Young Adult / Ghost Girl, Chapter Two

Chapter Two

It was a house that was not too far from Michael’s.  She sat in the soft dirt in the cellar and stared at the dirt mound. The pitiful skeletal remains beneath the dark brown earth still had a rope around its neck, but when she had sprung to awareness after her death, anger had swelled up in her and somehow she had managed to rip the rope away.

She curled up on top of the earth and began to cry.  She wished wished wished the memories would go away, but they wouldn’t.  She could remember being dragged downstairs, the knife at her throat.  She was scared to defy him when he told her to remove her clothes.  He’d tied the rope in a slip knot and put it around her neck and pulled it so tightly that she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

There was a flash and lights came on.  Then she noticed what was in the cellar.  An imitation of a photographer’s studio: drop cloths, lamps and a video camera staring her in the face.   She started screaming, her mind refusing to register all this as he pulled off his clothes and threw them against the wall.  She saw where they landed—and the shovel propped against the same wall.

She tried to run, but the rope choked her, and he dragged her back and she choked and almost passed out.  He bound her hands tightly and laughed when he saw her start to cry.  He heard her begging and pleading as he began to do things to her that she had never imagined were possible, the camera recording everything. It seemed to go on and on and just when she thought she couldn’t take anymore, he jerked the rope around her neck with a sudden hard pull, and everything went black.

“The most horrible day of my life,” she said softly, not wanting to wake up Crazy Girl.  She had first seen Crazy Girl a couple of days after she had died.  The girl had risen up out of the dirt and started talking to her, but her words often made no sense and she’d interrupt herself with peals of maniacal laughter as she spoke.   She must have gone mad before he’d killed her.  She wished she had gone insane herself, instead of being aware of every single thing that had happened to her.  Why couldn’t she have been given that?

She had always dreamed her first time would be a beautiful thing with someone she loved.  Instead, she had been horribly abused, then killed and dumped carelessly into a hole.  This wasn’t supposed to happen to someone like her, but Crazy Girl had made her realize that it could happen to anyone.  

All she wanted now was for her parents to have what was left of her, and someone kill her murderer.  Sometimes she would see a white light above her and she could feel part of her start to give in and drift up slowly towards it, but in the end she always resisted.  She was going to have her revenge on him.  She could hear his television right now and decided she’d go upstairs and open his cupboard doors and break a bunch of his plates.  Ever since Crazy Girl had shown her how, she’d wreaked as much destruction as she could.

Crazy Girl rose up out of the dirt, the rope trailing from her neck.  “Hey girlfriend, feel like a little action?”  She smiled, showing white teeth.  Her dreadlocks were matted and Mariah wondered if she would wind up looking the same.  She and Mariah were the same age, but Crazy Girl looked much older.  Maybe walking the streets had done made her look older and burnt out.

Mariah had been taken a few blocks from her house.  She’d gotten off the same bus she’d ridden a hundred times, but this autumn evening the early darkness had given him a cover.  He’d snatched her off the sidewalk, hand covering her mouth, and had dragged her into his house.

She’d replayed the scenario so many times, trying to figure out what she had done wrong to let this happen to her; but always came up with the same answer.  It was like someone had spun a giant roulette wheel and the number that had come up was hers.  There was nothing she could have done to prevent it, even though she fought it to the end.

“Let’s go have some fun,” Crazy Girl whispered, and they were upstairs, watching him stare at his wide screen TV.  “Don’t look, girl, don’t look,” Crazy Girl tried to put her hand over Mariah’s eyes, but it was too late.

It was her.  He was watching the video of her.  Every little thing he had done to her was being played out before her eyes.  Anger built up in her, and if she could she would have made his TV screen explode.  The best that she and Crazy Girl could do was make magazines and video cassettes fly off his shelves.  Crazy Girl managed to hit him quite hard in the head with a VHS cassette.

He looked around him, frightened. “Get out of here and leave me alone.”  Crazy Girl took Mariah’s hand and they were in the cellar.

