Chris Green - Only the Good Die Young

He’d stood up, going toward an antique phone, probably to call an ambulance. His dark hair was wild after digging his fingers through it in fright.

I positioned myself at Farah’s side and threw some sound out.

Her voice.

“Noah?” I imitated.

Right away, he forgot the phone, dropping it as he went back to his sister. “Farah… ?”

Then he realized that she wasn’t moving.

When he got to his knees next to her, I smiled, feeling his unadulterated fear, as pure as iced volts. In my state of highness, I wallowed in his mounting quivers. I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to really scare him, getting this mystery solved. I wanted to know what he knew about Elizabeth.

“Noah?” I said again. But this time, it was in Elizabeth’s voice.

His eyes widened in incomprehension, then terror, and I leeched hard to his cheek, scaring him even more.

Someone is in the room with us.

And we aren’t sure where.

We scan the near darkness—the unlit corners, the spot behind the sofa that we haven’t checked yet, the gnarled shadows from the wavering pool water light that’s coming through the door, like fingers clawing down the wall.

“Who’s there?” we ask.

The spirit from earlier? Had it hurt Farah?

Should we be running away?

Our heart beats so hard that it slams our chest, wailing to get out. Our limbs feel cold, like if we moved them they would crack like icicles.

“Is anyone there?” we say, louder.

Silence. The sound of our short breathing.

Then, little by little, the sound of someone else’s breathing.

Move, we think. Why can’t we move?

As we hold our breath, we see something rise from behind a kitchen counter in the faint trail of light from the open doorway.

It has blond hair wetted down by fresh blood.

A demonic, smiling face that we should recognize but don’t, because its skin is blue, and who has blue skin?

Even worse, a red-soaked rope is tied around its neck so tightly that we can’t help thinking that this thing must’ve been choked to death.

As we watch in frozen horror, its tongue lolls out of its mouth.

Before we can yell, it flies at us, the tongue whipping out, wrapping around our neck, squeezing, cutting off oxygen. We fall to the floor, grabbing at that tongue, but there’s nothing there.

Nothing at all.

Still, the face is hovering over ours, and the thing is laughing, and the laugh sounds so familiar. Musical. A song.

Elizabeth Dalton’s laugh… ?

Before Noah could faint, I pulled out of him, having the presence of mind to lighten the pressure against his cheek for an empathy reading.

And memories came through strong and clear.

“What the fuck did you do?”

A white scarf in his hands, throwing it back into the dirt that was surrounded by tall grass in the night.

Dragging his gaze from that scarf to the body next to it.

A long-legged woman in a white dress, her eyes staring at him blankly—

Blackness came crashing at me, and I shot out of the images like a silver bullet, my essence surging with electricity as I ripped out of Noah and over the floor, scabbed by the contact. But I quickly mended as I scrambled upright, still buzzing crazily.

Noah was on the floor, next to Farah, just as passed out as she was now. I wasn’t sure if it was because he’d been overcome by the hallucination and then the empathy, or if it was because I’d had a power surge in him when I’d seen Elizabeth in that car trunk.

Jesus, I thought as my essence thudded. Noah had seen her dead… or at least unconscious. But she’d looked pretty dead to me.

I realized that I was even more excited from the hallucinations and the empathy than I’d been with Farah. Was that a good thing that I wasn’t getting scared back into a time loop, as Amanda Lee had feared?

I didn’t have time to think about that, or more important, whom Noah might’ve been talking to or whose car that was, when a loud roaring came from outside.

Scott came thundering to the door. “Get your butt out here!”

I zipped out of the pool house to find the mansion’s outside lights flashing. And when a chair came crashing through a window and into the pool, I instinctively ducked as another followed it, sailing over my head.

“It’s Twyla!” Scott said. “I knew this might happen when she encountered the cleaner’s remaining energy. That Goth side of her always did hate religious stuff… .”

As he trailed off, Gavin busted out of the mansion, carrying Wendy in his arms like she weighed nothing.

Was she okay? Shit.

“Take care of the girl,” I shouted to Scott as a huge screech came out of the mansion. “Make sure she’s safe.”

And the only reason I requested this was that, without any preamble, I set upon Gavin, pounding against him with such determination that he dropped Wendy to her feet and went to his knees.

He yelled, just like he was angry at a force of nature. “What do you want?”

Belligerent. But that was fine. It filled me up with even more strength than his fear.

I had to catch him off guard, so I improvised. With a burst of materialization, I showed myself to him—an angel.

Just as he sucked in his breath, stupefied, I screamed like the devil, then bashed against him, pressing hard against his cheek, making sure his mind was on Elizabeth’s murder.

“Gavin?”

We hear her in the pool, splashing.

Her laughter. Then she appears, hoisting herself up and over the ledge to sit down, her bare legs still dangling in the water.

She’s as normal as we’ve ever seen her, blond hair slicked back, beaded water slipping down her skin. Her smile is just as sunny, too, even at night.

But her words aren’t.

“Why did you kill me?” she asks us conversationally. “Just tell me and I’ll go away.”

Our heart twists, just like it’s trying to turn away from the sight of her, so healthy, so alive.

We try to say something… God, how we try, but our lips are glued together. Literally.

Then she begins to crawl all the way out of the pool, dragging herself over the concrete, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

We choke, unable to look, even though we can’t stop looking.

“Gavin… ,” she moans.

One of her legs slides off, like it’s been suddenly sliced, then the other.

Still, she pulls herself toward us, her expression devastated.

“Tell me why, Gavin… .”

One arm falls away from her, leaving her with a lone limb that she still uses to crawl toward us.

Our stomach roils. Tears fill our eyes.

Then the other arm rolls away from her, left behind.

Even so, she keeps coming to us.

“Gavin… help me?”

The hallucination started fritzing, so I must’ve automatically lessened the pressure on Gavin’s cheek, turning to an empathetic state in his mind. But it was almost like the hallucination hadn’t stopped at all as I saw into his thoughts… .

A view from a balcony. A body on the ground.

Not Elizabeth’s.

Blond hair had turned to black, the body lying facedown on a patch of bloodied concrete at night.

A man?—

I was jerked out of Gavin then, pulled back into the world, twirling until I regained balance, already gearing up to go back into him to get more.

But what I saw on Gavin Edgett’s ravaged face stopped me.