The Ghost Files (25 page)

Another form flickers to our left. She swings in that direction, and probably twisting my hair out by the roots but I don’t care. I see Tina this time. I know it’s her just like I knew Ricky. She could have been pretty once, but her face has been carved up, a pattern embossed in the skin. I shy away from it. It’s almost as bad as Eric’s face. She walks toward us. Her movements are jerky and disjointed. That’s because her legs are bent at an odd angle. Even
I
cringe away from the walking nightmare and I know she means me no harm.

More and more kids flicker in around us, their mangled forms converging on us. I close my eyes. I can’t take it. If I thought I’d reached my scary threshold, I was wrong. I know they don’t want to hurt me, but I’m so scared, I’m shaking, never mind Mrs. O ripping out my hair.

Then I hear Eric’s familiar screeching start up, like a chainsaw cutting through a wall of nails.

“That’s, Eric,” I whisper and flinch at the pain in my head. My nose starts to bleed. It’s almost unbearable. “Was Eric your first? You remember what you did to his face, don’t you, Mrs. O?”

Mrs. Olson lets out a whimper and I know this is working. She’s afraid of him, but why?

“Why are you so afraid of Eric, Mrs. O?” I whisper, opening my eyes to look up into her terrified ones. “Why does he scare you more than the others?”

“He’s dead,” she hisses. “Dead, dead, dead. I killed him. He’s dead!”

Eric’s screeching gets worse.
“Ask her who I am,”
he orders.

Right.
“Who is he, Mrs. O. Who is Eric and why did you choose him first?”

“He had to pay,” she growls. It’s Mrs. O’s voice, but not. It sounds deeper, almost masculine. “He made us do this.”

“What did he do?” I ask. “Who is
he
?”

“She was a good wife to him, did everything for him, but he couldn’t keep it in his pants.” Mrs. Olson lets go of my hair and brings the knife up, slashing at the shapes around us. It goes right through them and I hear their laughter. They are laughing and it makes Mrs. Olson insane. She screams.

“She couldn’t give him children,” Mrs. Olson is panting, rage burning in her eyes. “
She
could. I couldn’t let him hurt her like that. I had to make the whore pay for her sins.”

Who is ‘she’? My mind was whirling.

Eric’s face swims up in front of us. The broken, twisted mess of flesh and blood snarls at her. I swallow, my throat on fire. The blue eyes are glittering with their own rage. Blood seeps down, falling onto the carpet.

Mrs. Olson lets out a yelp and moves backward again. Eric pushes at her, his rage is making me hurt everywhere.

“You had to die,” Mrs. Olson says. “She saw you that day, knew who you were. We thought you had died in the fire with her. But there you were, laughing! How dare you!”

Mrs. Olson takes a shaky breath. She blinks and I see reason return to her eyes then fear. She’s staring at Eric like he is the Death Angel come to collect. He now towers over her, blood oozing down his face, dripping onto the pudgy form.

“No,” she whispers. “I had to help him. He wouldn’t listen to me. We had to kill her, had to kill you. Then I couldn’t make him stop killing. He had to have them, had to hurt them. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t tell him no. He means everything to me. Please, please, I’m sorry, so sorry.”

“You killed my mother,”
Eric hisses. His voice fills the house. It echoes off the walls in octaves not meant for the human ear. I can feel the blood dripping from my ears.
“Then you killed me to make sure my father never found out I lived.”

His father? My eyes widen and then it all makes sense.
Mr. Olson
is his father. He has to be. Mrs. O killed Eric’s mother and Eric ended up in foster care. When she saw him and realized he didn’t die, she took him and tortured him before finally killing him. Oh dear Lord.

“You’re dead!” Mrs. Olson’s voice once again has that deep masculine quality in it. The madness is back in her eyes. She walks back towards us, swinging her knife. “You are dead and you can’t hurt me you little son of a…”

I get to my knees and throw myself at Mrs. Olson. She staggers back. I keep pushing, rolling as hard as I can. She hits the banister. Her hands clutch the railing and the knife falls from her hands. I catch it and turn, stabbing her right above the left knee. She screams and Eric and every ghost in the hall runs at her. She jumps back and in doing so, falls over the banister. I hear the sound of her body hitting the floor below. It’s a unique sound, one hard to describe and one I’ll never forget.

