“I don’t really care what they were, and neither does Keagan. A boy needs his father, and Harold wasn’t there for him, and now he’s dead.”
“I am not dead. I am in a different place.”
“That place is called death.”
“Then why am I here? Why can I talk to you? Why can I see you? Why can I see Keagan?”
“Because you’re a fucking ghost. That doesn’t mean you’re alive. It means you’re stuck between realms.”
“I’m not stuck! I chose this.”
“Semantics. The thing is, you don’t belong here, and I’m not gonna let you stay. I’m not gonna let you get to Keagan. So again, you can make this easy, give me your underworld name, and off we go, or you can make it hard. Your choice.”
The Horror doesn’t say anything, but I still feel its presence, even as it flickers in and out of my sight. It’s losing power, expending too much energy to engage with me, which is a good sign. That means he really doesn’t have that much power to manifest yet, which will keep him from hurting Keagan. Hopefully.
I do need to figure out what he meant about visiting Keagan. If he can do that, if he’s not anchored to one place, it’s going to make him a lot harder to get rid of. If he can figure out how to get from one place to another in the astral realm, that’s gonna make my job that much more difficult. But not impossible.
I stand up, rubbing my hands together. “Listen, Horror, the time has come for you to go back. If you make me chase you, I will. I’m relentless, and there’s no way you’re getting away from me.”
“We’ll see about that.”
And then it’s gone.
The sudden temperature change in the room is noticeable. I’m irritated, but at the same time, at least I understand a little bit more about the Horror than I did when I got here.
I guess I’ll leave. My time is likely better spent calling Calliope than trying to handle the other spirits that escaped the underworld.
For now, I need to make sure Keagan is protected.
After leaving the house and returning to my car, I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial Calliope.
“Wilder!” Her voice is as chipper as always. “How the heck are you?”
“I have a problem.”
“I figured as much. Lay it on me.”
“My latest target has some kind of attraction to the spirit world.”
“Attraction?”
“Yes, and I don’t mean he’s attracted. I mean he’s attracting.”
“Oh,” she says. “He’s attracting spirits?”
“Exactly. I know this because he’s interacted with a spirit board on two different occasions, which has caused some problems.”
“Oh, no, did he summon something he shouldn’t have?”
“Well, yes, because we shouldn’t summon anything, but to be specific, he was trying to summon his father and a whole bunch of other spirits snuck through. He also had a reading with a medium who told him that she had to shut the session down early because there were too many spirits trying to bustthrough. Something is attracting these spirits to him, and I need to know if there’s anything we can do about that. Is there a spell we can help him with? Is there a reason it’s happening? Is there anything we can do to make it stop?”
“Ooh, okay, this is a juicy one. It does happen, but normally the person is sensitive.”
“Sensitive, meaning?”
“They have abilities, like I do, or like a medium does, or a clairvoyant or a tarot reader. Some kind of supernatural energy surrounds them that draws that world to them. Is he into that stuff? Does he dabble?”
“Not to my knowledge. I think he only started in an attempt to contact his dead father.”
