Thanks—this is the chapter I had to work the hardest on. I feel sorry for teens when they have to deal with adults. A lot of the time adults are clueless and try to step in and “fix” things, when the best fix is to leave it alone. Old as I am (no, I’m not old, not old not old), I remember what it was like…
Young Adult / Ghost Girl, Chapter Five
The nurse came into his room to see what the commotion was about, and he tried to tell her it was nothing and everything was all right. His pulse was racing so fast that she took his blood pressure. Though the gauge showed that his blood pressure was only slightly elevated, it took a lot of convincing before he could get her to leave, and to shut the door behind her.
His head was throbbing, the world was spinning in circles, but he couldn’t bring himself to try and sleep. Mariah’s presence was nowhere. He wanted to call her name out loud, but that would only bring the nurse. The tears he felt welling up in his eyes were making his headache worse, but how could he sleep if she was not there? There would be no more rest for him this night.
All night he tried not to think about her. All night he failed. He’d barely dropped off to sleep when the nurse woke him up to take his temperature and blood pressure. He left the TV off, and suddenly a cacophony seemed to invade his head. Thoughts from the nurses, the orderlies, the patients seemed to overtake his mind and he couldn’t shut them up, making his headache even worse.
The voice he wanted to hear was absent. “Mariah?” he thought, listening hard for her. He tried to focus, listening for her reply, but all he could hear was the chatter at the nurse’s station. He only succeeded in making his head hurt worse, so he lay back on his bed and just let random thoughts he heard pass through his mind.
He was sitting up and ready when the orderly brought his breakfast. A short time after breakfast was cleared, a young intern came in. He looked at his pupils, asking him questions while Michael heard him thinking, “these dumb kids and their skateboards. I could build a whole practice around head injuries. But I wonder why he seems so depressed.”
Michael looked at him quizzically, waiting for him to ask the question. “He has no idea, none, that I can hear everything he’s thinking. He thinks he knows so much, but what does he really know?”
At last the questions came. “Everything going okay?” Michael shrugged. That was a stupid question. “Things okay at home?” Now the idiot was trying to play shrink.
“Things are fine at home.” Michael looked at him contemptuously. “I’m one of those rare teenagers who has a great family,” he said sarcastically.
“Girl trouble maybe?” Michael started, and he heard the intern think, “Okay, this I can deal with.”
“Don’t let it get to you.” He was trying to sound comforting, but wasn’t succeeding. “These things have a way of working themselves out.”
Right, buddy. Know how to get a ghost to come back after you upset her?
The doctor paused a moment. “Well, can I trust you to take it easy if I send you home?” Michael watched as he looked him up and down, as if he wasn’t quite sure this was the thing to do.
“Yes, you can trust me to be careful. I want out of here. I want to go home.” Michael cut him off abruptly, thinking, “What an idiot, he doesn’t have a clue.”
“Well then, you’ve got it. The nurse will call your mother and she can come and pick you up. But,” he looked at the chart, “Michael, you’ve got to be careful. I know helmets aren’t considered cool, but I don’t want you to risk another head injury.”
“I’ll do anything you want, just send me home.” And get your ass out of here because you are annoying the hell out of me.
The doctor left the room and soon Michael heard a nurse think, “He wants me to make a call for a patient, as if I’m not busy enough.” But she made the call, and then told him his mother would be coming to get him before lunch.
Good, at eleven o’clock he’d be free. His mom was bringing him clean clothes so he wouldn’t have to change back into his old ones. Suddenly, he thought about going back to the house, and realized she wouldn’t be there, and relief sunk into depression.
He could set the time by his mom. She showed up at eleven sharp, wearing her favorite blue suit, but she was worried and he could hear her thinking, “I hope he’s all right. It scares me that he got a concussion. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him.”
She gave him his fresh clothes, then went and took care of the paperwork. The orderly helped him into the car, and as they made their way home he tried not to listen to her anxieties and worries. He wished that he could tune all of this out and not have to hear what anyone was thinking, let alone his family.
They had made up a bed in the living room for him. “Stay off the stairs”, his mother ordered. There was a table with his cell phone, the TV remote, and things for him to snack on. His mom kissed him, and went into the kitchen and made him a sandwich, and added an apple and a can of coke and put it on a tray and brought it out to him.