It’s quiet.

I shiver and work to pull myself up to look over the railing. She is sprawled below us, unmoving. Is she dead? God, I hope so. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I let myself slide back down, resting against the bars of the banister. I’m woozy from blood loss. I hurt and don’t think I’ll last much longer.

At least she didn’t kill me. If I’m going to die, then this is a good way to go, fighting.

“Mattie?”

I blink and try to focus on Eric. His face is back to normal. He looks so worried. I smile at him.
“Thank you,”
I say.
“Thank all of you
.
”

“Come on, Mattie, you need to get downstairs and outside. No one can find you in here.”

I can hear them all murmuring sounds of encouragement, but I can’t move. I have no strength left. All my aches and pains are going away. I’m numb. I often figured dying really hurt. I know people say it doesn’t, but you don’t really feel anything. The pain is unbearable at first, but the human body is equipped to only handle so much pain before it shuts itself off. I’m grateful for that.

The sounds of whispers seem fainter and fainter, but I fight to keep my eyes open. I don’t want to miss the light. It’s beautiful. One of the bedroom doors is filling up with the most beautiful golden light I have ever seen. There is joy in that light and I want to cry. It so full of love. I can see people standing at the end of that light. Ha, it really does look like a tunnel.

“Do you see it? I see my Dad. Look, there my brother Matt! Granny?”

“No, wait!”
Eric is back to hissing.
“It’s dangerous in there, I can’t protect you!”

I groan, but must help them. They helped me and it’s my turn.

“No,”
I tell them.
“That light is for all of us.”

“All of us?”
Eric whispers brokenly.
“No, Mattie. Not you. I promised I’d save you. I’m sorry.”

“You did save me.”
I reach up and for the first time in a long time, there is no pain in my hands. I cup his cheek and smile.
“You got me out of that basement, you helped me hide, and you helped me kill her. You saved me, Eric, and now it’s my turn to save you.”

At least I don’t breath to do this.
“The light is your doorway to the next life
, I continue.
“There is joy and peace there. You don’t belong here anymore. You belong there. Those people are waiting to guide you through the Between. They will keep you safe. I promise you, there is nothing to be scared of. It’s time to go home.”

“Mommy!”
Michael Sutter. I remember him from the white boards, the little boy I’d seen in the bathroom when all this first started. His puppy-dog eyes shine with happiness. He hurtles himself into the light and then is gone. After that, they all drift in, calling out to their loved ones. I watch every ghost I’d seen since the little girl in the bathroom to Rick go into the light and it makes me happy.  As much pain as I am in, I am happy that I could help them.

Sally squats in front of me. I haven’t seen her since she showed me Mary’s bike.  I hadn’t expected to, though.  Sally is not brave.  She runs from the things that scare her. The fact that she brought me here is more than I would have hoped for. She looks at me uncertainly, as if asking for my permission.  “It’s okay, Sally,” I tell her.  “You were brave and helped me find everyone.  It’s time to go.  Your grandmother is waiting for you isn’t she?”

A quick look towards the light has Sally nodding.  “Then go.  I’m okay.”  I watch her stand and then walk into the light.

Only Eric and I remain.

“You should go too,’
I tell him, blinking. I’m so tired.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily, Hathaway,”
he smiles and sinks down beside me. The cold surrounding me is safe and strangely enough, warm.
“I’ll wait for you.”

“Did I tell you how cute you are when your face isn’t all Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”

Eric laughs softly and I feel his fingers brush against my cheek.

My head falls forward and I my eyes close. I just want to sleep.

Then I hear a crash.

“Mattie!”

Chapter Thirty

The ever-growing familiar beep, beep, beep pulls me out of a blissful darkness. I try to move and can’t. Panic sets in. Am I still there? Am I still trapped? Still strapped to that table? I force my eyes to open. Good. I can see. Relief sweeps through me. It’s dark, but the IV machine is all lit up.

There are several other machines I don’t recognize, but I’m in the hospital. Again. The smell alone should have alerted me, but I’m tired. My blurry eyes do a frantic search of the room, looking for ghosts, but again, they are strangely absent. Why do they leave me alone when I’m here?

