“You need to stick by me,not them. No matter what happens from here on out, I need you by my side, okay? We can’t take any chances — I just have to figure out what to do before they—” The woman moved toward me, moved in small baby steps as she crept across the floor. Her large bare feet, riddled with corns and bunions, with nail polish so badly chipped they made my own nails look salon fresh. Raised up high onto her tippy-toes, padding across the rug, video camera held out before her, the soft whir of it the only sound in the room as it recorded what I could only assume were a series of white, glowy, wavering images of one smallish blob of light and one even smaller blob of light, since, from all the shows I’d ever seen on TV that covered ghosts and hauntings and such, it was pretty rare for those recorders to pick up anything more.
“He’s not alone,” she whispered, waving to her husband from over her shoulder. “There’s someone with him, someone smaller, like they’re crouched down low.”
He?
I narrowed my eyes and scowled, nudging Buttercup even closer to my side. Tugging on my skirt and running my fingers through my hair until it was arranged a little more nicely, a little more girly, completely offended by the fact that I’d just been mistaken for a ten-year-old boy.
“Is it him? Is it really the Radiant Boy?” her husband called, the words rising at the end in a potent mix of excitement and fear.
“Yes,” she said, her voice having firmly decided, though her eyes weren’t quite as convinced. “At least it certainly seems like it. And he’s got someone with him — someone smaller — there are two Radiant Boys here!”
Oh brother.
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, sitting back on my heels as she continued to creep closer and closer.
Some ghost buster she was turning out to be. Mistaking what was clearly a cute blond girl and her adorable yellow Lab for not one, but two bratty little boy ghosts.Sheesh!
“Try to speak with them — try to make contact,” her husband urged. His gaze was fixed on the screen of his little hand held device, eager to see the lines shift and move once again. “Ask him why they’re here, and what they might possibly want. Ask them if they have any messages they might like to pass on.”
Saying all of that as though I could only hear the words if she said them. As though she had some special patented way of communicating with the dearly departed.
Her husband came up behind her, seizing the camera she passed over her shoulder and steadying it in one hand while keeping the voice recorder going in the other. Watching as his wife crept even closer, running her hands over her wrinkled green sweats while completely ignoring the bed hair that, had I been her, I would’ve been way more concerned about.
“Is there any message you’d like us to pass on? Is there anything we can do for you?” the woman asked, squatting down on her haunches, as her knees cracked so loudly and violently, I actually jumped in surprise. Cringing back against the wall as she angled her face until it was dangerously close to Buttercup’s and mine.
“Yes,” I said, finding my voice again and nodding sincerely. “I’d really like it if you could just pack up your equipment and move on, so I can deal with this Radiant Boy on my own. You know, the one you actually came here to see? Seriously, move it along so I can finish the job.”
I scowled, knowing she wasn’t about to go anywhere. Not as long as Buttercup and I were inadvertently giving her the thrill of her ghost-busting lifetime, even though, technically speaking anyway, neither of us could truly be considered as earthbound entities, since we were only there on a mission, and therefore had no plans to stay — a small, but pretty substantial fact that was completely lost on her.
I sat back and sighed, long, loudly, no longer caring when she turned toward her husband, her eyes wide, head bobbing up and down as she said, “Did you feel that? Just now? That rush of cold air?”
He nodded, his gaze running the track between the camera’s display, the voice recorder, his wife’s crazy eyes, and back.
“Are you getting all this?” she asked, rising in a way that made her knees crack again, causing Buttercup to wince and me to cringe.
“All of it,” he mumbled. “Every last bit of it.” He smiled, his eyes shining brightly.
“Fantastic!” she exclaimed, face beaming, cheeks flushed with excitement, as her hair, still not attended to since she’d jumped out of bed, pretty much stood up on end.
And watching all of that, well, it was just too much.
Not only had I been recorded and filmed, destined for some pathetically dorky, homegrown, schlocky, ghost-busting Web site, but I’d yet to see the Radiant Boy, and as long as they kept this up, it was clear that I wouldn’t.
I slumped against the wall, and glared at the couple before me, hoping they’d get a good shot of that amongst the rest of their footage. Watching as they closed in on us, stopping just short of where Buttercup was crouching down low, transitioning into full-on guard dog mode, as he let off a low, menacing growl.
“Oh, now you decide you don’t like her?” I looked at him, and shook my head. “What about earlier when you were slobbering all over her hands? Huh, what about that?”
But just after the words were out, I noticed she wasn’t the one he was growling at.
There was someone behind her.
Someone creeping up behind both her and her husband.
Someone who glowed so brightly the whole room lit up.
Someone who could only be described as Radiant.
Behind him, the room shook.
Objects flew.
As the ghost-busting couple bolted through the door with Buttercup close on their heels. Dropping their equipment and abandoning their belongings without a second glance, the shrieking echo of the husband’s high-pitched scream lingering in the air long after they’d left.
Leaving me to face the Radiant Boy all on my own, as practically anything and everything that wasn’t nailed down or weighing in at over two hundred pounds went soaring through the air, directed solely at me.
A chair nearly sliced me in half.
A lamp nearly cut off my head.
As a pair of graying old tube socks with holes in both the toes and the heels lifted right out of the couple’s suitcase and headed straight for my neck, completely bent on strangling me.
All of it whirling about in a frenzied gale-force wind that could rival any Midwestern tornado, and refusing to stop until the entire room and its contents were either broken, upended, or no longer anywhere near their original place.
I cowered against the wall, narrowly avoiding a rogue blow dryer that hissed and looped before me like a venomous snake. Too afraid to close my eyes in case I might miss something, too afraid to keep them open for what I might see. Squinting into the wind and debris at the Radiant Boy glowering over me, wishing I’d just grabbed hold of Buttercup’s tail and sailed right out of there while I’d still had the chance.
But it was too late for that. My failure to run left me with no choice but to deal with it. If I’d any hope of making it to London, learning to fly, or even just having the courage to face Bodhi again, I’d have to stay put, no matter what came at me.
No matter what became of me.
The Radiant Boy towered menacingly, having grown three times his size in just a handful of seconds. The blond curls that had been springy and bouncy just a moment before morphed into angry, vicious, three-headed snakes, while his body emitted a glow so bright — so radiant — it was all I could do not to cover my face. As his eyes raged ominously, two fiery, flaming pits of anger focused on me — though it was nothing compared to his mouth — an infinite black hole — a bottomless abyss — gaping so wide I had the unmistakable feeling he intended to swallow me completely.
I clamped my mouth shout, desperate to keep the scream from escaping. My eyes locked on those two flaming pits as he moved closer and closer still, knowing he was the scariest thing I’d ever seen in both my life and death combined. And that includes my worst nightmares, shows on TV, and even the movies I wasn’t allowed to watch but did anyway.
Nowhere had I ever seen anything quite as frightening as he.
His fiery eyes raging in a way so intense I could actually feel their white-hot scorching heat, as the infinite void of his mouth practically sucked the air right out of the room. Knowing only one thing for sure: No trip to London could ever be worth it.
And as for flying, well, it was clearly overrated.
But just as I turned, sneaking one foot halfway through the wall, eager to make my escape — I thought about Bodhi.
Thought about the smirky look he’d surely give me the second he found me in the hall, all wide-eyed and scared witless.
I thought about failing, and just how awful that always makes me feel.
And I knew I couldn’t do it.