The Loveliest Dead (17 page)

Jenna said, “It’s okay, don’t worry about it. Sure you want to stay for this?”

Kimberly took a moment to think about it. “I’ll stay as long as I can, okay? That’s the best I can do. But I can’t put my hands on that thing.”
 

“Don’t worry about it, honey,” Ada said, then turned to Jenna. “Now let’s not waste time. They’re here.”

“They?” Jenna said.

“They, him, whatever. You never know who’ll show up. Put your fingers on the planchette and keep concentrating on Josh, just think about Josh, keep your thoughts focused on Josh ...” Ada was speaking with that lulling cadence again.
 

The planchette was cool beneath the pads of Jenna’s fingertips, and she stared at it awhile as she tried to keep thinking about Josh, then closed her eyes. Her thoughts were shattered when the planchette budged forward—the varnished surface moved smoothly beneath her fingertips. Jenna’s hands jerked reflexively away from the thin slice of wood when it moved, and she opened her eyes.
 

“... keep our thoughts focused on Josh and your fingers on—” Ada opened her eyes. “Jenna, keep your fingers on the planchette, touch it lightly so it can move independent of your fingers. Don’t push it with your fingertips, follow it with them.”
 

Jenna forced her hands back down, placed her fingertips lightly on the smooth, varnished surface.

It budged forward again. This time, Jenna saw it move beneath her fingers and Ada’s. She moved her hands along with it as the planchette inched up past the U to stop with its pointed end on the H. Ada said the letter out loud.
 

Kimberly sat frozen in her chair and stared open-mouthed at the planchette.

Ada said, “Sweetheart, you’re gonna have to get these letters down, ‘cause I won’t be able to remember ‘em, okay? Now—H.”

Eyes wide, Kimberly nodded, then wrote down the letter.

The planchette moved to the left in tiny little budges and stopped at the E. The next letter was L.

Hello
, Jenna thought.
My baby’s saying hello, he’s saying
—
 

The next letter was P.

“Help,” Kimberly said.

Ada’s cigarette bobbed as she looked vaguely upward and said, “How can we help you, dear? That’s what we’re here for, just tell us.”
 

Jenna feared her heart would explode—-Josh needed
help
? How could she possibly help him? What good would all this do if she were only to learn he was in some kind of danger in a place where she could never reach him?
 

Jenna leaned toward Ada. “Ask him what’s wrong. Why does he need help?”

Ada said, “You ask him, honey, he’s right here with us.”

Jenna looked over at Kimberly. The color had drained from her face. Her lower body was turned so her legs were at an angle, ready to shoot from the chair and run out of the room on short notice. Jenna sniffled, took a breath. “Josh, why do you need—”
 

The planchette moved again, this time to the center of the board. Then it slowly made its way back to the P, over to the U. Ada called out the letters and Kimberly wrote them down, until she had two words on the page: HELP PUPPEEZ.
 

“Puppies?” Ada muttered. “Do you have puppies?”

Jenna shook her head. “We have no pets.”

Mrs. Frangiapani had asked if Miles had a puppy.

Jenna’s eyes widened slightly.
He called me a puppy
, Miles had said of the man in his nightmare.
 

The planchette continued to move, but it hit the same letters three more times: HELP PUPPEEZ.

“What
about
the puppies?” Ada said. “You’ll have to explain, because nobody here knows what you’re talking about.”
 

The planchette started to move again, but stopped when another drop in temperature occurred and the room became cold. Something happened that made Jenna feel vaguely nauseated—the air itself seemed to darken. A few things happened all at once.
 

One of the four lightbulbs in the overhead light went out with a pop and threw some sparks into the air, as did the bulb in the lamp on one of the sofa’s end tables. At the same instant, a force like a large fist slammed down on the table and made it quake so hard it nearly collapsed. Jenna and Ada pulled away from the table. Kimberly scooted her chair backward as quickly as she could. The planchette cracked down the center and collapsed inward before being swept off the table. It missiled through the air straight for Kimberly and landed in her lap. Kimberly screamed and fell over backward in her chair.
 

“You got a poltergeist,” Ada said as she stood.

As suddenly as it had changed, the air was fine again, the temperature normal.

“Jesus, oh Jesus,” Kimberly whispered to herself as she got to her feet and hurried away from the table. She stood in the entryway near the front door, arms folded beneath her breasts. Bending at the waist, she bobbed up and down slightly as she whispered repeatedly, “Demons. Demons.”
 

Jenna stood and hurried to Kimberly’s side. “What did you say?”

“Demons.”

“I don’t understand. What demons?”

“I was raised to believe you don’t go to Heaven when you die,” Kimberly said. “Seventh-Day Adventists believe that won’t happen until after the second coming of Christ, when the dead are all resurrected and everybody’s judged and either thrown into the Lake of Fire or taken up to Heaven with Jesus. Until then, the dead are just... dead.”
 

“Then how do they explain the spirits?” Ada said.

“They don’t believe there
are
any spirits—only demons posing as the spirits of dead loved ones.”
 

Ada wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip. “Huh? Why?”

“It’s one of Satan’s most successful lies—that we live on after death, that we’re immortal apart from God. It’s a lie to trip us up and lead us away from the truth.”
 

“Well,” Ada said as she picked the board up off the card table, “the truth
here
is, you got a poltergeist.”
 

Jenna said, “I’m sorry, Kimberly, but it’s okay, everything’s okay, those bulbs going out—that’s our wiring, there’s something wrong with our wiring. I’m serious— I’ve got an electrician coming tomorrow morning to take a look at it. Everything’s fine.”
 

Kimberly silently turned her head back and forth in disagreement as she calmed herself down.

Ada carried the board to the couch and dropped it into the open suitcase. “I don’t do poltergeists.”

