Blur (Blur Trilogy) (16 page)

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Wh
y yo
u?”

“I have no idea.”

Daniel wanted so badl
y
to tell him about the broken glasses that he and Stac
y
had found at the beach, but he knew he couldn’t. “If there’s no such thing as ghosts,
yo
u’re telling me I’m having hallucinations? Is that it?”

“Ma
yb
e. Yeah. I don’t know. I’m just sa
yi
ng I don’t think
yo
u’re seeing Emil
y
Jackson’s ghost.”

Daniel remembered his research on hallucinations earlier in the morning. He didn’t reall
y
like considering the possibilit
y
that he had some t
yp
e of brain tumor or was beginning to go insane, so he sta
ye
d on the topic of ghosts. “She grabbed m
y
arm at the funeral. There was still a mark there the next morning.”

“Show it to me.”

“It’s gone. It healed.”

“Oka
y.
”

“I’m not making this up, K
yl
e.”

His friend stared for a moment at one of the pictures of Ital
y
hanging on the wall, then looked back at Daniel. “Did I ever tell
yo
u the stor
y
of the doll in the window?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, I don’t know for sure if it’s still there, but when we lived in Minnesota, we would drive through Janesville to get to our place. If
yo
u took the old Highwa
y
14 through town, as
yo
u’re heading west, just as
yo
u cross Main Street, there’s this old two-stor
y
house on the right-hand side of the road.”

“What happened?” Daniel anticipated where this was going: “Was someone killed there?”

“No. But if
yo
u looked up at the attic window
yo
u’d see a doll hanging there. It was one of those old-fashioned dolls made of wood and it was hanging from a rafter with a noose around its neck.”

“Oka
y,
that’s disturbing.”

“No kidding. Well, there are all these stories about the doll and wh
y
it’s there. Some people sa
y
it moves; others sa
y
someone died in the house and the place is haunted. The wa
y
I heard it, there was a girl who lived there and the other kids made fun of her because she was the sort of kid that adults call ‘special,’ and kids call all kinds of other things. You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” Daniel said quietl
y.

“An
yw
a
y,
the other kids in the town were relentless, making fun of her, calling her names, all that. The stor
y
goes that even when she was a teenager she carried that doll with her ever
yw
her
e—w
hich onl
y
made them make fun of her more. One da
y
her mom was looking for her and couldn’t find her an
yw
here.”

He paused, as if to accentuate how long the girl’s mom searched. “Eventuall
y
she went outside to look for her and when she turned around toward the house, she saw her daughter hanging in the attic window where she’d killed hersel
f—h
ung herself off one of the rafters. And the
y
sa
y
that after the funeral, her parents took the same rope that their daughter had used and the
y
hung that doll up there in the window as a constant reminder to the townspeople of what the
y’
d driven their daughter to do.”

Daniel was silent.

“So, last month I was doing this contemporar
y-
issues assignment and I thought I’d tr
y
to find out what reall
y
happened. I came across this newspaper article from 1975 that said that one time,
ye
ars ago, the gu
y
who lived in the house was looking through a
National Geographic
magazine and saw a picture of a house in Penns
yl
vania that had a doll hanging in the window and he basicall
y
said, ‘Huh. Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a doll hanging in our window too?’ So he hung it up there.”

Daniel waited. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“No suicide? No girl getting made fun of? Nothing like that?”

“Nope. Just a gu
y
paging through a magazine.”

He evaluated that. “I don’t think I get it. What’s the point?”

“Before m
y
dad died he told me there’s this sa
yi
ng in Africa: ‘Something happens and then a stor
y
comes along and finds it.’ That’s what happened out there in Janesville. Some gu
y
hung the doll in the window and then a bunch of stories came along and found it.”

“And that’s what
yo
u’re sa
yi
ng is going on here?”

“This girl died. Emil
y
did. Oka
y.
It’s terrible. Stories are going to come along to tr
y
to explain it. It’s normal,
yo
u know? Just like how people at school are sa
yi
ng something up there at Wind
y
Point might have pulled her off the edg
e—a
ghost, I’m not sure; I don’t know what all that’s about. Sometimes there’s no wa
y
to make sense of something. There’s just the plain old ever
yd
a
y
facts and that’s all.”

“So
yo
u don’t believe me.”

“I believe what
yo
u’re telling m
e—t
hat
yo
u saw what
yo
u sa
y yo
u saw, that
yo
u heard it, but . . .”

“But
yo
u think it’s all in m
y
head. So what about the wound on m
y
arm, the one in the shape of her hand, the one that felt like it’d been burned onto m
y
ski
n—t
hat was all in m
y
head as well?”

“You sa
y
it healed?”

“Yeah, the next da
y.
Before football practice.”

“A mark that looks like it was branded onto
yo
ur ar
m—a
mark the size of a han
d—h
eals in just over twent
y-
four hours?”

“I’m telling
yo
u the truth.”

K
yl
e was silent. “Let’s get out of here. I gotta think about this.”

He rose and, without another word, grabbed the last slice of pizza, then went to pa
y
Rizzo, who was tossing an extra-large circle of dough into the air.

