Dream Dancer (Ghosts Beyond the Grove Book 2) (24 page)

     The opening was quite large and I rummaged through the scattered remains of the items Zach never unpacked in August.  One by one, I flung travel-size toiletries, loose change, and unused napkins out onto the nearest empty chair.  With each item, I became more desperate.  None of them resembled a cursed object whatsoever.  When I got to the bottom of the rubble, I almost started to cry.  But one more swipe of my hand revealed what I hoped would be the moment I’d been waiting so long for.

     The pocket itself was empty.  But at the bottom left corner, I’d discovered a tear in the seam.  That tear led not back inside the main area of the bag but into a hidden compartment between the interior and exterior layers of fabric.  I felt around until something sharp poked at my fingers.  Without hesitation, I ripped that seam from top to bottom and dug with my whole hand like a starving prospector clamoring for just one tiny nugget of gold. 

     When my fingers came into contact with something other than the smooth nylon lining, I knew I’d hit pay dirt.  I had a good idea of what it was based on its shape and roughhewn surface.  And it was exactly the type of object that I could picture being cursed. 

     I was so eager to find it that I never stopped to think about what would happen next.  So I stood there dumbfounded, staring at it and wondering.  I remembered very little from my years in French class but a French phrase suddenly popped into my head. Then I started to panic and dropped it like a hot potato onto the floor.  Folie a deux. 

     It was one of those weird foreign phrases that had no real English equivalent.  Translated literally, it meant a madness shared by two.  By definition, it was a peculiar psychological disorder in which two people with a very close connection could share delusional beliefs and hallucinations.  Being around Zach for all those months had almost made me feel like I was going crazy myself.  With him gone, I was feeling saner by the day.  But now I went and touched the very object that caused his psychosis in the first place.  Folie a deux was a distinct possibility now.

     I had to take action before I turned into a lunatic just like him.  But what was I going to do besides stare at that thing lying on the floor in front of me? 

40
. 
Eclipsed

     With each passing day after I got rid of that thing, I slowly became myself again.  There were good days—days where it almost never felt like I’d gone to hell and back.  Then there were the dark days—the ones that made me feel like I’d brought hell back with me.  Pitch black.  Hell for me wasn’t sulphur and brimstone or demons dancing around a fire pit.  No, hell was being locked inside the dark, dusty corners of my own mind.

     My sister Claire did everything she could to reassure me that it was over now and that I needed to leave the past in the past.  But I wasn’t so quick to believe her.  You see, you can’t go through something like that and not carry a certain amount of fear along with you even long after it’s over.  I went into hiding—both emotionally and physically.

     After our parents died, Claire and I mutually inherited the house we grew up in in a small town just outside of Chicago.  Claire was an English professor at the small branch college that I attended as a music major.  Our family was always so dysfunctional when our parents were still alive.  I hate to say it, but things started to feel normal once it was just Claire and I left.

     We both finally started to be happy once my dad’s drinking and my mom’s depression were no longer factors.  Who would have thought so much good could come from a murder suicide?  Yet it was obvious that the air felt less oppressive.  There was nothing left for us to worry about back then.  Claire was planning her wedding to Blake, another professor at the college.  I finally asked my longtime girlfriend, Nikki, to marry me.  Everything seemed right with the world.

     In those rare moments when things weren’t quite settled in my head, I would stroll down the sidewalk listening to the various street musicians.  Indie rock was my specialty but I enjoyed everything from jazz to rap to classical.  Seeing the passion in these other artists’ eyes helped me gain focus on my own career.  Most days I walked alone and I preferred it that way.  But the one time when Nikki insisted on going with me was the one time I needed her the most. 

     I was in the habit of always dropping a coin or two into the donation cups of the musicians who seemed legit.  And by legit, I meant the ones who seemed like they would use that money to buy sound equipment and not booze.  My father was an alcoholic.  I knew the kinds of tricks he used to get his next fix when he was broke until payday.  I refused to be a knowing accomplice to anyone’s addiction.  I’d met every one of the street performers I encountered that day before.  All except for one of them.  He was shady and not all that musically inclined. But there was something about that dirty man propped against a light post and mindlessly strumming on a beat up guitar that made me make an exception that day.  I’ve regretted that decision a thousand times over in a thousand different ways.

     To a trained eye like mine, there was no question that he was an addict.  But he wasn’t addicted to anything I was familiar with.  It almost felt like he was addicted not to a substance but to someone or something that was out of his reach.  He seemed so sad and tortured that I reached into my pocket and pulled out a couple quarters to toss into the hat he’d set out on the sidewalk in front of him.  I expected to hear the first one clink against the coins he’d already collected but instead all I heard was a dull thud.  Before throwing that second quarter, I walked up to the hat and saw that my quarter was the only bit of money inside it.  I dropped that quarter in then fished into my wallet for a few more bucks despite Nikki’s protests. 

     After depositing a five dollar bill in too, I turned and began to walk away.  His guitar fell silent and my heart sunk.  I’d given him enough to get his fix and he was heading to the liquor store.  I was never going to trust my instincts again.  I hung my head and kept walking.

     “Young man!” I heard someone call out behind me. 

     I ignored it.  If he was trying to talk to me, he had nothing I wanted to hear.  Then a sharp tug on the back of my shirt stopped me in my tracks and sent me into a bit of a rage.  That stupid drunk was attacking me just like Dad used to.  But this wasn’t like when I was a child and unable to defend myself.  I swung around with my fist flying.

