Thirty

THIRTY

The moment I see the body—and realize who it is—I run for the door. Cirillo leaps into my way.

"Where do you think you're going?" he says.

I stare at him. "To call the cops, obviously."

"You can place the call from the basement, Nicola."

"I could if I had my damn phone." I go to pat my pockets for emphasis and then remember the speakers and steak knife and stop.

"Fine," I say. "You call them."

Cirillo only eyes me, and there's a moment where I feel like I must be dreaming because none of this makes sense. There's a body lying a few feet from us. A mutilated corpse. The obvious next step is to call the police. Yet Cirillo stands there, eyes narrowing, as if I've suggested we stuff poor Brodie back into the furnace.

He must be in shock.

"We need to call the police," I say slowly.

"You were running from a crime scene," he says.

"What?"

"You don't think this is a crime scene?" He steps toward me. "Are you going to tell me the boy did that to himself?"

"No, obviously it's murder. That's why we need to contact the police."

He only watches me with those narrowed eyes, and a chill creeps up my spine. Over the last few days, I've wondered whether I'm losing my mind. But now I'm the one doing the sane thing, and if Cirillo is stopping me, then either he's lost it… or he's responsible for…

I look toward Brodie's body, and carefully inch my hand toward the steak knife in my back pocket.

"That's how you found Heather and Patrice, too."

I freeze, following the voice as if it comes from nowhere. As if I've forgotten there's someone else down here with us.

"I looked up the story, Nic," Shania whispers. "That's what I was doing upstairs. You gave me enough to look it up, and I had to know." She looks at me. "You found Heather, nearly dead, with her… her stomach ripped open. And you found Patrice lying on the forest floor, injured and holding a hunting knife. Right, Nicola? Or it's Janica, isn't it? Your real name is Janica."

" Real name? " Cirillo wheels on me. "What the hell is going on?"

"What's going on is we have a dead body," I say as calmly as I can, enunciating each word. "One of you needs to call the police. I am not trying to leave. I will stay right here until they arrive and answer all their questions. Just—"

"I want to know what Shania is talking about," Cirillo snaps.

Seriously? There is a mutilated corpse so close I can smell it, and you're worried about—

I stop the thought and speak again, just as calmly. "Call 911, and then I will explain—"

"It happened when Nicola—Janica—was in high school," Shania cuts in. "Back when she knew Anton."

"Holy shit, are we really doing this? There is a murdered—"

Cirillo blocks me as Shania keeps talking.

"Nicola and her two friends were holding séances in the forest," she says. "Something went wrong. Anton was there—Nicola admitted he and his friends staged a haunting. Then one of the girls ended up like this."

She waves at Brodie, and I can gnash my teeth at this sudden betrayal, but she's in shock, and all she can think is that this dead boy has been killed like my friend from twenty-two years ago.

I've been wondering whether my husband had something to do with that, so I can't really blame Shania for wondering whether I'm responsible for this. She barely knows me.

The problem is that a corpse just fell from the furnace, the badly mutilated corpse of a missing young man, and the very obvious next step is to call the police. But that's me, thinking logically even in my shock. Now the logical thing for me to do is to answer their questions so we can make that phone call.

"Yes, we held two séances," I say. "Anton and his friends staged a haunting at the first, acting as if we'd conjured the ghost of a young man who killed his girlfriend. Patrice thought she was possessed by that young man."

Shania tries to jump in, but now I'm the one speaking over her. "Patrice insisted on a second séance to fix it. At the time, I didn't know the boys faked the haunting. I didn't know what happened. But I thought if it was all in Patrice's head, we only needed to convince her we'd fixed it. Instead, Heather ended up…" I look at Brodie's body and can't get the words out.

Shania says, "Then Nicola claimed she stumbled over a blood-covered Patrice lying in wait, with a knife in her hand. Patrice chased her out of the forest."

"No," I say. "I found Patrice lying beside a knife. She had blood on her. When she started to get up, I ran. The police came. Patrice was arrested and…" I swallow. "She was remanded to a mental institution."

"While you got to walk away, change your name, and lead a happy new life with the guy who started it all," Shania says. "The guy who made Patrice think she was possessed."

The venom in her voice startles me.

I say, quietly, "I hope that's not what happened. It really was just a prank—"

"Boys being boys."

"I never said that." I keep my voice level. "I'm not defending what they did."

"What about what you did?" Shania says.

My shoulders tighten as guilt rolls over me. "If you mean changing my name, I was young and convinced that everyone knew who I was after the news stories. If you mean the séances, yes, obviously I regret not doing more to stop Patrice and Heather."

