Experiment in Terror 05 On Demon Wings (15 page)

and as long as I was around him, I would be OK. Dex used

to make me feel that way with everything. Except my heart.

I lifted my hands and placed them inside his leather

jacket, which was open slightly. I could feel his muscles

underneath his silky shirt. He wasn’t rock hard; instead, he

looked predestined to carry weight rather than lose it, but

his body was stil a pil ar of strength and the more my tiny

coral-painted fingers pushed and prodded against him, the

more I felt like nothing could knock him over. He was as

rooted as a tree. I wanted to borrow some of that strength,

take it from him. Just thinking it made my kisses faster,

more frenzied.

Final y he pul ed back and moved his hand around to the

side of my face. It was warm against my cold cheek that

was braised by the chil ing wind.

“It’s getting late,” he said, his voice uneven. He cleared

his throat.

“It already is late,” I whispered, not wanting to stop.

“And cold,” he said as he pul ed my cardigan around

me. “You need something warmer than this.”

“You’l do,” I said. I was surprised at my boldness.

Maximus was too.

“I’m pretty hot, I’l admit that,” he said slyly, then chuckled

at himself. “But we need to be inside a warm cab before

you get pneumonia.”

He gave me a quick peck on the lips, then took my hand

in his and led me back to the path. Now that the makeout

session was over, the terrors and shadows that lurked in

the back of mind were free to play. I didn’t want to go home.

I couldn’t. Abby would be there.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say any of this to him as we

cut across the park, the damp grass brushing against the

bottoms of my boots, the bums who lurked beneath the

trees. I probably would have felt safer snuggling up to the

guy who slept under his garbage bags ful of beer cans than

alone in my room.

We hailed a cab fairly easily once we got to Burnside

Street – it was the weekend and downtown Portland was in

ful swing with people spil ing out of hole-in-the-wal bars,

music venues with shitty bands, and late-night dives. I

wanted the night to keep going. I wanted to line up with the

masses at Voodoo Donuts and feel like the city had my

back.

But instead we both got in the cab. At least Maximus

made sure to drop me off before him, even though he lived

way closer to downtown than I did.

As the cab pul ed down my familiar street, he asked, “Do

you have a big day tomorrow?”

“I was scheduled to work,” I said, feeling a pang of

embarrassment, anxiousness. “But who knows what’s

going on with that anymore. I guess I’l just get haunted.

Maybe I’l take up knitting. Baby slippers seem to be pretty

popular.”

My voice was shaking slightly at that last bit and I

swal owed back my tears. My house loomed in front of us,

the cabbie reciting my address.

“Perry,” Maximus said, reaching for my hand. “I know

you’re scared. But so far, nothing real y bad has

happened.”

“What?” I snapped at him. I briefly eyed the cabbie in the

rearview mirror and he quickly looked away, none of his

business.

“Abby is taking it slow. Knocking and slippers, painting

your nails.”

“And taking over my body!”

I could sense the cabbie was looking back at me again,

wondering who the hel these weirdos in his cab were.

Maximus lowered his voice. “We don’t know yet if it’s

connected, remember? I don’t think it is. In fact, I know it’s

not. You’re stil you, Perry. One hundred percent.”

“Oh, wel , if you’re so smart, why don’t you tel me what

else it could be?”

He gave me a smal smile, immune to my anger. “I don’t

know. I know you don’t like to hear that it could al be in your

head-”

I gasped at that. Appal ed.

“But,” he continued, “you’ve been through a lot. So I

would at least consider it, if I were you. I’m going to come

over in the next few days and we’re going to figure this out

and start from there. One thing at a time. Abby won’t be a

problem, you’l see.”

I wondered when he had gone from Ghost Whisperer to

Ghost Buster, but I had no choice but to believe him. He

was the only person who had experience in this, and the

only person who took me seriously. Maybe not entirely

seriously, but enough. And he was a good kisser.

He leaned forward and hugged me and that cinnamon

smel engulfed me again. Then he said, “I’l cal you

tomorrow.”

I would have stayed al night in that cab if I could, but I

reluctantly got out. To his credit, he kept the cab waiting

outside until I had unlocked my front door, then it sped away

into the night.

I tiptoed up to my room, trying to ignore the darkness of

the sleeping house, and made it to bed. The slippers on the

floor were gone. The pamphlet was back on the table. I

don’t know why I was so against having it al be inside my

head. That would actual y be glorious. Maybe there never

were any slippers. And if there were no slippers, there was

nothing to fear.

It didn’t explain a lot of other things, though, but before I

could even indulge those possibilities, the evening of wine

and tequila folded over me like a breaking wave and I was

down for the count.

“Wake up, sleepy head,” Ada’s chipper voice cut into my

dreams. My dreams where I was fal ing and fal ing through

a red inferno, giant wood bugs crawling up the side of my

mind.

I groaned and tried not to move as the events from last

night snapped into place. I knew I was hungover as shit and

if I opened my eyes and moved a muscle, I was going to

pay for it dearly.

“Go away,” I slurred, unable to say anything more.

“It’s a beautiful day outside,” she responded, ignoring

me. I could hear her walking over to the window and

opening it. “Ahhh, smel that air. Spring is on its way.”

Why was she so chipper? Usual y Ada was a goddess

of grump in the mornings.

