TWENTY-SIX
The golden-haired girl and I stared at each other, listening in abject horror to the cries next door. Suddenly, I realized why all the other ghosts were outside. Nidhi’s words came back to me, “only one of the ghosts is hostile.”
“She’s deranged,” the girl whispered.
“Her spirit is trapped then?” I asked, crestfallen. If Dorothy were continuously reliving the scene of her death on an endless loop, there wasn’t much I could do for her. As Christopher explained, those ghosts existed on a different plane entirely. I couldn’t make contact with Dorothy even if I wanted to.
“Trapped?” asked the girl, her eyes flicking nervously to the door of her room.
“Her spirit. I mean, I won’t be able to talk to her like I’m talking to you. She’s blocked, isn’t she?”
The girl shook her head. “I already told you,” she said, her whisper even lower and more intense. “She’s not trapped. She’s just deranged.”
Her eyes left mine as her head snapped in the direction of the door. Her already wide eyes grew even larger. I followed the line of her gaze until I saw what was making her back away slowly.
Dorothy was standing in the doorway, but she wasn’t the Dorothy I’d seen in life. Her hair was a disheveled heap piled on top of her head. Her eyes were wide and glazed. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. She was a ghostly white and her skin glistened with moisture. Her nightgown was stained with blood.
“You!” she screamed when she saw me. Her nostrils flared and I looked back at the girl for an explanation. She was pressed up against the corner of the room.
“You took my baby!” screamed Dorothy in the same bloodcurdling screech from before.
“What? No!” My mind flashed to taking Alice from the hospital. Then it occurred to me that she wasn’t really seeing me, and her eyes were unfocused. Nidhi said she heard those same screams.
“She can’t hear you,” said the girl. “She won’t listen to anyone. Not even me.”
Dorothy nearly growled, her eyes now deadly. I didn’t need to be told the woman was dangerous. She looked nothing like her former self. She rushed me and before I had time to step aside, her hands found my shoulders and the whole weight of her crashed into me, causing both of us to fall to the ground. If Ada’s contact with Dorothy during the moments when she died at the hospital weren’t enough to extract her from her deranged state, what could I possibly say to make her listen?
Dorothy’s hands found my neck. I wrapped my hands around hers, trying to pry her off. She was surprisingly strong for a ghost.
“My baby!” she wailed, pressing her fingers tightly around my throat.
With all of my strength, I bucked my hips forward and Dorothy tumbled off me.
“Help me!” I yelled to the girl. She came over and looked at me apprehensively. I had Dorothy pinned beneath me now and was trying to hold down one of her hands. The other was still flailing wildly, groping to find my throat. The girl knelt down beside Dorothy. She was clearly terrified but she managed to take hold of Dorothy’s wildly swinging arm and pin it down on the floor.
Dorothy’s eyes were inhuman. I couldn’t even see a spark of the woman she’d been before in life. I had no idea how to get through to her. She stared back at me without really seeing me, and just grunted and moaned, struggling to get free. Her head rocked back and forth tirelessly. She was feral, animalistic. I looked at the girl who seemed just as terrified as me.
Dorothy started spluttering now, “My baby, my baby, my baby,” she cried over and over.
I continued to hold her down, wracking my brain for a way to get through to her.
“Dorothy,” I said calmly. Her eyes stayed unfixed but she quieted slightly and looked up at me. “Dorothy,” I repeated slowly. “I have your baby.”
She screamed and her whole body lurched forward and contorted so violently, I almost lost my grip on her. We clung to her tightly, until my arms and legs began to ache with the strain of holding her. Slowly, her writhing slowed. Her chest rose and fell in large, shuddering gasps. She stared up at me, tears in her eyes.
“You took my baby?” she said. Her voice was lower now. Her eyes still weren’t seeing me but at least, her body had calmed down somewhat. She still struggled, but her arms were not moving in all directions; now they just reached for my throat.
“She’s safe, Dorothy. Your baby is safe.”
“They want to kill her! He’s going to kill her!”
“No one killed her, Dorothy. Junior is gone. No one can hurt your baby.”
At the sound of Junior’s name, something shifted in her expression. Her watery eyes began to focus. Her body began to still. The blond girl looked up at me, and her eyes were wide with amazement.
“She… she… Keep talking!” said the girl, her facial expression instantly morphing from fear to hope.
“Dorothy, your baby is safe and she’s looking for you.”
