For what seems like the millionth time since we left the hotel, I glance in the rearview mirror. For a second, I think the beat up blue Honda Accord has finally stopped following us, but then I see it come around the corner. I sigh in resignation. Guess I’ll have to take care of this.
“Maria,” I shout over the blasting music. “Pull into the next parking lot you see!” She looks at me funny, but as soon as she sees a McDonalds parking lot, she pulls into a spot and kills the engine.
“What’s going on?” Hazel asks. I wait until the other car pulls in and parks a few spaces away.
“Are you all seriously that oblivious?” I snap. “That car has been following us since we left the hotel, and none of you idiots noticed.”
Toby looks over at the car and rolls his eyes. “Not again…”
I throw open the back of the van and stalk over to the car. The two guys inside look terrified. As they should. The pretend not to see me at first, so I pound my fist against the passenger window. They both jump, and the passenger slowly rolls his window down, just barely. It’s enough for me to reach my arm inside and unlock the door. I have the door open and the passenger dragged out within seconds.
“How many times do we have to tell you to fuck off?” The passenger, who I have had the extreme misfortune of meeting several times before, is named Theo. He thinks he’s a ghost hunter.
Theo pushes his black-rimmed glasses back up his nose with a shaking hand. “We weren’t following you!” Then he winces like I’m about to hit him or something. I definitely want to, but I don’t. I shove him away from me in disgust.
“Bullshit. I saw you the whole time. You really think I’m that stupid?” Hazel comes up next to me and grabs my arm.
“Calm down, Jude. Violence solves nothing,” she says. Theo’s eyes widen when she uses the word violence. She glances inside the car at the driver. “Chris, can you please get out?” The driver’s door opens and another version of Theo steps out. He looks nearly identical, except he is taller, doesn’t wear glasses, and his dark brown hair is longer than Theo’s buzzcut. Also, he looks like he had his face pounded in recently. Kind of like Toby.
“What the hell happened to you?” I say, unsuccessfully suppressing a grin.
Theo smirks and I clench my fist. “Guess you didn’t see us the whole time, did you?” I take a threatening step toward him and his smirk vanishes.
“We snuck into the house after you guys left,” Chris answers. “It… didn’t go so well…” He wrings his hands nervously.
“If that didn’t teach you, you’re even dumber than I thought.”
“We just followed you to give you something,” Chris said. He rummaged through his pocket. “You left it at the house.” I raise my eyebrow and reach out my hand for whatever it is. Before he can drop it in my hand, Toby is suddenly next to me. He reaches his hand over mine and catches whatever it is in his own hand.
“Toby, what…” I start. Toby opens his hand to show me what it is. The missing gem for the locket. If I had touched it, I would have gone through watching Olivia being beheaded again.
“Don’t just take things from weirdos, Jude. You know better than that,” he says with a grin. I roll my eyes, then turn on Chris.
“Where and how did you find this?” I demanded. He looks disappointed that I’m not the one who grabbed it. I know he just wants to see how my ability works, but he could try asking instead of tricking me. I wouldn’t show him, but he could still ask. Then I notice something off about his eyes.
When a ghost possesses a human, it can take on a few different forms. Usually, the ghost is only powerful enough to control the human’s thought process. They can give them false memories and emotions. Other times, the ghost is powerful enough to completely take over the human and access their memories. They can then use both the human’s memories as well as their own, and control the human completely. The last form is when the ghost is powerful enough to completely control the human as well as change the humans looks to match their own. This doesn’t mean that the human looks like a completely different person, but instead certain features will temporarily change, until the ghost either loses power, or is expelled from the human.
Chris’s eyes are the wrong color.
Being twins, Theo and Chris both have the same eye color, but right now, Chris’s eyes are Brown and Theo’s are blue. I glance at Theo, who looks at me with terrified eyes, and I suddenly wonder if he’s terrified of me, or his brother. When I look back at Chris, he also looks terrified. Great. I take a step back and look at them back and forth. Maybe it’s Theo’s eyes that are the wrong color? I’m usually more observant than this, but for some reason, I can’t remember which one is their normal eye color.
Toby is looking at me like I’m crazy then turns to Chris. “Fine, don’t tell us. We don’t need to know anyways. Come on.” He turns to leave, but I don’t follow.
“Jude, come one,” Hazel says. She grabs my arm and tries to pull me away, but I don’t budge.
“Which one of you…” I wonder aloud. Chris’s eyes jump to Theo and back to me. “Yeah, you’re right. We don’t need to know.” I stick my hand out to Chris. If he shakes my hand I might get a glimpse into his mind. “Thank you for bringing this to us.” Chris looks relieved and shakes my hand.
