The Ghost Hunter's Daughter Read online

  Shady M was infamous to Bloomtown schoolchildren, partly due to the large mole on her left cheek that sported a crop of long, dark hairs that curled at the end like a villain’s mustache. Hairs, Anna always thought, that she could easily just tweeze. Known and despised for her strict “load ’em and leave ’em” policy, Shady M would ignore the slightly tardy kids running toward the bus stop, pulling away as if she didn’t see them. Anna had firsthand knowledge, maybe more than any kid in Bloomtown, that Shady M showed no mercy. In a way Shady M had contributed to the death of Anna’s mother.

  Filled with a sudden dumb horror, Anna’s body went into autopilot and she felt her legs stepping off the curb. There was a glimpse of Shady M driving the bus, grim and focused, followed by a yellow and black blur and a sickening wind that blew Anna back to the final morning of her mother’s life.

  Anna was eight years old and hoping it was one of Mommy’s good days when she walked down the second-floor hallway, clutching her favorite hair band. The hallway was hoard-free and sunlight filled the house. She poked her head into her parents’ bedroom.

  “Mom?”

  Helen Fagan didn’t answer. She was huddled under a blanket, facing the wall. Anna approached the bed, her hand hovering over her mother’s swaddled figure, wanting to touch her but knowing to be afraid. She registered the rapid rise and fall of her mother’s bedding and heard her faint but fevered whimpering. Feeling light-headed, Anna snatched her hand back—it was one of Mommy’s bad days.

  Anna backed out of the room, picking up one of her mother’s barrettes from the vanity, the one shaped like a butterfly that she wasn’t supposed to play with because it was expensive and had sharp bits. She was being bad, but Mommy was sick again and it wasn’t fair. She secured the barrette around a section of hair behind her right ear and then walked down the stairs.

  In the kitchen her father poured cereal into a bowl. “Bloomtown Plumbing—The Drain Whisperers!” was stitched on the back of his overalls.

  Anna handed him her hairband. “Can you gimme a French braid?”

  Jack admired the butterfly barrette in her hair: two pairs of ornate silver and peach malachite wings curving upwards to sterling silver tips. “Very pretty.”

  “It’s Mommy’s.” Her mother had loved butterflies.

  Anna squirmed as her father’s large hands fumbled through her hair. He was doing it wrong, starting too low on her neck. Jack didn’t know about braids, or barrettes that were for looking not touching.

  “That's not how Mommy does it! It’s a French braid, not a regular one.” She wished she hadn’t said it because now his face looked old.

  Jack walked her to the back door and helped her get her backpack on.

  “Okay, kiddo, gotta go to work. You're going to Doreen's after school. I'll pick you up after dinner.”

  “Can’t Dor come over here? We wanna play with Peeps.”

  “Not today. Mommy's sick.”

  Anna sulked. “She's always sick.”

  Jack bent down for a hug before leaving. Penelope’s small form scampered into the kitchen and greeted Anna with a flurry of paws, licks and hungry whines. Jack forgot to feed her! Anna poured puppy food into a dish and filled the water bowl from the faucet. Watching Peeps gobble up her food, Anna couldn’t resist petting her for a minute. She giggled as the puppy’s head whipsawed wildly between the bowl and Anna’s hand. It was a minute too long. From outside came the heavy rumble of the school bus. Anna grabbed her backpack and bolted out the front door and into the street, making eye contact with Shady M in the bus’s giant side mirror. She was fast, but Shady M was faster. The bus grew smaller and then disappeared around a bend. Out of breath, Anna looked back toward her house. There was no place else to go.

  Her legs wobbled all the way up the stairs.

  “I missed the bus,” she said, stepping into her parents’ bedroom. “Can you drive me?”

  There was a long silence as the sour smell of sweat and sickness settled over her. But her mother wasn't in the bed. Helen was crouched atop the ceiling fan above the bed, baring her teeth at Anna, her ribs protruding through the fabric of her sweat and tear-stained nightgown. Locked in fear, Anna’s legs refused to budge. Helen dropped down onto the bed with a light thump.

  “So many questions for such a little maggot,” Helen said, and Anna felt her knees clack together like magnets. Mommy wasn’t herself again. Mommy was sick. Helen slithered off the bed. “I can give you knowledge, child. Do you want knowledge?”

