The Haunting of Sunshine Girl (31 page)

Oh no, what if proximity to Nolan doesn't bother me because he's dying? What if whatever it is that made the awful wrong-end-of-the-magnet feeling kick in is fading away?

Suddenly a terrible cracking sound makes the house shake. The ceiling above us is ripping away, as easily as if it were made of cloth. I scream as the second floor disappears and a blast of freezing air blows into the house. The rain from the storm outside—there's no outside anymore, we're all outside now—is drenching us. Oscar and Lex dash toward the living room, hoping to get away from this mess. I try to position myself over
Nolan like an umbrella, but it's useless. I shiver like a leaf; right now, being close to him isn't making me any warmer.

Across the room I hear a voice that sounds nothing like my mother's say, “I didn't expect to see you here.” She's talking to Victoria, not me. I wait to hear Victoria answer her, but there's nothing: only the sound of the wind and the rain, then a horrible laugh coming from my mother's mouth. Then a splash as Victoria's body falls to the ground.

Another crack, and the wall between us and the driveway vanishes; more water rushes in. Nolan is lying in at least three inches of it, rising steadily around us. I turn his head, trying to angle his mouth and nose above the water line, scared that he might drown.

At once I'm aware of the weight of a shadow hanging over me. I look up. There's my mother with her strange liquid eyes, staring at me.

“Young love torn asunder,” she says, but in a voice much lower, meaner, and uglier than her own. How strange to hear someone else's voice coming out of her mouth. “What a tragedy.” She clucks her tongue.

“What did you do to Victoria?” I ask desperately. I can't see her from my place on the floor, behind the kitchen island. The demon just laughs in response, and I know that whatever it did, Victoria can't help me now. I shiver, as drenched as if I'd just taken a shower.

Nolan is unconscious.

He can't help me either.

And my mother is absent, trapped somewhere inside her own body. Does she even know what's happening? Is she watching this from somewhere beneath the demon, screaming to be set free?

I'm all alone. It's just me and the demon and our broken-down, roofless house. Pellets of rain crash against my face and stream into my eyes, until my mother's body standing above me is nothing more than a blur. I'm so cold that my teeth are chattering, banging against each other angrily.

I'm not even holding the knife anymore. It lies uselessly beside Nolan's body. So much for a weapon that's supposed to manifest itself when you need it.

With her superhuman demon strength, my mother reaches down and flips Nolan over with just her left arm. I try to crawl out of the way, try to grab the knife once more, but I slip and fall on my back beneath the weight of Nolan's body, now pinned on top of mine, the knife digging into my back beneath us. At least I still feel Nolan's breath against my cheek.

I try to arch my back so I can slide my arm beneath it to reach for the knife. But I can barely reach it with my fingertips. I open my mouth to scream but water rushes in, choking me.

Oh gosh, Victoria and Nolan were both wrong.

I'm not the kind of person who finds hidden stores of strength when she's faced with a crisis.

I'm the type of person who flails around on the ground, splashing in demon rainwater.

“Somebody help us!” I shout. Is my mentor watching me, even now? Can he hear me? Is he really just going to stand aside and let all these people die while I fail?

“Please!” I beg, spitting water with each syllable, but no one answers. Tears stream down my face, mixing in with the raindrops.

Mom—the demon—presses her foot against Nolan's back, holding us both down. Blood from Nolan's wound mixes with the rainwater and drips onto my face. I gasp, struggling to fill
my lungs with air as the water edges ever higher. I know that no matter how deep it gets, it can't really drown me—the demon can't kill me. But it can drown Nolan.

Writhing and twisting, I manage to wrap my fingers around the knife beneath me. It's cold as ice, so holding it hurts. Wriggling beneath all this weight, I finally pull the weapon out from beneath us.

It's still just a knife, but I hold it up anyway, slashing at Mom's leg. She just grins her horrible glowing grin. My arms aren't long enough; I can't reach her.

Thunder rumbles above us, followed immediately by a flash of lightning so bright that for a second it blinds me. The storm is right above us. The wind is howling, but in between gusts I can still hear sounds of celebration from the TV in the living room. “All right everyone,” an announcer shouts, “ten seconds to the New Year!”

The roof must still be in place in the living room. Maybe it's still dry. Maybe I can drag Nolan and Victoria in there, get them out of harm's way.

A crowd begins chanting:
10, 9 . . .

Who am I kidding? I can't even get out from under Nolan, let alone drag two bodies into the other room. Mom digs her heel into his back, pressing down on us both. I gasp for breath and my mouth fills with water. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted, rotten and sour.

8, 7 . . .

This is how it's going to end. Everyone I care about is about to die. Victoria is helpless, unconscious across the kitchen. Nolan will drown just like Anna did. Will I feel his spirit when it leaves its body? My mother's spirit will be destroyed. And
Anna's along with it. Nolan's will be next, once the demon moves on to its next victim.

Victoria will forget that she was ever a mother—she'll forget every diaper change, every bottle feeding. Forget that she ever helped Anna with her homework, forget the first time her daughter read a book by herself, forget Anna's hands and her laugh and her smile.

6, 5 . . .

I close my eyes, trying to blink the icy-cold water away. I will forget my mother. Not right away, like Victoria said. It will happen slowly, inevitably, even if I plaster the house with photographs. Maybe in a few months I'll forget the sound of her voice, the way she laughed. Then I won't know how she smelled. It could be two years before I forget pizza dinners and arguing over the remote. After a decade I'll even forget why she named me Sunshine.

I've failed completely. We lost, and the demon won. What happens to luiseach who fail their tests? Will my mentor keep testing me over and over until I pass? Or will he disappear and leave me all alone, a luiseach without her powers, just like Victoria?

