The Spirit Key Read online

  I cocked my head and stared at him. I knew most of the kids in school, and I knew I’d never seen him before. I’d definitely remember someone who looked like him. “Who are you?”

  He gave me a broad grin, and I couldn’t help but notice one of his front teeth was missing. “I’m Jeff.” He glanced down at the toys. “Can I play?”

  I shrugged. I really wanted Tim here, but I could play with Jeff. “Sure.”

  Jeff was funny. He didn’t talk much, but he still made me laugh with the way he said things. When Mom peeked her head into the room to see what I was doing, Jeff whispered that I shouldn’t tell her he was there.

  “I’m playing with my new friend.”

  She stared at me. “Who?”

  I pointed to Jeff, and Mom sort of grinned, but not really. It was more of a pained expression.

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “She can’t see me.” Jeff sounded so sure, but that was stupid. Of course she could see him. I mean, he was sitting right next to me.

  “Listen, why don’t you come into the kitchen? We’ll bake some cookies.”

  Cookies? Hell, yeah. I loved them. Of all the things that could satisfy my sweet tooth, cookies were number one on the list.

  “Can Jeff come?” I looked at him. “Do you like cookies? My mom makes the best.”

  Mom bit her lip. “Why don’t you tell Jeff to go on home. Maybe later I’ll make him some cookies too.” She turned and walked away.

  “Okay!” I faced Jeff, a big grin on my face. While I felt bad that he had to go, I was going to get cookies. “See you later.”

  He gave me a sad smile and a halfhearted wave. “Nuh-uh. I just wanted someone to play with me once more. Thank you.”

  And as I watched, Jeff faded away, leaving me alone in my room with goose bumps covering my arms.

  After that, I started seeing people who disappeared more frequently. It took me a while to work out what they had been, but once I had, I knew that Jeff and the people I saw were ghosts. At first I’d notice them here and there, but when I hit puberty, they not only showed up more often—they tried to talk to me. It wasn’t like Jeff, who spoke softly. No, they demanded I help them. The problem was, I had no idea how. Most of the time I could ignore them, but there were some who were so persistent that I screamed at them to leave me the fuck alone. It never kept them away for long.

  I began lashing out, cursing at my brother, running to my room and slamming the door, telling anyone and everyone to leave me the hell alone. Mom and Dad were worried that it was some kind of delayed reaction from dying. My doctor said that it was my brain still working on processing the whole situation. Me, I knew better. With apologies to Haley Joel Osment and Bruce Willis, I saw dead people.

  THINGS WENT from bad to worse when I turned thirteen. And by worse, I mean earth-shattering, horrible, no goddamn good at all. Shit, that day…. If I could relive it, I would make sure it never happened.

  Imagine it: You’re sitting in class, listening to Mrs. Kavener talking about how a molecule of oxygen bonds with two molecules of hydrogen, thus forming water. You see something out of the corner of your eye but refuse to look. Or at least you try. Your gaze flicks in that direction, and you find a man standing there. He’s sort of gray-green and all washed out. His clothes are like those on the teacher at Old World Wisconsin—black pants, a long-sleeved white shirt, and gray vest.

  Like an idiot, I didn’t look away, and, of course, he saw me and realized that I could see him.

  “Please. Help me.”

  I did my best to ignore the pleading and try to focus on what the teacher was saying.

  He came closer, until he passed through my desk and stood in the center of it, glaring down at me. “Help me!”

  This time it wasn’t pleading. It was a demand. I put my head down, scribbling in my notebook, and he continued to stand there. I could smell him, you know? It was like rotted meat, and I had to bite down on the urge to gag.

  “Help me!”

  Around me, I saw everyone watching the teacher. I couldn’t believe no one else heard him shrieking. Louder and louder it got, until it was nothing but white noise, covering everything else. I tried putting my hands over my ears in an attempt to blot it out, but the sound continued to rise, like a thousand lost souls crying out for help.

