The Ghost Files 2 (The Ghost Files - Book 2) (2 page)

In all honesty, the last three homes I’d been placed in had been really,
really
good ones, but I just can’t seem to stem the bitterness spewing out of my mouth these days. I’d wrecked my own chances at a good foster home not once, not twice, but three times in the last two months.

Dan sits down and takes my hands into his. They surround my smaller ones and I marvel at how tiny they look compared to his. His turns them over and examines the tiny scars left over from the string of surgeries I’d had to undergo to correct the damage Mrs. Olson had inflicted. She’d smashed them both with a sledgehammer while I was tied down, unable to move. Just thinking about it gives me the willies. I’d taken the bandages off earlier and forgot to put them back on. The bandages help to relieve the pain and they help me to forget sometimes how I got the scars.

NO. I am stronger than her. She will not beat me. It’s a mantra I whisper over and over every time I wake up screaming. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a tough cookie, had to be growing up in the foster care system, but being tortured is something even I can’t shake off. It haunts me.

Dan, however, brings out the vulnerable side in me. I hate him for it some days, bless him for it others. He makes me feel safe enough to be vulnerable.

“Well?” he prompts when I don’t answer.

“Look, it’s not a big deal. I apologized to the kid.”

“Yeah, Mattie, it kinda
is
a big deal,” he refutes softly. “Nancy said if you get kicked out of one more home, the only place she has left to put you is a group home.”

“What?” A group home? My gut twists at the thought. The only group home I’d ever been in was Hartford House. They’d closed it down shortly after I arrived. It was also the place Mrs. Olson had staged her torture room. Group homes have an entirely different meaning for me now. I can’t go to a group home. I won’t. I’ll run away before that happens.

“Squirt, I know you’re angry about everything…”

“Angry?” I laugh harshly and hold my damaged hands up to him. “I can’t even hold a crayon and color inside the lines, Dan. Angry is not the right word.”

He sighs and I glare at him, daring him to say anything. He knows what I’ve gone through. Dan is the only person I told everything to.

“Look, Squirt. There’s not a lot that Nancy can do if you get kicked out of here. Will you promise me to try to behave and curb your temper?”

I know he’s worried. I see it in his eyes and can sense the frustration in him when he runs his fingers through his short cropped brown hair. He’d even tried to get his parents to take me in as a foster kid, but his mom didn’t want to deal with an “emotionally scarred, potentially violent girl.” I don’t think his mom has ever been fond of me, but I don’t really know why. I’m always on my best behavior around her and I’m polite, but she’s never really very friendly. His dad is a different story. He adores me, smart mouth and all. I think if it had been up to him, I’d be sitting in the Richards living room right now instead of this cesspool.

“I promise to try not to be too lippy,” I agree reluctantly.

He rolls his eyes and I laugh. “I think it’s the best I’m going to get from you, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” I grin. “So you came all the way from Quantico to talk to me about my bad behavior?”

“And to give you your birthday present.”

Present? I perk up.

Standing up, he goes over to the door and picks up a box on the table I hadn’t noticed earlier. It’s small, but it’s wrapped in garish pink and silver with little happy birthday logos all over it. I raise my eyebrows. Dan knows I’m not a pink girl.

He shrugs and hands it over. The crooked paper is a sure sign he wrapped it himself. I smile. I figured he’d have had the sales girl do it for him. Not to be one to sit and admire his lopsided wrapping, I tear it open and nearly squeal like a girl. It’s a phone, not just any phone either, but the one I wanted. The Samsung Galaxy S4. OH. MY. GOD. He did not!

Then my momentary euphoria dies. I can’t afford the service on it. The hag keeps all the money for herself and won’t let me have a phone. Why spend money on a cell phone when I can use the perfectly good phone in the living room? Evil bat.

“Dan, thank you so much, but…”

“No buts, Squirt. You need a phone with as much trouble as you get yourself into. When you told me one of your foster dads “accidentally” lost yours, I figured I’d get you a good one.”

“You don’t understand,” I say, frustrated. “I can’t afford the service.”

He gives me the patented Officer Dan grin. “It’s covered, don’t worry about it, Squirt.”

“Uh, no, it’s not,” I tell him. “You can barely afford your rent, let alone two cell phone bills.”

