Until It Sleeps Read online

  Hell, for all I knew, spirits took over bodies because it was the equivalent of a joyride. Maybe they simply liked being able to touch and taste again. Maybe they were bored. The important thing was to get it out of there, not to understand it.

  I stepped into Amber’s bedroom, and the sun illuminated strips of brightness across the carpet through the shredded shades. Amber’s room had been stripped down to bare bones. She no longer had her desk or her tablet or her chest of drawers. She couldn’t even be trusted with her television. She’d shattered the screen and cut herself somehow and then drawn pictures on the wall in her own blood.

  So, now the room only contained a bed. No blankets. No pillows. Sade was afraid Amber might hurt herself with them.

  Amber seemed to find it endlessly entertaining when Sade was distressed over harm Amber inflicted on herself. Sade worried the thing in Amber would do permanent damage, just for kicks.

  Mads came in behind me. She shimmered a little in the dark room, the only real hint that she was a ghost and not a regular person.

  Amber was in the corner. She was wearing a dirty t-shirt and a pair of underwear. She wouldn’t let her mother put any other clothes on her. When she saw me, she looked up, eager.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “The asshole who leaks power and his ghost bitch.” She grinned, but it made her look demented. “Are we going to play twenty questions again today? You going to ask me why I’m here and what I want and other existential questions?”

  “Afraid I got bored with that,” I said. “I bet you don’t even know why you’re doing this. You’re like one of those delinquents who gets caught and can’t come up with a reason for breaking the rules.”

  Amber stretched, and her body seemed to contort in unnatural ways. “I got reasons. I’ll tell you what they are, but first, you give me a little taste.”

  “Yeah, not going to happen.” I folded my arms over my chest.

  Amber stood up and rolled her head on her shoulders. Then she faced me, putting on a pouty face. “How are we ever going to get anywhere if you won’t trust me?”

  I shrugged. “I guess we’re not going to get anywhere.”

  She scratched her jaw.

  “Hey, not so hard,” I said. “You never clean your fingernails. You’re going to give her an infection.”

  Amber chuckled hoarsely. Now, she was walking across the room toward me. “You’re leaking all that juice, Deacon,” she breathed, her voice catching in her throat. “Just one taste?”

  “Stop talking like that,” I snapped. That kind of yearning voice from a ten-year-old’s mouth was enough to make me want to vomit.

  “Please?”

  “Deacon, there’s no reason to talk to it,” came Mads’s voice.

  I turned to look at her. “Right.” Here I was getting pulled into a conversation with that thing. I didn’t need to let that happen. I took the oil out of my pocket and uncapped it.

  “What’s that?” said Amber, closing the distance between us.

  I backed away from her. She wanted to suck my essence out. It was a thing that spirits did to me. But she had to touch me to do it. Usually, they would touch my forehead, or put their faces against mine. If I kept out of their way, I could keep from being drained. Once they latched on, though, there was nothing that could be done. Sometimes, Mads could break the link, but not always. It depended on how strong it was.

  “Come back here,” ordered Amber.

  I continued backing up, keeping my eyes on her. The room was empty, so I didn’t have to worry about accidentally tripping over anything. I dabbed a bit of the oil onto one of my fingers and then transferred it to my forehead. Then I capped the oil and raised my hands high over my head.

  I closed my eyes and I whispered, “To me. To me, now.” I reached out with some otherworldly part of me, and I called to the power.

  For a moment, there was nothing but darkness and endlessness and emptiness.

  And then, it was coming for me, barreling through time and space, and I could feel its power and its size. It was some kind of conglomeration of spirits and energy, all tied together and moving. I was never sure exactly how these pockets of power were formed. I theorized that violence and tragedy formed them. Usually, however, they became anchored to something in the world—a house, an object, or even a person in the case of Amber. These were unattached, and I didn’t know why.

  Spirits liked to feed on the power. That was why they liked me. I was hoping that the spirit inside Amber would leave her and be absorbed into this pocket of power.

  I opened my eyes.

  Amber was right in front of me, reaching for me.

  I backed up.

  And collided with the wall. I really hadn’t been watching where I was going.

  “Just a taste,” said Amber, reaching for me.

  “Amber,” I said, licking my lips. “Behind you.”

  Behind Amber was the ball of power I’d summoned. To me, it looked like a tangle of limbs and hair and teeth. It was bulging in some places, as if things were trapped inside, trying to get out. A membrane stretched over parts of it. Inside, lights glowed dimly.

  Amber didn’t turn. Her hand was coming for me.

  I ducked, and just in time, because her fingers brushed the top of my head. I dove in the direction of the power.

  Amber turned to follow me. And then she saw the power. Her eyes glazed over. “Oooh,” she murmured. “So much to taste.”

  “Taste it,” I said. “Leave Amber and eat your heart out.”

  Abruptly, Amber threw her head back and a greenish black liquid began to pour out of her mouth and eyes and nose and ears.

  I staggered. I was starting to lose my strength. I had to keep control of the power for now. I was going to pass out soon, though. This was taking a lot out of me.

  Mads was containing the entity coming out of Amber. She used her hands to direct it toward the power source.

