I closed my bedroom door, locked it, and hefted my newly loaded backpack over both shoulders. Hopefully Dad wouldn’t check my room for a while. If he believed Jason and found the door locked, he’d probably think I was still mad about him not letting me go to Hannah’s.
Tossing my leg out the open window, I dropped to the roof, leapt onto an adjacent tree limb, and plopped into the yard. “Uff.” I hit the ground with a thud and the scar on my hip screamed. I crouched for a minute in the shadows of the massive oaks, waiting for my leg to stop throbbing, grateful my room faced the backyard. Away from Dad’s office. Away from his view.
“Pssst.” A hiss from the shadowy tree line launched my heart into overdrive.
Then I saw him. Jason. He sat at an awkward angle among the shrubs outside of Hannah’s house trying to look inconspicuous.
“What are you doing over there?” I limped toward him fast, silently praying Dad wasn’t looking out a window.
“Waiting for you, of course.” Jason stood up, wiping his dirt-stained hands on his pants. “Didn’t want to go in without you.”
I was glad he’d waited. I needed a friend to deal with the monster. “Did you tell my dad I wouldn’t come out?”
Jason nodded. “He didn’t seem surprised. He told me to give you time. Said you were still dealing with your mom’s death.”
It was true, even if I didn’t want to hear it. “I always will be dealing with it.” I touched Mom’s blue amulet and hoped somehow she’d see me through what we were fixing to attempt.
“Come on. Let’s get this over with.” I lurched up and headed toward Hannah’s front door, pausing to side-hug my best friend. “Thanks, man. I know you hate lying. But sometimes . . .”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, taking the final steps to the door with me. “Sometimes . . .”
In less than an hour we had unloaded our gear in the front room of the Wilkeses’ house. Aunt Elena was setting up a monitor and EMF reader when Frank walked in with two sledgehammers and a crowbar.
Maybe busting out a basement wall would be fun. Jason’s face split into a grin. Looks like he thought so, too.
Hannah took out her EVP detector, flipped a switch, and started scanning the walls. “Nothing so far.”
What a nerd. She should be the psychic, not me. She’d love it.
“Elena.” Frank nodded to the glowing screens and gadgets in his hands. “You stay here and monitor our readings.”
Elena’s face hardened, but she didn’t complain.
“Hannah, you can stay with your aunt or bring your EMF detector to the basement with us.”
Hannah nearly bounced off the floor with delight. “I’ll come.”
Frank looked at her hard and she stopped bouncing. “This is serious business. Stay calm and watch the readings.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hoped I’d be as calm as Frank in situations like this one day. With training maybe I would be. Maybe.
Frank handed me one of the sledgehammers and gave Jason the crowbar. “You boys ready to go and break down this wall?”
I’d always imagined federal psychics to be totally brainy. I never imagined them covered in tattoos toting crowbars and hammers. The coolness factor of being a psychic just went way up. This was going to be fun.
Frank laughed as if he could read my mind. “There’s a lot more to psychic fieldwork than seeing spirits. You’ve got a lot to learn. But for now, follow my lead and remember that prayer-ward I showed you.”
I nodded and repeated it to myself before following Frank into the dark.
Silence seemed to fill every facet of the basement. No sound. No light. No movement. No chill to let me know if Mrs. Wilkes was even here. It was like I’d imagined the whole thing that night we’d been here to investigate—except that they had evidence. Her voice. My screams.
Jason flipped on his headlamp. If I weren’t so scared, I would have laughed. Jason looked like some sort of freaked-out spelunker.
“Where did you feel drawn to the wall, Alex?” Frank asked, his hands outstretched, exploring the energy of the room. As a Class A Psychic, Frank could feel energies and hear and see them, just like me.
I didn’t respond at first. I wanted to know if Frank felt anything.
“I feel like something traumatic happened here.” He tapped the spot on the wall where I’d heard Mrs. Wilkes’s fearful cries.
“That’s it,” I gulped. “That’s the spot.” A sudden chill coursed over my arms and along my spine.
Jason shivered and his breath came out in large, white puffs. “Do you feel that?” His light swung wildly around the room with his head. “It’s so cold.”
Frank’s face grew grim and he flipped on his own headlamp. “Right. We’d best get started before we have too much activity.” He hefted the sledgehammer and smashed it into the bricks. I did the same.
Bricks crumbled beneath our pounding hammers. That’s when the screaming started.
“Stop. What are you doing? He’ll kill you. He’ll kill you all.” Mrs. Wilkes’s voice hitched, frantic. Her face appeared through the hole we’d broken into the wall. She was pale, translucent, but I clearly saw the bloody gash in the side of her head. The gash that had likely ended her life. I swallowed back bile, wondering how he’d done it.
Smash.
Smash.
Smash.
Our hammers and Jason’s pry bar pulled away the bricks. Despite the effort, I was getting colder. Shivering.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Hannah’s EVP reader pulsed loudly with every smash of our hammers. “My readings are getting stronger,” she said, her voice thin and full of fear.
I knew he was coming before I heard his roar.
