Beyond the Grave (16 page)

“Right,” Michael said. “Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to clean up your room the best we can. I'll try to fix the window. Do you think Noah's still at school?”

For some reason, the prison popped in my mind, but I wasn't sure why. “We can start at his apartment,” I decided. “Let's hurry.”

We shoved the last of my destroyed bedding into garbage bags. Michael said he was going outside to retrieve the window. Before he even made it to my bedroom door, though, he stopped dead in his tracks. We all did—the noise coming from downstairs was terrifying.

Trisha was screaming.

Before Trisha's scream had fully faded, I was halfway down the stairs. Bliss and Michael were right behind me, their footsteps pounding as fast as my heart. I didn't know what I'd find in the dining room. My brain hadn't hurdled as far ahead as my instincts, which were shrieking at me to shield Trisha no matter what. Without a weapon, the only thing I had was myself, and as I cleared the stairs and raced down the front hall, I was fully prepared, no matter what was making Trisha scream, to jump onto its back and squeeze its neck as hard as I could.

Unless it was Noah.

If I found Noah hurting his mom, I didn't know what I would do.

But it wasn't Noah standing in the middle of the dining room with his back to me. The man was taller, with the broad shoulders of a football player.

And he was lifting Trisha off the ground, his huge arms swallowing her small frame. Memories of the Watcher flooded my mind. I wanted to scream, but I was too terrified. Michael pushed past me, but he wasn't throwing punches or trying to free Trisha from the man's fierce embrace. He didn't even look
scared. If he was the Protector, why wasn't he doing anything to help?

The man lowered Trisha to the ground but kept one arm around her so she couldn't run away. I could see her tear-streaked face as she turned from the man to look at Michael.

“Who are you?” she asked, wiping at her cheeks.

“He's with me,” Bliss announced. Both Trisha and the man turned around, allowing me the chance to finally see the stranger's face. He was younger than I had guessed, maybe in his early twenties. And he was smiling. So was Trisha.

“I didn't know you had friends over,” Trisha said to me.

I was still recovering from the shock of hearing her scream and the instant panic it had induced. “They're from school,” I explained weakly. “We're working on a project.”

She wasn't listening. “Charlotte, this is my oldest son, Ryan. He has a terrible habit of scaring me.”

Ryan shrugged. “I thought you'd like a surprise visit. But hey, if you want me to leave…” He pulled away a little and Trisha gave him a playful punch on the arm.

“Don't you dare. You're not going anywhere until after the wedding.”

There was a mild resemblance between Noah and his big brother. I studied Ryan's face, trying to determine which features they had in common. The nose was similar, and maybe the chin. But Ryan's eyes were brown, whereas Noah's were green.

Trisha hugged her son again. “How did you know I was here?”

“I stopped by the apartment first. Noah told me where to find you.”

“You saw Noah?” I gave Bliss a hopeful glance. If Noah was at home, then it was unlikely he had been the one trashing my
room a half hour earlier. He didn't have a car, and there was no way he could have walked from my house to his in such a short amount of time.

“You're his girlfriend, right?” Ryan held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hi.” I wanted to be polite, but I was more interested in news about Noah.

“I'm going to make some coffee,” Trisha announced. “Would anyone else like some?”

Bliss declined, and Michael said he needed to go out to his car. I knew he was using the opportunity to retrieve my bedroom window.

I cornered Ryan while Trisha was in the kitchen. “So you saw Noah?”

“Yeah. I woke him up.” He laughed, and it was similar to the way Noah laughed. “He was so confused to see me. Thought he was still dreaming. I got a better reaction from him than I did from Mom.”

“When was this?”

“About ten minutes ago.” Ryan frowned. “You always ask a lot of questions?”

“Yes. I'm very annoying that way.”

He shrugged. “Mom likes you. My brother likes you. You're fine by me.”

