Perception (Apparition Investigations #1)

Case #2: Hell's Gate: Part 15

Esperanza allowed us to put her shoes on and load her up in the car. She wouldn't respond to basic instruction, but she'd let us move her body around. Like some kind of doll.

God, I hated dolls. They were too creepy. And I lived with ghosts.

Noah met us out there, parked in his truck, and not too close to Hell's Gate either. Must have been his lunch break, I thought, eyes glancing to the dashboard clock. Even fourth graders needed to eat. I pulled up behind him and moved to help Camilla lead her sister from the backseat.

Behind me, I heard Rose move over to Noah. They spoke lowly, their voices too soft to carry to us. But when I glanced over my shoulder, Rose threw her arms around Noah. He wrapped his arms around her waist, burying his face into her neck.

"Stella," Camilla said urgently.

I turned forward to see Esperanza shuffling down the street, completely unaided. Camilla kept close, her hands out as if to catch or restrain her. But Esperanza moved. The first action I'd seen her take without prompting.

"Rose," I called out, following after them.

They fell into step behind us, Noah staying close to Rose's side. Their hands were clasped together.

Esperanza moved like a zombie. Her feet shuffled, her arms flapped limply at her side. Her head was even tilted off to the side.

If she said 'brains,' or so much as glanced at my head, I was going to flatten her.

Ghosts were one thing. But you did not suffer a zombie to live. That's how the world ended.

She moved closer to Hell's Gate, taking her time.

The white path that led off to Hell's Gate came into view.

It grew closer.

And the sense of uneasy in the air grew.

My eyes darted over to Noah's.

He watched Esperanza uncertainly, his hand itching to reach up to his eye. But Rose squeezed his hand each time I thought he might.

I was going to buy him an eye patch for Christmas. It would save him having to charge up that ward of his.

She continued to inch closer.

Camilla cast me a worried look over her shoulder.

Then Esperanza reached the path.

She froze, staring up at it.

Then her head turned, looking further down the street.

And she started shuffling off in that direction.

"What is she doing?" Noah hissed. We all stood still, watching as she kept on down the road. Shuffling.

I turned to Camilla. "What is she doing?"

"How should I know? You're the experts."

Rose gasped. "The cemetery. She's going to the cemetery."

I felt like kicking myself. And judging from Rose's tone, she felt the same way.

Everyone knew about the bad press surrounding the local cemetery. How they'd lost bodies, buried people on top of each other, moved plots. It'd been poorly run, with complaints lost or buried, until one of the City Council's family members' tombstone had vanished about twenty years earlier. Since then, the city watched what happened in the cemetery. And did a better job keeping track of the dead.

Up until then, though, it'd been the Wild West in there. Tombstones taken, plots reused without the original bodies being moved, the treasured mementos left in remembrance pilfered.

'Home,' the ghosts had said. As in final burial places.

As in they couldn't find theirs.

Rose took off running, hurrying after Esperanza. The rest of us fell into stride a few yards behind, watching as she stumbled toward the cemetery gates.

They'd been left open. It was the middle of the morning, after all.

Just inside the wire fence was a square marble archway. Plaques decorated it of people who'd generously donated to remodeling the cemetery twenty years earlier. There were flowers planted along the base, making it almost appear chipper. But it was hard to lessen the imposing impact of towering marble. Not even soft yellow and purple tulips could do that.

Esperanza shuffled through. She followed the concrete path until she met the crossroads. And then she stopped.

Standing in the center, she'd turn her entire body first down one path, then another. Lost. Except without the furrowed brow of confusion on her face. That was still expressionless. But the constant spinning in circles showed she wasn't sure where to go next.

"Are we taking the ghost to its resting place?" Camilla asked.

"It'd be nice if we knew where it wanted to go," Noah said, looking around. "We shouldn't stick around here more than we need to."

"Maybe I could talk to it? Get its name?" I suggested.

"No," Noah barked. "No, we aren't doing that."

"It could help though," Rose said.

He looked down at her, his dark expression softening. Not enough to make him look like a warm teddy bear, but he definitely looked at her with softer fury than me. "We can't keep doing that. It's not right."

"I just want its name so we can ask it where to go," I snapped back.

"No, you want its name so you can control it!"

Camilla's eyes danced between us. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying we could figure out what it wants, and give it to it, if I know its name."

"And strip it of its free will in the process?"

A West Texas wind started to pick up and I angrily shoved my hair behind my ear so I could see.

"Uh, guys?" Camilla said.

I ignored her, squaring off to Noah. "Is it stripping it of its free will to just ask it what it needs in order to cross over?"

"And what happens when it doesn't know what it needs," he barked. "You just going to burn it alive?"

"Funny coming from the guy trying to squish Cyril and Oliver between the boundary of their watch and your ward!"

"Wait, what?" Rose asked, eyes widening.

"Guys?" Camilla said again.

Noah jammed a finger in Esperanza's direction. "We've got a human soul on the line here!" What happens when the spirit doesn't like your order and takes it out on her!"

"I won't let it!" I shouted, my voice rising out of anger and to be louder than the increasing wind.

"Because you'll bind it with its name? Can't you see the problem with that?"

"Guys!" Camilla screeched.

We all whipped toward her. She stared at her sister, eyes wide, as she backed away.

As one, we all turned toward Esperanza.

She'd grown upset, not knowing which path to take. Wind circled around her, kicking up leaves and dirt. The windchimes on the nearby trees began to sway. The vases at the tombstones nearest to us began to rattle, petals falling from the shaking.

Her expressionless mask cracked. Her eyes narrowed, her hands balled into fists, and her breathing became hard and fast.

"Crap," I muttered.