Haunted

“I’m not sure. He just collapsed.” Alex knelt to check Zac’s pulse.

  “It will take a few days, but he will be fine.” A wave of relief flooded through me until I remembered that Zac being safe didn’t mean things were over.

  “What happened to Isobel?”

  “She got away. I have been looking for her.”

  “You think she’s gone?”

  “No. She will be lurking somewhere. We have to find her.”

  “And when we do?” I was tired of fighting Isobel. It seemed like we’d never be free of her.

  “Where is the gun?” Alex asked.

  One look at his face told me the real fight was just beginning. His jaw was clenched and a vein in his temple throbbed.

  “I hid it. I didn’t want anyone to find it on Zac.”

  “That was good thinking, but we need it now.”

  “What for? It’s not like we can use it against Isobel.”

  “We need it to kill Doctor Ritter.”

  For the first time in our entire relationship I found myself doubting Alex’s judgment. “Are you crazy?”

  “Where did you hide it?” he persisted.

  I nodded in the direction of the heavy stage curtains. Without a word Alex retrieved the weapon and slipped it inside his jacket. My stomach was churning and Alex saw the revulsion on my face.

  “We do not have a choice, Chloe. How many people have already been hurt? Ritter will not stop, and neither will Isobel. But if we destroy him, every spirit he has conjured will disappear with him.”

  “I can’t kill anyone,” I said, feeling ill.

  “No one is asking you to.”

  “We don’t even know where to find Doctor Ritter.”

  Alex looked down at Zac’s inert form. “No, but he does.”

  “What do you mean? How would Zac know anything?”

  “Zac and Isobel shared one mind for a brief time, which means Zac will know where Ritter is. We must prise that information out of him.”

  “Um … don’t you think he’s been through enough already?”

  “Yes, I do. But I also think Zac would want to do everything in his power to help.”

  The events of the last week suddenly caught up with me. I felt on the point of breaking. “I just want to go home.”

  “I know, my darling. I need you to do this one last thing,” Alex urged.

  I knew why he needed me. Zac and I were friends; I was the person he trusted.

  Without a clue what I was doing, I knelt beside Zac, took his hand and focused on transferring healing energy into him. He looked vulnerable and broken and I hated the idea of putting him under any more strain.

  “Zac, can you hear me? I know you’re not up to this right now, but I need to ask you something important.”

  A few tense moments passed before Zac’s hand squeezed mine and I felt encouraged to continue.

  “Alex and I need to stop Isobel before she does any more damage. In order to do that we need to find Doctor Ritter. You need to tell us where he’s hiding.”

  Zac opened his eyes and gave me a vacant stare. He struggled to understand what I was asking. Then he moved his head as if to indicate he didn’t have any answers.

  “You do know,” I pressed him. “Isobel’s thoughts were linked with yours briefly. You have to access those memories now — don’t block them.”

  Zac’s face turned from white to red, like he was summoning every vestige of concentration in his overwrought brain. His eyes rolled back and he began to shake so much I thought he was suffering a seizure. He tried to speak, but the words weren’t forming.

  If I’d known this was going to cause Zac pain, I would never have agreed to it. I felt annoyed with Alex for not telling me.

  “We have to stop this. We’re making him worse,” I said.

  Alex nodded.

  Just as I was trying to calm Zac, he croaked out two faint words. “Not here.”

  “Where?” Alex asked forcefully.

  “Outside … sheds.”

  I knew exactly where he meant. The only sheds on campus were the maintenance sheds behind the tennis courts. That’s where Doctor Ritter must be hiding.

  Zac must have fought hard to get that message out because the minute he did, his eyes lost focus and he slipped again into unconsciousness. I felt his pulse; it was erratic but still beating.

  I’d never been so relieved to hear the sounds of sirens and screeching tyres as the emergency services arrived. Leaving Zac and the other injured to the paramedics, Alex and I slipped out a back exit before the police cordoned off the theatre building. We sprinted across the school grounds toward the maintenance sheds.