“I got a raise, Mattie. Don’t argue about your birthday gift. It’s not nice.”

“I’m not a nice person, or did you forget that,
Officer Dan
?” I ask.

He shakes his head and his  brown eyes darken with anger. “Mattie, the last time you didn’t have a phone, you got kidnapped and tortured.”

The old boy has a point there.

“And since you won’t promise me not to go running off after a ghost again—with no backup—you’re keeping the phone!”

We glare at each other, neither willing to lose the staring contest. He’s such a dork sometimes.

“I hate owing people, Dan,” I finally say. “You know that.”

“It has a built-in wifi connection,” he wheedles. “You can have internet for the laptop anywhere you go with wifi.”

“And I do have backup,” I tell him. I have Eric. Eric, or Mirror Boy, as I call him sometimes, had been the first of Mrs. Olson’s victims and he’d done everything he could to keep me from danger, down to accidentally hurting me. He stuck around to keep me out of trouble, or so he says. I think he just likes to peek at me in the shower, even if he denies it.

“A ghost does not constitute backup, Mattie,” he argues, “especially if no one can see or hear him but you.”

“Are you really gonna sit here and argue with me on my birthday?”’

“It’s not your birthday yet.”

It’s my turn to sigh. “I’ll keep the danged phone already!”

“Good,” he snaps.

“Fine,” I growl.

“I swear you’re worse than two year olds arguing over a toy,” Mr. Richards laughs when he walks in. I hadn’t noticed Dan left the front door open. We’d been arguing so loudly, neither of us heard him come in. Mr. Richards doesn’t look a thing like Dan, but then neither does his mother. They’d adopted him when he was just a baby. Mr. Richards is tall, stately, and his blue eyes twinkle with laughter.

We both turn baleful eyes on him. We are NOT children, despite the fact that we’re arguing like them. He laughs out loud at our murderous expressions.

“Go get your things, Mattie,” he chuckles. “We’re going out to dinner to celebrate your birthday.”

My stomach growls noisily at the very mention of food and they both give me frowns of concern. I jump up and head for my room. I’m not turning down free food!

I open the door to my room and run straight for my purse, lying on the bed. Before I can turn around, the room starts to freeze up. I don’t have time for this. I’m hungry, dang it. I turn around to yell at the ghost and stop, the words dying on my lips.

It stares at me from the barren corner across the room. The entire area around it is shrouded in black, making the pale face staring at me even more stark. Long straggly black hair flows around, shoulders hunched in, like its preparing to attack. I take an involuntary step back at the rage and hate emanating from it.

When it looks at me, I want to run. Its eyes are pools of liquid darkness, a black so deep it scares me. The thing’s mouth opens and black liquid begins to trickle out, running steadily to pool at its feet before starting to slowly leach towards me. I jump on the bed, my eyes never leaving the thing standing across from me.

Its head jerks in a motion that reminds me of those crazy people you see on TV that are insane and constantly twitch. The fingers are curled like claws and they clench repeatedly. It simply stares at me. I want to scream at it, to demand it leave me alone, but my voice fails me. There are very few things in this world that can scare me and standing across from me is the thing that just made the top of the list.

With a twisted jerk of its entire body, it starts to shuffle forward. I inch back, intending to jump off the bed, but before I can so much as move, it’s standing in front of me, the stench coming from it making me gag.

It touches me.

Chapter Two

I can’t breathe.

I can’t move.

I can’t see past the darkness of the eyes staring into mine.

My lungs burn and I want to cough, but I can’t. All I can do is kneel on the bed and scream, but no sound escapes my lips. Liquid, hot and foul, fills my mouth. It seeps out, running down my chin. The stench is unbearable, but I’m frozen, unable to defend against the hatred emanating from the thing in front of me. I can feel its need to hurt me, to consume me.

“Squirt…what the…what…is…
that
?”

Dan sees it?

“Mattie!”

I focus on the panic in his voice. This
thing
might hurt him. I won’t let it hurt him. I manage to close my eyes and I can breathe. It can’t control me if I’m not looking at it. A wail unlike anything I’ve ever heard bombards me. I can hear Dan shouting something, but if I open my eyes, I’ll be defenseless and I will not be defenseless. Not ever again.

