Final Breath (15 page)

Eli didn't even wait for
GOOD BYE
. "Did you die in this room?" he asked.

The indicator moved to
YES
again.

"How old were you when you died?" Eli whispered.

Then the planchette seemed to stall on him. Finally Eli gave it a nudge toward the row of numbers. He knew he was cheating, so he closed his eyes. The first number the indicator stopped on was
1
. Then it moved to
4
, and then
GOOD BYE
.

A fourteen-year-old named Carl had died in this bedroom. "How?" Eli asked. "How did you die?"

The planchette slowly skimmed across the board to the letter
L
, and then
A
. It seemed to take forever for it to move from letter to letter. After eight letters, Eli wondered if it was ever going to make sense:
L-A-C-E-R-A-T-I.
But the disc kept moving until it spelled out the word:
L-A-C-E-R-A-T-IO-N
. Then it said
GOOD BYE
.

Eli climbed off the bed and went to his desk. He grabbed his Webster paperback dictionary, and looked up the word. He found something under lacerate. "To tear roughly," it said.

He glanced up at his Dad's Root Beer clock and realized it was 3:40 in the morning. The bedroom didn't feel so warm anymore. Eli figured that last
GOOD BYE
from Carl would be for a while.

His mother was wrong about the Ouija. Instead of stirring up their ghost, that long session with the Ouija board seemed to have made
Carl
more docile. The next few nights went by without any
otherworldly
incident, though Eli felt more scared than ever--sleeping in that room where someone was murdered. He tried to get more information from the Ouija about fourteen-year-old Carl and exactly how he'd died. But it was frustrating, nothing at all like that first night. When he didn't come up with letters that spelled gibberish, Eli knew he was controlling the planchette himself. So he wasn't sure about Carl's last name, who had
lacerated
him, and how long ago it had happened.

His mom used to say that he quickly grew tired of his toys. And the Ouija wasn't much different. After a few days, the Ouija board went up on his closet shelf and stayed there.

Then on the night of July Fourth, when they'd found the front door open and that strange mess in the kitchen, Eli had figured Carl was back. It had been their first
unexplainable incident
in a while--unless his mother had been keeping something from him. Eli realized the next day--when he'd overheard her and the neighbor lady talking outside--she'd been doing exactly that. Obviously she'd known all along about a suicide in the apartment, but she hadn't told him. Eli wondered what else she was hiding.

Well, he could keep secrets, too. His mom didn't know about Carl. The whole thing started to make some sense to Eli. The woman who had lived in this apartment years and years ago had
lacerated
her fourteen-year-old son, Carl, before killing herself. Eli still wasn't sure what that meant, and he casually asked his mother at the breakfast table the other morning.

"Lacerate?" she repeated. "Oh, it means to tear something up, cut it up."

"You mean--like cut it with a knife? A knife could give someone a
laceration
?"

She nodded over her coffee cup. "That's right. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Somebody used the word on a TV show yesterday, and I wasn't sure what they were talking about." He went back to eating his Honey Nut Cheerios.

Eli wanted to find out more about Carl and his mother. But he didn't even know their last name--or when they'd died. He'd tried to google
Tudor Court, Seattle, murder-suicide,
but his search results had been a weird mix of real estate listings for the apartment complex and articles about different unrelated murders in the Seattle area.

He'd thought about asking his neighbors in Tudor Court about the murder/suicide, but he was worried it might get back to his mother.

Eli hadn't been sure how he could learn more about Carl--if that was indeed the kid's name--until he'd heard Marcella say just a few minutes ago: "Someone dead is communicating with you."

Her hand was still on his forehead. "I see a person very much like you," she said finally.

"Is it a teenager?" Eli asked. "Is the dead guy a teenager--like me?"

She took her hand away, sat back, and sighed. The dog lazily got to its feet, then rested his head on her thigh. She scratched him behind the ears. "It might be you in a past life, Eli. I can't be sure. Do you have any reoccurring dreams? Sometimes, that's your past life trying to communicate with you." She lit up another cigarette.

"So you're saying this dead guy who's communicating with me is actually
me
in a past life?"

