Kimberly hovered above the abyss, fingers sliding along the slimy walls, feet sinking into a gooey floor. She was Alice in Wonderland, wandering through a strange reality that made no sense. If she plummeted into the depths of the mouth below her, where would she land? Could she find a way out?
Panic bubbled up her throat and choked her. No, no, no. She could not be lost. She would not fall into an inexplicable coma while her spirit remained trapped in this realm. She had to take Faith home.
She closed her eyes. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
No matter how hard she willed away the oozing walls, her fingers remained covered in ectoplasm. It was real. She was in the Nightshade, and James held her completely under his control. This was his reality and he knew how to manipulate it. Her feet slid over the edge of the chasm. She dangled over a gulf of nothing.
Rather than deny the surreal surroundings, she fought them. She imagined the hallway turning on end and found herself sliding back the way she’d come. A funhouse of horrors. She could play this game too. Feet squishing, she retraced her steps.
But James wasn’t done. The wall split into a hideous mouth and wrapped around her hand like an amoeba. She pulled, but the living tissue swallowed again and again. She struggled but watched her wrist, then her forearm, then her elbow engulfed. Like quicksand, the gelatinous ooze pulled incessantly and struggling only made it worse.
Her hand drooped with sudden weight. The hematite. It would ground her in the living world and guide her back to those who waited for her there. She stopped thrashing and flailing, focusing her attention on the smooth stone Rosie had pressed into her hand.
With every ounce of strength she could gather, she clenched her fist and pulled. The wall squelched in protest as she succeeded in extracting her arm, inch by inch. A sloppy wet pop accompanied her fist as she gave one final yank. She was free of the writhing wall.
She stepped backward, thinking only of the Johnsons and her friends. The walls, floor, and ceiling shimmered, twisted, and morphed back into the house. She blinked as she tried to recognize her surroundings. The living room. How much time had lapsed? How long had she floundered in the Nightshade?
She made her way up the staircase and returned to Faith’s room.
She passed through the open door. Drifting through the bedroom as if in slow motion, she saw the blurry images of all the people depending on her.
She walked past Sterling, who held the radio, ear pressed to the speaker. His mouth moved. A whispered crackle drifted past her, distorted through the frequency. “I don’t hear either one of them.”
Ruth and Daniel clutched one another. Images of sobbing Ruth jerked in and out of focus.
Michael stood near her body, hands pressed to his mouth.
Rosie crouched beside her, shaking her head at Michael.
Sterling set down the radio and turned abruptly. “I’m going to go look for the girl again.”
He walked right through her, unaware of her presence. She smelled him, sensed his deep concern, felt every molecule of his being in a rush of intimacy that knocked her off kilter. Reaching out a hand, she longed to assure him, connect with him. But he walked away, oblivious, and the complete lack of acknowledgement left her empty—and with a better awareness of what wandering spirits experienced on a daily basis. Fresh determination rejuvenated her. She couldn’t leave Faith to this dismal future, lost in the spirit world.
In all her years as a practicing psychic, she’d never had an out-of-body experience. She eyed herself as she passed by, returning to her starting point—the closet wall with a terrified little girl on the other side.
She leaned through the wall, spotted Faith, and caught her breath. Faith remained exactly as she’d left her, knees drawn close, arms hugging her legs, face pressed into her thighs. But now James bent over the girl, whose form he dwarfed in his current monstrous shape. She called out in the fiercest voice she could manage. “Faith! Run to me! Now!”
She heard her own voice crackle through the radio’s speakers. Apparently, so did her crew.
“Ruth! Now!” Michael’s voice commanded.
“Faith! Run, baby! Run to Ms. Wantland!”
The girl lifted her head, though her eyes remained closed. “Mommy?”
“Yes, it’s Mommy. Come on, my little Faith of an Angel. Run! Run as fast as you can right now!”
Faith opened her eyes—and saw the monster crouched over her. The girl’s screams tore through the Nightshade, sending feedback screeching from the radio.
“What’s happening to her?” she heard Rebecca cry.
But she couldn’t split her focus. Rescuing the girl had to be her only concern. “Faith! Here! I’m here!”
Time slowed to a crawl as Faith swiveled her head, locked eyes, and pushed herself to her feet. The girl turned her back on James and never looked back as her arms pumped and feet pounded, closing the gap between them, eyes wild.
But Kimberly saw him—watched him shriek in anger as his hostage ran for freedom, watched him bear down on Faith bearing down on her.
“Keep going, Faith!” she called.
Ruth must have understood on some level that her daughter needed continued encouragement. “Run, baby, run!”
“Run, baby,” Kimberly echoed, heart hammering as James closed the distance between them.
With James only a hair’s breadth away, Faith launched herself forward into Kimberly’s outstretched arms. She clutched the girl, closed her eyes, and leaned back into her waiting body, falling as if through a vat of molasses. The Nightshade wouldn’t let her go easily. It pulled back in a tug-of-war as she struggled to escape, kicking her feet at James as he roared and grappled to regain possession of Faith.
A force hooked her, like a hand gripping her very core, and with a yank, she sailed away, back to the world of the living. Breaking through the barrier between the Nightshade and the living world, her ears popped. She landed back in her body and pitched sideways, cracking her head against the floor. Still cradling Faith, slick with ectoplasm, she gasped for breath.
The room erupted around her. Ruth and Daniel lifted Faith from her arms. Ignoring the ooze coating their daughter, they buried their faces against her, crushing her with hugs as if they’d never let her go.
Rosie and Michael each grabbed an arm and helped her sit up. She leaned forward and breathed deeply, trying to catch her breath. She caught Elise’s eye, noting her usually stoic researcher teared up as she watched the Johnsons revel in the return of their daughter.
Sterling appeared in the doorway and did a double take at the scene in front of him. “What the actual hell?”
“Ms. Wantland brought her back,” TJ said, his pride in the team evident in his smile.
Sterling stared at her. “I looked all over this house. I didn’t see her anywhere. Where did you find her?”
“She was in the Nightshade. The spirit realm. James was strong enough to drag her there.”
Sterling’s forehead scrunched, his eyebrows crooked, as he shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
She could see him struggling to balance his innate skepticism with the inexplicable things happening around him.
Michael squatted beside her, inspecting her for visible injury. Rosie held open palms a few inches from her body, checking her chakras and energy levels.
“I’m okay,” she assured them. “Just bumped my head during reentry.”
“Reentry?” Sterling shook his head. He bent down and stared in her eyes, appearing to search for something, though she didn’t know what. He ran one finger through the ectoplasm left behind on her arm. “What is this?”
“TJ, can you get a sample of this ectoplasm for Sterling to analyze, please? And someone get some towels for Faith.”
Elise shook off the shock. “I’ll grab some towels.”
TJ shrugged off his backpack, extracted a plastic tube and scraped it along her arm before capping it and passing it to Sterling. “Here you go.”
“Ectoplasm, huh?” Sterling shook his head but pocketed the sample. He squatted beside her. “Will you talk to me about this later? Tell me where the girl was? This would be a phenomenal stage act. Was she in the closet all along? You covered her with goop and then ‘returned from the spirit—'”
A deep rumbling emanated from the bowels of the house. The hair on Kimberly’s arms stood on end. She held up a hand. “Shhh. Listen.”
Sterling cocked his head. “I only hear the people outside. Is that what you mean?”
“What’s that smell?” An acrid burnt odor assaulted her nose.
Sterling’s forehead crinkled. “I don’t smell anything.”
The faces of her crew and the Johnsons mirrored Sterling’s. They all shook their heads in confusion. No one but her detected any of these changes.
Not good.