Watching Enoch pace the dilapidated kitchen was dizzying. I could barely track him, my eyes wanting to roll and close rather than focus. Behind me, the woman was restless, weakly kicking her legs back and forth on the mildewed sleeping bag, clawing at the fabric with her fingers, and making tiny noises with a broken cadence. “Enoch, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” I tried again. I’d told him, maybe too bluntly, that his great-grandmother had taken a fall at the house. That I’d only been there for Deborah (he seemed so sure it was her) to find because I couldn’t go in the ambulance with Ezra, who’d been having some sort of seizure issues. Enoch had laughed darkly at that, told me that wasn’t what was wrong, but his grim mood had swung to panic when I mentioned his great-grandmother.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” His voice was shrill, and he was tugging at his hair in what was surely a painful way, fistfuls of it just yanked with each word. “He did it! He did it to her! Shit! I should’ve been there! But then he’d have come for Mom! Shit!”
“Enoch, please,” I tried again. “Panicking isn’t going to help you, right? Let’s take a breath.”
“Shut up,” he snapped. “Just shut up a minute!” He threw his head back and took several gulping breaths. “Shut up,” he repeated, but it seemed more to himself than to me or Deborah. “Help,” he whispered. “He’s coming…” He squeezed his eyes shut tight and rocked back onto his heels before coming down hard on the flat of his feet. He was chanting help and he’s coming and hurry over and over until the words blurred together and, finally, he stopped on a deep, sucking gasp. “He can’t hear me!”
“Um, try someone else?” I got to my hands and knees and hung there a moment, my stomach heaving. Only thin bile came up, splattering on the dirty floor and leaving it none the worse for wear.
“Like it’s a freakin’ chat room,” he muttered.
“You said your mom was strong in it, right? And you were too, before she, um, got hurt? So why don’t you try again? Reach down to whatever it is that makes you able to do it and grab on, give it a try.” A few months ago, I’d have told him to stop it, to get himself together but… Who was it hurting? It was even possibly helping because it distracted him from me, and I was able to push onto my knees then, letting dizziness wash over me for a minute as he tried to talk to Yancy, from the sound of things.
“Like a brick wall,” he muttered. “Too much like Pops.” He shook his head and his tone changed to sweet and caring. “MeMaw, MeMaw, MeMaw,” he whispered over and over. “MeMaw, can you hear me? Hey, MeMaw!” Enoch froze, his eyes flying open and head snapping up. “She’s not there.” He jerked his head to face me. “She’s not there! It’s not even like Yancy is a brick wall! She’s a blank spot! Fuck!” He kicked at the wall, the boards splintered with rot and wet drywall mushing under his heel.
“Hey, hey, hey!” I was terrible at soothing. CeCe would attest to that. When we were kids and one of us got hurt, I was the tough-love twin. You won’t bleed to death from a scraped knee. A plain bandage works just as good as a cute one. Stop getting snot on me, it’s just a splinter, geez… But now, I figured, was as good a time as any to dredge up my dormant empathy gene and turn it on for Enoch. “You’re pretty stressed out right now, Enoch. Studies have shown stress has a negative impact on ability.” I was generalizing like a champ, but he was paying attention. At least a little. “Oscar even has problems when he’s stressed, you know?”
“He’s the best freaking medium ever,” Enoch protested, sounding scandalized. “How can he have problems from something stupid like being stressed out?”
I struggled to my feet, clutching the pantry door frame for support as I tried to stay upright. “I don’t know how y’all’s abilities are supposed to work, but if you’re feeling frantic and frustrated, I know that can definitely affect how things like thinking and even physical performance work. When Oscar isn’t able to focus, sometimes it’s hard for him to talk to ghosts. He has to take a minute and recenter himself.” That wasn’t a lie. I’d seen him do these resets after a particularly intense reading, before moving on to the next person. We’d had to do some promo for UnReality and Oscar filmed a few ‘casual’ séances with carefully vetted-by-the-channel questioners. One or two had been unhappy with what Oscar said and he’d needed a few minutes of quiet to just center and, in his words, let himself feel okay with what he’d passed along. “If Oscar can be affected by stress, and he’s a full-grown man who’s been doing this for most of his life, wouldn’t you be impacted by it too?”
“Because I’m a kid?” he sneered.
“Because you’re tired. And yes, you’re a kid. And you shouldn’t be alone in this, Enoch. Let me help you. Let me help you find someone you can talk to about this.”
He was quiet for a long moment, then, “Maybe Oscar?”
“Maybe,” I allowed. At that point I’d have offered to resurrect Houdini himself if it meant Enoch would help me back to the Carstairs place and call for help.
He was quiet again, then nodded. “Okay. Okay. But the problem is… he’s out there.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the dirty kitchen window. “He’s out there and he’s not gonna let us get far. And I can’t let him take her, Doctor Weems. I can’t let him take her from me. Not if there’s a chance I can get her okay again.”
I looked at the woman behind me. I wasn’t a medical doctor, but I knew there’d be no helping her at this point. She was on borrowed time. Her breathing was shallow and very slow, her eyes unfocused… I nodded at him. “Okay. Can you carry her?”
“Doctor Weems, he’s gonna try for you,” Enoch said urgently. “He’s angry, and he wants to do some really bad things. And if I’m fast enough, he’ll go for you first.”
I wanted to ask what speed had to do with anything if we were talking about a ghost. From what little bit I’d gleaned from Oscar and just pop culture in general, I didn’t think ghosts were bound by something as mundane as how fast they could run. Instead of arguing, I just made a noise of agreement. “Well, better me than you, I suppose.”
