Scott Nicholson Library Vol 3 Read online

  “Back in my day, all we had was the school newspaper,” Martin Summerhill said. His tie was askew and his sleeves rolled up, projecting the air of a man who’d rather be playing golf.

  “Yes, sir,” Dempsey said. “Multimedia is all the rage now. Social networking, video blogging, Tweets. Real-time entertainment.”

  “Nothing but the best for our children,” Martin said. “I’m a strong supporter of education.”

  Dempsey smiled, letting the man make his political pitch. He’d seen a “Re-elect Summerhill” sign by the mailbox and figured the election was coming up in a few days. Dempsey had already promised his vote, not that he had any intention of being in Parson’s Ford when Tuesday rolled around.

  “Are you registered to vote?” he asked Snake, whom Dempsey had brought along as a production assistant.

  “Too young,” Snake said. “Plus I’m a convicted felon.”

  Martin drew back with a confused, startled expression, as if a felon in his yard was as unthinkable as a pile of steaming giraffe poop.

  Dempsey gave an exaggerated giggle and said, “He got ya, didn’t he? That Snake. Such a comedian. The next Bill Murray.”

  He jabbed Snake in the ribs, and the skinny guy yelped in pain. Then, catching on, he started giggling, too. “Felon, heh heh. Get it? They can’t vote.”

  Martin nodded, dubious, eyeing the “Live free or die” tattoo on Snake’s forearm. “So the whole school will be able to watch this, right? After you edit it, I mean.”

  “Sure, we’ll make her look good,” Dempsey said, flashing his own political pedigree. “I know the vote for Homecoming queen is coming up, and a little interactive social media certainly can’t hurt.”

  Cindy was inside putting on her make-up. Judging by the spin she’d put on the project, her father thought it was a blend of Bible-verse study, Red Cross fundraiser, and class project. She’d sold it well enough that her parents were leaving her home unattended. Dempsey suspected she’d had lots of practice fooling them.

  “Okay,” Martin said, straightening his tie for the road. “Tell Cindy we’ll call her from Raleigh. And to keep an eye on Lacey.”

  “Royce,” Snake said.

  “Excuse me?” Martin said.

  “Royce,” Dempsey cut in. “Isn’t he a candidate for Senate?”

  “Halloween,” Snake said.

  “Halloween,” Martin agreed. “As much as I’d rather stay here giving out candy, the party’s having a party.” He winked at Snake. “Republican, right? Straight ticket.”

  “Royce.”

  “You got it.”

  As Martin and his wife drove away in their Lexus SUV, Dempsey gave the thumbs-up to Snake. “Let’s set up the extra cameras.”

  Rounding up that many extras and having them to pretend to be smashed teenagers would have been a logistical nightmare. The real thing was so much easier.

  Dempsey wished it had been his idea, but the agent had pulled it all together. He’d even revised Dempsey’s script, the one act that had left Dempsey feeling uneasy. The agent had described the editing pass as a “tweak,” but the dialogue was weaker. Leave it to the Money People to screw up a good story in the interest of box office.

  “If you’re going to sell out, better add a few zeroes at the end,” Dempsey said to Snake, who didn’t get it but gave a gap-toothed grin nonetheless. They unpacked the utility van Dempsey used as his production vehicle, Dempsey reviewing the schedule in his head.

  The first act called for Pettigrew and Cindy to make out a little in the kitchen, nothing too heavy, just enough to get the teenyboppers in the audience riled up. Then Cindy and Lacey had a little scene playing up the house as haunted, telling stories about the TV turning on by itself and silverware sliding off the counter.

  There was a bit about a knife that had flown across the room and buried itself in the wall. Dempsey wasn’t sure how Cindy would explain the gouge to her parents, but before the film wrapped, the kitchen was going to be a mess.

  “That Ouija board thing,” Snake said, lugging a light stand onto the porch. “You ever messed with one before?”

  Of course. People always ask how you get an agent, and there’s only one way I know of.

  “I’ve played around a little bit,” he said. “The little plastic wheely thing kept coming up on M. At first I thought it was like ‘mmmm,’ but then I wondered if it was M & M’s. You know, the candy.”

