Bound Spirits Read online

  As she pondered these things, the desire to see her mother again grew so intense, the sadness and grief so deep, Chris could think of nothing else. Her limbs grew heavy and suddenly, all she could think about was joining her mom. She lay down on the bed and began to entertain ways that could happen.

  As she closed her eyes, she realized someone, somewhere, was crying. It was a desperate sound, filled with soul-wrenching grief and despair. It sounded far away, and on some level, Chris knew she should get up and try to find where it was coming from. But she couldn’t move. She didn’t really want to. She wanted to go to sleep and for all of this to be over.

  And then it stopped, and the feeling passed. Chris sucked in a gulp of air, as though she’d been drowning, and sat up.

  What in the world was that?

  She went into the hall and called for Derek. He didn’t answer. She headed downstairs to look for him, but before she reached the first floor, Ron and Joe both appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

  “We found something,” said Ron.

  “Was it something that wailed and sobbed and made you want to kill yourself?”

  Both ghosts looked surprised. “You could hear that?” asked Joe.

  “Faintly, but it still packed a punch. Did you see what it was?”

  “Only got a glimpse of a white dress,” said Ron. “I’m guessing that’s the white lady Marsha was talking about.”

  “A weeping woman in white?” Chris looked at Ron. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Pretty sure,” said Ron.

  “La Llorona.” They both spoke at once.

  “La Yo-what now?” asked Joe.

  “It’s a Mexican legend,” said Ron. “A jilted woman drowned her children and then killed herself. Now she wanders the earth, crying as she searches for her lost children.”

  “She’s sure a long way from Mexico,” he said.

  “Other cultures have similar legends,” said Chris. “But none of them say anything about the mother’s despair spreading to those who hear her call.”

  “Some versions do warn that anyone who hears it is in danger of dying, though,” said Ron.

  “Well, that’s awesome.” Chris frowned. “I need to find Derek.”

  “Derek’s right here,” said the man in question, lugging equipment in from the dining room. “I could use a little help.”

  Chris hurried over and threw her arms around him, hugging him tight.

  “Whoa.” He set down the cases he was carrying so he could return her hug. “What’s this about?” He pulled back and looked at her, concerned. “Did you find your mom?”

  “No. I’m glad that thing didn’t get you to throw yourself off a balcony or something.”

  His brow furrowed. “What thing? Did you make contact?”

  She shook her head. “The white lady. Her crying… didn’t you hear it?”

  “I’ve been down in the basement packing up cameras and audio equipment for the last twenty minutes. I didn’t hear anything. You want to fill me in?”

  Before she could, her phone rang. “Hang on.” She took it out and frowned at the display. “It’s Marsha.”

  “Shouldn’t she be in bed?” asked Ron. “It’s like three in the morning.”

  Chris answered the phone. “Marsha? Everything okay?”

  “No!” She half-sobbed, sounding panicked. “It’s here! It’s destroying my room as I speak!”

  “Okay. Try to stay calm. Where are you now?”

  “My parents’ house. I’m downstairs. I shut it inside, but it keeps pounding on the door. I’m afraid it’s going to get out!”

  “Marsha, listen to me. Get out of the house. I want you to hang up and text me your address. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  “Please, please hurry!” She hung up. Chris put the phone back in her pocket and looked at Derek. “We need to go.”

  “Okay, give me a minute to load up this equipment.”

  “Leave it. We can get it later. We need to get over there now.”

  Chapter Seven

  She waited for them on the front porch. The spacious wrap-around porch on the farm-style house had ample seating, including a porch swing and a wicker love seat, but Marsha sat huddled on the front steps underneath the light. She wore velour sweat pants and an over-sized tee-shirt, no shoes, and her hair was partially done up in a sort of bun that probably started out artfully messy but now looked like a mess. And she was smoking.

  She put her cigarette out on the step beside her as they approached. Then she sprang to her feet, ran to Chris, and embraced her. “Thank God you’re here! I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Is it still going on?”