I excused myself from the room. Bliss and I grabbed some supplies from under the kitchen sink and went upstairs to continue cleaning while we waited for Michael. I sprayed carpet cleaner and scrubbed at the marks while she straightened up my books and pictures.

“You knew that Ryan wasn't the Watcher,” I said.

“Actually, I didn't. But Michael seemed to know, so I didn't freak out.”

I set down the spray bottle. “Why are you with Michael? I don't understand.”

“He's helping me with something. Something important.”

It would be nice, I thought, if people could stop being so vague. Just once, I wanted a clear, concise answer with absolutely no room for interpretation.

Michael called up to us from outside. Bliss and I went to the space where my window used to be and looked out. “I'm going to need some help! It's too big to get my arms around.”

I grabbed a couple of the full garbage bags on my way downstairs, then helped Michael carry the window back to my room. Trisha and Ryan were having coffee in the kitchen, so they didn't see us come through the front door. Once in my room, I realized there was no way to put the window back without a professional. “We can't just prop it up there,” I said. “And there's no way I can explain this to my dad.”

But maybe, I thought, there was someone else I could explain it to. I waited until Trisha was on the phone to ask Ryan to come upstairs. “I need your help,” I said. He followed me into my room. When he saw the mess, he grimaced.

“You're not going to ask me to help clean, are you?”

I showed him the window. “I need this fixed, and I don't want to worry my dad or stress out your mom. Can you help?”

He whistled. “How'd you do that?”

“Science experiment gone wrong,” Bliss said.

“I'll say.” Ryan inspected the window frame. “I have a buddy who can take care of this. Might be a couple days, though.”

“That would be great. Thank you.”

He smiled. “No problem. I'm with you—no need to get my mom any more stressed than she is.” He lowered his voice. “Has she been crazy?”

“A little. Not too bad.”

“Yeah, well, you've never seen her in hyperdrive. It's about to get a whole lot worse.”

I almost laughed. Ryan had no idea how bad it was already. I thanked him profusely, and he said he'd check out the garage for some plastic sheeting. “Gotta keep it covered,” he said. “You don't want squirrels getting in.”

“Right. That would be bad.”

Ryan located a thick, opaque sheet of plastic and stapled it to the frame. When everything was done, my room didn't look half-bad. Not good, but not like a tornado had ripped through it, either.

“Now what?” I asked Michael. Ryan was downstairs with Trisha, the garbage bags had been taken out to the can, and the carpet fizzed with spots of foaming cleaner.

“We need to take a little field trip. Is that okay with you?”

I wanted out of my room. “Only if it means you're going to answer every single question I ask.”

Michael held out his hand and I shook it. “Deal.” Then he turned to Bliss. “Is it okay with you?”

She tied up the last garbage bag full of bedding. “It's time, I guess.” She looked at me. “I need you to promise not to judge me.”

“I don't understand.”

Bliss sighed. “You will.”

 

T
HE GNOMES WERE
arranged single file in a straight line that stretched from the front door of Bliss's house all the way to the street. “Wow.” I tried to do a quick count. “Are there more?”

Bliss shook her head as she took out her key. “Yep. Someone brought back a dozen.”

“And they set them up like that?”

“It's better than what they did last week. Our yard looked
like the set of a gnome porno.” She unlocked the door, but didn't open it. Michael came up behind us. “I don't know if I want her to see this,” Bliss said to him.

“It's fine. Charlotte can handle it.”

I didn't know what they were talking about, but as long as the house wasn't stuffed with dead bodies or crawling with a thousand rats, I was pretty sure that yes, I could handle it. Bliss took a deep breath and pushed open the door. “Watch your step.”

Despite the bright afternoon light, it was dark inside the house. The sharp smell of lemon cleaner and mothballs reminded me that this had been Bliss's grandfather's house. It definitely had that old-person aroma. I stood in the entry with Michael at my side while Bliss moved slowly forward into the next room. She bumped against something, and a second later, a lamp glowed from across the hall.

I gasped. “Oh.”