  The next thing I knew, he lashed out, striking me in the chest so hard, it sent me flying from my desk, only to stop when I slammed into the wall. Everyone in the class was laughing, thinking it was something I’d done for attention, until they saw the blood oozing from where he’d hit me, staining the dark sapphire-blue shirt Mom had bought because I’d begged her for it. All I could think of in that moment was how pissed she was going to be.

  Tim jumped up from his desk and rushed over, knelt down beside me, and cradled my head in his lap. Mrs. Kavener stood over him, looking pretty much like a ghost herself, as her skin was pale and she was shaking.

  Yeah, that was my first contact with a ghost. I had no idea they could actually hurt me, but when I see the jagged scars across my chest, which took thirty stitches to close, I’m reminded every day that they can.

  Things went downhill from there. Yeah, you know that old saying about how it couldn’t get any worse? Don’t ever listen when someone tells you that bullshit, because the universe must get a shit-ton of laughs watching you squirm like a worm on a hook as it gets jollies showing you that things can always get worse.

  Chapter One

  WHEN WE got to high school, I went from being the strange kid to the town pariah. No one wanted to talk to me because I was a freak. People would see me muttering and thought I was talking to myself. Then the rumors about how dying had done something to my brain and I was, in their oh-so-educated vernacular, obviously retarded, began making the rounds.

  Ghosts were coming out of the literal woodwork now, and I had no idea why. They always approached me, and ignoring them was getting harder and harder. After my death and resurrection, Mom had gotten tranquilizers to help her sleep. I started sneaking the leftovers from her medicine chest and taking two times the recommended dose, just to keep them at bay. It wasn’t a perfect solution, however. More than once I passed out at my desk, and a couple of times Mom had to come in for a meeting with the principal.

  Dad was long gone. It seemed that he couldn’t handle the stress, so he up and bailed on us. He hadn’t tried to contact us in probably three years. He and Mom argued one night not long after the ghost sliced open my chest, and he told her that he was tired of the “freak show,” which I can only assume meant me. The solid thwack of flesh on flesh told me she’d slapped him, and immediately after, she told him to, and I quote, “get the fuck out.”

  And he did.

  But back to the tranquilizers, the sleeping in class, and the meetings with the school. The principal said she was understanding of the situation—which was a laugh—but that I couldn’t be taking drugs on school property, and that unless I got help, I was going to end up being expelled.

  Dr. Trainer continually asked me what was going on, and I had no clue how to explain to her that there wasn’t anything wrong with me, but plenty of shit was fucked-up in the world. Ghosts became more and more aggressive, and I found self-medicating wasn’t doing the job it used to. So I upped the dose more.

  Long story short, I ended up in a program for addicted teens.

  We sat around, talking about the stresses we were under that caused us to indulge, imbibe, or just throw our lives away. I sat there silently, because my standing up and saying, “Hi, I’m Scott, and ghosts talk to me” would end with me being sent to a different kind of program and being fitted for a nice jacket with ties in the back.

  Through it all, Tim stood beside me. Well, to be fair, both he and his mother did. She knew I was important to him, and by extension, I was important to her. She treated me like I was her second son, allowing me to spend the night when things got too hard at home. Unfortunately, the ghosts seemed to get my change of address, becau
se they were there too.

  Young, old, men, women, boys, girls, all times of the day or night. It had become a constant parade of spirits around me.

  The drugs had long stopped helping. In fact, I think they made things worse, because they lowered my resistances to the voices. I couldn’t blot them out anymore, so I quit cold turkey. Mom thought I was turning over a new leaf, but the reality was, I needed something… else.

  Now, I’m going to admit something to you that I would never tell anyone else: I contemplated suicide as a way to end the constant intrusion in my life. It got to the point where the dead outnumbered the living, each of them anxious to talk to me, to touch me. I was freaked the hell out.