“What’s a poltergeist?” Jenna asked.

“A poltergeist is a spirit that could use a good ass-whooping, if you ask me. You got a teenager in the house? A girl?”

“No, only our son. He’s ten. Why?”

Shrugging, Ada said, “Poltergeist activity’s usually associated with adolescent girls, but not always. A boy of ten—who knows? But you got a poltergeist.” She took her notebook and pen from the card table, tossed them on top of the Ouija board, and closed and snapped the suitcase. “Poltergeists don’t wanna talk, they wanna piss you off, and I just don’t take any shit off ‘em anymore. Let somebody younger screw around with the little bastards.” She put on her coat, then stood with the suitcase at her side. She took what was left of her cigarette from her mouth and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “You can pay me now, and then I’d like to go home.”
 

Jenna went to her and said, “I’m sorry about the planchette, Ada. I’ll be happy to pay for it if—”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, honey. That comes with the territory. How could you know you had a poltergeist?”

“But... how do we get rid of it?”

“That’s why poltergeists are such a pain in the ass. There’s not a whole lot you can do about ‘em. They eventually go away. They never stay for long, but they’re a real pain in the ass as long as they’re around. You can’t believe anything you see or hear in your own house as long as you got a poltergeist. It’s like having a tantrum running loose in the house. And like I said, I don’t do ‘em. And not only don’t I do ‘em, I don’t hang around in houses that have ‘em, so you can pay me outside in the bus.” Ada walked past Jenna, through the entryway, and out the front door.
 

With Kimberly’s help, Jenna quickly put the table and chairs away and replaced the coffee table in the living room. Then they drove Ada home.
 

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Kimberly said on the way back from dropping Ada off in front of her trailer. In spite of the rain, they drove with the windows rolled down to get the smell of Ada’s cigarettes out of the SUV. As the woman had complained about everything under the sun, Jenna had watched Kimberly wiping tears from her eyes as she drove. Once Ada was gone, Jenna had waited for Kimberly to speak. “I’ve never believed in them,” she said. “That night I saw my grandma—I’m not sure what that was, but it wasn’t a ghost. She didn’t hang around and haunt me or anything. I don’t believe in them.”
 

“Neither have I,” Jenna said. “Until now.”

“Do you, now? Really? I mean ... just all of a sudden?”

“I’m
so
sorry. I had no idea this would upset you so much.”

Kimberly smiled, squeaked out a couple laughs. “Neither did I. I’m as surprised as you are. I haven’t thought about this stuff in ... well, in a lifetime. But seeing that board—and then when that planchette moved—I could tell neither of you was moving it, it was moving by
itself
—and that sudden crash—”
 

“I know, that was scary, wasn’t it? All of this is kind of scary.”

“Not only that, it might be ... I think it might even be dangerous.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“Well... just because Ada says you’ve got a poltergeist, or a ghost, or whatever, doesn’t mean she’s necessarily right. It could be ... well, something
else
. Maybe something harmful.”
 

“I didn’t think you believed in that stuff anymore.”

“I said I wasn’t a Seventh-Day Adventist anymore. But I had that stuff drilled into me from a very young age. I guess it’s hard to completely shake it. I’m sorry, Jenna, but that really shook me up. And it made me think. And all I’m saying is,
you
should think, too. I still think Mrs. Frangiapani was right—you should just leave this alone and focus your attention on your family.”
 

“Ada says I have a poltergeist. You’re saying I have— what, an
evil
spirit? A demon? Which is it?”
 

“I’m just saying you should
think
about it. You’re new at this, remember. You said you didn’t believe in
anything
before this. Well, some of us have had a little experience with beliefs, and I’m sure we’d all tell you the same thing—don’t put all your eggs in one dogma.”
 

Jenna chuckled.

“Hey,” Kimberly said, perking up a little, “maybe that just pushed some of my old buttons back there, I don’t know—seeing that Ouija board, and those lights going out like that...”
 

“I was telling the truth, Kimberly. That’s happened a few times before in the house. An electrician is coming out in the morning to take a look at the wiring.”
 

“Still, I saw that planchette move,” Kimberly said. “And I saw it get crushed by ... well, by
nothing
. I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life. The only way I know how to process it is through the filter of the religion I was raised with and trained in. So maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But Ada’s opinion is just that—an opinion. I want you to promise me, Jenna, please, promise me you’ll at least keep an open mind. Maybe Ada’s right and you’ve got a poltergeist, or maybe something
else
moved through your living room today. Something dangerous.”
 

Jenna turned her eyes front and stared out past the sweeping wipers at the road ahead.
Something
had hit that table nearly hard enough to make it fall apart. It had broken the planchette and swept it through the air. There was
something
in the house. But until that moment, she had not considered the possibility that her family might be in any danger from it. The thought tied her stomach in knots.
 

CHAPTER TEN

Lily. Tuesday, 10:16 A.M.

While Jenna and Kimberly were picking up Ada that morning, Lily Rourke sat at her kitchen table in Mt. Shasta, sipped coffee, and read through the information Claudia had found on the Internet about the Binghams. Lily found searching the Internet tedious and frustrating, but Claudia was a wiz with her laptop. She had assembled a number of articles and links and e-mailed them to Lily. Along with that, Lily had skimmed through the books Claudia had brought her.
 

The computer took up much of the small round table. There was a desk in the spare bedroom where she would’ve had more room, but Lily preferred working in here where she caught some sunlight and the coffeepot was close. A cup of hot coffee stood beside her keyboard, and beside that, one of the cheese Danishes Claudia had brought to work with her, half-eaten on a napkin. Claudia was working the register up front, but Lily hadn’t heard a sound so there had been no business yet.