Poltergeeks (2 page)

  Naturally, I just
had
to go inside and that's when it became abundantly clear to me that I probably should have called for backup.

  Awesome.

 
 

 
 
 

Just because I'm a witch doesn't mean that I can't get in over my head when it comes to the supernatural. The first clue that I should have probably, God,
called
for my mother,
was when I saw Mrs Gilbert's sofa hovering about two feet above the rose-coloured carpet in her living room. Of course, every stick of furniture was floating but the sofa, being the largest object, immediately drew my attention. I took a tentative step forward, and the sofa immediately spun around so that its polished oak feet were pointing at the ceiling. I held out my amulet and grated my teeth together as I increased my concentration. Somewhere inside the house was the source of the poltergeist's energy, I just needed to home in on it.

  I clutched the copper amulet tightly in my right hand and drew on my spirit. I could feel the swirl of spectral energy brushing against my skin, so I shut my eyes tight and cleared my mind. Within seconds the temperature inside Mrs Gilbert's house dropped like a stone. I intensified my focus, directing my senses through the curtain of shadow that separates the spirit world from the mortal plane. In seconds I'd detected the source of supernatural energy: the kitchen.

  "Well here goes nothing," I said, exhaling a shaky breath as I headed up a narrow hallway. No sooner had I reached the kitchen when Mrs Gilbert's stainless steel refrigerator slid across the chequered floor with a screech. The fridge door swung open and a jug of milk sailed past my head, smashing against a bookshelf. I dove for cover as a series of Tupperware containers flew off the counter. A dozen brown eggs splattered across the ceiling, the yolks dribbling down the powder-pink walls.

  "Nobody likes a show-off!" I barked. "I'm coming into this kitchen whether you like it or not, so you might as well just stop this lame haunted-house routine right now!"

  Apparently the poltergeist heard me.

  I watched as a set of multicoloured alphabet fridge magnets floated through the air and rearranged themselves into two simple words that sent a chill up my spine:

  
L-E-A-V-E N-O-W

  At least the poltergeist was talking to me, which had to count for something. Rather than enter the kitchen, I decided to press the spirit for information.

  "Spirit, what are you doing in the world of the living?" I asked, trying to sound like I wasn't intimidated. The letters slowly rearranged themselves until another word formed:

  
L-O-S-T

  "You're lost?" I was puzzled. "Spirits aren't supposed to become lost, so where
should
you be?"

  The letters floated to within arms' reach and assembled into a pair of words that told me this was not your average poltergeist:

  
A-T
and then
R-E-S-T.

  At rest? This wasn't a malevolent presence. If anything it was the spirit of some poor, departed soul that should have crossed over but either chose not to or wasn't being allowed to. I decided to ask it one more question before offering assistance. Just as I was about to open my mouth, a set of enamel bake ware flew out of a cupboard and slid across the floor.

  I blinked a few times, half-hoping I wouldn't get beaned with a frying pan and said, "Spirit, were you on the other side? Did you cross over?"

  The floating alphabet rearranged itself again.

  
Y-E-S

  Holy shit!

  I gulped as a surge of panic seized me. Someone had
meant
for this to happen. The spirit seemed to be lost and the poltergeist activity was either a cry for help to the living or a kind of supernatural rage at having been sucked back into the mortal world, I wasn't sure which.

  And I had a right to feel panic, too.

  While I'm still an apprentice witch, I'm old enough to know that pulling spirits who've passed on back into the world of the living requires boatloads of skill and is almost
always
done for a sinister purpose. More often than not, it's black magic – as black as it gets. I wasn't dumb enough to try to conduct an exorcism that would send the spirit back to the other side, because whoever or whatever had yanked it into the mortal realm would detect my magic, and they could easily send a counter-spell that could do something nasty like… Oh, how about kill me? If Mrs Gilbert was going to get back into her house, I had to figure out a way to get the spirit to leave without being detected by whoever sent it here.