Rotten eggs. Ghosts don’t smell like rotten eggs. What is this thing?

Cold lips press against mine and I open my eyes, startled, repulsed. Those liquid pools of ink try to pull me back in, but I can see Dan. He looks scared and that look grounds me in a way nothing else could have.

“Go away,” I tell it, my voice not as strong as I want, but at least I manage to get the words out.

It hisses.

“I said go away!” I shout, my voice strong and loud in the quiet of my room.

Another hiss and it backs away. I start to relax, but then it turns, and it’s standing next to Dan. He stumbles back, and in his haste to get away, falls flat on his butt. His eyes widen as it bends toward him. The brown in them have gone black in panic.

“NO!” I jump down and grab the only thing I can get my hands on, my laptop, and swing at it. It passes right through the thing and slams into the doorframe.

“Dan? Mattie?” Mr. Richards calls. “What is going on in there?”

With a hiss, the thing flickers and fades. It’s not like a ghost. Ghosts just pop in and out, but this thing, it was like watching an image fade in and out of a snowy channel on TV. It jerked and jumped before bleeding into the air around it.

“Daniel Aaron Richards, what are you doing?”

We both swivel our heads to see Mr. Richards glaring at his son. I know what this looks like. Dan is on his butt and I’m standing over him with a busted laptop. Oh God, my laptop…NONONONONO!!!!

“D-Dad…”

“My fault, Mr. Richards,” I tell him, my voice still shaky. “I saw a cockroach the size of a small mouse crawling up the doorframe. I slapped it with the laptop and Dan dived out of the way.”

“Cockroach?” He frowns and glances over the room.

“Yeah, Dad,” Dan nods. “What she said.”

Mr. Richards frowns at both of us, not believing a word of it, but there’s not a lot he can do. He hauls his son up and gives him a good hard stare, which causes Dan to look at the floor. He’s such a bad liar. I get the same look, but I stare back at Dan’s dad with complete innocence. He shakes his head and mutters something about peas and pods.

“If you two are done goofing off, I’d like to get going,” he says and starts to walk down the hall. “We have reservations.”

“What the hell was that?” Dan whispers as soon as his dad is out of ear shot.

“No clue,” I tell him. “You
did
see it though, right?”

He nods.

Wow. Officer Dan, the most emphatic non-believer I’ve ever met, saw a ghost. Well, not a ghost, but it was something and he
did
see it.

“We’ll call Dr. Olivet as soon as we can ditch Dad,” he says. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

He doesn’t have to tell me twice. No way do I want to spend alone time in my room any time soon.

Dan’s rickety old beat up Ford truck is parked in front of the building with his Dad’s brand new Lexus behind it. Dan and I head for the truck, but his dad cuts us off by asking us to ride with him. We share a shuttered look which causes Mr. Richards frown to deepen. My eyes widen when I realize what he’s thinking. Uh, no.

“That’s fine, Mr. Richards,” I tell him. “Your car is way more comfy than Officer Dan’s mutant truck.”

“It is not a mutant!” Dan’s outraged looks distract his dad into laughing.

“How many different shades of color are on it?” I challenge. I can see primer, red, and brown with just a quick glance. I know he said he was doing some body work on it, but right now it just looks like a mess.

“Don’t tease him, Mattie.” Mr. Richards hides a smile. “He’s overly sensitive about Myrtle.”

“Myrtle?” I almost choke on my laughter.

“That was her name when I bought her,” he defends, his face red.

“Come on, kids, get in the car.”

Dan and I pile in the backseat, which earns us another speculative look from his dad. This time Dan picks up on it and shakes his head.

The car moves into traffic and I for one sit back to enjoy the ride. His dad’s Lexus is a NICE car and it’s not often I get to ride in something so luxurious.

“There’s something I wanted to talk to you about before we get to the restaurant, Mattie.”

My attention is drawn back to Mr. Richards. He sounds very serious.

“I’ve been thinking about your situation for a while now,” he says. “Given that you’re turning seventeen tomorrow, have you thought about emancipation?”

My eyes widen. I have thought it, constantly, but it’s not something I can do, not given my situation.

“Yes, sir, I have, but I still have two more surgeries on my hands and a ton of physical therapy. I can’t pay for that.”