I walked out of the bunkhouse, following the wisps of the two ladies and Hudson’s stalking gait. Everything was normal out there—birds being loud, the rattle-hum of insects in the dry grass, and very distantly the rumble of trucks on the highway, miles away. It felt wrong, like there should be some ominous clouds overhead, or silence pressing in.
“You’ve always been dramatic,” Grandmeresniffed, coming into view beside me. “I only tried to save you from yourself.”
“We’re doing this now?”
“Well, you’re the one insisting upon making a scene. Really, Oscar. I shouldn’t still be having to guide you at this stage. If you’d stayed to what you’d been taught—”
“Then I’d be living a lie. Like you were.”
Grandmere, wearing her favorite pantsuit and glittering with her favorite jewelry, glared at me imperiously from the bunkhouse porch. “Impudent brat,” she muttered. “Your mother’s influence. She was too soft when it came to your abilities. To our abilities.”
I refused to rise to the bait. It was tempting, though. Mother had been kind, if a bit distant, and loved me in her way, but when it came to my mediumship, she’d treated it as a sweet party trick and said it made her nervous if I did it too often around her. When she passed, I didn’t try to contact her because I didn’t want to scare her. “Why are you doing this to me,” I asked. “You’ve been the one blocking me.” It wasn’t a question—I already knew the answer.
“That spectacle in New York was gauche, Oscar! It was beyond gauche, if such a thing is even possible!” She stepped off the porch as if she were still alive, moving fluidly and keeping every shred of grace and to the manor born snobbery she’d had in life. “It was shameful, whoring yourself out like that. And if I’ve taught you nothing else, it’s respect for what we do!”
“Whoring?” Hudson muttered. “Sounds like you had a lot more goin’ on than chatting with us poor spooks, huh?”
“Hush,” I hissed at him. Grandmere arched her dark brows at me. “Can you see them?” I asked.
She inclined her chin, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “First lesson, Oscar: Don’t speak to that which is not summoned.”
“You taught me to close down parts of my ability for your comfort. Because of your fears,” I cried. “And now people are suffering because I don’t know what to do!”
“Really,” she sniffed. “What you need to do is keep out of it. You were not asked to handle anything. These ghosts are not under your hand—”
“I don’t understand,” I said, my tone more frantic than not. “Grandmere, what do you mean, under my hand?” My stomach lurched and I wanted to just curl around it, reset my entire day, Hell, my entire month. Maybe the year. “You didn’t teach me everything,” I challenged. “You kept so much from me. I know it. You were afraid, though, and I’m not mad at you for being afraid.”
“I taught you what was necessary,” Grandmere said with more than a hint of frost in her tone. “I taught you what was safe. I love you, Oscar, even if you don’t believe that. And I protected you. You’re spitting in my face, trying to step away from those teachings!”
“Please,” the spectral Ms. Carstairs murmured. “Please stop!” She shimmered, going nearly see-through before snapping back into focus. She looked like she felt ill, her features drawn and pinched as her spectral jaw worked. “He’s going to take us,” she gritted out. I’d never known a ghost to experience pain, but she seemed to be in the throes of something bad, something that was hurting her. “You’re fighting with that old biddy and—” she broke off on a ragged cry. “Oh!”
“Old biddy!” Grandmere shrieked, losing her cool exterior. “How dare—”
Ms. O’Halloran and Hudson crowded me as Ms. Carstairs swooped and Grandmere drew herself up imperiously. “Listen to me,” Ms. O’Halloran insisted in her reedy voice, “Albright is going to kill us. I mean, again!”
Hudson nodded. “He’s been taking us out since his own death. He’s… he’s not like us. He pulls on us, on our, what’s it, on our energy, you know? Like draining a battery dry.” He glanced at Ms. O’Halloran. “You know what a battery is, right?”
“I’m dead, not stupid. I see things. Or I did.” She turned her translucent face to me, and I realized she looked like she was crying. “The only ones left from the founding families, the ones who… who did Albright wrong, are the Carstairs. Once he’s done with them, he… Well, I doubt he’ll move on like he says he will.”
“How is he drawing on you? I don’t understand,” I protested. “How is that even possible?”
Grandmere broke away from her fight with Mrs. Carstairs. “It’s nothing you should concern yourself with,” she snapped at me. “It’s not what we do, Oscar. This projecting, this draining is vulgar and beneath us.”
“For the love of god,” I groaned. “Grandmere! This isn’t some goddamn dame and poodle party! People are literally dying! I know you were—you are—afraid but… but I need help. Please. Please, Grandmere. Help me.”