  Suddenly every single cupboard door in the kitchen swung open and then slammed shut with a deafening crash. The kitchen light flickered on and off like a strobe as the fridge magnets spelled out three words:

  
H-E

  
I-S

  
C-O-M-I-N-G

  My blood ran cold. I stared hard at the alphabet letters and tried desperately not to freak out. There had to be a way to get the spirit out of the house before he or it or whatever the hell was coming detected my magic. I needed something to act as a proxy for the spirit to occupy, and yes, damn it all, I was going to have to ask for my mother's help after all. Then it dawned on me; Mrs Gilbert was a granny – there had to be children's toys in the house I could use. Something without opposable thumbs, because there was the very real possibility that whatever was coming might occupy the proxy as well. The last thing I needed was to get chased out of the old lady's house by a knife-wielding Cabbage Patch doll.

  I raced down the hall and checked each bedroom until I found a toy chest. I threw off the lid and began rifling through until I found a plush teddy bear with movable arms and legs. I gave it a quick once-over and then I darted back up the hall and threw the teddy bear into the kitchen. It landed against the side of the fridge and slid onto the floor.

  "Spirit!" I shouted. "I can get you back to the other side but I can't do it here. I need you to enter into that teddy bear and I can take you to someone who will help you cross over!"

  I didn't have to repeat myself. An almighty crash shook the house as all the furniture fell to the floor at the same time, and I had to grab hold of the wall to keep myself from landing square on my butt. I felt a blast of spectral energy pass through my body as the spirit flew into the soft toy, and I allowed myself a satisfied smile. My idea actually seemed to be working.

  Seconds later, the only movement in the house besides my thumping heart was the small bear's arms and legs. The stuffed animal turned its head toward me and
winked!

  "OK,
that
is too creepy."

  I heard the front door open and then Marcus' familiar voice call out.

  "Yo, Julie, everything okay in here? I've got your backpack and Mrs Gilbert is sitting in her car waiting to get back in the house."

  No sooner had the words left his lips than the floor started shaking again. A jolt of force swept Marcus off his feet, smashing his body into the stippled ceiling with enough force to leave an impact crater.

  "Julie!" Marcus gasped. All the colour had drained from his face and his eyes flashed with panic. "C-can't breathe!"

  A gale of supernatural fury blew through the front hall, sending me tumbling into the kitchen. I struggled to get to my feet just as Mrs Gilbert's refrigerator toppled over onto its side, spilling its contents all over the linoleum.

  
"Julie… h-help!"
Marcus choked. Chunks of drywall fell to the floor as I quickly got to my feet and reached for my magic. I pushed my senses through a thick film of dark energy that was pouring through the floor vents and spreading across the carpet like an oil slick. It pulsed and throbbed with an eerie green glow, forming an enormous ghostly hand that clamped Marcus' body tightly, squeezing the air from his lungs and smashing him against the ceiling like he was a rag doll.

  I raised a spell, tapping into Marcus' terror and my own panic at seeing my best friend attacked. A wave of energy washed over my body as I lashed out at the vaporous hand with a blast of magic.

  "
Subsisto!"
I bellowed, as I clamped my left hand around my amulet. A stream of power flew out of my closed fist like a five ton truck, screaming down the hall and shattering the vaporous hand. Tiny shards of malice dropped to the floor, where they dissolved into a harmless mist. Marcus fell from the ceiling, bouncing off Mrs Gilbert's sofa and landing face-first on the carpet.

  "Marcus!" I shrieked, as I grabbed the teddy bear and raced down the hall. "Marcus, are you okay?"

  He gave his head a hard shake and slowly rolled over onto his hands and knees. His t-shirt was ripped in about four different places and there was blood on it.

  "Ow," he said quietly, as he presented me with my back pack. "Poltergeists hurt. A lot."

  "This was way more than a poltergeist, Marcus." I chewed my lip. "There's some pretty badass dark magic at work here. The poltergeist is a spirit that was yanked from the other side and I think I must have pissed off whoever did the yanking… damn, you've got blood on your shirt. Are you hurt?"

  "Just my feelings," he said without blinking. "My shirt got wrecked courtesy of Slippers the Siamese cat. So, was that an actual spell that smashed me into the ceiling?"

  I nodded as I slipped my backpack over my shoulders. "Yep, and we need to get the hell out of here before whoever conjured it decides to take another shot at us. You didn't lose our pledge money did you?"