“He’s planning to do another one,” she told Mariah, “I can feel it.  He’s acting like he did before he got you.  It’s like feeding a habit; you maybe can go a while without, but eventually you gotta have a fix.  He’s gonna get himself another girl, for sure.  Only a matter of time now.”

“We’ve got to stop him.  We can’t let him do it again.”  Mariah was horrified.

“You gotta plan?” Crazy Girl asked her, “You know someone with a Glock Nine or something?  All I could do when he took you was watch.  Now you saying we can do something about this?”

“Maybe,” said Mariah, “Maybe.  I can’t let this happen again.  I’ll send my soul to hell before I let him hurt another girl.”

“You scare me girl.  And you think I’m crazy?  I’ll catch you later when you start talking sense.”  Crazy Girl disappeared down into the earth, leaving Mariah to think.

It was late evening, and Kit was walking down the street, holding tightly onto the bag that held her ballet slippers and leotard.  If Michael disliked this neighborhood for being rundown and shabby, she hated it because it frightened her.

She felt safe when she walked past lighted porches, and streetlights comforted her.  But there were those houses with empty dark porches, torn curtains, and dark windows  that seemed threatening by their emptiness.  She’d hurry past these as quickly as she could, wishing that someone would have met her at the bus stop, or that one of her parents had picked her up from class.

But the worst house was one that she had to pass shortly before she reached hers.   It had not been kept up, the lawn was overgrown, the steps up to the porch were sagging, but someone lived there.  There was no porchlight, but there was a glow in a large window that could have been from a lamp or TV.  Every so often a corner of a curtain would lift briefly, and then fall.  Then she would run as fast as her feet would carry her until she reached her own house.

She had taken the move harder than Michael.  When her parents had announced that they were going to have to sell their house and move, she had burst into tears and locked herself in her room.  She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.  All her friends were here, what did her parents expect her to do.

For the next week she had argued, pouted, cried, begged, pleaded.   No, they couldn’t move.  Where else could they live, anyway?  How could they even think of doing this to her?  Never, ever, did she dream in a million years that they would do this to her.

One night Michael came into her room and grabbed her by the arm.  “This stops now,” he said, “Mom and Dad are having a hard enough time without you whining and making it worse for them.   We have to move and that’s that.  Stop thinking about just yourself for a change.”

After that things got worse.  One night her parents asked her which of her after school activities meant the most to her.  This took her by surprise.  She played soccer, belonged to Girl Scouts, took ice skating lessons, and ballet.  Something seemed to tell her that she was being asked to make a choice.  

“Ballet”, she said.  Soon afterwards her soccer and ice skating lessons were dropped.  Michael stopped participating in soccer and baseball and focused on his skateboarding.  Her parents switched their cars to cheaper ones, and their house was put on the market and sold.

She had begged and pleaded with her parents to not buy this house.  Michael had done the same, but her parents seemed set on it.  Her mother gave her a book of wallpaper and paint samples to choose colors and trim for her room, but she’d only half heartedly looked at them.  She hated her new room in spite of the view of the large back yard with its magnolias and lilacs.

She found herself counting steps now, breathing heavily.  She was approaching “the house”, and her heart was starting to pound as she grew closer.  This time she could see the hand that lifted the curtain, and it stayed open longer.  For a brief moment, she could see a face peering around the curtain.

She ran home, screaming.  Her hands trembled as she unlocked the door.  When she finally succeeded, she ran upstairs and threw herself on her bed.  She lay there trembling and sobbing; she was so frightened she could not speak or stop shaking for a long time.

Michael found her lying on her bed.  “What’s wrong Little Bit?” he asked, using her childhood nickname.  She said nothing but held onto him tightly and her tears came out in torrents.  He gently stroked her hair, guessing that something was horribly wrong waiting to see if she could tell him.

“Michael, I’m scared.  We have to convince Mom and Dad to move out of this house and get away from this neighborhood.  Something bad is going to happen if we don’t, and I’m afraid it’s going to happen to me.”

