“I’d love to be there with you. But I know you don’t think it’s safe for me. Can I at least drop off my computer for you?”
A crashing sound came from downstairs.
An icy wave of dread washed over him.
“I’ll call you back,” he said. “I need to check out something.”
“Be careful, Drew.”
He rushed downstairs. He was certain the noise had come from the basement.
Poised at the top of the basement staircase, he flipped the light switch, chasing away the blackness.
Silence lay over the area below.
With a shaky hand, he drew the .38 from the holster. He held the gun in both hands, muzzle pointed at the ceiling, and slowly descended the steps.
He saw what had caused the noise. In the corner of the room, a board game had been tossed to the hardwood floor: Scrabble.
Cold air wafted toward him and caressed his face. The coolness felt as welcome as a breeze on a sizzling day.
“Sammy.” He smiled. “You’re a genius, man.”
In the kitchen, he spread the crossword game board on the dinette table and dumped a couple dozen wooden letter tiles out of the sack.
The board overlapped the jagged crack caused when Mika had flipped the table. The fracture served as a vivid reminder of how much was at stake.
“Sammy, I need some answers,” he said. “I need to find out how to deal with Mika.”
He remembered that during previous communication, Sammy had answered questions that he presented verbally. He decided to try the same approach now, to save time.
The air around him thickened, cooled.
Sammy was nearby.
He leaned over the game board. “Earlier, you said that you and Mika are from the same place—you called it a sad place. Do you know the name of the town or city?”
The letter tiles began to slide across the board and form a phrase.
FAR FROM HEAR
“Okay, you told me that before,” he said. “But what’s the name of the city, Sammy?”
DONT NO
He sighed, tried to hide his frustration with the ghost’s inadequate answers to basic questions.
“Is the sad place a house?”
YES
Okay, this was progress. Until now Sammy hadn’t told him exactly what the “sad place” was.
He flipped through his notebook and looked at his notes. Earlier, Sammy had said, “sad place is hers.” Mika therefore owned this house, and Sammy had dwelled there, too.
“Good, Sammy. Where is this house located?”
MORNENG
That puzzling word again. Morneng. What the hell did he mean? Hunkered over the table, he decided to temporarily change the line of questioning, and hope that he could lead Sammy back to this subject and a more coherent answer.
“Let’s talk about Mika,” he said. “What is she?”
WOMAN
Was Sammy trying to be a smart-ass? Or was he merely simple-minded?
“Listen, she can’t be an ordinary woman, not with the stuff she’s able to do.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Is she some kind of psychic—meaning, she’s got lots of weird powers?”
CAN DO LOTS OF STUF
“Okay, I can believe that, then. She’s always able to find me, wherever I go.”
SEE FAR
“See far? You mean, she does some kind of remote viewing thing, can sort of focus on me in her mind and know where I am?”
YES
It was perfectly unbelievable. And perfectly sensible.
“That means I can never get away from her, Sammy. Is that true? Will she always be able to find me?”
CANT SEE VEREY VEREY FAR
His answer seemed to indicate that Mika’s ability to detect his location had limitations. But what was the extent of her talent? How far away did he have to run? A hundred miles? A thousand? Ten thousand?
He doubted Sammy would be able to provide a more quantitative explanation. Back to the house.
“Sammy, is the sad place very, very far from hear?”
YES
“Where?” He was so eager to know he asked the question without realizing that it would take them back to conversational ground they had already covered.
MORNENG
Morneng, morneng, morneng.
He wanted to pull his hair out. What did that word mean?
He got an idea.
“Wait here, Sammy, I’ll be right back.”
He ran upstairs to his office and dug a state road atlas out of a desk drawer, where he kept some of his reference materials.
He checked the names of cities and towns in Georgia. Mika had told him that she lived somewhere in the state, hadn’t she?
But in the entire state of Georgia, there was no town called Morneng.
It might be a misspelled word. Sammy sure wasn’t going to win a spelling bee competition.
Morning, maybe?
He examined the atlas. There was no town named “Morning,” either.
He returned to the kitchen. The spectral coldness waited near the table.
“Morning?” he asked. “Is that the name of the town, Sammy? Morning, like ‘good morning’?”
SAD PLACE IS MORNENG
“The sad place is called morning?”
Sammy rapped the board, causing the tiles to jump, but the message remained the same: SAD PLACE IS MORNENG
Andrew gnawed his lip. Maybe he meant “mourning” as in grieving. But a check of the atlas confirmed that no city named “Mourning” existed in Georgia.
“Sammy, I don’t understand.”
Sammy tapped the board again, like an impatient teacher: SAD PLACE IS MORNENG
“Mourning like crying? The sad place is crying?”
Another knock: SAD PLACE IS MORNENG
Andrew dragged his hand down his face. This was going nowhere.
“Listen, how can we get rid of Mika?” he asked.
DONT NO
“What can we do to stop her?”
A tap: DONT NO
“Can we make her quit?”
Another tap: DONT NO
“Don’t you know anything at all?” he asked. “Damn, you sound like a stupid kid!”
