A Guide to the Other Side (24 page)

She pulled on the ghost leash, but the Sheet Man didn't move.

“How on earth did you know that?”

“You have your tricks, Baylor. I have mine.” She tugged on the leash again. “You must look at this from my point of view,” she continued, entirely too calm for my liking. “You see—”

But I didn't get to see, because I couldn't listen to this bizarre demon-woman for another moment, especially not when she had supernatural tricks hidden up her sleeve. I cracked open the egg, grabbed the stone, and chucked it at the Sheet Man.

The sheet unraveled itself like a tornado of cloth, spinning upward to reveal Alfred and a balled-up Kristina, and then ripping itself into shreds to tie around Rosalie in midsentence. They bound her feet, pinned her arms to her sides, and covered her mouth, making her resemble a very haphazardly assembled mummy.

“You did it!” Kristina yelled, unfolding herself and rising up, her hands balled into fists. “Oh, I knew you would!”

Alfred was beaming at me, and the first thing I noticed was that his eyes were actually a light shade of brown. He looked like a friendly old man, though his nose resembled a small mountain squashed in the middle of his face, and I suddenly thought of his son Will's big nose and laughed. They looked exactly alike.

“This is too funny,” I said, feeling slaphappy. “It's so great to see you both.”

“Wait.” Kristina tensed up and looked through a wall. “We're back in the physical world, and the dogs are coming.”

And sure enough, the dogs came bounding from the front door—where they'd been barking at Reverend Henry, who was still outside—and leaped at me, their sharp teeth bared.

Alfred laughed, and a fusion bomb of blue energy flew from his hand and hit the dogs with a force so great that they were blasted out the window in a disharmonious concert of broken glass and pathetic yelps.

“So not fair,” Kristina said, shaking her head with admiration at his blasting abilities.

“I've wanted to do that for years,” he said, flexing his still-glowing fingers.

Reverend Henry rushed to the broken window and looked in to find me there with Rosalie all tied up.

“Baylor, where did you go?!” he yelled. “You just disappeared!”

“I was transported to that limbo realm,” I said. “Everything's fine now.”

“That's great to know
now
,” he said while bending over and huffing, “but I panicked and called your mom. She's on her way here, and she is
not
happy with us.”

“What?” I moaned. “No!”

“Who cares, Baylor!” Kristina said. “We need to deal with this whole situation first.”

She motioned to Rosalie and Alfred. Their eyes were back to normal, and I was so relieved never to have to look at those beady black eyes ever again.

“Thank you so much, Baylor,” Alfred said, practically dancing around the room in celebration of his freedom. “My lovely ex-wife had been using some voodoo magic for years before I died, and I was trapped in that gray landscape the second I crossed over.”

Rosalie tried to say something, but her mouth was tightly gagged.

“It's not so great being bound up, is it, dear?” he said.

She glared at him, but her now unremarkable eyes affected no one.

Reverend Henry, unaware of the two ghosts present, kept looking from me to the bound-and-gagged Rosalie in shock. “What? Bay—wha—how—are you serious? What is this?”

“Just settling some grisly ghost business, Reverend,” I said, grinning dreamily.

“I'll ask you for just one favor, Baylor,” Alfred said, turning back to me. “If you wouldn't mind going downstairs to the basement and destroying her hate shrine dedicated to me?”

I looked at Kristina, who was also grinning like a fool, and she nodded.

“Okay,” I said, and he led the way down the hall and into the kitchen.

“It's just down there, in the far left corner,” he said, pointing to a door next to the refrigerator. “I'd go with you, but you'll forgive me for being a bit paranoid about being so close to evil so soon. I can still feel it lingering all over me.”

“I'll come with you,” Kristina said, and she flicked something in my mind to tune me into the spirits.

I frowned at her, wondering why she wanted me tuned in, and we walked down the stairs. I found the light switch, and the air was sucked out of my lungs.

Rosalie had erected a table in the corner covered in all kinds of paraphernalia: an ancient, thick book, tarot cards, a cracked mirror, dark prisms, and a small voodoo doll covered in a white sheet, with pins sticking into all parts of the body.

Standing guard over the table was a Bruton, its black, jagged wings spread apart like a massive bat's, taking up nearly the entire width of the basement. The fire in its eyes burned mercilessly.

“Kristina,” I said under my breath. “Back up. Go back up.”

“No. Walk over with confidence and destroy the relics,” she said, defiant.

I started walking slowly again, and with every step the fire in the Bruton's eyes glowed more sinisterly.

“Good demon,” I said breathlessly. “Good boy. Please don't attack me.”

Its head followed me and shifted violently around, like black smoke escaping into the air.

I focused on my breathing, trying to keep it steady, in and out.

It can't hurt you
, I reminded myself.
It can't touch you.

I collected the tarot cards as the Bruton hovered over me, maybe three feet away. I ripped them up, trying to stifle a horrified gasp as wisps of black energy slithered into the air from the paper shreds and circled my hands, as if trying to invade me, before ultimately returning to the demon. Then I threw the book onto the floor and chucked the mirror at it, a thousand pieces of glass stabbing into its cover and scattering all over the bare gray concrete; the prisms met the same fate a few seconds later

Finally, the doll. With each needle I removed, more black energy returned to the Bruton, like he was vacuuming it up. I shredded the miniature sheet, then ripped the head off the ragged voodoo doll, threw the pieces down, and stomped on them.

The table empty, I smiled at Kristina and said, “That wasn't so bad.”

