Until It Sleeps Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  Also by Val Crowe

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Until It Sleeps

  Vengeful Spirits, Book Four

  Val Crowe

  UNTIL IT SLEEPS

  © copyright 2018 by Val St. Crowe

  http://vjchambers.com

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  Also by Val Crowe

  Brighter

  Death Girl

  Ratcatcher

  Empire of Rust

  CHAPTER ONE

  I peered up at the house from the window of my truck. I was parked across the street from it, and the house looked pretty normal. It wasn’t one of those gothic monstrosities with turrets and crumbling siding or anything. This was a nice one-story brick house. There was an attached garage and a flower garden in the front. There was a swing hanging off the bough of a tree in the front yard.

  Yeah, it was a nice-looking house.

  Houses didn’t look haunted anyway. I couldn’t tell just by taking a glance at it if it was haunted.

  Well, okay, sometimes I could. But it wouldn’t be because of the way the house looked, it would be a feeling I got. Or sometimes I’d see a ghost or something, which was typically a pretty good hint that a place was haunted.

  And haunted houses? That was kind of what I did. My name is Deacon Garrison, and I see ghosts. I spent my time traveling around the country, trying to do what I could to help resolve hauntings. It wasn’t a glamorous job, and it didn’t pay well. Okay, at all. But it was my thing. For a long time, I’d run from my abilities, but now I embraced them.

  Of course, part of the reason the house I was parked across the street from didn’t look haunted was because it wasn’t haunted.

  No, there were other problems inside its brick walls. Possibly worse problems.

  “So, should we go over the plan again?” said Mads, flickering into existence in my passenger seat.

  Mads was my ghost girlfriend.

  I mean, she wasn’t really my girlfriend. She was a ghost, and only I could see her, and we couldn’t touch, and all of that added up to a pretty terrible foundation for a relationship. But, you know, whatever. We understood each other.

  “Couldn’t hurt,” I said.

  “When we get in there, you’re going to use the oil,” she said. The oil was a blend of dandelion and wormwood. It was a conduit for spirits and phantoms and things that went bump in the night.

  “Right,” I said. “And summon powerful energy, as powerful as I can stand.”

  “And then I’m going to guide that malevolent spirit into that power,” said Mads.

  “And then the power’s going to leave,” I said, “and take the spirit with it.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Well, it sounds like it’s going to work, anyway,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “But we don’t have a great track record for our plans going well.”

  I scoffed. “Oh, come on. Never tell me the odds. Way to be positive, Mads. You’re going to psych me out.”

  “If it doesn’t work, it’s going to be a shit show,” she said.

  “Um, okay, did you hear what I said about psyching me out?”

  “Because,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard me, “you’re going to be passed out for a good ten hours at least, maybe more. And little Amber is still going to be possessed. I won’t be able to do anything, but her mother will have to try to drag your sleeping form out of her daughter’s bedroom while that thing inside her daughter continues to taunt her.”

  I grimaced. “It’ll work.”

  “We hope it’ll work.”

  “It’ll be just like in Memphis,” I said. “That went great.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Okay, it knocked me on my ass for almost a week, and then the powerful energy I had summoned got attached to a leather jacket, but we just burned it, and it was all good.”

  “This time the energy will move on,” said Mads. “I’m going to make sure of that.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “So, it’s going to be fine.”

  She was quiet.

  “You don’t think it’s going to be fine?”

  She turned to me. “Deacon, how long have we been doing this?”

  “Uh, since August if you count the thing in Thornford,” I said. “So, what? Six months?”

  “Five,” she said. “That’s not very long.”

  “It’s not nothing,” I said. “Besides, Sade—Mrs. Donaldson,” I corrected myself. Mads didn’t like it when I called Sade by her first name for whatever reason. Sade was attractive, but she was practically ten years older than me, and I thought Mads was being overly insecure. Still, to keep the peace, I didn’t call her Sade. “Mrs. Donaldson’s tried everything else. She’s had Amber in and out of psychologists and she somehow convinced a priest to try to do an exorcism. If we fail, we’ll be just like everyone else.”

  “So, what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying it’s totally low pressure,” I said. “I’m trying to unpsych myself out, thank you very much. What are you saying? Why ask how long we’ve been doing this?”

  “I just… I don’t think we should get to overconfident. We’re flying blind most of the time, and we need to acknowledge that. If we think we’re too amazing, we’ll let down our guard. If we let down our guard, we could be in big trouble. There are dangerous things out there, and they all want to feed on you.”

  “I know this,” I said. “I’m not overconfident. I’m trying to be, you know, just confident enough to be psychologically helpful.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You’ve heard that, right?” I said. “You’ve heard that if you think you’re going to succeed, it increases your chances of actually being successful? I’m pretty sure that’s a thing.”

