Beyond the Grave (8 page)

“So he's like a guardian angel-slash-bodyguard kind of thing?”

“That about sums it up,” I told Avery. “Except that he's also a healer.”

The first person I'd called after my wild windstorm of a day was my best friend. I was lucky to catch her when she was on a break from classes, and we had spent the past hour chatting while I lounged on my bed.

At first, I only wanted to hear about normal stuff, such as what she thought about her professors and her dorm room and the weekend parties. Avery downplayed college life, telling me that she mainly had TAs instead of professors and the dorm bathroom where she had to shower was always crowded. I knew she was trying to make sure I didn't feel like I was missing out on too much.

“So what's the best part?” I asked. “There's got to be something you love.”

She paused. “Honestly? The best part is the freedom. I mean, I have a schedule and responsibilities, but it's all up to me. No one's asking me for a hall pass.”

“I think that's the most underrated part about graduating
from high school,” I said. “Once they hand you that diploma, you get to go through life without ever asking anyone again for a slip of paper to use the bathroom.”

“That's true.” She laughed. “And I love not having a curfew. Last night Jared and I drove out to the country to look at the stars. It was so nice we stayed to watch the sun come up.”

“Sounds wonderful.” And it did. I wished Noah and I could do that, just take off without having to check in with anyone and go wherever we wanted.

After I caught her up on my classes and Noah, I told her about my strange, brief visit to see Mom and my even stranger meeting with Michael. “And you know the real reason this guy is at my school?”

“I thought he was there to keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah, but there's more.” I sat up on my bed. “One way to permanently confine the thing that's out to get me is to learn its true name. Michael is doing research. He thinks the original person was an inmate at the asylum we visited last year.”

“That makes sense, since that's where everything began,” Avery said. “What does Noah think about all this?”

“I haven't had a chance to tell him yet,” I admitted.

My gut instinct was screaming at me not to tell him. I hated keeping anything from him, but lately I got the sense that he was holding back from me, as well. He was always so busy, but never very clear on what he was doing besides general “work.”

At first I had thought he needed a break from the perpetual drama that was my life. I had bothered him too much with stories about mystery cars and panic attacks. Then I worried that it was something deeper than that. I couldn't explain it, but I felt like Noah was changing somehow, that he was gradually shifting into a new, more tense personality. I only
caught glimpses of it, and he was fine and happy when we were alone together, but something was off, and I could not escape one idea that gnawed at me, the one that whispered to me late at night when I couldn't sleep—that Noah had been forever changed by his encounter with the Watcher.

Had evil left its mark on my boyfriend?

“I don't know what he'll think,” I said to Avery. “Relieved, maybe? I know he worries about me.”

“Yeah, he does. And this extra protection power sounds good, but why do you need it now? I mean, do they really think you're in immediate danger? Because if you are—”

I cut her off. “I'm not,” I insisted, although I wasn't sure how much truth that statement held. I had left Potion shortly after learning that Michael had basically been assigned to me and my mom. My brain was buzzing with information overload, and I needed some time to understand everything.

Also, I felt more than a little guilty over the way I had treated Michael, who had been working overtime for weeks. He spent half his day following me around, then went to the long-term care facility to work on healing techniques with my mom. And I had treated him like dirt the second we'd met. Why would he want to help me when I'd been such an angry, whiny brat? Beth had wisely suggested that we meet on Monday, just Michael and I, to talk things out.

“We're going to the mall,” I told Avery.

“You hate the mall.”

“It was his idea. I guess he wanted to make sure we were somewhere public in case I flipped out on him again.”

“Charlotte, if things get too heavy, you'll let me know, right? Jared and I can drive back in a day.”

“Thanks. But I don't even know completely what's going on, so don't worry yet, okay?”

If things got bad again, I didn't want Avery or Jared any
where near me. I couldn't risk the chance of them getting hurt.

“Can I make a suggestion?” she asked. “Wait until you have all the information before you say anything to Noah.”

“That's a good idea.” He didn't need the stress, not on top of his crazy new class workload and his troubles with insomnia and sleepwalking, which he constantly assured me were not that bad. I would tell him everything, but only when I knew everything. I felt relieved that Avery had given me a sort of permission to stay quiet. It eased my guilty conscience.

I got off the phone with Avery and remained on my bed, mulling everything over. Sometimes it felt like my brain was one of those lottery machines on TV, and all my thoughts were a different little ball, popping haphazardly in the air until one was sucked up to the top. But as soon as I pinned down one of my thoughts, another one popped up next to it, a line of random thoughts in no particular order.

Something was bothering me, something I couldn't quite articulate to myself. My main worries—my mom, Noah and the possible return of the Watcher—were connected by something. I was sure of it.

Feeling restless, I went downstairs. Shane and Trisha were off comparing floral arrangements, Noah was working on yet another school project for AV class and Dad was at the store. I needed to get out of the house, but I wasn't sure where I could go. As I plucked my car keys from the front table and slipped on a pair of shoes, I thought of something. Within minutes, I was headed in a new direction. I hoped it would lead me to practical answers.

 

A
N ARMY OF GNOMES
greeted me when I pulled up to Bliss's house. At first glance, the mass of red and green caps looked like an overgrown field of crazy Christmas-colored mush
rooms. I rang the doorbell and tried to ignore the slightly creepy sensation that the hundreds of tiny ceramic eyes induced.

“Charlotte?” Bliss looked confused. “What are you doing here? How did you know where I live?”

“You mentioned the street on the first day of school,” I reminded her. “And you said the front lawn had a lot of—” I glanced behind me. “These.”

“Oh. Right.” She stood in the partially open doorway. “I'm not trying to be rude, but why are you here? Are you okay?”

“Sort of not okay. Can I come in?”

