Spirit Mountain (5 page)

Chapter Eleven

I supposed I was more cunning than I liked to admit, but every teenager could relate. Two pillows stuffed under my sheet in perfect body form were enough to throw off my aunt and uncle, should they try to come in and check on me. I knew that wouldn’t happen because when I locked my door, they always left me alone. But it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.

Even though I was expecting company, the light tap on my window made me jump. After one last tuck, I ran over and unlocked it for Logan. I thought it was funny. For most teen girls, when a boy sneaked into their rooms, it was for a different reason... But for me, it was to investigate a ghost story on a legendary mountain in a small town with more secrets than its population. Not your average romance.

“Dang, it’s cold out there.” Logan rubbed his hands together, cupped them and breathed into them.

Reaching up, I brushed snowflakes off his jacket and hat. “I’m nervous, are you?” To be honest, nervous was an understatement. Part of me still hoped my whole disappearing act through a portal in my room to meet my distant relative’s spirit was actually a dream.

“Nervous to sit on your windowsill and be sucked into a portal to who knows where? Nah, I’ve been through crazier.” He laughed as I slapped his arm.

“Okay, here’s the deal. We will be on the other side for ten hours or so. Let’s make sure we get all the information we need to figure out if Ty is actually connected with the death of your sister and the mayor’s daughter.”

He nodded. “Wanna hear something creepy?”

“Creepier than all of this? Uh, yeah.”

His deep breath filled the room. “When I left earlier today, I decided to detour to the library.”

“What’d you find out?”

“I’ve heard it mentioned before, but I’ve always ignored it as part of the mountain’s legend.”

“Yeah?”

“Read this.” He pulled out a photocopy of an article he’d found on microfiche in the library. The article appeared old, and at the top right corner, I saw the date that confirmed its age.

“1922?” I whispered. I dropped my eyes to scan the headline: ‘Could Castleborough Be Cursed?’ Dropping my eyes lower, I now focused on the subheading: ‘Every mayor of Castleborough has lost their eldest daughter in a freak tragedy over the past one hundred and twenty-seven years.’ I brought the paper down to my legs and stared at Logan. “Is this real?”

He shrugged. “Listen, I went to the library and searched: ‘weird things in Castleborough,’ and this is what came up. There wasn’t much more, which is strange, too, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah. Did you read the article?”

“Damn right I did.”

“And?” I asked. “How did the girls die?”

“One died in her sleep.”

“That’s not
that
weird, Logan.”

“It is when the autopsy report suggests she died by drowning. Yet, there was no water anywhere around her… except for a pendant with a vial of water she wore around her neck. Who drowns in their sleep?”

“Okay, that’s weird.”

My alarm on my cell phone announced that the time was now 8:55 p.m. “We should get in position. We don’t want to miss our window of opportunity.” I laughed. “Pun intended.”

Logan laughed, which was quite nice. Every girl likes it when her crush laughs at her jokes, even the bad ones. He took a deep breath. “Okay, New York, here goes nothing.” He moved to the windowsill and sat on it as I slid my back against his stomach so we’d go together. “If this doesn’t work, you owe me big time.”

I laughed inwardly. “Trust me, Logan. It’s going to work.”

The five minutes between 8:55 and 9:00 p.m. were the longest five minutes of my life. Holding onto Logan’s hands, which were wrapped around my waist, I closed my eyes, rested my back against him and took a deep breath. Moments before my alarm sounded, he pressed his lips against the top of my head in an endearing, ‘I’ll protect you’ sort of way.

When Logan gasped, I knew he realized we were becoming transparent. Deliberately going through the portal made me even more anxious than when I wasn’t sure what would happen next. Before he could say anything, we were sitting on a heap of baby doll body parts.

“What the heck?” Logan jumped up, swiping the baby dolls off him. “Those are creepy! What’s that all about?”

I tried not to laugh. “Remember, I told you about my aunt and her dolls?”

“Oh, my God, New York, you were telling the truth.” He circled in one spot, scanning around the perimeter of this new dimension. “I don’t know what to say.”

I reached my hand out for him to take it. “We need to find Ty. Last time I was here, I only had a couple of hours before I went back through the hole. The problem with this place is that time seems to speed up. We have to keep a close eye on our watches to make sure we don’t miss the portal.”