  “Well, no, I haven’t. But if you say so,” she said.

  “I do say so. Come on, let’s go do this thing.” I pushed open the door, and my phone rang.

  “Who is it?” said Mads.

  I pulled out my phone to check. “It’s Wade,” I said. My best friend. “I’ll call him back later.”

  * * *

  “Oh, you’re here already,” said Sade Donaldson, ushering us inside her house.

  The house may have looked normal from the outside, but inside, it was very different. The place wasn’t clean, because Sade didn’t have the energy to do things like that now, not when she was worrying over her child all the time. And to hide the fact that she hadn’t straightened or vacuumed or dusted in a long time, Sade kept all the window shades pulled closed.

  Coming inside the
place was like walking into a dark cave.

  Oh, and when I say that Sade ushered us inside, I really mean me. Because, of course, Mads came inside too, but Sade couldn’t see her. She knew that I could communicate with spirits and that I had help from the other side, but she didn’t know that Mads was my ghostly partner. She didn’t know anything about Mads.

  Sade gave me a watery smile. “So, do you think there’s any chance this might work?”

  I took a deep breath. “I do.”

  She looked down at her shoes.

  “Look,” I said. “I know that you’ve been through a lot, and that it’s hard to have hope. I can’t say for certain that this will work, but I wouldn’t be trying it if I didn’t feel confident. So, even if you don’t have hope, I do. And whether you hope or not, it will work anyway.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath and put her fingers to her lips. She was trying not to cry.

  When I had first spoken to Sade Donaldson, she had been at the end of her rope. She was considering sending her daughter Amber to be institutionalized, but she felt guilty about that, because Amber could be dangerous sometimes, and she felt it was her responsibility to look after the girl. Additionally, she was a single mother, and Amber’s father wasn’t in the picture. Amber was her entire world. If she sent her daughter away, what would she do with herself? How would she managed to get out of bed in the morning? Who would she be, if she wasn’t Amber’s mother?

  Obviously, she would still be Amber’s mother no matter what, but it wouldn’t feel the same.

  Amber had been expelled from school after an incident with another girl had gotten violent. Amber had hurt the other girl. The other girl had some candy that Amber wanted, so Amber took it from the other girl forcefully.

  Since Amber no longer went to school, she needed twenty-four-hour care, and that meant that Sade couldn’t go to work. She needed to work to provide for her daughter.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  She was lost, and everything was awful.

  I hoped that I could return her daughter to her, fix everything.

  “Okay,” I said, “so remember that after I do this, it’s going to take a lot out of me. I’ll probably pass out and stay out for hours. Feel free to leave me where I lie. I will eventually wake up, I promise.”

  Sade swallowed hard. “Do you… have to pass out? I mean, if it goes wrong, I’d really rather you—”

  “It’s an unfortunate side effect,” I said. “If I could get out of it, I would. But I can’t.”

  Sade nodded. “Well, okay.” She put her hand on my arm. “Thank you for doing this.”

  “Hey,” muttered Mads darkly. “Why is she touching you?”

  Gently, I pulled my arm back from Sade. “I just hope I can help, that’s all.” My phone rang again. Huh. I dug it out of my pocket. Wade again. I furrowed my brow. If Wade had called me twice in such a short span of time, it might mean that something bad had happened. Maybe it was an emergency. I gave Sade an apologetic look. “Sorry, I need to take this,” I said.

  “Oh, of course,” said Sade.

  I went back out onto the front stoop to answer the phone. “Wade, you all right?” I said.

  “Deacon,” said Wade. “Hey.” He sounded very, very serious.

  “What happened?” I said. “Is someone hurt?” Is someone dead? I grimaced.

  “You, uh, you remember Cheyenne Terrell?”

  “From right after graduation?” I said. “Yeah, I remember her. Is that why you’re calling me? To talk about the one that got away? Because this is not a really great time to reminisce, I’m afraid. I’m working.”

  “Cheyenne’s dead,” said Wade.

  “Oh, man,” I said. “That’s awful. I’m really sorry. But, look, I can’t talk right now. Can I call you later on? Or maybe tomorrow, because I’m going to be passed out for about ten hours or more, and—”

  “It was a few years ago,” said Wade. “No one bothered to tell me about it. But then, out of the blue, her mother calls me.”

  “Um… look, Wade, maybe you’re not hearing me, but I have to go.”

  “Her mother says that Cheyenne had a kid. That he’s seven years old.”

  “Well, that’s sad that kid no longer has a mom—”

  “Seven years ago, man. Come on.”

  “Come on what?” I said.

  “It’s my fucking kid,” said Wade.

  “What?” I said, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach.

  “I have a son,” said Wade.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “You don’t have a…” I shook my head. “Dude, we are too young to have kids.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” he said.