Marcella took a long drag from her cigarette and nodded.

It sounded pretty screwy to Eli. "Well, do you know what my name was in my previous life?" Earlier she'd figured out his name had three letters. Maybe she could tell him something about the name of this dead teenager. "Does his name start with a
C
?"

"The answer is in your dreams, Eli," she said cryptically. She set her cigarette in the ashtray, then reached across the table. "Give me your hand again."

Eli obeyed. He glanced outside the booth. The sun had disappeared behind some clouds. He didn't hear any more speeches from the guest celebrities over by the mega-store. His mom was probably looking for him.

Marcella set his hand down on the table, palm up, then stroked it. "I usually don't tell people bad news unless they ask to hear it," she said. "In your case, I think I can help you. Shall I tell you what I see here?"

His mouth open, Eli nodded.

"You're in danger. I see dangerous forces all around you, Eli. And I'm sorry, but you will face a loss--very soon."

Eli stared at her. He felt a sudden tightness in the pit of his stomach--like a warning. He tried to tell himself that she was just jerking him around. But lately--ever since the Fourth of July--he'd felt something bad was going to happen. Maybe it had to do with their ghost; maybe not. But the danger was there.

Even if he didn't want to believe Marcella's prophecy, in his gut Eli knew it was true.

Sydney tried not to lose sight of the man with the blue
59
T-shirt, but it was difficult. They'd finished up the interview portion of the program, and placed a long table in front of the celebrity guests. This setup gave audience members had a chance to come up on the stage and get an autograph or chat privately with her, Terri, and the Channel 6 weatherman. People kept crowding in front of her on the other side of the table, blocking her view. Then someone would step to one side or move their head a little, and she'd see the swarthy man again--among the audience, just a bit closer to the platform each time.

The network had sent a stack of her latest 8 x 10 glossies publicizing
On the Edge
. She signed about a hundred of those. She couldn't believe that some people still had 8 x 10 photos of her from her figure-skating days. She even signed a few old copies of
Making Miracles: My Own Story.
All the while, she kept an eye on that stranger in the blue T-shirt. He'd been getting closer and closer to the celebrity platform, and now he stood in line right by the platform steps.

It made her a bit nervous. But what could he do to her in front of all these people?

"Sydney, can I come around there and get my picture taken with you?" asked a large forty-something woman with honey-blond hair.

Nodding, Sydney got to her feet. "You bet. What's your name?"

"I'm Shirley!" the woman squealed. "Oh my God, this is so exciting! I love your
Mover & Shaker
stories!"

Sydney shook her hand. "Well, thanks, Shirley. Get on back here."

While the woman eagerly trotted around to her side of the table, Sydney stole another look at Mr.
59
. He was standing on the platform steps now.

She and Shirley put their arms around each other, while Shirley's friend took three different photos. Shirley asked for an extra autograph for her daughter, who wanted to be an Olympic figure skater. Sydney signed it:
To Audrey, Best of luck on & off the ice.
Shirley thanked her over and over, then gave her a hug and moved down the line.

Sydney stole another look toward the other end of the platform. She didn't see Mr.
59
on the steps or in the line of people. She gazed out at the crowd dispersing in front of the store. She tried to catch a glimpse of him. That blue T-shirt should have given him away. But Sydney didn't see him anywhere. It was as if he'd disappeared.

"Hi, Sydney," a woman was saying to her. "I don't watch your show, but I'd really love an autograph."

"Um, sure," she said. She scribbled her name on one of the 8 x 10s, then handed it to the woman. "There you go. Excuse me."

She walked around the table. Several people in line said hello to her. She smiled and nodded back, but she kept glancing out at the parking lot--and beyond. Eli was probably on one of the rides over by the fun fair area.

Gil had given up the mike and was signing autographs. Sydney asked one of the big-shots with ValuCo if she could use the microphone to make an announcement. "Um, my son was supposed to meet me here fifteen minutes ago," she explained.

The middle-aged man, sweating in a business suit, nodded. "Help yourself, Sydney."