I felt her sit down on the bed and I bobbed up and down

on the mattress. I moaned again and threw my arm over my

face. The air coming in did smel cool and inviting but it

wasn’t enough to clear the cobwebs.

“What did you do last night? You stink.”

I ignored her and attempted to go back to sleep, feeling

my brain getting sucked into the dark weightlessness.

Before I could, she grabbed my arm and lifted it up, forcing

the light into my face. I winced.

“I said go away,” I repeated, dragging out the words into

a whine.

“Do you have to work today?”

Pause.

“Fuck.” I total y forgot about that.

I opened my eyes careful y as the stabs of light entered.

It real y was a beautiful day out, but al I could see at that

moment was blankness, like I was standing in the middle of

the sun.

Then I saw Ada on my bed, holding my phone out, like

she knew exactly what was going on. She was wearing a

kel y green dress and her hair was tied into a knot at the

very top of her head. She looked like a clear-eyed forest

nymph. I felt a pang of envy.

I took the phone, muttering “thanks,” and dialed the

shop’s number. I didn’t have enough time to get scared or

nervous because Shay snapped it up on the first ring.

“Don’t worry about it, Perry,” she explained to me after I

apologized profusely for not being there. “We’ve just taken

you off the schedule until you get better. You just rest up and

sort yourself out.”

I hung up the phone feeling worse rather than better. I

hadn’t been let go or fired but this was al too familiar. This

was how I almost lost my last job (before, you know, I

screwed myself over on purpose). My employers had been

worrying about me because I was seeing Old Roddy in my

bedroom. Now it was different ghost, same problem. Was

this doomed to repeat itself throughout my whole life? Was I

never, ever going to escape the dead? I wished I knew

what they real y wanted with me.

“It’s because you’re one of them,” Ada said.

I jumped at her voice, forgetting not only that she was in

the same room as me but sitting next to me, a foot away.

“Pardon me?” I asked her as my heart quickened.

She rol ed her eyes. “I said you’re one of them. I asked

why your slacker coffee shop was so understanding and I

answered it’s because you’re one of them. You’re a

slacker. They need your kind there. I’m just talking to myself

real y, since you don’t ever seem to hear a word I’m saying.

Ever.”

That wasn’t true. Not entirely.

“How was last night?” I asked, gingerly sitting up in my

bed. I rubbed at my temples as the room spun. I think

someone had replaced my mattress with a water bed.

“Do you actual y care to know?” she asked snidely.

I peered at her with one eye. It hurt less than with two.

“Yes, don’t be so emo.”

I could tel she was going to come up with a retort about

me being emo, but she swal owed it. It was always a matter

of who cal ed the other one that first.

“OK, if you care to know, we broke up.”

I managed to open the other eye so I could study her

face better. Her chin was lifted defiantly. She looked

confident. “Are you OK?”

She nodded. “Never felt better.”

“So you know you did the right thing, then. How did he

take it?”

She giggled, then broke into a huge grin. “He had the

nerve to throw it in my face of how long he had waited and

now he wasn’t ever going to get any.”

“What a fucking douchecanoe,” I said, wanting to punch

Layton’s lights out.

“Total fucking douchecanoe,” she reinstated. “That’s

how I total y knew I made the right choice. He was so angry,

his face went al , like, red and he was babbling crap and

tel ing me I’l never be anything...”

I let out an angry laugh. “That’s rich, coming from some

dil hole whose biggest accomplishment wil be to get his

head crushed in by some lame col ege footbal team.”

“If he’s lucky,” she said, tracing her finger along the

pattern on my quilt. “But then I told him it must burn to be

dumped by someone like me then. And then I left. Wel , I

gave him the finger. And
then
I left.”

Even though it hurt my head to do so, I leaned forward

and gave Ada a quick hug.

“I’m proud of you,” I blurted out, feeling strangely

emotional.

She snorted. “That’s cuz you’re lame.” But I could tel it

made her happy, as lame as I was.

“Hey, listen - ”

I was interrupted by a piercing, terrible scream from

downstairs.

Our mother’s scream.

Our eyes met for a brief, horrifying instant and we both

leaped out of bed as fast as we could. I was only in a long t-

shirt but it didn’t matter. I had never heard my mother

scream like that before and I prayed that we weren’t going

to run down the stairs and find her dead on the floor.

We scampered down the stairs two at a time, with Ada

cal ing “Mom!”

“Girls!” she yel ed back, sounding calmer, which relieved

me. Her voice was coming from my father’s study.

We hustled our way over there. The door was open and

my mother was standing in the middle of the room, a stack

of papers at her feet, plumes of dust rising up from them

and catching in the sunlight that was coming through the

opened blinds.

Her back was to us, her limbs frozen in front of her, like

she was stil holding onto the papers. Her attention was on

the wal s so that’s where my attention went too.

I gasped. One hand flew to my mouth while Ada grasped

the other.

My dad’s study had been destroyed. The wal s had huge

tears in them like someone took an axe and just started

hacking at it randomly. The edges of the tears were

dripped with red and with the same color someone had

painted pentagrams al over the wal s, even the ceiling.

Some were as smal as your hand, others were the size of

a tire. The decorative crucifixes he had displayed were al

upside down. That sight chil ed me more than anything else.

It chil ed me so bad that a violent shiver shuddered through

me and I nearly lost my balance. I reached out for the edge

of the door and hung on.

Ada and my mom took no notice of me. How could they

with what they were looking at. Even al the paintings of