  “Especially not seven-year-old kids. Hell, you’re going to have to teach him to shave in two minutes,” I said.

  “You’re not helping,” said Wade.

  “Sorry.”

  “You should be.”

  And then we were quiet.

  I clutched the phone and walked down the front steps to look across the road at my truck. “How are you?”

  “I’m, uh, in shock,” he said.

  “You met the kid?”

  “Yeah,” said Wade. “He’s, um, he’s pretty awesome.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Kadan.”

  “Kadan,” I repeated. “Good name.” I shook my head. “Holy shit, dude.”

  “I know.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. “Uh, fuck… I’m coming to Thornford, okay? I’ll be there to see you. Probably take me two days.”

  “Why so long? Where are you?”

  “I’m kind of in the middle of an exorcism here,” I said. “Well, not an exorcism, because that’s a Catholic thing that doesn’t work on the things that I’m trying to cast out. It’s not a demon. It’s a thing like Negus. And it’s inside a ten-year-old girl, and I have to take care of this before I go anywhere, but I will be back as soon as I can.”

  “Okay, I get that,” he said. “If it’s a little girl, you have to do that. But, yeah, I want to see you. I need you back here.”

  “Soon as I can,” I said. “I promise.”

  * * *

  Inside Amber’s room was the only place that the sun came in at all, and that was because the window shades were shredded.

  Apparently, one night, Amber had raided the kitchen for all the knives, and she had slashed her bedroom to all hell while Sade slept. When Sade woke up the next morning, she found Amber naked in the middle of all her shredded sheets and clothes.

  “Sorry, Ma,” Amber had said, looking up at her mother blankly. “Just practicing.”

  Amber had never called her mother, “Ma,” before, but she seemed to have assumed the moniker precisely because it upset Sade. It wasn’t accurate to call the thing that was controlling Amber by her name, but we had yet to ascertain its actual name, so I tended to think of her that way simply to avoid confusion.

  After the knife incident, Sade had gathered up all the sharp objects in the house and locked them up in a cabinet downstairs.

  She hadn’t even cried, because at that point, things were so bad that the shredded clothes and knives hardly bothered her.

  The possession had come upon Amber suddenly, and Sade hadn’t witnessed it. One day, Amber hadn’t come home from school. Sade called the bus driver, and he said that Amber hadn’t gotten on the bus. Sade eventually found Amber two blocks from the school building, crawling on all fours, her head dangling at an unnatural angle, her eyes unfocused.

  Horrified, Sade had bundled Amber up and taken her home, but Amber didn’t improve. She seemed to have trouble walking or controlling her limbs. She didn’t seem to be able to talk. She only uttered strange guttural noises. She kept clawing at her own skin, scratching herself until she drew blood.

  Sade took Amber to the doctor, who didn’t know what was wrong with her.

  No one knew what was wrong with Amber.

  Not doctors, not psychologists, not her teachers,
not priests or pastors. No one had ever seen anything like it before.

  Amber did improve in a manner of speaking, over time. She gained better control over her body, and she remembered how to speak. But she didn’t sound like Amber anymore. It wasn’t just that she called her mother, “Ma.” It was that she talked about things like dismembering and beheading. She had become sarcastic and she found other people’s pain funny.

  She wasn’t Amber anymore, that’s what Sade thought. But when Sade voiced those sorts of thoughts to anyone, they thought Sade was crazy.

  But I got wind of Amber and Sade through my mother, who was a traveling medium. My mother faked her gifts, but people came to her when they had supernatural problems. If they were genuine, she referred them to me.

  Now, here I was.

  I knew about this sort of thing. I was familiar with it, because when I was a kid, my mother was possessed by an entity called Negus. Negus possessed my mother because he wanted to use me to make himself permanently corporeal. That way, he could watch over his daughter, who was half-human and half whatever Negus was.

  Ghosts and spirits were always wanting me. They wanted to feed on my power. Unfortunately, whatever power I had, I had no way of harnessing it against them. So, the power had the effect of making me vulnerable and not giving me much of an edge. I did my best with it anyway.

  I had eventually gotten rid of Negus. I’d made a deal with him to protect his daughter, and he’d been bound up in a special box. He wasn’t going to bother me again.

  Anyway, a lot of the things that happened to Amber happened to my mother. It was typical in possession for the entity to have trouble taking control of its host. It would be clumsy until it got better at the controls, so to speak. The scratching was typical too. Maybe the entity felt itchy in its new skin. I didn’t know.

  Now, I just needed to help Amber.

  At first, I’d wasted time trying to figure out what it was this thing wanted. I figured it must have possessed this girl for a reason. Maybe she had access to something it wanted. Maybe she was connected to a source of power. I couldn’t be sure.

  But I couldn’t get any information from it, and eventually, I decided it wasn’t important.