  “Mmmm,” Snake said. “Candy.”

  Dempsey wondered if Snake had been smoking strange vegetables, and then decided it wouldn’t make any difference. “Act two is all about the séance, the kids all sitting around the board laughing and joking. Then there’s some moaning and Cindy has the little pointer and she spells out ‘R-O-Y-C-E.’”

  “Royce.”

  Dempsey didn’t know if Snake was speaking on impulse or had correctly spelled a five-letter word for the first time in his life. “The mood gets serious when Royce shows up. Just fades in like a trick, right in the middle of all these kids who think they’re acting in a movie. A real live ghost.”

  “A live ghost?”

  “Just carry the lights,” Dempsey said, as Pettigrew steered his rumbling truck into the driveway.

  Pettigrew had shaved for his acting debut, though his wardrobe of oily coveralls and flannel shirt would need a serious makeover. Still, the agent had insisted, and the supporting cast really didn’t matter. This was a Royce vehicle, and Dempsey could have band-aided the project with “High School Musical” castoffs and still come out with a winner.

  Creativity is so much easier when the audience is guaranteed. Now I know why Hollywood loves remakes.

  “Yo, Pettigrew,” Dempsey called. “Break a leg.”

  Pettigrew, who was shuffling through pages of the script as he walked across the lawn, said, “What page is that on?”

  “It’s an expression of good luck in the industry.”

  “I get it. Sort of like ‘bust a gut.’”

  “Or ‘cut a fart,’” Snake said with a moist, unpleasant snicker.

  “Get in there,” Dempsey shouted at Snake, whipping him with a cable and driving him into the house.

  Pettigrew glowered at the script as if it were written in Sanskrit. “When does this Royce guy come in? I don’t even see any lines for him.”

  “That’s all improv. Veteran actors do it all the time.” Much to the annoyance of directors the world over.

  Pettigrew flipped through a few pages. “And this part here, where it goes ‘Royce drifts in from the doorway.’ I got a chain in the truck if you need it. You know, to hook him from the ceiling.”

  “Just leave the special effects to me,” Dempsey said. “Go on in and practice with Cindy. She’s in her bedroom.”

  Pettigrew swallowed hard. “We’ll be alone?”

  “Just you two lovebirds and an Ouija board.”

  “We’re not lovebirds.”

  “Come on, you know how these things go. Nothing gets tabloid coverage like an on-the-set romance.” Dempsey lowered his voice. “You don’t have to marry her or anything. These flings usually end when the next project comes along.”

  “I’m going to marry Crystal Aldridge.”

  Dempsey gave him a friendly slap on the back that was just a little too solid. “Sure, sure. Hometown sweetheart and all that. But Hollywood is three thousand miles from Parson’s Ford. In L.A., even the homeless are beautiful.”

  “I ain’t sure I want to go through with this.”

  A vehicle sped down the street, a sleek SUV with tinted windows. It was packed with teenagers. The driver honked and the kids shouted and waved. Dempsey grinned and waved back, and Pettigrew stuck up his hand as if giving an oath.

  “Do it for the fans,” Dempsey said. “They need dreams. They need something larger-than-life to make their own lives meaningful.”

  “Parson’s Ford was doing just fine before all this glitz and glam came in,” Pettigrew said. “We didn’t need no French accents or fancy coffee.”r />
  “Do it for the money, then.”

  “My truck’s already paid off and I got a down payment in on the International Harvester—”

  “Do it for Royce.”

  Pettigrew’s eyes glazed. “Royce.”

  Dempsey smiled. “That’s what I thought. Come on.”

  Dempsey took Pettigrew by the elbow and guided him into the house. They went past Snake setting up in the living room and ascended the stairs. Cindy’s room was the last on the left, which Dempsey had noted in the storyboards for the early scenes.

  Party, lovebirds hold a séance, all hell breaks loose. Three acts and roll credits. Simple enough.

  Cindy’s door was open. She was sitting on her bed, the pages of the script spread around her. The Ouija board was in front of her, and she was rolling the planchette around.

