Authors: Apryl Baker
Why won’t the little bugger just take a hint and go away? I shiver as the cold around me intensifies. This ghost is like a dog with its favorite chew-toy. It’s not giving up.
“Not here,” I mutter. “Later.”
“See, Mary, even Mattie knows we should have this discussion another time,” Mrs. Cross tells her daughter.
“Uh-uh.” Eyes closed, I shake my head. Following two different conversations is annoying. “I wasn’t talking to Mary.”
“What?” Mrs. Cross frowns. “Then who?”
Another long sigh drifts out of me. Explaining is too hard.
“Mom, think about it for
like, five seconds. Who else would she be talking to?” Mary snaps. “Can’t you feel how cold it is?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Cross looks around curiously. “But…Oh!
You’re
the only one who can see the-the whatever. Got it.”
Yep, she gets it even if she doesn’t want to. Mrs. C isn’t a freak show like me. I’m the Ghost Girl whether I want to be or not. And
that’s all thanks to my mom’s success at murdering me at the ripe old age of five. Yes, I died for a few minutes and came back, only to see ghosts.
My ghost mentor, Dr. Olivet, explained this stuff to
me once. He says I’m a Reaper…yeah, weird. Reapers help souls cross from this plane to the next, meaning they ferry people from this world through what I call The Between—a place full of very scary things that want to eat you. I was
supposed
to stay dead, but because I didn’t, this girl now has reaping powers. Try explaining this to, well…anybody. It sounds nuts, but to me it’s very, very real.
For my whole life I could make ghosts believe that I couldn’t hear them. Then they’d go away. That worked until I saw the ghost of my foster
sister, Sally, who’d been murdered. At the time, everyone believed she’d just run away—except for one young rookie cop who took a chance and believed in me. That’s how I’d met Officer Dan. I’d ended up in the clutches of Sally’s killer, but with the help of all those ghosts I’d worked so hard to ignore, I survived and saved Mary, too.
That’s why Mary believes I can see ghosts. She’d been close to death and her spirit-soul-whatever sought me out, asking for help. At least I’d managed one good thing in my miserable life. Saving her was worth all the torture I went through at the hands of the crazy serial killer who just happened to be my then-foster mother.
Mary and I had been bruised and shattered in more ways than could easily be described. You don’t walk away from that without developing serious bonds. She’s family, always will be, no matter what. Mary and her mom accept me for who I am, for what I can do, without censure or ridicule. They gave me a home where I’m free to be my own weird self, ghosts and all. I’ve never had that before and I’ll always be grateful to them.
“I’m still here,”
the ghost says.
Persistent little bugger. “I said
later
,” I whisper-shout and make the mistake of looking to my right.
I rear back and fall off the ledge. It’s all I can do to not scream. The girl can’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. She’s wearing a strapless black party dress, like for a school dance, but it’s ripped and torn and one of the matching shoes is gone. Her skin is a grayish blue; the body is bloated like it’s been in the water for a very long time. One eyeball
hangs from its socket by something that looks like a bloody string. The other blue orb is glaring at me. Her entire body is covered in bruises. There are burn scars on her arms, upper chest, and around the lips. Cigarette burns, maybe?
“What happened to you?” I whisper. This girl definitely tops the list of most gross.
“You happened to me, Mattie Hathaway,”
she hisses.
“This is All. Your. Fault!”
She launches herself at me.
There is nothing but burning anger in the eye of the dead girl hurtling towards me. She means to do me serious harm. What did I ever do to her? And how is her death
my
fault, of all things? I’ve never even met the chick.
Like a flash, I’m up and moving across a huge expanse just inside the airport entrance. No way can I do anything while in front of all these people
—even if I knew how to stop her. Bathroom, bathroom, I’d seen one behind baggage claim. That’s the best plan I have right now.
Then I burst through the open-style doorway. “Sorry, sorry, got the runs,” I say in apology to everyone staring at me like a crazy person. Those simple words clear the bathroom better than anything else. No one likes the smell of diarrhea. I’m never embarrassed to use this excuse. It works. Simple as that.
After I look in all the stalls, I breathe a small sigh of relief. I’d learned a long time ago to open stall doors to make sure no one was actually in them. It always surprised me to find out how many high school girls will hold up their feet in a stall just to hear gossip. I’d only made that mistake once when I screamed at a ghost to leave me alone. It was the last time I’d ever acknowledged one—until Sally’s ghost showed up a few months ago. Rumors are nasty, especially ones about
me
. After that school, I always attached myself to the in-crowd. Better to be the freak on the inside than the freak on the outside.
Now where is the danged ghost? She’d lunged at me like there was no afterlife and she doesn’t bother to follow me? The nerve of the little chit.
“Look, I don’t have time for your drama,” I call out. “I have places to be. If you need help, I’ll
try
, but just not right now.”
“She hates you,”
another girl-ghost voice says, making me whirl around, but I don’t see anyone. I hate it when they hide.
The bathroom door opens and two flight attendants stroll in. I sigh. Why can’t people just stay out of the bathroom for a full five minutes? Women go to the restroom more in an hour than men do all day. It’s flippin’ ridiculous.
I head into one of the empty stalls and hope to God the new ghost won’t pop in with me.
“Why does she hate me?”
I ask, switching to internal chatter mode. No point in letting anyone hear me and think I’m crazier than I am.
“She blames you for her death and our deaths.”
Our deaths?