  I wondered whether Alex had ever fired a gun; whether he’d actually be able to kill Doctor Ritter. The only time I’d ever held a gun was when I was about twelve years old and we visited my Uncle Jack in Idaho. He’d taken me and Rory to a shooting range for fun. The idea of actually using one on a person, no matter how sinister, made me feel faint.

  One step at a time, I told myself. One thing I did know was that if we didn’t stop Doctor Ritter now, there was no telling what he would do next. He must have committed his entire unnaturally long life to perfecting these dark arts. If he had finally succeeded in commanding the dead, he wasn’t likely to give that up now.

  The shed was a run-of-the-mill structure made of galvanised steel, the sort of place you wouldn’t expect anything extraordinary to take place. The doors had dusty glass panes, some of which were broken, and were padlocked and chained. How were we going to break in without being heard?

  I started when someone wearing workboots and overalls emerged from the gloom. Then I recognised him.

  “Miguel! What on earth —” I began, but he tapped a finger to his lips to shush me. He nodded at Alex in acknowledgment and said, “Hurry. There isn’t much time.”

  In his other hand he was holding a set of boltcutters. I watched in amazement as he used them to cut through the padlock and chain.

  We slid one of the doors open just enough to slip through. I thought Miguel would follow us, but he stood back, like an actor whose part in a play is over.

  There were no lights and I nearly crashed into a ride-on mower before my eyes adjusted to the gloom. We navigated our way carefully around the clutter of broken pots and rusty tools, and didn’t see Doctor Ritter at first because he was hidden behind some metal shelves.

  We crept toward him and I saw he was kneeling before a makeshift altar made from what appeared to be a packing crate with a white cloth over it. It was covered with lighted candles, as well as some statues of pagan deities and a collection of tiny bones that could have belonged to a small animal like a cat, or maybe … I chose not to finish that thought. There were also several glass vials, each containing a different-coloured liquid, and dried herbs burning pungently in shallow bowls.

  Doctor Ritter was wearing a hooded robe like some ancient high priest instead of his usual three-piece suit and appeared to be in a deep trance. He hadn’t noticed our arrival, which was lucky for us as I was sure we’d made a lot of noise. He was facing away from us, his silver hair loose, his body bent low in a position of supplication.

  Alex watched him for a moment, eyes narrowed in fascination. “He is raising the dead right at this very moment,” he whispered. Slowly he withdrew the handgun from inside his jacket. “We need to move closer.”

  I grabbed Alex’s sleeve and tugged him back. There had to be another way to stop a necromancer other than murder. Maybe we could bargain with him. No matter how many crimes this old man had committed over the decades, wouldn’t pulling the trigger make us no better than him?

  Alex read the reluctance in my face. “Chloe, he is not a man. He is a fiend in the guise of a man.”

  Images of the attack in the theatre came back to me. I saw the blood-streaked faces of people whose names I didn’t know but whose fear would remain with me forever. I heard the screams of pain and terror as if they were happening all over again. I tried to draw
on those memories to reignite my rage, but instead I just felt flat. Doctor Ritter might deserve to die, but who were we to mete out that punishment? I didn’t want that kind of power or responsibility.

  Alex stroked my face. “Once this is over, Chloe, we can be together without fear. I hope you still want that?”

  Of course I wanted it. I wanted it more than anything. I’d just stopped believing it was ever going to be possible. Our love had been under assault from the beginning; but without faith we didn’t stand a chance. There was no way I was going to wimp out on Alex now, not after everything we’d been through. By way of answer, I took his hand, held it between my own and pressed it to my lips.

