The tears begin to fall again. “Can you pick me up? I’m at Lookout Beach.”
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Just please come now.”
I sit on the street curb outside the entrance to Lookout Beach attempting to get a hold of myself before Frankie arrives. Twenty minutes later, bouncing headlights approach followed by the rumbling engine and the smell of exhaust as he pulls up in front of me. I climb into the front seat and glance at the worried expression on his face before I turn away to gaze out the passenger window.
“I’m sorry you had to come out here,” I mutter. “I know you don’t want to see me right now, but I didn’t have anyone else to call.”
“What happened? Why are you out here?” Frankie says. “Did Conor do something to you? Where is he?”
“It wasn’t Conor. Something happened to him. He’s missing.”
“Missing?” he replies, but I don’t clarify. “Belinda, can you please look at me.”
I try not to stare at my reflection in the car window; my puffy eyes and shiny cheeks. I look awful. I finally turn to face him. “He was taken by a carrier spirit. Some guy who’s been stalking Mara. I guess she didn’t think it was important enough to tell me and now Conor’s gone… to the spirit realm, or something. What am I going to do, Frankie? His parents are going to notice when he doesn’t come home tonight. What if they know he was with me? What am I going to tell them?”
If Frankie is at all panicked by this news it doesn’t show in his face. “First of all, you need to dial down the panic so you can tell me exactly what happened.”
“I told you, this spirit, his name is Darius, is obsessed with Mara and he doesn’t want her to get her body back so he’s been using Conor’s body to try to break me and Conor up. Then tonight, he got inside Conor and disappeared with him. Poof! Gone, just like that.”
“Did Mara say he was taken to the spirit realm? Is that what she told you or is that just your guess?”
“That’s what she told me,” I reply. “She didn’t say anything about trying to get him back either.”
“She can’t,” Frankie replies. “If she goes in there she’ll never make it out. She’s too sensitive.”
“Too sensitive!” I shout. “Oh, sure, we don’t want to hurt the spirit’s feelings now, do we?”
“That’s not the issue.”
“Are you still in love with her?”
“What? Don’t be crazy. I don’t even know her.”
“You know her enough to know she’s sensitive.”
“Yeah, that’s sort of obvious considering how she lost her body in the first place.”
“When you killed her boyfriend? Did you do the same thing to Conor?” I clap my hand over my mouth, but it’s too late to take back what I’ve said.
He stares at his hands as his fingers grip the steering wheel tightly. “I know you’re upset and you have every right to question me because I wasn’t honest with you. But please don’t ever accuse me of intentionally trying to hurt you.”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I’m just panicking. I don’t know what to do. I’m scared…. Frankie?” The question pops up in my mind like a creepy jack-in-the-box and I’m almost too afraid to face it. “Conor was scared last night. He said all this weird stuff has been happening ever since he met me. What if he told someone else about all this stuff? What if they accuse me of doing something to him? What if he never comes back? I’m freaking out, Frankie!”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“It could happen.”
“It’s not. I won’t let it happen.”
“You can’t stop that kind of stuff from happening. Conor could be dead. I could go to jail for the rest of my life.”
“Stop talking like that,” Frankie says, his eyes locked on mine. “I’m going to help Mara find him. I’m going to drop you off and you’re going to bed as if none of this ever happened. Do you understand? You never saw Conor tonight.”
Frankie walks with me around the side of the house, past my rusted bicycle and my mom’s bedroom window, to the back entrance. I slide the key out from beneath the empty propane canister next to the grill that never gets used. I slip the key into the lock and Frankie puts his hand over mine.
His eyes shift back and forth between my face and the door as if he’s searching for something. “I….” he whispers. “I’m sorry if what I said today hurt you; about not wanting to see you before the competition.”
Hearing him saying the words again, even if it’s just to apologize, reopens the wound. I pull my hand away from the doorknob so he can’t touch me.
“I don’t think you understand,” I say.
“Understand what?”