The Bruton, which had been eerily watching me, suddenly screeched, and it was like an airplane had just crashed into the house. The fire in its eyes exploded out at me, and it started beating its wings back and forth to direct the flames all around me.

“Run, Baylor!” Kristina yelled.

“Where?” I shouted back, seeing only fire, which seemed to take alternating shapes of people writhing in pain.

Kristina looked around, then stuck her hand out and tried to blast a spot through the wall of fire, but it was like water evaporating in the heat of the flames.

The wall started closing in, eviscerating the table and chairs, and before I knew it, the intense heat was just a few feet away, the hairs on my arms burning, the skin practically melting off me. The terror etched in Kristina's face was sinking in, and I closed my eyes and simply thought,
Help
.

A white flash lit up the circle of fire, and Colonel Fleetwood dropped down from nowhere, wielding his silver battle sword. He cut through the flames and thrust the sword forward into the body of the Bruton.

The fire instantly vanished, reabsorbed into the shrieking Bruton. With one final fiery gaze, it tilted its head at me—at least, I think it did—and, wings beating furiously, flew off to terrorize someone else.

“Demon dung,” Kristina and I said in unison. We looked at each other and laughed nervously.

“Thank you, Colonel Fleetwood,” I said.

“The pleasure was all mine, Baylor, now that I can freely travel between sides again,” he said. He looked Kristina up and down. She was the closest to crying I'd ever seen.

“I don't know what happened,” she said.

“The protections are currently dismal at best,” the colonel said. “We'll need to reinforce them later today.”

“Baylor was almost taken by a Bruton,” Kristina shrieked. “We should do it right now.”

Before the colonel could say anything else, though, Reverend Henry's bloodcurdling scream bellowed from upstairs.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” I YELLED, SPRINTING
up the stairs to the kitchen. “Can either of you see?”

Colonel Fleetwood disappeared, but Kristina stuck with me. I sprinted down the hall to the living room, where Rosalie was standing behind Reverend Henry, holding a sharp dagger to his neck. Alfred and the colonel hovered near them.

“Blast her!” I yelled.

“The knife is right against his throat,” Kristina said. “The force would cut his head off.”

“How did she get out?”

“The dark energy of that demon slashed her bindings off,” Alfred said.

“The Bruton!” Anger detonated inside of me. “I'm going to hunt it down and banish it.”

“Baylor, let's focus on the situation at hand,” Kristina said warily.

“Right,” I said, looking at the reverend's distraught and very confused face. “Rosalie, you insane witch of a person, drop the knife right now.”

“Baylor Bosco, I knew the second you showed up on my doorstep that you'd be a thorn in my side,” she said. “Although I should have realized that the first time my dear Alfred escaped to visit you.”

“You escaped her to see me?” I said to Alfred.

“I did, though it didn't accomplish anything except to terrify you,” he said. “Sorry about that. I needed to pass on a message to you somehow but couldn't find a way.”

“Why did you almost kill me on Halloween, then?”

“That was me,” Rosalie said brightly. “Once I realized what he'd done, I decided to send my own message.”

“And then you showed me the shoes,” I said to Alfred, “knowing Angela was back in town and had dropped them off.”

“He certainly did,” Rosalie hissed.

“I can't believe you can communicate with ghosts,” I said, shaking my head. If my purpose in life was to help people, surely hers couldn't have been much different. “How could you treat someone this way?”

“Unlike you, dear,” she spit, “this curse is not something I'm proud of.”

“Clearly, since you're holding a reverend hostage with a knife at the moment.”

“He's my insurance,” she said. “With him as my hostage, you'll do whatever I demand.”

“You can't go five minutes without terrorizing someone, you psychopath,” Alfred said, sounding amused.

“Now that you're dead,
dear
, your opinion is worth even less to me than it was when you were alive,” she said.

“Fantastic,” he said. “Then it certainly won't interest you to know that Baylor's mother is almost here with a police cruiser close behind.”

Her eyes flashed in shock, and she bit her lip. “Well, it looks like this will have to be fast, then. Baylor, now that you've taken away my puppet, you're going to help me get the money Angela owes me.”

“That's not going to happen,” I said.

“It is,” she said, “because if you don't, I'll find you, and I will hurt your family.” She smiled. “And I know you wouldn't want that.”

“Are you insane?” I asked.

“The answer is clearly yes,” Kristina said.

“Be quiet, you dumb girl,” Rosalie spit. “I thought once I had you out of the way, Baylor would be too stupid to figure any of this out. I was wrong about that, but since I know he was so dedicated to finding his dead sister, it's not too big of a leap to guess he'll be just as dedicated to keeping his family alive.”

She grinned horribly, revealing her straight, coffee-stained teeth, while Reverend Henry's hands gestured by his sides. He had remained silent the whole time, since he couldn't totally follow the conversation taking place with the ghosts, but he now started to give me a strange look with exaggerated wide eyes, his lips clenched together in a white line.

“What?” I asked slowly, trying to pick up his clues. “If I don't help, you're going to kill Reverend Henry? Or are you going to keep him alive and hurt my family? Which is it?”

That's when the reverend smiled. That was it! Of all people, he was the one most familiar with the ramblings of lunatics, and he could recognize a crazy woman without a plan from a mile away. Without wasting another second, I took off through the door and ran as fast as I could down the street.

“Stop!” she screamed.

I sprinted around the corner and down Main Street. Kristina was gliding next to me a second later.

“She's getting in her car,” she said. “She's going to chase you down.”

“The police will be here any minute,” I said, panting. “She should leave town before she gets arrested for attempted murder of a holy man!”