  It didn’t take much coaxing.

  Amber fell down to the ground, moaning.

  The liquid flowed through the air to settle inside the ball of power.

  I gasped.

  “I’ve got it,” said Mads. “I’ll get it out of here.”

  “Good,” I groaned. And then I collapsed onto my knees.

  “It’s gone,” said Amber, lying in a heap on the floor. “You got rid of it.”

  “Yes,” I said, managing a tired smile at the little girl.

  “Where’s my mommy?” said Amber.

  “She’s just outside,” I said. My eyes fluttered closed.

  And everything went black.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When I woke up, I was in Amber’s room and it was the middle of the night. I sat up, and my whole body ached.

  “Deacon,” said Mads. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.” She was kneeling over me.

  I rubbed my eyes. “It worked?”

  “It worked,” she said. “I pushed that energy out of here, as far away as I could get it.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “Amber’s okay?”

  “She’s… well, she’s kind of shaken up,” said Mads. “Anyone would be.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I said. “But she’s okay otherwise.”

  “She’s happy to be back in control of her body,” said Mads.

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ll show you,” said Mads. “Get up.”

  That was easier said than done. Everything hurt, and I felt as though I’d been steamrolled or something. I swore a good bit, but I managed to get to my feet.

  Mads led me out of the room and down the hallway to Sade’s room. I peered in the door to see that Amber and her mother were curled up together in her mother’s bed, their arms wrapped around each other. They looked peaceful. They looked exhausted. They’d been through hell.

  “You’re sure it’s okay?” I asked Mads. “Sure it worked?”

  “Positive,” she said, smiling. “You did good, Deacon.”

  “
We did good,” I said. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

  She shrugged. “I did what I could.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, if they’re okay, no point in sticking around. I got to get back to Wade.”

  “Right, what was that phone call about?” she said.

  I turned and headed up the hallway. “Wade’s a daddy.”

  “Um? What do you mean?”

  “He had a secret love child,” I said.

  “He had a child and didn’t tell you about it?”

  “No,” I said. “There was this chick. Her name was Cheyenne.” We were at the front door. I opened it up and stepped outside. I shut the door behind myself. I started across the dark street toward my truck. “It was the summer after high school, and she was there because she was going to Malbrooke in the fall. Wade and her had a thing. He was really into her.”

  “What about Olivia?” said Mads. “I thought you and Wade were both head over heels for her.”

  “Right, but we swore off her,” I said. I was at my truck now. I opened the door and got inside. “And Wade rebounded with Cheyenne. And then I found about my dad and got the Airstream. I went on the road.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So, how did Olivia feel about Cheyenne?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Honestly, Wade and I stopped hanging with her that summer. It all felt awkward between us.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Is this bothering you?” I said. “You’re the one who brought up Olivia.”

  “I can’t be jealous of a dead chick,” said Mads.

  “Even though you are a dead chick,” I said.

  “Maybe,” said Mads, wrinkling up her nose in thought. “If I was alive, I don’t remember it.” Mads had been a ghost for a really long time.

  “Anyway, one day, Cheyenne just up and left. It was right in the middle of the first semester. She didn’t say goodbye, and she didn’t leave a forwarding address. Wade was devastated. He really had it bad for her, you know? She was his first serious girlfriend. He followed her around like a puppy dog. I hated her for that.”

  “For hurting your best friend?”

  “Yeah, I thought it was a shitty thing to do. But now, I’m guessing she must have disappeared because she knew she was pregnant.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “This Cheyenne girl bore Wade’s offspring. Also, apparently, she’s dead.”

  Mads made a face at me. “Wade should seriously stop sleeping with girls. He’s like a bad luck charm.”

  * * *

  Wade and I were in a corner booth, sharing a beer. It was the following evening. I’d driven straight here from leaving the Donaldson household, only stopping to pick up the Airstream.

  The Airstream was my vintage 1965 silver camper, which I lived in. I had restored the thing myself, with these two hands. I was pretty proud of the thing. Once in town, I parked it in the campground where I usually stayed when I was here, and then I sought out Wade. He was kind of a mess.

  I got it.

  What had happened to him, it was insane.

  It was the kind of thing that you hear about happening to people, but you never really think could happen to you. I mean, it could happen to anyone. Well, not anyone, I guess. Not a celibate guy. Not a woman.

  That’s the weird thing about fatherhood. It’s a big, important thing that you do, but it’s also, like, you’re not that vital to the process. You could die, and a woman could be pregnant with your kid, and you’d become a father posthumously. It’s a real head trip.

  My own father? I never even met the guy. He knocked up my mom and that was all. I didn’t hear from him again until after he was dead. Then he was just leaving me shit in his will.

  And Wade’s father was around, but he was a dick. He was an abusive, alcoholic asshole. Now, he’d cleaned up and done the twelve-step thing, and he was trying to make amends. Which he mostly did by throwing a lot of money at Wade. I think he would have liked to be more part of Wade’s life, but Wade wasn’t really cool with that.