I don’t think you understand how hard I’ve been trying to get over you.
“How much that hurt me,” I reply, blinking back tears. He pulls me into his arms and I bury my face in his chest. I have a sudden sickening feeling that Frankie is afraid he might not make it back from the spirit realm. “You’re coming back, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” he replies quickly as he pulls back and cups my face in his hands. “But if I don’t make it back tonight, tell my dad you don’t know where I am. Don’t get yourself in trouble for me.”
“What do you mean, if you don’t make it back tonight?”
“Just promise me you won’t tell anyone the truth about any of this. I don’t want them to haul you off to the loony bin while I’m gone. Can you promise me that?”
His eyes never waiver from mine as he awaits my answer. As soon as I nod my head, his lips are on mine. It’s a quick, tender kiss, but I don’t want it to end.
“Don’t wait up,” he whispers as he turns the doorknob and pushes the door open for me.
I step inside the kitchen and watch in a daze as he softly closes the door behind me. I glance at the window across the dark kitchen as Frankie’s silhouette passes behind the lacy curtain. He’s gone.
Chapter 49
Listen
Frankie is not Tuket. I have to keep reminding myself of this as Frankie stands before me under the dim moonlight on the shore of Lookout Beach. His wide hazel eyes are pleading with me. He’s hours away from risking his life, surfing with a massive head injury, ending the vicious carrier spirit cycle, and here he is begging me to take him to the other side. He is going to risk being forever lost in the spirit realm, all for Belinda.
“I know the risks,” he says as the waves crash on the small strip of sand behind him. “And I know you can’t go in there without me. Let me help. Please.”
The ocean breeze makes Frankie’s T-shirt billow and flutter and I wish I could feel that wind, smell the brine, touch the water, command it the way Frankie does. I wish I knew how he became this person. I wish I knew how he put all the darkness behind him and became the guiding light in Belinda’s life. If I pay attention, I think I have something to learn from him. Admitting this to myself sickens me.
“You cannot lose sight of me. Once we’re inside, you cannot let me go,” I say to the man who once shattered my spirit so completely I would never be the same.
He nods. “I won’t let you get lost again.”
I glide toward him and as soon as I enter his body I know.
I know that peaceful confidence he exudes because it’s running through me, filling me like the warmth of the sun. I close my eyes, our eyes, and concentrate on the shift. The shift from this world to the spirit realm is difficult to make, especially when carrying a human. Once we’re inside, Frankie’s spirit, Tuket, and my spirit will become separate beings.
The heaviness comes first, pressing on all sides of me, then comes the release and I’m yanked up like a puppet. Faster, faster, upward, until it stops. I open my eyes and nearly two hundred years of memories from the time I was lost in the realm come back to me.
A desolate white space where shadowy spirits whir past you and linger over you at once. I close my eyes to block it out then I remember Frankie. I open my eyes again and h
e’s standing before me: Tuket.
His shiny bald head gleams in the brightness of the white light. A shadow spirit tugs at his arm, pulling him sideways as he stares at me. I lunge forward and grasp his hand and he grips my hand firmly. His hand is calloused. From driving spears into people’s hearts. I try to push this thought out of my head, but this is the place where these kinds of dark thoughts float everywhere, seeping into your bones, squirming inside your veins.
“Don’t let go!” he shouts. Though his voice is muffled beneath the nonsensical whispers of the shadow spirits, the tone of his voice still startles me. He is Tuket. He pulls me toward him and wraps his arm around my shoulders so he can speak directly into my ear. “Don’t let go of my hand.”
All my senses have returned here. I can feel his breath in my ear. I can feel the icy fingers of the shadow spirits gliding over my skin. I can feel the smooth skin of Tuket’s arm as it slinks off my shoulder. He clutches my hand tightly, too tightly, but I know it’s only so we don’t lose each other. It makes me feel safe, something I never felt around Tuket when we were human.
No. This is not Tuket. This is Frankie.
