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

shook my head slowly. What could I say that would not panic my best friend? I didn’t want to confirm the town’s fears about the new girl either. So I said, “She needs help with a project, and she thinks I can do it.”

Narrowing her eyes at me, Jane’s mouth thinned into a line. She could tell I was not telling the full truth. But after a while she gave up on it, perhaps realizing it was not a good thing to pursue.

Clarifying

 

I emailed Rick as soon as I got home. Dawn was at Brigid Finian’s house helping her and Breanna plan a Halloween party for their group of ‘friends’ on Saturday (Halloween was next Tuesday). I wasn’t invited of course. But then I wouldn’t have wanted to go anyway. Dawn’s Goth friends were backstabbing creeps, and I was weary of Dawn hanging out with them though I understood now why she did. Her Goth friends were the only kids at school who did not snub her for being my sister. They thought it made her edgy.

Anyway, I asked Rick to confirm something for me. I simply wanted to know if Deidre was for real.

 

How can you tell if someone is really seeing ghosts and they aren’t making it up?

 

I then went to YouTube to watch some music video covers by my favorite amateur singers. During the middle of one video, I heard a knock at the living room door. I lifted my head, looking around to see if anyone would get it, but then I remembered that no one but me was at home. My mom was gone to something with LASS, a joint service project (I think) for the upcoming Thanksgiving raffle at our church this year. Dad was still at work.

I wondered who it was. It couldn’t be those missionaries. My mom would have told them she was busy this week, because she was. Extremely busy.

Getting up, I went to the door and peeped out the hole. I saw Deidre standing on our front step. She looked anxiously preoccupied. As I opened the door, I wondered how she knew where I lived. Once open, I leaned back and I stared at her. “What are you doing here?”

She sighed and looked around again as if making sure she was not followed. “Can I come in?”

Honestly, no one else would have ever asked me that question except for Jane. So I stepped aside and let her in.

Deidre looked around at our house, her eyes taking in our living room with all the family pictures, the couch, and the coffee table as if she had just entered Disneyland. And I noticed that the cold around her actually stayed outside. It didn’t follow Deidre in. When that happened, she actually glanced back with relief to the doorway.

I shut the door, and she actually took off her jacket, breathing easier. Her eyes raked over me again, then the house again. I could tell she was amazed I lived in such a nice place. It was like she had expected my house to be like the Bale’s place.

“Look,” she said, “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t really need your help. Have you thought about it? What I asked you?”

Pulling back, I shrugged. “I… I really don’t know what it is you want from me. I have no influence on ghosts. I wasn’t involved in their deaths. I—”

“Fine,” Deidre cut me off. “I didn’t expect that anyways. Most of the ghosts are from an older time era anyway. Look, I’m stumped. Ok? And I really need to get this job done…” She let her voice trail off as her imps screamed that she should just ask to stay over at my place that night, which was weird. No one would ever ask that except Jane. But I had a feeling Deidre’s motivation was not the same as Jane’s. First off, her staying with me would clearly cause her trouble.

“Do you want something to drink?” I asked, heading to the kitchen. It was the proper and polite thing to do after all.

She followed me. “Um. No thanks. Look, I really—”

“You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?” I said, going to the fridge anyway. I took out some juice and then fetched an apple from the hanging rack. I decided I wanted something to snack on at least.

Deidre paled, but she nodded. She peeked to the door again. “I can’t stay long. My father…”

Chills rushed through me. I heard her imps scream for her to beg to be adopted by my family, especially since they had adopted me. I got the distinct impression that she was jealous of me and wanted my life… or perhaps just my family. It wasn’t like she was going to steal them from me or anything, but that she wished she had my family and not the one she had.

I took out another glass and poured juice for both her and me. I gestured to the kitchen stool for her to sit.

She remained standing, wringing her hands and averting her eyes to the kitchen counter, ignoring the glass of juice. “Look, I—”

“Calm down,” I said. “I don’t want to cause you trouble, but I can guess the kind of trouble you are already in. Can you just explain in the simplest terms, and maybe we can figure something out?”

Deidre nodded. She sat on the stool now. Drawing in a breath first, she then said, “I… I’ve been traveling with my father everywhere doing these exorcisms, going to paranormal fairs, and all that since my mom was killed. It was just a car accident, but… I’ve been seeing ghosts ever since and they won’t leave me alone.”