  “I think it stopped.” She let Chris go and stepped back. “I’ve been too afraid to go back inside.”

  “Where are your parents?” asked Derek.

  “They’re visiting my brother in Springfield. I had the place to myself.” She let out a bitter-sounding laugh and brushed a fallen lock of hair out of her face. “At least until I tried to go to sleep.”

  Ron appeared beside them on the front walk. “Joe and I will scope things out inside. You guys wait out here.”

  Chris nodded and focused on Marsha. “Tell us what happened.”

  With trembling hands, Marsha pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her pants pocket and shook one out. She placed it in her lips and produced a lighter, but paused on the way to lighting it, glancing at Chris and Derek. “Do you guys mind?”

  “No,” said Chris, “but since when do you smoke?”

  She removed the cigarette from her mouth and looked at it. “I actually quit years ago, but I held onto a pack for emergencies.” With a sheepish look, she shrugged. “This seemed to qualify.”

  “Here, let me.” Derek took the lighter from her as she again started to light it. Once she took a drag, her hands stopped shaking so much. “Why don’t we go sit down and you can tell us what happened.”

  “Okay.” She led them to the porch, pausing to stoop down and pick up a brandy snifter from the top step. Clutching it to her chest, she again glanced at them both, her expression mildly guilty. “I’d offer you some, but I’d have to go inside to pour it, and I’m not ready for that yet.”

  “That’s okay,” said Chris. “Let’s sit down.” She took hold of Marsha’s elbow and led her over to the swing before taking a seat next to Derek on the wicker couch, the better to see Marsha. “So you said everything was fine until you went to bed. What happened then?”

  Marsha took a drag on her cigarette and flicked the ashes into the brandy glass. “It started out like last night. I was in bed, trying to sleep, and I felt like I was being watched. And there was… I don’t know how to describe it. It was this air of hate. I told myself it was my imagination, that I was still shaken up from what happened back at the house. But I wasn’t at the house, so I was safe. I did my best to ignore it, and then I fell asleep.”

  “If you were asleep,” said Derek, “I have to ask. Are you sure you weren’t dreaming before you called us?”

  She gave him a pointed look that almost startled Chris and pointed toward the second story with her cigarette. “You’re welcome to go up there and see for yourself.” This was not the Marsha they knew. Her cheerful, people-pleasing veneer had been completely stripped away, leaving behind an angry, snarky woman who clearly brooked no nonsense.

  Derek leaned back and held up his hands. “I’m trying to cover all the bases.”

  “I take it your room was trashed?” Chris asked, steering them back on topic.

  Puffing on her cigarette, Marsha nodded. She blew out a column of smoke and said, “I woke up to a crash. I turned on my light and sat up, and things were flying around the room. For a while I sat there and watched. I guess I was probably in shock and also too scared to move. But then a horse figurine hit me in the back of the head, hard enough to break.” She raised a hand to the back of her head. “It didn’t cut me, but it left a goose egg.” She leaned forward so Chris
could feel it for herself.

  Leaning back against the swing, she sniffed. “I loved that figurine. I’ve had it since I was eight. I used to be crazy about horses.”

  “A lot of little girls are,” said Derek.

  “Anyway, after that, I grabbed my phone and ran to my parents’ room to call you, and you told me to get out of the house, so I came straight outside.”

  “But you stopped to pour yourself a drink first,” Derek pointed out.

  She shook her head. “I came outside first. I was out in the yard, watching my window and listening. I was such a wreck. When things seemed to settle down, I snuck back in to pour some brandy and grab my cigarettes out of my purse. While I was in there, the pounding on my bedroom door started again, so I ran back outside. I haven’t been back inside since.”

  Ron appeared on the porch. “It’s clear. Her room is trashed, but whatever did the trashing seems to be gone, or at least dormant. It’s probably not a good idea for her to stay here alone, though.”

