A Guide to the Other Side (10 page)

“Things aren't too great, Rev,” I said, before launching into the events of the previous few days.

“And I just left the hospital and came directly here,” I finished. “Help me.”

“That is some story, Baylor,” he said slowly. “Wow. Well, first things first, you didn't get to do your routine today, so let's light some candles.”

Four candles and a hundred deep breaths later I felt the calmest I'd felt all morning.

“Now,” he said, returning to his chair, “maybe you'll have some peace of mind to think. I'm sure Kristina will return soon too. I guess the good thing about her being dead already is that you don't have to involve police.”

“Except that when she goes missing, there's no one to help me at all.”

“True,” he said, lifting his legs up and crossing his feet on his desk. “But as you said, she's probably in the Beyond learning some more ways to protect you. It's likely just taking a while, since you both have never faced anything like this before.”

He kept talking, but I'd stopped paying attention because I'd noticed his shoes, and a deep chill ran down my back.

“Reverend,” I said, interrupting him, my eyes fixated on his feet. “Where did you get those shoes?”

“These?” He laughed. “Believe it or not, they're actually from a big donation we got from some out-of-towners. I needed a new pair, and I saw they were sort of run-down, but they seemed like a nice brand, nothing I could ever afford, so I thought,
Hey, why not?
Owning some secondhand name-brand shoes for once won't kill me.” He paused for a moment and seemed perplexed. “I think it won't kill me, at least. Why do you ask? Can you tell they're old?”

“No,” I said. “They're the same shoes the Sheet Man was wearing.”

His face fell. “Are you telling me I'm wearing demon shoes?”

“I don't know what I'm telling you,” I said, leaning forward to examine the silver buckles. “I just know they look like the ones I saw before the tuba fell on me. When did they arrive?”

“Uh, last week at some point. Thursday, probably.”

“Thursday was the first day the Sheet Man visited!” I nearly yelped with excitement. “Who made the donation?”

“I honestly couldn't tell you,” he said, taking his legs off the desk and slipping the shoes off. “But now I think I'm going to burn them.”

“That's not the worst idea, but let me see them first.”

He set them on the edge of the desk. I hesitated for a moment because I was worried what I was going to see by touching the shoes. There was a big chance any memories attached to them were brutal.

But when I picked one up, nothing happened. I turned it all over in my hands, running my fingers along the seams on the side and tracing the edge of the buckle, as if trying to massage a memory out of it, but it was just a normal shoe. The leather was so soft that I felt bad for telling Reverend Henry that they were probably cursed—I could tell they were comfortable.

On the inside, just under the shoe's tongue, I saw something written in black marker. I squinted, but it was blurry, like it had been written a hundred years ago.

“There's something written there,” I said, getting my phone out to shine some light on it. “Can you make it out? I think the first letter is an
A
.”

The reverend took the shoe and peered inside. “Sort of looks like it says ‘APARKER.'” He tilted his hand and moved the shoe an inch away from his face. “I think it says that, at least.”

“What's an aparker?” He handed back the shoe and I looked again. It did sort of look like that.

“It's probably a name, like A. Parker, with the
A
being an initial.”

“What kind of man writes his name on his shoes? Especially a pair this nice.”

“I can't say. Could be any reason.”

“I wonder if I could track him down online. At least I have something to work with.” I held out the shoe, smiling. “You can have this back now.”

He threw his hands up. “I don't want to touch that thing again.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “You've been wearing them for a few days now. I think they're fine. I didn't feel anything negative when I touched them.”

He still looked hesitant. “I'll wear them for today because I'll be barefoot otherwise,” he said. “But tonight they're going straight into the fire.”

  *  *  *  

I told my mom the news in the car, but she didn't share in my excitement.

“You didn't tell me you saw that thing wearing shoes! And the reverend was wearing the same shoes?!” She gasped. “Oh my God, I hope you incinerated them on the spot!”

“I don't think they're cursed,” I said. “They didn't have a bad energy.”

“Well, it can't be a good energy, Baylor!” she said.

“They're just shoes,” I said. “They're fine.”

“Well, you're a boy, so you don't get it, but if I found out my shoes belonged to a dead lady who was haunting me, I wouldn't be very happy. I'd probably even demand a refund.”

  *  *  *  

Mom agreed to let me take the rest of the day off instead of going back to school. At home there was a gigantic package of baked goods sitting on the kitchen table, courtesy of Aiden's mom. She really
had
baked a lot: There were cookies, brownies, blondies, seven-layer bars, and a small lemon cake. I grabbed a cookie, ran upstairs, lit a candle, and hopped onto my computer. Just as I was about to start searching the web for some more clues about the Sheet Man, my computer started to fritz. The screen blurred for a few seconds, then turned blue.

Then, letter by letter, a message appeared on the screen.

Don't worry about me. Be back soon. K.

Then it disappeared.

“Well, that's just great,” I mumbled to myself. At least she wasn't in danger. Still, she could have given me some idea of when she'd return. I told my grandma that I'd see her soon all the time, even though I had no idea when the next time would be. It could be a year, for all I knew.

“Soon” was what you said to comfort someone. I didn't want to be comforted. I wanted my sister back to help me solve this problem.

Think logically. You're being followed by something Kristina thinks is really bad. She wouldn't leave you for a long time, since she knows you need her help. She will be back soon, and by “soon” she means shortly.