Dorothy’s head was moving from side-to-side across the hard wooden floor. Her dark hair was tossing in both directions and a few strands clung to her face, moist from the exertion.
“My baby?” asked Dorothy again.
“Alice. And your granddaughter, Ada. They need you, Dorothy.”
Dorothy’s head stopped and her closed eyes opened. For the first time, I recognized a semblance of the beautiful woman that once occupied the space behind them. Finally, I was talking to Dorothy. I didn’t know how long she’d remain sane, but I was sure one hundred years of searching desperately for your lost child wouldn’t work any wonders in regard to your mental health.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Dorothy?”
Dorothy nodded. The girl gasped.
“She’s never talked to me before,” said the girl. “She’s never even seen me. She just screams at me that I stole her baby. She won’t listen to me, even though I’ve been trying to tell her the truth.”
“The truth?” I asked her.
“I’m Alice,” said the girl.
I had to catch myself before I released Dorothy’s still restless body. “You’re? What? How?” I spluttered, unable to form a coherent question.
“Well, I came to find her but I haven’t been able to communicate with her because she doesn’t see me.”
“But you’re, you’re…” I looked at the blond hair, the young complexion. She was not how I imagined “Memaw Alice.”
“Young?” Alice asked with a smile. “Blond?”
I nodded, struggling to swallow.
“I guess Dorothy’s looks skipped a generation. Ada was my mother’s spitting image. I suppose I look more like my father, but I never knew who he was. As for my age, I didn’t exactly want to spend all of my ghostly existence looking like an old woman who died of kidney disease.”
I thought of Drake in the dreamscapes, his cologne and different clothes, the thickness of his facial hair. I guess it never occurred to me that ghosts could alter their appearances. I stared in wonderment at Alice. Then the shuddering frame of Dorothy beneath me snapped me back to reality.
Alice shifted her grip on Dorothy’s body and her hand brushed against mine. I gasped as my body felt like it was immersed in an icy pool of water. I saw a flash of a vision. Alice was lying on a hospital bed with a younger Jill and Ada standing beside her. I felt the love and the sadness of that moment, along with Alice’s sadness at not being able to communicate with her bereft mother’s spirit.
“Dorothy, it’s time for you to find your family.” Cautiously, I loosened my grip on Dorothy’s arm and unstraddled her thin body. She drew her limbs into her chest and heaved a great sob. “Alice is looking for her mother, Dorothy.”
Dorothy’s whole body shook. The young girl got up and crouched down next to her sobbing mother. She rubbed her back.
“Mommy?” she tried and Dorothy raised her miserable head to meet the eyes of her daughter. As if seeing her for the first time, her eyes opened wider as she took Alice in.
“My baby?” she asked. I heaved a long sigh of relief.
Alice nodded, tears in her eyes. “It’s me!” she said with a wet laugh. Dorothy wrapped her arms around Alice. Alice turned to me and smiled in an expression of heartfelt thanks. I wasn’t sure what I’d done exactly, but whatever it was, I was glad to see the reunion of the two women. Their souls could finally be at peace.
I walked back to the hallway and rested my back against the wall. I suddenly felt exhausted, but also more than a little proud. I wished for a moment I could walk outside into 1910 New York again and find Drake rather than returning to the present, and my real life. That thought was followed by a flood of guilt. I took a deep breath and looked around the hallway.
Sitting down on the floor, I shut my eyes tightly, trying not to hear the low murmurs in the next room. I remembered what Lovie said and focused as much as I could on the rising and falling of my chest. I listened to my breath and concentrated on doing slow inhales and exhales, as the voice from the tunnel returned slowly. My vision started to fade and I listened as hard as I could to the voice. Slowly but surely, it got louder and louder, until I could make out the clear, velvety timber of Lovie’s recitations. I let my eyes close, and my head grew heavy. I clung to Lovie’s words, letting them pull me back to the hallway. I could feel people around me, and I also sensed the two ghosts in the room next door, but I knew somehow that I’d returned. I opened my eyes. The lighting in the room had changed and it was dark outside. Ryan’s hand was wrapped protectively around mine.
When I opened my eyes, Lovie stopped speaking. She looked down at me with keen interest. Ryan, who’d been resting his head against the wall behind him, stirred. I breathed a hearty exhale.
“We did it,” I said smiling. Ryan and Lovie smiled back.