I nodded, waiting for more. It was tragic, of course, but there was nothing I could do about that either.

“I’m a ghost whisperer, so-to-speak,” she said with the weariness of person who had hitchhiked the continent. “I learned later that it runs in the family but skips generations.” She shook her head with teeth clenched. “Dad can sometimes hear the ghosts too, but he can’t see them,” Deidre murmured. “It had really creeped him out when he was a kid. But when I ended up with the ‘gift’…” she made air quotes “…he ended up turning into a career for me. For us.”

I stared. It sucked for a career. I doubted it paid well. It couldn’t be fun. And it didn’t look like she wanted to do that sort of thing for the rest of her life.

“This thing with this house is a major deal for my dad. If I can’t get rid of the ghosts…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”

I stared at her frowning. “Why can’t he just get a job?”

She shook her head. “When Mom died, he flipped out. He used to be an electrical engineer—”

“He should go back to that.”

“—But now he acts as my agent, and this is all he does,” Deidre said, ignoring me. “We have no other source of income.”

“That didn’t answer my question,” I muttered. She needed to get away from her father. I could tell he wasn’t just using her for money, he was emotionally abusing her. It was in the manner of her imps. They were saying cruel things to her, things like she was garbage if she didn’t get this job done right; that she was a failure and worthless. If there ever was a girl who needed to go to that exclusive private school in New York City, it was her—if anything to get away from her father.

I said, “If you really want help, I can connect you with people who—”

“I shouldn’t even be talking to you!” she hissed as if the walls had ears. But then I realized maybe the ghosts tattled on her. Maybe they watched her for her father. She did say he could hear them sometimes. “But I’m desperate.”

Her imps spat at me. They didn’t like it that she was visiting me. It was like they were enjoying the circumstance she was in, but did not understand what real imp fun was like. My imps were spitting back at them, mooning them next.

I swatted them all away.

Deidre stepped from me, startled at that gesture. Her eyes widened more. I realized for a flash of a second when my hands had made contact with the imps they were visible, and she saw them. “Oh my gosh. You really do see invisible things too.”

I nodded. “Imps. They’re everywhere. Look, I’ll help you. But we need to find out what really is going on. I need to…” and I shuddered “…go to your house.”

She stepped back from me. “No way.”

Hanging my shoulders, I looked to the ceiling. “Ugh. Deidre. We have to find out the real reason those ghosts think I am their problem or their solution or whatever. I didn’t cause their deaths, so they can’t blame me. But if you are saying the vampires in the mountains killed them, then what is it that I can do to fix it? I can’t bring all those people back to life.”

Pressing a hand to her forehead, Deidre murmured, “Of course not. The thing we need to do is break their connection or fixation to that house and this town.”

 “And how do you do that?” I asked.

She shrugged, “For some ghosts, if they were murdered, I try to expose the criminal. For others… uh… I have to satisfy their desire for revenge.”

I stared. I knew what that entailed. Revenge meant I had to go into the mountains and take on the vampires. The entire lot of them. “I’m not doing that.”

Deidre cringed, nodding.

“So what can we do?” I asked.

Shaking her head, she headed back to the living room again to leave. It was like she was fleeing. “I don’t know,” she said. “Put them at rest somehow. I don’t know.”

The moment she pulled the door open the air blew in cold. And coming up the walk was Dawn with Brigid and Breanna. All three stared at us as Deidre stepped outside.

I could feel the cold gather around Deidre again as she walked down the steps, hardly looking at any of the girls except for my sister, and with jealousy.

When Dawn went past her and up to our front door, her eyes savagely asked me ‘What that girl was doing in our house’.

“Is she your new best friend?” Breanna asked me as she went inside, “Now that Jane is busy with the Mormons.”

With a dirty look, I said, “She was just asking for a favor.”

Dawn’s eyes widened on me. So did the eyes of her friends.

“What favor?” Brigid gasped out.

“None of your business,” I bit back and returned to the computer. I unpaused the video I had been watching before Deidre had come, trying to get back into it.

All three girls went into the kitchen, Dawn’s friends shifting far away from me as if I had threatened to bite them.

“You left the juice out,” Dawn called from that room.

Moaning, I got up again and went back to the kitchen to clean up my mess.

Dawn’s friends were going through our cupboards, looking for snacks I presumed. Dawn was getting out cooking pot. Our eyes met briefly, hers demanding once more why Deidre