  But having Mom, Tim, and Mrs. Jennesee in my corner helped me stay strong and not give in. At least until I turned eighteen. I was a shell of myself by then. Voices assaulted me day and night, pleading, crying, whimpering, demanding, excoriating. I couldn’t sleep anymore. I couldn’t function at all. If I managed a few minutes a day, I considered myself lucky.

  And my health was deteriorating. I’d gone from 165 to 125, my clothes hung off me, and my grades—something I’d always been proud of—dropped like the proverbial rock. Graduation was a no-go. The school had talked to me and let me know that I wouldn’t be marching across the stage to accept my diploma, and that I would have to repeat the year. I decided it was easier to just drop out. Why bother wasting the teachers’ time?

  What made it even worse? Ryan, the brother who told me I’d ruined his summer by dying, was concerned, so it had to be bad. Tim was constantly trying to get me to eat. He plied me with pizza—I used to be able to eat a full sixteen-inch one from Classic Slice, but now I couldn’t keep down more than a few bites.

  The doctors tried different medications, telling Mom that I was depressed, bipolar, or whatever. The truth was, none of those things were true. I just couldn’t handle my life anymore. Most kids worry about zits or whether or not they’ll get a date. I worried I was insane. I was in a downward spiral, and the bottom was coming up fast.

  And it was having an effect on my friends and family. Mom took up drinking. From the time she woke up until she went to bed, she was drunk. I got it. She had to numb the pain of being my mother. Ryan left the house one day and went to his girlfriend’s place, then announced he was staying there. Tim…. Oh, Tim. He defended me to anyone and everyone. He was my rock, but unfortunately that stone was gathering moss, and my grip on him was slipping away.

  Tim had no idea what he could do to help me. He gave it way more effort than I was worth, and he was paying the price for it. He decided he was going to take a year off college. Then two. He kept trying to find someone—something—that could help, but by now, even I knew nothing would ever take the ghosts away.

  One night, after Mom had passed out on the couch, I slipped downstairs. In my hand was a battered suitcase that held all of the important things in my life. Pictures of me, Mom, and Ryan, more with me and Tim, some trinkets he’d given me. Clothes. Money. My laptop. God, it was hard to believe my life could be condensed to fit into a Samsonite carry-on.

  I left a note telling Mom I was leaving. In it, I said how much I loved her. How very sorry I was for all the hurt I’d caused. I asked her to please say goodbye to Tim for me. I also said if she wanted to tell Ryan, that was okay too. And I slipped out the door and left, never intending on going back.

  Of course, life always has other plans.

  Chicago—2018

  I STRETCHED out on the ratty couch I’d gotten at the thrift store with my first paycheck. In a brilliant crushed blue velvet, it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen. Of course, when the owner told me I could have it for twenty bucks, I snatched it up. At least it was comfortable. Well, comfortable-ish.

  I’m not sure if you could call sneaking out in the middle of the night “running away from home,” but it had benefits I never dreamed possible. The farther I got from Milwaukee, the sparser the ghosts became. When the bus pulled into Chicago, there wasn’t a single one to be seen. I walked the streets surrounded by the living, and it was fucking glorious.

  Even though I wasn’t convinced this was anything more than a lull, I stopped at a Super 8 motel, paid for four days, and slept for eighteen hours before I got up, ate like a pig, then went back to sleep for another ten. My rest was undisturbed—if you didn’t count the guy and girl going at it like banshees at three in the morning—for the first time in years.

  Those four days went by quickly, and each time I opened my eyes, I expected to see the ghosts. But nothing happened. I started to believe that I was finally free and thought maybe I could have a life again.

  So, I got myself a job. It was a shitty one, flipping burgers at a dive restaurant, but it paid decent—and the boss, Mitch, paid me in cash, which let me work a lot of hours. The nice thing was the money kept me in a room at the motel until I was able to rent my first apartment. Even if it was nothing more than a hole-in-the-wall, it was mine. And each day that passed ghost-free? That was a bonus in my book.

