Exorcize This, Julie Steimle [best books to read in life txt] 📗

third hour. “You know I see imps. They’re little devils, right? But I can coax them to do things for me under the condition that it causes trouble. If it upset your father and made a mess, then it made them happy. I know it isn’t exactly ethical, but it was only way to get the bones out of the forest quickly.”

Deidre nodded at me, smirking. Behind her I noticed Bobby Macawber and Tabby McMahone in a heated argument. Something about ‘pregnant’ and ‘last time she had her period’. Her imps were screaming for her to not tell her parents and just get an abortion.

“Do you need me to help you sort out the bones at all?” I asked, ignoring them. What they did was none of my business.

Deidre smiled at me. “Didn’t you walk by the park this morning and see for yourself?”

I shook my head. “No. My mom drove me this morning. I’m still recovering.”

She went a little pale. I think in that moment she realized that I had to take on the vampires anyway, despite my reluctance to do so. Clearing off that expression, she mustered strength to say, “Well… all the bones have been gathered into those boxes and taken to the police station. I have been sorting them out with several ghosts for the past few days, and believe me, there is a lot more than I expected. Mostly, they just want to be identified. The thing is… some of the ghosts are still fixated to the house and are following me still. Most have moved on—at least to the police station. It’s the ones in the house that I am worried about.”

I nodded, wondering that that meant. “They’re not vampire victims?”

Drawing in a breath, Deidre shook her head. “I don’t know. I had thought so, but was there an unsolved murder in this town at some point? One I might have missed or was hushed up?”

I shrugged. I didn’t know of any. Then an idea came to me. “Did you ask the police that question?”

She nodded. “I did. Early on. It’s our usual procedure. Dad usually investigates unsolved crimes while I talk to the ghosts. One ghost in particular is really ornery. He moves things. He rattles things. He tries to convince me to do bad things….”

I stiffened. Did ghosts do that?

“Let me come to your house after school,” I said, which shocked even me as I still dreaded going to the Bale’s place.

Her heart seemed to leap with hope, another one-eighty in attitude. That was what she wanted now. And she just wanted me to suggest it.

We reached class where Jane eyed me with Deidre. And though Deidre took her usual seat, Jane hissed to me, “Is she going to get you into trouble again?”

I shook my head as I pondered on that, wondering if she was. “I going to have to go with her—”

“Not again!” Jane moaned. She looked likely to bang her head against her desk. “I hate to say it, but that girl seems to be trouble for you. She nearly not you killed.”

Probably, though I did not tell Jane what I had done to the vampires in the forest. I had told no one. I think only the police and Mr. McDillan knew as they were the only ones to see me blood-covered.

“It will be the last favor,” I said to her. “Trust me.”

Jane shook her head. “I trust you. Not her. All of these years people have been calling you creepy, but she is genuinely creepy.”

I shrugged, unsettled by that remark. “She’s being haunted. What can I say?”

The rest of the day went by fast. It was amazing how fast it zipped by. It was also amazing how people stared at me in silence and their imps had stopped telling them to call me nasty names. The high school rumor mill has done its work again, only this time they were saying I had found the lost hiker and rescued him alive. They were also saying I had taken on a horde of vampires to do it. My bandages were proof. And the adults were talking about it also.

It was a half-truth. Admittedly. And I wasn’t so sure I wanted to correct it. It was technically true… just not in the heroic picture that rumor painted. Yeah, sure. I had found and brought back the missing hiker, but not with a horde of vampires on my tail. I fought the vampires because I had been upset over what they had done to my birthfather, and I had lost control.

 

Not a Ghost

 

After school, I walked with Deidre to her home. I waved to the missionaries as they rode past on their bikes, and they waved back, grinning. Groaning, Deidre grabbed my wrist and pulled me along. When we passed the park, she pointed out at the wrecked grass the scattered shards of cardboard. But the bones were gone.

When we got to her house, it still felt heavy with darkness. It still breathed cold. She let me in and led me to the kitchen where she intended to get me something to drink. The moment I stepped into the house, I felt a heavy presence looming in the room. At first I wondered if the presence was a death angel watching me—but it did not feel the same as that biker or that elderly woman. And I could see no one.

My eyes took in the drab, and rather filthy looking walls. The house itself felt like it was coated in something, a layer of… I didn’t know what. Grease? It was like a dirty film, the kind that coated the outside windows of a house, the ones that desperately needed to be washed, though it was sticky like it would not come off without a scraper. The furniture was just as greasy looking, the colors washed out and worn. I lifted my voice and said, “Did you bring your own furniture or did this stuff come with the house?”

