Brimstone (11 page)

Her eyes narrowed. “You mean the one you said was probably an optical illusion?”

“Uh, yeah. But, well, this is going to sound crazy, but …”

“But you don’t think it was my shadow.” I must have looked surprised that she said it so plainly and so calmly. She smiled ruefully. “I haven’t had anything else to do but think about it, Maggie. I know my own shadow, and I know
when something is …” She struggled for the right word. “Foreign.”

I let out a pent-up breath. This was going to be easier than I’d thought. “Do you mind if I do a little experiment?”

“Nope. I’m relieved you don’t think I’m off the deep end.”

I dug into my backpack and took out the blacklight I’d borrowed from the chemistry lab. I did ask. I’m not sure that Blackthorne really heard me—he’d been happily explaining carbon bonds to a glassy-eyed student—but I
did
ask.

I had a distinct memory of the way Karen’s leg had shot out from under her, as if it had been yanked. Flipping off the light, and feeling ridiculous, I shone the lamp on her ankle, and saw a familiar fluorescent glow.

“Oh my God.” Karen stared at her own foot as if it belonged to someone else. “What is that? And why didn’t it come off when I washed?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.” I didn’t see a reason to mention putrescine or cadaverine. “I found it on the diving board, too.”

“What do you think it is?” Her brown eyes searched mine, avidly curious. I still hesitated.

“It sounds kind of crazy.”

“I promise I won’t laugh.” I gave her a narrow-eyed look and she raised her hand, as if taking an oath. “Scout’s honor.”

“Okay. Have you ever seen the movie
Ghostbusters
?”

i
arrived at Gran’s house with fifty-nine seconds to spare. Justin sat at the kitchen table, books spread around him. He was wearing jeans today, and another oxford shirt, untucked this time, and there was chocolate smeared at the corner of his mouth.

“How’s your friend?” he asked as I came in.

“Pretty amazing, actually.” I was stunned at how easily Karen had accepted the idea of the supernatural, and more to the point, how non-freaked-out she was at having been touched by it. I’d only
dreamed
about the shadow and I was kinda wigged.

“Have you ever known someone for years, and then
something happens, and all of a sudden you realize you’ve never really known them at all?”

“I think we’ve all done that.” He didn’t look particularly freaked out, either. Was I the only one who was dizzy from spinning back and forth between “this is real” and “this is crazy”?

I picked up one of the books:
Ghosts and Specters: An Empirical Study
. Another one was,
A History of Paranormal Experience
. And another:
The Literature of the Supernatural
.

“I thought you were a history major.”

“I’m getting my bachelor’s in history. I want to do graduate studies in the anthropology of myth and occult experience.”

“That should open up a world of career choices for you.” I set the book down. It was the size of a toaster but considerably heavier. “What made you choose an advanced degree in creepy?”

He shrugged. “I’ve always been interested in the theory of the supernatural. My upbringing wasn’t exactly conventional.”

“Do you have a nutty grandmother, too?”

Her voice came from the other room. “I hear you!”

“I love you, Gran!” I called back, then poured myself some tea and sat down near the plate of cookies. “Anything on ectoplasm?”

Justin folded his arms on the table. “Let’s back up a bit. Tell me why you think you’ve encountered a ghost.”

Gran bustled into the kitchen, carrying a load of laundry. “I want to hear this. Since it’s the only way I’ll know what my granddaughter is up to.”

Sighing, I took a chocolate chip cookie for fortification.
While Gran folded towels and Justin made notes, I told him about my frustratingly vague dream, and the unease I couldn’t shake. I described the strange awkwardness of Karen’s fall, and the smell I might have just imagined. I related her glimpse of a shadow moving over the water. When I finished describing my impromptu detective work, they both stared at me.

“What?”

“I’m just stunned,” said Justin. “Because yesterday you seemed very, um, resistant to the idea that you might have some extrasensory perception. And now you’re tracking down a ghost.”

“First of all, I don’t have ESP. I don’t bend spoons or see dead people, or any of that freaky stuff. I just have good intuition.” From the corner of my eye I saw Gran roll hers, but she didn’t say anything. “Second, I’m not tracking a ghost. I’m investigating the possibility it
might
be a ghost.”

He gave me a look I was starting to recognize. It meant he thought I was funny but didn’t want to piss me off by laughing. “Okay. Let’s be logical about this, then. What makes you think it’s a ghost?”

“Well, the shadow, I guess.” The evidence seemed sparse, once I tried to lay it out. “And the spooge it leaves behind.”

“Which we don’t know is related.” He wrote down “shadow” but not “spooge.” “It could be nothing more than a strange sort of mold or mildew.”

I snapped, irritated at his skepticism. “You’re the Mulder here.
I’m
the Scully.”

“I’m just helping you be objective.” He tapped his pen on the pad. “What else?”

“The smell,” I said. “There’s that awful smell.”

“Okay.” He jotted it down. “That’s good. What about a feeling of cold or dread?”

“No cold. And I was faced with a bottomless well of dark water, so I wouldn’t have noticed any extra dread.”

“A sense of another presence?”

“Lots of people were around when Karen fell.” I thought a moment. “But I did have a weird feeling later, when I went back.”

“You can’t be more specific?”

I raised my hands in a shrug. “It’s not like telling if the lights are on or off. It’s ambiguous. I was nervous about getting caught.”