  “You haven’t been summoning anything, have you?” Dempsey asked.

  “I was just playing around,” she said, and then glanced at Pettigrew. “What’s with him? Is he on drugs?”

  “He’s high on Royce.”

  “Royce,” she said, her mouth going slack.

  “Royce,” Pettigrew echoed.

  “Royce,” Dempsey agreed. “You two run through the bedroom scenes and I’ll be back with the camera.”

  “When do we kiss?” Cindy said.

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Royce,” Pettigrew said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bone waited in the closet until Crystal and her mouthless mother were in the living room.

  The Judge had been right. Two drops of squirrel-eye jelly in the special Halloween concoction had thrown the entire spell off kilter. Instead of granting Minerva Aldridge the power to shut down the portal at the most vulnerable time of year, the spell backfired and shut her up completely.

  Best of all, Crystal thought Royce was the saboteur. The Judge had assured Bone the disappearance of Minerva’s mouth was only temporary, and that by November she’d be as loud and shrill as ever.

  Of course, any spell Minerva uttered then would come far too late.

  Bone moved over to the Orifice on the wall, which glistened with ill intent. “Psst,” she whispered, figuring the Judge was waiting for her to check in. “It’s Bone.”

  The voice came faint and hollow. “Bone. It’s me.”

  “Tim?” She peered into the pulsing, dark morass but couldn’t see his face.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is the Judge there?”

  “No, he gobbled some of those chocolate-covered coffee beans you smuggled through and went tearing off across the graveyard, howling at the moon.”

  “You were supposed to save those for an emergency.”

  “I call Armageddon an emergency.”

  “Being a little melodramatic, aren’t we?”

  “You should see the weird army of critters the Judge has assembled. Big, slimy tentacled things—”

  “That would be the Lurken.”

  “And these crawling dust bunnies with fangs.”

  “The Underlings.”

  “What about the one-horned stacks of cherry cheesecake?”

  “Those would be the Spooge.”

  “Spooge?”

  “Leftover ectoplasm. Sort of like your soul was a big pimple and you squeezed it.”

  “I’m too young for pimples.”

  “Goodie for you. Where are all these creepy critters?”

  “They’re milling around outside the cemetery gate. Waiting for marching orders.”

  Bone listened to Crystal’s attempts to calm her mother. She didn’t have much time. “I need a little help here.”

  “Want me to get the Judge?”

  “No, I want you to cross over.”

  There was a silence. She imagined Tim huddled near the crack in the mausoleum, peering at the miasma of the portal. Some girls had no problem taking advantage of a guy who had a crush on them. They figured they were doing the guy a favor, giving him a chance to feel useful and hopeful at the same time.

  Plus, what girl didn’t love attention?

  “I don’t know, Bone,” he whispered. “I’m scared.”

  “Hey, coming back is a whole lot easier than getting over there in the first place. It’s sort of like being born, only without the icky fluids and diapers and a doctor’s thermometer up your butt.”

  “How will I do it?”

  Bone unrolled the little slip of paper she’d copied from Minerva Aldridge’s Big Book of Home Cooking. She flung a handful of crematory ash against the Orifice and recited the Fetching Spell:

  “You’ve yet begun the journey’s end,

  Become tomorrow’s oldest friend,

  Too soon you left the skin you wore,

  Come back and try it on once more.”

  A moist slurping sound filled the room, and the desk lamp blinked. Tim’s face popped through the Orifice, covered with a gooey substance that resembled rubber cement. He was briefly pulled back, his open mouth trying to scream, but one more mighty lunge and plook—his head pierced the veil. He wriggled for a moment but he was stuck. He gasped and laid still, his head protruding from Crystal’s bedroom wall like a trophy deer.

  “Uh, now what?” he said.

  Bone turned over the slip of paper that held the spell. The back of the paper was blank. Crystal had joked once that amateurs had no business messing around with folk magic. Bone figured Crystal was bragging. If Minerva could do it, anybody could do it.

  Except Bone doubted Minerva would leave somebody hung up between the real world and Darkmeet. Talk about a Tweener ....

