Salem's Sight (4 page)

The color is what most people like,
although I don’t like it myself. It’s sort of light auburn – not
light brown, not dark blonde, not red, but some strange combination
that’s hard to describe.

I walked over to the mirror near the
window and fixed the back of my earring. With the sun shining in
through the window, I had highlights of pure gold. That was the
part I liked.

Still, given the option, I would have
traded with Berkley in a second. Traded completely. Like I said
before, she has these cool almond-shaped dark brown eyes. Mine are
just plain light blue. Again a lot of people have told me they’re
pretty, especially boys, but like …hello… who can believe
them?

And I would’ve killed for her easily
tan-able olive complexion. Add in the fact she’s a petite 5’3 while
I tower over her at 5’7 and there you have us – beauty and the
beast.

Okay, so maybe I’m not the beast
exactly. But you know, self-esteem again. It’s strange because I
was overconfident before the accident, so sure of myself, so …
invincible. Now my flaws seemed to stand out mocking me. Unworthy,
unworthy, unworthy.

Berkley opened her backpack with a
loud zip and brought me back to reality. “…sort of like a new life.
It may not seem like things fit together right away but they will.
You just have to go with it.”

We’d been talking about redecorating.
“What do you mean?” I asked wondering how much I’d missed while I
zoned out.

“
My parents are settled
now, but when I was young we moved a few times so I know what it’s
like being the new kid. Sometimes it’s hard at first to merge your
old life into your new one. Bit of advice though, just go with it.
Life changes no matter what you do.”

Like, duh. “I know, but I don’t have
to like it.”

“
Just don’t fight it. It’ll
take longer and be more painful. It’s going to happen
anyway.”

Okay, she was a fatalist. I nodded,
although I wasn’t sure I bought into it. It helped that she’d moved
too, though. One more thing we had in common. One more
bond.

I really lucked out meeting Berkley.
She had a lot of friends, but they were from many different groups.
She could fit in and be accepted by any of them, but she didn’t
make any one of them mutually exclusive.

It was a good thing, too. It made room
for me. And right now I needed her more than I needed food.
Somehow, I think she realized it.

I pulled the ribbon out of my hair and
yanked off the rubber band. Having it in a high pony made my scalp
ache. Normally I would have used a scrunchy, but not everything is
unpacked yet and that box must have been put in the basement. The
ribbon had covered the ugly rubber band.

I looked at the ribbon and threw it up
in the air, catching the other end as it came down. I’m not sure
why I did this, except it seemed to help me unwind and
relax.

“
What are you going to do
your research project on?” Berkley asked as she continued to gaze
at the topics list we were given in class earlier in the
day.

“
Not sure, what looks
good?” I continued to throw the ribbon in the air, watching the
light blue cloth twirl, end over end, like a piece of falling
sky.

I threw it up in the air again and
cupped my hands awaiting its arrival.

It never came.

CHAPTER four

Suspended two to three inches from the
ceiling, the ribbon dangled, teasing.

My breath caught and I stared. This
couldn’t be happening. That thin strip of blue couldn’t just hang
suspended in air.

“
Berkley,” I said, barely
audibly.

I could tell when she looked up by her
intake of breath. “Oh my God! How’d you do that?” she asked as if
I’d just duplicated one of Houdini’s famous illusions.

“
I’m not doing anything.
It’s… it’s just there.”

Berkley dropped her notebook and leapt
to her feet. If she ran, I’d have been at her heels. But she
didn’t. Instead, she took the few short steps needed to reach me.
“Is it stuck on something? A cobweb or …?” She made a face and held
her hands palm upward as if she knew what she said didn’t make
sense.

“
Are you kidding? This room
has just been painted. There aren’t any cobwebs here.”

“
How do you explain it
then?”

Explain it? I couldn’t explain it.
That was the problem. “I’m pretty much clueless. Look at the way
it’s hanging though. The shape is sort of like a candy
cane.”

Berkley peered up at the ribbon.
“Looks more like a question mark to me.”

We looked at each other then back up
at the ribbon, which continued to hang motionless.

A chill ripped through me. “What do
you think we’re being asked?”

Berkley raised her eyebrows in a
bug-eyed stare. “We? I don’t think there’s any ‘we’ here. It’s your
room, your ribbon, and your throw that sent it across into some
other dimension. Face it, girl. This ghost’s for you.”

My mouth dropped open and when I
recovered enough to speak, my voice squeaked. “You think it’s a …
ghost?” For some strange reason, that hadn’t occurred to
me.

My insides twisted. “Could it be my
father trying to tell me something?” As I spoke my heart began to
beat faster, racing along with my excitement and hopes.

I realized I wanted it to be him. More
than anything I wanted there to be some signal from the other side,
some sign that my father was still around and that he forgave me
for giving him a hard time the day he died.

I looked over to where the writing had
been on the wall. Ridiculous. There had been an explanation for
that. There’d be one for this too.

When I began to feel my hopes pretty
well dashed, Berkley surprised me with her answer. “Anything’s
possible. Not necessarily plausible, but possible. After all,
you’ve got a piece of material dangling in mid air in your
bedroom.” She flipped her hair from the inside of her shirt. It
cascaded around her, fanning the air and causing the ribbon to
slightly twirl.

She had me there. The blue fabric
wasn’t exactly obeying the laws of gravity. So the ribbon’s
question, if there was one, remained.

“
I would have been spooked
if you hadn’t been here,” I said grateful that this time I had
company. If I’d been alone, I would’ve booked it out of there and
would probably still be running. Anyway, I felt like I owed Berkley
an explanation.

