“Why didn’t they disappear like the little boy in the well?” I asked. He had seemed at peace.
“Sometimes spirits don’t know how to move on. They’re lost and need help finding their way.”
Lukas frowned. “And you’re going to be their guide?”
“More like their travel agent.” Alara pulled four packages of Red Cap tobacco out of her bag. “If you guys want to help, I’m going to need a bucket.”
The spirits crowded around Alara as she emptied one of the tobacco packets into a bucket of water and stirred it with her hand. “We have to make a floor wash and cleanse the room of negative energy or the loas won’t come.”
“The what?”
“The loas are intermediaries in the spirit world. Some of them guide lost souls to the other side,” she explained, her arms soaked to the elbows. “But they won’t show up unless we scrub this room down.”
Jared studied the brown water. “And this is what we’re using to clean the place?”
“Florida Water makes the best floor wash. But unless you have bergamot oil, rose water, oil of neroli, and about seven other ingredients stashed in the van, we’re going with this. Lots of cultures use tobacco to purify sacred spaces.” She handed Jared a wet towel. “Start purifying.”
Lukas walked up and down the stairs, refilling the bucket in the kitchen until Alara ran out of Red Cap and the floors were clean, at least according to her standards. He didn’t say a word to Jared and not much more to me. When he caught me watching him, his usual playful expression was gone.
Alara lit a novena candle in the center of the room. By now, some of the children were sitting cross-legged around her, fascinated. “We need something to offer the loas.”
I glanced at the stripped beds and the IV poles, the bare bulb and the dirty faces of the spirits. There was nothing here. Lukas and Jared looked through their pockets, but weapons and salt probably weren’t the right sort of offerings.
I only had one thing of value.
My hand shook as I slipped my mother’s silver bracelet off my wrist and handed it to Alara. I heard a rip and turned in time to see Jared tearing something off his father’s jacket. He dropped the white patch bearing his last name next to the candle.
Alara shook her head. “I’m not sure if it’s enough.”
One of the smaller children scrambled to her feet and disappeared behind a metal bed frame. She scurried back and handed Alara a dirty bundle with two circles drawn on the front, and a piece of IV tubing wrapped around it. A crude doll made from one of the bed straps.
Alara’s eyes glistened in the candlelight as she opened her journal and read from a page written in Haitian Creole, the language of the loas. The children listened intently and she turned to the next page, written in English—Psalm 136.
Her voice was quiet, and I only heard snippets as she spoke.
“To him who alone doeth great wonders:
for his mercy endureth for ever…
With a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm:
for his mercy endureth for ever…
And hath redeemed us from our enemies:
for his mercy endureth forever.”
Their bodies started to fade, two or three at a time. Until there was nothing left but a patch, a silver bracelet, and a doll lying on the floor.
Upstairs, I lingered by the front door, trying to sense the change within the house. Part of me wanted to open the pantry in the kitchen to see if the spirit of the little girl was still locked inside. But I knew she was just a fingerprint left behind, and I wanted to remember the real spirits who had finally found a way out.
Jared was standing in the center of the rusty merry-go-round, staring past the gates over which no child would’ve been tall enough to see. From where I stood, the world was framed by those black bars. Had the children ever seen the world without them? Would they be able to see it now?
“When I was little, I wanted to be a superhero so I could protect people from the bad guys,” Jared said. “I couldn’t even protect you from a dead kid.”
“If you’re talking about what happened today—”
“We could’ve died, Kennedy.”
The front door slammed behind me.
“And whose fault is that?” Lukas stalked across the yard toward his brother.
“Do you really want to go there right now?” Jared stepped off the edge of the merry-go-round, sending it spinning gently without him.
“I want to know how many people are going to get hurt because of you. Are you gonna get her killed, too?” Lukas asked.
Time seemed to slow down as Lukas closed the distance between them. He lunged, tackling Jared, and they hit the ground hard. They rolled in the dirt, both grappling for the upper hand.
Jared made it to his feet first and grabbed Lukas around the waist, lifting him in the air. He slammed his brother’s back into the dirt and pinned Lukas’ arms down with his knees.
I ran down the steps just as Jared punched his brother in the face. “Stop it!”
Jared looked up at me. It was only a second, but it was enough time for Lukas to free one of his arms. His hand closed around Jared’s throat.
“What happened in there wasn’t Jared’s fault or mine,” I said. We all knew I was talking about more than getting trapped inside a wall.
Lukas relaxed his grip and Jared scrambled away from him, coughing. “Don’t worry, Luk. You made your point.”
Lukas stood up and wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve before he walked away.
I knelt down next to Jared, and he dropped his head. “He’s right.”
“About what?”
“How close I came to getting us killed.”
I didn’t want to think about what it felt like inside that wall. “We’re both fine.”
Jared looked at everything but me. “Because Lukas saved us.”
“He had help.”
“Lukas would’ve found you somehow. He protects people,” Jared said, falling silent for a moment. “I get them killed.”
“Don’t do this to yourself. It was an accident.”
He raised his head, eyes dark and shining.
“Five people are dead, and there was nothing accidental about it. I knew there was a risk, and I kept looking anyway. I led Andras right to them.” Jared leaned his head against the wall. “I don’t want you caught in the cross fire the next time I screw up.”
It felt like my heart stopped beating.
“What are you saying?” But even as I asked, I knew the answer.
He studied the weeds and dead grass at his feet. “I care about you—”
“Just not enough to stick around,” I said.
“You don’t understand.”
My hands curled into fists at my sides. “Three hours.”
“What?” he asked.
“That’s how long it took for you to walk away.”
Whenever I cared about someone, I imagined them leaving—the words they’d say, the way it would feel when they left. I thought if I prepared myself, it would be easier when it finally happened. I was wrong.
“Kennedy—”
I held up a hand to silence him. “Now let’s see how long it takes you to forget me.”
CHAPTER 29
Sons of Disobedience
I stared out the window as the winding back roads led us closer to the coordinates etched in the sledgehammer. I tried to lose myself in drawing, anything to forget Jared’s arms around me inside the wall, or how easily he had given me up outside it. We hadn’t spoken a word to each other since I left him standing in front of Hearts of Mercy.
There wasn’t anything else to say.
I sketched the woods along the Maryland state border, where towering oaks guarded the remnants of charred brick buildings. According to ghost stories, the houses belonged to witches, until they were burned to the ground with the women trapped inside them. Now people believed the scorched remains were haunted.
It was hard
to imagine we were going somewhere with a history more disturbing.
Lukas had spent most of the ride searching websites on his cell phone, so he didn’t have to talk to his brother. When he finally lost the signal, he went back to studying the map.
He drew a line connecting the red circles, while Jared scanned through the static on the radio.
“There’s probably no reception out here.” Priest looked up from his own sketch, some kind of tube loaded with canisters.
“That’s because this is the edge of the world, and we’re about to fall off,” Alara said.
Jared turned the dial again and this time a voice cut through the static. “The shooting occurred at eleven fifteen this morning at the Walmart in Moundsville. Three people were killed and two others injured before the gunman exited the store, turning his weapon on police. The gunman was killed in the standoff, and no officers were injured.”