Because he was her brother, Michael felt responsible for her safety and an obligation to protect her.  He had thought her fear hysterics at first, but the words “I’m afraid it’s going to happen to me” had been said with a seriousness that made him take notice of what she said.  This was not the whining of a selfish brat, she was truly afraid.

He held her by the shoulders and looked at her.  “Whatever it is, you tell mom and dad.  Tell them what’s making you afraid, and why.  Tell them you don’t want to walk down the street after dark.  Ask if one of them can meet you at the bus stop.”  Her sobs had slowed down to a gentle sniffling and she nodded her head.  

He kissed the top of her head and went to his room.  “First smart thing I’ve heard you say since we met,” a voice said.

He looked in the corner of the room and saw her standing there, a shimmering presence.  “Guess you didn’t know that smudging doesn’t necessarily keep out ghosts.  Especially ghosts with something important to tell you.  The protection candle was nice, though.”

“What do you want?” he asked her.  Best to get to the point.

“I need your help, and you’re need mine to help you protect your sister,” she moved closer to him, close enough that he could reach out and touch her if he wanted.  She was solid now, and he had an uncontrollable urge to take her in his arms and kiss her.  He didn’t care if she was a ghost.  What stood before him seemed a flesh and blood girl.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Do what?” he answered.

“Look at me all moony.  Look, someone is living not far from you who’s been watching your little sister, and if something isn’t done about it, she’s going to end up like me.”  She stopped there afraid to say more.

‘”And what do you want for yourself, Mariah?” he asked directly.

If ghosts could blush or flush or look guilty, she would have at that moment.  She still wanted her vengeance, but seeing the monster stare at his sister made her realize there was more than just her interests at stake.  For the first time since her murder she found herself thinking about someone’s safety and not just her revenge.  After ten years of lying in the dirt of a cellar and fuming over the injustice that had been done to her, she realized that someone else could be harmed and that she did not want that to happen.

“How did you know my name?” she asked, trying to recover herself.  “We’ve never  had any meaningful conversations.”

“I have my ways,” he said mysteriously.  Suddenly something came over him, and he crossed the room and took her in his arms and kissed her.

She yielded for a moment, even seemed to melt into his embrace, then appeared on the other side of his room.  “How dare you assume you can just kiss me?” she demanded, “What makes you think you had my permission?  Or was I supposed to be so overwhelmed that I wouldn’t mind.”

“I just felt like kissing you, so I did.  I’ve wanted to ever since I first saw you.  Even when I was wishing you would go away I still wanted to kiss you.  I’m sorry if…”

“No, you’re not sorry.  No guy is ever sorry when he does something like this.  I’m going.”  Before he could even respond she disappeared.  Two books flew off his shelf and landed on his bed.”

“You liked it,” he shouted, hoping his parents weren’t home.  Well, he’d liked it, and he thought that in spite of the way she acted, she’d liked it too.  Next time he’d be more careful with his approach.  As a matter of fact, he felt like kicking himself for doing it the way he had.  He wasn’t even sure what had come over him, only that the look of those blue eyes had cut straight to his heart.

She, in the mean time, was back in the cellar with Crazy Girl.  She paced around the cellar, calling him names, swearing that she’d stay away from him for good.

Finally, Crazy Girl couldn’t take it anymore.  “This is all because he kissed you, girlfriend?  I got news for you.  You’re half in love with someone you can’t even have, girl.  He’s alive, you’re not.  You’ve had a thang for him since you first went to his bedroom.  Don’t try and fool me, ‘cause you can’t.  I know what I know and that boy’s made you crazier than I am.  We ain’t like live folks; so if you have a chance to be in love, take it.  This might be your only chance.  Don’t be a fool.”

“Were you ever in love?” Mariah asked.

“I thought I was in love with my boyfriend, and look where it got me.  No,” she shook her head, “you can’t have something real that’s gonna last, but you can have something good that will last for a while.  I can tell when someone’s in love, and you got it bad.  And if he kissed you, he’s got it bad too”.  