“Are you sure you won’t need me?” She wanted to stay, but he didn’t want her there. He didn’t want to listen to her; but most of all he wanted to be alone. There wasn’t much she could really do for him anyway.
“Go back to work, Mom. As long as I don’t move around much I’m fine. I’m a little dizzy, but I’ll be careful, I promise. If you stay here you’ll fuss over me and I don’t want to be fussed over. And you’ll worry. At least at work you’ll have something else to think about. The doctor said I just have to take it easy for a few days, right?”
“Not even going to give me an excuse to skip work, huh? Okay my little Titan, it’s back to work and I’ll see you when I get home. You just make sure you do what the doctor told you to.” She leaned over and kissed him.
“Deal. Now, how about letting me find a way to keep the world from spinning around in circles? Love you mom.”
“You too, kid,” and she was out the door.
He forced himself to eat his sandwich and apple, even though he really didn’t have an appetite. The only thing that really tasted good to him was the coke. He kept missing a certain pair of blue eyes and try as he might, he just could not make her appear. He even thought about going upstairs and seeing if she would come to his room, but dismissed that thought. He wasn’t so terribly eager to try the stairs just yet.
And he missed her, oh god how he missed her. It was all Short Round’s fault and that stupid concussion. He didn’t think she was a demon or monster, but for one brief moment the dream had come back when she looked at him. Why couldn’t he have controlled himself? Couldn’t Mariah understand his brain has just been jostled really badly? If he’d been in full control of himself he could have stopped himself in time, and explained that he’d had a nightmare due to the concussion.
How was he going to get her back?
His mom had put today’s newspaper next to the sofa and he picked it up and tried to read, but the letters swam on page and his head started to spin from the effort. He opted instead for lying back on the pillows and taking a nap. The only time he didn’t have to worry about being dizzy was when he was asleep.
He drifted off to sleep, trying not to think about her, but his thoughts were full of her, even in his dream. They were kissing and she was smiling at him, then she started to back away. Each time he took a step closer she would draw further back, her smile slowly turning into a frown.
He reached his arms out to her, but she began to scowl. “You promised, you promised; you said you loved me, how could you think that of me?” She began to shimmer and slowly faded away.
He could not see her; he could not hear her voice. “Mariah, I’m sorry. It was all a big mistake. How could I think anything bad of you?” He looked around but she was nowhere to be found.
He began to run, aimlessly at first, and then found himself running up the street to the house where her body was hidden in the basement. His limbs were sluggish, even the three short blocks between him and the house seemed to stretch further and further and he grew more out of breath. Then the nausea from his concussion hit him and all he could do was stand and breathe heavily, watching in frustration as the house stood mockingly out of reach.
“How could you?” asked the voice again, and then there was nothing but blankness, as if he was in no place and no time. Here he would be trapped for eternity, always seeking her, always calling for her, but never finding her. He cried out in frustration.
“Michael, Michael.” It was her, it had to be. But he looked up and saw Kit’s face.
“Michael, you were having a nightmare of something. You looked really scary.” Kit’s face looked worried. Suddenly his kid sister looked too old for her age. She shouldn’t look that way he thought. She’s only a kid.
“Hey Mike.” Dewey stood next to the sofa and punched him gently on his shoulder. He looked for a chair close to the sofa, then, finding none, sat down on the floor, and accepted the cold can of coke Kit fetched for him, careful not to encourage her too eager smile.
“Some privacy, Kit?” Mike looked meaningfully at her. She shrugged her shoulders and then with one last longing look at Dewey, she went upstairs.
“Who are you and what have you done to my sister?” he asked, only half in jest. She’s got a crush on him. I don’t know if I like that, he thought.
“Transference,” Dewey replied. His parents were psychologists, and he could pull psychobabble out of the air like a magician. “I was on the bus and I saw her. I was coming over here anyway, so I told her I’d walk with her.” He dropped his light tone and became more serious, “She really is afraid of that house, you know.”
“She may have good reason, but I don’t know how to prove it. I can just see me telling the cops that I believe there are two bodies buried in the basement of a house up the street. That would go over really well, don’t you think? Especially if I told them that I knew because a ghost of one told me about it.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it.
“Speaking of ghosts, where…”
Michael cut him off. “I don’t want to talk about that, okay? Just leave it.”
“Touchy.” Dewey stretched out on the floor. “But okay, I’m cool. Your business, your problem. If you want my help, you’ll ask for it.”