  Anna tried to swallow the terror in her throat, but her words came out reedy and shrill. “The bus left without me.”

  Minutes later, Anna sat strapped into the front seat of her mom’s blue Volkswagen Jetta. Daddy would be mad that “sick Mommy” was driving her to school. Anna’s stomach hurt and the seat belt made it worse. The thing inside her mother had grinned at her from the driver’s seat, its yellow teeth, slick with saliva, shining in the harsh morning sun.

  Anna stood on the street, breathing hard and blinking in the glare. Her shaky hand touched her forehead, wet with sweat. She tried to slough the horrible memory off like a bird shaking out its feathers, tried to think about good things so she wouldn’t cry. There was Craig and the possibility of kissing him one day. There was a future, away from Bloomtown and Jack’s Crap, where no one knew about her parents and no one called her Goblin Girl. Tears welled up but Anna swallowed hard, pushing them back down. Forget going to Dor’s, she’d walk the two miles to school. She wanted to be alone.

  • • •

  When Anna made it inside the blissfully cool hallways of Bloomtown High, the bell marking the end of first period was ringing. Great, now she’d have to ask Jack to write some bullshit note excusing her absence. Feeling sweaty and gross, she rushed to her locker hoping that she wouldn’t see Craig.

  Freddy was waiting for her, wearing a NASA sweatshirt and a guilty grin.

  “Where were you?” Anna asked. “I missed first period.”

  “Me too. My phone alarm didn’t go off. The satellites are getting fried by the flares. The radiation bursts must be as potent as cosmic rays up there.”

  “Cosmic rays?”

  “Pinpoints of high-energy radiation that can zap right through an astronaut’s helmet and skull like they’re not even there.”

  Freddy grabbed Doreen’s hand as she snuck up behind him and playfully poked him in the ribs.

  “So, ladies, space gaze tonight?” Freddy asked. “The aurora borealis may be visible because of the solar storms. Hasn't happened around here, in like, a hundred years.”

  “Sounds pervy,” Doreen said.

  Anna pulled open her locker and inspected her shiny face in the mirror she’d taped to the locker’s back wall. The scar on her face had swollen to an angry red, and she quickly blotted it down with several layers of powder.

  “No, you dirty-minded fiend,” Freddy said. “It’s charged particles from the sun reacting with gases in our atmosphere. You know, the northern lights? It’s gonna be a clear night. No clouds means good visibility.”

  Inside Anna, irritation flared along with a dim headache. “Don’t you think we’re getting a little old to sit around staring slack-jawed at a bunch of stars?”

  Freddy looked stung.

  “They're not all stars,” he said. “Some of them are distant galaxies, and who peed on your pop tarts?”

  “I wonder if when aliens die, they become, like, alien ghosts,” Doreen said.

  “Yeah, and they need ghost hunters like Mr. Fagan,” Freddy said.

  Her father was the last thing Anna wanted to discuss. “Who cares?” It came out sharp and mean. Doreen wilted like a thirsty tulip.

  “We do. You do,” Freddy said, annoyed. He was protective of Doreen. Anna was, too, normally. “At least you used to.”

  “I used to be a lot of things.”

  “The anniversary,” Doreen said quietly.

  Anna flushed. Of course they knew. They were mourning, too. They had their own memorie
s of Anna’s mother, when Helen Fagan still danced around the house with Jack after a glass of wine. The summer that New Bloomtown started construction and they lost their bike trails, Helen had surprised all three of them with the to-die-for water guns of the moment. There were the rainy weekends that she made them peanut butter and jellies by the mound, quartered with the crusts cut off, and let them play video games all day.

  Helen Fagan came from a snooty family in upstate New York who hadn’t wanted her to marry Jack—“the plumber,” as Anna’s grandparents still called him—but she detested snobbery of any kind. Before the demon, Helen truly enjoyed her life, so she didn’t have the need to make other people feel badly about theirs. She studied art and design in college and became a woodworker, making custom furniture for private collectors.

  Anna’s favorite memories were of the walks she took with her mom in the nature preserves of Ocean County. Helen liked to teach Anna about the tree species native to southern New Jersey. They tried to scare each other with gruesome tales of the infamous Jersey Devil, a deformed half-beast, half-man that was said to haunt the wild and desolate Pine Barrens. But while hiking through the thorny forest, pretending to be frightened by the slightest rustling of brush, they knew they were safe, that no evil bogeyman was really hunting them down. How wrong they were.