  As I did, an inhuman shriek reverberated around the space as Isobel emerged from the gloom. I knew I was looking at a cold and heartless killer, twisted over the years by dark thoughts. Isobel would never change. She would never stop. Nothing would ever bring her peace, or stop her hating the living. Isobel and her father had violated a fundamental law of nature, but then again neither seemed to have much respect for laws. The realisation filled me with a sudden and overpowering exhaustion. I felt as if this fight would never end. Maybe Isobel couldn’t be killed. How could we conquer such deep hatred?

  When she rushed at me, I made no move to protect myself. She looked ready to tear me apart, but I felt strangely empty. Maybe the only way to end this was to give her what she wanted. Maybe that was the victory she had been seeking all along.

  She was almost upon me when I heard a deafening sound. At first I thought part of the building behind us had collapsed until an acrid smell filled the air. It was only when I looked at Alex still pointing the gun at Doctor Ritter that I realised what had happened.

  Isobel turned around with a crazed look then stumbled forward with her hands outstretched before letting out a strangled cry.

  “Father, don’t leave me!” The necromancer rocked back on his knees and his eyes flew open to stare at us. In that moment I could barely tell the difference between him and Isobel, as if they were one and the same. I supposed, when you thought about it, they were: a father who’d let his madness seep into his daughter until they were both twisted and knotted like the roots of an ancient tree.

  Doctor Ritter’s face was stiff with pain, but instead of crumpling to the ground like a regular person, he stayed upright and began to slowly shrivel like a piece of dried fruit. It seemed as if the flesh on his body was rapidly decaying, caving inwards around his bones. It was a disgusting sight, but I was unable to look away.

  As the necromancer clawed at his own body, his eyes bulbous in his desiccated face, he wheezed a final threat at us. “You can never escape the past. It will always haunt you.”

  At the sight of her father reduced to a pile of smouldering robes, Isobel let out a savage scream that was half-pain, half-fury. But she had no opportunity to avenge herself on us as she also began to wither in front of our eyes. She whimpered like a wounded animal as she slowly disintegrated, but not for one second did her eyes leave Alex’s face. Finally she was nothing more than a pile of ash on the ground alongside her father.

  Suddenly I felt my knees give way from under me. Alex caught me in his arms just before I hit the cement floor.

  “Is it really over?” I asked, and felt his arms wrap around me and his head come down to lean gently against mine.

  “Yes, my love. It is over.”

  There was no sense of relief. Instead, a numbness crept over me. I willed myself to feel something, but it seemed as if someone had reached into my brain and switched off everything that made me Chloe Kennedy. All I was really aware of was one thing and that was how pivotal this moment was …

  This was the moment every adversity had been leading to; the moment that would determine what the future held for me and those I loved. I couldn’t believe it had taken so long for me to understand the truth. All this time I had been thinking my fight with Isobel was about revenge and vanity and the tragedies of the past. But now I saw that it was about me. It had always been about me.

  From a young age I’d known I didn’t fully belong to this world, and I had been right. At eighteen years of age here I was, still living a half-life, wavering on the fringe between life and death. Now the universe was telling me it was time to make a decision. Choose, Chloe, it seemed to say. You know what to do.

  Faces flashed through my mind — so many of the ghosts I’d seen through my life. Isobel was there, and Alexander of course, and Becky Burns. My mom was there too. How had I become so tangled up in the world of the dead; tangled to the point I felt there was no way of extricating myself? Deep down, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to.

  Perhaps it was time to accept that I needed them. Perhaps it was time to stop fighting and embrace the destiny that seemed to have been chosen for me.

  The siege at Sycamore High was all anyone talked about for a couple of weeks, but then, like all dramas, it died down. The FBI carried out an investigation, but it proved inconclusive. People’s recollections of what had happened proved hazy. Some told the investigators about a crazed woman with long black hair and wearing a white gown, while others talked about child soldiers, but no evidence of either could be located despite extensive searches. Some people blamed it all on a gas leak or an electrical malfunction that had caused a mass hallucination. The incident looked like it would remain a mystery, and for my part I thought it was better that way.