Deidre walked out from the kitchen carrying two glasses, one for me and one for her. As she held one out for me, for a split second I saw the looming shadow of a man just a few feet behind her. I stepped forward to look, but he vanished just as quickly.

“Is your dad home?” I asked.

She shook her head, watching me peer around her. “He’s at the police station right now. The bone sorting has kept him busy. He’s actually rather pleased with that, as he can hear the ghosts identify themselves.”

I nodded. That was good, but then who was that figure I saw?

“As for the furniture,” Deidre said, gently pushing one glass into my hand as I had not taken it, “They came with the house. Mrs. Bale had tried to remove them, but something won’t let her, she says.”

I stared. “That’s some ghostly fixation.”

Deidre nodded then shrugged. “It’s not usual. And it does not fit the history of the house.”

The history of the house. I realized I knew nothing about the Bale’s house. It was just an old ugly house that people always said was haunted.

“What is the history?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Look at it. It was built post World War II. It’s got bricks and wood veneer with cracks. The fireplace is not up to code, and most of it demands to be retrofitted—”

Man, Deidre knew a lot about houses. How many haunted houses had she been in? Maybe she could ditch this ghost-whispering work and become an architect.

 

“—But beyond that, Mrs. Bale said it belonged to an army vet from World War I before she owned it. He retired and was an upstanding citizen until he passed in the sixties. Lung cancer, I think. No ghosts back then.” She looked around with another shrug.

That was weird. That meant the house got haunted after that. After the sixties.

“Mr. Finian had purchased it,” Deidre continued. “And I looked into that family…” I thought of Bridget and her brother Kyle. “…and they are pretty ordinary.”

If a Goth chick and a guy who wanted to sell recreational marijuana was ‘ordinary’—though they were like grandnieces and grandnephews to Mrs. Bale. Maybe she meant the Finians of Mrs. Bale’s day.

“And the Bale family is squeaky clean,” Deidre added.

I nodded. Mrs. Bale had inherited the house from her father and she with her husband had wanted to sell it and move into a condo. They had still moved into the condo, but selling the house turned out to be impossible.

“When did Mrs. Bale say it started to get haunted?” I asked.

I saw a sudden movement out of the corner of my eye. It was starting to get cold immediately around us. I could feel the ghosts move in and huddle near Deidre. In her eyes, I could see a flicker of agitation. Almost fear. The imps around us were peeking also, murmuring. One asked the other, “It isn’t a boogieman, is it?”

They shot looks to Deidre’s imps who were sulking. Those imps shook their heads.

There was such thing as a boogieman? I wondered what that was. I had to ask Rick if he knew. Whatever it was, it scared imps.

Shivering a little, heading to where she put her jacket to pull it back on, Deidre said, “I think when they first decided to retire and sell the place, actually. It started, of all things, on a Halloween.”

I shuddered. “Which Halloween?”

Thinking on it, Deidre murmured, “Let me think. It was… um… I think she said about sixteen or seventeen years ago.”

I stared at her. That was the year I was born. That was freaky. Was this a coincidence or were they related. The ghosts blamed me after all.

“And?”

She shrugged. “And I don’t know. It was all of a sudden. I think they were holding a Halloween party and were playing with an Ouija board when—”

A shudder ran through me. My mother had outright banned Ouija boards. She said they invited the devil in. Dawn had wanted one, but with me living in our house, my mother did not even want a trace of evil things near me. I mean, our Halloween costumes always had be happy things, like fictional characters from books and movies. We were never allowed to dress up in any way spooky. Up until the day I realized that it was because a real vampire bat had indeed dropped me on my father’s lap Halloween all those years ago, I had never understood it. But now, knowing I was demon who needed to stay far away from evil things, I realized that policy might have saved my life.

That moment the walls rattled. The lights flickered and the chandeliers jingled.

“This house is possessed,” I said, looking to them.

Deidre rolled her eyes. “Mrs. Bale already tried priests and holy water. She told me so. She put a cross in every room.”

I shook my head, feeling that evil presence intensify. “No offense, but I always thought holy water and crosses were a gimmick.”

She stared at me. Apparently she had used them in some of her ghost whispering.

I explained. “I know they have no effect on vampires. That’s Hollywood mumbo jumbo.”

“Then what affects vampires?” she breathed out as the house seemed to moan now. It was nearly speaking to me,