     Instead of being met with mutual aggression, I came face to face with his beaming smile and outstretched palm.  At first, I thought he was giving me my money back.  Was this all some sort of joke?  A reality show to see how many people would float this wretched soul a little loose change?  Then I looked closer.

     The small object in his hand was nothing of value though it seemed important to him.  He was offering it to me like it was made of pure gold though it looked every bit as dirty and useless as the drifter himself.  I didn’t really want to touch it let alone take it from him but I felt compelled to let him repay me for my kindness the only way he could.  As soon as he was out of sight, I would throw it into the next garbage can I saw and forget all about it.

     “Thanks,” I said with an awkward smile.  I plucked it from his hand as fast as I could and pretended to put it into my pocket for safekeeping.

     He barely acknowledged my thank you, instead training his eyes on something behind me in the distance.  He pushed past Nikki and me at full speed and dove into the back of a waiting limo.  Any second now, I expected to see him tossed back out onto the concrete.  Yet I watched in shock as that limo pulled slowly out into traffic with him still inside.

     Nothing about it added up.  It
had
to be a prank.  My gut, though, said I’d just witnessed something far stranger than any joke could be.  Nikki tugged at my arm to get me to follow her back home but there was one last thing I needed to do.

     “Gimme a second,” I replied, brushing her hand aside.  “I’m not keeping this thing.”

     I walked over to where he had left his belongings with every intention of dropping that thing into his hat and never looking back on the events of this day.  The money I’d left for him was already gone, no doubt pilfered the minute he turned his back on it.  I was about to return his gift permanently when
she
caught my eye.

     Blonde hair, bright blue eyes.  The exact opposite of the brown eyed brunette Nikki, who I’d loved since I was fifteen. 
She
was breathtaking in her black leather skirt, strapless top, and heels that made her tower over me by a good three inches.  She was tattooed and wild—the kind of girl who would break your heart then hand it back to you along with a greeting card.  “Thanks for a good time.  Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”  The kind of girl you would see wrapped around your best friend the next night while pretending she didn’t know you at all.  She was the type of girl every man wanted to tame but knew they never would.  Oh, but the way she was
looking
at me….

     I forgot all about what I was doing and ran down the street to catch up to her, ignoring Nikki’s frantic calls behind me.  I dodged in and out of the pockets of people on the sidewalk desperate to reach her but she vanished from sight.  That was far from the last time I would see her but the most vivid memory I had of her.  As time went on, less of my brain was mine.  Slowly, she was taking over every piece of me.  I wanted her yet hated her.      

     Nikki and Claire hounded me for months, wanting to know what was wrong with me.  I did everything I could to please
her
—I spent every spare dime on tattoos and piercings.  I wrote her a catalog of love songs.  Nothing seemed to make her happy.  How could I tell my fiancée that I was now in love with a stranger, a stranger who felt more familiar to me than she did after almost four years together?  Instead, I broke up with her.  Lucky for me, neither she nor Claire gave up on me.

     The best way I could describe the whole ordeal was that I was doing battle with my own mind.  And after the fact, I dealt with daily PTSD for several months.  Now, it only hits me in flashbacks—random things could trigger it and send me into a whirlwind of anxiety that I was about to be attacked.  This time it was an old lady at the grocery store who bumped into me with her cart.  It was a combination of being startled and the fact that she smelled like peppermint.  The girl of my nightmares always smelled of it too.  It used to be my favorite flavor.  Not anymore.

     So I settled into my happy place to ride out the internal storm.  My happy place was the old couch in the basement.  It was the couch Mom was murdered on but it held some of the few good memories I had of her and Dad when I was really young and the worst was still yet to happen.  I would curl up there in the fetal position until the anguish subsided.  Nikki, Claire, and now Blake too, knew not to disturb me when I felt like this.  The minute I heard the door open I knew
she
had found me.  I wept openly and prayed that Dad would have killed me, too.

     “Micah?  Are you awake?  There’s someone here to see you,” Claire said as she made her way downstairs one creaking step at a time.  And behind her, crept the footfall of someone else.

     It was the same ominous sound found in nearly every horror film ever made.  The sound evil made as it was about to wind its way into every crack and crevice in your soul.  I knew it wasn’t good.  I knew that
she
had come to reclaim what was left of me.

     I squeezed my eyelids shut so tightly that they began to hurt.  Maybe if I never set sight upon her, she wouldn’t be able to take control of me again.  Yet every once in a while, I still felt that burning desire to touch her and that urge was gnawing at me as hard as I was fighting it back.  Don’t open your eyes.

     “Micah Sloan?” a gruff voice barked into my ear, startling me enough to make my eyes fly wide open.

     This stranger definitely bore no resemblance to
her
yet I continued to cower there on the couch in silence.  Before me stood a tough looking older man—one who was much wiser to the ways of the world than I was.  What did he want with me?

     “Micah Sloan,” he repeated, with an air of authority that demanded a response from a coward like me.

     “Yes?” I replied, terrified by what might be in store for me.

     “We need to talk about what you did at O’Hare last August.”

     My worst nightmare was unfolding right in front of me.  I still felt guilty for what I did to that kid in the airport that day.  I knew the kind of hell I unleashed on him.  But I was desperate and Claire convinced me that it was the only way to fix things.  I didn’t really know all of what happened until months later as the fractured pieces of my memory started to fall back into place.  I started to panic.  I looked over his shoulder at Claire who was signaling for me to keep my mouth shut.  But my anxiety took over and the words began dripping out.

     “I’ll tell you everything as long as you don’t make me take it back!”