  Zac was the only exception; his memory of that night remained crystal clear. He disappeared off the face of the earth for a while and I figured he just needed space, but then I heard a rumour that his parents had shipped him off to some exclusive clinic in California. I was the first to visit him after his discharge. He looked tired and drawn. It was obvious he would need a period of rest and maybe some trauma therapy, but I knew he’d be okay, scarred but okay.

  “I’m sorry for doubting you,” he said as we sat by the pool, our legs dangling in the water. Zac’s mom seemed to have snapped out of her alcohol-fuelled daze and kept bringing out snacks.

  “And I’m sorry you got caught in the crossfire.”

  “That’s not your fault.” He gave me a wan smile. “It’s hard to pick up where you left off, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But it gets easier. I say that from experience.”

  “Graduation’s coming up. Doesn’t seem real.”

  “I know.” Not only did it feel unreal, it felt like an anticlimax.

  “What will you do after that?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought. You?”

  “Work on my music for a while.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. I might go hang out with my gran for a bit.” The idea only took shape as it was being uttered.

  “England?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve heard the food sucks, not to mention the weather.”

  I smiled. It was comforting to see that even after everything he’d gone through, Zac hadn’t lost his sense of humour.

  “There’s stuff I need to figure out,” I elaborated.

  “I get it. But you better stay in touch.”

  “Promise.”

  There were things other than Zac to be grateful for. After watching Isobel and her father violently depart this world, I wasn’t up to walking or driving so Alex ended up carrying me most of the way home. I discovered that Dad and Rory hadn’t made it inside the theatre at all that night. By a stroke of good luck, Dad’s girlfriend Marcie (I no longer referred to her as that woman) had managed to get herself lost and wound up at the wrong school. She couldn’t find her way back so Dad and Rory had to go pick her up before the play began. I couldn’t begin to express my relief, and I supposed it meant I couldn’t carry on hating her any more.

  Dad took a few days off work and became attentive all of a sudden, frequently coming into my room bearing mugs of hot chocolate. It made me feel like a little kid in need of reassurance that there were no monsters lurking under my bed. But the monsters in my life had been real, an
d not so easily dispelled.

  “Chloe, would you like to talk to someone about what happened?” he asked me a few days after the attack. “It doesn’t have to be me. Perhaps a therapist or someone like that?”

  “Thanks for the suggestion,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s the answer for me.”

  “Okay,” he said, obviously not wanting to press the issue. “But if there is anything you need, or anything I can do, you will tell me, won’t you?”

  “Sure.” I took a sip from the foaming mug. It had been my favourite mug as a kid and had a big cheerful snowman on the front.

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone,” I replied, glancing at the figure in the cane chair by my window, his long legs crossed at the ankles, a book of Elizabethan sonnets on his lap. “And believe me, I’m glad you and Rory weren’t there.”

  “We’re all okay, that’s the important thing,” Dad said, attempting a smile.

  I wasn’t sure how okay I really was but nodded anyway.

  He crossed the room to look out the window onto our street. “You know, your mom and I had a pact.”

  These days it was rare for him to offer up any personal information so I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip.

  “Yeah? What kind of pact?”

  He turned to look at me and I saw that his eyes were glassy. He took a minute before answering. “We promised each other that if anything happened to one of us, the other wouldn’t go through life alone.”

  “That’s weird,” I said, unsure what else to say or how I felt. Why was he telling me this now? Was he trying to justify moving on from Mom so quickly? Or seeking my permission to date Marcie?

  Dad patted my hand and suddenly I could see the strain of the past six months permanently recorded in his greying temples and the lines around his mouth.

  “No, honey,” he said. “That’s love.”

  My father’s words stayed with me long after he’d gone to bed. I might be in love with a phantom, but love was love, wasn’t it? You didn’t choose a particular path; you just found yourself on it. I knew that if Alex had to leave this world, I couldn’t forget him. I knew I couldn’t be like my dad and find someone new to love.