas’s case.
I prayed he didn’t find this. He’d believed me about a lot of things, and if my ghost returned to monitor stuff, it’d kill me all over again to think that the single law enforcement personnel on my side saw me as a raving lunatic.
I debated crossing the title out once more and tearing out the pages. My finger traced over the red markings, then I decided against it.
Willa’s User-Friendly Guide to Ghosts.
It had a nice ring to it.
I closed the notebook and hid it away, not worried about Nick snooping. We’d worked out how to give each other privacy long ago, so we respected each other’s hard boundaries.
Besides, I’d be relocating to the attic inside of a few weeks, if Dad was to be believed.
Looping back to Agent Veritas, I debated the pros and cons of telling him about the mayor. After the dream connected Orten to that construction site, it felt like everything wanted to slot together, but about half the pieces were still MIA.
Maybe I could call him and poke around to gauge what he knew.
My phone’s clock showed it was just after six a.m.
On a Sunday.
Hmm.
Well, it definitely wasn’t appropriate to just message government officials, right? If I called and it went to voicemail, I’d hang up. No harm, no foul.
I slid on some fuzzy socks and slipped from the room, traveling the hall to the door on the end. It housed the staircase leading to the attic.
Climbing the steps, I opened the second door at the top of the landing.
Cool, stale air greeted me. The soft grays of dawn trickled in through the dormer windows, but that gentle light failed to penetrate the thick, open darkness of the vast room.
We’d accomplished quite a bit shifting boxes around. Dad wanted to expedite the process. He proposed building a dividing wall to block off the half with junk, rather than painstakingly sorting through everything now to determine what needed to be kept, trashed, or donated.
I’d be happy either way.
Honestly, even with the space halved and the roof’s slope crowding the useable perimeter of the room, it still afforded an impressive available footage for a bedroom.
My hands blindly groped around for a string, tugging it.
The light, a single, sickly yellow bulb that hung from a chain, did little to reach the corners farthest from the windows. I shivered, peering into the darkness.
The single, weak bulb hadn’t seemed like such a big deal in the middle of the day when I was accompanied by both Dad and Nick and sunlight streamed in through the double windows.
Okay, so phone flashlight then.
I carefully stepped on the plywood we’d temporarily placed atop the joists to prevent us from busting through the thin slats and drywall ceiling below. That’d send Mom into a fit.
When I reached the spot furthest from my parents’ room below, I checked the screen.
No service.
“Joy,” I muttered, aiming the flashlight down. Our wooden path didn’t reach the windows, but therein lay my best odds of finding reception. I’d have to tread carefully, stepping only on the thick boards. “One at a time.”
While two inches seemed like an intimidatingly strong chunk of wood, that same width pressing into the middle of a foot felt like walking on wire.
The arches of my feet ached by the time I picked my way across, but it’d accomplished my goal. The phone had bars.
I’d programmed Veritas’s number from the business card as Mr. Truth.
“Oh,” I whispered, hesitating. “What if he has a wife?”
Different scenarios flipped into being, but ultimately, my aching feet sealed the deal.
I’d already come this far. Worst-case scenario, Veritas would assume there was an emergency and answer the phone half asleep.
Okay, that was a pretty awful worst-case… I went to hang up, hoping seeing an unsaved contact is his call log would be enough for him to phone me later when he saw the missed call. I could create an excuse to find some privacy when the house was awake, right?
Except, half pulled from my ear, he answered. “Hello, this is Agent Veritas.”
“Ah, um, hi. Hello. I mean, I’m sorry to call you so early… on a Sunday morning. You weren’t… oh God, I mean, gosh, you weren’t at church or anything, were you?”
A breath of air filled the line. “Church services don’t start until ten or eleven.”
I blinked. “Right.”
Why couldn’t I think of what to say?
“Is this Willa Walker?” Veritas questioned.
My voice dropped in volume. “Yes.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“What? No, I’m not in—why would you think—”
“Look, I’m going to be honest with you, kid.
” Kid? I turned eighteen in May. “After you left, I hauled Trent Pierce in for questioning, but he pulls a lot of weight as the chief of police, especially when it seems like half of his department are die-hard fans and would gladly go to bat for him.” Veritas paused. “He walked.”
My stomach bottomed out at the news.
After Pierce showed up, threatened me in front of witnesses, verbally abused me, and made himself sound off his rocker crazy, I thought for sure something would happen.
It’d been a lie. Mr. Truth had offered the idea of protection, dangled it like mouth-watering bait before my desperate famine.
He’d whispered silver-tongued promises and failed to deliver.
Veritas cleared his throat, sounding incrementally more awake. “Talk to me.”