“I don’t understand. What did I do to cause someone’s death?”
“I don’t know,”
she whispers close to my ear.
“But I know it
is
your fault.”
“How can it be my fault if you don’t even know what I did?”
I try not to cringe from the cold slowly settling into my bones. She’s so close to me.
“The only thing I remember is your name,”
she tells me.
“I heard it over and over as I died. What happened to me happened because of you.”
“How did you die? Can you say?”
God, what a horrible question. Do I want to know the answer?
“Pain. Lots of pain. I remember screaming, crying out for someone to save me, but no one came. It hurt so much.”
My body shudders again, and not just from the cold.
“You said I’d caused all of you to die,”
I whisper.
“How many girls?”
“I’m not sure,”
she said, her voice sounding more like a death rattle.
“Maybe eight?”
Eight? I cringe. Eight girls dead and they
all
think I’m responsible?
“Where did you die?”
She needs to give me something to go on so I can tell Dan. He’ll chase down a lead…well,
if
he’s still talking to me. I did deck his girlfriend, but then again, he threw me out of the way to help the little backstabber. Should I even be talking to him at all?
“I…I…”
The screech begins at the base of my skull and explodes behind the eyes. The pain—her pain—echoes through my head. And just like the other ghosts—their screaming feels like a hot knife slicing through me. I hate knives.
“Shh,” I whisper, hands covering my ears, but it doesn’t help. “You’re hurting me.”
“Good,”
another voice whispers.
“You need to suffer like we have.”
Freaking awesome. This one isn’t the ghost from earlier. It’s new, but she’s just as angry. Hands grip my arms, squeezing so hard I know there’ll be bruises. The cold bites into me and I clench my teeth against the need to scream. Okay, toilets are flushing and water is running. That means the flight attendants must be getting ready to leave.
“What in the world…” I hear one of them say. Chances are the mirrors are icing over.
“It’s so cold,” the other flight attendant says, her voice sounding a little worried. As well she should be. There are some very pissed-off ghosts in here. “Come on, let’s go. If we miss the first employee bus, we’ll be waiting a good thirty minutes. It’s shift change and I want to see my kids.”
“I know you think I’m responsible for your deaths,” I say when I hear the ladies leave.
“You are,”
they both hiss.
“Regardless,” I interrupt them, trying to focus past the pain in my head. “I will help you, but not right now. I have to be at the police station soon. If you find me tonight, I will do everything I can. I promise.”
“How can you help us?”
another voice pipes in. This one is calmer, younger than any I’ve heard so far.
“The others said we’re dead, but I don’t believe them. I don’t feel dead.”
I sigh. She sounds confused. The typical ghost can’t accept the fact they’ve died and need help to realize it so they can cross over. I just learned last week if those ghosts don’t cross over, their
confusion turns to rage and then they become what is called a vengeful spirit. Then all they want is to cause a whole lot of pain to the living. Not a chance I’m letting the little buggers turn all vengeful on
me
. Those things hurt. My entire body can attest to that.
“It doesn’t matter what she thinks she can do. She has to pay.”
My entire body stiffens. It’s the girl from outside. She’s mad as all get out. What to do, what to do? I’m trapped in a bathroom stall. Probably not the brightest idea in hindsight. Time to go on the offensive.
“Look, I don’t even know you so there
’s no way I am responsible for your death! I’m not paying for something I didn’t do, now back off!”
“Ohhh, she’s getting pissy
.”
The angriest of them laughs.
“Maybe we should show her why this is her fault.”
Show me? My eyes widen. Oh, no way. That’s only happened to me once and I refuse to do it ever again.
“Don’t make me feed you to The Between,” I threaten. They shrink away from me immediately, afraid. Every ghost has glimpsed The Between. It’s the void between this plane and the next, full of monsters just waiting to gobble up an unprotected soul.
“You can’t hide from us, Maattiieeee…”
They’re whispering all around me, their voices sounding more like the hissing of a pit of snakes than anything else. Pain explodes behind my eyes and the temperature in the room turns from freezing to a burning cold. The water is running and I know without looking every reflective surface is covered with a sheet of ice. These ghosts are
seriously
pissed off.
“Yeah, well, you try something and it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” I say softly. “I will feed you to the wraiths without a second thought.”
Fear is something I’m tired of feeling. I never used to be afraid of anything, but since breaking my own rule and talking to the spooks, my life has been one terrorfest after another. So, I’ve had it. I won’t let them make me afraid anymore.
Well, I refuse to
let
them see they can make me afraid, at least.
I take a deep breath, and then push the stall door open and step out. My feet hit ice and I go sliding, landing on my butt.
Water has overflowed the sinks and now the tiled floor is iced up. Well, that’s just freaking great.
The lights in the room flicker as I carefully pick myself up off the floor. Where are they? The room is so cold it physically hurts, but I force back the pain. I’ve felt worse than this. These little ghosts have nothing on the ones I’ve faced over the last week. “Come out, come out, come out,” I call quietly. “Not so brave when you know I can take you out, huh?”
A hollow chuckle comes from one of the stalls and I whirl, desperate to see where the little buggers are hiding. Too late, I realize my mistake. My feet slide out from under me and I hit the floor again. But this time my head bounces really hard.
“What’s wrong, Mattie?”
The angriest ghost laughs harshly in my ear.
“Not so brave now that I have you at
my
mercy?”
Her hands reach out and grasp my head.