For a second, I am back in a dreamlike version of the Colton house. I see Theo reaching for something inside the closet. His eyes are brown, like mine. No, not like mine. Like Chris’s. I turn away for a second because I hear a noise. When I look back, Theo is running at me, fist swinging toward my face.
I let go of Chris’s hand and smile before turning away. Toby is looking at me and I shift my eyes toward Theo and mouth, “Possessed.” He rolls his eyes, annoyed. When we get back to the van, I jump in the back and started searching for the supplies we need.
“How did he get possessed? And how did you know?” Hazel asks. “Nothing feels different about him.”
“His eyes are the wrong color. He was possessed when he picked up the gem. What I want to know is how he is still possessed. The ghost should have left his body when he either left the house, or let go of the gem. What is the ghost attached to if it’s neither of those two things?” I pull out a bottle of holy water and some salt. One of them should get the ghost out of Theo. “Also, Olivia has green eyes, so it’s not her spirit. If that’s her necklace, she should be the one attached to it, not someone else.”
When I turn around to get out of the van, Theo is standing on the ground staring up at me with a wicked grin. Holy crap. “Uh……” I fumble with the bottle of water to try to throw it on him, but by the time I get it open, he is already in the van, hand around my throat. The bottle of water falls to the floor of the van and runs harmlessly around his shoes.
Normally, I wouldn’t be afraid of a wimp like Theo. Unfortunately, whoever is possessing him is much stronger. In fact, they are much stronger than any spirit I have ever encountered. He drags me out the back of the van. When the others try to get out to help me, he somehow forces all the van doors shut and locks them. Without even touching them. I’m fucked.
I kick at him, but he slams my head against the pavement and my vision goes black.
“I normally plan for my victims better, but you four are getting in my way. I’ll save the cute redhead for last,” Theo-not-Theo growls. He’s talking about Hazel. I feel something cold and thin wrap around my neck, and then it slides one across my neck, biting into it sharply. I can feel warm blood tricking down my skin. And then something else falling onto my face. It feels like sand. After a few seconds that feel like years, the wire loosens and Theo gasps, letting me go.
I lay there gasping for air, until my vision returns. When it finally does, I realize that Chris had pick up the salt that I had dropped and pour it over Theo while he was preoccupied with trying to murder me. Maria and Hazel are worrying over me while Toby is digging the first aid kit out of the back of the van. Chris is both hugging and lightly punching his brother. Behind them, I catch a glimpse of our ghosts face just before he vanishes.
“Get me my book,” I say, struggling to my feet. My head swims but somehow, I make it to the van. Toby tries to grab me but I shove him away and grab my notebook and a pencil from the glovebox. I need to get his face down on paper before I forget it. I lean against the van and sketch it down as quickly as I can.
“Jude, seriously, you might need stitches! Sit down at least!” Toby scolds me.
I finish the whole sketch before I realize that there’s blood dripping all over the page from my neck. That bastard tried to kill me! Hazel is next to me, looking at the drawing. I shove the blood covered notebook into her hand and I half sit half fall down on the ground. My head hurts and everything keeps spinning around me.
“Really? You couldn’t just come over here and sit down? Pussy.” Toby says as he hurries around the van and bandages up my neck. “Maria, let me see your hands.” I open my eyes and see that Maria is standing next to Hazel. Her hands are both bleeding and swollen.
“What happened?” I ask. I stand up, holding onto the van so that I don’t fall back down. Everything is still spinning. I wonder if I have a concussion. I touch my neck and feel a bandage over it. When did that get there?
“I had my hands between the door when that asshole slammed them shut with his mind powers,” Maria says, gritting her teeth. Toby gently pokes and prods them and she cries out in pain.
My head hurts. I look at Hazel, and notice that she’s holding my notebook. There’s blood all over it. There’s blood all over the place, actually. My blood. Oh yeah. Now I remember.
“Jude, maybe you should sit down,” Hazel says. At some point, she appeared next to me. Toby is looking down at me. Why am I on the ground? “You just sat down, Jude. You don’t remember?”
“Did I say that out loud?” I ask. Or maybe I don’t ask. When did Toby bandage me neck?
“I think he’s lost too much blood. We need to get him to a hospital,” Toby says. “Maria, too.” They drag me to my feet. How did I get in the car? I am very confused right now. Am I drunk?
“We need their footage of the house,” I mutter.
“Jude, can you look at me?” I don’t recognize that voice. I open my eyes and see a woman with black hair, dressed in scrubs standing over me. “Do you remember what we talked about five minutes ago?”
“Dude, I have never seen you before in my life,” I answer. I look around the room, then down at the tube stuck in my arm. “When did I get here?”