  Chris reached over to pat Marsha on the arm. “You did the right thing by calling us. I don’t think it’s safe for you to stay here. You should come with me to my place.”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” said Ron. Chris shot her a look, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine. But keep her away from the attic. I’m heading back there now. Joe’s already gone home. It’s been a long night and we’re both running out of steam.” Without waiting for an answer, she disappeared.

  Oblivious to the entire exchange, Marsha nodded. “That would be so great. Thank you so much.” Her eyes filled with tears. She wiped away one that strayed down her cheek. “So what did you guys find at the house?”

  “I think we had an encounter with the white lady you told us about. During your attacks, did you hear someone crying?”

  “Crying?” She thought a moment, then shook her head. “No, why?”

  “It’s not important.” Chris looked at Derek. “The time frame doesn’t fit, anyway. It sounds like Marsha was getting attacked tonight around the same time we had our encounter. Last time I checked, a ghost can’t be in two places at once any more than the living can.”

  “So you’re saying this is definitely something else,” said Derek. When she nodded, he said, “Can I talk to you?” He stood up and smiled at Marsha. “Give us a sec’. We’ll be right back.”

  She nodded and focused on finishing her smoke. Derek led Chris out into the yard, out of earshot. “So you think we’re dealing with something that’s attached itself to Marsha, not to a place.”

  Chris folded her arms. “That’s what it’s looking like.”

  “And you invited her to stay at your place.”

  “I can’t leave her on her own. The thing physically attacked her. She’ll be safer with me.”

  “Maybe. But will you be safe?”

  “I don’t know. I have to think that having Ron and Joe around will provide some kind of protection.”

  “Maybe,” Derek again allowed. “But maybe not. What about that thing that used to be in your house, the one that killed Ron?”

  “Sarah.”

  “Yeah. You told me she could actually destroy other spirits.”

  “Not destroy. More like absorb. They were all released when she was destroyed, at least according to Ron.”

  “Okay, but my point is, what makes you so sure inviting this thing into your home won’t put all of you in danger?”

  Chris mulled this over. He had a point. And it wasn’t like the prospect of having Marsha as a house guest was high on her list of things she wanted to do, ever. But she’d already extended the invitation and it was too late to take it back without looking like a jerk. Besides, regardless of Chris’s feelings about Marsha, she was family, or soon would be.

  “What else would you have me do? I can’t leave her on her own.”

  “No, I guess you can’t. So I’ll stay over, too.”

  Her brows furrowed as she looked up at him. “That’s going to get a little crowded.”

  “Oh, come on, your house is huge. But if you can’t spare a guest room I’ll sleep on the couch.” A slight smile crept across his lips. “Unless you can think of another solution.”

  She reached out a finger and pushed against his chest. “Keep it in your pants, Brandt.” Even as she spoke, a smile tugged at the corners of her own mouth. Marsha and her dad weren’t the only ones with old-fashioned ideas about these things. Derek didn’t necessarily share her desire to wait, but he respected it, and she loved him all the more for it. But he sure did make it hard sometimes. “Marsha can sleep with me. Hopefully there’ll be safety in numbers, and if not, I can see what’s going on for myself. You can stay in one of the spare rooms.”

  “Maybe it would be better if I stayed in the same room as the two of you. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor.”

  “You do know that when two straight women share a bed we don’t actually strip down to our panties and have pillow fights, right?”

  “Grow up. And also thank you for that mental image.”

  “I’ll put you in the room right next door, for all the good it will actually do to even have you there.”

  “It’ll make me feel better about this whole thing.”

  “Fat lot of good that will do if we’re all dead by morning.”

  “Have I mentioned how much I love your relentlessly optimistic outlook on life?”

  “Stuff it.” She turned and went back to the porch.

  Marsha looked like she was about to light up another cigarette but stashed it when she saw Chris coming. “Everything okay?”