"I mean this." Shania jabs a finger at Brodie. "We found him exactly the way you found Heather and Patrice. Sliced open with a bloody hunting knife in his hand."

I don't say that's not how I found either Heather or Patrice. She's conflating the two because she's freaked out, and she's drawing parallels because there are parallels.

I don't know what's going on. I can't wrap my brain around it. Maybe that's why my mind keeps screaming at me to call the police.

Call the police. Let them deal with it. Get out of this house. Now!

I didn't kill Brodie. I cannot imagine Jin or Shania or Cirillo killed Brodie. But there is something in this house, something that knows me as Janica, and I don't know if it's Anton or Roddy or Anton possessed by Roddy—

Stop. Focus.

Call the police. Let them deal with it. Get the fuck out of this house.

"You think I had something to do with this." My voice is flat as I push any hint of outrage from it. "Okay. That's for the police to decide. I'm not trying to escape. I'm not even insisting on being the one who makes that call. I will sit over there." I point. "I will wait for the police to arrive after one of you calls them."

That's reasonable, right? It's the most fucking reasonable thing any one could possibly say when accused of having sliced open a young man whose body lies a few feet away.

In fact, it's probably too reasonable, even for me, which means I'm in shock. But the point is that I'm not running for the door. I'm not insisting on using my own phone, so I could escape while I'm upstairs getting it. I'm not insisting on making that call, so I could fake it. And I'm not asking how the hell anyone could think I'd do something like this.

I might be shaking inside. I might be freaking out and trying so damn hard not to panic, but outwardly I am calm and I am reasonable.

"Nicola didn't do this," Cirillo says.

My breath catches.

Dear God, is someone else here being reasonable? Hallelujah.

He continues, "Either way, though, it's obvious why she wants us to call the police."

Because there's a dead body in the room? A mutilated corpse that was stuffed in a furnace? I have to bite my cheek against the wild urge to laugh at the absurdity.

"She wants us to call the police because she knows she'll get away with it."

"What?" I pivot to face him.

Cirillo says, "Anton was there for those teenage séances. He orchestrated the fake hauntings."

Shania nods.

I fight against the surge of howling frustration and resume my role as the voice of reason. "Anton was only at the first one. His friends wanted to play a prank, and Anton went along to keep them in check. They were all at a movie when Heather died."

"Are you sure?" Shania says. "That's easy to fake. Just buy tickets. Maybe they were setting up an alibi."

"Anton didn't kill—"

"Even you suspected he might have been involved."

My mouth opens in protest, but she barrels on. "I caught you looking up the case yesterday, and you confessed your fears. Dr. Cirillo thinks we have two entities—Anton and something dark. You're afraid Anton is the something dark."

"I considered it… and dismissed it."

"Conveniently," she mutters, and part of me wants to laugh. Ever since I've known Shania, I've wanted her to be more assertive, more confident. Now she is… and it's at my expense.

I can be hurt, but I understand. She read the details of my past online and then found Brodie murdered in a way that matches my friend's horrible death. At the very least, I'm the kind of woman who marries a sociopath and tries to cover for him.

Cirillo nods. "All right then. That confirms my suspicion. Why is Nicola so eager to call the police?"

"Because there's a fucking—" I begin.

"Because she knows she can get away with this," he says again. "No one is going to believe a terminally ill widow sliced open this boy. And no one is certainly going to believe a ghost did it."

"Why would Anton's ghost do this?" I wave at Brodie. "Why would I do it? If there is something here and if it killed this boy, then it's not my husband. I'm not even sure it's human. Maybe it's Roddy Silva—"

"Who?" Cirillo says.

"The other young man she mentioned," Shania says. "The one who killed his girlfriend twenty years before her friend, Heather, died. Roddy Silva murdered his girlfriend in the same way and then took his own life and was found holding the knife. Like that." She points at Brodie.

He wasn't found like that, but again, I won't nitpick.

"Also?" Shania says. "Roddy was Anton's uncle."

Cirillo rubs his temples. "So we're dealing with generational homicidal madness. But Nicola? If you swear those ashes upstairs belong to Anton, then that is who I've summoned. Not this Uncle Roddy. Not some random ghost. Your husband. Anton. Who seems to have murdered this Heather girl when he was alive and now, as a ghost, he has murdered Brodie Kilmer."

"You said ghosts can't seriously harm the living."

"Obviously I was wrong. Now whatever the story, you know the police won't listen to nonsense about homicidal ghosts. That's why you want to call them, and that's why we are not letting you."

"We have a dead body. A murdered young man—"

"And I can get his story. From him."

I go still. "What?"

Cirillo waves at Brodie. "I had you bring Anton's ashes because it provided the best way to contact him. This is even better. I'll summon Brodie and ask what happened to him."