He choked wetly, turning his face away. “I’m real sorry, okay? And if he… if he uses you, he probably won’t use you up. He needs the energy too bad for him to just like blow the wad, you know?”
“Er, charming phrase, and okay. Let’s just go, Enoch.” At that point I’d have agreed to crawl naked through broken glass if it meant we got out of there and got to the Carstairs place.
Enoch helped me into the kitchen proper and went to pick up Deborah. She moaned and tried to fight him, but he lifted her with little effort. She was literally skin and bones, from the looks of things, and couldn’t weigh over sixty or seventy pounds. Her head lolled towards me and her bloodless, cracked lips parted in a grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. “Follow me carefully,” Enoch said. “The place is shot to hell, but it’s safer than leaving her outside.”
He led us out of the kitchen and into a narrow, short corridor that smelled so strongly of mildew, I gagged. It burned my nose as we made our way down the wet, spongy carpet and into a large foyer. Deborah rattled out a moan and started to fight weakly in Enoch’s arms, turning her face against his chest and making wet, hacking, broken sounds in her throat. “Sorry, Mom,” he murmured, jostling her like a fussy baby. “We’re gonna go fast, okay? Don’t look up.” He glanced back at me, nodding at the remains of a wooden chandelier hanging overhead, one of those that looked like a wagon wheel and was stereotypical ‘western ranch’ style. “Dewayne Hicks topped himself there,” he murmured. “Mom found him and…” he closed his eyes. “I was following her, you know, like a ghost? With that projection? She’d been upset all day and I wanted to help her and she found him and…” He hiccoughed on a sob. “And when I came runnin’ after I saw what she did, she was gone. And Dewayne Hicks was on the ground. Rope broke,” he added, sniffing in an affectation of a tough guy ‘eh, who cares?’ attitude. “I think she really liked him special,” he added. “She was real upset when Pops didn’t let her see him again.”
Deborah’s moans were frantic, her fingers plucking at Enoch’s shirt fruitlessly. “Okay, okay,” he soothed. “Sorry, Mom. Doctor Weems didn’t know. And he needs to know why… why this is going on, okay?”
“Enoch,” I began, but the house groaned around us. Not settled, not ‘made a weird noise like an old house,’ not wind passing through holes in the roof. Groaned. A heavy, tired, sad, but angry noise like the house itself was tired of our shit and ready for us to go. The front door, hanging by a single hinge, swung inwards and dropped off, crashing to the floor and making us jump. “Shit,” I gasped.
Enoch nodded. “Uh huh. He doesn’t want us going. He wants us scared.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He’s done this before. When I brought Mom here to hide her, when she refused to get near home, he tried to drive us out. But if I kept Mom back in the kitchen, he didn’t get so het up. I think…” he trailed off, looking a little embarrassed at his own theorizing, “I think it’s because this part of the house was his one time, you know? But the Hicks family added the kitchen in like the fifties. That was never part of the original house.”
As if on cue, the house rattled out another groan. “Let’s move,” I said. “Today’s been shitty enough without dying under a pile of rubble.”
Enoch adjusted his hold on Deborah and, after taking a deep breath, marched towards the open door. “When we get separated—and we will—keep runnin’ across the old cow field, okay? There are two fences. One of ‘em is gonna be hard to see because it’s half-fallen down. It’ll hit about knee high on you and it’s barbed wire so keep an eye out. The other is split-rail and when you hit that one, you’re at the property line. Get over it and you’ll be back on Pops’ land.”
I nodded. “Lead the way.”
Enoch stepped onto the sagging porch, looking fearfully towards the tree line past the house, and sucked in a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said again, and took off at a loping run with far more ease than anyone carrying deadweight should be able to do.
I lurched after, leg and head screaming for me to stop, threatening to take me down with every step. I glanced down the old drive leading to the road where we’d broken down not so long ago but what felt like a different lifetime. For a moment, I considered heading for the road, flagging down help, but the drive was long and overgrown. If I stayed behind Enoch, there was a better chance of reaching help instead of waiting for a car to pass and hoping they stopped for a beaten, bloody man waving at them like a mad thing. Enoch was already in the cow pasture by the time I made it to the edge of the front yard. And something was moving in the pecan grove between the house and the road, the one I’d seen someone moving in the other day while trying to get a signal on my phone. Pushing myself faster, I made it to the edge of the high grass before the dark shape broke free from the trees and headed for me. Enoch’s wordless shout told me he saw it, too, and gave me a burst of speed I knew I’d pay for soon. Enoch disappeared from sight, dipping down with the slope of the land, and I found the first fence.
It hit me across the legs, just above the knees as Enoch had guessed it would, and I tumbled face-first, the sharp thorns of metal tearing through my jeans and into my skin with a hot-sicking tug. My scream was raw and loud. I was unable to stop it as I rolled onto my back, the feeling of warm blood spilling down my legs as the shape loomed over me and resolved into a man with a grim, unpleasant smile and dark, narrowed eyes taking me in thoughtfully. “Not my first choice,” he muttered. “But you’ll do.”
Everything hurt and felt wrong. My already mushy head was suddenly too full, too frantic, then it all snapped quiet, and I was left feeling like I’d been shoved into a bag and tucked away in a corner. I could hear the world around me, but I couldn’t speak. I could see, but it wasn’t the way I usually did. Everything was a blur, like I was using someone else’s eyes.
I’m going to miss Oscar, I thought as everything seemed to close in around me and the smothered-trapped feeling melted into a haze where I hung like a bug in a web. I think I might love you, Oscar, I thought as I finally sank down into whatever was happening.