Logan nodded, marveling at the wondrous world we’d just stepped into. Everything seemed to glisten with the colors of the rainbow. Red flowers, bright green trees and purple butterflies with firefly-like lights attached to their wings made the place wondrous. If not for the eerie feeling in the air, one might’ve designated this place the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World.’

“I can’t believe this. Where are we?” Logan scanned high and low, taking in everything as we walked. Without warning, he stopped, catching me off-guard. He yanked me to the right.

I glanced at him curiously. “What are you doing? We need to find Ty.”

Behind an array of shrubbery was a clear view out to the top of the snowy mountain. Logan parted the greenery and gasped at the view. “Beth, look at this.”

Slipping past the bushes and stepping beside him, I gawked at the feeling of standing at the top of the snow-white mountain, staring down on the town of Castleborough and beyond. “This is unreal.”

Logan reached to put a hand up against the potential barrier, keeping the snow on one side and the warm beautiful elements on this side.

I flashed him a curious glance. “What are you doing?”

“I want to see what this is. From our town, we can’t see this place.”

“What if it messes something up?”

He gave me a sideways look, his brown eyes contemplating my fear. “Fine. Let’s throw something through it.”

We both glanced at the ground to see if we could find a rock, stick or any other object we could throw. I remembered my mysterious snowball attack from earlier. “Oh, wait, I know. I have a rock in my pocket.” Stuffing my hand into the front pocket of my jeans, I pulled out the rock that had been wrapped in the snowball. “Allow me.” I smiled.

Logan crossed his arms over his chest and stepped back. “You throw it, and I’ll watch where it lands.”

Taking three steps out of the shrubs, I cocked my arm back and prepared to throw it at the clear film that created a barrier between us and the mountaintop landscape in front of us.

“Wait!”

Logan and I both turned around to see Ty coming at us with his hands up and his eyes locked on the rock in my hand.

Chapter Twelve

I let out a deep breath. “Oh, my God. Ty, you scared the life out of me!”

“Don’t throw that rock.” Ty cautiously stepped toward me as if I carried a landmine that might blow up if he got too close.

Logan leaned in and whispered in my ear, “So, this is him, huh? The guy who killed my sister.”

“He didn’t kill—” I was unable to finish my sentence before Logan rushed toward Ty and tackled him to the ground.

I shoved the rock back in my pocket and jumped on Logan’s back. “Get off him. He didn’t kill anyone!”

All Ty kept saying, as he blocked the blows from Logan, was, “The rock. Where did you get the rock?”

Logan lifted his right shoulder and easily flung me off his back. I flew sideways and landed on the ground with a thud and a sharp pain in my side. “Logan!” I coughed.

He held Ty by the neck, pinning him to the ground before flashing me a quick glance through suddenly intimidating eyes. “What? I’m kind of busy here.”

“Get off him right now. I’m telling you, he didn’t kill your sister.” I crawled over to them and pushed Logan, barely budging him. “Logan, please. Stop it.”

He pointed at me with his right index finger, glaring through beady eyes. “You better not be wrong. My sister saw this guy in her dreams! I remember her telling me about his freakish dark eyes.” He slowly moved off Ty and knelt at his side.

Ignoring Logan, Ty, still lying on his back in the grass, whipped his head to me. “Beth, where did you get the rock?”

I didn’t understand his obsession with the rock. He didn’t even seem to care that Logan had darn near choked him. “It was in a snowball someone threw at me earlier today.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course.” Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the black and gold boulder, a little bigger than my palm. I handed it to Ty. As he studied it, I shrugged and flashed Logan an uncertain glance. “What is it, Ty?”

“Just as I suspected.”

“What?”

“This isn’t a rock. It’s a message.”

Logan and I narrowed our eyes and glanced back at the fleshy spirit being in front of us. “Can you explain that to us?”

Ty nodded. “Watch this.” He cracked open the rock and tossed a green powder into the air. As if the substance was alive, the powder didn’t fall toward the ground or coat anything in its path. It simply hovered about, rearranging itself as it glowed before us.

Startled, Logan and I took a step back. Within a matter of seconds, the powder had spelled out the words: ‘
You’re Next’
in the air between us.

I whipped my head from Logan to Ty. “What the heck does that mean?”

“It’s
him
, Beth. I’m telling you.”