Now I understood why Bliss had been so reluctant to let me inside. This wasn't a house—it was a storage facility. Nearly every inch was covered with boxes, stacked in uneven columns that grazed the ceiling. A narrow path revealed patches of carpet. I followed the path into what I guessed was the living room, where more boxes blocked out the windows and a single recliner rested in the corner, surrounded by even more stuff.

Bliss stood against one of the stacks, her face blank. She was waiting for my reaction, and I remembered what she had said about not judging her. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say, what would be appropriate.
I'm sorry
didn't seem right. But I was sorry. I knew her living situation was not her fault. The Bliss I knew would not choose to live this way. No one I knew would choose to live this way.

“When I said I was helping Bliss with something, this is
what I meant,” Michael said. “Her grandfather left a lot be hind when he died.”

“Okay.” I wanted to make sure that I didn't say anything that could possibly be construed as judgmental. I wanted to be kind and supportive, the same way Bliss had been when I had melted into a panic attack or asked to talk with her about my problems. “So these are all your grandfather's belongings.”

“Yes.” Bliss ran a hand over one of the stacks. “He saved everything, from newspapers to sugar packets. And now my mom and I have to deal with it.”

My first question—why not just throw it all away—was answered by Michael before I could say the words out loud.

“Every time they try to remove his belongings from the house, something happens. Something paranormal.”

“About a month after he passed, we tried to get rid of all the magazines,” Bliss said. “The entire dining room is filled with them. But as soon as we began taking them out to the garbage, things started happening.” She kept her gaze on the boxes nearest to her. “Lights went off, piles tipped over. It was like he was trying to block us from the room. Every time we attempted to clean, something would happen.” She paused. “That's part of the reason I believed you when you told me about the Watcher. I had experienced some strange things myself.”

It was a case my parents would have been interested in. Maybe I would have tagged along and helped Shane set up the cameras and unroll the cable. I could picture our black van, with “Doubt” painted across it, parked in the driveway and all of us descending on the house, dressed in our khaki pants and matching T-shirts, ready to record and debunk the happenings.

I missed that part of my life. Investigations had helped form
my personality, defined my family. I missed it so much I could feel it within me, like bruises buried inside my bones.

I wanted to help Bliss, but I wasn't sure that I could. My fancy equipment was gone, and the Watcher was the likely thief. How many problems could I tackle in a day? Or in a lifetime, for that matter?

“We didn't bring you here to deal with this,” Michael said. “Bliss and I are handling it.”

“Then why
did
you bring me here?”

Bliss stepped away from the boxes. “Because it's a place Noah's never been to.”

The worn recliner across the room suddenly looked very inviting. I just wanted to sit down. “He's the next Watcher.” I whispered the horrible truth, but they still heard me.

“We're not sure yet.” Bliss touched my arm. “He's a candidate, but that doesn't mean he's the one.” She guided me to the chair and I slumped into it.

“Did he destroy my room?”

“We don't think so,” Bliss said.

“Okay, you have to stop with the ‘we.' I don't get it. How are you involved with this?” It came out more bitterly than I had intended. I wasn't upset with Bliss. She had been a good friend to me. But I was confused and hurt and struggling to put together the pieces of an increasingly awful puzzle.

“She's special,” Michael said.

“Please be more specific.” When he hesitated, I pointed at him. “You promised me answers. Now, spill.”

“You already know that there are many Watchers.” Michael sat on the floor by the recliner. Bliss sat on the other side. It made me feel like a queen perched on top of a shabby throne. “There are also many Protectors,” he said.

“One for every Watcher, right?”

Bliss nodded. “That's right. It's the balance principle.”

“Beth explained that to me. But what does it have to do with you?”

She looked at Michael, who nodded, before she spoke. “Because, Charlotte. I'm a Protector, too.”