She went to Gil's mike, and switched it on. "Eli McCloud!" she said, trying not to sound too shrill. She kept thinking,
he's really going to love this
. "Eli McCloud, please meet your mother at the platform by the ValuCo front entrance..."

She repeated the announcement, all the while gazing out at the parking lot for the stranger in the blue T-shirt. There was still no sign of the man.

Sydney hoped she'd find him--before Eli did.

"What exactly do you mean?" Eli asked timidly. "What kind of danger am I in?"

Marcella stroked the palm of his hand and said nothing.

Finally, Eli pulled his hand away. "You--you can't just tell me something like that, and expect me not to freak out. When you say I'm--
facing a loss
, do you mean somebody I know might die?"

Marcella nodded. Her expression was unreadable behind those dark glasses. "Someone close to you," she said. "It may be prevented, though. I know a way to help you."

The German shepherd stirred a bit as Marcella hoisted a big cloth purse off the floor and plopped it in her lap. She fished out a pencil and a notepad. "Write down your address," she said.

Eli wasn't sure if the woman planned to send someone over to rob them later or what, but he scribbled down their address at Tudor Court.

"I will create some good luck for you," Marcella said. "But you must help me. In order for this to work, you need something valuable. Do you have a twenty-dollar bill on you?"

Eli stared at her and blinked. "Um, I'm not sure," he lied. He still had a twenty from the twenty-five bucks his mother had given him.

"It can work with a ten-dollar bill," she sighed. "But a twenty is better--the stronger the value, the stronger the luck. You don't have to hand it to me, Eli. I just need to
see it
."

Reluctantly, he reached into his pants pocket and found the twenty. He showed it to her, folded up. He wondered if she'd suddenly lunge for it.

Instead she leaned back in the chair, took her cigarette from the ashtray, and puffed on it. "Unfold the bill and show me the front side."

Eli was obedient. But he balked as she reached over and touched the top right corner of the bill. "Tear that corner off--so the twenty mark is separated from the rest of the bill," she said.

Eli hesitated.

"Go on. Do what I tell you. It'll bring you luck. Tear it off, and stick the torn piece inside your pocket. You'll need to keep that in a special place for the next twenty days."

Eli figured he could always tape it up later. He carefully tore the top right corner from his mother's twenty-dollar bill, then tucked the detached piece into his shirt pocket.

"Now, let me tear off the opposite corner," she said, reaching for the twenty.

Eli held the bill very tightly while Marcella ripped off the bottom-left-corner 20 mark. She held that corner piece to her heart for a moment and lowered her head as if in prayer. Eli could see her lips moving. Then she gave him the torn-off little section. "You need to put that in another special place, Eli. Keep it there for twenty days."

He slipped the second severed corner into his shirt pocket. Something about all this didn't feel right.

She glanced at his address scribbled on the notepad, tore it off the piece of paper, and slapped it down on the table. "Fold up the twenty-dollar bill, set it on top of this paper, and then fold over the paper so you can't see the bill anymore. The bill needs to be completely covered."

Eli squinted at her. "Are you going to make my twenty bucks disappear?"

She sighed. "I'm trying to help you, Eli--"

He pushed his chair away and quickly got to his feet. "I'm sorry," he said. He shoved the mangled twenty back in his pants pocket. The knot in his stomach got even tighter. "I--I'm not comfortable with this. I've got to go."

The dog suddenly stood up and let out a bark.

"Don't put the bill back together for twenty days!" Marcella warned. "It's bad luck!"

But Eli didn't stop to listen. "I'm sorry!" he called, hurrying out of the booth. He only glanced back to make sure the dog wasn't chasing him. It was all clear; no sign of Marcella or her German shepherd.

As he turned forward again, Eli almost slammed right into a lean twenty-something man with a dark complexion. He looked Italian or Latino; Eli wasn't sure. "Sorry!" he said.

But the man said nothing. He wore sunglasses, a baseball hat, and a light summer jacket, which he must have just bought--or stolen--from ValuCo, because it still had part of the sales tag sticking out of the sleeve. It was weird how on this hot day, the guy wore the beige jacket zipped all the way up to his neck.