Frank’s eyes flickered to the sound of the angry spirit, but he didn’t even flinch. He simply directed his headlamp inside the hole we’d made in the wall. “Alex, quickly now. Collect her bones.”
Right. I dropped my hammer and adjusted the light on my head. Why did I have to grab the bones? I didn’t ask. There wasn’t time.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Jason rummaging in my backpack. He pulled out our ghostball trap and handed it to Frank. “Go for it, X. We’ve got this if we need it.” He tossed me my now-empty backpack.
Frank and Jason faced the roaring spirit of Mr. Wilkes and I went for the bones.
I slithered inside the space we’d created in the wall and landed next to Mrs. Wilkes’s long-dead corpse. There wasn’t much there except for cobweb-covered bones that poked out of a faded floral dress. No skin. Not much hair. I wish I’d brought gloves.
That’s when I felt her looking at me. “What are you doing, child?” she asked, her voice tight with fear. Mrs. Wilkes’s spirit looked from me to her corpse.
“Hurry, Alex. He’s stronger than I expected,” Frank called to me. “Get that ball ready for me, Jason.”
I tried not to listen to them, but focused on collecting the brittle bones. “You shouldn’t be here, Mrs. Wilkes.” My fingers closed around her skeletal arm, and it snapped off with the crunch of dried firewood. Gross. I pushed away my disgust and shoved her arm in the bag.
“What are you doing with those?” Her wide eyes stared at the lifeless skeleton.
“You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be afraid of him anymore. You need to go into the light, Mrs. Wilkes. That’s why we’re here. We’re going to bury you so you can go where you belong.”
A faint look of hope crossed her face, but died when we heard a horrific roar.
Jason screamed and I grabbed at her body, shoving her other arm and legs and pelvis and spine into my backpack. There was no time to be grossed out. My friends were out there dealing with a malevolent spirit. The same malevolent spirt that had nearly got me killed.
Last, I popped her skull into the bag. “Come with me, Mrs. Wilkes. It’s time to go where you belong.”
Mrs. Wilkes gave a fretful nod, then, as a wispy mist, settled herself within the bag of bones. Okay, that was creepy. I tried not to shudder and climbed out of the wall. That’s when my Third Pentacle of Jupiter tattoo began to itch. Not a good sign.
I’d expected Mr. Wilkes to be safely contained inside our ghostball, but what I found nearly made my blood freeze. Jason lay on the floor, a thin trail of blood dripping from his nose. Hannah and Frank stood frozen solid, locked in place, looks of terror etched on their faces like the life-size wax figures I’d seen at the Witch Dungeon Museum on our trip to Salem last year. Our ghostball trap lay unused at Frank’s feet, its sigils still black.
Upstairs, I heard Elena pounding on the door to the basement, screaming for us to let her in. I swung my headlamp toward the door—our only way out. There in the lock was the missing key.
Struggling with the bag, I bolted up the stairs and tried to twist the key but it wouldn’t move.
“Alex,” Aunt Elena screamed, frantic. “Open this door.”
“I’m trying,” I cried. “But I can’t. It’s locked.” I worked at the key, trying to twist it open. “It won’t budge.”
A terrible, cold presence wrapped around me from behind. I swung toward the basement. Toward my friends. But my thin beam of light dimmed into nothingness. Mr. Wilkes was a large, black mass, and he grew almost as huge as the room. “You’re not going anywhere,” he growled.
I needed to think and fast. The tattoo at the base of my skull burned. I grabbed my mom’s Nazar Boncuğu amulet, whispered a prayer, then dove down half a flight of stairs for the ghostball at Frank’s feet.
The lamp on my head went flying as I collided with the concrete floor and my hip scar screamed in agony. The pain made my vision narrow and swirl with blackness; I thought I’d pass out. But I couldn’t. I had to stop Mr. Wilkes. I had to save my friends.
I grabbed the sigiled ghostball and Mr. Wilkes lunged at me. My vision went black and a terrible iciness coated my skin. Mom’s amulet grew warm against my chest and it began to radiate a brilliant blue. Then the tattoo at the base of my skull burned, but I ignored it, held up the ghostball, and prayed the sigils would trap Mr. Wilkes inside.
The pressure on my neck tightened, strangling the breath from my throat. Aunt Elena kept pounding on the door, her voice garbled and high-pitched with fear. Mrs. Wilkes screamed from inside my bag. I had to use the ward.
I drew in what little breath I could and hissed it out. “By the light, on this day, I call to Thee to give me Your might. By the power of three, I command Thee into this ball. Lord protect all that surround me. So may it be. So may it be.”
Mr. Wilkes let out a great wail. Then everything went silent. My headlamp lay sideways on the floor, its beam illuminating the smashed wall. Frank fell to his knees, coughing, and I heard Jason cry out.
Hannah scrambled over the broken bricks to Jason and wiped the blood from his face.
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Mrs. Wilkes’s spirit rose out of my backpack and she spun in circles. “Where is he?”
Very slowly I got to my knees and then stood, the ghostball clutched to my chest. The sigils sizzled with golden light. We’d done it. The ghostball had worked. I had Mr. Wilkes trapped inside.