He tugs me through the forest of vaguely human, smoky beings. The white landscape begins to transform as the despair crawls over me, like mercury, searching for a crack to slip inside. As the whiteness fades to darkness, shapes begin to form; the same shapes I saw the last time I was trapped in the realm. Black craggily trees materialize and reach for me as we rush past. As my nightmare is constructed before my eyes, I know the same thing is happening for Tuket. This is the spirit realm, where nightmares come true.
You’ll never be human.
I shake my head at the doubts trickling through the crevices of my mind. “How are we going to find them?” I shout.
“Your realm is different from mine,” Tuket shouts as we race through the dark forest in my mind, trying to outrun the spirits. His eyes widen at something he sees up ahead, but all I see is more forest and spirits. What ghosts haunt Tuket’s nightmares? “What’s the one place you would refuse to go?”
I consider his question as a shadow spirit clings to my dress like static. I try to ignore the cold feeling that sends shivers over my skin.
You can’t go back there. You’ll never make it out again.
“Mara! Answer me!” Tuket shouts.
His face is deadly serious. The same look he always wore when we were alive, but it’s changed a bit. There’s fear in the curve of his brow. This place is getting to him.
“There’s only one place,” I reply then I stop in the middle of the forest. I marvel at the way the moonlight paints lashes of blue across the barren tree branches. I close my eyes as the mutterings of the shadow spirits quiet down. I know as soon as I imagine the one place it will emerge before me, erected from the shambles of my nightmares.
I open my eyes and there it is. The house looks the same today as it did the night Reno was killed. The cedar planks form a pitched roof and span the length of the outer walls of the house where more than thirty members of Reno’s family once lived.
Tuket doesn’t look at me. He can’t see what I’m seeing, but he knows. “It’s not real,” he says, and he squeezes my hand as I attempt to pull myself free. “You can’t let go. You’ll never make it out of there.”
I want to run back the way we came. I know what waits for me inside that house. I was trapped in there for nearly two hundred years. The door creaks open inviting me in. Someone waves at me from the door. Though it’s too dark to see who is waving, I know it’s her.
Tuket tugs me gently toward the house. He can’t see the door—it doesn’t exist in his nightmare. I tug him sideways so he’s behind me as we step inside. My foot drops onto a staircase that leads down. Ten steps away, the stairs disappear beneath a pool of black water. The house smells like seaweed. A light beneath the surface of the water beckons me. I take another step down and a crunching sound beneath my feet startles me. The steps are covered in sand.
Across the cedar-lined room a doorway ten feet above the waterline leads to a hallway. I raced up and down that hallway with Reno countless times. She appears in the doorway, dark curls dripping from the knot on the top of her head, her yellow bodice cinched tightly around her waist and gown billowing out behind her. She’s smiling at me. Even after what I did to her, she still smiles. I lean toward her, teetering on the edge of the steps, and Tuket tightens his grip on my hand.
“Mara!” he shouts, and I steady myself again. “You have to find Conor. Is he here?”
The water below us begins to rock back and forth and the light beneath the water has disappeared. The water crashes against the walls of the house and sends gusts of cool, briny air swirling around me. Someone emerges from the roaring waves, slowly climbing the steps. His sandy blonde hair is dripping wet and appears almost black in the darkness. The water becomes still and his eyes are locked on mine as he lumbers up the staircase one step at a time.
“Samuel,” I whisper.
My arm trembles as I reach out to him, but he stops before I can touch him. He tilts his head as if he doesn’t recognize me.
“It’s me,” I say as I lunge forward to touch him and he tumbles backward. A loud crack echoes as his skull hits the wooden stairs. He tumbles into the water and disappears beneath the oily black surface.
A painful blackness falls over me and my skin aches. I dig my fingernails into my cheek and drag them toward my jaw.
“Mara?” Tuket calls my name. He sounds so far away, but I know he’s behind me. He’s supposed to be holding my hand.
