Poltergeeks (9 page)

  "Julie Richardson, get your butt out of this bathroom right now! Marcus, stay in the hall!"

  I could make out my mom's silhouette through the splashing water and dust, her hands glowing white with magical energy.

  Ticked off would be an understatement to describe the tone of her voice and I was probably going to be grounded until my wedding day but it didn't matter. I let out a huge sigh of relief as I scrambled across the slippery bathroom floor and dove out the door for the relative safety of the hallway.

  And that was when I witnessed the difference between a novice witch and an experienced practitioner who was in 'mother bear protecting her cubs' mode.

  "
Filmus!"
she roared, as she sent a blast of magical force from her glowing white hands that roared straight into the ceiling. The floor shook as I staggered up to Mom and stood beside her to see an enormous vaporous orb descend from the ceiling.

  "What's that?" I coughed.

  Mom didn't take her eyes off the orb. "It's whatever was trying to kill you," she snapped. "And just so you know, what you just experienced in this bathroom is
nothing
compared to what's going to happen to you when we get home."

  Oh yeah,
definitely
grounded until my wedding day.

  The orb hummed and crackled as my mother's magic contained the spectre. She reached into her pocket and strolled with confidence to the wall above where the sinks used to be. She drew a large white circle and stepped back. She reached into her purse and pulled out a glass vial containing an oily liquid. She coiled her arm back, drew up her left knee to her chest and then pitched the vial into the center of the circle. It shattered on impact, spraying the oily liquid all over the wall, then Mom calmly walked up to the chalk circle and whispered a word of magic.

  "Whatever just happened here wasn't a poltergeist," she said, eyeballing the chalk circle. "Now step back because we're about to be exposed to the torment of all the spiritual energy inside that construct being drawn to the circle. When it contacts the blessed oils I threw at the wall, it will leave the mortal plane and fall upon whoever sent it here."

  She was right. This was no poltergeist – it was an assassination attempt.

  "I release you," my mother whispered. The orb dissolved in a shower of white sparks. It struggled in mid-air as a roil of spectral energy flew out of the chalk circle. I gaped as I watched a series of wretched-looking faces appear and disappear from within the orb, their hollow eyes and silent, screaming mouths opening and closing, as if bellowing their torment or gulping for air. The wall sizzled, sending tiny plumes of blue smoke up to the ceiling. An unearthly scream filled my ears and a wave of nausea gripped me, forcing me to my knees.

  I held my hands over my ears as the scream filled the hallway, causing the flipped over lockers to shake, and then two very clear, bone-chilling words filled the air:

  
"
Endless night!"

  A deafening, mournful wail filled my ears followed by a blinding flash that turned the interior of the girl's washroom photo-negative. A gale-force wind blew through the doorway, sending me sprawling across the hall. Mom tried to stand her ground as a tidal wave of heat blasted her, followed by an electric-blue ball of compressed force that shot out and hit Mom in the face, snapping her neck back violently.

  "Mom!" I screamed. I watched in horror as her body sailed through the air and crashed into the wall behind me. Another jet of wind blew through the entrance, lifting me off my feet and tossing me into the corner like a discarded toy.

  Marcus rushed to my mother's aid. I reached into my pocket and grabbed the copper amulet. I clenched my jaw tightly as I gathered every ounce of focus I could muster and shaped it into another dome of protective energy. One of the bathroom stall doors that had helped protect me from the flying sinks from hell cut through the air like a giant rectangular Frisbee. It smashed into large splinters of broken plywood and painted sheet metal as it crashed against my protective shield. My amulet burned inside the palm of my hand and I shut my eyes tightly, summoning an almost primal level of power I'd never thought existed within my magic.

  I stood up and struggled over to the doorway, becoming enveloped in the supernatural energy. Ectoplasm poured over my body in a shower of chilled slime and dripped onto the floor.

  I shrieked with rage.
"Begone whoever the hell you
are! I command you leave this place!"

  The cloud of energy swirled violently. I ground my teeth together and thrust the amulet out like a battering ram.

