Reveal (Cryptid Tales) (6 page)

“
We used to fish off that dock, you know. I caught a big bass in that pond the year before, well before I left.” Wendy looks nostalgic.

“
Hey Wendy, can I ask you something?”

She snaps back to our current reality. “Sure.”

I pause, rethinking my question but decide to go for it anyway, “How did you, you know, die?”

“
Well that’s easy Shay,” she says with a sad look in her eyes, “I killed myself.”

She turns to look out over the churning black water. It’s been disturbed from the rain and as it drizzles the water continues to move. I put my hands in my front sweatshirt pocket to keep them warm.

I can see her slipping into her past. She seems to get a dazed look whenever she’s back in her time. She continues to look out over the lake and takes a deep breath to begin.

“
It was summer and I liked to swim. I thought I could reach the bottom of the lake if I tried hard enough. I filled my lungs with air and swam hard to the bottom. I brushed the silt floor with the tips of my fingers. When I approached the surface I saw my daddy paddling around in our dingy.” She gestures to a half submerged dock. “He said I was in too deep and I should work my way back to shore. I was angry with him. I knew I could do it and I could go longer holding my breath, I was a fantastic swimmer. Daddy used to say I swam like a fish since I grew up in this lake. So I dove back toward the bottom. But I had moved too far in the lake. It was too deep. He was right; I would never reach the bottom. The water swirled around me as I struggled to breathe. I couldn’t get back to the surface to take a breath. I remember it getting dark and feeling weightless.”

She looks down at her hands, “I had drowned and I had done it to myself. He tried to warn me and I wouldn’t listen, it was my own fault. I watched him as he dragged my body out of the water and tried to revive me on the shore, but it was no use. I was already gone. He cried for days after he buried me in the backyard.” If ghosts could cry, this is where she would have done it. She was sniffling, but no tears were shed. Ghosts don’t have any fluids like live people do, so essentially they don’t cry, but they also don’t need to eat or sleep or any of our other daily activities.

Wendy continues her depressing tale, “I watched him for years, but eventually he left our home and moved away. He never remarried and I just stayed in this house while it rotted away. I’m tied to the home, not him, so I can’t leave Marksville. Only adult ghosts travel with people tied to them by experience. Kids stay near landmarks because their experiences are mostly based in their environment. It’s rare we attach to a single person, so as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t follow him. But eventually he returned… in a coffin. It was in his will that he wanted to be buried with me and Mama. I guess he kept the property just for that.”

Finally she looks back to me, “I miss him, Shay. I just want a chance to see him again. I thought by having
you
bring me here I would be able to.”

I get that she’s done telling her story and it’s time for some action. “Alright where do we start?” A rock floats by my head. I nearly jump out of my skin; she is a freaky little girl. “Do you have to do things like that?”

“
Sorry. It’s just, well the blood thing… I need you to cut yourself, remember?”

How could I forget? Ugh, gross. I grab the rock out of the air and push it into my left palm. A small tear in my skin develops right near my age line, the line that extends from my wrist to the middle of my palm. My mom used to be into palm reading, wait until she sees that I cut my life line right in half,
super
, she’ll be thrilled. After the blood begins to pool in my hand and I’m starting to sway Wendy reminds me why we’re here.

“
Alright now, drop your blood over here on this patch of grass.” She points and I see a small crooked stone standing out of the ground.

“
OK.” I walk over without looking at my hand. I crouch down and rub my bloody left hand in the wet grass, the coolness of the ground feels good on my fresh wound.

“
Now,” Wendy says floating behind me, “think really hard about me and my dad. Think of how you want him to return to this place. You’re performing a summoning, only really strong paranormals can do this, and I know you can.”

I break my concentration for a minute to look at her, “A paranormal?”

“
Shay focus! It just means you can see and speak to ghosts.”

Right, just my normal life.

She whines, “Shay,
focus
.”

OK, OK. Think, dead father, you were here, come back to your little girl. I’m thinking about Wendy, the water, I’m freezing… thinking, thinking. I take a deep breath and the rust taste fills my mouth, I try to focus on it.

Then it happens, that electric current I feel off of Wendy is suddenly at my feet, or maybe it’s in my feet? I take another deep breath and attempt to focus as the electric current settles in my feet. It’s climbing up my legs, weird. The current fills me up making me feel warm until it touches my fingertips. Then like lightning it shoots out of my fingers, I open my eyes and I can actually see it. Little tiny blue lightning bolts come out of my fingers, this is absolutely insane. And then I see him, just a shimmer at first, but then he’s there. A tall light haired man, dressed in clothes from the early 1900’s. I know it worked, this is Wendy’s dad and I brought him to us.

Relief floods me, but so does sudden exhaustion. I fall to my knees, feeling the squish of the wet ground against my jeans. I can hardly keep my eyes open as I see Wendy’s reaction to seeing her dad for the first time in all these years. She’s overjoyed, jumping up to hug him tightly.

I hear a man’s voice say, “Thank you. This is all I’ve ever wanted. I have missed her so much.”

I nod at him. I just manage to get out, “You’re welcome.”

I am so tired and cold, so cold. Maybe, if I just sleep, for a minute, yeah that will work, just a little nap. I close my eyes not realizing there’s no one really there who can wake me up.

My fingers curl around the cool side of my pillow and I breathe in the scent of Tide,
mmmm home
. I sit up so quickly it makes my head spin. Wait, home? How did this happen? The last thing I remember was being at the old blue house with Wendy and her dad. Did I actually do that? Did I bring him back to our world? And if I did, where was he to begin with? Oh snap, what kind of trouble am I in now?