  I guessed, theoretically, this kind of thing could happen to me. I didn’t have a lot of sex, though. I was pretty sure Wade got laid more often than me, owing to the fact he lived in a college town and all. And I was always careful, as careful as I could be, anyway. Nothing’s a hundred percent, though. So, yeah, I could find this out, I guess.

  What I didn’t get was why Cheyenne had kept this from him.

  She shouldn’t have been allowed to do that. Like, it wasn’t as if Wade was a bad guy. He had been young, and maybe he wasn’t very mature, but he deserved to know that he had a son. He had missed so much of the kid’s life.

  Sometimes I thought about asking my mother about my own father, but I never did. We really didn’t talk about him. For half my life, I didn’t talk to my mother at all, because I thought that when she had been possessed, that had been her. So, I thought she was a horrible person. Then I found out it was Negus, and my mother and I made up. But we’d yet to have a discussion about my father.

  He obviously knew I existed if he left things to me in his will.

  So, I figured it was on him that we didn’t have a relationship. He could have looked me up anytime before he died. True, he died suddenly and young. He had a heart attack, from what I understand. Maybe he thought he had time. No excuse, really, though. By that time, I was almost twenty years old, and he had missed my whole childhood. If my mother had hidden me from him, that would be one thing. But he knew about me.

  Anyway, I figure he must have been a royal dick. So, uh, I didn’t worry about it.

  “So, why didn’t Cheyenne tell you?” I asked Wade. “Did her mother tell you that?”

  Wade took a drink of his beer. “I asked. Cheyenne’s mother—her name’s Virginia, by the by—said that we were really young and that Cheyenne didn’t think I was ready to be a father or something. I don’t know. It sounded like bullshit to me.”

  “I feel like you should be able to sue or something,” I said. “You can never get any of that time back. You missed all the shit. His first steps and his first words and teaching to him to ride a bike. You were robbed.”

  Wade set down his beer, nodding.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Is this making it all worse, me pointing stuff like that out?”

  “I’m not suing anyone.”

  “No, I know,” I said. “Not that it would make up for it, anyway.”

  “I mean… if I’d known about him, everything would be different,” said Wade. “I would have graduated college already.”

  “Or you wouldn’t have gone,” I said. “You’d have gotten some job to provide, right?”

  “Maybe.” Wade took another drink of his beer.

  “So, why are you finding this all out now?”

  “Well, Virginia, she’s starting to get health problems,” said Wade. “She’s had full custody of Kadan for two years, but she’s worried that she won’t last. Or that even if she does, she won’t be able to have the energy and youth to keep up with him. So, she thought that maybe we could share custody. She only wanted to give me every other weekend with Kadan, and I said I wanted more.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s nothing.”

  “Yeah, and it’s like you said. I already missed his whole life.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “He’s a really cool kid, Deacon. I can’t wait for you to meet him. He’s really smart, and he does these cool Lego things. Really complicated stuff he puts together. Spends hours and days on them. He’s, you know, he’s awesome.” Wade was smiling. He looked sort of awed.

  I grinned back at him. But the smile kind of scared me. Like, how had that happened? Wade was kind of a fuckup. So was I, but that was why we were friends. We were fuckups together. Now, Wade was a dad, and he was all falling in love with his kid. Which, of course, he would do. But it made me feel… I don’t know. Scared somehow. Because I knew that everything was changing, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to l
ike all the changes. I ran a finger around the rim of my glass. “I want to meet him. I really do.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to get Virginia to let me have him overnight. So far, all she’s letting me do is like take him out to McDonald’s and shit. I’m afraid I’m going to have to get a lawyer or something and fight for all this, and…”

  “Hey,” I said. “Speaking of lawyers and fighting, you’re sure this is true? Like, okay, the timeline matches up, but are you positive that Kadan is really your son?”

  “Yeah,” said Wade. “Virginia wouldn’t let me see him until we did this DNA test.”

  “Okay, so she got in touch with you and told you about it and asked you to take a DNA test. How long ago was this?”

  “A few weeks.”

  “You didn’t call me?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem real. I kind of didn’t want to think about it. I was fucking terrified. Hell, I’m still fucking terrified.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, me too.”

  “You? What do you have to be scared about?”

  “I don’t know, but I am.” I was still laughing.

  He shook his head and me, and then he laughed too. “Anyway, yeah, it’s all legit. I ejaculated. Boom. Seven-year-old kid.”

  I snorted. “Dude.”

  He hung his head. “It’s all so weird.”

  “You’re not kidding,” I said.

  “Look, there’s other reasons I wanted to talk to you,” he said. “Did you, uh, ever hear about Sanford House?”

  I furrowed my brow. “Um, it kind of rings a bell. What is that?”

  “Two years ago, it was a minor news story. This guy said that he and his wife moved into a house and it was haunted, and the ghosts killed her. For a while, the police thought he was lying, and that he murdered her, but then they ruled it a suicide.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember that at all.”

  “It was Cheyenne,” said Wade. “I guess I never put it together because I never saw a picture of her or anything, and her last name was different since she was married. But she died in that house.”

  “Murdered by ghosts?” I furrowed my brow.

  “Is that even possible?”