Come on, just suck up the
embarrassment and fill her in. I took a deep breath and felt my
face heat with shame as my thoughts traced back to my flight of the
chicken. “A few nights ago I ran out of here screaming like a baby
because there was literally writing on the wall. Turned out to be
old stuff my grandmother jotted down to ward off my mother’s
nightmares.” I gave her a condensed version of the
details.

Berkley’s eyes widened and her jaw
dropped. Her expression bore a startling resemblance to those
commercial actors who clunk their hands on their heads and realize
they could’ve had a V-8. “This was your grandmother’s house,
right?”

“
Yeah, why?”

“
I’ll bet it’s her.”
Berkley glanced back to the ribbon and then around the rest of the
room as if she expected my grandmother to materialize.

I frowned not following her train of
thought. “I don’t understand.”

“
Your grandmother must be
behind the ribbon. She lived here; ghosts often stay where they are
comfortable,” she said, quickly adding, “I read that once,” as if
that fact gave credence to her opinion.

The thought sat taking root in my
head. Berkley made it appear logical. I shook my head. Logical?
What was I thinking? There was no logic to this.

“
My mom won’t be home for
another hour or so. What should we do?” I asked wondering if we
should make her race home or try to google ghostbusters.

“
Document it. Have a
camera?”

Once again, Berkley with a common
sense answer to a less-than-common problem. “I’m not sure where my
mother keeps her digital, and I haven’t seen mine since the move,
but I have a disposable one in my top draw. It might have one or
two pictures left.”

I pulled it out and snapped off one
picture. Sure enough it was the last on the roll. Not the best time
to run out of film, yet so day-in-the-life-of me.

“
What if the angle isn’t
good enough?” Berkley asked. “We don’t want to look like
fools.”

Fools? I hope she wasn’t planning on
submitting it to “scariest places on earth” or something because,
hey, like I still have to live here. “Who are we planning on
showing this to?” I stood waiting terrified of her
response.

“
Your mother, of course,
and could I show it to my parents? Please? This is just so cool. I
wouldn’t mention it to anyone else though. It’s too easy to get
labeled strange. I mean some people would think it was awesome. But
there would be others that wouldn’t believe no matter what, so I
think we should just keep it to ourselves.”

That was a relief. She had me nervous
there for a second. “Trust me Berkley, I’m not about to parade
around saying, ‘Hi, I’m the new girl and I have a ghost in my
house. Want to come over?’”

“
Good point. You don’t
think you can find the other camera?”

I shook my head.

“
What about video? Do you
have a video camera?”

Again leave it to Berkley to find the
answer when my head refused to work on all its cylinders. “I know
where that one is. Watch the ribbon,” I said, glad I was the one
leaving the room rather than the one left alone there with the
phenomenon.

I could tell she didn’t relish the
idea of being left there either by the way she glanced at the
ribbon and then at the door.

“
Just hurry up, okay. You
don’t want it to come down before we get further
evidence.”

Yeah, I understood, and it had nothing
to do with evidence. It was simple. Berkley was not much braver
than me. Not wanting to leave her there too long, I ran toward the
living room in record time, grabbed the video camera from the
cabinet under the television, and headed back for my whacked out
room.

Before I entered the room I hit record
and got some good footage of the thing suspended in space. I didn’t
want to touch it, but at the same time wondered how long it would
stay. “Take the camera from me and continue to film.”

Handing the camera off to Berkley, I
gingerly approached the ribbon once again searching for any sign
that it caught on something, any reason for it to be hanging there.
Needing to do something, gently I blew a soft breath on the ribbon.
It moved ever so slightly, one half twirl. I blew on it again and
the question mark glided around in one full circle.

Getting more daring I blew harder and
… the ribbon fell. My heart fell with it.

What if it had been my father? What if
it was my only chance to say I’m sorry? I’d have to pay close
attention in the future. Whatever was happening was happening for a
reason.

Berkley shut off the camera and handed
it back to me. “Well looks like whatever or whoever was there is
gone now.”

She was right. The second the ribbon
fell there was an empty feeling throughout the room the way it
feels when your friends leave and the house is suddenly
silent.

****

Berkley left about an hour later and
you better believe I was cursing fate for that one. I had pleaded
with her to stay, but she figure skates and wasn’t about to lose
her ice time and pre-paid lesson.

Less than ten minutes after that, the
sound of the door opening and closing echoed through the quiet. Mom
was home and I still hadn’t figured out how to approach the
incident in my room. ‘Hey Mom, funky stuff happening in the house,
better get out your holy water,’ wasn’t going to cut it.

We chatted casually and just when I
was going to ease my way into ghosts and the possibility that there
was an entity occupying the house, I noticed the flowers she had
brought in with her.

“
Do you want me to put
these in water?” I asked as I looked at the bouquet. Wildflowers,
not my mother’s usual pick. Normally she preferred yellow and peach
roses, but any roses would do.

“
No, I’m going to run them
over to your grandmother before supper.”

Oh good, now Mom lost it too. I wanted
to ask if she actually heard from Grandma lately or if she just
wanted me to bring them to my room where her spirit had taken up
residence. “Excuse me?” I asked instead, trying to sound casual
like I just hadn’t heard what she said.

“
I want to stop by her
grave.” She hesitated. “Normally I just have flowers sent, but I
figured since I’m here I’d just make a quick stop.”

I stared at her. She might have been
speaking in tongues for all the sense she made.

“
It’s the anniversary of
her death today. I’m sure you didn’t know that. I always make it a
point to send wildflowers. They were her favorite.”