be my best friend, Jo, and I
She left. Jo wanted to run back upstairs, cradle herself in Nick’s arms, have him kiss the top of her head and say everything was fine, fine, just fine, love. Instead she stomped up the Powells’ steps and jabbed at the doorbell. After what seemed like an hour, Drew opened the door.
“Well, happy freaking holidays,” he said, looking her over. “That a pie?”
Jo shoved it at him. “It’s from my mom.”
“Nice,” he said. “My mom has been listening to Perry Como all morning. I’m about seven seconds from getting my dad’s shotgun out of the safe and killing either her CD player or myself. Care to join me?”
“I have to get home...” Jo started, but then Mrs. Powell was at the door, taking the pie, cooing thanks, ushering her in. She was wearing a Patriots sweatshirt and perfect makeup, a sprig of fake holly in her helmet-like hairdo. The diametric opposite of Mel.
“So, Jo, your mother tells me you’re quite a student,” she trilled, cutting into the pie. She tapped a cigarette out of the pack with her other hand—the same brand Drew smoked, Jo noticed—and paused to light it, flicking ash into a tray shaped like a sleeping cat. “Maybe you could tutor my son here sometime, so he doesn’t end up in vo- tech and covered in grease for the rest of his life.”
“Jesus Christ, Mom,” Drew complained. Mrs. Powell swatted him on the head.
“None of that. Your mother tells me you’re very interested in history, Jo. What are you studying now?”
Jo wanted to turn around and run. She could feel Nick calling to her, the feel and smell and chill of him tugging at her, wanted more than anything to feel him against her whole body, pressing into her like the thorns in her dream.
“Ash House,” she lied. “The history of Ash House. It’s an independent study project.”
“Ash House.” Mrs. Powell shivered and tapped ash off her cigarette. “That place gives me the creeps. I lost a girlfriend there in high school, you know.”
“Here we go,” Drew muttered. “This is a really long story, FYI, Jo.”
“Hush, boy,” she said, waving a hand at him. “There were six of us, and we got to playing truth or dare, and she and I were to walk across the bridge on the rail.”
“I have to...” Jo tried. Her stomach was boiling, the acid eating at her insides, even though she hadn’t eaten anything since a few bites of Mel’s turkey the night before.
“We fell in, probably because we were drunk off our kettles on cheap bourbon,” said Mrs. Powell. “Judy ... Judy Templeton, that was her name... she hit her head and drowned. At least that’s what the coroner said.”
Jo smelled a sweetish scent rolling off of Drew’s mother, and realized for the first time that if she wasn’t drunk, she was doing a good job getting there.
“When I was in the water,” Mrs. Powell continued, “I felt as if something ... something was almost, pulling me down. Not a root or a rock, but something strong, like ... well, like a hand. And I heard this voice while I was under the water. Whispering about black water, drowning. Anyway.” She shivered again. “Grim old place. ’Course, we were only there because of what happened to that girl back in ’58.”
Pins made of ice pricked Jo up and down her spine. “What girl?”
“You know.” Mrs. Powell waved a hand. “Effie Walker. Kids called her Pepper, on account of she had this fabulous red hair...”
“
“Relax, dear, I won’t embarrass you in front of your cute little friend much longer,” Mrs. Powell said. Drew mimed shooting himself in the head behind his mother’s back.
“What about her?” Jo said, voice coming out loud and high.
“She had a fella,” Mrs. Powell said. “Real mysterious. Theory is he got her knocked up, dumped her, or something like that. Anyway, she walked into the Acushket down at Ash House with rocks in her pockets, even though nobody ever saw her with the boy and her sister and mother swore she wasn’t in a family way. Just decided one day to up and end it. That bend in the river’s had a lot of accidents. They need to put up a guardrail there.”
It was as if the river had come to her, had filled up Jo’s ears with rushing water. She couldn’t hear what Drew was saying, nor the smarmy carols pouring from the Powells’ stereo. Couldn’t think of anything but the dream, the girl with flaming hair at the river’s edge. Thorns in her skin. Ice filling up her lungs as she stared into the black current.
Her stomach twisted, and the next thing Jo knew, she was staring into the face of Effie Walker. Her hair had been carefully curled once, but now it hung lank against her cheeks, and her makeup ran down her face in rivulets. She wasn’t the only one. Judy Templeton, cutoff shorts and platform sandals and a ripped-up Journey shirt, sodden and clinging to her petite body. Both of them, sunken-cheeked and hollow-eyed, starved white fingers reaching for something they could never catch hold of.
And Abigail Worth, who leaned down and whispered in Jo’s ear in the language of black water.
Jo couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe. She could feel again, and her joints ached. Her bones pushed against her skin, and she wasn’t cold now but burning up, and if there had been anything in her stomach, she would have spewed up on Drew’s scuffed leather army boots.
“I’ll get her home,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Outside, staring up at her lit window, Jo clutched at Drew. “I can’t go home.”
He stopped in the driveway, didn’t argue with her. “Where can you go?”
A shadow flicked in front of Jo’s curtains, the size of a tall thin spirit. Watching her. “Ani’s,” she said, thinking of the only place she could. “Take me to Ani’s.”
Drew backed the Nova out of the garage while she shivered. She could feel Nick’s eyes on her.
Not just his intended had died at Ash House, been consumed by the river. He’d lied. He’d lied to her, and she’d walked him across the threshold, set him free. To do what?
Jo jumped into the passenger side of the car, slamming and locking the door, as if it would do some good. She caught her face in the door mirror and almost vomited again. Her eyes were sunk into her skull, and her hair was dull and tangled. Her cheekbones stuck out like razor blades, and her lips were chapped. She could see every vein under the skin.
“You okay?” Drew asked. Jo managed a nod, curling her knees up to her chest.
“For now. Just drive.”
Drew drove and got her to Ani’s grandmother’s place in record time. Ani’s dad was an EMT, and he’d drawn the dubious honor of being the one to patch up family scrapes and drunken bar brawls on Christmas Day.
“Jo?” Ani dashed out of the house wearing nothing but a thermal shirt she’d cut the collar out of and jeans hastily stuffed into boots.
“You know what’s wrong with her?” Drew said. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”
Jo knew she was going to fall over soon, but Ani was there, and Drew, and they held her up. “Jesus,” Ani said. “I knew she was thin, but she’s ... Christ, she’s
“Listen,” Drew said. “I gotta get back, before my mom finds the rest of the holiday cheer and drunk-dials my dad up at the state pen. I’d just as soon not have that conversation.”
His voice was a radio broadcast from some far-off country, fading in and out on waves of static and whispers from the ether.
“I ... I’m sorry,” Jo tried. “I’m sorry, Ani...”
“Shit, man,” Ani said. “Don’t worry about that now. Just come inside with me, okay?”
Ani helped her inside, and while Ani’s grandmother made her hot tea, she told Ani the truth. “I think he’s ... he’s evil,” Jo said quietly. “Abigail said ... And now I let him out....”
Ani’s grandmother sat at the table with them. “Now you’ve got to fix it.”
Jo looked up at her. Everything blurred and gently vibrated around the edges. She half wondered if she was still dreaming. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“Seen stranger things in my life,” Ani’s grandmother said. “Hauntings and worse. What you’re callin’ evil is ghost sickness. When the dead get under your skin, bleeding your life so they can cling to theirs for another minute or two. Makes you sick, makes you hungry, makes you do anything to keep them.”