4, 3 . . .

“I love you, Mom!” I shout up at her face as thunder and lightning explode in unison above us. She's got to be in there somewhere, maybe she can still hear me. Maybe I'll remember that I loved someone this much, even if I can't remember who.

Suddenly someone is wrapping her hands around my wrists. I open my eyes and glance around frantically: Nolan is still unconscious, and Victoria is out of my sight somewhere on the other side of the counter. The grip tightens; I'm being pulled
out from under Nolan's body, pulled up to stand by a phantom helpmate.

“Anna?” I sputter, water dripping down my face. I hear a small, distant voice answer, “
It's me
.” She squeezes my fingers into a fist around the knife.

The house starts to shake, a localized earthquake. In the morning geologists for miles around will check their Richter scales, wondering what on earth happened.

I squeeze the knife, feeling the cold steel prickle my skin.

Wait, it's not a knife, and it's not cold. Not anymore.

It's a
torch.

An enormous wooden torch with a hot orange flame coming out of its tip. A flame that only gets stronger in the driving rain. I hold it out toward my mother but she jumps away, dancing out of my reach.

2, 1 . . .

The flames grow higher, warming me. Suddenly I am magically, magnificently dry. I hold the torch above me like an umbrella; it creates a bubble of warmth around me. A bubble whose edges are growing, inch by inch. Still, my mother dances away from it. The kitchen wall gone, she's able to back into the driveway, well out of my reach. She grins her wet grin from just outside the bubble.

“What good is a torch that can't reach her?” I yell. How do I get to her?

The sound of paper ripping makes me turn from my mother to the kitchen counter. Invisible hands are ripping open the bag that holds Nolan's fireworks.

I know exactly whose hands. “Anna, you're a genius!” I shout. I reach for the sparklers and pull them into my bubble, where they magically dry just like I did. I use the torch to light one; it
brightens the room, looking festive even now. I throw it at my mother. It hisses when it touches her skin. The flame brightens, but when she looks at it, it extinguishes immediately.

I light a handful more and throw them all. Still, the sparklers extinguish when they hit her skin. Still, she is able to dance out of my reach.

Lightning flashes again, but this time the thunder is almost a minute behind it. The storm must be moving away.

It's working!

I light another sparkler. This one I throw into the driveway behind her. Despite the water all over the ground, it still burns—this rain cannot extinguish the fire from my torch. I light and throw another, then another, until there is a bright
U
of sparklers around my mother's body, blocking the demon so it can't back any farther away from me.

I take a step closer, out of the kitchen and onto the driveway. Then another step, closer still. The demon hisses at me, but I don't retreat. Instead, I get so close that my mother's body is enveloped in my bubble of heat and warmth. Her wet skin sizzles as it dries. She crouches on the ground, wailing in pain.

No, not she.
It.
This is the demon I'm facing, not my mother. I hold the torch over her body, and her skin is no longer sizzling. It's
boiling.
Steam rises off her skin like a thick blanket; it's so thick that I can barely see her.

She screams. Now her voice sounds like her own: “Please stop, Sunshine! You're hurting me!”

My heart races at the sound of my mother's voice. Can she feel what's happening, even with the demon possessing her? Oh gosh, should I stop—what if I'm hurting her every bit as much as I'm hurting the demon?

I hesitate, and as I do I feel Anna pressing one last firework
into my left hand. I look down at it; in the light that the torch gives off I can see the scar where my mother cut me, already fading away.

This firework isn't another sparkler—it's a Roman candle.

Victoria said that dark spirits are often those whose lives were taken too soon. They might have been the kindest humans, but the urge to stay here on earth twisted them into something unrecognizable, something evil. I wonder who this demon used to be. I wonder whether exorcising it will allow it to finally move on to where it's supposed to be.

I feel Anna's fingers squeeze my shoulders, her way of telling me that I know exactly what I have to do. And now is the time to do it.

Mom screams again, calls my name again. “Sunshine, please!” she begs, but I shake my head, tears streaming down my face. She told me once that the body can't remember pain. I just hope it's true.

I light the firework and hurl it at my mother's crouching body. It explodes in a fire of colors at my feet, the most horrifying and beautiful thing I've ever seen.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Drenched

I lower the torch,
but I remain dry. My hands are black with soot, my ears ringing from the sound of the explosion. I'm back in the kitchen with Mom's body at my feet; it looks like she's fainted. Above me the ceiling is back, and the second floor is above us, right where it's supposed to be. The wall between the kitchen and the driveway is back in place, not even a scratch around its edges to show that it was missing just seconds ago. Water still drenches the floor, but the tile around my mother and me is dry.

From the TV shouts of
Happy New Year!
echo through the house, which has stopped shaking. The mournful first lines of
Auld Lang Syne
drift into the room.

How is that possible? It feels like I heard the chanting of
3, 2, 1
hours ago. Okay, maybe not hours, but at least several minutes. I look at the torch in my hand; it's shrinking, turning back into a knife. I wonder what it might have manifested as if I'd been facing a different kind of demon.

Just how magical is this weapon? Did time stand still while I wielded it? Did the earth freeze while I was locked in that bubble, warm and dry?

I study the weapon in my hand—it's just a dull knife again, although now, when I look closely, I can see the shadow of the torch that it was just seconds ago. Maybe it will always look that way to me, the way it was a rope to Victoria.

“Sunshine?” My mother sounds groggy, like she's waking from a deep sleep. I look down at her, still crouched at my feet. “What happened?”

“You don't remember?”

Mom shakes her head. She looks around the kitchen like she's seeing it for the first time, reaches her arm out of the dry ring surrounding us, and touches the wet floor. “Why is the kitchen soaking wet?”