Maybe This Time (40 page)

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Isolde said as she sat down across from the couch, looking even paler than usual.

It's a little late for that, isn't it?
Dennis said.

“What?” Isolde said, looking around.

“That's Dennis,” Andie said. “Are you sure you can do this?”

“Yes?” Isolde pushed her narrow glasses up the narrow bridge of her nose.

“Maybe they'll be feeling guilty for killing Dennis,” Southie said.

They don't give a rat's ass,
Dennis said.

“Watch the language,” Isolde said.

“What language?” Southie said.

“Dennis is grumpy,” Andie said.

“Do you want a permanent job, Dennis?” Isolde said.

No.

“He's going toward the light as soon as we're done here,” Andie said firmly.

No I'm not.

“Don't be hasty about turning me down,” Isolde said. “It's interesting work.”

I have a job. I'm researching ghosts.

“Well, you'll meet a lot more with me,” Isolde said. “Think about it.”

It's a moot point. I can't leave this couch.

“Oh, suck it up, Dennis,” Isolde said. “You're too old for a security blanket.”

I believe I would know if it were possible for me to establish a wider range.

“You've been a ghost for six hours, but you're an expert,” Isolde snorted.

I was an expert before I was a ghost,
Dennis snapped.

“Not that I don't find this fascinating,” Andie said, “but we need to find out what it is that the ghosts left behind that's keeping them here. Since Dennis had dibs on the couch, it's not that, so let's just leave the furniture out of it for now. We have to be looking for something smaller, a lock of hair maybe, the Victorians did a lot of mourning jewelry. Or . . . a finger or something.”

“A finger?” Southie said.

“Probably not. We need to find out what's holding them here so we can burn it and send them on to . . . wherever.”

“Are they here?” Isolde said. “It doesn't feel like they're here.”

No,
Dennis said.
I'm the only one here.

“Then we'll have to call them. Just remember, they're killers. If things start getting dicey, I'm calling it quits for good on this one.”

“Now that is a sane idea,” North said.

“Sit down,” Isolde said, and he did. “Join hands. Breathe.”

The thing about those long slow breaths was that they were very
peaceful. Andie relaxed into her chair a little more, but she watched for any movement in the air, any clue that there might—

This again?
May said.
You know, you could just ask me.

“Not you,” Andie said.
“Them.”

What do you want?

“Is there something tying them here, some souvenir with a lock of hair or something that would keep them from being evicted?”

It would have had to have come with the house,
May said.
That was years and years ago. Something really old. Our family wouldn't have anything that old.

“Old,” Andie said. “Something from the early 1800s.”

“Pocket watch,” North said.

Andie jerked around, distracted. “What?”

“We found a pocket watch when we searched the house. I'll go get it.”

North left the table, clearly glad to be able to do so.

“Good,” Isolde said. “With him gone, I can see a lot clearer. What do you think, Dennis?”

I think it's all a crock.

“My God,” Andie said. “You're dead and you still don't believe in ghosts?”

I don't believe in the burning of the pocket watch. Victorian mourning jewelry was rings and lockets.

“Lockets,” Andie said. “The locket you drew on Miss J is around Alice's neck. I'll be right back.” She turned and ran for the stairs, double-timing it up to the nursery, only to see Lydia standing in front of Alice's bed, snarling,
“Get out”
at North, and when Andie said, “What the hell?” he turned around.

North's eyes were empty and black, cruel and evil, and then she saw the pocket watch in his hand and realized she was looking into Peter's white face of damnation. North was gone.

“Get
out of him,
” she said, as he advanced on her. “That's not your body, give it back.”

She took a step back, keeping her eyes on the watch in his hand. “We have to burn that watch, Lydia,” she called out as her back hit the door. “It's—”

He grabbed for her, and she ducked and tried to knock the watch from his hand, but he got her by the throat, lifting her up off her feet as she choked, her eyes level with his, staring into the empty evil horror that was there. “North,” she choked out, but the room began to spin, there was a rushing in her ears, and then suddenly he dropped to the floor and she went with him, and Carter was standing over them with the small fire extinguisher from the mantel.

“I hit him,” Carter said, anguished, and North began to struggle to his feet, the back of his head bleeding, and then Miss J was there, too, and Andie felt ice in her veins.

“No!”
she screamed and grabbed the watch from the floor, triggering the catch so that it opened as she flung it into the fire. She heard Miss J shriek like nothing on God's earth, and then the ice in
her blood was gone, but North was reaching for Alice, and Carter and Lydia and Andie all dragged him back while he fought them, and Alice shrank back against the wall, terrified, screaming,
“Bad!”
, as her necklaces swung forward—

Andie lunged over North, still struggling on the floor, and screamed,
“Give me the locket!”
, and Alice ripped it off without question and threw it to her.

North surged up from the floor, Carter and Andie hanging on to him, and Andie flung the locket into the flames.

The locket blackened in the fire, but Peter fought on in North's body, rage distorting his face.

“It didn't work,” Andie yelled, grabbing North around the neck and holding on to him while the others fought to keep him down.

“It didn't open,” Carter yelled back, and reached into the flames and pulled it out, his face twisting as the fire burned him, and then he stamped on the locket and broke it open, exposing a brown curl of hair inside.

Peter screamed, and Carter threw the curl into the fire where it crackled and then turned to ash, and North collapsed on the floor, unconscious.

Lydia bent over him.
“What the hell was that thing?”

“A ghost.” Andie grabbed the pitcher of ice water from the lunch tray and plunged Carter's hand into it. “That was incredibly brave,” she told him. “Keep your hand cold.”