  A swell of anger rose from Anna’s core—but then she saw Craig Shine walking toward her.

  Anna squeezed Freddy’s wrist. “Pretend we're talking.”

  “We are talking,” Freddy said.

  Doreen gave Freddy a pitying look and escaped down the hall just as Craig reached his locker. He nodded at Freddy, giving Anna a brief, private smile.

  Craig opened his locker, resting one hand on top of the metal door. He wore ear buds with one bud in and the other hanging down the front of his shirt. A detail that struck Anna as unbearably sexy. A string from one of the buttons on the wrist of his flannel shirt was coming loose, and she had an urge to reach out and tug on it.

  Craig leaned toward her, the nearness of him making her face even warmer. For one nerve-jangling moment she thought he might kiss her, but instead he whispered in her ear, “Cut a new track last night.”

  He pulled back, reached into his locker for a book, then turned to look at her. His dark eyes made the noise and bustle of the hallway retreat to a blurred hush.

  “And are you going to share this mysterious new track?” she asked.

  Craig took his hand off the locker and placed it on her back, whispering in her ear, “Well, that depends, Fagan. Do you want me to share it with you?” He trailed his hand down her back, a rush of heat chasing the path of his fingers. “Ask me nicely,” he said. The hair on her neck fluttered under his breath as her heart ignited in her chest.

  Calm down, she told herself. Above all, say nothing stupid.

  Freddy leaned against a nearby locker, pretending to be engrossed with his phone. He looked up at her with a pained expression. Freddy thought Craig was a simpleton with subpar musical talents. But Craig had a deep side. “I like to turn up the music so loud that it’s impossible to think,” he’d told her one night in August at a beach party where a bunch of them had gathered to mourn the end of summer. And that was sort of deep, wasn’t it?

  As if Freddy’s death glare wasn’t enough to ruin the moment, Izzy Lopowitz and Frank Mafay approached, no doubt trying to score popularity points by being seen in the vicinity of Craig Shine.

  “Sup, Craig?” Izzy said, scanning Anna’s body. “You hanging with the witch girl? Her daddy traps goblins and shit.”

  Frank emitted a rapid-fire spray of girlish laughter, getting a quick finger sniff off before fist-bumping Izzy.

  “Let’s go,” Freddy said, placing his hand on Anna’s arm. He was trying to get her out of the situation, but she gently shrugged him off. Izzy wasn’t going to ruin the few moments she’d have all day with Craig.

  “Girls always stick together,” Izzy said, jabbing his index finger in the middle of the blue circle on Freddy’s NASA sweatshirt. “Do you two go pee together, too?”

  “Yeah,” Frank said, getting in Freddy’s face. “You need a tampon, gay boy?”

  To toast that stroke of comic brilliance, Izzy and Frank fist bumped again and continued their swagger down the hall. Anna rolled her eyes at Freddy but he declined to give her a roll back, mouthing “later” and leaving for class. Izzy would have Freddy in his crosshairs now, and it was her fault. She’d make it up to Freddy later. What mattered now was Craig. But he had a strange look in his eye.

  “That's some crazy shit about your dad. You into that stuff?” Craig asked, running a hand through his gelled hair.

  “Not even remotely,” Anna said. And it was true, mostly.

  The bell rang.

  “See ya, Fagan,” Craig said flatly before walking off.

  Great. He was totally turned off now, probably crossing her name off as any kind of possibility. Annoyed, Anna rummaged through her locker looking for a book. The second-period bell rang and she cringed as the clanging sound continued to vibrate between her ears.

  Perfect. Not only was she late, but her ears were ringing. It was probably a brain tumor with her luck.

  Heat shot down the back of her neck. Izzy was back, and way too close. His breath reeked of cigarettes and chocolate milk.

  “You're kinda hot, Goblin Girl,” he said. “You like getting scared? I got something that’ll make you scream.”

  Disgusted, Anna slammed her locker shut, but Izzy blocked her way. His curdled breath surrounded her in a fog.

  “Do you mind?” She gestured for him to move. “Your stench offends.”