She stared at me for a very long moment. I could almost pretend she was alive again, so vibrant and real she seemed. But then she shimmered and frowned. “No,” she said. “No, I don’t think I should encourage this. You’re refusing to follow the path I laid for you. The safe path. The right one. I will not be party to your self-destructive tendencies.”
She was gone. I felt her leave in a huff and snap. I wanted to cry like a child and demand she come back, demand she help me. Instead, I pulled myself up and turned to the remaining three ghosts. “I don’t know how to help you. I’ve never faced someone like Albright. Hell, all I’ve done is be the middle man for communication. I don’t know what Albright is, what he’s doing to you.”
“Stop him,” Hudson said quietly. “Enoch, bless his heart, he’s been trying but he doesn’t know the first thing about what to do. Less than you, even. But he’s been trying. We don’t want to disappear like the others. We want to go to whatever’s next. We deserve that. We didn’t kill Albright—that was our ancestors. But we’re paying for what they did in ways you cannot imagine. This,” he waved a hand at himself, at the ladies, at the ranch, “this is our Hell, slowly diminishing until he’s done using us up, then…” He shook his head. “Then we’re just gone. There’s no crossing over, there’s no haunted houses. Gone.”
A low, keening sob—very alive, very human—broke over us and the ghosts vanished from sight, though they lingered still. Out of the cow pasture lumbered Enoch, sweaty and dirty and carrying a bundle of—no, not a bundle! A person!
“Enoch!” I broke into a run towards the split-rail fence as he heaved himself against it. He shoved his burden at me and sank to his knees. I grabbed for them automatically, nearly recoiling in horror when I saw who—what—I was holding.
A dead woman.
A dead woman who rattled out a coughing moan and tried to reach her hand for my face.
My shriek was loud and tore at my throat as I staggered back.
“Don’t drop her!” Enoch cried. “It’s my mom! Don’t hurt her!”
I fell back into the dust, clutching the woman to me as if my arms had locked at his words. She smelled, God how she smelled! And she looked weeks dead, but she was moving, making sounds. Reaching for Enoch.
“Shit, son.” I looked up, fully expecting David Carstairs but realizing, belatedly, it was a different man entirely. It was the man I’d seen in the photo at the diner. The man I’d caught a glimpse of before.
Mason Albright.
“I wish you’d gone already. I don’t like collateral damage, as they call it. I wanted to be nice and clean, get this over with.” He sucked his teeth, dropping down into a crouch to touch Deborah’s face. She moaned and writhed, surprisingly strong for someone in her condition. “Aw, girlie, you’ve been real helpful. More than I’d expect from a Carstairs,” he chuckled. The sound was grating and perverse, gallows humor out of place.
“I’m sorry,” Enoch sobbed, but I didn’t know if he meant me or Deborah. He crawled frantically between the slats of the fence, reaching for her even as Albright stroked her face. Enoch could see him—I knew he could, by the way he flailed at the spectral fingers, trying to brush them away from his mother. “I can’t make him leave her alone. He’s… he’s…”
I nodded. “Enoch, take her. Move her away, okay?” I didn’t know if it would help but it would get him away from us, from Albright and whatever he was trying to do.
Albright smirked. “You’re a funny one, little man.”
The crunch of tires on gravel and the sound of David Carstairs shouting erupted in front of the main house. He had pulled up in his truck and was thundering across the yard towards us, Yancy sprinting from the house at the commotion. “Get off my property,” Carstairs shouted. “Get away from my grandson or I swear to God, I’ll have you arrested. I’ll—” His sudden stop would’ve been comical in almost any other circumstance. He and Yancy saw Enoch at the same time, his tear-streaked and snotty face twisted in pain, mouth open on a sobbing scream as his mother thrashed and heaved between us. “She,” David gasped, going a shade of gray that spoke only of bad things. “She…” He pitched onto his knees. “Oh my god… Oh my god, no!”
“Mom,” Yancy’s voice was strangled, a bare whisper. “Oh no… No, Enoch, no! Where did you… Where was she?” he asked, voice ragged. He couldn’t take his eyes off his mother, but he went to Enoch’s side and pulled him into a rough embrace, pressing Enoch’s face against his chest as if, by hiding his eyes, he could keep him from the horror of what was happening, what had happened.