***
On the road back to the airport, my anxiety surrounding Drake returned. I was exhausted from my latest forays into the spirit world, although I was pleased with all that I managed to do. I would never have known I was capable of that. Any positive emotions, however, were dulled and numbed in the face of my growing fears about Drake. If we went to the house and he wasn’t there, what then? Worse still, if it were possible for me to connect to the spirits without Drake, what excuse did I have for needing him?
Again, I suffered guilt for my thoughts. It was wrong to even think them regardless of whether or not Ryan could hear. I turned on my phone and checked the emails from earlier as a distraction. I responded to the clients and deleted the spam before opening the second of the two messages from my realtor. She’d written “URGENT” in the subject heading, but I could hardly think of what could be urgent regarding the house; the title and all the paperwork had been processed months ago. Now, our only contact was me deleting her chain emails that she forwarded every few days.
I opened the message expecting to find another invitation to an open house; but instead, I read a terse message from the woman urging me to contact her immediately.
Peyton,
I’ve been trying to call your cell for two days now but it keeps going to voicemail. There’s an issue with your aunt’s will that affects your ownership rights to the house. I need you to contact me as soon as possible.
Mela Abderman
Abderman Realty
I looked up from the phone, feeling slightly dizzy. I had no idea what it meant, but the email contrasted so sharply with the events of the last twenty-four hours that I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. An issue with the will? It stated pretty clearly that the property was mine. Mela did have a tendency towards histrionics. It was nothing that couldn’t wait until I had a chance to go back and rest at least.
Confused, I passed the phone to Ryan.
“What do you think she means?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he sounded worried. My brain was too fried to know how to interpret the information. “Are you going to call her?”
“I will tomorrow,” I said, my voice sounding tired. And I felt it too. Even if I slept an entire day after my adventure into the past, today’s escapades didn’t exactly leave me in a rested or rejuvenated state. Besides, there were more pressing issues than contracts. Right now, the only thing I cared about with regards to my house was whether or not it was still haunted. I put my phone back in my bag and my eyes settled on Ryan. He’s been uncharacteristically quiet for the entire ride. Our relationship was rocky, to say the least. I knew he had his own baggage to sort through; we were each grieving for someone who was no longer here. I felt closer to him knowing that he at least somewhat understood me, even if we could never discuss it. I made a mental note to be a better girlfriend.
As soon as the plane wheels touched the ground, some of my anxiety diminished. I was so close to being home, and finding out if Drake were safe. Even though I made a pledge to be a better girlfriend, Drake saved my life on more than one occasion and I would always care for him even if I couldn’t be with him. That’s what I kept telling myself.
By the time we got back to New Orleans, I was beyond exhausted. It was just Ryan and I, since Lovie had to leave to join Christopher on the job he ran off to do.
I slept the whole car ride home. The large, heated seats in Ryan’s big pickup truck were all the invitation I needed to shut my eyes.
When we pulled up in front of my house, Ryan didn’t turn off the car. He gave me a long, somber look.
“Do you want me to come in with you?” he asked.
I ignored the question and said what I’d been thinking the whole journey home. “Ryan, thank you so much for being here for me through all of this. I’m so lucky to have you and I’m sorry I haven’t been the best at communicating that. I promise things will go back to normal soon but after everything I saw, I’m still a little thrown. I need a moment to calm down and reorganize myself.” I looked at him apologetically.
He nodded, his mouth flattening into a contemplative line. He strong jaw was speckled with the beginnings of a beard. The adventure hadn’t been easy on him either. I reached across the large seats of the truck and wrapped him in a hug. As I pulled away, our eyes met and my stomach flipped. Staring into his eyes, I felt such unbridled passion and love, it made my heart swell in my chest. I truly loved this man.
“I’ll come check on you in a few hours, okay?” he said. I kissed him, grateful for his swift understanding. Ryan’s mouth opened eagerly in response to mine and it took everything I had for me to pull away from him, but I couldn’t relax until I found out what happened to Drake.
I exited the truck and made my way up to my front door. Terrified by what was about to meet me, I unlocked the front door with a shaky hand and stepped inside.
My shoes echoed as I made my way across the hard floor. The Wooton replica was still sitting unmoved in the front room. My chest tightened.
“Hello?” I called out. “Drake?”
In response, a large gust of wind tore through the house. It whipped my hair around my face and slammed the still open front door. My body melted with relief. Drake was here!