Michael smiled. That was the thing about Dewey—he could back off something and not take it personally. Short Round was intense, and sometimes he’d go off on you over some reason that only he understood. Dewey was more accepting, more laid back. There was a strange balance between the two. They complimented each other in a way that Michael could see, but not quite understand. Sometimes he’d even feel like an outsider in their company. Not deliberately, but because he had no part in that strange synergy between them.
“What are we going to do about your sister, Mike?” Dewey took a long drink of his coke. “I’ve never seen anyone as afraid as she is of that house. Pretty soon we’re going to start having a lot more daylight and then maybe she’ll feel safer, but she shouldn’t have to be afraid to walk down her own street.” He looked down at the newspaper, “Hey, what’s this?”
He picked up the paper and started skimming an article. “Mike, have you seen this?”
“It makes me too dizzy when I try to read. What did you find?”
“I’m not sure you’ll want to hear this.”
“C’mon dude, what is it? You can’t just tell me about something, and then say, ‘oh, never mind!’”
“Why not? You and Short Round have been doing it to me for years.” He sighed theatrically, “Okay Mike, here goes: ‘Disappearance of 15 year old girl puzzles police’.”
“What?! Let me see—oh wait, that might not be a good idea. Is there a picture? I think I could look at a picture.”
Dewey handed him the paper. There was a color photo of a teenage girl whose resemblance to Kit made Mike uneasy. Light brown hair, almond-shaped blue eyes, the too-thin face, even her wide mouth with its narrow lips. It could almost be a picture of Kit two years from now.
“Just read me the highlights of what it says.” He handed the paper back to Dewey.
Dewey scanned the paper. “Okay, her name is Suzie McCann. She’s our age—goes to our school! She disappeared from the skating rink three nights ago. She told her friends she was going to get a drink but she didn’t return. No one saw her leave. Her friends called her parents to see if she’d gone home, but they hadn’t seen her. They reported her disappearance to the police, but they didn’t act for forty eight hours because they figured she might be a runaway.” He set the paper down for a moment. “Why do they always think we’re runaways? That sucks.”
“Let me guess the rest,” said Michael, “they’ve found no trace of her. They’re asking anyone who might have any information or who might have seen anything to contact them. If she’s run away, her parents are pleading with her to come home. If not, they’re asking that anyone who knows anything to please come forward. They’re offering a reward for any information that leads to her recovery.” These were words that were used almost every time a child disappeared. He didn’t have to stretch his imagination far for this.
Dewey applauded. “Not word for word but close. There’s no description of a vehicle since there’s no witnesses. They aren’t coming out and saying it, but it’s like she just vanished. Mike, you don’t think this has anything to do with Kit, do you? Jeez, I mean, just because she’s scared of that one house and imagined…”
“Maybe she didn’t imagine it,” He’d spoken more sharply than he meant to and tried to soften his words. “She says this creep looked right at her. She wasn’t just scared, she was terrified. Maybe there is more to this than her over-active imagination. I know my sister. I know the difference between her little girl hysterics and when something is really wrong. And I think the something wrong is that guy she saw.”
“Doesn’t mean we can connect a creepy neighbor with the disappearance of a girl we don’t even know. Even if you hadn’t hurt your head and we could go out running around, there’s at least a hundred places, in or out of town, that someone could hide a body. We’re just skate rats, not detectives.”
“Dewey, are you up for doing something stupid for me, since I can’t do it?”
Uh oh, I don’t like the sound of this. Dewey looked at Mike, waiting. Mike wasn’t one for hair brained ideas, but lately the friend he’d known all his life sometimes seemed to have someone else walking around in his body.
“Dewey, if it seems safe, if it looks like there’s no one watching you. The third house up from ours, with the foxglove growing in the gutter. Go check the garage and see if it’s open. Look for a maroon van. If it’s there, check and see if it looks like there’s any fresh dirt on it, or something. Just check it out, and call me when you get home and tell me what you found out.”
Dewey laughed mirthlessly. “That is totally whacked Mike. Checking out someone’s car? You think I can get away with it even if I agree to try? You’re starting to scare me. First you tell me you made friends with the ghost of a girl who was murdered. Now you’re trying to solve a disappearance of another girl. You’re acting like you think you can figure all this out, and I’m telling you that you can’t.”