  Izzy's smirk faded. “I'm saying I like you. I want to get with you.”

  It was shocking how much she wanted to hurt him. Her fingers curled into fists as she stifled the urge to punch him in the face.

  “The scariest thing ever?” she said. “Your face.”

  Izzy, not sure what to do, grabbed his crotch. “You'd be lucky to get on this.”

  It was laughable, but Anna didn’t laugh. Adrenaline was coursing through her, which was weird because she didn’t normally let Izzy get to her. She broke past him and took a few steps before turning and flipping him the double bird.

  She didn’t have to see Izzy again until Denton’s last-period biology class. Mr. Denton was droning on, oblivious to the large black pepper stuck between his front teeth. He had an angry rash of broken capillaries around his nose, made more garish under the fluorescent lights of the classroom. The harsh lights buzzed in her ears and bathed the classroom with an unforgiving glare, revealing every clogged pore and dandruff flake and all the dusty chalk smears on the blackboard behind Denton’s desk.

  The big news of the day was the Invasion of the Zombie Bees. The flat-screen TV, rolled out in front of the blackboard, was broadcasting night-vision footage of bloated bees, jerking erratically through the air. The bees, Denton explained, had been attacked by a parasitic fly that had injected its eggs into their bodies. The fly larva inside them somehow overpowered the worker bees’ basic instincts, resulting in previously unseen behavior like night flying and the abandonment of their hives.

  Anna rubbed her temples. Another headache.

  “What do you think, Ms. Fagan?”

  Denton looked down at her.

  “About what?”

  “I see you’re not paying attention once again. Maybe that’s why you failed your quiz yesterday?” Denton held up her quiz in front of the class. A large “57” was written in red at the top and underlined. Next to it Denton had written “Really??” in extra-large print.

  Anna might have laughed it off if Izzy hadn’t opened his mouth.

  “Really, Fagan, a fifty-seven?” Izzy yelled from the back of the room.

  A few kids snickered and Denton blushed with pleasure as he told the class to settle down. He was the type of teacher that treated his vulnerable students with subtle contempt, all in a bid for “cool points”—but this was extr
eme, even for Denton. Anna normally felt vaguely sorry for him, but now a visceral loathing exploded in a starburst behind her eyes and reignited the painful ringing in her ears.

  “Is this part of your job description, Mr. Denton?” Anna asked.

  The room froze in a collective silence. This wasn’t the way Goblin Girl acted. Goblin Girl normally sat there and took it. Anything to keep the attention off her.

  “Excuse me, Miss Fagan? I suggest you watch your mouth or—”

  “It’s a simple question,” Anna continued. “Is sharing a student’s grade with the rest of the class a part of your job or not?”

  “I’ll send you to Steuben’s office,” Denton said, the top of his bald head turning red.

  “Great. I can ask him.”

  The class snickered, not at her now, but at Denton. Anna knew better than to get on the bad side of a teacher. She was surprised she had the guts to take him on. Guts, or stupidity? a voice inside her asked, but she ignored it.

  “Everyone get back to work and keep it zipped,” Denton said. It was over, for now.

  When the bell rang, Anna found herself walking slowly past Denton’s desk. She met his eyes straight on, and he was the first to look away.

  Izzy approached her in the hallway. “Yo, G-girl, didn’t know you were such a badass.” Anna kept walking, but Izzy kept moving his lips.

  “The ass ain't bad, actually. I’d like to crack that nut.”

  She didn’t bother to flip him off. “Get some help,” she said, already thinking about going home, where she could be alone in her room and mourn her mother’s death in peace.

  Chapter Four

  Source

  There was a realm not of matter and form, but of spirit, from which the universe, and possibly countless others, had sprung. Jack called it “Source.” Anna wanted to believe that Helen Fagan had crossed into Source, that she was free, that she was safe, but then why had her spirit remained elusive? When Anna felt hopeless—as she did today—she tortured herself with thoughts of her mother’s spirit trapped in some sort of monstrous hell dimension, enslaved by the demon that murdered her. Jack had tried for years to contact Helen, hiring mediums and psychics and using his own connection to Source to try to communicate with her. He’d begged for any sign from her, but the phone lines were silent. One day he just gave up, and Jack’s connection to Source grew weaker from then on.