I woke up after too little rest to the sound of yelling. Confused, I rolled over in the guest bed and squinted at my alarm clock, then groaned when I saw that it was only eight in the morning. As tired as I was, returning to sleep was impossible. The rising voices from downstairs, mixed with the unsettling events from the day before, forced me out of bed and downstairs. The chaos I found there made me wish I had stayed under the covers.

Trisha paced the dining room, her phone pressed against her ear. “But we need to have a vegetarian option!” she practically screamed. “I don't even know what a vegetable soufflé is. Can't we change it to a pasta dish?”

In the living room, Shane and Ryan were locked in a tense conversation involving the greatest college football conference of all time. They sat across from one another, arms crossed.

“Ha!” Ryan barked. “Give me the SEC over the Big Ten any day.”

“The Big Ten was winning national titles long before the SEC even existed,” Shane retorted. I tiptoed into the kitchen,
unwilling to get trapped in a heated discussion involving field goals and championships.

Dad was at the counter, flipping through a book as he drank his morning coffee. “Welcome to the first official day of wedding madness,” he said. “Get out while you can.”

I slumped into a chair and put my head on the kitchen table. “Does it have to begin so early? I actually wanted to sleep today.”

“At least we only have to endure two weeks of this.”

Two weeks. At once, it seemed too soon and not soon enough. I had other things to think about besides my brides maid dress, though. Bliss's revelation that she was also a Protector wasn't exactly good news.

“Doesn't that mean there are now two Watchers?” I had asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

“We're still figuring that out,” Michael had said. “It's never happened before. But yes, that's what it would suggest.”

I wanted to go the rest of my life without someone referring to my problems as something that had “never happened before.” There were moments when I seriously contemplated why I had been chosen for the paranormal turmoil that seemed to engulf me. It all came back to an event in Charleston more than a year ago. I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time—and I wondered how long I would have to pay for that innocent, accidental moment.

One Watcher was bad enough, but two? They could team up. One could come after me while the other went after my parents. I had stayed awake most of the night, staring at the plastic stretched across the window frame. Every time there was even the slightest breeze, the plastic rippled and my heart had started beating faster as I had braced myself for something to come tearing through it. Unable to stay in my room, I had
grabbed my pillow and slipped into the guest room across the hall, which felt marginally safer.

Trisha walked into the kitchen, the phone balanced between her ear and her shoulder. “I'm on hold. Again,” she said to us. “Noah should be here later. I let him sleep in. Actually, I couldn't even wake him. He must have been up talking to Ryan all night.” She offered me a wry smile, then turned back to the phone. “Hello? Yes, I've been on hold. No, I don't want you to transfer me.” She returned to the dining room.

Dad closed his book. “You want to go out to breakfast?”

I was already standing. “Give me five minutes.”

Shane and Ryan's voices began to rise. Dad gave a wary look in the direction of the living room. “I think I'll wait in the car.”

I ran upstairs to throw on some clothes. A quick glance in the mirror told me I would require a hat, as well, but I couldn't find one in my room. I headed to the laundry room downstairs, where I knew Mom had stored a box of winter and outdoor gear.

Shane was sitting alone in the living room, angrily punching buttons on the remote control. Trisha was still yelling into her phone. So far, the wedding wasn't doing a whole lot to bring the happy couple closer. If anything, it was making their relationship worse.

I was about to step into the laundry room when Ryan's voice stopped me.

“What do you mean, you're already here?”

He was in the laundry room, which made sense. It was away from the bedlam reigning in the other rooms downstairs. I figured he was talking to Jeff, who wasn't due to arrive for another week. I decided to forget the hat and hope that at this hour only senior citizens were dining on pancakes, and any critical fashionistas would still be asleep.

“Yes, it's a problem,” Ryan said. He sounded mad. I began to walk away, but his next sentence made me freeze.

“Because you haven't seen her in fourteen years, that's why!”

He wasn't talking to his brother. He was talking to his father.

“Stay away from her. I'll come to you, okay? But you can't do this.”

