“Thanks for the warning. It’d help if you told me what it was… ?”
He only lifted that eyebrow, and I knew he was just like any spirit, finding amusement where he could because, otherwise, time was an emotion killer.
As he stood there, the invisible ground started to fall away below me, like ice cubes dropping out of a tray. Fake Dean grinned, enjoying his little jokes.
The floor opened up and I plunged back to earth, zooming like a comet, feeling my celestial body transform, taking me away from coma-paradise and back to the weirdness of life.
After I performed a very ungraceful landing in a strawberry field that spread under the starry sky, I realized that I’d dug a ditch from the force of my entrance. It smoked as I stood to check over my essence.
Colorful and uninjured. But why wouldn’t it be after fake Dean’s attentions?
Feeling like myself again—the ghost self I truly was—I looked up at the stars, wondering where I’d been hanging.
And why fake Dean had been so cocky about thinking that I’d be back someday.
25
When I got to Amanda Lee’s, she and Louis and Randy were indeed waiting for me on her front porch, near the swing.
But two other ghosts had shown up in the meantime.
Twyla and Scott flew over to me right away, leaving Randy and Louis behind as Amanda Lee stood from the swing, looking at me from a distance.
“Where’ve you been?” Scott asked as Twyla bobbed with curiosity, surveying my major color with a bit of awe.
“That’s a question I could ask you,” I said. “You guys left Wendy alone after I asked you to stay with her.”
Twyla put her hands on her hips. “After you chased Farah, Little China Girl told us to scram, and I wasn’t about to babysit a mouthy, emotionally on-fire trend queen who called my wardrobe ‘unfortunate.’ So I took off to UCSD, you know? There’s always some pinhead playing with a Ouija board in the dorms or whatever.”
Scott piped in. “There was nothing happening, so I went with Twyla. I guess we should’ve stayed… .”
He was baiting me for an explanation as to what’d gone on.
I shook my head. “I doubt your presence would’ve changed anything in the end. Just come with me to talk with the others.”
“Changed what?” they both asked, and I waved them on and floated toward the porch, where I would have to break the news to Amanda Lee.
By the time I got there, Amanda Lee could sense something big had gone down.
Randy’s relieved smile even died on his face when he saw my expression, and he took up that sober sailor stance he’d assumed when he’d hovered near the bed of McGlinn’s time-looped uncle the other day.
As I told Amanda Lee everything—from the pool house hauntings, to discovering Farah was the killer and Noah was the helper, to the revelation of Daddy Edgett’s abuse and his death via Gavin—she slowly sat down again. I couldn’t read her face, but I could feel how much the news pummeled her. I think Louis could feel that from her, too, because he hovered near her, faithful and good, no matter what dimension he lived in.
“Are you okay?” I asked her after she’d had a few minutes to absorb it all.
She only nodded and clutched at her turquoise cross around her neck. “Farah? She was the one who did it?”
“Yeah.”
Amanda Lee gradually pushed the swing back, and it idly fell forward as she rode it, the chains groaning. I’m not sure she realized she was even moving.
Louis tried to smooth the rough moment. “We talked all night about those dreams that Gavin had, but now every meaning we came up with is null and void, I suppose.”
There was still so much to work out about the case, wasn’t there? I wanted to unwind all its threads. Louis was definitely up for it. I’m sure it would help Amanda Lee to come to terms with everything, too.
“All those twisted clues,” I said. “Right there in Gavin’s mind. I guess the girl pilots in the dreams weren’t his anima, after all. The main pilot was Farah and the second one was Wendy, and the air machines were a symbol of their high-flying, wonderful childhoods, when you’re supposed to be able to laugh and soar and have fun.”
“And the big dark bird really was death,” Louis said. “The dad’s death. And it was shadowing Farah and Gavin.”
“That means the dragon with the crushed face was their dad, because he didn’t have much of a face after he fell from that balcony. He was trying to pluck Farah out of the air and victimize her in that first dream, and in the second, when he was the spider, he did get her with his web. Gavin saved her both times.”
Yes, the motivations for Farah’s crime had been there, in his baffling subconscious, all along for me to figure out. But since Gavin hadn’t known Farah was Elizabeth’s killer, his clues hadn’t been clear enough to me.
“I feel so awful for him,” I said. “I haunted him for killing Elizabeth when he actually did it to his dad. I’m not sure he meant to kill him, though.”
Actually, I had the feeling I was wrong about that, because in that second dream, I suspected that Gavin and the bird had been working together, killing the father. But did I care? Frighteningly, I didn’t, because if Wendy had escaped the man’s abuse thanks to his death, that was just fine by me.
Louis gave me a sympathetic glance. “If Gavin’s dreams were any indication of how he felt about Elizabeth, he was haunted before you even got to him. Thoughts of her death were tearing him apart.”
True. Gavin lived in a world of blood. He’d killed, and I’m sure even more dreams than I’d witnessed had featured him in leather chairs with red trailing from his fingertips, him wearing clear masks with gory tears slipping down his face.
He’d worn a mask for four years now, existing with memories of violence and despair. But I’d made it worse.
“Gawd,” Twyla said from where she was sitting on the porch railing. “When humans aren’t being clowns, they’re sure being bummers. Bleh.”
Louis, Randy, and Scott sent her chiding looks, but Twyla was Twyla, and she summoned a travel tunnel, flying toward it.
“You guys are being total bummers, too. Like, call me when you’re off your depresso pills.”
She shot off, the tunnel sucking up behind her like a mouth turning into nothing.
An oblivious Amanda Lee was just as pale as every other human I’d encountered tonight. “So this is what closure feels like.”
I didn’t know what to say.
But she was ready to talk now. “I feel horrible about Gavin and Wendy, as well.”
“As far as I know,” I said, “they decided to keep the whole truth to themselves. They didn’t tell the cops everything.”
“Then we won’t go to the law with our findings. Not that they would even believe us. I don’t want to, anyway, for their sakes. They’ve been through enough.”
“And Farah paid for what she did,” Louis said.
Amanda Lee looked toward his voice. “I don’t feel badly about Farah.”
When Scott added his two cents, it seemed she could hear him vaguely, too.
“She got her just deserts,” he said.
The only thing I regretted was that she’d gotten her way in the end, going out on her terms and taking Noah with her. I felt sad for the little girl who’d been abused and warped, but that part of her had died a long time ago.
“Noah didn’t deserve it,” Amanda Lee said. “I know he helped with…”
She didn’t have to say, “Desecrating Elizabeth’s body” to clarify.
Clearing her throat, she went on. “He was a casualty in that demented house, just as much as Wendy and Gavin. Why couldn’t I see any of this?”