  "
Begone!"
I roared.

  Amazingly, at the utterance of my command, the tornado of energy disappeared into the chalk circle with a lingering hiss. I dropped to my knees as I tried to catch my breath, and then I glanced over my shoulder at my mother.

  Marcus was kneeling over my mother with a terrified look on his face. I went to them, hunkered down and gave her a hard shake.

  "Mom? Are you alright?"

  She didn't move.

  "
Mom?"

  Marcus ran a shaking hand across her right cheek and whispered, "She's ice cold."

 
 

 
 
 

The ambulance arrived within twenty minutes and the doctors confirmed Mom was in a coma three hours after that.

  This was my fault.

  I leaned on Marcus as we sat in the private waiting room of the intensive care unit at Rockyview Hospital. It reeked of antiseptics. I was numb all over and I barely noticed the heavy-set woman, Ms Iverson, from social services kneeling down in front of me.

  "Where's your father, Julie?" she asked in a sympathetic voice.

  "He's gone," I whispered, my throat was raw from sobbing for the past three and a half hours.

  "Gone… You mean your parents are divorced?"

  "He's dead," I said shaking my head. "He was killed in a car accident when I was four. I barely remember him."

  Ms Iverson took my hand in her sweaty palm and tried a reassuring squeeze. It didn't work.

  If only I'd decided against going back into the school. If only I'd just waited outside for Mom like she asked, I'd be at home studying calculus while she was in the kitchen making supper. As if he'd been reading my thoughts, Marcus leaned in and whispered in my ear.

  "Don't blame yourself, Julie. Your mom knew what she was doing and there's just no way to have foreseen this. You have to know that she took every precaution."

  I slumped against his shoulder. "But it
is
my fault," I sniffled. "I screwed up. I should have got out of the school and waited for her to show up, but I wanted her to finally see what I could do, that I didn't need her being so over-protective all the time. Now she's hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines."

  I ran through the facts in my head. What I'd thought was a poltergeist was in fact a spiritual construct. I'd read a creepy message in what looked to be old-fashioned English with a warning that witches were somehow a target. I should have high-tailed it out of there, but I didn't. I was cocky and over-confident and now my Mom was in a coma. She was breathing with the help of a ventilator and no doctor in the world could bring her back because what put her in the hospital couldn't be cured by medicine.

  Ms Iverson sat down beside me and flipped a yellow sheet over a pile of other yellow sheets on her clip board. She made a few notes and then clicked her pen and slipped it into the breast pocket of her blazer.

  "Julie, is there anyone in your family we can call?" she asked quietly. "Under the eyes of the law, you're still considered to be a minor. If we can't find next of kin, we're going to have to take you away for a few days while a court decides where to place you."

  "That won't be necessary," said a stern female voice from the doorway to the waiting room. I looked up to see a portly woman with a pair of cat's eye glasses and thin grey hair pulled back underneath a fake leopardskin hat.

  The social worker stood up and started flipping through the pile of sheets on her clip board. "And you are?" she asked, without looking up.

  "I'm Julie's legal guardian," the woman said, whipping out a sheet of paper from her matching fake leopard-skin purse. "Have a look and you'll see everything is in order."

  Ms Iverson gave the woman a sceptical glance and snatched the sheet out of her hand. She held it close to her nose and I could see her lips moving as she read the document. The woman with the garish hat and purse waited patiently as I gave her a quick scan. She was dressed in a similar spotted overcoat that looked like it was a throwback to the Fifties. Her black satin gloves stretched up to her elbows and there was an enormous emerald ring with a stone the size of a ping-pong ball on her right ring finger. Her thickly painted lips curled up into the creepiest version of a reassuring smile that I'd ever seen, and I was struck by how her eyes sparkled under the fluorescent lights of the waiting room.

  Marcus nudged my ribs with his elbow. "Who's that?" he whispered.

  "I have no idea," I said, still eyeballing the woman.

