A Guide to the Other Side (16 page)

“You kids are in Boston alone?”

“We took the bus,” J said.

“I see,” he said. “Looks like I'm going to have to give them a call.”

“That won't be necessary, Officer,” I said, brushing myself off and gathering up my bag. “Really, I'm fine, and we have a bus to catch.”

“You three are minors alone in Boston who just had to call nine-one-one because one of you nearly went tumbling over the river's edge.” He smiled kindly but spoke firmly. “What's your parents' phone number, son?”

  *  *  *  

My mom spoke to the officer at length, and when he handed the phone to me, she tersely said two sentences before hanging up: “Take the bus home. I'll pick you up at the station.”

J, Aiden, and I didn't say a word to one another the entire ride home. They knew I was furious with them for calling the cops, but they also felt completely justified in trying to save my life.

When we got to the bus station, my mom was there with a nervous-looking Mrs. Kirkwood.

“J, Mrs. Kirkwood is going to take you home,” my mom said, not looking at me. She turned to Aiden's mom. “I'll call you later, Karen.” She marched to the car, and I looked one last time at Aiden and J. It was obvious I was a dead man walking; their smiles, meant to be encouraging, looked more like Ella's when we tried to feed her pureed peas.

“Not a word,” my mom said, her voice a dangerous whisper. “Not one word until we're home.” Of course. She and Dad had to yell at me together.

  *  *  *  

My mom may have wanted to make sure my dad was present to yell at me, but she took care of the bulk of it herself.

“I forbade you, Baylor,” she said, chopping away at a bunch of carrots. I could imagine her hanging up the phone with the officer and heading straight to the store to stock up in preparation of this exact moment. “I literally said, ‘I am forbidding you to go.' Let that word soak in for a second. Forbid.”

She chopped as I sat at the kitchen table in silence. My dad sat next to me. He didn't seem angry as much as he was abysmally confused.

“
Forbid.
And why did I forbid it, Baylor? Do you remember?”

I didn't say anything. If there was one thing I knew about my mom, it was that it was best to let her get it all out, no matter how long it took, like a balloon slowly, painfully deflating its air.

“Because you told me you wanted to meet the son of that dead thing that put you in the hospital. Now, that's just crazy, isn't it? Isn't it, Douglas?”

My dad grunted.

“I thought it sounded like a bad idea, Baylor, because you could get hurt, maybe wind up in the hospital again, something awful.” She heaved a pile of diced carrots into a Tupperware container. “And then today I get a
phone call
from a
police officer
in
Boston
about my son, who was there alone with friends and seemed to go missing, and guess what, Baylor.
You proved that it was a bad idea.
”

It went on like that for a while, until they sent me to my room to begin my punishment of being grounded for forever, and then when they died and crossed over, they were still going to make sure I was grounded. I never gave them a straight answer about what led Aiden and J to call the police, nor did I tell them the Sheet Man made another appearance, this time with Kristina in tow. I didn't ever plan to tell them, since my mom would go berserk.

Seriously, what was I going to do? Whenever I had a question, I turned to Kristina. Kristina was the one who was supposed to stick with me. She was the one who was supposed to protect me from the evil spirits, especially the demons, like the Insymbios, who could sneak in unnoticed, take over my body, and make me go insane; or even worse, the Bru—I stopped and took a deep breath, vanquishing the thought from my brain. Even thinking about them could make me vulnerable.

What could I do to protect her? I couldn't bounce between realms. I couldn't simply walk over to the Beyond and ask for help. Even if I could go to the Beyond, which I obviously couldn't access since I wasn't dead, I wouldn't know what to say. The Sheet Man seemed to exist in his own weird, lifeless limbo, and it wasn't like I'd be able to cough up directions on how to reach him.

My mom was right. It was chaos on the other side.

With candles lit, I demanded Colonel Fleetwood get his butt back over here so we could come up with a plan.

Nothing. Not even a creak in the floor. Not even a flicker of the lights. Not any sort of small sign that anyone or anything was listening to me.

If Kristina was my buffer to the other side, it was horrifyingly possible that with her taken out of the loop, I'd lost my “in” with the Beyond. Could that really be?

My little séance obviously wasn't working, so I hopped on my computer and searched for Alfred's wife. Kristina's one clue was my only solid lead. But Angela was nowhere to be found.

Then I remembered that the ex-wife lived in Winchester, and J had suggested I find her next. She could be easy to track down, and maybe she knew something.

Sure enough, Rosalie Parker's address was listed online; she was located just outside of Winchester's little downtown area.

I jotted the address onto a piece of paper and ran downstairs.

“Dad, we're going into Winchester tomorrow, right? I need to apologize to Aunt Hilda and everything.”

He and my mom both turned to me with shocked expressions.

“Baylor Bosco, what do you have planned?” my mom asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Nothing!” I said. “I just feel really bad about everything.”

“Fine by me,” my dad said with a shrug. “I want to stop at that fishing store on Main Street too.”

“Well, be sure to call Aunt Hilda before you head down there,” Mom said scathingly. “We don't want you to surprise her and give her a heart attack.”

  *  *  *  

After a sleepless night, the next morning couldn't come fast enough. Luckily, my dad was an early riser because of his job, so we both got ready and drove the thirty minutes to Winchester. We ate breakfast at a café on Main Street, where he tried to talk to me about my fiascos in Boston and at Aunt Hilda's birthday dinner.

“Between you and me, I think it's crazy your mom is making you apologize to her,” he said between bites of his ham-and-cheese omelet. “I walked into that place knowing something was going to happen. Everyone knows you can't function properly in Italian restaurants.”