I stare. He's kidding, right? Oh, I can tell by his expression that he's not, but that only means he's lost it. Seeing Brodie like that has shattered all semblance of common sense, and he's spiraling into a delusional world where contacting a murdered man's ghost is the very definition of reasonable.

No, not reasonable. There's something in his eyes, like he's spotting that golden ring dangling in front of him again.

He sees a story. A marketable story even better than the one he has, because in this one, he becomes the hero.

In the middle of a series of séances, Dr. Davos Cirillo discovers a horribly mutilated corpse… only to learn it matches a corpse from the grieving widow's secret past. He has no idea what to make of this, but the solution is clear. He must reach beyond the veil to the one person who can answer this most unanswerable question.

He must summon the dead man's ghost.

Will anyone reading such a story pause to wonder why Cirillo didn't call the police? Not if he spins it right, and certainly not if he actually makes contact and solves the murder.

All I know for sure right now is that I do not want to contact anything in this house. Because whatever killed Brodie is waiting for nightfall. Waiting for the next séance.

I look at Shania. She might be confused and in shock, but even she knows we need to call the—

"Agreed," she says, and her eyes glint in a way that makes me do a double take. "Contact Brodie's ghost. Find out what happened."

"Are you—?" I stop myself before saying anything to set them off. Instead, I speak slowly. "We need to call the police. Even if Brodie could tell us anything, we can't do a séance right now. Whatever killed him is here, and if we summon it—"

"You aren't going to stop, are you, Nicola?" Shania's voice has gone ice-cold. "You'll say anything to keep us from getting these answers. Well, the only ghost I've heard was Anton."

"That wasn't Anton," I blurt. "Jin set it up."

I pull out the speakers. Something clatters to the floor, and everyone stops to stare at it.

The steak knife.

They don't say a word. They just look from that knife to me, as if all their questions are answered.

"It's a steak knife," I say. "From the kitchen. I grabbed it when I heard someone down here because I thought it was Brodie. This is what I wanted to show you." I lift the speakers. "Jin was playing recordings of Anton's voice, spliced sound bites. I found these in the sitting room."

Their gazes turn to the speakers. Then Shania's gaze goes from the knife to the speakers to me, and she says, "How could you, Nicola?"

"W-what?"

"You've been setting up speakers, just like Dr. Cirillo said, and you're showing us the proof and blaming Jin. Your brother-in-law? Who came here to support you?" She shakes her head as she lowers her gaze, her voice going thick, as if with tears. "I don't know you at all, do I?"

Goddamn it! That's why I didn't want them finding the speakers in my pockets. But in my panic, I dove in.

Did I really think they'd believe me?

"Anton's not here," I say. "Whether you think I set these up or not, someone did." I hit the button and the recording starts. "This is what we heard. Not Anton. Whatever is here—?"

"Stop talking, Nicola," Shania says. "Just stop talking."

"No, I am going to keep talking until someone listens."

Cirillo moves toward the stairs. "Shania, please watch Nicola while I fetch my equipment for the séance."

"Like hell," I say, rocking forward. "If you two want to contact Brodie, be my guest. I am going upstairs and calling the police—"

Cirillo steps into my path.

I glare up at him. "Get the hell out of my way—"

The blow comes from behind. It slams into the side of my head, and I reel, half from the blow and half from the shock of it.

Woozily, I turn to see Shania with the spade, and I somehow don't make the connection. Shania wouldn't hit me, not with a spade of all things. It must have been the ghost. It's here, and it struck me and—

Shania swings the spade into the side of my knee.

I dimly hear myself gasp "Shania?" as I topple.

"There's rope in the next room," Shania says. "Grab it. We're going to need to tie her up. Find something to gag her."

Silence from Cirillo as I start to rise, still dazed from the blow to the head and the shock of what's happening.

"She's not going to let us do this," Shania snaps at Cirillo. "She's going to escape. She killed that boy. We both know she did. We need to detain her and contact his spirit."

I'm on my knees. Cirillo isn't answering. He's in shock himself. He's realized this goes too far, that something is wrong with Shania.

I catch a glimpse of her face, the look on it, and for a moment, I don't see Shania. I see Patrice in the forest that night, the emptiness in her gaze that had stopped me cold, made my gut scream something was wrong.

Something was wrong with Patrice.

Now something is wrong with Shania.

Something is inside Shania.

I push up, my hands outstretched to ward off another blow, but when it comes, it's from behind. Cirillo knocks me to the floor, and before I can process that, I'm flat on my stomach with my arm twisted behind my back.

"Get the rope," Cirillo says. "We'll do the séance quickly and then call the police to arrest her."