My eyes follow the length of my arm down to where his hand should be, but it’s not there. I find a hand in my hand, but it’s not Tuket’s. I look over my shoulder and Samuel is standing behind me in Tuket’s place.
“You came back?”
His mouth opens and black water gushes over his chin. “Mara,” he says, his voice garbled by the water. “Mara, wake up.”
They drowned. They didn’t die from the impact of the force that exploded from my hands that night on the beach. Samuel and his mistress were propelled into the water where they drowned. But these are not ghosts and you can’t die here in the spirit realm. You can die a million gruesome deaths here and still wake up in the same nightmare. It never ends.
Samuel’s face melts into Tuket’s face. He’s shouting at me. He’s shaking me. It hurts. My skin hurts. He’s going to kill me. I writhe and kick against his grasp, but he tightens his grip.
“Stop! You’re hurting me!” I shout. “You’re killing me!”
He’s still shouting as I struggle to get free, but I can’t hear his words. My shoulders grow weaker and weaker the more I struggle. The water is rising below me. I glance over my shoulder and there she is again, standing on the surface of the water carrying a parasol. She twirls it in her hand as she glides across the water toward me. The black water seeps into the hem of her dress, climbing up her skirt.
When I turn back to Tuket he’s gone. I’m falling, falling slowly over the edge of the staircase toward the water, toward her.
Chapter 50
I lie awake the whole night waiting for a call or even a text message from Frankie letting me know he made it back with Conor, but by four o’clock I realize something’s wrong. I’m going to have to explain this to Frankie’s father when he wakes up at five in the morning and finds Frankie’s bed empty. Conor’s parents, and the police, will surely seek me out when they realize he’s missing. I’m a terrible liar. Not to mention the fact that my mom knows I went out with Conor last night. This will not go well. I have to think of a better story than complete denial.
I slide out of bed still wearing the shorts and T-shirt I wore to the beach with Conor. Slipping my feet into my sneakers, I tiptoe downstairs. I write a note on the dry erase board on the refrigerator letting my mom know I went for a bike ride with Frankie.
I sneak out the front door and skirt around the garden toward the side of the house where Frankie and I walked
together just hours ago, before he kissed me. I walk my bike down the concrete walk on the side of the house and across the front yard. Once I hit the sidewalk, I hop onto my bike and begin pedaling toward Lookout Beach.
Except for a few stragglers returning home from their Saturday night adventures, the streets are empty. I pass the 24-hour donut shop next to Trixie’s and turn my face away from the storefront. The owner knows me as Miss Double-Dutch Crunch. The last thing I need is to have my alibi crushed by my affinity for chocolate cake donuts.
The wind blows my hair out behind me, a brown flowing cape, though I don’t feel anything like a superhero. I feel like the damsel in distress, sitting on the sidelines while the prince tries to save the other prince from the burning castle. I hate damsels, especially when they’re distressed.
I stand up on the bike to get more leverage as I pedal uphill through the main boulevard in Conor’s hilly neighborhood. On the downhill portions I lift my feet and let the pedals spin. Soon, I find myself approaching the narrow dirt road where Conor turned onto on our way to Lookout Beach.
As soon as I turn onto the road, I see headlights bouncing toward me. It has to be Frankie. I pull my bike to the side of the road and wave my arms over my head. The car slows as it approaches. The headlights have burned bright spots into my eyes as the van stops next to me. Even through my impaired vision, I can see that Frankie is alone in his car and he looks shaken.
He climbs out of the car and helps me slide my bike into the back of the van without speaking. As soon as I climb into the passenger seat and slam the door shut, he peels out of there. I’m too afraid to speak. He pulls off of the dirt road and onto the main street and finally he glances at me, and I know. I can tell by the shadows under his eyes and the fact that Mara isn’t with him that neither Mara nor Conor made it back.
“I told my mom I was going to your house,” I say as he turns onto Mariposa. “Can I go home with you? I don’t want to be alone.”