  After thirty-one days straight, I decided I needed a better job. I started looking at ads, and to be fair to my boss, I told him I was applying at other places. He sat me down, looked me square in the eye, and said, “What are you running from?”

  How the hell was I supposed to answer that question? The obvious answer was to lie. I spun a tale of being on the outs with my family and needing to get away. He nodded sagely, said uh-huh in all the right places, then dropped a bombshell on me.

  “You know they can track you by your credit cards and social security number, right?”

  Now you’d think, with all the television I watched, I’d know these things. Nope. Never even occurred to me. But he told me he knew a guy who could help, if I was willing to pay for it. That’s how I met Eddie Rivers. When Mitch told me the guy could get me any kind of ID and set me up with a new identity, I was figuring some sleazy, smoke-filled bar. The address Mitch gave me? Yeah, no bar here. In fact, Eddie turned out to be a seventeen-year-old who lived in his parents’ basement. He had an enormous computer system setup, and with it, he assured me, he could recreate me.

  He warned me that a falsified social security number could land me in trouble, but then added with a laugh that the whole thing was such a gray area, and I was probably going to be okay, because he hadn’t made a fake name, just remade my old one.

  Still, he swore they wouldn’t be able to track me down easily.

  It took him a couple of weeks, but when he was done, I was Scott Fogel again, and Eddie had created a whole persona for me, including a social security number, school transcripts, which he copied from my old ones—the works. And yes, it was not cheap. I ended up working at the restaurant for three more months just to be able to pay him off. Once I was done, though, the world was my proverbial oyster.

  I took online courses and got my GED. It wasn’t the diploma I wanted, but it opened new opportunities for me in my job search. Eventually I landed a part-time gig in an advertising firm, doing whatever they needed. Some days I answered phones; others I would deal with email correspondence. I loved working there, because it meant dealing with live people.

  Of course, the live people who had been in my life? I missed the hell out of them. I kept telling myself that when I was stronger, had better control over things, I could reach out to them. But I’d fucked up their lives already and feared I would somehow drag them back down into the cesspool my life had been. So I left them alone.

  Unfortunately, they didn’t return the favor.

  One night, after dragging my ass home from a grueling twelve-hour shift, I flipped the switch on the air conditioner, sighing when the cool breeze drifted through the room, displacing the heat and humidity from a balmy day. I poured myself a glass of iced tea, then swiped the condensation from the cool glass across my forehead, groaning at the refreshing chill.

  “So, this is where you ended up. Not too bad. Nice view at least.”

  I leaped out of my c
hair, dropping the glass to the floor with a thump. I spun to confront whoever was in my apartment and came face-to… well, face, with someone I used to think of as my second mom. She looked old, weary. The lines in her face were etched deeply, no longer the softness I remembered at all.

  I was instantly transported back in time to the day I walked into her house while she was on the phone. She’d said hello and I replied. Whoever was on the other end must have asked who it was, because her reply tickled me to this day. “It’s Scotty, Tim’s boyfriend.” My face had heated because she had no idea how true I wanted that to be.

  Now she stood in my apartment, crackling with energy that I knew far too well, but I didn’t want to believe it was true.

  “Mrs. Jennesee?”

  She gestured toward the apartment. “Seems like you did pretty good for yourself. Was it worth it?”

  I shivered, knowing it had nothing to do with the AC or the tea. The truth was there, obvious for me to see. “You’re dead.”

  “And you’re a genius,” she exclaimed with a shrug of her shoulder. “Or, you know, not.”

  “You can’t be here.” I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted this to be another one of my hallucinations. Rebecca Jennesee was important to me, and the thought of her not being alive? It crushed me.

  Her eyes opened wide. “Sweetie, I can pretty much go anywhere I want. Dying can be pretty liberating, but I think you know that already.”

  I shook my head harshly. “Ghosts can’t leave the area they died in.” There wasn’t much I was certain of when it came to ghosts, but that one was on the money. I thought. I mean, it explained why the ghost from school never followed me home, right?