“Please.” Mike waited, but wasn’t receiving the reply he’d hoped for. “You’re the one who said we couldn’t protect Kit, remember? You said he’d have to be stopped.”
“I was talking the cops, Mike, not playing Hardy Boys. Okay, here’s the compromise. If it looks safe, and if I feel okay about it, I’ll take a quick look. He paused for a moment, and took a deep breath. “I’m starting to wonder about you. Maybe Short Round is right; you’re mess around with things you should leave alone.”
“He told you that? I’m not trying to put you in danger, all I’m asking is for you try to look at this guy’s van.”
Dewey sighed. “And trespass on private property. I don’t know who’s getting weirder—you or Short Round. I’m used to an ordinary life. My parents are pretty ordinary people, for shrinks. Now all this weirdness is going on I didn’t ask to be part of; but it looks like I’m being drawn in because I won’t leave my best friend hanging. I’ll think about it, okay? As much as I’d like to walk away from this, I’m a little curious.”
“Thanks, dude. I’d do it, but I feel like crap. The world is starting to spin again. See you tomorrow?”
“If I’m still alive.” Dewey laughed and let himself out.
Mike sighed. Maybe Dewey would do it. Dewey tended to be more thoughtful than his two friends, Right now he was probably debating as to what he would do while he walked up the street. He’d have to pass the house, but he could either keep on walking, or give in to curiosity and look.
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fruityness12 reviewed Version 3 -
Read 91% of the Item
I really really like this plot, but I think this was fit for adults more than young adults. There is some a few spelling errors, but overall, this is a great story!!
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FrakKevin reviewed Version 3 -
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So far I’ve read every chapter up to this one. With part 4 I was kind of drifting away from your story, but this one bought me back. It didnt seem so cluttered and the plot didnt have so much going on. I like it started off light, I actually laughed at the questions the stupid intern was asking. Your characters grew and I actually now know his sister’s name and what kind of person she is. It was way to confusing with ghost and dead girls runing to pay attention to his sister. Overall story is moving along fine…like the teen drama and will be reading part 6
PIMckenzie reviewed Version 3 -
Read 100% of the Item
Alright, I like where you are going and the story intrigues me. You have something there that you can develop into a good novel.
Some words don’t flow right, one that struck me was “Blankness”, it just doesn’t click. Another thing that doesn’t click is the dialogue. It seems a bit disjointed and requires concentration to follow. I have no idea how old you are as I never check who writes before I read, however,you seem to try to create a dialogue between two teenagers but some of the conversation , expressions and words used sound too “adult”.
Otherwise, I would like to read the entire thing.
As far as writer block is concerned, one night you are going to wake up at two O’clock in the morning and write three chapters in a row before sun-up and it will flow from there.
Keep writing, Best of luck
PIM
misskara reviewed Version 3 -
Read 100% of the Item
omg – i can’t wait for the next chapter! i haven’t even read the previous ones – but this is great! you are talented, it’s so suspenseful, intriguing, and personal. i would buy it if it were already for sale! love love love it!!! thank you!
oneshot92 reviewed Version 3 -
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Very well written. You might want to try using different quotations to seperate the thoughts from the dialog.I think it’s something that my son might like to read.
Sweettouch reviewed Version 3 -
Read 100% of the Item
The plot thickens. You have written an entire chapter with no Mariah and I miss her. Am finding ghe story moves quite well and your characters are very nicely developed. I am looking forward to more. I found no errors or things that have to be changed. Maybe a little more on the missing girl would be helpful.
W_Guerrant reviewed Version 3 -
Read 100% of the Item
‘The nurse came into his room … and to shut the door behind her.’
This section a little wordy, maybe find a better way to say it or play the scene out, but the summary version has it feeling awkward.
‘Uh oh, I don’t like the sound of this.’
I think that should be in quotes since it’s someone talking.
‘you’re mess around’
Messing around.
A great story, very good for young adults especially, I like the plot and setting. Keep up the good work.
trident reviewed Version 1 -
Read 9% of the Item
I’ve not read the rest of this story, but commend you on this chapter. The characters are clear, and the story vibrant.
My question to you is why is this in the short story category? This is a novel.
Having said that, it almost could stand alone, if you paid a little more attention to the closure of the passage. Perhaps, where he’s “trying not to think of her, you could give the reader more background to the story.
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