“About an hour ago; we started a blood transfusion and stitched up your neck. You’re lucky. If it’d been just a little deeper, you’d probably be dead.” The doctor or nurse, whatever she is, messes with the tube sticking out of my arm.
My head is pounding and I have to close my eyes again. “My head is killing me.”
“You know what’s killing me? The fact that you’ve said that about four times now. Can we make this the last time?”
I laugh. “I’ll try.”
“Good. Now, this conversation seems much more coherent than the previous ones we’ve had, so maybe I’ll actually get some information out of you. I’d like to know how you got your injuries.” I open my eyes and look up at her. Her face looks stern, like she thinks that maybe I did something wrong. I try to keep my face neutral, but in reality, I’m freaking out. What should I tell her? What did the others tell her? What if I get the story wrong and I get arrested or something? Wait, I’m the one who’s injured, so that wouldn’t make sense…
“We pulled over in a parking lot to grab some food out of the back of our van, and when I turned around, this guy just attacked me. I think he tried to cut my throat with a wire or something, but everything’s kind of… fuzzy. That’s all I really remember.” That is pretty much the truth, so I hope that’s similar to the story that the other went with. Assuming that she asked them already.
“I see…” She seems relieved, so I must have said the right thing. I breath out a silent sigh of relief. Then I sit up suddenly.
“Maria! Is she okay?”
“The girl who came in with you? Her hands are pretty banged up, but nothing broken. Just bruises and lacerations.”
“When can I leave?” I ask. I have shit I have to do, now that I know what the murderer looks like.
“Seriously? You have a possible minor concussion and lost quite a bit of blood. We want to keep you at least overnight.”
“No thanks. I need to leave now,” I say. I grab at the tube in my arm and she yelps, slapping my hand away.
“Are you crazy?! You can’t just pull that out whenever you want! I have an obligation to make sure that you are in stable condition before you leave!”
“I don’t really care about your obligations, honestly. Also, I can leave whenever I want. It’s not like I’m in prison or something. So, if you are that worried about it, you can safely remove this from my arm for me. Otherwise, I’ll do it myself.” She crosses her arms and bites at her lip. It’s actually pretty attractive…
“Fine. You’ll also need to sign a form saying that you chose to leave against my advice.” She carefully removes the tube and puts a bandage over the small hole in my arm. “Your friends brought you a change of clothes.” She gestures to a chair, then leaves,muttering something about crazy people.
After I slowly get dressed and almost fall down a few times, the doctor comes back into the room and hands me a clipboard and a pen.
“Sign and date here,” she says, sighing. “I also printed out some instructions on taking care of your stitches and making sure you get enough vitamins, since you lost so much blood. Please actually read them.” She shoves some papers into my hands along with some medical supplies. She looks like she’s about to say something else, but instead turns and leaves briskly.
When I get out to the waiting room, I see the police talking to Hazel and Toby. Maria is sitting in one of the chairs, her bandaged hands resting on her lap. When I get closer, the police stop talking and look at me, surprised.
“What the hell are you doing?” Toby snaps. “You should not be up walking around right now!”
I fall heavily into the chair next to Maria, tired from the short commute. “Well then, good thing there are chairs here.” Toby groans and looks at the ceiling.
One of the police officer’s flips open a little notebook. “Well, since you’re here, we might as well get your statement.” I quickly tell them the same thing that I told the doctor. “Did you see what he was wearing? Any distinguishing features?”
“Honestly, I don’t really remember what he looked like. It all happened so fast, and after he slammed my head against the ground, everything got kinda fuzzy.” This isn’t a lie at all. I don’t remember most of what happened after. I remember sketching him, but I don’t remember what he looked like now.
“I understand,” the officer says. He hands me a card with his name and number on it. “If you remember anything, call us immediately.” Yes, I’ll make sure and call the cops if I see any more murderous ghosts. Good idea.
“Of course,” I say, taking the card. As soon as they leave, I toss the card on the ground. “Whoops.”
Hazel rubs her eyes and turns to me. “Are you seriously just gonna leave? You could have died, Jude. This isn’t a joke. This is your life.”
Why does everyone question my decisions? I ignore her and Toby and look at Maria’s hands. “Are you okay?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah, I’m fine. I didn’t almost die, unlike some people,” she says angrily.
“Oh my gosh, people. Calm the fuck down. I’m alive, aren’t I?” I spread my hands and gesture as if to prove that I’m still here. “Are we gonna sit around talking about me forever, or are we gonna go figure out what the hell is going on around here? We need to get those idiots’ footage from the house.” I stand up too quickly and sway, but Toby grabs my shoulder to keep me from falling. “See? I’m totally fine.”
“You’re an idiot,” he mutters. Regardless of what they think of my level of intelligence, they still lead the way out to the van.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