Albright smiled up at me. His energy pulled at me, like he was sinking fingers inside my chest and rummaging around. Never in my life had I felt something like this, even in my most intense encounters with spirits. He could touch me, I realized. Touch whatever made up my soul, my spirit, my energy. He was trying to… to what? His touch squeezed and I gasped. “No,” I shouted, pushing back against him. There was that glow again, quick and hot, and he was gone. Deborah was shaking as David screamed into a phone for help, Yancy was rocking back and forth with Enoch clutched to his chest. I scooted back, my stomach cramping and hands shaking.
“Your friend,” Enoch said, muffled. “He’s… he’s gonna come. And I tried but I don’t know what to do!” He shoved himself away from Yancy and found me, his eyes wild and panicked. “I tried to talk to you, but you couldn’t hear me,” he said, voice catching.
“How,” I asked. “I suspected but… how?”
He shook his head. “What was keeping me out? How can you let ghosts in but not me?” He dashed at his face again and Yancy pulled him back, turning hard eyes on me. I shook my head—I don’t know what he means.
I was suspecting maybe I did, though. Maybe I did know more than I thought. “Enoch, are you… were you able to reach out to me?”
“That’s what I said!” He growled in frustration, the sound twisting into a rage-filled scream. “Fuck!”
“Oscar.”
“Oh, thank god,” I gasped. Julian was hurrying across the field towards us. “Where have you been? The gh—Enoch,” I corrected, now that I knew, “said you were in trouble and—”
And he was. He still was. He was moving wrong. Not like an injured man, not entirely. That I’d expected. He was limping on the injured leg, favoring that side as he reached the fence, but it was only as he got closer that I realized he was holding himself stiffly, arms twitching at his sides. His face was contorted into a mockery of his usual expression. “Oscar, you should’ve just gone. But I guess I can thank you and your friends,” Julian said. No, Mason, it was Mason, using Julian’s body like he’d tried to use Ezra. “All I need is here now. And I can finally, finally rest.” He started to climb over the fence, but Julian must have fought him, pushed back against him, because his body jerked back and he flailed, scratching at his arms, his face, like he was trying to rid himself of bugs on his skin. With a yowl, Mason surged forward, overpowering any fight Julian tried to put up and climbing sloppily over the fence. Julian was covered with gashes and blood coated his legs, an angry, seeping wound on his leg that looked suspiciously like a bite mark, joined by deep gashes and furrows on his thighs. The angry goose-egg on his forehead was purple and black and worryingly close to his eye. “Julian,” I whispered. “No, no, no, no, no…” He couldn’t handle this! How the Hell could he be okay after this? I made a movement towards him, but Enoch grabbed me before I could get to my feet. “Let me go!”
“Enoch, let go,” Yancy barked.
“No! He’ll take Mom! He’ll take her!”
“Shut him up,” Carstairs shouted. “Shut him up!”
Mason made it to our knot of people and swayed on Julian’s feet. Then, he just dropped. His entire body folded down, and he was a heap on the ground. I didn’t have time to consider what was coming because it was so fast. Julian went down, and Deborah surged up with a wet, horrible scream. She grabbed her father by the ears and dragged his face down in some parody of a horror movie, Carstairs thrashing away from her as Yancy shouted out in fear, pulling a screaming, crying Enoch back towards the bunkhouse.
“No! Mom, stop! Stop!” Enoch broke free and ran hard at Deborah and his grandfather, tackling them both. He wrapped his arms around her and rolled back, trying to pull her away from Carstairs, who sat in stunned, bleeding shock at the sight of his dead daughter fighting her son. Julian groaned and it spurred me into motion.
“Julian, move, move, move,” I begged. “Get out of the way!”
“Help her,” Enoch shrieked. “Mr. Fellowes, please! He’s using her all up! Help!”
Fuck. I waded into the fray, now with Yancy trying to pull Enoch away even as Enoch clung tight to his mother. “Mason Albright, you’ve caused enough harm,” I said, voice shaking slightly. I found Deborah in the tangle of limbs and grabbed onto the back of her neck and opened myself up, reaching for Mason Albright. He was twisted up inside whatever made Deborah, Deborah who was really more dead than not. She’d been slowly peeled away until all that was left was closer to dead than alive. I closed my eyes and shoved at my walls, pushing out the barriers I’d learned early on to keep in place, to filter out chatty dead. I could practically feel Grandmere’s irritation and disappointment as the last of those walls pulled down and I could fully grasp Mason Albright’s ghost, twisted and tangled in Deborah Carstairs’ energy. “There you are,” I panted, my headache reaching incredible proportions as his presence hit me—unfiltered and raw.