Feeling a bit better after rationalizing away my paranoia, I took to the Internet to dig up information on A. Parker.

First I typed in “A. Parker shoes.” Nothing.

Next I tried “A. Parker sheets.” Still nothing.

Then I typed in “A. Parker, Keene, New Hampshire.”

It turned up some results, but nothing too specific. I tried to think of what else I knew that would be helpful, and then I smacked my hand to my forehead.

“Of course!” I added one word to the search bar: “obituary.”

Jackpot. It turned out an Alfred Parker had died some three years earlier in Winchester, a nearby town. He'd been seventy-two when he died, been divorced, and had a son and a daughter. Seemed he was a late starter with having kids—both of them were only in their midtwenties when he died. It looked like he'd remarried, too. It didn't state what he'd done for work, just that he'd “pursued many successful entrepreneurial endeavors.”

He seemed relatively normal. Nothing screamed that he would transform into a creepy demon stalker.

I read it once more and stopped at the line about the children, Isabella and William.

I had a feeling they would be my best bet, so I searched for them next. The results were limited, though, with just a few viable entries before everything devolved into sign-ups for online yellow pages. But I did find some pertinent information, like some old articles about Alfred and their mom, Rosalie T. Parker, and even some old photos. I managed to figure out Isabella was in California working as a teacher, and William was going to school in Boston.

William seemed the most promising, since Boston was only a couple of hours away from Keene.

The only problem was figuring out how to get there.

“Absolutely not,” my mom said when I told her about my discoveries. She was sitting on the floor of the family room playing with Ella, and I was shoving down a brownie. “I am not driving you to Boston so you can attempt to meet up with the son of the dead guy who put you in the hospital. End of discussion.”

“But, Mom,” I said, my mouth filled with chocolate, “what if he needs my help?”

“Baylor, haven't you mentioned several times now that Kristina can't confront him because he's evil? Maybe he should have thought about getting help before he died and had to face the consequences of his poor life decisions.” She looked at Ella and cooed, “Isn't that right, Ella-Bella? You make good choices in life! Good choices!”

“Good!” Ella screamed, throwing a block into the air.

“That's right!” My mom laughed. “Good girl. Don't be bad, or else your brother will have to deal with you from the Beyond, and we don't want that.”

“So that's it?” I asked, annoyed. “What if I ask Dad?”

“Don't bother. Even if he were up for it, I am forbidding you to go.”

“Forbidding? Mom, I can talk to dead people because I'm supposed to pass along healing messages. You're preventing me from doing my life's duty. You realize that, right?”

“I've grown to appreciate your gift and think it's wonderful that you can help people who need it,” she said as she scooped up Ella and headed to the kitchen. “But when you wind up in the hospital because of it, guess what? I get to put my foot down. And if someone on the other side has a problem with it, you tell them I would be
more
than happy to discuss that with them.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Got it?”

THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL
every time my classmates saw me, they would stare awkwardly or say something like, “Feeling okay, Baylor?” Apparently, news had traveled to everyone about my collision with a tuba.

To make matters worse, Kristina still hadn't reappeared. I lit five candles that morning and asked her to come back, but when I got done with my shower and looked in the mirror, there was a message written in the fog.

Stop being a baby.

It freaked me out she had been there without even saying hi. I just hoped she couldn't see me in the shower. The mere thought made me shudder.

At lunchtime I told Aiden that it seemed like everyone was making a bigger deal out of the incident than they should be.

“Well,” he said, unpacking his usual pepperoni sandwich, “they're not talking about your accident as much as they are the fact that you screamed like a banshee and had the scariest face any of us have ever seen outside of a movie.”

“What?”

“Yeah, people think you're haunted or something,” he said, shrugging. “Not everyone gets what you can do.”

“That sucks!” I said, slamming the table. “Being in band is bad enough for my reputation. I don't need that rumor on top of it.”

“You should know that what people think of you doesn't matter,” he said pointedly.

He was right. How many times had I passed on messages from ghosts saying they wished they had lived their lives the way they wanted instead of the way others wanted? Too many to count.

But still . . . junior high is hard enough without ghosts yammering in your ear, and I needed all the help I could get.

“How's that head, Baylor?” J asked, stopping at our table on the way to her next class. She wasn't in our lunch period, thankfully; otherwise, Aiden would be in danger of choking to death every day.

“A bit sore,” I said. “Too bad people think I'm haunted.”

She smiled. “Well, better to be haunted than stupid.” Aiden was grinning like an idiot at his sandwich the whole time. “Uh, are
you
okay, Aiden?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine, fine,” he said, looking up at her. “Just pretty happy about this pepperoni, is all.”

I turned my head and closed my eyes. It was so painful to watch
and
hear.

“Well, enjoy,” she said, shaking her head. “Let's hang out this week? Maybe head to the Patty Joint on Friday night?”

“Sounds good,” I said as she walked away.

I let a moment pass before turning to him. “Seriously? You're going to die alone.”

“I know,” he said, taking a bite of his sandwich. “I know.”

  *  *  *  

After school I had an injury-free band practice, although my ego was still slightly tarnished. Mr. G., in an effort to be nice, had placed pillows around my chair in case I collapsed again. My cheeks were on fire as I thanked him, but all he'd really done was inadvertently remind everyone that I was the crazy guy who'd had to go to the hospital.