The cold, coagulating air grew thicker.
“I didn’t mean that, Sammy. I’m just confused and scared. I’m sorry.”
The ghost spelled another message.
AM A KID NOT STOOPID
And the coldness faded away.
He pleaded for Sammy to come back. He repeatedly apologized. But the ghost did not return. He was angry with him, apparently.
“Good job, man,” he said to himself. “Pissed off the only one who could help you.”
He wrote down what he recalled of their communication. He read through his notes, tried to make sense of what Sammy had told him about the sad place, which he considered the linchpin of understanding Mika’s background. But the meaning of Sammy’s cryptic statements eluded him.
One thing had become clear: Sammy was a kid. It explained his poor communication skills.
“Why couldn’t I have gotten a grown-up ghost?” He laughed bitterly at the absurdity of the situation.
He took a Heineken out of the refrigerator. He sat at the dinette table, drank deeply, belched.
The thought of drinking himself into a stupor appealed to him. It would take the edge off the anxiety that chewed at his guts.
Even as he considered the thought, he knew he wouldn’t do it. Drunk, he would lose full control of his mental and physical functions, and with Mika on the prowl, he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable. One or two beers would have to be the limit.
As he sipped the brew, Sammy’s baffling messages spooled through his mind.
Sad place is morneng.
He was missing something. A vital link that would explain all of the clues. But what was it?
Sad place is morneng.
Why was he convinced that it was something obvious? Sammy wasn’t Shakespeare, crafting intricate and metaphorical language. He was a kid, almost painfully simple and direct.
He worried that he was analyzing this too rigorously. The logical left side of his brain doggedly attempted to grind out a solution—but inhibited his creativity and intuition.
Sad place is morneng.
He took another sip of beer and let his thoughts settle. From his experiences writing fiction, he’d learned that the muse often visited unexpectedly, after he had given up trying to wrestle an idea to the surface.
He went to the pantry, opened a can of Planter’s almonds, and poured out a handful. He munched on almonds and sipped the Heineken.
Without any purposeful effort, his mind circled back to what Sammy had told him.
Mika and Sammy hailed from the same place. The sad place. A house. What kind of house would an heiress to a fortune own?
An estate, probably. Like a mansion.
A mansion . . .
He stopped eating.
The beer bottle felt much colder in his hand. Like a brick of ice.
He had an idea. An idea that frightened and excited him simultaneously.
He needed to talk to Sammy. Immediately. The ghost was his only hope of proving what he suspected.
He ought to knock himself upside the head for insulting the kid.
Loud music struck up in the basement. The kitchen floor started to throb.
He placed the beer on the counter.
It had to be Sammy down there, fooling around with the stereo. Throwing a temper tantrum. Just like the child he was.
He went to the basement door.
A disco song played downstairs: “Dance With Me,” by K.C. and the Sunshine Band.
“That you, Sammy?” he said. “I said I’m sorry!”
The music increased in volume. The walls vibrated and the door trembled.
“Turn it off!” he said. “Stop messing around!”
The banging music played on.
Feeling like a parent needing to discipline a boisterous child, he pounded down the steps.
But Sammy was not there.
Mika was.
Chapter 33
M
ika was dancing. Standing at the base of the stairs, Andrew froze.
On the other side of the room, the patio door was half open, allowing an evening breeze to whisper inside. The locksmith had changed the lock on the door only an hour ago, and he had made sure that it was secured.
It proved his fears: locks were useless against Mika.
Twirling around the hardwood floor, she waved at him. “Hey, baby. Come on and dance with me!”
Laughing, she whirled. Snapped her fingers to the beat.
As she neared the furniture, it moved out of her path; the sofa, chairs, and end tables, pushed by an invisible force, glided to the walls.
She barely noticed.
Fear covered him, like a blanket of ice.
What would Mark Justice do?
Justice answered:
You can’t fight her, Andrew. She’s got unbelievable powers. Get the hell outta here.
But terror had rooted his feet to the floor.
“We’ve got plenty of space to boogie,” she said. “I loved salsa dancing with you. Get your booty out here, darling.”
“Where are you from?” His voice was hoarse.
“You’ll find out, baby.” Grinning, she shimmied toward him, hands extended to entice him to dance with her.
He finally broke his paralysis. He drew the revolver out of the holster. His hands shook as he aimed the gun at her.
“Stay the fuck away from me,” he said.
“Put that down, Andrew.” She stopped dancing. Her eyebrow twitched.
He curled his finger around the trigger.
“Get back,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot. I’m not playing with you.”
“I warned you.” She raised her hand, as if to signal someone to stop.
An ice-cold sensation clamped over his wrists. He gasped in surprise and pain. The strange force wrenched his wrists downward with almost enough savagery to break them.
He cried out. The gun popped out of his hands and clattered to the floor.
As swiftly as it had seized him, the coldness faded.
He examined his wrists; red blotches burned on his skin.
“Don’t ever do that again, Andrew,” she said. She smiled, faintly, as if pleased by his horror. “Now get out here and dance!”