“Jesus Christ,” Lydia said.
“That was evil.”

Andie left Carter and bent over North, looking at the back of his head as he came to. Carter had really smacked him, there was blood back there, but with any luck he hadn't cracked his skull.

“North?” she said. “North? Honey?”

His eyelids fluttered, and then he said, “Ouch,” his voice wobbly, and sat up, wincing, dizzy enough that he leaned on her. “What was that?”

“You were possessed,” Andie said. “Didn't you know? Didn't you feel it?”

North put his hand on the back of his head and then pulled it back to look at the blood on it. “I blacked out. What the hell happened?”

“You were possessed and tried to choke me and Carter hit you with a fire extinguisher to save me.”

North's eyes widened, and Carter said, “Sorry.”

“I'm not,” Andie said.

May came to the door and stopped, barred by the fire.
What happened?

Then Southie was there, staring through May, saying, “What the hell?” and Flo looked at them all from behind him and said, “Oh, no,” and went to Carter, and Isolde stood in the doorway next to May and stared.

“So,” Lydia said. “Ghosts are real and they can do that?”

It was the pocket watch?
May said.
And the locket? Because Miss J and Peter are gone. Really, they're gone. I felt them go. Ask Dennis if you don't believe me. He's down on the couch.

“We burned the watch but he kept going,” Andie said to May.

That makes sense. It was his watch, so he'd put a lock of her hair in there. And she'd put his in her locket.

“They're both gone,” Alice said, and sat back, an odd look on her face.

Carter nodded, holding his hand in the ice water, and Flo said, “You've burned yourself, let me take care of that,” and Lydia and Southie helped North to his feet.

North turned green and bolted for the bathroom.

“What's wrong?” Lydia said, starting to follow him, and Andie said, “You do that after you've been possessed,” and turned back to Alice.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Yes,” Alice said. “You're here.”

“So you got rid of them,” Isolde said.

Not all of them,
May said.
I'm still here.

Andie looked up at her. “And we're going to talk about that now.”

 

Andie went out into the hall with May. “Remember when you told me that the others had had their humanity burned away? I think you're going that way. You possessed me, and then when I was too strong for you, you possessed Kelly. That's evil, May. That's wrong. From the way the kids have talked about you, that's not who you were.”

Well, I wasn't DEAD before.

“It's more than that. You know it's more than that.”

I saved your life.

“I know. But what you're doing, staying here, it's wrong. This is not the way it works. You know it's wrong.”

May pulled back, doing that shifting thing that always made Andie's stomach turn.
I didn't know my life would be over so fast. It's not my fault. That insane bitch killed me before I had a chance. Everybody deserves a second chance. That's all I want, a second chance.

“I know,” Andie said miserably. “I know all of that, but that's not the way it played out. And the way you're living now . . . You're not living, May. You're just a shadow.”

I can't give up. But it's okay, I have a plan.

“May—”

Take me to Columbus, and I'll take Kelly.

“No!”

Andie, I've been inside her and there's nothing there, it's just all this greed and need, and you know how she was after the kids, she's a miserable bitch—

“You can't hijack somebody else's life, May.”

—and it's not like I'm getting a great deal there, she must be pushing forty. I'm
nineteen,
Andie. I had my whole life ahead of me.

“And now it's gone,” Andie said, making it sound as final as she
could. “You got screwed over, no doubt about it, you deserved so much more, but it's done. It's over.”

No!

“Look, maybe there's something wonderful if you move ahead. Maybe if you go toward the light—”

Maybe there's nothing there. Maybe if I go into the light, I really do die.

“You're already dead.”

No. No, this is ME. I'm here.

“May. I don't know how to help you. But you can't stay here trying to steal other people's lives.”

Don't leave me here.

Andie stared at the girl helplessly. “May, I'm not even sure you can leave here. I think you're tied to the house.”

No. No, there's a lock of my hair in my old jewelry box. My mother braided mine and April's together.

“Who's April?”

My sister. Carter and Alice's mother.

Andie looked around. “Is she here, too?”

No, I don't think she stayed after she died. I think she just snuffed out like a candle. I was alive then so I don't know. I didn't even know this existed.

“Maybe she knew what she was doing.”

Maybe she just gave up. I'm not giving up.

Andie took a deep breath. “Think this through. If you're tied to that lock of hair, you're stuck wherever the hair is. I can take you to school with me once I start another job, but then you're going to be hanging out listening to high school kids murder Shakespeare. You can stay in the house and watch the kids grow up, but somehow, that doesn't seem like it's enough for you.”

It's SOMETHING.

May sounded frantic, which was natural considering what she was facing, but there was an edge there that hadn't been there before, a savagery under the complaint.

“You sound different.”

I'm scared. I'm angry. What do you expect?

Andie bit her lip. “What if you're losing your humanity? The others did, they became monsters. You don't want to become a monster—”

They hung around for two hundred years. You'll be dead before I start to lose it. Then we can really talk.

“We don't know that,” Andie said. “We don't—”

So you're saying no.

“I'm saying you're not where you're supposed to be. You're not supposed to be stuck between two planes living a shadow life. This is wrong for you. It's wrong for everybody. And if we don't fix it, if you don't move on, I think things could get really bad.”

May was silent, and even worse, Andie couldn't see her moving. It was as if May had finally stopped dancing. Maybe because she was starting to think.

“May?”

I don't want to move on.

“Okay.” Andie got up. “It's your choice. But I can't take you to Columbus. It's just wrong, May. You'll have to stay here.

I hate it here. I've been stuck here in this stupid town and then this stupid house all my life.