“I thought maybe it’d be a bit poetic to use the last of her energy up, killin’ him.” Mason slipped free of Deborah and moved up, floating just a bit above her as I pulled back. “Things get kinda dull, waiting for justice when you’re dead. Deborah’s not gonna have to wait long to find out, is she?” he laughed. “She ain’t got but a sip or two left. Folks like her, like you, like your friend Ezra, y’all are like bright fires in the dark. Folks like me…” He grinned. “I’d call myself a regular Prometheus, but I don’t like how his story ended.” He tapped his temple, giving me a wink. “That fella of yours, he’s got himself a trove of stories kickin’ around in his skull. Regular library in there.”
“Punished by the gods for hubris sounds fairly accurate in this case,” I panted. Mason chuckled, then quick as a thought, was gone and Julian was moving again. “Shit!” I was on Julian before he could rise to his knees. “I’m sorry,” I breathed. “I don’t know if this hurts or not, but I’m so, so sorry!”
Mason fought me hard, but Julian was stronger than I thought. Mason was struggling to hide but it wasn’t working. He pushed against me, trying to pull away from my reach as I let my ability stretch. I heard Julian gasp, and Mason Albright was in my face, snarling and shouting. “You will not stop me,” he screamed. “I’ve waited too long for this! Do you know what it’s like to have your life stolen from you, to have to suffer for decades and watch your killers piss away your legacy? I don’t want your blood on my hands, but I’ll take it!”
“No!”
Deborah’s ripping, wet cry brought silence across the yard. “No!” she rasped again, and she was struggling forward, cadaverous and horrifying but something alive in her eyes as she reached up and flung her arms wide. I don’t think anyone else could see what I saw, the bright flare of marigold-bright light that spread out from her as she grasped at Mason Albright, her body arching backwards as he disappeared into her.
“Mom,” Enoch and Yancy both shouted, rushing forward. Deborah fell and rolled weakly onto her back. “Mom,” Yancy was crying, sobbing over her. “Mom, no, no, Mom,” he chanted, patting at her face, grabbing her hands,
Enoch shook his head. “No, no! Help her! Help her!” he screamed, voice raw and nearly the rasp I’d heard in my head for the past few days. “Help me,” he whispered. “Oh god…”
Deborah was shaking. She managed to focus on her boys and her lips twitched into maybe a smile. “L… Lo…”
Then she was quiet. Gone.
I felt the shift in the energy, felt her leave, and Mason Albright was gone with her.
Wherever she had gone, whatever she had done, she’d taken him too.
“No,” Enoch moaned, rocking back and forth. “No, no, no…”
“Deborah,” Carstairs whispered, finally speaking for the first time in several long minutes. “Deborah, I didn’t know, Deborah…”
“Are you Oscar Fellowes?”
“Fucking Hell, this place is undead grand central,” I groaned, canting my head up to see a middle-aged man, wearing fairly modern clothes and looking infuriated. “I am.”
“Fucking finally. I’m Dewayne Hicks. This asshole,” he jabbed a finger at David Carstairs, “fucking hanged me in my own goddamn house!”
I turned my head to look at Carstairs. “You’re the one who killed Hicks,” I said. “You?”
Carstairs was too shocked, too shaken, to argue. “I had to. He was gonna ruin everything. He’d found evidence about what our families had done. Not just rumors, real honest to God proof. And he was gonna sell it to some macabre collector. He’d run his family farm into the ground and wanted the money. He… he taunted me about it. Seemed excited by the idea of a scandal.” Carstairs shook his head, staring at Deborah’s twisted, desiccated remains. “We’re barely hanging on to this place by the skin of our teeth. Rumors would’ve ruined us.”
“Not old ones like that,” I whispered. “Mr. Carstairs…”
“I couldn’t let him tell a soul. The… the letters… I destroyed them afterwards.”
“Mom saw him,” Enoch growled. “She saw his body. And Mason Albright saw her. He wanted her light, her strength, and he took it!” Enoch flew at Carstairs, beating him with his fists, kicking him and howling in rage. No one moved to stop him.
I edged to Julian and felt his pulse. It was slow but strong, and he was breathing. Bloody, beaten, traumatized to Hell and back, but alive. The crunch of gravel again made me look up and it was a large silver SUV rolling up the drive slowly, like whoever was driving was uncertain if they were at the right place. I knew when we’d been spotted, though, because the passenger door flew open and CeCe shot out, not caring about her red bottomed shoes and her designer outfit as she flew across the grass and dirt, shouting her brother’s name. I sobbed once, quietly, and laid my head on his chest.
Finally. Finally.