Michael called his friends and summoned them to a meeting at the skate park the next afternoon.  He knew Short Round would guess part of the reason, but he was reasonably sure that Dewey was in the dark regarding Mariah—how strange it felt to say her name—and would only know what he planned to tell him.  He trusted Dewey, but a ghost in his life was something he definitely did not want to share.

He was sitting on a park bench, waiting for them to arrive, when he found her suddenly sitting next to him.

“My friends are coming.  I’m going to tell them about someone scaring Kit.”

“You should tell them she’s in danger.  Or at least tell your cute little oriental friend that the man who killed me is stalking her.  And, by the way, I accept your apology.”

He looked at her, not knowing whether he was more surprised by her remark about Short Round or by her accepting his apology.

“I don’t know what we can do, but I want to do something.  I’m not going to let that creep get my sister,” he said, “and how did you know—oh, never mind.”  He looked for his friends, but he didn’t see them coming.

She put one of her hands on his.  It was cold to the touch, but the thought of her just being there next to him sent shivers down his spine.

“You don’t hate me?” he asked.

“Maybe I hate you, or I hate what you did,” she said solemnly, “ I never had a boyfriend, not a real one.  No one’s ever kissed me before.  I have to admit that I liked being kissed by you, but I don’t like the way you did it.  Oh,” she said out loud, “Your friends are coming.”  She shimmered briefly and was gone.

Short Round came rolling up, flipped his board up and bounced down on the seat next to Michael.  Dewey, more cautious, skid his board to a halt and sat on the other side.

“What’s up, Kemo Sabe?” Short Round asked cheerfully.  “We’re wasting valuable skate time here.”

“Shut up, ‘Minh.’,” said Dewey, using Short Round’s given name, “Something’s bothering Mike, can’t you tell.”  Short Round opened his mouth and then closed it with a pop.  

“Sorry Mikie, just trying to lighten things up.  Your face looks like a thundercloud.”

“Okay,” started Mike, then he exhaled.  This was definitely not going to be easy.  “Well, here goes nothing,” he thought.

“This is going to sound really weird; but  I think some wacko is stalking Kit.  She came home last night in tears and it took forever for her to calm down.  She was scared, really scared.  I’ve never seen her like this before.  She started babbling about how she was never walking down our street again, wasn’t going to take the bus unless it was full daylight.”  He paused for a moment, “Something felt really wrong, and I don’t know what to do.  Mom and Dad told her she was just imagining things, but that made her even more upset.  She ran up to her room and slammed the door, and wouldn’t even come down for dinner.”

“Sure it just isn’t your usual Kit hysterics?” quipped Dewey, “She can throw quite the fit when she wants to.  I’ve witnessed it.”

“Yeah,” said Short Round, “hysterical younger sister.  That would fit.”  But he looked at Mike as if to say, “and what do you think really scared her?”

“Dude, you don’t get it.  I was the one who was there when Kit got home.  She ran into her room and started crying, no, sobbing, and she was shaking so hard I didn’t know what to do.  And she couldn’t stop.  She was so freaked out I thought about calling 911 or something if she didn’t calm down.  All you had to do was look at her to know that something was really wrong.”

“So why didn’t the PA’s believe her if you did?” asked Dewey, “If it was as bad as you say it was, wouldn’t they take her seriously?”

“I think they are in denial about the neighborhood and the house,” Michael sighed, “I mean, I like high tech modern homes, but I kind of like old houses, too.  But there’s  a wrongness I feel in my neighborhood.”  He held up his hand as Dewey was about to speak, “Something has happened to me since we moved.  I know how crazy this sounds, but I’ve always thought that there was something creepy about our neighborhood.  Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s maybe just a someone.  And I don’t like thought of this someone coming after my kid sister.”

“What can we do?” said Short Round.  

“I don’t have many ideas,” said Michael, “She only has ballet once a week, unless there’s a recital coming up.  I’m going to try to meet her at her bus stop and walk her home.  But I was wondering if either of you would mind meeting her and getting her home if something comes up and I can’t.”