“
Thank you
,” I said, finally feeling vindicated. “Agreed. There were just so many people inside one little space. I sort of lost my mind.”

“That being said, it was wrong of you to go to Boston after she
forbade
you from going.” It sounded like he'd rehearsed this. “You're going to be paying for that one for a while.”

“I know. Again, I'm very sorry.”

He sipped his juice and sighed. “I do not envy you, son. The ghosts and the crazy stuff and all.” He smiled at me. “Oh, and don't tell your mom I said any of that stuff about Aunt Hilda.”

Afterward we browsed the tackle shop. My dad was looking for fall sales to stock up for spring, and he bought a couple of snagless sinkers as well as a few spools of line. But when we called Aunt Hilda at ten to let her know we wanted to come over, she was nowhere near ready.

“Now what?” my dad asked. He looked around at the other shops. “I guess we can get some Christmas shopping done. My mom would probably like something from one of those antique shops.”

I shuddered. Antique stores are the worst place for objects with memories attached to them.

“Hey, Dad, you know what? One of my teachers lives just around the corner,” I said. “Would you mind driving me over so I could stop by and say hi?”

“You want to visit a teacher on a Sunday at ten a.m.? Isn't that a little weird?” he asked.

“Uh, I don't know, we were almost like friends, this teacher and I.”

“Which teacher is it?”

“Mrs. Parker. Remember her? She's divorced now.”

He scrunched his face together as he thought. “I don't think so?”

“Come on, it'll only take a few minutes.”

“But you're grounded.” I could see the wheels spinning in his head, calculating whether or not visiting a teacher really fell into grounded territory. “Why not? I don't mind catching up with my students, I'm sure she won't mind either.”

And a few minutes later I was walking up the brick pathway to a tiny brick cottage. I had told my dad to stay in the car, but that he could come say hi at the end if he wanted, which was another bald-faced lie, but whatever.

The house had a nice front porch, with white iron lattice railings around the perimeter. The garden was kept up nicely, which is the universal sign that the homeowners care about their house, and I felt satisfied Rosalie wouldn't answer the door drunk and covered in weeks-old bits of food.

I rang the doorbell and heard a couple of dogs barking. They sounded like big dogs, and I wondered how they liked being cooped up in such a small house.

The door opened, revealing a woman wearing a red bathrobe. Her graying brunette hair was tied up in a ponytail, and she was already wearing makeup. She was pretty and seemed delicate, and I could easily see my mom looking similar to her in twenty years.

“Can I help you?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

“I'm Baylor Bosco, and I can communicate with people who have crossed over,” I said. “I was hoping I could speak with you for a few moments about your ex-husband, Alfred.”

She shook her head in her surprise, blinking vigorously.

“Is this a joke?”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I know Alfred has been dead for several years, but I've just started receiving very strange visits from him. He won't speak with me, though, so I don't know how to help him.”

Her face sort of collapsed. One second she looked normal, the next second everything was wrinkled and twisted.

“You need to go,” she said, reaching to close the door.

“No!” I growled, slamming it back open and surprising myself with my sudden fury. “I know he didn't leave your children any money, and now I need to know how to fix it so he'll leave me alone. Where can I find Angela?”

Rosalie was stronger than she looked. She managed to begin closing the door, while staring at me like she wanted to reach down my throat, pull out my intestines, and use them to decorate her Christmas tree. “I don't like to talk about my ex-husband,” she said in a voice that wasn't her own. “Get off my property.”

The door clicked shut, followed by a massive dead-bolt clunk. I stared, stunned. Then I spun around and walked down the path, just as my dad was getting out of the car.

“What happened, Baylor?” He looked shocked. “Did you make her mad somehow? Bring up the divorce or something?”

“No,” I said, “she just didn't remember me. Guess we weren't as close as I thought.”

  *  *  *  

I was so distracted by everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours—talking to Will, discovering Kristina got ghostnapped, and meeting Rosalie—that I could barely remember why I was at Aunt Hilda's place.

“Sorry I ruined your birthday,” I said flatly. “I didn't mean to ruin it. I know you only turn eighty-eight once, and since it was probably your last birthday, I feel bad it didn't go the way you wanted it to.”

“Baylor!” my dad exclaimed, trying to force a laugh, while Aunt Hilda's eyes widened to the size of half-dollar coins. “Why don't you try that again?”

“Try what again?”

“Your apology,” he said through gritted teeth. “One more time.”

“Uh, I'm sorry you don't believe I have the ability to talk to ghosts, even though your friend Marjorie is standing behind you and telling you she's sorry she never paid you the forty bucks you won playing Bunco with her.”

“I always thought she cheated,” Marjorie said, shrugging, her voice low and gravelly from what must have been decades of chain-smoking. “Who's that good at Bunco?”

“Marjorie?” Aunt Hilda said. “I just saw Marjorie last night. She can't be dead.”

My dad's jaw dropped, and I pressed my lips together.

“Oh, sorry, kid,” Marjorie said, laughing. “Forgot to mention I'm fresh as of early this morning.”

“Thanks a lot, Marge,” I snapped, looking at the troublemaking ghost over Aunt Hilda's shoulder before turning my attention back to her. “Sorry, Aunt Hilda, looks like Marjorie crossed over this morning.”

Aunt Hilda looked at me with indecipherable eyes, and then she caustically spit, “I don't believe you.”

“She's in for a nasty surprise if no one finds me before my cats run out of food,” Marjorie said.

I grimaced, but before I could say anything, my dad grabbed my shoulder and steered me out of the apartment. “Sorry, Aunt Hilda. I'll have Connie call you later.”