  "No," he said. He tossed me the collection bag. "The only thing I lost is any affection I might have had for cats. What's up with the teddy bear?"

  "Just call it a temporary shelter for a wayward spirit," I said. "We'll take it back to my house because I'm going to have to include my mother in this one."

  "That bad?" he asked.

  "That big," I said grimly as we walked out the door.

  Perfect. I was going to have to play second fiddle after all.

  Go Team Julie.

 
 

 
 
 

We got back to my place after a five-minute jaunt up the path from Mrs Gilbert's. My house, incidentally, isn't exactly popular with the neighbours, whose manicured lawns and professionally landscaped flowerbeds are a major-league contrast to the weed-infested goat farm my mom calls an
ecosystem.
Then again, ninety percent of the weeds crawling up the fence and across our driveway have a magical purpose as they are key ingredients for potions, so they're kind of necessary in our line of work. We trudged up the front path. Marcus reached for the doorknob, but I snatched his hand away at the last second.

  "Don't assume those sentinels are down. I'd hate for you to lose an appendage," I said firmly.

  He grunted. "Oh yeah. I just figured since your mother's car is in the driveway…"

  I gave Marcus an understanding smile as I whispered a word of magic and disarmed the sentinels. "You've had a traumatic day, so don't sweat it," I said easily. "Just remember that protective spells don't distinguish between good and evil, okay? They're magical booby traps."

  "Gotcha. Your forte is witchcraft, mine is physics and online gaming. You wanna remind me why we hang around together, again?"

  "Number one, you're going to get me an A in physics," I said, giving him a slight nudge. "And number two, you're the voice of reason when I decide to go and do something risky and dangerous."

  He grunted. "Ah, glad we've got that sorted out then."

  Marcus isn't exactly suitable material for the cover of a romantic novel. He stands about five foot nine and has just enough of a mischievous streak programmed into his DNA that you wonder half the time whether he's a genius or a shit-stirrer. His clothes hang off his spindly body like bed sheets on a laundry line, but he has a kind face and a quirky smile that reveals itself when he's completely intrigued by stuff like math and science – my natural enemies.

  He's known me since kindergarten and he's grown up realizing that I'm, well, not exactly like other girls. Marcus first learned about my being a witch back in grade four when I stupidly boasted that inanimate objects could defy gravity. He called bullshit so I levitated a pair of winter boots in my basement and my spell went haywire somehow. I'd just managed to raise the boots about a foot off the ground when one of them went rogue. It flew out of my magic circle and smacked him in the side of the head leaving a bump the size of a grapefruit.

  He took it in his stride, of course. After my mother grounded me for three days, she realized that our secret was out; at least when it came to my best friend. So Marcus became a fixture in my magical life. Mom has established one basic rule when it comes to my best friend; namely, don't try to teach him witchcraft. Naturally I broke that rule about two weeks after the "flying boots of doom" incident. I decided to teach Marcus a simple feat of magic because in my eight year-old mind, it just wasn't fair that I was a witch and Marcus wasn't. All he had to do was to draw on his spirit and move a paper clip two inches across a smooth surface. So I drilled him for a week on how to tap into his spirit and the poor guy wound up concentrating so much that he gave himself a nose bleed every single time we tried the spell.

  Marcus was heartbroken, but over time he's learned that witchcraft isn't just something you decide to take up one day as a hobby, it's basically imprinted in your DNA or something. First off, there are witches like me and then there are Wiccans. They're kind of like… How about the difference between a paramedic and a surgeon? Wiccans are a breakaway sect of witchcraft. Like us, they have covens, but they're more into pagan rituals and practicing ceremonial magic. A true witch is someone born into a family of witches who can trace their lineage back for hundreds of years. We are gatekeepers to the human world. We have a long history of doing battle with supernatural threats and we keep close watch over the compacts: agreements with the non-humans that dwell in the mortal world. All of this is done through formal witches covens and a centralized Grand Council that meets twice a year during the summer and winter solstice. You can leave a coven and go it alone as my mother and I have done, but you still fall under the authority of the Grand Council. If you break the rules, someone from your local coven comes knocking at your door. If your offence is serious enough, well… use your imagination.