  The social worker started jotting down information on her clip board of power and handed the document back to the lady in the cat's eye glass.

  "Betty Priddy?" she asked as she scribbled away. "Is that with two d's?"

  "That's right," the portly woman said, the smile frozen in place by pounds of makeup.

  "I'm going to need an address and contact information," the social worker piped up.

  Ms Priddy rolled her eyes and gracefully waved two fingers in front of the social worker's face. Ms Iverson's clipboard slipped out of her hands and landed on the floor with a loud smack.

  "You don't need our address and contact information," Ms Priddy said calmly.

  The social worker glazed over and I could have sworn I saw a thin line of drool slither out the corner of her mouth.

  "I don't need your address and contact information," she said in a monotone.

  Ms Priddy's smile broadened. "We'll be staying at Julie's house."

  "You'll be staying at Julie's house," the social worker repeated like a robot.

  Marcus nudged me again in the ribs, good and hard. "Am I going crazy here or is that lady in the fur doing a Jedi mind trick?"

  I nodded slowly as Ms Priddy sauntered over and folded her arms. Her thickly painted smile didn't even twitch as she gazed down at me, then at Marcus and back to me again.

  "Julie Richardson and Marcus Guffman," she said thrusting out her hand. "I'm Betty Priddy and I'm just tickled to death to have finally met you."

  Marcus slowly rolled his eyes up to Betty's face and reluctantly held out his hand. "Um, hi?" he said nervously.

  She shook his hand good and hard and I could tell she must have had a strong grip because Marcus winced for half a second as his arm flopped up and down like a rubber hose.

  I glanced at the social worker. She was still standing like a mindless zombie and hadn't picked up her clipboard. "Who the hell are you, lady?" I asked in a weary voice. "Mom never once mentioned anyone named Betty Priddy before."

  She sat down beside me and the smile on her face dissolved into a look of compassion. "I'm your legal guardian," she said with a hint of softness in her voice. "A long time ago your mother made arrangements for your care should anything ever happen to her. I'm sorry to have to be here, Julie, but I'm not sorry to have met you finally after all these years."

  All these years?

  I didn't know whether to bust out bawling again or start cursing up a storm. Mom and I might get on each other's nerves nine times out of ten, but we'd made a pact to
never
keep secrets from each other. So why hadn't she told me about Betty Priddy? I took a deep breath and regained my composure because I was already an emotional train wreck, but I knew my Mom well enough to know there had to be a sound reason why she kept me in the dark.

  "Can I see that letter you gave to the social worker?" I asked firmly. Betty nodded and handed me the folded document.

  It had the Seal of a Public Notary on the bottom and I recognized my Mom's signature. I scanned up the page and read aloud:

  "Statutory Declaration. I, Donna Regina Richardson of the City of Calgary in the Province of Alberta hereby make oath and say that I am the mother of Julie Elizabeth Richardson. That I hereby name Betty Priddy to be the legal guardian of my daughter. Sworn before a Commissioner for Oaths in the City of Calgary in the Province of Alberta."

  I handed the document back to Betty and gave my head a hard shake. "She wrote this less than a month after Dad died!" I gasped. "Why?"

  Marcus put his arm around me again and I slumped in my chair. My head was swimming with questions and I didn't have the energy or inclination to ask them.

  "Your mother made this declaration to protect you, Julie," the strange woman said. "The reason she hadn't mentioned me before is because my presence hasn't been needed until now."

  I looked up at her as my eyes flooded with tears. "I saw what you did to the social worker," I said, choking up. "Mom always said that screwing around with people's heads was forbidden. She told me that any witch who did so would face swift punishment."

  Betty's painted lips curled up into that creepy looking smile again, and she placed a reassuring hand on my knee.

  "That's right," she said softly. "But who said I was a witch?"

  Marcus gave her a puzzled look. "If you're not a witch, then what the hell are you, lady?"

  Betty squared her shoulders and tugged at her leopard skin coat.

  "I'm your tutelary, Julie. And we have a lot of work to do."