I slunk away from the laundry room and left the house. Dad was sitting in his car. “Everything okay?” he asked as he backed out of the driveway.

“I think Trisha's ex is planning on crashing the wedding.”

“I see.” We drove to the end of our street. “In that case, I think we're going to need more than just breakfast.”

 

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
we were sitting in a booth, waiting for our waffles to arrive. I recited everything I had overheard Ryan saying while Dad listened. I was worried for Shane and Trisha, but there was something about the problem that was so normal, so human. Maybe it bordered on talk-show territory, but at least it didn't involve an evil paranormal force. That alone made it seem manageable to me.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“We keep him away from the wedding,” Dad replied. “It sounds like we can count on Ryan for help, and probably Jeff, as well. Do you know how Noah feels about his father?”

“He thought he saw his dad hanging around the bus stop a few days ago. It shook him up.” I sighed. “I thought it was a mistake. He hasn't seen the guy since he was little.”

“That's got to be tough for him.”

“He hasn't talked about it much, but yeah, I think it bothers him more than he lets on.”

“Are you two okay? I noticed that he hasn't been coming around as often.”

“We're fine.”

It wasn't the truth, but Dad didn't need to know that. I wasn't going to tell him about Noah's late-night visit to my room or the fact that he was skipping school and suffering from a case of major sleep problems. I wondered if this was the right moment to reveal what was really going on, but I felt that I couldn't do it alone. I needed my sister with me. I needed us to be united when we broke the horrible news that the Watcher was not done with our family.

Our waffles arrived and I drowned mine in warm syrup. I was digging in when I noticed that Dad hadn't touched his food yet. “Aren't you hungry?”

“I was just thinking about you and Noah.”

I tried not to choke on my waffle. The idea that Dad had contemplated my relationship was an uncomfortable one. “Um, what about us?”

“You two had a rough start. Not many couples can get through the kind of trauma that you both went through, especially at your age. It says something about your bond.”

It may have said something then, when our first kiss was immediately followed by a night of terror, but I wasn't sure what it said about us now. I was losing him. I blinked back my tears and tried to focus on my waffles. I would not melt down in front of Dad.

“Did I ever tell you how proud I was of you? You were so strong that night.”

This was not a conversation I wanted to have in a diner. We hadn't talked about the night Mom was hurt since right after it had happened and Dad was still recovering in the hospital.

“I don't feel strong now,” I mumbled.

“Strength is not a light switch, Charlotte. It doesn't flick on
one moment and stay on for the rest of your life. You have to work at it.” He began to cut his waffles. “But now you know that it's there. You know what you can do.”

We finished our breakfast in comfortable silence. I thought about Dad's words. Maybe I knew what I could do, but what about the things I
needed
to do? Where did I even start?

On the ride home, Dad reminded me that Annalise would be arriving later. “She's going to stop by and see your mom first, but she should be here after lunch.”

“If she knew what she was walking into, she never would have left Charleston.”

We pulled into the driveway and Dad turned off the ignition. “I'm going to talk to Ryan about his dad, but I don't want to alarm Shane. He's got enough going on right now.”

I assured Dad I wouldn't say anything. It was strange, though, how we were all keeping secrets from one another. Everyone was afraid of hurting everyone else. Would it really be that bad if everything was out in the open? If all our weird secrets were peeled back and revealed?

Then I walked inside the house and remembered exactly why I was keeping so much to myself.

It was as if we'd never left. Trisha was still pacing the dining room with her phone. Shane and Ryan sat in the exact same spots in the living room, arguing about football. Tensions were high. But in two weeks, they wouldn't be. That was when I would come clean, I decided. I would tell Annalise before then, but we could wait until after the wedding to introduce the paranormal problems to everyone.

As I debated a new escape plan from my house, the doorbell rang. “I'll get it!” I yelled over my shoulder. I was hoping it would be Annalise. But when I opened the door, it wasn't my sister looking back at me.

It was the police.