“You said that last time. Who is this
him
? What are you talking about and what is that rock if not a rock?”

Ty stood, motioning for us to follow him. As we moved away from the portal to my room and further into the forest, I feared we’d lose our way back, but decided to trust Ty. We needed answers. If I really was going to be the next to die and had only a few days to live, I needed answers, and I needed them fast.

Ty turned to me, his shimmering dark eyes scrutinizing my face. “When the townspeople killed me a hundred years ago, my spirit got stuck here, unable to leave or move on...”

“Right. We know that from the letter your sister wrote.”

Ty nodded, not appearing the slightest bit surprised by my revelation about our knowledge of the letter or his sister. He maneuvered further into the forest that clearly wasn’t the same mountaintop we could see from Castleborough below. “But when I got here, I wasn’t alone,” he continued.

“What do you mean?” Logan asked.

“There was another spirit here. One filled with rage and anger like I’ve never felt before.”

“There’s an angry spirit
here
?” I asked.

Ty nodded. “Yes. He stays on the other end of this place and never ventures over to my side… anymore. Not unless he’s provoked.”

“Have you tried talking with him?”

Ty nodded. “On his side of
Spirit Mountain—”

He moved his eyes from me to Logan and back. “On his side, there’s a pond with those rocks in them. They’re filled with a magical glowing powder inside. If you hold them in your palm, press them against your head and think of what you want them to say, they will create that message like you saw back there.”

Logan threw up his hands to stop me. When I stopped, Ty stopped. Logan glared at Ty. “You really expect us to believe that this angry spirit gave Beth that message? Wrapped it up in a snowball and threw it at her when she was way down in our town?”

Ty nodded. “Believe it or not, it is the truth. He can see you from the barrier that you were going to throw the rock through.” He hesitated. “He can see all of you.”

We continued walking for one hundred feet when Ty stopped near a massive tree, its girth almost the size of my aunt and uncle’s house. When he invited us inside through a clever, almost-invisible door, I waited for Logan to go in first.

Once inside, Ty ushered us to sit.

I finally decided to ask what was nagging at me. “So, you’re telling me that this spirit can see us?”

He nodded.

“What else do you know about him?”

“Nothing. He stays on his side and I stay on mine.”

Logan held my hand. That’s when I realized I’d been shaking. Not because I was cold, but because the situation alone had balled up a knot of fear in my stomach. It wasn’t every day that a person had the opportunity to talk with a distant relative spirit who’d told them that an angry spirit could see them.

Then that the spirit sent a message through a magical snowball, informing the individual that they were the next to die. Honestly, right then and there, I was beyond grateful that Logan had accompanied me and was now comforting me.

“So, why did you visit my sister in her dreams?” Logan asked.

“I’m clairvoyant, Logan. I can see when someone is going to die, so I try to warn them.”

“You tried to warn the mayor’s daughter and my sister this past spring?”

“Yes.”

“But twenty-one days after you showed up in their dreams, they died. Don’t you think that’s an odd coincidence?”

Ty leaned forward, his elbows resting on his legs. “No, I think he gives twenty-one days to each of his victims. Then he kills them.”

“Why twenty-one days?” Logan asked.

“I don’t know. The weird thing is, the townspeople killed me twenty-one days after my seventeenth birthday, but I don’t know what that’s got to do with this other spirit. Which makes me wonder if he isn’t trying to set me up.”

Logan shifted uncomfortably. “If you’re clairvoyant like you claim to be, then who killed my sister?”

Ty narrowed his eyes. “I wish I knew. I can see that someone is going to die, but I can’t see who’s doing it. Maybe it’s because I’m in this world—this dimension. I think I’m stuck here until I can prove and stop Simon from killing anyone else.”

“Simon?” I asked.

“The angry spirit. I know his name, but that’s all I know.”

Logan and I exchanged uncertain glances. “Are you sure you can’t think of anything else about him?” I asked, fearing his response.

He shook his head. “I need your help. Find out who he is and why he’s so angry. Why is he killing girls in Castleborough? Why does he want to kill
you
?”

When Ty asked that last question, I nearly gasped. My heart quickened.
Why me?
I thought.
Why would this spirit—this Simon—want to kill me?

After a moment’s hesitation, Ty glanced around his tree room before shaking his head at us. He whispered, “You must go! He’s watching us!”