Bliss stepped out onto the front porch, shutting the door behind her. “I wasn't expecting company. The house is kind of cluttered right now.”

“Maybe we could go somewhere?” I hated to sound desperate, but I truly thought that Bliss might be able to help me. She seemed unconvinced, though, as if maybe I had strange ulterior motives for dropping by unannounced.

“Let me grab my purse,” she said finally. “We can get coffee or something. Wait here.”

She slipped back into the house, opening the door as little as possible. A minute later she returned.

“I counted fifty-three,” I told her, waving my hand over the yard at the little stone men.

“That means a few more have been stolen.” We got into my car. “Not that I mind. We used to have over a hundred.”

“That's a lot of gnomes.”

She laughed. “When I was younger I thought they came to life at night. I was convinced they would break into the house and attack me in my sleep.”

“I would probably think the same thing,” I admitted. “How did you sleep at night?” I headed for Giuseppe's. It was close,
and I figured we could talk over their famous cannolis and iced tea.

“My grandfather told me that they did come to life at night, but they would stay away from the house if I fed them. So after dinner, I would put the leftovers outside. The food was always gone the next morning.”

We arrived at Giuseppe's. “Where did the food go?”

Bliss smiled. “My neighborhood is home to some of the fattest raccoons around.”

Inside, the restaurant was wonderfully empty. It was after lunch but before dinner, so we had our choice of booths. Craving sugar, I ordered a cannoli but couldn't convince Bliss to do the same. She sipped on unsweetened iced tea while I tried to figure out what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

Bliss beat me to it. “So, you wanted to talk?”

“Yes. I hope that doesn't seem too weird.”

“Well, we spent our senior year basically hating one another despite the fact that we hardly knew anything about each other. So, yes, maybe you showing up at my house is a little strange.”

Her voice held no malice. She was simply stating facts. I appreciated that. In fact, I respected it. High school was behind us. Whatever petty problems had once existed there now remained there, forgotten along with the locker combinations and the lunch schedule.

“I need advice,” I began. “Advice from someone removed from my situation.”

“You mean an outsider.” She stared at the red plastic tumbler in front of her. “Because that's what I am, right? An outsider.”

“In a way…”

“In every way.” Bliss sighed. “I've lived here my whole life,
but I've never fit in. Do you know what that's like? To know people since kindergarten, and for them to never accept you?”

“No,” I said. “But that's because I'm a different kind of outsider. I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere, and I've only been here for a year.”

This brought a small smile to her face. “So we're both outsiders. Just a different breed, I guess.” She swirled a straw through her tea. “Maybe that's why we clashed. We're too much alike.”

“Maybe.” It wasn't as if I had set out to hate her, though. She had disliked me from the moment I had stepped into the AV room. She had never trusted me. And now here I was, asking for that trust, and all I could think was that, despite our conflicted history, it felt right to be here.

“So.” Bliss looked at me. “You brought me here so I could give you advice.”

I set down my fork next to the untouched cannoli. “You know about the panic attacks.”

She leaned forward. “Did seeing your mom help?”

“No. I don't know, I didn't stay long. Something happened while I was at the hospital.” I wasn't sure how to explain everything. Bliss knew nothing about the events that had shaped my life over the past year. She was, as she had pointed out, an outsider. Her knowledge of what had happened to my mom was gained from reading the same news stories that everyone else had read or seen, a story that had been crafted to protect my family and friends. A demented fan had attacked us, we claimed, not a demonic force.

“You obviously want to tell me something important,” Bliss said, filling the silence that I had allowed to form. “I'm here and I've got time. So start talking.”

There was a time when Bliss's inherent bossiness would
have annoyed me. But now I appreciated her no-nonsense approach to things. If you have something to say, say it.

So I did.

I didn't start at the beginning, which for me was the summer before, when my family had entered the Courtyard Café in Charleston together—and had left with something else entirely. Instead, I started my story with the New Year's party. She had been there, sitting with me and some of our classmates around a hundred candles. She had been at the school when so many strange things had occurred. She knew who was responsible for those happenings—before prom the truth had been revealed—and she had read the scattered news reports about my mom. But she didn't know the truth, and that's what I needed her to understand, so I told her everything, including all the details about the Watcher and what, exactly, had happened to my mom.

She listened, her brow furrowed. I kept my voice low, even though the restaurant remained empty and the waitress only came by to check on us once. It felt good to release my words, to tell my story to someone for the first time. Once I got started it was difficult to stop. I even told her about my late-night attempts at making contact with something, and how that had finally happened a few weeks earlier.

“You're actually communicating with an entity?” Bliss asked.

“Yes. I'm not sure what—or who—it is, but I have a recorder full of EVPs.”

“Charlotte, are you sure that's a good idea? After everything you've told me, it seems dangerous to mess with this stuff. As in, really dangerous.”

“But maybe not. If there's even a chance it could help my mom, I have to try. And now I have Michael, so I'm safer than I was before.”

“Right.” Bliss sat back. “The Protector.”

I felt a flicker of panic. Did she not believe me? Had I just spilled all of my secrets to someone who thought I was crazy? I waited, trying to decipher her reaction to my story, but Bliss kept her face perfectly blank.

“So?” I braced myself for the imminent recommendation that I visit the nearest psych ward. “What do you think?”

“I think…” She seemed to be searching for the right words. “I think you've given me a lot to digest. And I'm still not sure why you came to me with all this.”

I didn't have a response to that. Why
had
I come to Bliss?

It had to be more than simply needing an “outsider” opinion.

“Charlotte.” Bliss studied the glass in front of her, not meeting my eyes. “When I was in the eighth grade, some kids convinced me that there was a student in the boys' bathroom that needed help. I went in, and saw one of my teachers using the urinal.”