I shift my head slightly and wince at the pain, but am glad I moved. Dan is asleep in the chair beside my bed. He propped his feet on the bottom of the bed and is slouched down. He looks exhausted. His police uniform is wrinkled and stained with dark patches. It has to be blood, whose I don’t know. It could be mine or it could be Mrs. O’s.

Thoughts of Mrs. Olson make me shudder violently. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined she was the killer. She took care of me, stayed with me, and made me feel safe. How can I have been so wrong about her? Usually my instincts are much better than this. I never saw it coming. The things she did to those poor kids, to me. I can feel the knife tracing over my skin even now. The shakes start in as soon as I think about it. The monitor attached to me starts to beep wildly. My breath comes in short panting gasps and in a heartbeat I am back in that house, strapped down, crying and begging for it to stop.

“Shh, Mattie, you’re safe now, shhh….”

Eric? I open my eyes and find his blue ones staring at me. He is sitting beside me on the bed. I thought he’d gone into the light. What is he doing here?

“If you don’t calm down, you’re gonna wake up your friend. He hasn’t slept in days.”

“Eric?  Why are you here?”
I ask in my head, mindful of Dan asleep in the chair.
“Why didn’t you cross over?”

“Trying to get rid of me already, Hathaway?”

“What?  No!  I just don’t understand…why didn’t you go into the light?”
My breathing slows, calmer now that I know I’m not alone in that basement again.

“
I said I would wait for you, Mattie, and when you didn’t go, I stayed. I needed to know you’d be safe, that you were okay.”

His eyes have lost their teasing light and he’s serious. He is looking at me the way I’d always wanted a boy to look at me and I want to scream at the unfairness of it all. Why does he have to be dead? Fate is cruel, I think. She gives me someone I could really come to trust, to maybe even love, and I can’t have him. That is not his fault, though. He did his best for me, now it’s my turn to help him.

“I am okay, Eric, because of you.”

“When I first saw you, you were so outrageous,”
he laughs softly.
“I knew they’d want you. I thought if I scared you, you’d stop looking, but you just got more determined. I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you, Mattie. I didn’t know I could.”

“You and me both,”
I tell him wryly.
“I thought you guys could just pester me. I didn’t know you could physically harm me. I’m glad, though. Without that screeching of yours, I don’t think I could have taken Mrs. Olson.”

“I do not screech. Girls screech, not guys. Guys yell.”

The outraged expression he wears makes me laugh. Why does he have to be dead? Why do I have to convince him to cross over? I don’t want him to go.

“Eric….”

“No.”
He puts a finger to my lips to shush me.
“I am not going into the light, Mattie.”

I shiver at the cold that seeps into me.
“Why? You don’t belong here anymore. Everyone you were protecting is safe now. They are on the side waiting for you.”

“Not everyone. There is still one person I’m waiting for.”

My eyes widen. Does he mean me?

“
Who else is going to keep you out of trouble, Hathaway? Besides, the other side is overrated.”

“Eric, you can find peace over there…”

“I said I’d wait for you, Mattie, and I will.”
He leans down and presses his cold lips to my forehead.
“Get some rest now. I have to go find a girl down in the morgue scaring the attendants with her moaning.”

“Eric!”
He’s gone. Just like that, I blink and he’s gone. He’s supposed to cross over, to find peace. He deserves it after all he’s been through, but secretly, I’m glad he didn’t go. I’m so messed up. Here I am wanting something I can’t have again. I don’t think I’ll ever find anything normal to hold onto.

Then I see Dan. He’s about as normal as you can get. And he found me. God only knows how, since Eric had issues trying to get through to him. Dan is here, sitting in bloody clothes, waiting on me to wake up. He hasn’t left me despite my attempts to push him away. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I’d be dead right now if not for him. Leave it to Officer Dan to save the day.

The slow steady beeping of the machines lulls me back to sleep. When I wake up again, I am not as afraid as before. I know where I am and I also know Eric is around. If anything spooky tries to hurt me, Mirror Boy will eat them alive. Maybe he’s the reason the spooks are leaving me alone this time.