  “Hocus pocus, al-a-kazam,” she said, junk she’d heard in a movie somewhere.

  Tim blinked but otherwise looked like a dead cancer victim. “So, what happens when all these Lurken, Spooge, and Underlings come stampeding up behind me?”

  You’ll probably be shot across Parson’s Ford like a cork from a champagne bottle. And have a sore booty to boot.

  Before Bone could decide her next move, Crystal entered the room. She took one look at Tim’s head, then at Bone holding the funeral urn that contained the sacred ashes of her ancestor and guardian angel, Arveleta Aldridge. “You didn’t.”

  “She did,” Tim said.

  “How many times do I have to say it? ‘Dead stay dead.’”

  “Three times, actually,” Bone said. “Spells should be repeated three times.”

  Which is where I went wrong, but it doesn’t look like Crystal is going to let me fix it.

  “You could say hello,” Tim said to Crystal. “You haven’t seen me in six years.”

  “You haven’t aged a bit,” Crystal said. “Sorry about that cancer thing.”

  “It happens,” Tim said.

  “How do we get him out of there?” Bone asked.

  “We’ll have to ask Momma.”

  Crystal yelled down the hall. As the footsteps hammered in the hallway, Bone set the urn on the bedside table and went invisible. “Better this way,” she whispered.

  A moment later, Minerva burst into the room, arms flailing. Her eyes flitted around the room, taking stock of the dead boy stuck in the Orifice. She touched the spot above her chin where her lips used to reside, as if wanting to speak and remembering she couldn’t.

  “What do we do?” Crystal asked.

  Momma tapped the back of one hand with two fingers and then pointed to the ceiling. Crystal and Tim looked up. Minerva shook her head and repeated the motions.

  “Two words,” Tim exclaimed.

  Minerva nodded vigorously, holding up one finger again.

  “First word,” Crystal said, catching on to the game of charades.

  Minerva thrust her hand out, palm open.

  “Five,” Tim said, counting her fingers.

  “Hand,” Crystal said.

  Minerva shook her head, eyebrows knitted in frustration. She tugged her earlobe and then cupped her hand behind her ear.

  “Sounds like!” Tim said.

  Minerva nodded and
acted like she was pushing a long stick around on the floor.

  “Mop,” Crystal said, having done enough of that particular chore.

  Minerva nodded and held up her palm again.

  “Traffic cop,” Tim said. “Hey, I just noticed, I can’t feel my toes. Is this a bad thing?”

  “Stop,” Bone whispered from the closet.

  “What?” Crystal said.

  “Stop!”

  Minerva looked at the closet and her jaw twitched as if she wanted to speak but had forgotten she had no mouth.

  Bone parted a couple of blouse-draped hangers and smiled at the middle-aged witch. She was solid.

  The jig was up. The Crystal-and-Bone Variety Show was now out of the closet. “Hello, Miss Aldridge,” Bone said.

  The witchwoman’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead like twin electrified caterpillars. Then she glared at Crystal.

  “There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Crystal said.

  A lie on top of a lie. When you say you’ve been MEANING to tell, it really means you were never going to tell but had finally gotten caught.

  “It was my idea,” Bone said. “To keep me secret. I know white witches aren’t supposed to consort with the dead.”

  “We weren’t consorting, we were just hanging out,” Crystal said.

  Minerva put her hands on her hips, giving Crystal a look that said, Just wait until I get my mouth back.

  “Uh, guys?” Tim said. “Talk about hanging out. How long am I stuck in your wall?”

  Minerva held up two fingers to indicate the second word, and then did the ear thing for “Sounds like.” Then she stroked her throat and made a fluttering motion as if releasing a bird into the wild blue yonder.

  “Swallow,” Bone said.

  “You should quit while you’re ahead,” Crystal said.

  Minerva put her hands where her lips should be and flung them outward.

  “Vomit?” Tim said, as if chemotherapy had permanently etched that function into his repertoire.

  Minerva shook her head and cupped her hands to mimic a megaphone.

  “Voice!” Crystal said. “Stop voice.”