Short Round was about to speak, but Dewey cut him off.  “Mike, that’s a really good idea, but there’s a big problem.  What’s going to happen on a night when she forgets to make sure someone’s there?  Or if none of us can do it?  Or, even worse, she stops worrying and decides she doesn’t need any of us and then this guy nails her?”

“That’s the problem, you know.  We can make all the contingency plans that we want, but in real life something always goes wrong.  It’s won’t be our screw up; it’s just the law of averages.”

“What are you trying to say, Dew-man, speak,” Short Round had a look of understanding on his face, but he had the feeling there was more to what Dewey was saying.

“I’m saying that we can’t really protect Kit,” he said, shaking his head,  “ Maybe he’s like one of these serial killers.  That means he’ll always want to find someone to kill.  Say he can’t get to Kit, well, he’ll find someone else.  It’s not enough to just protect Kit, he’s got to be stopped.”

“We’ve been watching too many forensic shows,” replied Mike, “But I think you’re right.  The cops won’t come near him without probable cause, so that leaves us where we started.  We don’t know who he is, we only know he’s in the neighborhood and probably close to my house.  I’m getting a headache thinking about all this.”

“This is what I think,” Short Round piped in, “I think we should get on our boards and skate.  Then you two white eyes are going to have to let little Short Round do some conferring with the spirit world.  He looked at Mike, “You don’t think that my grandfather didn’t teach me a thing or two?  He knew no one was going to be a shaman, but there’s things in my world that don’t exist for you.  And maybe they can help us.”

“Like, what are you going to ask, oh wise one?” Dewey was excellent at sarcasm.

“I’m going to ask for guidance, Grasshopper,” Short Round smirked, “There are never any answers, but you can always ask for help finding the right path.  Your parents should have raised you guys as Buddhists.  You white folk don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”

“Yeah, right,” said Mike, and cuffed him on the side of his head, “Let’s skate our butts off.  First one to fall buys lunch.”

“Hope you’ve got enough money,” said Dewey, and they went into the park and forgot about everything else until it was time to go home.

Luckily for Mike and Dewey, it fell to Short Round to buy lunch.  They were still at the park when Mike caught his bus, trying to out do each other.  He looked out the window, pondering what Short Round had said.  He wondered what it would have been like to be raised the way he was.  In Short Round’s world, ghosts were a matter of fact.  When he explained to his parents why the house smelled funny and about the ghost in his bedroom, they had reacted pretty much the same as when Kit had insisted someone was stalking her.

He hadn’t really expected his parents to take him seriously, he’d only hoped they would.  He’d taken it philosophically when he’d been met with skepticism.  His parents were practical, grounded people, and they were under a lot of stress.  He’d hoped for more open mindedness on their part, but he’d shrugged off the things they told him.  He’d grown up a little too quickly this year, but he’d had too.  He just wished that they’d taken Kit more seriously.

“The monster took to hiding in the shadows of his front yard.  He kept looking for the girl, but someone was always with her now.  He didn’t know what had given him away, but he was patient.  Sooner or later there was going to be a night when there was no one to meet her at the bus, or the seasons would change and daylight would last until late, and maybe she’d get brave again and start to walk home alone once more.

It was all about being patient, all in the timing.  He’d have to be careful if he wanted to snatch her during daylight.  It would be much easier if he could grab her now while darkness still lingered.  He’d been careful and he’d waited a long time.  They hadn’t caught him yet.  And if it wasn’t this one, there would always be another.

He no longer went down to the cellar to gloat over the two mounds of earth.  The things that flew around his apartment and broke made him nervous.  Well, they weren’t going to stop him from getting this one.  Soon there would be a third mound of earth to go with the other two in the cellar’s floor.  All he had to do was wait.

Mike was lying awake in bed.  There was too much on his mind to be able to sleep.  There was a full moon, and he went over to his window to stare at the yard.  It always surprised him to see the yard lit with that eerie, yet beautiful, silver light.  He found it hard to believe that full moons seemed to bring negative things.  There were more murders, he’d heard; crazy people acted up more in mental hospitals, and according to his mother, more babies were born.  He was a full moon baby, she’d told him.