I race to the window and pull back the light lavender curtain to see my car sitting in the driveway under the maple tree where I usually park it. But how? I mean could I have driven myself home and went to bed without even remembering it? I guess I could have, I was really tired. My head hurts and since it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work till two this afternoon I decide a couple more hours of sleep couldn’t hurt. Maybe things will become clearer then. I climb back under the covers and wrap the sheets around me. I drift off easily into a dreamless sleep.

When I open my eyes I can smell the coffee brewing downstairs. I feel groggy but better, not as drained. My legs fall over the side of the bed as I rub my eyes. Yesterday seems like a dream, but then I see him and I know what I did was real.

“
Jeremy?” I say as I look at the small boy in my bedroom. “Is that you?” He smiles that big toothy grin I grew up loving. He’s back in his six year old form, with his tan wrinkled pants and white top.

My eyebrows must crinkle together because he walks over to me and says, “Oh Shay please don’t cry. I’m here, it’s alright.”

He holds my hand in his, his little fingers attempting to intertwine with my own. I’ve rehearsed what I would say to him if he ever came back a million times but suddenly my mind is totally blank. I sit there paralyzed by disbelief.

“
Jeremy, I’ve missed you so much. I am so sorry I sent you away. I never meant to…” my words start to sound more like sobs and I realize I’m crying.

“
Shay look at me,” Jeremy says, “I understand what you did, and you don’t, so give me a chance to explain.” I take a deep breath and nod my head while wiping away my tears with the sleeve of my hoodie, I realize the material still smells a bit like rain. I watch him like a hawk, I don’t want to look away and have him disappear again.

“
Shay, when you told me to leave you banished my spirit from having contact with you. That didn’t mean I couldn’t see you, but it did mean that you couldn’t see or contact me. While I was banished, I was doing tasks for other ghosts and that’s how I met Wendy. She wanted to bring back her father and she knew that I had previously had contact with a person who may be able to do that. That person is you. We both agreed if you used your power to bring him back it would break the banishment because of the deal you made with Wendy. The deal that said she would connect you with me, if you helped her. Luckily our suspicions were correct.”

It shocks me to hear such sophisticated talk from a six year old. It will take me some time to remember he’s been on our plane for over seventy years.

I am astonished that this whole thing was a plan all along.

“
You knew I could do this? You really thought I could bring him back?”

He frowns, “Well I knew you could bring him to this plane, but only if he was stuck on another. If he had crossed over then you wouldn’t have been able to, but since he was so depressed when he passed, we guessed he was lost on another plane.”

I try to wrap my head around all of this, “You mean to tell me there are other planes?”

He smiles at me sweetly, almost like he’s explaining all of this to a small child, instead of an adult like myself.

“
Yes Shay, many, but the main two are the living and non living. Our planes are parallel, so we constantly live a similar life on one of the planes.”

“
Is that where you were when I banished you?”

He shakes his little head. It always amazes me how his bangs never fall in his face, although he can change his appearance by choice, it never changes naturally like mine does.

“
No I was still on this plane. You’re strong, but not that strong. You can’t banish someone from a plane, but apparently you can summon them back.” He smiles a coy smile, like he knew all along that I could make this happen. Suddenly something clicks in my head, “Wait is this why you wouldn’t go looking for my father? Because you wanted me to summon him on my own?” Excitement floods me; I
will
be able to see my dad again. I already start to focus on him in my mind. Almost dreaming of the way he smelled and felt when I notice Jeremy pursing his lips.

“
No, I’m afraid not. I wouldn’t go looking for your father because I have no idea where he is. I’m sorry Shay, but when I said I wouldn’t help you find him it’s because I can’t. I can’t track any people or spirits, just places. It’s the disadvantage of passing away when I was a child. So if you had moved away, it would be extremely difficult, if not totally impossible to find you. You would have had to summon me, which until yesterday you didn’t know how to do.”

I still feel like I’m behind on the conversation. “What did I even really do? I mean I just thought about what he might be like. It was just this idea of a person that came into my head and then it happened. He was there, at least I think he was. What if I accidently summoned someone else?”

“
You won’t, your instinct will tell you if who’s coming is the right spirit or not. You’ll just have to focus harder next time. You did great for your first time. We can talk about all of this later, but for now I have to go. I need to check on Madame and the children.” He looks over his shoulder, ever since this conversation started I’ve been feeling like Jeremy is a little jumpy and rushed.

Jeremy has always worried about his ghost family, constantly going back to the woods near the orphanage to check on them.

“
But wait, when will I see you again? And how did I get back here? Did you do this?” I gesture to my bed and my clothes, finally putting together that it’s the same outfit I wore yesterday.

“
All of this will be explained in due time. Can you come to me this time? I want to stay near my family tonight. I’m worried about them. Rebecca has been saying she’s seen the man in the black coat.” He suddenly looks chilled.

Jeremy’s death wasn’t just caused any fire; it was a fire set by a cold blooded killer. He watched the children burn in the house and Jeremy says he can remember hearing him laugh, a cold harsh sound that he can’t forget. Ghosts don’t sleep, but if they did this man would fill his nightmares. When he’s worried about his family it’s usually because the man in the black coat has shown up again. Apparently he likes to revisit his work. It’s totally disgusting and I wish they would just catch the bastard who did it.