K
yl
e held up a twent
y.

“Punch the button and grab
yo
ur change,” Rizzo called to them in his robust Italia
n—b
ut now Daniel noticed, also slightl
y
North Dakota
n—a
ccent.

“Keep it, man.”

“Grazie.”

When the
y
got outside Daniel said, “That was a nice tip.”

“That was m
y
mom’s mone
y.
”

“Ah.”

The
y
headed toward their cars.

“Listen,” K
yl
e said, “when the mind believes something it affects
yo
ur bod
y.
People get sick and get healed b
y
their thought
s—p
lacebos,
yo
u know. Using
’e
m, soldiers on the battlefield can make it so people don’t even feel amputations. And then there’s that weird thing about phantom pain, where a person who’s lost a limb can still feel it hurt. I’ve heard the
y
can even feel the limb that isn’t there bump against stuff. It’s wild.”

“So the mark on m
y
arm just appeared because I believed Emil
y
grabbed me?”

“I don’t know. I guess,
ye
a
h—t
hat or I’m totall
y
wrong about all this and ghosts are real and this one is gonna haunt
yo
u until it gets what it want
s—w
hatever that is.”

“Sometimes
yo
u’re a little too honest.”

Daniel’s phone vibrated.

“Sometimes the truth is all we have.”

Daniel checked the screen and found a text from Ronnie Jackson: “Can u come ovr to m
y
house @4? need to talk to u.”

“What’s up?” K
yl
e asked.

“It’s Ronnie, Emil
y’
s brother. He wants to meet up this afternoon at four. You should come too.”

“Ronnie texted
yo
u?”

“I asked him to. I wanted to talk to him about Emil
y.
”

“Because
yo
u think she was murdered.”

“Yes.”

“M
y
mom’s showing a house toda
y.
I have to watch
Michele.”

K
yl
e’s four-
ye
ar-old sister had been a surprise bab
y
to ever
yo
ne in his famil
y.
Ever since his dad died in a car accident two
ye
ars ago, K
yl
e, his mom, and Michele had been on their own.

A lot of times his mom had to work on weekends, and K
yl
e helped watch Michele whenever he needed to. Though he sometimes complained about it, Daniel knew he reall
y
didn’t mind, that he fiercel
y
loved his little sister and would do an
yt
hing for her.

K
yl
e hit the unlock for his car. “Let me know what Ronnie sa
ys
, and if
yo
u see an
yt
hing else,
yo
u know, an
y
eidolons.”

“Eidolons. Right. He
y,
last night
yo
u texted me that
yo
u had something we needed to talk about. That was the whole reason we met for lunch. What’s up?”

“It can wait.”

“Don’t do that.”

“It’s oka
y.
”

“Tell me, K
yl
e.”

“I’m sa
yi
n
g—”

“K
yl
e. Go on. What is it?”

“Yeah. Oka
y,
yo
u’re right. You should probabl
y
know.” But he didn’t continue.

“Know what?”

“Well, I heard people are putting stuff on Emil
y’
s grave. If
yo
u reall
y
think she was murdered, ma
yb
e the killer returned there,
yo
u know, like the
y
do on TV shows when the
y
go to the funeral of the victim or the cemeter
y—
l
eave stuff at the grave, take souvenirs, that sort of thing. I was wondering if
yo
u wanted to go out there, have a look around, see if there’s an
yt
hing out of the ordinar
y.
”

“You mean an
yt
hing that might tell us who the killer is.”

“What could it hurt, just taking a look around?”

Probabl
y
nothing, except Daniel had told his dad he was going to stop poking around, looking into this.

Oh, and is that wh
y yo
u’re going to go over to talk to Emil
y’
s brother?

The grave
ya
rd.

Yeah.

If there was ever a place to see a ghost, it was out there.

“I don’t know.”

“Listen
”—K
yl
e swung his door ope
n—“
call me and tell me how it goes with Ronnie. We can talk about the cemeter
y
thing later.”

The
y
said good-b
ye
and K
yl
e took off.

Daniel had a couple hours before he needed to leave for the Jacksons’ house, so he went home to read up on killers. It didn’t take long to find out that often, the
y
reall
y
did return to the scene of the crime, as well as attend the funerals and visit the graves of their victims, just like K
yl
e had suggested the
y
did.

He looked into hallucinations again for a little while, especiall
y
tactile ones, to tr
y
to figure out how that burn mark had actuall
y
appeared on his arm, and how it had healed so fast. However, even after an hour, he didn’t dig up an
yt
hing helpful or encouraging.

Basicall
y,
if
yo
u start seeing things that aren’t there, or hearing or even feeling things that aren’t there, there’s almost alwa
ys
something seriousl
y
wrong with
yo
u.

Ma
yb
e his mom and dad were right. Ma
yb
e he did need to see a docto
r—a
shrink ma
yb
e—t
o figure out what was reall
y
going on.

He texted Ronnie to get his address and found that he lived near Lake Algonquin, probabl
y
in the same neighborhood Stac
y
was from.