Suddenly he felt two cold arms slip around his waist, and cold lips planted a kiss in the middle of his back.  He turned her around to face him, and saw that Mariah was all smiles now.  She traced the lines of his brow, his lips, and kissed him again.

“Come on, cold lady,” he teased gently, “Let me get in bed and I can put the covers between us.  Then I can hold you better.”

She didn’t object, but followed him as he got into bed.  She climbed in next to him, and he put his arms around her and held her tightly.  They satisfied themselves with the closeness and kiss after deep kiss.  He stroked her hair, lifted her chin so he could look into her beautiful eyes, then drew her as close to him as he could, fitting her into the contours of his body.

“Are you going to spend the night with me?” he asked, and she nodded.

“As many nights as you want.”  She snuggled closer to him.

“Sounds good to me,” he answered.

They lay for a while, enveloped in each other.  It seemed odd to him that she did not breathe, and that her skin was cold, but there was something delicious about the feel of her in his arms.  Minutes, or was it hours, passed—he couldn’t tell.  Laying there like that could make him forget about everything, except for the moonlight and the girl in his arms.  And then he remembered.

“Mariah?”

“Mmmm?”

“Mariah, will you let me ask you some questions?”  

She turned around to face him.  “Why?”

“You know,” he said fiercely, “If you want something from me, I need you to help me.  There are things I need to know before I can help you or Kit, things that you only know the answer to.”

She turned over, putting one cold arm around his waist.  “Look, I was going to talk you into helping me, but now I’m not sure I can.  Before I knew you I didn’t care what kind of danger I was going to put you in, you were just a means to an end.”

“And now?” he prodded.

“Now I don’t want him to hurt you or anyone else.   I want to be free of him.  I want my parents to have closure—I want them to be able to bury me and give me a headstone, instead of their wondering what happened to me.  I know they blame themselves and maybe I can stop it.”

“But that’s what parents do, Mariah,” he kissed her cold forehead, then her lips.  “If something ever happened to me or Kit my parents would blame themselves for a long time.”

“Well, don’t you think if they had me, my parents might finally be able to stop blaming themselves?”

“Oh, Mariah,” he held her tightly, “Why don’t you just pass into the light and let things work themselves out?”

“Because they don’t work themselves out.   Crazy Girl  was there before me.  I guess she was a street walker or something.  She was fifteen, like us.  He picked her up off the streets and brought her to his house.  I don’t know if she was his first victim, but after he killed me and I regained consciousness…”

“You what?” he asked, incredulous.  How do the dead regain consciousness anyway?

“That’s how it works, Michael.  One minute everything goes black and you’re gone and then suddenly it’s like someone’s poured a bucket of cold water on you.  Crazy Girl been missing since sometime in the 1980’s.  No one’s found her.  No one’s found me, and I’m a middle class white girl who’s been gone for ten years.  

As long as he keeps us hidden like treasures in his cellar, no one is going to find us.  So how can I pass into this light while things are the way they are?  No, I’m not leaving this earth until my parents have me and they can stop wondering.”

“He might be thinking that it’s time.  That he’s waited long enough.  And he’s looking at your sister and thinking that she might make a good candidate for body number three in the cellar.”

She stopped for a moment.  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Michael.  Can’t you just hold me instead?”  She looked at him, her eyes pleading.

He smiled and drew her closer.  “Okay, no more forensics for now.  I don’t want you upset Mariah, I just want to hold you and have you be here when I wake up.”

She did not reply, but kissed his chest and rested her head against him.  

For the first time in his life, he realized he was in love.  He’d made out with girls, but he’d never met a girl like her.  Where the others had been warm and soft, her flesh was cold; but when he looked in her eyes he felt helpless, like he was drowning.  

Michael stroked her hair, but could not stop thinking, “What do I do with this?”  He tried, and tried, but could find no clear answer.  Eventually he drifted off into an uneasy sleep, Mariah snuggled like a child in his arms.

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