  “It’s all settled. We need to get your things. I can come up with you, or if you’d rather wait out here, Derek and I can pack you a bag.”

  “That would be great. I don’t think I can take going up there again yet.” She pulled her cigarettes back out.

  “Sure,” said Chris. “But Marsha?”

  She paused in the middle of lighting up. “Yes?”

  “No smoking in the house, okay?”

  She slumped a little as she lowered the lighter and cigarette. “Don’t worry, this will be my last. You won’t tell your dad, will you?”

  “Secret’s safe with me.”

  “Thanks, Chris. You have no idea how much all of this means to me. I promise I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  Chris simply smiled and nodded and headed inside the house.

  “It’s not her behavior that worries me,” Derek said as he followed her inside.

  “Speak for yourself,” Chris muttered. She had no idea how long this more subdued version of Marsha would last, but she wasn’t about to let herself get too used to it.

  Chapter Eight

  The rest of the night passed without incident, unless you counted all the times a sleeping Marsha elbowed Chris in the face or kneed her in the back. Marsha slept fitfully in Chris’s bed while, between her thrashing and the anticipation of an attack, Chris lay wide awake.

  She gave up on sleep once the light of daybreak seeped in through the curtains. Since the previous attacks had happened in the middle of the night, she thought chances were weighted enough in favor of Marsha being safe on her own and got up to steal quietly downstairs. She found her laptop open on the kitchen table, with her sister seated in front of it, tapping away on the keys.

  “Don’t let me interrupt your writing,” she said as she trudged through the kitchen on her way to the coffee maker.

  The tapping stopped anyway. “It’s not writing,” said Ron. “It’s research.”

  “On a new novel?”

  “On Marsha. Or what’s haunting her.”

  On zombie autopilot, Chris went through the motions of starting a pot of coffee. “Find anything interesting?”

  “You could say so. I started out brushing up on La Llorona. Of course, that legend is about a particular ghost, but there have been other sightings that fit the profile, so I think it also qualifies as a type of haunting.”

  “You think that’s w
hat our white lady is?”

  “She shares a lot of the hallmarks. It would help if we could find out more about her.”

  “Marsha doesn’t know anything helpful. I’ve asked her to get in touch with her grandmother. Hopefully she’ll have more info.”

  Ron drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “It would help if we could actually talk to the spirit. But she doesn’t seem to be in the mood for conversation.”

  With the coffee started, Chris pulled up a chair next to Ron and sat down to wait. “It could be that she’s not capable. Maybe she’s an apparition, not an intelligent haunting.”

  “You think she’s an environmental electromagnetic recording of a past event?” She looked skeptical. “I’m not sure I buy an apparition having the power to sow so much despair.”

  “That’s only one theory of that type of haunting. Maybe what’s really going on is that those types of spirits have been around and on their own for so long that they lose their minds, or their sense of who they are.” Noticing Ron’s frown and remembering exactly who—and what—she was talking to, she quickly added, “That’s only one idea, though. That’s probably not it at all.”

  “Anyway,” Ron said, ignoring that entire line of thought, “I tried looking into the history of the estate, but that didn’t turn up anything helpful. So then I did some digging on poltergeists.”

  Chris’s eyes widened. “Poltergeists?”

  “What else would you call whatever’s got it in for Marsha?”

  Chris sighed and rubbed her face. “I don’t know, but I have a feeling I’m going to need coffee before I can continue this conversation.”

  She got up and went to retrieve her favorite mug from the dishwasher, a tall black ceramic mug with a big, white, three-dimensional ceramic ghost taking up one side. It was the cute kind, more like Casper than the ones she normally dealt with. On top of the mug’s handle perched an adorable little baby version of the ghost. Derek had gotten it for her because naturally, it had reminded him of her. It was meant for Halloween, but since pretty much her entire life was one long, unending Halloween, it seemed appropriate for every day.