Again the pen tapped, an aggravated rhythm. “Your perceptions aren’t a lot of help.”

“Sorry. Next time I’ll bring my spectrometer.”

Gran spoke up, preventing an argument. “What about history? Has there ever been another incident or accident in the pool, or even the gym?”

“I didn’t find anything in the school newspaper about the pool, but the online records only go back five years. I’m going to check the city paper archives tonight, and the microfiche at the library tomorrow.”

“Good plan.” Justin closed his notebook and started gathering his books. “Strange that those other girls were able to dive without anything happening. Karen must have been the unlucky number.”

I must have reacted to that, because he looked at me closely. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head. Gran had taken the plates to the kitchen a few feet away.

His expression said I hadn’t fooled him, but he let it go. He said his polite good-byes to Gran and as she saw him to the door, I took our cups to the sink, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher. By the time I’d finished, Gran had returned. She put her arms around me and kissed my hair.

“I am so proud of you.”

“What for?”

“For opening your mind to the possibility of things you cannot see with your eyes.”

The praise embarrassed me, since I hadn’t so much flung wide my mind as cracked open the door with the safety chain still firmly in place. “It’s no big deal, Gran.”

“It is a very big deal.” She cupped my face in her hands. “You have so much potential to do good things in the world. But you be careful. Listen to that intuition and be smart.”

“Yes, Gran.” I hugged her back. “I will.”

I told her I’d keep in touch, then grabbed my stuff and let myself out the front door. I wasn’t surprised to see Justin MacCallum still outside, leaning against the fender of my car and looking serious.

“So, what happened?” he asked, in a tone that didn’t allow any arguments.

“Karen switched places with me in line at the diving pool,” I said, giving in without a fight. “I’ve been convincing myself it was just random luck.”

He thought for a moment, then said, “That’s probably all it was.” Another considering pause. “But …”

I groaned. Was there any more ominous word in the English language?

“But,” he continued, ignoring my drama, “you should keep your guard up. There’s a theory in science that the very act of observation can influence a situation. Once you start looking closely at something, it might start looking back at you.”

Last night’s installment of the subconscious creepshow came slamming back into my brain so hard that I flinched. Justin didn’t need any ESP to interpret it.

“Something looked back at you, didn’t it.” He didn’t bother to make it a question. “When? At the pool?”

“Last night. I saw the fire again, but this time the smoke thing … It
looked
at me, just like you said.” I shook my head. “It was a dream, but it feels like it really happened.”

“We should assume it did.”

I liked that “we.” Justin had a steadiness that made me glad to have him on my side. “Maybe your vision was a warning, that the spirit has noticed you. Or maybe you met in some kind of dream plane. I don’t know.”

I rubbed a hand over my eyes. I’d had a sort of buzzing in the back of my brain all day and the thought of wearing a supernatural bull’s-eye ratcheted it up to a head-splitting volume.

Justin’s hand touched my shoulder. “You okay?” I shot him a what-do-you-think look, and he lifted his hands in surrender. “Stupid question. Sorry.”

I sagged into the driver’s seat, half in, half out of the car.
“Four days ago my life was simple. All I had to worry about was avoiding the prom and living through graduation.”

He ignored my whining and cut to the heart of the matter. “What happened four days ago?”

“I had the nightmare.” I ran my hand over the leather-wrapped steering wheel, the rough bumps and tears keeping me anchored, and away from the deep water of fear and supposition. “And something inside me … woke up.”

“Woke up?”

“That’s what it felt like. I hadn’t had a dream in years. At least not one I couldn’t ignore.” I sighed. “They ought to come with an instruction manual.”

He didn’t give even a courtesy laugh. He was deep in thought. “Weird.”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

“No, I mean, I wonder which woke first, the spirit or your visions?”

What kind of ghost-hunter has to put the spirit world on hold while she finishes her homework?

The outline for my English paper had been unfairly disapproved by my teacher. Jonathan Swift was over two hundred and fifty years dead, so unless Ms. Vincent had a direct pipeline to the afterlife, I couldn’t see a reason for her to call my well-annotated suppositions bunk. Then again, if she did have the ability to communicate with the dead, maybe she could actually be of some use to my current situation, which would definitely be a novelty for Ms. Vincent.

An instant messenger window popped up while I was knee-deep in Lilliputians.

I clicked over to the IM window and typed back:

We kept the chat window open while we worked, which probably wasn’t very efficient, but I felt less lonely in my room. The sound of my parents puttering around downstairs made the house seem normal and safe. Even the sheer mundane boredom of homework settled my nerves and made my fears seem a little foolish. When I finished my paragraphs on J.C., I was even able to pick up the book Justin had lent me and thumb through it with a certain detachment.

It seemed weird that I hadn’t talked about all this with my closest friend. Despite the D&D thing, Lisa was a rock of unflappable logic. I’d never told her about the dreams I’d had as a kid, never talked about my intuition. I didn’t want her to think I was a flake. Even though I was beginning to admit that I was, quite possibly, exactly that.

There was a long pause. Maybe she was just analyzing Julius Caesar and not deleting my name from her address book or marking it: “Nutjob.”

Another long pause.

Put up or shut up time, I guess. I was surprised she hadn’t simply fired back a flippant reply. If she was entertaining an honest answer, I should offer a little trust.