12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

Connor’s email had a bunch of actionable tips, one of the most obvious of which was the practice of sageing. The problem was that I couldn’t leave the building so close to lights out to find some white sage or any of the other things he’d mentioned, so that was out for now. However, Sidnee was friendly with one of the dinner ladies and said she’d try and scrounge some from the kitchen when she could.

Apart from the sage, one of the other things was the prayer to Saint Michael. I could have used my hour to sneak into every unoccupied common space and recite it, but Sidnee’s story gave me pause. Her family had tried to get rid of their poltergeist, and whatever the priest had done had made it disappear temporarily, but it had returned with a vengeance. I didn’t want to force our poltergeist to up the ante and become even more violent.

I wished there was a way to communicate with the ghost but I had zero experience with summoning spirits. I froze at that thought; I didn’t have zero experience because I’d summoned Aoife on several occasions. Could she come to me this far away from Portlock? She had managed to communicate with the spirits in the gemstones – though admittedly they were banshees like her. Even so, it was definitely worth a shot. If Aoife could communicate with other spirits, maybe she could ask our poltergeist to stop!

I decided to use my free hour the following morning to try and speak with Aoife. If that didn’t work, I could always go back to the original plan of going to the library. Satisfied, I rolled over to my side and drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke, I completed my morning routine and waited until Sidnee and Margi had left for PT. I didn’t need witnesses if this all went pear-shaped.

Finally alone, I sat on my bed, crossed my legs, closed my eyes and looked inwards for any sort of connection that I had with Aoife. Predictably I found nothing; we didn’t have a bond like me and Connor. Even so, I had to try. ‘Aoife,’ I said loudly, ‘I need your help. Please come to me.’

I opened one eye: nothing. I sighed, closed my eyes and tried again, injecting a little more force into my voice. ‘Aoife Sullivan!’ I called sharply, then I entreated, ‘If you can travel this far, please come, Aoife.’

The wheedling tone clearly worked because I felt a wave of freezing cold air. I opened both eyes and Aoife was standing before me, her colourless hair floating about her in an invisible wind. Like a typical teenager, she’d assumed a pouting position: arms folded across her chest, hip cocked, flat look. She didn’t say anything, although I knew she could. She was a really strong banshee.

‘Thanks for coming, Aoife.’ I shot her a grateful smile. ‘I really need your help. We have a problem here, a poltergeist that’s started to become violent. I was hoping you could talk with it and see if there’s a way to get it to stop.’ Her stance relaxed and I wondered what she’d been expecting me to ask of her. ‘Can you help?’

She shrugged and I waited. When she opened her mouth I tensed, expecting her banshee wail to unnerve me as it had so many times before. Sure enough, the cold intensified and her screeched words made me want to clamp my hands over my ears. ‘I’ve never met a poltergeist. I cannot promise anything.’

Something about her voice pierced my very soul. ‘I don’t have any other options. Please can you try?’ She gave an abrupt nod and disappeared. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe this whole situation could be resolved quickly.

I waited for a few minutes for her to return but she didn’t. I didn’t want to waste the rest of my precious hour so I took my laptop to the library as I’d originally planned. Rather than looking for general information on poltergeists, I decided to see if I could find out anything about this specific one, Petty Peril. I assumed that was a corruption of his true name; Peril may well be his real surname, but I was guessing that Petty was probably Peter or something similar.

I really needed to access the records of staff and past recruits because it seemed likely that someone had died at the academy. Maybe their body was buried here, like Sidnee’s uncle’s victim.

There was no sign of any records in the library – they were probably confidential and locked away in a database – so I sat at my computer and signed into the slow library Wi-Fi. Once I was connected, I searched for deaths that had happened in or around the academy during the last few years. Nothing.

I extended the search parameters and finally I found something from thirty years ago.

After a three-day search, a recruit, Petrovich Peril, was found. It appears he had become lost and confused while hiking in the woods and had died of exposure. Our condolences are with the family over this tragic loss. The State Trooper Academy has closed for one day to allow his friends and acquaintances to attend the funeral. The family has requested that flowers and donations are sent to…

This was it, a short, emotionless obituary in the local paper, but at least I had his true name. I’d never have guessed Petrovich, but there was a lot of Russian influence in this part of Alaska so I guessed it made sense.

I filed the information into my memory and checked my watch: my time was almost up. I hurried back to my dorm and put away my computer. As I closed my footlocker, an icy breeze washed over my skin and I looked up. Aoife was hanging in the air next to me. ‘How did it go? Did you have any luck?’ I asked hopefully.

I braced myself for her banshee-wail reply.

‘He is angry. Someone is trying to harm the academy. He is trying to draw attention to it.’

I frowned. Harm the academy? I thought that Thorsen was at risk of harming the academy’s reputation , but although he’d been present at a few of the episodes he hadn’t been attacked – not like Engell. ‘Did he say who? Or what is being done?’ I pressed. Engell dealt with financials and I’d seen the pages of numbers floating around. Could he be embezzling from the academy?

Aoife shook her head. ‘It’s tough for us to communicate, like we are on different frequencies. What I managed to get was garbled. He isn’t trying to hurt anyone. He has the academy’s best interests at heart, but someone here doesn’t. That was all I got. You need to find a way to communicate with him because he was reluctant to speak to me.’

‘Thank you, Aoife. Your help has been invaluable.’ I frowned. ‘It’s weird that he’s trying to help when he’s done a lot of damage and someone could have been hurt.’

She shrugged then faded from view. I yelled, ‘Bye, Aoife!’ after her, but I wasn’t sure that she heard – or cared. Still, manners were important.

I thought about what I’d learned because it changed everything. If the poltergeist was trying to help the academy, then who was trying to bring it down? And why?

Something fishy was going on, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.